First-Person Fiction

We have read of many ugly characters in Ottessa’s collection, but the narrator of this story takes that ugliness one step further. We have a clear understanding of the narrator’s character—she feels herself to be superior to the residents in Alna, and she hates her current work life. She also craves the drugs or “my little jewel” as she refers to them. She is answerable to no one, and has no interest in caring about others. What events or circumstances molded this personality of our narrator, we can only speculate, but this antipathy towards others leads the narrator to a despicable inaction.

Ottessa Moshfegh

The narrator returns to her home to find a teenager standing on her lawn looking at her house. She tells us “when the girl turned around, I saw that she was pregnant. The swell of her baby made a tent of her long black sleeveless shirt.” The girl is looking for work, and she wants to clean the house as she had done before. Does the narrator refuse her because of her condition? No. Does she offer to help in any way? No. She simply lets the girl clean the house. The narrator does wonder about the teenager and even asks herself how the girl’s mother could let her “wander outside in the sweltering heat.” But the narrator, in her determinedness to be uncaring, does nothing for the girl.

The narrator simply eats and watches the teenager lug the cleaning supplies upstairs, “one arm weighed down by the bucket, the other dragging a broom behind her. ‘I’ll start upstairs,’ she said and lugged the stuff up the steps, her face flat and serious, the enormous bulge of her belly straining against her shirt, which was already darkened with sweat down the front.” The narrator then turns to the drugs she acquired earlier in the day, hoping to ingest them, but she realizes they’re different than the ones she had gotten before. As she stares at them wondering how she can take them, she hears “a loud thud” from upstairs. The narrator “put the stuff down on the table and listened. ‘You okay?’ I hollered, still staring down at the crystals. ‘Yeah, I’m all right,’ the girl answered. The scrub brush started up again slowly.” Knowing the girl’s condition, does the narrator go upstairs to check on her? No. She doesn’t even look away from her drugs.

When the girl descends the stairs, the narrator notices “a black stain of blood at her crotch. She seemed not to know that she was bleeding. There was no way she could have seen the blood past the mountain of her belly, I suppose.” The girl becomes dizzy and is clearly in distress, and though the narrator brings her a glass of water, she still lets the girl clean the rest of the house. She doesn’t mention the blood because she “wasn’t good around blood” and “the girl seemed perfectly fine to me.” The narrator goes outside to throw away trash when the girl walks outside with “one hand down under belly and the palm of her other hand up in front of her face. When she saw me and the neighbors, she turned her palm around. It was covered in blood.” The neighbors crowd around her and call for help; the girl is in labor. The narrator simply goes inside to get the girl her money for the cleaning job.

The narrator’s self-absorbed nature and aversion to care may lead to the girl losing her life and/or the life of the child. The narrator may cause the deaths of two people because of her inaction. Whatever events led to the ugliness of the narrator, she has done nothing to rise above them. This girl could have been her chance to gain a new perspective. The girl clearly has no one except for her mother (debatable), and if the narrator had shown care, she could have gone with the girl and been present with her. However, the narrator is not inclined to change. Ottessa understands that misery loves company, and if the narrator’s ugliness affects an innocent person, so be it.