In an attempt
to get over the death of her children, Ma went to hairdressing school. She
would travel to homeless shelters to cut hair, and give anyone she knew a
makeover. Eventually while doing this, Ma became friends with other mothers who
lost their children. Michael also stopped hanging around Southie, doing
everything he could to stay away from the violence. This is a stark contrast
from earlier in the book, when the MacDonald’s lived in Jamaica Plain and the
kids were trying to create chaos in the neighborhood.
MacDonald
still praises Whitey for trying to keep the streets of Southie clean. The way
that Michael writes, it hints that Southie is starting to find out some of the
things that Whitey has been doing.
Kathy (who
moved to New Hampshire) moves back home in this chapter as well. The reason for
this is that she burned her house down and going insane, saying things like “Have
you ever heard of North America?”. After moving back, Kathy disappeared for a
while, then came back pregnant with a girl, later to be named Fatima Maria.
Michael
also added in a line that was somewhat surprising to me, he said “Jesus, this
is a great place to grow up”. I thought it was weird that after everything that
happened, MacDonald still thinks that growing up in Southie was great. Although
Michael felt this way his mother was not a fan of the Southie way of life after
the kid’s death, so she decided to move to Colorado with Maria, Seamus, and
Stevie.
One idea
that MacDonald shares several times is before someone dies, someone has a dream
about it. In the case of Kevin, Ma had a dream about him dying so she went out
and bought a new black dress for his funeral before he even died. In this
chapter, Michael has a dream about a boy named Timmy dying, and a few days
later he was killed. I don’t know if these are weird coincidences, but I
thought it was worth mentioning.
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