Where the Lilies Bloom

“Now he’s old and sick and ready to die and when he does, this is what we’ll inherit—his defeat and all that goes with it.”

This quote characterizes Mary Call’s ability to be blunt, damning, and no-nonsense. Her character does not mince words, and she has no room for sentimental or empty speech. While she is loyal to her father, she sees him as the antithesis to how she wants to live her life; she views his life as a failure.

“Romey’s hunger for things we don’t have never leaves him.”

This quote examines Romey’s character and offers a juxtaposition between Romey’s role in the family and Mary Call’s. While Romey has the freedom to openly express his emotions, desires, frustrations, and confusion—and chooses to do so—Mary Call is unable to communicate her feelings and doubts to her family. She has to be the strong one, dampening her hunger in order to take care of the family. She also prides herself on not having so many needs.

“Always having to say yes, Kiser, and no, Kiser, and thank you, Kiser, and I’m sorry, Kiser. For what?”

Unlike Roy Luther, Mary Call does not want to be subservient or obsequious to Kiser Pease; she does not want to have to bow down to anyone. She wants her family to be self-sufficient and to understand and fight for the fact that they deserve more than the little that big men give them. The word “Kiser” is an anaphora in this passage, which draws attention to its Germanic etymology, “Kaiser,” meaning “emperor,” underscoring the hierarchy that Mary Call resists.

“Romey laughed and sniffed the air again and I sniffed it too and thought about freedom—the wondrous glory in it and its awful anxiety—and we walked on.”

After acquiring the house and land, Mary Call gets a taste of freedom, which gives her paradoxical feelings: she is both happy and worried. The Cleavers portray freedom as an olfactory quality, suggesting that freedom feels proximate for the siblings (touching their nostrils as they “sniff”) yet distant (as though the source of the smell is far away). While Mary Call values her family’s autonomy, she also knows that this freedom is going to fall on her shoulders. She is the one who will have to navigate the unchartered territory of land ownership. This quote also highlights the intimacy between Mary Call and Romey.

“That’s one of the things I promised him. That there wouldn’t be any carrying on. So if you feel like doing any don’t let me see you at it, you hear me, Romey?”

Upon hearing about his father’s death, Romey reacts strongly; Mary Call’s reaction highlights the complexity of Roy Luther’s demands on her. Not only is Mary Call put in the position of having to be the head of household, but her father has also required that they emotionally stifle themselves (although he has their best interest in mind). The authors suggest that living in poverty means not having the luxury to process emotion.

“Possibly they’d send us to an orphanage and we wouldn’t be a family any more.”

A looming threat throughout the novel, heavily adding to Mary Call’s burdens, is the chance that the county will separate the family due to no longer having a legal guardian. This driving fear illustrates the importance that Mary Call places on family and togetherness.

“It looked old and tough and the sight of it made me feel old and tough. I felt like the tree and I were related.”

This passage takes place during the emotional, climactic scene of Roy Luther’s burial. The symbol of the tree partly represents Mary Call’s world-weariness and capacity for endurance, aspects that makes her feel old beyond her years. The tree is a symbol of quiet strength or an ability to endure. The tree offers an anchor, diluting her feelings of aloneness as she carries out a near-impossible task. It also connects her with nature and the land, which are sources of identity-affirmation. 

“Romey, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. Happy pappy aren’t happy. They’re useless and lonely and sick.”

Loneliness is a feeling that both Romey and Mary Call fear. While charity and assistance are seen as demeaning in Mary Call’s eyes because it lessens a person’s autonomy, she also sees it as a source of loneliness. The Cleavers raise questions about whether Mary Call’s insistence on her family’s autonomy is also a lonely pursuit or whether, in this novel, family is all that is needed to genuinely combat loneliness.

“See? I can drive. Didn’t I tell you I could?”

None of the siblings react to this sentence said by Devola, highlighting the fact that no one takes her seriously. This is a subtle moment exploring how Devola is undervalued in the family, conveying the Complexity of Family Bonds since Devola’s skills subvert the hierarchy that Mary Call upholds. While the Luther family are tight-knit, they are not unrealistically perfect.

“At one point in this process I was horrified to feel my eyes filled with tears and I cussed, I think. Some life for a girl, I thought.”

This quote demonstrates Mary Call’s reluctance—and even repulsion—toward showing emotion. She wants to be mature and rational; circumstances have caused her to see emotion as distractions and weaknesses, getting in the way of solving problems. This is also one of the only times that she alludes directly to her gender as she looks at a more removed perspective at herself and her situation, seeing its absurdity.

 “Brains are what solves things, the brains God gave us. What we’ve got to do is learn to use them and be smarter than other people.”

This quote emphasizes Mary Call’s devotion to reasoning and critical thinking over emotion, reactivity, and violence. Her fervor is partly guided by the stereotypes that exist around impoverished, mountain people. She also connects the mind to God; there is no friction between intellectual and spiritual life in the text.

“At that hour they hated me and I hated myself, knowing how I appeared to them—a pinch-faced crone, straggle-haired, bony, ragged, too desperate for anyone with only fourteen years on them but still driven by a desperation that was unholy and ugly.”

