Night, Mother

Jessie continues her instructions to her mother, telling her that the milkman will keep bringing milk. Petulantly, Thelma insists that she’ll never drink milk again, but Jessie is confident that Thelma won’t let it go to waste. Jessie told the milkman that she was going on vacation, which Thelma finds laughable since Jessie leaves the house only when she’s carried to an ambulance. Jessie starts to clean out the refrigerator, and Thelma peppers her with questions, some mundane and some deeply complex. She wants to know why Jessie resents her, what Jessie is thinking and feeling, and what she experienced during a seizure. Thelma asks Jessie what caused her to fall from the horse, why her husband, Cecil, divorced her, and where Jessie put Thelma’s glasses. Taken aback, Jessie tells her where to find her glasses.

Then Jessie tells her mother that Cecil left because she wouldn’t stop smoking. Thelma argues that what disturbed Cecil were Jessie’s “fits”; Jessie corrects her and tells her to call them seizures. Thelma argues, “It’s the same thing. A seizure in the hospital is a fit at home” (38). Jessie replies that they didn’t upset Cecil but that he felt guilty because he pushed her to go horseback riding.