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Chapter Six
Summary: Chapter Six
On a scorching hot day in August, Jude packs a picnic basket for a rendezvous with the girls at Venice beach when she receives a phone call from Desiree. Desiree notices a change in Jude’s voice. Jude thought that Reese would come to his senses and admit that being with her was a mistake. To Jude’s surprise, however, Reese continues to show her affection. Jude learns how to navigate Reese’s body and learns what is off-limits, a noticeable change from her time with Lonnie who had no reservations about his body and what he wanted. Barry also notices the positive change in Jude’s demeanor.
At the beach, Jude keeps a shy Reese company as the girls remove their shirts and swim in the water. When Jude and Reese return home from the beach that evening, Jude suggests they turn the lights on while they make love, telling Reese that she wants to see him. Reese rejects the idea and sleeps on the couch. The next time Desiree calls, Jude reveals to her mother that she is seeing someone but that he closes himself off from her. Desiree tells Jude that every man is like that.
Jude sneakily decides to get a new job to help pay for Reese’s expensive breast reduction surgery from a patron at Mirage, a plastic surgeon named Dr. Reed. At Barry’s thirtieth birthday party, Jude tells Barry of her plan and inquires if he knows anyone who is hiring. Barry’s cousin Scooter drives a catering van and offers Jude a job. The following day, Scooter picks Jude up and takes her to her first gig in Malibu. When Jude returns home that evening she lies to Reese and tells him the reason she got the job was to have extra money.
In the fall of her sophomore year, Jude enrolls in an anatomy class to learn more about the human body. Jude continues her catering job in the meantime, serving cocktails and finger foods to wealthy Hollywood types. Both Reese and Desiree disapprove of Jude’s job, but Jude enjoys the anonymity of the job, as well as seeing the exorbitant way that the rich live, which is so drastically different from Mallard. That fall, Jude begins having dreams of her father. One night after waking from a dream, Reese tells Jude that it’s understandable that she would think about someone she hasn’t thought about in a long time. Reese recounts dressing up as a man in Arkansas and kissing a girl named Tina Jenkins. Reese’s family caught Reese and Tina, and Reese’s father beat Reese. If Reese ever wanted to return home, Jude tells Reese, she would like to go with him.
Reese did not have a solid plan for what he would do in Los Angeles when he first arrived, desiring only to get as far away from Arkansas as possible. In the beginning he sold his body for money. At one point, a white man assaulted him after “discovering his secret.” The night Reese met Barry, Barry showed Reese kindness for the first time in Los Angeles, taking him out to eat and offering Reese a place to stay.
In December, Jude works a catering job in Beverly Hills—a retirement party for a wealthy Mr. Hardison, a loyal client who is part of the Hardison Group. Jude is told to act on her best behavior, so when an underaged blonde girl asks Jude for a drink, Jude hesitates. The girl tells Jude she is twenty-one and proceeds to down a martini while striking up a conversation with Jude about her mother not showing up to the party. Suddenly, a dark-haired woman enters the party, and Jude drops the wine bottle she’s holding.
Analysis: Chapter Six
Throughout the novel, many characters have split lives. Some are attempting to escape their pasts to create entirely different versions of themselves, while others live double lives. Barry and his alter ego, Bianca, illustrate how powerfully one person can inhabit two different people, and Barry prides himself on his ability to keep his two lives separate. Stella lived the first part of her life as a Black twin from Mallard, Louisiana, and she lived her adulthood as an entirely different person: a white mother in California who has no siblings. Reese grew up as a girl knowing all along that he was actually a boy. When Reese struck out on his own, he became the man he always was and left behind both his female identity and the family that didn’t understand him. Though Jude’s transformation is less visible, she leaves Mallard to escape an entire town that abused her for being too dark. In Los Angeles, she finds a self who is not defined solely by her skin tone. Each of these characters must protect their split selves by cutting ties with family or by hiding the full truth of their lives from others around them.
Reinvention is a way for the characters in the novel to create their own identities, and it is often to escape great pain. Reese’s father beat him with a belt with a big silver buckle when he discovered that Reese was a boy, and the first outfit that Reese buys as a man includes a leather belt with a silver stallion buckle. The act of dressing himself publicly as a man for the first time and wearing a belt like his father wore is a way both to claim his own identity and to reclaim the power that his father tried to take from him. Similarly, Stella is permanently changed when she witnesses her father being murdered by hateful white men. As a girl, she struggles to understand why it happened as the fact of it defies belief. In a strange and painful way, Stella’s reinvention allows her to lay claim to the power that took her father’s life.
Though Reese, Stella, and Barry establish identities contrary to those that society has tried to force upon them, their lives do not split neatly into two. In this chapter, none of the characters can fully leave or forget their second selves. Barry always has Bianca on his mind as he shops for her, takes care of her, and hides her from different parts of his life. Stella lives in fear of being caught and known. Each element of her adult life—her relationship with her husband and daughter, her jobs, her friends—is predicated on her ability to continually suppress who she once was and to successfully pass as white. Reese similarly suppresses talk of his past, but it causes him a great amount of pain. His own body is a constant, uncomfortable reminder of the second self he left behind. Jude hates transparency and being seen. Even in her new life, she struggles with people looking at her, whether it’s showing her body in public at the swimming pool or believing that Reese sees her beauty. Though each character reimagines themselves on their own terms, and often reclaims themselves in precisely the ways that society has punished them for, none fully escape their pasts.
