“Grace feels her head shaking, back
and forth, feels the shame rising from her scalp as if each hair
is being uprooted, one by one, leaving her bald as a baby. Itis,
dear God, just as her mother said: from airs and graces comes
disgrace.”

Throughout this story, I gound graces overanalysis of everything to be very odd. On the one hand, she’s probably right in many of her assumptions. On the other hand, that’s a lot of thinking for a mundane interaction. It seemed a lot like deep-rooted insecurity. That was solidified for me when the last line of the passage basically confirms that she’s embarrassed by her existence: Her skin, hair, way of speaking, way of doing things. And it all stems from her mother telling her she is a disgrace to the family. It makes me wonder why her mother was so embarrassed by her own child to the point of making a rhyme about it.