Granny Torrelli Makes Soup

“You going to tell me what’s making your eyes so inside-looking?”

These are the words that Granny uses to ask Rosie what is wrong with her when she is upset. These words demonstrate that Granny Torrelli realizes that Rosie is being introspective and thinking about herself rather than what is around her. In order to heal her rift with Bailey, Rosie will need to look beyond her own perspective to see his.

“That Bailey has made me molto molto sad. Boo hoo hoo.”

Granny Torrelli’s playful teasing here illustrates the tone of the novel. The novel is told informally through a colloquial, conversational tone. Though written in English, it also contains numerous Italian words as Granny Torrelli is from Italy. Further, instead of using quotation marks, the author uses italics to indicate dialogue, which breaks with written tradition.

“I wanted to be just like Bailey, and I wanted Bailey to be just like me.”

This desire causes numerous problems for Rosie. First, when she was younger, she got upset when Bailey could not go to the same school as she did. Second, it causes problems now as the children are older because Rosie keeps failing to let Bailey have his own unique skills and strengths. At the start, the children are fighting because Rosie tried to be like Bailey by learning Braille, failing to grasp how Bailey might perceive her efforts as cutting into his own uniqueness.

“They want a nice roof over your head, they want good food in your stomach, they want to get you shoes before the ones you have pinch your feet.”

Granny Torrelli explains to Rosie, as they discuss why her parents work so much, that the hard work is for Rosie’s benefit. Even when her parents are temporarily absent, they are loving her and taking care of her. Granny Torrelli’s words here prompt Rosie to keep pushing outside her own perspective, considering how others feel.

“And one day he was reading to me from the Braille book, his fingers moving so softly over the page, and I grabbed the book and ripped the page and then I told him it was an accident, that I hadn’t meant to rip it. But I had meant to rip it.”

This admission on the part of Rosie demonstrates her burgeoning frustrations over Bailey gaining independence. The moment shows that Rosie is capable of acting spiteful and making mistakes in her friendships. However, it also shows that she is able to admit these mistakes at least to herself, even if she is still struggling to grasp The Importance of Forgiveness, which includes the ability to admit mistakes to the aggrieved party and apologize.

“Then she crosses herself because she is Catholic, but I am not Catholic and so I do not cross myself.”

There is much that Rosie and Granny Torrelli share. Granny Torrelli passes along a lot of her cultural heritage to her granddaughter. She does not pass on her religion, however. These small differences help to highlight that the outcomes of Granny Torrelli’s stories may not necessarily be the outcomes of Rosie’s stories.

“I wish I had all the things in Granny Torrelli’s head inside my head, and then maybe I would know what is going to happen to me, and who I will be, and what I will be, and if I will marry, and if I will have children, and if I will have a job, and if I will be happy in my life.”

Here, Rosie expresses frustration over all of the unanswered questions in her life. She envies her grandmother because Granny Torrelli’s life has already answered its own questions. However, part of The Power of Storytelling lies in as yet untold stories too: Rosie does not know these things because her own story with Bailey is still unfolding.

“Oh Rosie! I wish I had a young head like yours, instead of this old head of mine. You should not wish for all these tangled things in my head. She taps her forehead. Very crowded in here!”

While Rosie wishes she had the answers to how her life will turn out, Grandma already has many of her own answers. What Rosie does not realize is that with experience comes complication. Rosie’s life is simpler than Granny Torrelli’s because Rosie does not have a lifetime of experiences and thoughts to wade through.

“And I am thinking how I want to be the rescuer. I want to rescue Bailey. I want to fix him, give him new eyes, make everything easier for him.”

Rosie has noble desires toward Bailey because she loves him so much. However, she still lacks empathy. What she does not realize is that Bailey is a whole person in himself who may not want rescuing. Rather, Bailey wants them to be equals.

“Pardo got mad at her and told her she was too full of herself, full of impossible dreams, full of crazy wishes.”

Rosie realizes that Pardo treated her grandmother unfairly. He did not understand what Granny Torrelli really wanted. He failed to recognize his friend’s hopes for herself, wanting to hold Granny Torrelli back in order to keep her to himself. There are echoes of Rosie’s attitude toward Bailey here, in that she has long tried to mother and protect him, even as he has worked hard to gain independence. Most poignantly, though, Rosie recognizes how this fight had the force to mark the end of a relationship.

“Until today, Bailey could do something that I could not, and he wanted that and needed that.”

This moment marks a turning point and a moment of epiphany for Rosie. She is able to see the situation from Bailey’s perspective rather than just from her own. Finally, she demonstrates selfless empathy, and she will decide to act on that empathy immediately after.

