Fight Night

“She can’t believe she keeps waking up alive and is really amazed and grateful about it which is what all the pamphlets at therapy say we’re supposed to be feeling about every new day.”

Swiv refers here to Grandma’s sense of gratitude. Again, her ability to live life to the fullest comes, at least partially, from her many experiences with death—particularly untimely death. This quotation also acknowledges that the family has been attending therapy. Mom’s traumatic experiences, Dad’s absence, and how all of this has affected Swiv are subjects ripe for therapeutic assistance.

“Fighting is so hard and yet we’re never supposed to stop!”

Swiv absorbs Grandma’s lessons about fighting, though not always in the correct ways. The word takes on both literal and figurative connotations here. She has been expelled from school for fighting with the other kids, and she fights to control her temper. She is also fighting to keep her family together and safe, a fight that stretches the resources of a nine-year-old child.

“Last night I slept with Mom. Gord was tucked right in between us. Mom slept with her hand on her chin like she was thinking all night long.”

Swiv is a liminal figure, caught between being a child and striving to be an adult. Here, she is simultaneously vulnerable and brave; she is childlike, sleeping in the bed with her mother, but she is also protective of her unborn sibling. This juxtaposition characterizes Swiv’s precarious role in the family. The last sentence foreshadows Mom’s transformation from an emotionally compromised woman into a responsible parent.

“Today I was Grandma’s human walker. She stood behind me with her hands on my shoulders and we shuffled slowly from room to room. Conga line! said Grandma.”

Swiv literally bears the burden of Grandma and their tragic family history when Grandma uses her shoulders for support. Swiv will inherit this history, but she will also grow strong under the weight of it—thanks both to Grandma and Mom. This also showcases Grandma’s irreverent sense of humor: No matter the circumstance (she fell that morning), she approaches it with some sense of joy.

“Your Mom is fighting on every front, said Grandma. Internally, externally. Eternally, I said. Yes, it would seem so, said Grandma. With your dad being gone and—”

Swiv initially thinks of Mom as a weak person, one who succumbs to angry impulses and bears little responsibility for her child or her own mother. However, Grandma is determined to ensure that Swiv understands that Mom is fighting against trauma and the sadness that comes from tragedy. The different facets of Mom’s struggles are illustrated through the internal rhyme here—internally, externally, eternally.

“When she was gone I felt frozen, like a bug in amber, and I didn’t know what to do.”

Grandma leaves to meet her friends and play cards, and Mom is at rehearsal. Without any adults in the home for whom to care, Swiv is at a loss. The simile here refers to fossilized remains, the detritus of history. Swiv is trapped in the cycle of the family’s tragic history and suffering.

“I don’t want to understand impermanence, I told Grandma. I realize that, she said. But the is you are in the process of understanding impermanence, whether you want to be or not. We all are.”

Swiv’s stubbornness is one of her greatest strengths; she has already proven herself to be a fighter. This foreshadows the impermanence that Swiv will ultimately have to face at the end of the novel: Grandma’s death. Grandma tries to prepare her for the inevitable by referencing Marcus Aurelius and the Stoic philosophers, conveying a sense of timeless wisdom.

“I remember reading an interview with a writer once and she said that she was writing against death, that the act of writing, or of storytelling, that every time she wrote a story I mean, she was working through her own death.”

As part of Mom’s assignment from Swiv—to write a letter to Gord—she mentions that her sister, Momo, asked Mom to write her letters. Mom feels guilt that she neglected to do so and then Momo died by suicide. The fact that Mom actually writes the letter to Gord represents a desire to write against her own fears that she, too, will follow her father and sister. For her, writing becomes an act of resistance.

“Mom was in a happy mood because of Gord being fine even if we didn’t know for sure if Gord had any sex organs—which I think is a good thing not to have in life, and I crossed my fingers for Gord.”

Swiv’s ambivalence about gender speaks to her liminal status; her hostility to sex speaks to her fears about Mom’s ability to care for Gord. It is also indicative of her age, as childhood is a time when sex can often seem frightening or disgusting. It also reveals a thematic concern of the author: not to limit characters or their capabilities based on gender. One can determine what one wants to be.

“This is what my friend the revolutionary, Huey P. Newton, said. You can only die once so don’t die a thousand times worrying about it.”

Indicative of Grandma’s style, she casually drops a reference to Huey P. Newton, the revolutionary Black leader and founder of the Black Panthers, as if he were one of her acquaintances. This has the effect of making her erudition less intimidating and her sense of humor more evident. It also reveals her indomitable spirit and foreshadows her own decision to refuse more treatment in the hospital. Death is inevitable, as Grandma well knows, so one must live as much as one can in the interim.

“Mom told us that Willit Braun had phoned wanting to talk about salvation with her or Grandma and she’d said, Wrong number, this is Satan.”

Willit Braun is the religious leader from the family’s former village, a symbol of the repression and despotism under which Grandma and Mom lived for many years. Mom’s flippant response not only represents her defiance in the face of oppressive forces but also a reclamation of her autonomy.

“I set my alarm for twenty minutes earlier than Mom’s because I was the only one who knew how to get Grandma’s compression socks on, even though there are YouTube videos and Mom could just watch one and focus and learn.”

Again, Swiv takes on the adult role within the family. At least at this point in the book, she knows that Mom is unreliable. She assumes the role of caretaker and reveals her frustration that Mom cannot—or will not—do so. Over the course of the book, this attitude toward Mom slowly changes when Swiv undergoes some overwhelming experiences and Mom slowly regains her emotional equilibrium.

