PREFACE

WHICH EXPLAINS THINGS


Father calls me Mary. Mother calls me Marie. Everybody else calls me
Mary Marie. The rest of my name is Anderson.

I'm thirteen years old, and I'm a cross-current and a contradiction.
That is, Sarah says I'm that. (Sarah is my old nurse.) She says she
read it once--that the children of unlikes were always a cross-current
and a contradiction. And my father and mother are unlikes, and I'm the
children. That is, I'm the child. I'm all there is. And now I'm going
to be a bigger cross-current and contradiction than ever, for I'm
going to live half the time with Mother and the other half with
Father. Mother will go to Boston to live, and Father will stay here--a
divorce, you know.

I'm terribly excited over it. None of the other girls have got a
divorce in their families, and I always did like to be different.
Besides, it ought to be awfully interesting, more so than just living
along, common, with your father and mother in the same house all the
time--especially if it's been anything like my house with my father
and mother in it!