Growing Up

When Baker is five, his family—now including sisters Doris and Audrey—prepares to visit Benny’s brother Miller for an end of the harvest festival. Ruth sees the trip as risky since Miller drinks, though his wife, Edmonia keeps him in line. Ruth is concerned about Ida Rebecca’s influence over Baker, especially Ida Rebecca’s superstitious beliefs in ghosts and omens.

Before supper, Miller takes Benny outside to see the pigs for slaughter, and they drink. When they return, they seem fine, but Benny soon leaves the table. Everyone can hear him vomiting outside. The next morning, Benny is still sick. The festivities are cancelled. Baker sees his father in a doctor’s car, smiling and wearing his suit to go to the hospital. Baker is held up to the window to kiss him goodbye. Benny tells Baker he will be back in a day or two and to be good until he returns.

That afternoon, Ruth returns home with the children and leaves early the next morning for the hospital. Baker spends the day playing alone, until his cousins Kenneth and Ruth Lee find him and tell Baker his father is dead. He does not want to believe it but senses it is true. He learns that when his mother arrived at the hospital, she was told 33-year-old Benny had died “in acute diabetic coma” (59). The town turns up in force to begin the rituals. The women clean the house and prepare food. The men stand around in their good suits to show the dead man was well-liked, thereby providing comfort to the widow.

Baker is sent to the other side of town. He spends the day weeping before concluding God is indifferent, love is a prelude to pain, and happiness is a prelude to “some grim cosmic joke” (60). Late in the day, Baker returns to the still active house and is told to wait in the yard. After dark, Annie Grigsby embraces him and takes him to see his father. Baker is most struck by his “motionlessness,” which “was majestic and terrifying” (62). He does not want to see his father that way again.

After the funeral, Ruth decides to move the family to New Jersey. Her brother Allen has offered to take in her and the children. Ida Rebecca wants the children to stay, but Ruth does not want to break up the family. Uncle Tom and Aunt Goldie are childless and desperate for a baby. They want to adopt ten-month-old Audrey. In her “shock and depression,” Ruth agrees (63). It is the only thing Baker ever hears his mother express regret over throughout her life. After surrendering Audrey, Ruth Elizabeth sits in her rocking chair staring at the stove. Baker asks his mother when Audrey is coming home. She does not answer but instead offers him a slice of jam bread. 

Lucy, Doris, and Baker move to Newark in January 1931. Allen gently scolds Lucy for giving up Audrey. Allen and his wife Pat both experienced youthful hardships that made them compassionate. Allen dropped out of school in tenth grade after Papa’s death. He worked blue-collar jobs up and down the East Coast, eventually landing a “suit-and-necktie job” as a salesman in New York (66). A half-Irish, half-Cuban native New Yorker, Pat grew up in a Catholic orphanage and then lived in boarding houses working various jobs. Baker credits her for inspiring his love of newspapers, calling her “A hopeless news junkie” who could never resist the newsboy’s cry (67).

Baker struggles with transitioning to city life. He is almost hit by a car. A girl lures him into her home with the promise of cake if he is willing to remove his pants. After this incident, his mother confines him to the small backyard. He hates the cod liver oil he must take to ward off diseases. He and Doris contract whooping cough and are required to wear yellow armbands marking them as disease carriers. The Health Department tells his mother Baker is at risk of developing curvature of the spine and needs gym classes, which he hates. Seeing he has no talent for it, his mother suggests he play baseball instead.

His mother faces typical Depression-era problems. New Jersey does not recognize her Virginia teaching credentials, and she is unable to find work. In December, she finds holiday work at a five-and-dime working twelve hours a day for $18 a week. Financial independence is out of reach. To help the family, Allen takes advantage of Depression firings to get a higher paying job. Companies fire employees then rehire one person to do the job previously done by two, at a salary less than either made individually. Baker believes Allen is successful because he owns two suits.

Lucy considers remarriage a more likely route to security. Uncle Allen introduces her to Oluf, a good humored, optimistic Dane. She calls him “a good man,” her “official seal of approval” (72). Oluf is a traveling salesman who began as a baker. With bank loans, he purchased several houses in Pennsylvania. Baker is terrified of losing his mother (72). He has nightmares of her dying and leaving him and Doris alone.

Baker shares letters Oluf wrote Lucy from the road. They chronicle his struggle to remain employed and pay his property taxes and mortgage. He is let go from his sales job and returns to baking but is unable to secure a better position closer to Lucy. As his economic situation deteriorates, he gives way to despair. In April 1933, he writes his final letter asking Lucy not contact him anymore. He encourages her to find a man good enough for her and to forget about him. He is lost.