Agnes Koljaiczek (Oskar's Mother) Timeline and Summary

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• Agnes is conceived (Oskar tells us) under the skirts of her mother, Anna Bronski, by Joseph Koljaiczek.
• Agnes falls in love with her cousin Jan Bronski and the two of them begin a romantic relationship. But her practicality eventually gets the better of her and she decides to go with the safe bet by marrying Alfred Matzerath, a German.
• Agnes helps Alfred Matzerath run his shop. She has great business skills and the shop flourishes.
• Agnes gets pregnant, but since she's seeing both Alfred and Jan at the same time, it's unclear who the father is. Oskar, however, feels pretty sure that his blue eyes link him to Jan.
• When Oskar is born, Agnes says that she'll get him a tin drum on his third birthday.
• When Oskar decides to make himself stop growing and throws himself down the basement stairs, Agnes thinks it's an accident and blames her husband Alfred for leaving the trapdoor open. She never really forgives him.
• To buy Oskar's drums, Agnes takes him to a toy store run by a Jewish guy named Sigismund Markus.
• Agnes leaves Oskar with Sigismund every week while she goes off on trysts with Jan Bronski.
• One day, Agnes, Oskar, Alfred, and Jan are walking along the shore and see a guy fishing for eels. Agnes vomits when she sees that the guy is catching the eels by pulling them out of a dead horse's head.
• Her husband Alfred buys a few eels for cooking and tries to make her eat them that night. But she refuses to ever eat eel or any fish again.
• It's pretty clear that seeing the eels and the horse's head has been a traumatic experience for Agnes. After a few days, she starts eating fish again.
• But now she won't eat anything other than fish. She eats so much fish that she actually gets fish poisoning and dies. From this point on in the book, Oskar starts referring to her as "poor mother."