Bitter in the Mouth

The other major theme of the novel is that of secrets, although this theme is closely related to the former in many ways. Again, the two major examples are of Linda and Harper—Linda because of her synesthesia and Harper because of his sexuality and other, related proclivities. The former might be, to some extent, surprising—or at least unexpected—but Linda learned early on, correctly or not, that the fact that she tastes words is something that needs to remain hidden, a defect in her because it makes her different. In fact, DeAnne takes it further and suggests that she is mentally ill (although it is implied at the end of the novel, during their reconciliation, that DeAnne may have simply not believed her). Linda has, ironically, no vocabulary for her experience, and it is an experience that is difficult to understand, so it becomes a lifelong secret, even with her psychiatrist long-term partner, and even after she discovers that her condition does, in fact, have a name, and that others experience it, too.

Harper’s secrecy is more traditional, both as a trope and within the context of the story. However, it also represents the larger point the novel makes about secrets, which seems to be that there is rarely such thing as a true secret. After all, Harper’s sexuality was not truly a secret—Iris had been aware of her younger brother’s propensity for cross-dressing from the time he was young, and she even used that fact to reattain a letter of recommendation for Linda from the congressman whom she once caught partaking in the act with Harper.

As Linda the narrator tells us, it was relatively easy to connect the dots, and even though she didn’t fully understand what homosexuality was, she knew from a young age that Harper liked men. As a result, Harper’s secret is more representative of the kind of “open secret” that dominates the novel, the sort of thing that everyone is aware about, but that they choose to ignore or overlook to reinforce their idea of how things should be as opposed to how they are. To an extent, Iris practiced this with everyone in her family, including with regards to her granddaughter’s ethnicity—as Linda notes, doing otherwise would mean that she would have to acknowledge that her family was, in some way, different.

Perhaps better understood as a theme of dominance or power and viewed in conjunction with issues of race in the novel, monstrous men and their actions run throughout. The most horrific is, of course, Bobby, Kelly’s older, high school-age cousin who first forces Kelly to touch his genitals, then later rapes Linda when she is 11. Bobby’s actions function as another example of the kinds of secrets that exist in the book—Kelly and Linda do not talk about it, and DeAnne, for her own reasons, convinces herself that Linda’s bloodied underwear are a result of her first period rather than of sexual assault. However, it is also the most egregious example of the monstrosity of men, which is itself a narrower example of the way power functions in the novel—and, further, the way difference functions in the novel, as Linda asks Kelly why Bobby was so much more violent and forceful with her. (Given the second-half revelation, the answer likely has at least partially to do with race.)

Interestingly, though, Bobby is killed off. This might initially suggest a rather unexpected and neat ending to Bobby’s tale and his power over Kelly and Linda—shortly after he rapes Linda, he dies in a car crash, in an event that even Linda claims looks a lot like divine retribution. This serves two likely purposes, however. First, it demonstrates that Linda can never feel catharsis in the wake of the crime, as it not only fundamentally changed her relationship with her mother but also remained with her for the rest of her life. There is no climactic revenge or retribution for Linda to gain, just a monstrous boy whose actions did not follow him to the grave.

Second, it demonstrates that such monsters are not explicit and obvious but lurk beneath the surface in myriad ways. Bobby, for example, was well-liked by the adults around him, especially Kelly’s and Linda’s mothers. Further, though, Linda continues to experience male monstrosity in similarly subtle, hidden ways throughout the rest of her life, both sexually (e.g., her teacher and Leo’s brother) and in actions (e.g., Leo). If anything, Thomas’s definition as The Reasonable Man early on ends up serving not as a critique, as it initially comes off, but as a counterweight to the more usual kinds of men who populate Linda’s life.

The novel wrestles with racism in a way that foregrounds race as one facet of a more complex individual identity rather than emphasizing racial tension, per se—Linda even differentiates, after moving to New York City, between the question of what it was like to grow up being Asian in the South, and what it was like to grow up looking Asian in the South, given that the only thing Asian about her was the way she looks. This isn’t to say Linda didn’t experience racism growing up—for example, she writes about the racial slurs other children hurled at her when the teachers couldn’t hear, as well as suggesting that she only knew they were meant to be insults by context.

However, although the novel does wrestle with race and racism, that larger conversation is woven so delicately throughout its other themes and motifs that Linda’s ethnicity becomes a surprise reveal that only comes at the end of Part 1, after we’d already been conditioned to believe that the secrets and conflicts in the novel had already been revealed. Much of the first part of the novel makes more sense with this knowledge—for example, the frequent references to her seventh year, which turned out to be the year she was adopted; the jade flower sent by the Hammericks upon Thomas’s death, meant to be an insult and a reminder of why they no longer speak to him. That said, the decision to delay this reveal is still a keen reminder that the novel is about Linda as a person, not Linda, the Vietnamese girl in Boiling Springs.

At the same time, race is put into conversation with the concept of invisibility and exclusion in a way that is atypical of such novels. It is important to note that Linda’s experiences with direct, explicit racism come from children rather than adults; the adults instead render her invisible as best they can. Linda recognizes, of course, that the children must have learned their ideas from somewhere. The novel, therefore, makes a similar claim to the one it makes about male power and monstrosity—i.e., that explicit monstrosity exists, but that it is an incomplete picture; rather, children like Bobby, or her classmates who called her racial slurs, grow up to be adults who are also monstrous but more adept at hiding their monstrosity. Linda hears bigotry as it is addressed toward others—e.g., toward the few Catholics and the lone Jewish woman in town—and it isn’t difficult to deduce that, behind closed doors, this is how she is discussed, as well. Further, she recognizes her own position in the Black men and women of town, who are the only people who seem to truly see her, and whose children are the only ones who call her by her name rather than a slur.