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Chapters Six–Eleven

Summary: Chapter Six

Dre drives Mav straight to Lisa’s house. At first, Mav can’t get the courage to tell Lisa the news, so they just talk about school. When Mav finally tells Lisa about his one-night stand with Iesha a year before, during the time when he and Lisa were broken up, Lisa cries. At first, she’s heartbroken, but then she becomes enraged as she realizes that everyone else knew he’d slept with Iesha but her. Crying, Lisa tells Mav to leave.

Summary: Chapter Seven

Mav faces challenges on the first day back at Garden High, which is officially named Jefferson Davis High School. The night before, King Jr. cried all night from teething pain. In the morning, an exhausted Mav struggles to take care of the baby and get himself ready for school at the same time. Over breakfast, he tells Faye he wants to change the baby’s name to Seven, which he believes means “perfection.” Mav’s troubles continue at school. In the hallway, Ant, a member of the King Lords’ rival gang, the Garden Disciples, warns Mav to tell Dre to watch his back; Dre’s been racing for money on the east side, which is Garden Disciple territory. Later, Rico, Mav’s friend and a King Lord, tells Mav that his Air Jordans aren’t real, and Mav makes a mental note to confront Red, the guy who sold him the fake sneakers. After several classes, Mav ditches school to hang out with King.

Summary: Chapter Eight

Mav heads to Lisa’s school, St. Mary’s, to try to talk to Lisa, but he has no success. He and King then find Red selling fake goods on the sidewalk and confront him about the fake sneakers. When Red refuses to refund Mav, they flip his tables and leave. King then drives Mav to Mr. Wyatt’s house, where he works all afternoon planting rose bushes.

Summary: Chapter Nine

Mav has been working for Mr. Wyatt for a month. The baby, now named Seven, still lives with Mav as Iesha has left home and he doesn’t know how to find her. It’s Friday night, and instead of hanging with friends like he used to, Mav is taking care of Seven, washing laundry, and doing homework. King calls Mav and invites him to a party, and can’t understand why Mav won’t just hire a sitter and join him. Just after he puts Seven to bed, the doorbell rings. It’s Dre, equipped with water guns, pizza, and music. During the water gun fight, Dre’s gold watch falls off. It’s scratched but not broken, and Dre puts it back on. After they dry off, Mav and Dre eat pizza in Dre’s car while listening to the baby monitor for Seven. At one point, Bus Stop Tony, a local addict, leans in, and Dre gives him some pizza. When Seven cries, Mav goes inside to check on him, and Dre uses that time to call Keisha. As Mav puts Seven back to bed, he hears gunshots and tires squealing outside. Screaming for Dre, Mav runs outside, hoping against hope that Dre is all right. Instead, Mav finds Dre slumped over in the car, dead from a gunshot to the head. Keisha’s screams can be heard from Dre’s phone by his feet.

Summary: Chapter Ten

Dre’s body is taken away, and the police find Bus Stop Tony in the area. While the police think Tony killed Dre, Mav knows better. Tony’s an addict but not a killer. Mav highly suspects Ant, who basically told Mav that Dre was a target. Mav’s hate for Ant begins to grow. At Dre’s funeral, all of the extended family is there, and Moe is there to support Faye. The King Lords wear their gang colors, black and gray, to show respect, even though Dre hadn’t been active in the gang for a while. After the service, Mav steps outside and tells the other King Lords that he thinks Ant might be the killer. When Mav says he wants to get revenge, Shawn makes him promise he’ll back off and let the big homies take care of it. Feeling disrespected and angry, Mav walks away, but he doesn’t get far. Suddenly, Lisa is there. She takes his hand and invites him on a walk.

Summary: Chapter Eleven

Lisa and Mav walk to her house. Once inside, Lisa notes how bad Mav’s hair looks and offers to wash it for him. What starts out as a moment of shared comfort and friendship evolves into a moment of intimacy, and they have unprotected sex.

Analysis: Chapters Six–Eleven

Lisa’s sense of betrayal from being out of the loop highlights the concept of community and its importance in the characters’ social structure. The difference between Mav’s and Lisa’s standing within their peer group causes tension in their relationship that makes Mav’s revelation about the baby especially hurtful. Lisa’s attendance at private school and her aspirations for college already set her apart from most of her peers. This has the effect of creating a sense of social isolation, and the revelation that they knew about Mav’s baby first, distances her even further. Lisa can afford to dream about college, but for her, a successful academic future might mean leaving behind the only community she has ever known.

When Mav explains his idea for a new name for the baby, he demonstrates the importance of naming as a cultural legacy. The lives that Mav and the members his gang community lead often result in the death or incarceration of its elders, and Mav’s deliberate and careful selection of his son’s name shows that Mav wants to project the best future for his child. Mav wants Seven’s name to give him purpose, much in the way that Mav’s name guides him to think for himself. Unlike the forward-thinking names that Adonis and Mav give to their sons, the true name of Mav’s high school is the antithesis of the cultural legacy Adonis and Mav are trying to establish. Jefferson Davis was the only president of the Confederate States of America, and the fact that the school carries his name is a shameful legacy for the mostly Black student body. King’s expulsion for standing up to a racist teacher further illustrates the risks that he and other Black students are willing to take to uphold their cultural legacy.

Mr. Wyatt taps into Mav’s need to talk about his feelings and gives Mav a respite from living up to the gang’s idea of a tough and stoic young man. Mav’s dynamic with Mr. Wyatt is different from the one he engages in with his fellow gang members, and when Mr. Wyatt invites Mav to talk about his rough day, he gives Mav the much-needed emotional support those other relationships lack. This is a huge step toward Mav’s growth and maturity, and Mav’s ability to accept Mr. Wyatt’s support hints that Mav in turn will be able to provide the same kind of emotional support for his son.

Mav’s ability to place his family’s priorities over those of the gang separates him from his peers, and the differences between him and King highlight Mav’s growing maturity. Mav establishes a routine that allows him to do what he needs to do at school, at work, and for his baby. Mav’s job is to get the plants and his son what they need to survive, even if that means personal sacrifice. King does not understand Mav’s choice to put Seven’s needs above his need for a social life, which indicates that King did not mature during his brief time as a father to the baby. Mav misses his friends but recognizes his responsibilities, and King’s insistence on Mav staying in the drug game contributes to the wedge in the boys’ friendship.

Dre’s murder is an obstacle to Mav’s growth because the loss deprives him of a role model to whom he can relate. While Mav has other parental figures in his life, it was Dre who would demonstrate how to prioritize the responsibilities of fatherhood over loyalty to the gang. Without Dre’s counsel, Mav allows his desire for retribution to outweigh his clear need to care for himself during a time of overwhelming grief. Lisa steps back into Mav’s life just as his feelings of grief and vengeance threaten to completely engulf him, and the passion of their brief but intimate reunion also overwhelms Mav. The fact that Mav already got another girl pregnant foreshadows what will come from this encounter, and without Dre’s positive example, it is clear that Mav’s next steps will be difficult for him to navigate.

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