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Why does everyone have to put you in a box and nail the lid on it? I don’t know what I am—polymorphous and perverse. Shit. I don’t even know if I’m white. I’m me. That’s all I am and all I want to be. Do I have to be something?

When Connie asks Molly in Chapter 9 if she’s a “queer,” Molly responds with an impassioned diatribe against the use of labels and roles to define a person and dictate behavior. To Molly, Connie’s question lays bare the conventional, small-minded thinking that threatens to break down relationships and communication between people. Once Connie knows that Molly is in fact a “queer,” she disregards the perfectly normal friendship they have. Her irrational fear that Molly might try to rape her displays the potency of the labeling mentality: even an individual as intelligent as Connie accepts the premise that Molly’s lesbian status prescribes her actions toward all women. In this passage, Molly exposes and rebels against society’s need to define and compartmentalize rigidly all aspects of life. Her description of herself as “polymorphous and perverse,” terminology used to describe someone who exhibits sexual tendencies in which the genitals are not the sole or principal sexual organs, places Molly outside Connie’s conventional classification. As she does in Chapter 1 with the phrase “I’m here,” Molly insists “I’m me” and that she should be viewed on the basis of her character rather than on labels or her past.

Though little is made of it in the text, Molly’s reference to uncertainty about her being white exposes the prevailing attitude in America toward race during the pre–civil rights era. As a child, Molly experiences the effects of segregation firsthand when she accidentally uses a bathroom reserved for Black people and is punished by Carrie. Even Carl, Molly’s model of fairness and compassion, falls in with the conventional behavior that separates whites from Black people. In this passage, Molly seems to taunt Connie by equating the taboo of being lesbian with that of being partly Black. By grouping them together, Molly suggests that Connie and other small-minded people think these traits are equally reprehensible and do not belong in the social mainstream. Molly herself, however, pays no attention to these prejudices as she meets different kinds of people in the book. Her failure to reveal explicitly that Holly and Calvin are Black points to her lack of racial bias.

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