“That Granny Torrelli. Me, I always want to do things for Bailey because he can’t see, things I think are too hard for him, like cracking the eggs. But Granny Torrelli is showing me that Bailey doesn’t need so much help, that I should quit being such a take-charge Rosie.”

Ever since she was young, Rosie has wanted to help Bailey. This desire comes from a place of kindness as she wants to take care of her friend. What Granny Torrelli teaches Rosie, however, is that Bailey can do more than she thinks he can and that teaching him to do these things is more helpful for Bailey than doing them herself.

“I am watching his hands, and my heart is so full of that Bailey boy that I want to grab him and hug him.”

Rosie’s feelings about Bailey are intense. When she is angry with him, she is very angry and icy. Here, she feels intense affection for him. Sometimes these feelings change quickly, and that makes her feel like she is an odd person.

“I stop being a jerk, temporarily, and say, Sure, she’s nice. But my snotty self has to add, I guess.”

Rosie generally understands how she feels, and she is not afraid to admit the darker sides of herself. She understands that she can be mean at times, and she is willing to admit this to herself. This moment marks one instance where that is the case.

“Crash! Zing! Things flying around inside my head so fast. I am thinking, Hurry Granny, hurry, come back from your pause and rescue me before I say something stupid.”

This is another instance of Rosie’s strong feelings taking charge of her mind. Again, Rosie understands her own ability to act on impulse, and she wishes Granny Torrelli would come back soon to stop her from giving in to these impulses. These words represent Rosie’s tumultuous emotions as well as her desire to be able to act logically despite them.

“Inside, I am thinking good things and terrible things. I want to stay there watching Bailey forever.”

Despite the anger that Rosie sometimes feels toward Bailey, she has intense feelings of friendship for him. Her anger does not wipe away her affection just as her affection does not prohibit anger. The two live together within her.

“And for a time, it is peaceful in the kitchen, and I am outside myself, a calm place to be.”

Most of the action that takes place within the novel takes place in conversations and memories. Very little action takes place in the present tense. This structure is reflective of the emotional journey that Rosie goes on throughout the novel. Because her inner life is so strong and rich, she feels a bit of peace when she can get outside of herself and reside more in her physical environment than in her emotional one.

“I hear an ice king in his voice.”

Up until this point, the relational jealousy was on the part of Rosie, and as such, she is the one who has ice in her voice. Here, however, Bailey begins to get jealous, and those feelings produce the same ice in him that they did in Rosie and Granny Torrelli. Through this shared experience among characters, Creech demonstrates that the problem of “ice” lies in the jealousy itself rather than in a weakness of the individual characters.

“My first impulse is to say, No, Bailey, I am staying with you here forever, but something stops me, some little sly fox who has replaced my tiger.”

These words demonstrate the way in which Rosie views her emotions as animals inside of her at times. She wants to console Bailey, especially as she would honestly rather be with Bailey than with the new family, but she also wants to gain the upper hand. As such, she lets the metaphorical cunning fox that lives inside her dictate her words.

“I know it is mean of me to be quiet right now, but the sly fox has taken over, and I am no longer in control of my Rosie self.”

At the beginning of the novel, Rosie understands that she can be stubborn and have big feelings. Here, she demonstrates an inability to take control of her actions. Instead, she acts to manipulate and hurt Bailey rather than to console him.

“It is so quiet and so sad there in the kitchen with our hands all on the table: Granny’s wrinkly soft ones, and Bailey’s strong ones and my normal Rosie ones.”

While Bailey and Rosie make the pasta and the meatballs, touch becomes important as it helps unite them and softens Rosie’s harsh feelings. Here, their hands unite them again as Granny Torrelli tells the story about the sick baby, and the two children wait to hear if the baby survived. This moment is a strong manifestation of The Power of Storytelling, and it also draws on the motif of Blindness: In this moment, touch and the unifying nature of the story open a different avenue for connection.

“I am singing the songs of my mother and my grandmother, Granny Torrelli says, little lullabies I thought I’d forgotten.”

Healing is mainly facilitated through stories in the novel. Here, however, healing comes from the passing down of songs from one generation to another. Both songs and stories help to define a culture and to unite people of different generations as they are passed down.

“I don’t care if the whole town comes, as long as you come, Bailey boy.”

Both Rosie and Bailey have overcome their jealousy at this point after hearing Granny Torrelli’s story of the sick baby. Because of this new awareness, Rosie is no longer intimidated by Janine’s presence, and she no longer feels the need to have the new children around. Her main focus is Bailey and her relationship with him.