41 pages • 1 hour read
Raven LeilaniA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Edie wakes up the next morning and reconsiders her agreement to end her relationship with Eric. Akila appears in her room and states that she knows about Edie’s relationship with her father. Throughout the day, Edie navigates her new environment awkwardly. After seeing that her student loan payment has left her with only $30, Edie attempts to pick up some orders for delivery. She delivers an order to a famous local dermatologist named Dr. Havermans, who offers her $300 to “crush tomatoes and raw eggs with my feet while he listens to Arvo Pärt” (110). She acquiesces and takes a train to her storage locker to grab a few of her belongings.
Upon returning to Rebecca and Eric’s house, Edie observes Akila struggling to do her hair. She offers a suggestion before Akila shuts the door. Edie returns to the guest room and attempts to begin a self-portrait. Rebecca appears and asks Edie to help her change the sheets on her and Eric’s bed. After Edie confronts her, Rebecca admits that she has yet to tell Eric, who is away on a business trip, that Edie is now living at their house.
Edie informs Rebecca that she has an interview later at a clown academy. As Edie nervously prepares for the interview, she overhears Akila’s math tutor Pradeep’s racism towards Akila and attempts to speak up in defense of her; Akila stops her before she can speak.
Edie heads to the clown academy for her interview and realizes that she is underdressed. The interview does not go well, and Edie feels “disappointed in myself for needing this job so desperately and for being as black as I am and for coming unprepared” (116). Exhausted, Edie returns to the house and watches Rebecca as she does yoga. While they prepare dinner together, Edie shares her concerns over Pradeep’s earlier aggression towards Akila. Rebecca rejects Edie’s concern and reminds her, “You are a guest” (120). Anticipating Rebecca kicking her out, Edie packs her belongings and imagines the conversation they will have in which Edie will express “that my intellectual labor should be subsidized and the onus is not on the oppressed to consider the oppressor” (120-21). However, Rebecca never appears, and as she observes Rebecca taking out the trash the next morning, Edie understands “how keenly she is alone” (121).
The next day, Edie keeps to herself and applies to more jobs. Edie attempts to work as a camgirl—streaming herself with a live webcam—but only attracts one racist client. After observing a moment between Akila and Rebecca in the garden, Edie heads to Rebecca’s master bathroom and looks through her intimate belongings. Rummaging underneath the bed, Edie finds a chess game and thinks about her own mother and how “she was not a woman who laughed” (123). She finds a game of Monopoly and thinks about how it was her father’s “favorite game because he always won, and he always won because he always played against me” (125). As she searches for her father’s favorite piece, the boot, she opens the box and discovers a gun. Rebecca texts her that she and Akila are leaving to buy school supplies. As she watches them drive away, Edie receives a call from Eric.
Eric expresses exasperation that Edie has not answered any of his calls. Edie plays with the gun as Eric speaks and shares his desire to leave his wife. Edie wanders into Akila’s room, which she has left open. She reads through Akila’s notebooks, which are filled with Batman fan fiction, until Akila finds her and demands she leave.
Edie retreats outside to smoke a cigarette, and Rebecca informs her that she must leave for work. She asks Edie to take Akila to tae kwon do and gives her the keys to one of their cars. Edie accompanies Akila to tae kwon do and is impressed by her physical prowess. They return to the house, and Edie uses a photograph of Rebecca and Akila to paint a portrait of them “craned over a single tomato” in their garden (134).
Edie wakes up the next morning in a panic and heads to her old apartment, where she has left behind a painting of her mother’s dead body. Edie returns to the house with the painting and helps Rebecca dye her hair black. Rebecca asks Edie if she has any plans for the evening. She takes her to a concert with a mosh pit, where she shares her history of attending such concerts and reveling in “the brawn, the punch she felt inside her ears, the entropy and crystallized core of communal violence that is impossible to contain” (139). Rebecca rips off her shirt and bra and begins to mosh. Edie joins her and attempts “to honor the spirit of the thing and not pay too much attention to her breasts, which are lovely and small and slightly unmatched” (139).
After the concert, Rebecca and Edie head back to the house, and Rebecca informs her that she fired Pradeep after talking to Akila. As they pull up to the house, so does a taxi with Eric returning home a day early from his business trip.
In this chapter, Edie attempts to adapt to her new environment. She attempts to forge a connection with Akila by offering haircare advice and defending her against the racism of her math tutor. Akila denies Edie’s attempts to connect although Edie brings an innate understanding of Akila’s position. After she informs Rebecca of Akila’s situation with her tutor and is scolded, Edie grows frustrated at how she has “been invited here partly on the absurd presumption that I would know what to do with Akila simply because we are both black, and now be rebuffed when I have not performed the role of the Trusty Black Spirit Guide to her taste” (120).
Ultimately, Rebecca thanks Edie for her concern for Akila and fires Pradeep. Edie continues to observe and investigate Rebecca closely. She sees her own mother in Rebecca’s strict calorie counting and obsession with exercise. She witnesses Akila and Rebecca laughing in the garden and paints the tender scene. This act reminds Edie that she has left behind her painting of her mother in her old apartment. In her exploration of Rebecca’s belongings, she discovers a gun that she plays with as she talks on the phone with Eric. The gun foreshadows an act of violence that will occur later in the novel as well as the underlying threat of aggression that surrounds Edie and her interactions with Eric and Rebecca.
Rebecca’s aggression emerges when she invites Edie to join her at a concert. Edie helps dye Rebecca’s hair black from her natural blonde. Rebecca discloses to Edie her attraction to the violence of the mosh pit. Edie joins Rebecca in the mosh pit and enjoys the violence she experiences. They both seek a release and an escape that this aggression temporarily supplies.