Summary: Chapter 13
Esther goes to the beach with her friend Jody, Jody’s
boyfriend Mark, and a man her age named Cal. She and Cal talk about
a play in which a mother considers killing her son because he has
gone mad. Esther asks Cal what method he would use if he were going
to kill himself, and he says he would shoot himself. This answer
disappoints her; she thinks shooting oneself a typically male way
of committing suicide, and decides that not only would she have
little chance of getting a gun, but she would not know where to
shoot herself even if she did get one. She decides to try to drown
herself in the ocean. Cal swims out with her, but decides he cannot
make it to the rock that is their destination. Esther continues
swimming, thinking she will continue until she tires, and then let
herself drown. As she swims, the mantra “I am I am I am” thuds in
her mind.
She thinks of that morning, when she tried to hang herself.
She removed the cord from her mother’s bathrobe and walked around the
house looking for a place to hang the rope. She could not find a suitable
place, however, and tried to kill herself by pulling the rope tightly
around her neck, but every time she started to feel woozy, her hands
weakened and loosened their hold on the rope. She thought of going
to a doctor again instead of killing herself, but then imagined
living in a private hospital and impoverishing her family with the
cost of her care, and ending up in a state hospital.
Esther decides not to swim to the rock, as she thinks
her body will rebel and regain its strength by resting on the rock,
and she decides to drown where she is. She pushes herself down through
the water, but every time she dives, her body bobs to the surface.
Her mother says that Esther should pull herself out of
her depression by thinking of others, so Esther volunteers at the
local hospital. On her first day, she must deliver flowers to women
who have just given birth. Esther throws out the dead and dying
flowers and rearranges the bouquets, which displeases the women.
They complain, and Esther runs away from the hospital. Esther considers
becoming Catholic, thinking the Catholics could talk her out of
suicide, or let her become a nun, but her mother laughs at the idea
of a conversion to Catholicism. Esther goes to visit her father’s
grave for the first time. After some effort, she finds his stone
and begins to weep. She realizes she has never cried about her father’s
death; she did not see his corpse, and she was not allowed to attend
his funeral, so his death never seemed real to her. Her mother never
cried either, but smiled and said he would rather die than be crippled
for life.
Esther decides on her method of suicide. After her mother
leaves for work, she writes a note saying she has gone for a long
walk. Then she retrieves her sleeping pills from her mother’s lockbox.
She hides herself in a crawl space in the cellar, takes about fifty
pills, and drifts off to sleep.
Summary: Chapter 14
Esther wakes, semiconscious, in darkness. She feels wind
and hears voices, and light begins to pierce the darkness. She calls
out for her mother. She does not realize she is in a hospital, and
when she says aloud that she cannot see, a cheerful voice tells
her she can marry a blind man. Soon a doctor visits her and says
her eyesight is intact and a nurse must have been joking with her—she
cannot see because bandages cover her head. Esther’s mother and
brother come to visit. She wishes her mother would leave, and tells
her brother that she feels as she did before she tried to kill herself.
She denies calling out for her mother. A young doctor who is an
old acquaintance, George Bakewell, visits Esther and she sends him
away. She does not really remember him, and thinks he only wants
to see how a suicidal girl looks. She asks to see a mirror, and
when she sees her bruised face and shaved head, she drops the mirror.
The broken mirror angers the nurses, and Esther is moved to a hospital
in the city.
