/lit/ - Literature

Hey writebros anyone want to rate my opening?

>My parents were entirely adequate. My father was a trapper; my mother was whatever the wives of trappers did in those days. Sometimes, when she partook of vodka, she would become convinced that she was the bastard daughter of some nobleman. She spoke of his estate on the Neva river, where she recalled herself toddling along poplar-line alleys and hiding alder cones under the Roman columns of the gazebo. She did not seem particularly interested in the role her own mother had played in all this: sometimes she was a cook or a washerwoman, other times a parishioner whom the mustachioed Don Juan had met on one of his contemplative rides. His horse had been a dapple gray Orlov mare, she was sure of it.

>By my fourth year we had reached an understanding: she would talk, and I would ask what various things had looked like. The chapel in the hazelnut grove had red painted eaves, which were to be avoided in the winter because of icicles. Dutch irises grew around the fountain where three dolphins spewed water from their ferocious mouths. There was once a viper in the peony bed, and she had cried until the farrier killed it with his hammer. My grandfather, who lived in the outbuilding, was deaf and could neither confirm nor deny.

>Whenever my parents quarreled, my father would put his hands behind his back and say “Yes, baroness! Yes, marquess!” This violation of her sanctity never failed to piss her off.