I want to blog Beccah from Comfort Woman by Nora Okja Keller this week. This story is very Asian. There are a lot of people in Asia that believe some people can deliver messages back and forth from our world to the other world (hell or heaven). I have not personally met one yet, but my aunt did. She told me that it was unbelievable because the medium or psychic was able to tell something that only she and her mother know. My aunt was first led to a dark room where a lot of candles were lighted up. Like Auntie Reno said in the story that atmosphere was just as important as ability. (Keller 199) After asking some question to my aunt, the psychic then started to prepare the summon ceremony. The psychic casted some spells and burned some yellow papers. Next thing my aunt heard was the conversation of the psychic to the guards from the other world. The psychic politely requested the guard to bring my aunt’s mom to her body so that my aunt can talk to her. Sometimes the guard will refuse the request, but my aunt was lucky. My aunt said, few minutes later, the psychic’s body started to shake and it lasted for a minute or two. Next thing was the when my aunt got shocked. The psychic was changed to a low voice and called my aunt by her nickname. The nickname that was given to her by her mom when she was young, no one knows that but she and her mom. That was their secret.

I was confused how the Daughter treated her mother. “I loved my mother during the normal time. She laughed and sang songs she made up. Instead of telling me to clear my papers and books off the table for dinner, she’d sing it to me.” (Keller 194) It looks like a happy family scene to me. The Daughter was enjoying the time with her mother. However, she mentioned that this was when her mother is normal. Unfortunately, her mother was abnormal for most of the time. It was claiming by Aunt Reno that the spirit of the Mother had left the body and filled up with other people’s spirit. (Keller 194) When these moments came, the Daughter seemed like not liking her mother anymore. The Daughter locked the mother in the room; sometimes even yelled at her mother. (Keller 194)

“I killed your father.” (Kelly 192) I was shocked when I read this in the first paragraph of the story. The Mother was confessing to her daughter that she killed her husband. “Shh, Mommy,” the Daughter said. “Don’t start.” (Kelly 192) Why did the Daughter stop her mother? Was that because the Daughter knows that her mother was talking nonsense? Or it is just that the Daughter can’t stand her mother’s craziness anymore. I think it is the latter one because she mentioned in the story that she was angry at her mother not because of her mother’s confess, but because she was slipping into one of her trances. I think she was lonely and she was trapped in the dilemma of losing her father at young age. She was mad. Because she has to take care of her mother and she doesn’t have someone to take care of her and give her love. Time after time, she started to ignore and avoid her mother. In the extreme extend, she even wished that her mother can pass away so that she will be free from taking care of her crazy mother. “She leaned toward me, and she bent forward to kiss or hug me, I could see vein of white hair running through her black braid.” “Before she could touch me, I pushed away from the table, turning toward the sink to prepare the shrimp for the annual mean that made my mother’s hands crack open and bleed.” (Kelly 202)


PSYCHIC MINISTER