Summary
With the start of summer comes Ellen's unhappy stay at
her mama's mama's house. Beforehand, Ellen tells Roy and Julia that
she would rather be sent to reform school or work on a chain gang
than live with her crazy, mean- spirited grandmother. But they are
powerless to save Ellen and can only promise to see her on visits.
These visits never transpire, however, as Julia, for some unexplained
reason, is fired from her job as the school's art teacher, and she
and Roy move away. Sometimes, Ellen receives a letter from Julia.
In packing for her grandmother's house, Ellen leaves most
of her belongings behind and brings with her only the money she
has been saving. Of the time she spent at her grandmother's house,
Ellen says it is like a record being played at the wrong speed.
Her grandmother's car reminds Ellen of the undertaker's car at her
mother's funeral, only it is a different color. During the ride
to her house, Ellen's grandmother does not even speak to Ellen,
except to ask her when school begins again. Ellen laments that if
she had known then what her summer with her grandmother would be
like, she would have jumped out of the moving car and run off.
Initially, Ellen assumes that her grandmother treats her
cruelly because she is disappointed that Ellen is not a beautiful
girl. Ellen admits that she is not a exactly a "vision," but she
does have "good intentions that count." She also assumes that because
her grandmother is wealthy, staying with her will not be completely
terrible, so she should make the best of it while she is there.
This optimism, however, does not last long. By July, Ellen refers
to her grandmother as "the damn witch," and no longer cares about
her wealth, as she now understands that it is irrelevant to her
happiness.
At her grandmother's insistence, Ellen sleeps in the bedroom
that once belonged to her mother and has nightmares of ghosts. Ellen
is convinced that her grandmother has meant for her to have these nightmares
and wonders why she treats her so cruelly.
At the very start of Ellen's stay, her grandmother wakes
her up at sunrise and sends her to work with the field hands picking
cotton in the excruciating summer heat. The other field hands, all
of whom are black, refer to Ellen's grandmother as the "bosslady,"
as she is the one who owns the cotton fields on which they work.
Mavis, one of the field hands, is especially kind to Ellen, and
Mavis teaches her how to work the fields and stay cool. Whenever
Ellen falls behind, Mavis will help catch her up. She thinks it
is absurd that a white child would be sent to work on the field
and tells Ellen with a little laugh that her people were "born to
chop" and that is why they are such steadfast workers. Ellen, however,
does not think this is at all funny. Mavis also tells Ellen that
she had been raised with her mother, who was regarded as smart,
sweet, and her mother's pet, for she was the only child not ordered
to work the fields. Since her mother's death, her grandmother, the
bosslady, has been "touched." Ellen wants to examine encyclopedias
to find a diagnosis for her grandmother, though she feels she would
not know where to begin.
After a month of working the fields, Ellen thinks to herself
how she could "pass for a colored now," and how race no longer makes any
difference to her.
