The sound it produced from her mother.
The involuntary, 'uncontrolled' cry of a woman whose hair has been grabbed at the root and pulled upward — not vicious, not theatrical, the flat, working grip of a man doing something he has done before —
He pulled her to her knees.
Her mother's hands finding his forearm. Not fighting. The , instinctive grip of someone trying to relieve pressure by finding the source.
The audience.
Sofia looked at them.
They were laughing.
Not all of them. But enough — the low, comfortable laughter of men watching something they expected, something they had perhaps seen before in other rooms with other women, the laughter of an audience getting what they paid for.
Her mother's face.
Sofia had never seen that expression on her mother's face.
She had seen her mother in arguments, in grief, in exhaustion, in the particular, warm, 'working' peace of a woman who has built something and lives inside it.
