✳flâneur — a map of the web's best reading

The Yale Review | Colombe Schneck's Object of Desire

yalereview.org · 1,838 words · saved by 1 readers

WHEN I WAS thirty-two and three months pregnant, my mother, Hélène, made a request. She was half concealed behind her bedroom door, and from the hallway I could see a strip of the cream quilted cotton that hung on the wall behind her. With a faint smile and a hint of guilt, she asked: If my baby was a girl, would I give her Salomé as a middle name? She would not ask too much, she said, not a first, just a middle, the one you never use, hidden in your passport. It was the name of her cousin, and “there is nothing left of her.” I laughed, a nervous laugh, and said, “Of course I will.” But I did not dare ask who Salomé was or why there was nothing left of her. In any event, I had a boy. A year and a half later, my mother was diagnosed with a brain tumor, a glioblastoma. “There is no treatment,” the doctor said. “She is going to die in the next six months. Keep her at home, take care of her.” In the years before her diagnosis, in the dusk before dinner—or, as we say in France, “entre chien

The Yale Review | Colombe Schneck's Object of Desire Objects of Desire Salomé I gave my daughter the name my mother wanted—but who was her namesake? Colombe Schneck A photograph finally confirmed a story that had only ever been told in pieces. Getty Images In Objects of Desire , a writer meditates on an everyday item that haunts them. When i was thirty-two and three months pregnant, my mother, Hélène, made a request. She was half concealed behind her bedroom door, and from the hallway I could see a strip of the cream quilted cotton that hung on the wall behind her. With a faint smile and

Explore this link on the map →

related reading