November by Ursula Hegi
When my daughter finds me standing in the swimming pool, water up to my ribs in November, the beige of my wool dress darkened with moisture, she’ll cancel her wedding. Even when she was a girl, she could be stubborn, but I always knew how to stop her. Sometimes just words- you’re making my heart ache- and holding on to my chest. Once, when she wanted to buy that foolish motorbike, I pushed the bread knife into her hand -you might as well slash my throat. I Now she insists on marrying. She’s barely thirty-one, and I told her there’s no rush, even broke my crystal glasses and stepped on them with my bare feet. But she only walked away and locked herself in her room at the end of the hall.
Arms raised straight out from my sides, I stand in the icy water, my palms inches above the cloudy surface. My legs and feet feel numb, swollen, as though they belonged to someone else, but my belly is warm. I wait for the sound of my daughter’s car, the slapping of her tires against the pavement, the reassuring latch of her car door. She’ll come running toward the pool and cry out my name, kneel down and offer both hands to me...But it is quiet. Only the sky comes closer, the hazy dome tilting across the edges of the pool.
Test Questions:
1. Give textual proof that the mother emotionally manipulates the daughter.
2. Give textual evidence that shows the daughter growing immunity to the mother’s manipulation.
3. Explain why the woman is in the pool.

4. Give textual evidence of the condition of the pool.
5.
You