When it's warm, we go and bathe in the stream, we wash our faces and clean our teeth in the well. When it's cold, it's impossible to wash properly. There is no receptacle big enough in the house. Our sheets, our blankets, and our towels have disappeared. We have never seen the big cardboard box Mother brought them in again.

Grandmother has sold everything.

We're getting dirtier and dirtier, our clothes too. We take clean clothes out of our suitcases under the seat, but soon there are no clean clothes left. The ones we wear keep getting torn, and our shoes have holes in them. When possible, we go barefoot and wear only underpants or trousers. The soles of our feet are getting hard, we no longer feel thorns or stones. Our skin is getting brown, our legs and arms are covered with scratches, cuts, scabs, and insect bites. Our nails, which are never cut, break, and our hair, which is almost white from the sun, reaches down to our shoulders.

The privy is at the bottom of the garden. There's never any paper. We wipe ourselves with the biggest leaves from certain plants.

We smell of a mixture of manure, fish, grass, mushrooms, smoke, milk, cheese, mud, clay, earth, sweat, urine, and mold.

We smell bad, like Grandmother.

Exercise to Toughen the Body

Grandmother often hits us with her bony hands, a broom, or a damp cloth. She pulls our ears and grabs us by the hair.

Other people also slap and kick us, we don't even know why.

The blows hurt and make us cry.

Falls, scratches, cuts, work, cold, and heat cause pain as well.

We decide to toughen our bodies so we can bear pain without crying.

We start by slapping and then punching one another. Seeing our swollen faces, Grandmother asks: