50 pages • 1 hour read
Carla TrujilloWhat Night Brings
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2003A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Sections 38-41Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Section 38 Summary
Marci and Corin stay home from school a week to heal from their injuries. They spend their days with Randy’s mother; Delia lies about the girls’ injuries, which Marci questions.
Marci writes a letter to Grandma Flor about the abuse. In her response, Flor says she cannot get the girls because her boyfriend has had a heart attack, but she sends them money and instructions on how to take the bus to her. They hide the money under Corin’s mattress. Marci doesn’t want to leave without Delia. Instead, she finds the knife that Flor gave her and suggests, “Let’s make Eddie change” (140).
Section 39 Summary
Marci and Corin ask Randy to bring his father’s rope and duct tape to their house so they can tie Eddie up to his bed, though they don’t know when it should happen. Randy reluctantly agrees to help. They wait until a night when Delia is working late, and Eddie is drinking. Eddie teases Marci that she’s more of a boy than a girl; he undermines one of her wishes by saying she’ll never have a penis like his. When Eddie goes to bed, Corin brings Randy to the apartment. Together, the three children tie Eddie to the bed. Randy leaves. When Marci puts tape over Eddie’s mouth, he wakes up.
Eddie is furious: “We knew right then that he wanted to hit us bad” (147). The knots hold him in place. They tease Eddie and threaten to force-feed him chocolate ice cream, which he hates. The girls make three demands: that Eddie will “never hit us again […] never call us names or say things to make us feel bad […] never be mean anymore to anybody” (151).
Marci takes the tape off Eddie’s mouth, but he screams at them. She replaces the tape. Marci and Corin grab their knives and make a fourth demand: that he will never kill them. After this, they run their knives along his cheeks and throat, making shallow cuts. When they threaten to cut off Eddie’s testicles, he faints.
Corin yells Marci’s name, which snaps her out of her fantasy. She and Corin are watching TV. Corin tells her that if she had a genie, she would “wish for a new father” (155). Marci responds that she would wish for that and “other things.”
Section 40 Summary
Marci considers using a shotgun against Eddie but doesn’t know how they work. At the suggestion of Miss Buck, the librarian, Marci reads a book on karate and practices the moves. She asks Randy to help her, but she ends up hurting him. Knowing that she will need practice with an adult, she decides to ask Tommy. Marci is optimistic about using karate: “I looked at my hands. They were little, but they sure made Randy cry” (161).
Section 41 Summary
Tommy is hesitant to help Marci practice her karate moves. When he relents, he easily blocks her moves and knocks her down. He knows she is practicing to fight Eddie and tells her to get to a neighbor’s house and call him the next time Eddie is abusive. Marci is disappointed: “I felt a little better. But not much” (164).
Sections 38-41 Analysis
Marci’s journey toward strength continues as she allows herself to fantasize about physically harming Eddie. This is not something her religion permits, and it signifies larger steps away from her faith. While her actions hold imagery symbolic of childhood—for example, ice cream and karate—they display new levels of anger. In these sections, Marci is more active than at any time before.
The final visual of Marci’s fantasy, in which she and Corin “held the knives up over his huevos [a Spanish slang term for testicles]”, is symbolic of her wish to take Eddie’s masculine power and of her jealousy of that power (155). He, too, loves women but can express it in a way Marci cannot. Removing of his testicles would be a form of equality between them. Her desire to emasculate him addresses Eddie’s earlier slight that Marci will never have a penis. Marci, in a way, wants to take the male anatomy away from Eddie that she will never have.
