Answer:
The answer is: C- the narrator's mother is attempting to identify what her son ate.
Step-by-step explanation:
First of all, these are the missing options to the question:
What is the meaning of the excerpt?
A. The narrator’s brother is ignoring his mother’s behavior.
B. The narrator’s brother is playing a trick on his mother.
C. The narrator’s mother is attempting to identify what her son ate.
D. The narrator’s mother is addressing her sons for their misbehavior.
To get the answer, the text must be examined and the actions of the characters must be analysed.
In the excerpt, the narrator's mother was bent and her eyes were squinting. She was clearly trying to examine something that caught her interest.
Also, it was said that the mother froze, and started identifying what her son held in his hand at the same time, searching for evidence of oral contact with something.
Oral as we know, implies a connection to the mouth.
This simply means that she was trying to identify if the son put the object in his mouth.
Going by these clues, it is safe to say the answer is option C.