41 pages • 1 hour read
Raven LeilaniLuster
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 3 Summary
Chapter 3 opens with Edie’s confession that she had an abortion in her junior year of high school. At the time, Edie worked retail in a small women’s boutique in Upstate New York. She describes how isolated and awkward she felt even at that young age. Edie shares that, “I was not popular and I was not unpopular” but rather that she was not seen (44). The older man who impregnated her was named Clay; he worked at the gun shop in the mall where she worked and was only “the seventh black person I’d met in Latham” (44). At their first meeting, Clay talks about his own conflict with his family, and Edie divulges how her mother died and “how I found her with one shoe still on” (44). Despite her subtle fear of Clay, Edie feels bound to him in “a mutual understanding that we were both looking for something to destroy, […] a language developing between us that wasn’t so much romantic as it was breathless with shared conspiracy” (46). Her father returns home after a long absence. Edie confesses that she is pregnant; her father takes her to a clinic to have an abortion. After bringing her home after her abortion, Edie’s father abandons her once again. She finds one of her mother’s records and plays it. As she opens a window and listens to the music, “a laugh bloomed and promptly died behind my teeth” (47).
This moment of unexpected laughter repeats years in the future as Edie faces Eric’s wife in her home. They stare at each other before Edie decides to “turn and run down the stairs, and I look over my shoulder and see that she is coming after me” (49). Rebecca falls pursuing Edie. Eddie, feeling embarrassed, chooses to “walk back and take her damp hands into mine, then pull her to her feet” (49). Rebecca invites Edie to stay for dinner. She directs her to the guest bathroom where Edie can wash up and lays out an expensive blue dress for Edie to wear. The dress is too small for Edie, and she begins to “suspect that she is trying to humiliate me” (50). Edie watches through a window as guests arrive to the house for a dinner party; she sees Eric greeting them. Edie goes downstairs to join the party. She cannot find either Rebecca or Eric. A guest strikes up a conversation with her and informs Edie that the party is to celebrate Eric and Rebecca’s 14th wedding anniversary. Edie spies a Black child and wonders if she is real.
As the party goes on, Rebecca pulls Edie into the kitchen to ask for her help. She asks Edie if Eric drinks when they go out and informs Edie that Eric should not be drinking. Edie contemplates escaping but chooses not to. While presenting Eric with a cake to celebrate, Rebecca purposefully draws his attention to Edie, whom she asks to light the candle on the cake.
Overwhelmed, Edie retreats upstairs. As she attempts to calm herself in the bathroom, she meets the Black child she saw earlier; her name is Akila. She is Eric and Rebecca’s adopted daughter. Eric appears and orders Akila to go to her room. Rebecca enters, and Eric informs her that he will drive Edie home, despite Rebecca’s resistance. In the car, Eric takes a drink from a flask; he and Edie argue over how he cut off communication with Edie and did not tell her about his daughter. Eric reveals that Akila is “really struggling and I don’t know what to do” (62). They reach Edie’s house, and Eric confesses that he would like to hit Edie. She agrees, and Eric hits her. Edie can feel “the roots of my eyeballs curling, and the general feeling like my head is sitting on a single pivot, like an owl” (63). She asks Eric to do it again. Eric hits her harder a second time, and they have sex in his car. Edie quickly goes to her apartment and takes off Rebecca’s dress. She eats a rotisserie chicken with her hands and listens to a voicemail from Rebecca that says, “I enjoyed meeting you, let’s do it again” (63).
Chapter 3 Analysis
Chapter 3 starts with a glimpse into Edie’s past. She describes the isolation and awkwardness that filled her youth. She explains, “During this time, I couldn’t tell if I liked being alone, or if I only endured it because I knew I had no choice” (44). She recalls the trauma she experienced over her mother’s death in her junior year of high school. Edie was the one to discover her mother’s dead body, and she paints the horrifying scene repeatedly. These details from Edie’s past document the history of her promiscuity, which started in the months following her mother’s death and her father’s subsequent, enduring abandonment. Her attraction to older men originates with Clay, the older Black man who impregnates her. Edie thinks of her abortion throughout the novel as she reflects on the tumultuous aftermath of her mother’s suicide and how she almost became a mother herself.
Mother figures resonate throughout the novel, especially in the form of Rebecca, Eric’s wife. Leilani connects Edie’s mother with Rebecca through the motif of Edie’s laughter. Edie describes a moment of immense grief after enduring her abortion procedure at 16 and the laughter that “bloomed and promptly died behind my teeth” (47). Similarly, Edie reacts in laughter when confronted by Rebecca. Despite the discomfort and tension of this scene, in which she is caught rummaging through her lover’s wife’s clothing, Edie reacts with “a scream that I recognize as my own laughter” (48). Like many of her problems, Edie attempts to run from her confrontation with Rebecca, but after seeing Rebecca fall as she pursues her, she chooses to turn around and help her up. This moment begins a relationship that will carry through until the last pages of the novel.
As Edie meanders through Eric and Rebecca’s anniversary party, she is once again the sole Black woman in a predominately White space. She fumbles through small talk with a party guest and contemplates escape until she spots Akila, whom she first believes to be unreal. Across the party, Edie and Akila lock eyes and connect in their loneliness as Edie sees Akila’s “brown Kewpie face opening when she turns and looks directly into my eyes” (54). Later, when she and Akila first speak upstairs, Edie feels “a tightness in my chest” when she hears Akila say, “There are no black people in this neighborhood” (59). She understands the isolation Akila feels.
After Eric drives Edie home to the city, they engage in another violent, sexual exchange. Edie allows Eric to hit her and bruise her face. However, the chapter ends not with Eric and Edie but with Edie listening to the voicemail left for her by Rebecca, who expresses a desire to meet again. From this point forward, Eric and Edie’s relationship is complicated by the introduction of Akila, whom Edie feels connected to through their shared experiences, and Rebecca, a mother figure.
