The girl’s predilection is to trace her hand with a pencil on a piece of paper.
The mother made a rule that her daughter was responsible for something. And what could that be?—to be sulky and disappointed?—to be heavy and club-like? To be backward?
When the child finished her early education, she drew a picture of her future that consisted of a pair of legs, column-shaped, and just above them, the hem of a skirt in bright orange. The legs were decorated—as if wrapped in wallpaper—in pastel blue with red posies and their green leaves. The shoes were clumpy, earthy.
But about the child’s later life, how did she fare?
The child showed her picture to her mother.
“And where is her head?” her mother said. “I see legs!” she pointed. “Shoes.”
It was just a few words, but more than the child needed to consider.
The child was handed more paper.
And so was invented a kind of brute—a brunette with longish hair, who must love her enemies—who acts responsibly.