Things We Do in the Dark

Part 4 centers on Joey’s emotional testimony during the murder trial of her mother and then her experiences with her uncle at the home in Maple Sound. This section lays out The Traumatic Impact of Abuse on a child.

At the heart of the defense’s case was their contention that Ruby Reyes had brutally murdered Charles Baxter to save her daughter from his sexual attacks on her own preteen daughter. Crucial to that defense was Joey’s willingness to lie under oath and to go along with her mother’s defense despite knowing the truth: that her mother had used her as a way to secure Charles Baxter as a husband and gain access to the life of wealth and privilege. Hellier complicates her treatment of The Consequences of Secrets in this section since this secret from the court protects Joey.

Joey’s internal conflicts reflect her traumatic experience of being abused initially by her mother. In the Author’s Note at the end of the novel, Jennifer Hillier acknowledges her interest in exploring how an abused child would grow up and whether that child would reflect or reject the conditions of their upbringing. Ruby had been badly treated by her mother with harsh punishments, which she came to understand as an expression of her mother’s love. Joey struggles within the same psychological dilemma. Throughout the novel, Joey struggles to separate love and hate: “Joey did love her mother. She really did. She had come to understand that her mother had done her best, considering who her own mother was” (253). This insistent tone of “[s]he really did,” combined with the unreliability of her perspective throughout the novel, makes this expression of love uncertain.

Joey struggles to understand how her mother could have allowed Charles Baxter to molest her: “You knew, Mama?” (252). That betrayal epitomizes the novel’s emotional conflicts. Even in the face of Drew’s absolute commitment to her, a love that endured through more than 20 years, she cannot entirely embrace love as anything but a tactic. The destruction of her books by her aunt also suggests to her that she only has herself to protect herself. As she watches her beloved books burn, the orange flames roaring, she sees that they were “the only things in her world that weren’t attached to painful memories” (264). These books represent fantastical narratives separate from her own, although the fact that she picks a horror novel and a legal thriller signals that even her route to escapism is violent, reflecting the theme of Violent Crime as Entertainment. Abandoned by her books, her only escape denied her, she understands she is on her own.

Joey decides that the only way to save herself is “to save herself” (283); the tautology of her logic is revealing because, at this moment, she understands only that her mother is responsible for the hurt in her life. Her mother had put her in harm’s way with a pedophile in the hopes that he would marry her. As she steps into the courtroom, Joey remembers her mother’s words to her the night that she first left her with Charles Baxter: “Stop being a brat […] Charles is waiting for you” (272). Hillier hence portrays a character whose world as this moment is limited to these memories and a tautological understanding of her survival.

Joey’s stabbing her uncle reflects this trauma. The section closes with Joey’s stabbing her uncle during his late-night invasion of her bedroom. “It felt so good to feel his blood, it felt so good to cause him pain, it felt so good to hurt the monster who was hurting her” (287). The repetition of “it felt so good” illustrates, however violently, Joey’s mind in line with the needs of her body at this moment, in contrast to the dissociative episode during which she listens to the frogs croaking outside her window while her uncle abuses her. Part 4 ends on this climax during which Joey uses violence as a strategy for protecting herself.