ATDTDA (13): Heh, heh, heh, 351-353 #2

[Paul Nightingale]

The text emphasises the number of children involved without actually telling
us how many: "older ones" and "really little ones" is a simplistic
categorisation that perhaps indicates Dally's own confusion, the difficulty
she has keeping track. As yet she can form only a "general" impression.
Names are offered to help us work out the numbers involved (Bria, Nunzi and
Cici seem older; Dominic, Lucia and Concetta are younger); but the children
appear as one with the opening description of the house and its contents
(351), adding to an overcrowded impression. Bria refers to it as "a
magician's house" as though that will explain all. She still wears her "red
spangled knifethrower's costume" (352); if this is, to Dally's eyes, a
stand-out feature, it might remind her of her own appearance at the party,
the "juvenile rag" (349) that made her self-conscious. Bria's "unsymmetrical
grins" (352) seem to be a test; and Nunzi and Cici also offer a performance
she must negotiate to prove herself in their company. As yet no mother, for
whom the children are a substitute; and no paterfamilias. Dally has gone
from the party, where she was sensitive to her youth, to a situation where
she is being tested by those younger.

And why "stepbrothers and sisters"? Although strictly speaking accurate,
this would downplay, if not deny, effectively, Dally's relationship to her
own mother; or conversely downplay/deny Erlys' relationship to them. When
leaving with Zombini, Erlys left a note "pinned to [Dally's] blanket" (69),
the note a substitute for the child's absent mother, a reminder of her
maternal claim that insists upon her return, whenever. The images in the
"now-battered copy of Dishforth's Illustrated Weekly" have also substituted
for Erlys down the years. Perhaps to refer to step-siblings would be to go
back (as when reading the magazine over and over, Veikko-like) and deny the
initial separation. Erlys' note says she'll "be back" (69); and 'going back'
is what Dally attempts here.