I read “In the Family” four more times this week — it was the fifth through the eighth time that I read it in two days. I’ve noticed a few more things about it after reading it four more times.

There are several lines in the story that deal with community, with “we” instead of (or even versus) “I.” For example, at the beginning of the story, the narrator says, “I don’t know about the others…” We all assume that the “others” are other family members. However, that’s not explicitly stated. “Who else would the narrator be referring to?” one might ask. That’s just the idea, though: magical realism is all about the questions, in a sense, and not about the answers.

It also suggests that they don’t discuss the topic she’s bringing up. They talk about the appearance of others (“Gosh, look at Gus”), but they don’t talk about the ontological status of the events. When she says, “I don’t know about the others,” she continues, “but I sometimes felt that, more than a vision in the mirror, I was watching an old worn-out movie, already clouded.” This suggests a sense of separation from what she’s witnessing in the mirror, a dissociation from it. It’s not really a part of her reality but rather something she’s watching. The passage continues, “The deceaseds’ efforts to copy our gestures were slower, restrained, as if the mirror were not truly showing a direct image but the reflection of some other reflection.” A reflection of a reflection throws the whole situation in relief: if it’s reflecting a reflection, then whence comes that image that appears as a reflection. In other words, a reflection of what? This sense of a reflected reflection also impacts the image itself: in a reflection things are reversed. The right-hand side becomes the left-hand side in the mirror. A reflection of a reflection will correct the image. But at the same time, because it’s a corrected image, the reflection will appear opposite: raise your right hand and the you in the mirror will raise the other hand.

This line gets blurred even more at the end of the story, when the narrator says that she “can almost hear the distant rustle” of life on the other side of the mirror and “can’t tell if these sounds come from them or us.” Even if this is not a reflection, being unable to discern from reality and some alternate reality is a sign of mental instability.

Another thing that puzzles me is at the end we have the narrator talking about “a pineapple this big.” “This” functions as a demonstrative pronoun, and it assumes that we are close enough to see what “this” is. Of course we don’t, and I don’t know if that’s a mistake or not. Are we supposed to figure out how big “this big” is? Or know what size pineapple the narrator prefers?