“She’s a girl! said Grandma. She put her arm around the seat to the back where I was and patted the bottom part of my leg like that’s okay, nobody knows what you are, but that’s okay.”

When Swiv is mistaken for a boy by the cab driver on the way to the airport, Grandma corrects him without making Swiv feel self-conscious about the error. It speaks again to Swiv’s liminal status, but it also speaks to the notion that gender does not define identity. Swiv can be anyone she wants to be.

“Now I think that she was getting rid of her old self. She was getting rid of the self that was vulnerable, the self that had maybe inherited this horrible disease…her genetic legacy.”

Grandma tells Swiv that when Mom returned from the movie shoot in Albania, she was overly thin and wild eyed. While Grandma worried about her weight loss, she recognized that it was a physical manifestation of a psychological need. Mom has potentially inherited the same mental health condition that led to the deaths of her father and sister, and she is trying to shake that legacy in favor of embracing life.

“We need teams. That was a good instinct. Survival. She was fighting, fighting, fighting…to stay alive. To get back to you. And here we are…where’s that nitro, honey? Well, that’s the truth…you know, fighting can be making peace…fighting can be going small…That’s the truth, Ruth!”

As Grandma tells Swiv “The Truth about Mom” (147), she expands on the notion of what it means to fight, the main thematic concern of the book. Rather than Swiv’s idea of trying to become “King of the Castle”—overcoming all of the other kids on the playground—fighting can mean “making peace,” not just with others but with oneself. One does not have to raise fists against the world to fight; rather, one can decide, like Grandma, to “stay alive” and find joy wherever it resides.

“Grandma didn’t hear any of the story, really. She just sat there looking into the distance and vibrating with joy and wonder the whole time like she’d never been in a car before.”

When Grandma finally reconnects with her nephews, Lou and Ken, she radiates happiness. They are the last living reminders of her large family; their mother, her sister, has passed away, as have all of her other siblings. They are the embodiment of what Grandma suggests is the point of life: to celebrate with others and find joy.

“She had a fight with God for ten years. That’s how you know she loves him. Grandma held Lou’s hand while she told us about her fight. She believes that God is love and that love is in each one of us even if we don’t believe in God. I’ve never felt forsaken, she said.”

Grandma discusses the impact that her husband’s and daughter’s suicides had on her. This spiritual battle is another kind of fight, one in which Grandma had to come to terms with God’s inability to prevent this kind of tragedy (not to mention her own lack of control). Her idea of God represents a kind of universalist and inclusive vision rather than the repressive and castigating vision of religion symbolized by Willit Braun.

“Maybe you should tie me to the mast! Grandma shouted. Like my friend Odysseus! She winked at me. She was still drinking! If we tied Grandma to the mast and we tipped, she’d drown.”

Grandma and Swiv join Lou and Ken on their sailboat. Grandma’s comment refers to the ancient epic The Odyssey, in which Odysseus has his men tie him to a ship’s mast so that he can hear the infamous Sirens singing without jumping overboard. The Sirens allegedly drive men to their deaths, yet their singing is beautiful. Just like Odysseus, Grandma wants to enjoy every experience she can.

“She loved Grandpa. She knew she had to do the fighting against everything but that was okay with her. Grandpa didn’t like to fight. He liked to read.”

Grandma establishes herself as the fighter in the family. Indeed, it is the women in the family who are the fighters: Not only does Grandpa allow Grandma to do the fighting for both of them, but Dad also leaves Mom to fend for herself and care for his children. The women are also survivors of tragedy and violence who will pass this along to the next generation, Swiv and Gord.

“I tried to change the subject instead of lashing out, the way the therapist had told me to do. I knew she would say I was angry with myself for not protecting Grandma. But sometimes I was angry at other people, too! I guess the therapist wasn’t getting paid enough to deal with the hidden costs of additional anger because Mom did the sliding scale option.”

After Grandma falls at the nursing home in California, knocking out a tooth and breaking her arm, Swiv is angry with herself. However, she is also angry at Grandma for not being careful and for behaving nonchalantly after the fall, and she tries to manage these emotions. Still, Swiv—like Grandma and Mom—employs a sense of humor when faced with difficulty, joking about her family’s low-income status when discussing the therapist’s advice.

“We were all connected to each other like a search party.”

When Mom reaches the hospital to find Swiv and Grandma, they all hold hands, clinging to each other. This is about the undeniable, irrepressible connection shared by family—a connection that is clearly evident in the three generations of women who share this story. The simile (“like a search party”) represents how each woman has been seeking support from the others; they have finally found each other, in the end.

“I forgot to tell you that Grandma is part Christian and part secular existentialist. Mom told me that. I just found that out when I filled out the religion part of Grandma’s hospital form. Will she want to see a chaplain? A rabbi? A priest? I read these out to Mom. Mom said Grandma wants to see Gord. I wrote down Gord.”

Swiv will remember this as she packs the newborn infant into her backpack and takes her to Grandma—the only thing that will get the dying woman to open her eyes. While religion is significant, it is not as significant as family. This is reflected in the near-identical spellings of God and Gord, elevating Gord to divine significance.

“We all squeezed in next to Grandma in her skinny bed. Mom was holding on to all of us.”

Mom finally becomes the glue that binds the family together. She becomes the support that Grandma needs in her final moments and that Swiv and Gord will need as they grow up. As much as the book is a coming-of-age story about Swiv, it is also a bildungsroman for Mom.