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Book
Jeannette Walls · 2005
Walls opens the book in a taxi, dressed for a Manhattan party, watching her mother root through a dumpster three blocks away — and the rest of the memoir is the long answer to how both of those women got there from the same childhood.
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Appears in
What this book knows
Neglect can be wrapped in wonder: a child learns to survive beauty and chaos with the same bare hands.
shame
I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a Dumpster.
GCM-014I'd broken one of our unspoken rules: We were always supposed to pretend our life was one long and incredibly fun adventure.
GCM-005belonging
Dinitia ran her fingers lightly over the scar tissue. 'It ain't so bad,' she said.
GCM-011Erma relegated us to the basement. A door led directly outside, so we never went upstairs. We weren't even allowed to use her bathroom.
GCM-012grief
Dad was tied to the bed, thrashing and yelling. I sat with a jug of water next to his door. Mom told me to go outside and play.
GCM-013It was gross and creepy to think about, but it would explain a lot — why Dad drank so much, why he got so angry.
GCM-008Editor’s framing
What makes this memoir difficult, and good, is that Walls refuses to flatten her parents into villains. The father is a brilliant, charismatic alcoholic who promised to build his daughter a glass castle and never built anything; the mother is a painter who treated her children's hunger as a failure of their imagination. The wonder was real and so was the neglect, and the book's honesty is in holding them together rather than resolving them. Attend to the family rule the young Jeannette breaks — that they were always to pretend their life was one long and incredibly fun adventure — because the shame of that performance, and the cost of finally refusing it, is the emotional spine. Vela reads this where shame, belonging, and grief overlap: the particular grief of loving people who were never going to be able to keep you safe.
Featured passage
After Dad had gone back upstairs to tie into Erma's hooch and we kids were all in bed, Brian bit my toe to try to make me laugh, but I kicked him away. We all lay there in the silent darkness. "Dad was really weird," I said, because someone had to say it. "You'd be weird, too, if Erma was your mom," Lori said. "Do you think she ever did something to Dad like what she did to Brian?" I asked. No one said a thing. It was gross and creepy to think about, but it would explain a lot. Why Dad left home as soon as he could. Why he drank so much and why he got so angry. Why he never wanted to visit Welch when we were younger. Why … he was shaking his head so hard, almost like he wanted to put his hands over his ears, when I tried to explain what Erma had been doing to Brian. "Don't think about things like that," Lori told me. "It'll make you crazy." And so I put it out of my mind.
After Dad had gone back upstairs to tie into Erma's hooch and we kids were all in bed, Brian bit my toe to try to make me laugh, but I kicked him away.
Read alongside · the magazine
The particular grief of loving people who could never keep you safe sits inside the larger reading of grief.
15 published passages · book excerpt · lived experience
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