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The world had lost its boundary lines. My mother, who was small and soft, was now the strength of the family; my father, who was the rock on which the family had been built, was sobbing like the tiniest child. Everything was suddenly out of tune, like a broken accordion. Where did I fit into this crazy picture? I do not now remember my thoughts, only a feeling of great bewilderment and fear.
The narrator claims that “one cannot have both innocence and compassion,” and these lines, which occur when Lizabeth cannot block out the sound of her father’s despair and her mother’s soothing voice, support that claim. Looking back, the narrator says that at fourteen, not only had she never heard her father cry, but she did not even know that “men ever cried.” Readers can imagine that her father, who carried her effortlessly on his shoulders when she was young, sang, and made toys, has worked to shelter his children from the family’s trouble as long as he could. He would likely be appalled to know that his overheard despair has shattered his daughter’s innocence. But as long as she remains sheltered, Lizabeth cannot begin to understand and empathize with her parents and Miss Lottie.
Of course I could not express the things that I knew about Miss Lottie as I stood there awkward and ashamed. The years have put words to the things I knew in that moment, and as I look back upon it, I know that that moment marked the end of innocence. Innocence involves an unseeing acceptance of things at face value, an ignorance of the area below the surface. In that humiliating moment I looked beyond myself and into the depths of another person. This was the beginning of compassion, and one cannot have both compassion and innocence.
The word “humiliating” is interesting in these sentences, which describe how Lizabeth feels after she exhausts her fear and anger in destroying the marigolds. The idea of being humiliated is unsettling, even repellent. People do not care to be humiliated in front of others and may feel shame and anger if they suffer humiliation at someone else’s hands. But that is not what happens here. Instead, humiliation decenters Lizabeth, allowing her perspective to shift to someone other than herself.
Earlier in the story, when Joey suggests that the children go to Miss Lottie’s house to relieve their boredom, Lizabeth goes along because “annoying Miss Lottie was always fun.” Lizabeth’s half-hearted participation in that attack hints at her growing realization that their actions are “malicious.” This shift matters because Lizabeth is thinking not first of herself, the one acting out, but instead of Miss Lottie, the one acted on against her will. She is able to take Miss Lottie’s perspective instead of thinking only of herself.
Because Lizabeth releases the childish pride of being at the center of her actions, she sees not herself, crying on the ground, but Miss Lottie standing before her. The shift is humiliating, or humbling, but it fuels a spark of compassion for the woman gazing on her ruined garden.
