What marked this occasion was a question he asked and the answer he got back.
"Mudda, id my name Gracie, or id it Tom?"
The mother spoke sharply, as she whisked about the kitchen. "What do you want to know for?"
The question was difficult. He knew what he wanted to know for, and yet it wasn't easy to explain. The nearest he could get to it in language was to say: "I'm a little boy, ain't I?"
"Yes, you're a little boy, but you should have been a little girl. It was a little girl I wanted."
"But you want me, don't you, mudda?"
She dropped whatever she was doing to press his head fiercely against her side. "Yes, I want you! I want you! I want you!"
He remembered this paroxysm of affection not because it was special but because it was connected with his gropings after his identity. Paroxysms were what he lived on. They were of love or of anger or of something which frightened him and yet was nameless. He thrummed to himself, beating time on the table with his spoon, while he worked on to another point.
"Wadn't there never no Gracie, mudda?"