Marigold was dreaming the dream she dreamed. She was a single baby; Rose was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps she had decided not to be born. Beautiful Rose, lovable Rose. Because if she had been born she would surely have belonged to someone, surely Mother and Father. She was the sort of baby people would rush to claim and then hurry home with before the other parents could see her.

Marigold was not that sort of baby. Marigold was difficult. Well, life was difficult, she thought.

Life was difficult: finally you figured out how to climb the stairs. Unimaginably high, those stairs. Each stair came up to her waist. She would lean with her two arms on top of the stair, and then with great effort hoist herself up on her hands and knees. And then have to stand up and repeat the whole thing. I learned, Marigold thought, and then I fell to the bottom. Rose was looking down at me.

But that was not in the dream. Sunlight was in the dream. And that successful feeling that in Marigold’s waking life eluded her. Then how did she know how to feel it in her dream? And she could talk: that she remembered.

Meanwhile the dream, which should have continued pleasantly, was beginning to be permeated with misery and fear. She must have done something to Rose to make her not be. And it was true: she had hit Rose; once she stuck her finger almost in Rose’s eye. Rose often hit Marigold and stuck her fingers wherever they could go. But that Rose would have these dreams was impossible.

Whenever Marigold looked, there she was, sleeping soundly in her crib, often smiling in her sleep. I must have inherited Jewish guilt, Marigold thought. It was inherited from Father. Father had the full complement of Jewish guilt though he was only half Jewish. At least this was what he said. Then it was morning. All in all, Marigold was glad of morning. Rose was making a lot of noise. Really all the noise; Marigold smiled at Mother when Mother arrived. And later she ate her oatmeal from a spoon. She even held the spoon like a real person and not a baby.

Mother and Father understood that Marigold envied Rose. (Poor little Rose, thought Mother. Poor little Marigold, thought Father.) But Rose adored her sister. People have pets they love, but Rose had Marigold.

And while it was true there was a little condescension in these feelings, possibly even pity, it was also true that under this there was a deep regard, an admiration for a being felt in some way to be superior. At least less diffuse (as social beings are diffuse). As though the sweet puppy had become the service animal, or even the Seeing Eye dog, on whom life depended. There was in Rose, despite her obvious beauty and great charm, a deep vein of humility, born, she later felt, of her love for her sister, a reverence slightly touched with awe, as though to Rose Marigold was a kind of prophet or holy figure.

Marigold, she saw, was dreaming her dream. She had pulled off all her blankets. And Rose felt a painful wish to restore the blankets and stroke her sister’s damp hair, but of course this was impossible, owing to the bars of the crib.

Marigold’s book had a name; it was called The Childhood of Mother.

About this subject, little was known. But a book had to have a name, just as Rose and Marigold had to have names before anything could happen to them.

Rose was perennial. This meant she was always there, in her one place, just getting bigger, whereas Marigold was annual. You seed yourself, Mother said; this seemed to her a cheerful fact. But Marigold did not think it was cheerful. For one thing, it meant she was homeless, never knowing where she would be from one year to the next, maybe another garden entirely, without Mother and Father to carry her around when she was tired. You are a multitude; Mother said this also. It meant that though you might have one rose in your garden (what a marvelous rose, people would say), you would never have one marigold. I cannot think, Marigold thought, why they would have done this to me.

Who am I, she thought to herself. Or really, which am I of the hundreds in the original packet. This was not a question Rose would ever need to ask. But it explained the book: Marigold needed something that stood for herself as Rose stood for Rose.

How little we know, Marigold thought. It was known that Mother was once a little child and Grandmother was her mother. Before that she was a baby, though not so little as the twins were. The twins were really one baby divided by two. I am half a baby, Marigold thought. I am the brain and Rose is the heart. Or was it the other way? Father had also been a baby though he was always a boy. Other Grandmother was his mother. Other Grandmother lived far away; the twins did not know her.

Who took care of us, Marigold thought, if Mother was a baby? But the twins couldn’t as yet ask questions. They had to take what they could pick up, like pigeons in the public park. Still, Mother was what Marigold knew best, aside from Rose. But she couldn’t name the book The Childhood of Rose because Rose hadn’t had a childhood.

How little we know, Marigold thought again. She decided she would say what the twins did and then she would change their names to Mother. You can’t do that, thought Rose. You should only tell a true story. It is true, Marigold thought; it just isn’t real.

Excerpted with permission from Marigold and Rose: A Fiction, Louise Glück, Aleph Book Company.

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