Summary: Movement II [Chapter I: Hiding Places – Chapter V: Four Eyes]

The bathroom in which Sarah Broom’s father, Simon Broom, died was a place most of the family avoided. The plumbing didn’t work well, and there was a hole in the floor. The second bathroom, in the addition, was the only room with a lock, and Sarah used it to hide from siblings she teased. She was confused about why she didn’t have a father, but she was told she was the “babiest” and didn’t need to understand things.

Of all of Ivory’s Mae’s children, Sarah was the only one born by cesarean section. According to her mother, Sarah has continued in distress ever since. No one in the family will answer her questions about how her father reacted to news of her existence. He died when she was just six months old. He came home from work with a headache, and Ivory Mae found him slumped in the bathroom later. He died shortly afterward at the hospital. Sarah was the only child not in attendance at the funeral. Ivory Mae declined a jazz funeral, which Sarah regrets. The house became “Ivory Mae’s thirteenth and most unruly child.”

With two dead husbands, Ivory Mae devoted herself to her children and work. She learned to drive, and at night she studied to become a nurse. The children reacted to their father’s death differently. Darryl went to prison, and Carl went to work, fashioning himself to be “Mr. Broom number two.”

Sarah lists the five most important places of her childhood, describing them like fingers on a hand. Besides the Yellow House, they include her school, her grandmother Lolo’s home, Pastor Simmons’s home, and Schwegmann’s Super Market. At home, Sarah was known by her middle name, Monique. When she started school, her mother instructed that she be called Sarah. She attended Jefferson Elementary with her friend Alvin and nephew James. Her poor eyesight, which no one knew about, made learning hard. Even playing outside with friends was a challenge because she couldn’t see far past her face.

Sarah learned to memorize conversations she heard. Alvin’s mother died, and death was more real to her. At age 10, Sarah got glasses and realized all she hadn’t seen before. Upsetting sights like of prostitutes on the highway and police officers using them made her take her glasses off. She “learned to see and to go blind at will.”

Analysis: Movement II [Chapter I: Hiding Places – Chapter V: Four Eyes]

Sarah Broom’s poor eyesight is part of a wider metaphor about seeing and not seeing, of willful blindness. She spends the formative years of her childhood unable to see anything except what is right in front of her. Sometimes this is a problem. Her poor vision means she can’t see the board at school, so she acts up to cover up her lack of understanding. She can’t see where her friends are hiding when they play and is startled when they suddenly appear. With corrected vision, these problems disappear. She can see leaves on trees and other details, but she realizes she can now see awful things she wishes she didn’t see, like crime. She avoids this awareness by taking off her glasses “to go blind at will.” Later, she will wish she were wearing glasses instead of contacts, so she could take them off and revert to poor vision to avoid seeing her mother’s pain at Lolo’s death. The metaphor of sight and blindness extends to the larger story of the memoir. So many in power refuse to see the problems in the city that contribute to gun violence and destruction from storms.

This section highlights the absence of Sarah’s father. It details what Sarah doesn’t know about him more so than actual information about him. She lacks any knowledge about how he reacted to news of her mother’s pregnancy with her or her birth. No one seems to remember or want to share the information with her. She lacks any memories of him. All she has are stories, the most notable being of his death itself. She wasn’t at his funeral, and the funeral she wishes he had, celebrating his life, didn’t happen. Simon’s death in Sarah’s infancy means the only connection she has with him is through the house they shared briefly. This tentative connection makes the eventual demolition of the Yellow House all the more poignant, as it was the only physical link she had to him. When it is torn down, it is just one more way in which he is absent from her life.