This quote highlights a detailed, exaggerated visual description of Mary Call’s perceived appearance. She uses damning language with negative connotations to show her internal state, one that is at odds with her young age. Her language is focused on external appearance, especially stereotypical negative feminine traits, alluding to a “crone,” a female figure depicted in folklore.

“The sight of them, so thread-thin and gray, made me feel older than God.”

Mary Call once again alludes to age, suggesting that her situation is unnatural for her young years, causing a deep weariness. She also provides a description of her family, portraying the extent of their state. Although she has to be strong and emotionless, she is able to see her family’s suffering and feel compassion.

“It’s what it takes to get along in this world. Guts.”

Guts is a symbol in the novel for Mary Call’s belief in her own fortitude and as well as the fortitude inherent in the Luther identity. She characterizes the Luther family throughout generations as uniquely strong and capable. In this moment, Mary Call is delirious from having to kill a fox while also dealing with the collapsed roof and their mother’s rocker. The quote represents her dedication to her family’s well-being and image, to the point of threatening her own mental health—in the midst of incredible exhaustion and responsibility, she strives to make it a normal “teaching moment.” The dissonance between the situation and her words highlights her increasingly poor stability.

“Somehow it seemed a friendly idea, just for all of us to fall gently asleep in a cave some night and not ever wake up again—to be delivered from all the meanness and worry in life, forever safe.”

Mary Call has reached such a state of desperation that death seems preferable to life; the conditions of their life have become the antagonist. She uses “deliver,” a verb with Christian connotations meaning to be rescued by God from danger, to highlight the positive, spiritual quality of leaving the pain behind. “To be delivered” is also written in passive voice, meaning that they would not be doing the dying actively, but would be taken and guided by something—the Lord. Mary Call wants a guiding figure.

“The Lord has forgotten us. This land is forgotten. We’re forgotten. We’re forgotten people.”

Romey’s words completely disarm Mary Call, who is shocked by its deep sadness. It is an observation that is dark and wise beyond Romey’s 10 years. The authors use parallelism to emphasize the isolation and loneliness the Luther family feels. They feel not only the loss of their father but also the loss of their nourishing connection to God. The land is symbolic of their family, their ancestors, and their identity.

“Watching her I thought, she should be a doctor. Or a nurse. There is so much more to her than people realize. Roy Luther never realized how much there is to her and I, myself, am guilty of this too.”

This quote demonstrates an epiphany moment for Mary Call, demonstrating awareness, growth, and the capacity to reassess her assumptions, as well as her father’s. The Cleavers show this moment as part of the coming-of-age journey, since the truth of reality becomes less blurred by Mary Call’s own static assumptions.

“Backward and forward and up and down, my mind had shuttled over the problem a million times and I couldn’t see any answer for it but one: I would marry Kiser Pease myself.”

This quote gives insight into Mary Call’s mental processes, demonstrating how hard she labors to find a solution to save her family. Here, she is indirectly characterized as a creative, resourceful problem-solver, landing on the idea of marrying Kiser.

“Who’s bawling? You ever see me bawl? When you do, put it in the newspaper for everybody to read, it’ll be that unusual.”

This quote shows Mary Call’s extreme resistance to admitting that she is fallible, struggling, and distressed. Repressing her heightened emotions—and unable to express her stress— causes dissonance, forcing her to pretend that she is not crying when she is blatantly so. This is Mary Call’s most public cry, showing that she has reached her limit and needs help.

“I looked down upon it and tried to think that we were having some kind of communion with each other but found that a curious thing had happened: I could only dimly remember how he had looked and couldn’t remember at all the sound of his voice.”

This quote highlights the ambiguous, complex relationship between Mary Call and her father. While his demands have shaped her worldview and path, she also does not feel emotionally connected to him. This highlights Mary’s coming-of-age since her identity is no longer dictated by her father’s.

“‘Seems to me,’ remarked Kiser in an offhand way, ‘like Roy Luther put a lot off on you that didn’t belong.’”

This is the first time that someone offers a new perspective on Roy Luther’s demands, showing how he has placed inappropriate, unrealistic expectations on 14-year-old Mary Call. Although this remark has herculean implications, Kiser says it in an “offhand” way, showing the tact of his character. He does not mean to make Roy Luther the enemy and cause animosity. This moment exemplifies the fact that Kiser is no longer an antagonist.

“‘It’s right,’ I said. ‘It’s the rightest thing that ever happened to us.’”

This quote solidifies the importance of wildcrafting to Mary Call and her family. Not only is it a way for the family to be self-sufficient—not indebted to or serving another person—but it also connects them to education, the land, and their mother and ancestors. These connections affirm Mary Call’s identity. It is juxtaposed with the wrongness of all of the situations they have had to face.

“It’s such an old story, spring. Surely the earth must be tired of having to produce it year after year.”

Mary Call personifies the earth, giving it human emotions. Like the earth, she has felt ancient throughout the novel in moments of great stress. She cannot believe that the earth can rebirth itself, mirroring her own disbelief that she herself was able to raise her family from destruction. This quote reflects the theme of Survival in a Harsh Environment and the enduring abilities of the earth and its people.