Chapter 10 Summary: Chapter 9 - Childhood, Beauty, and Abandonment

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Summary

The chapter opens with the narrator compulsively adding items to online shopping carts late at night—knitwear, bag charms, animal-print accessories—before shutting her laptop to begin a personal essay assigned by her older writing partner. The essay requires her to explore her point of view at three separate ages of her childhood.

At age five, the narrator recalls her mother preparing her to look pretty when her father visits. Her mother applies makeup and curls her hair, saying that the best way to keep a man is to be as pretty as possible. Her father comes for dinner but leaves quickly. Afterward her mother sobs and resolves to try harder next time. On a subsequent visit, the mother and daughter wear new dresses and keep the curlers in longer. Her father stays for dessert, and the narrator hears her mother making happy sounds from the bedroom. Before leaving, he gives the narrator a plastic capsule from a quarter machine containing a jelly hand toy. He shows her how it sticks to a window, saying it will stay for days. After he leaves, the narrator changes back into her everyday clothes, and the sticky hand falls off the window.

At age seven, the hot curlers no longer appear. The narrator's father no longer comes around, but other men visit—some her mother's age, some older. They smell of chili and cologne and never stay long. The narrator makes friends with other children in the mobile home park (Kimberly, Robin, Angelica) who gradually move away, leaving her alone. She sometimes still makes homemade popsicles by herself.

At age nine, the family lives in an apartment. Her mother gets a job dancing—not tap, as the narrator hopes. People often remark that mother and daughter look like sisters. When older women learn the mother was sixteen when she had her, they react with concealed disapproval. The narrator notices bruises under her mother's blouses but compliments the blouse instead. Her mother's boyfriend breaks up with her, and her mother sobs into the narrator's lap, saying she could not bear to get rid of the narrator when she discovered she was pregnant—a statement the narrator recognizes as different from wanting to keep her.

After finishing the essay, the narrator opens her shopping cart tabs and finds none of the items appealing anymore. She clears all carts, then pulls up Mr. Korgy's Instagram and masturbates using a bottle of tropical Tums from her bathroom drawer, falling asleep with the bottle in her hand.

Key Events

• The narrator begins a personal essay assignment that takes her through three ages of childhood.
• At age five, mother dresses her up to attract father; father visits briefly and gives a toy.
• At age seven, father is absent; mother has various short-lived boyfriends; narrator's friends move away.
• At age nine, mother works as a dancer; narrator notices bruises and learns to hide her observations.
• Mother's boyfriend leaves; mother confesses she could not bear to abort the narrator.
• After writing, narrator discards online shopping carts and masturbates to an Instagram account.

Character Development

• The narrator (Jennette): Becomes increasingly aware of her mother's manipulation and her own role in performing beauty. She develops coping mechanisms: obsessive online shopping (then discarding it) and masturbation. She also recognizes the difference between being wanted and merely not being discarded.
• Mother: Shown as desperate for male attention, using her daughter as a prop to attract her father. She cycles through relationships and relies on Jennette for emotional support. Her behavior teaches Jennette that appearance is tied to value.
• Father: Distant and infrequent; leaves quickly after visits; rewards compliance with a cheap trinket.

Themes, Symbols, or Motifs

• Beauty as currency: The mother's grooming routine—curlers, makeup, new dresses—is a repeated ritual to secure male attention and temporary stability. The narrator internalizes this lesson.
• The sticky hand toy: A symbol of fleeting affection. It sticks briefly but falls off, mirroring the father's temporary presence and the narrator's belief that she must be "pretty enough" to make people stay.
• The Tums bottle: Represents an improvised, self-soothing sexual behavior that combines oral fixation and grinding, suggesting a need for comfort in the absence of nurturing relationships.
• Online shopping carts: Indicates compulsive consumption as a way to exert control and create fantasy, followed by disappointment and clearing of carts when the fantasy fades.

Why This Chapter Matters

This chapter is foundational for understanding the narrator's later relationships with men, her body image, and her sexual development. It reveals the early roots of her compulsion to perform attractiveness for male approval, a pattern reinforced by her mother. The essay assignment forces her to revisit painful memories, and her response—clearing shopping carts and masturbating—shows how she manages emotional distress through solitary, consumerist, and sexual acts. The chapter also establishes the narrator's growing critical awareness of her mother's language and motives, setting up future tension.

Study Questions and Answers

1. How does the narrator's understanding of her mother's phrase "couldn't bear to get rid of me" differ from "wanted to keep me"?
The narrator recognizes that the two statements imply different motivations. "Wanted to keep me" suggests genuine desire and love, while "couldn't bear to get rid of me" suggests fear or inability to act otherwise. This distinction highlights the narrator's growing awareness of her mother's ambivalence and the conditional nature of their bond.

2. What role does consumerism play in the narrator's coping mechanism in this chapter?
She fills online shopping carts with items she doesn't even like—animal print, scrunchies—as a way to feel calm and grounded. The act of adding items creates a temporary sense of control and distraction. After finishing the emotional essay, the carts lose their appeal and she clears them, indicating that the shopping was a means of avoiding painful feelings rather than genuine desire.

3. Why does the narrator masturbate to Mr. Korgy's Instagram after writing the essay?
Masturbation provides immediate physical pleasure and a sense of agency that contrasts with the powerlessness she felt in the memories. Using the Tums bottle suggests an improvised, childlike substitute for sexual gratification, linking to her earlier experiences of seeking comfort in objects. It also illustrates how she turns to solitary sexual behavior as a way to self-soothe after confronting traumatic material.

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