Further filings
The Mother of the House
★★☆☆☆
I dressed her myself. White, so it would look like a holiday. I told the children not to be frightened. I told her it was only winter we were throwing. When she went under I said she had only gone in a second. I asked for a picture of the water to show him how pretty it was.
In the old villages the woman of the house did not throw Marzanna. She dressed her. Linen. Beads. A skirt already worn to someone else's wedding. The doll had to look cared for or the river would not take the winter seriously. Długosz, wanting a Roman name for a Polish hunger, called Marzanna Ceres: grain, mother, the field that feeds the living. He did not write who packed the lunch for the procession.
She will tell you it was only winter they were throwing. She will tell you the children were frightened of the cold, not of the ceremony. She will tell you the girl went under for a second, and that a second does not count, and that she has a photograph of the water to prove how pretty it was. She still lives in the house. The house still has a man in it. She cannot leave the man and so she has learned to call the river a holiday. Ceres, if she ever sat at that table, would have recognized the trick: keep the field working. Call the cost a season.
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