Summary
The summer before Vance entered high school, things were looking up. His mother had been sober for a year and had been dating Matt, who supported her through Papaw’s death and her addiction, for two or three years. Lindsay had married a kind man and fathered a child, Kameron. Mamaw had been on a few vacations and seemed to be returning to normal. Vance himself was doing well in school.
For a time, Vance’s world seemed to be approaching stasis again—until his mother informed him that they would be moving in with Matt in Dayton, Ohio, meaning that Vance would have to move away from his friends, his hometown, and, most importantly, Mamaw. When his mother told him the news, Vance blurted out “Absolutely not” and stormed off. As a result, Vance’s mother decided he had anger issues and enrolled them in therapy.
Vance’s first encounter with therapy was an unpleasant one. The therapist, having only heard his mother’s side, ambushed Vance with questions like ‘why do you scream at your mother and storm off,” chronicling a series of tantrums that Vance couldn’t remember. Eventually, Vance fought back, telling the therapist his story of a life spent between parental figures and rife with interpersonal brutality. The therapist suggested they begin meeting one-on-one, and Vance agreed. In private, he told her he felt trapped; for the first time, Lindsay was married and on her own, Papaw was gone, and Mamaw—a lifetime smoker with emphysema—seemed too frail to continue raising Vance. He told the therapist he might go live with his father.
Nearly Vance’s whole family was unhappy with this decision, and many suggested he move in with Mamaw, but for the first time, Vance feared becoming a burden to her. His father’s house, for the time he lived there, was peaceful, normal, even boring, which Vance appreciated. “We fished in Dad’s pond, fed horses, and grilled steaks for dinner,” Vance recalls of one night. Yelling, throwing plates, and cursing was absent from this lifestyle.
“What I never lost, though, was the sense of being on guard,” Vance remembers. Given his father’s strict religious beliefs, Vance feared asking him basic questions—like how his faith fit into modern science—or sharing personal information about himself—like the collectible card game he played, called Magic. At some point, this pressure to conform became too much for Vance, and he called Lindsay to come pick him up. Although his father seemed heartbroken, he understood: “‘You can’t stay away from that crazy grandma of yours. I know she’s good to you,’” he said. Vance interpreted this as an admission that, although Mamaw had never said a kind word about his father, the way she raised Vance was clearly wonderful. He spent the rest of the summer living with her.
Finally, Vance did agree to move in with his mother and Matt, provided that he could still attend school in Middletown and see Mamaw often. At the same time, his mother’s relationship with Matt was obviously on rocky ground. Given this, Vance was shocked when he arrived home from school one day to find his mother telling him that she was getting married—but not to Matt. Apparently, her boss, Ken, had asked her out and she had obliged; a week later, she agreed to marry him. Vance and his mother moved in with Ken two days after she told him about their engagement. Ken had three children, the oldest of whom (a boy) was vocal about his dislike for his new stepmother, an opinion that triggered Vance’s sense of the hillbilly honor code. They fought, with Vance threatening to beat the boy within an inch of his life if he ever called their mother a “bitch” again.
Thus, Vance found himself in his sophomore year of high school, a miserable, frustrated kid with a terrible attendance record and a 2.1 grade point average. He started drinking and smoking marijuana, and he even felt detached from Lindsay for the first time. Whereas Lindsay had found herself a kind husband and had a baby on which to dote, Vance was still stuck in all the problems from which his sister had run.
Analysis
In this chapter, Vance’s crisis of bouncing between unstable households and father figures reaches its crisis point. Young Vance not only struggles to cope with the loss of his beloved grandfather, he must also endure his mother’s abuse and relive the baggage he associates with his biological father. Ultimately, it is only after bouncing between his mother’s home with Matt, his biological father’s home in Kentucky, his mother’s home with Ken, and finally Mamaw’s home, that Vance admits he feels trapped by his lack of a place to call home. It is an ironic admission since Vance feels trapped not because he has nowhere to go, but rather because he has too many places to call home.
Nonetheless, Vance writes that he could still always depend on Mamaw’s house as a shelter during tough times. He compares it to a “safety valve” that he doesn’t take pleasure in using but on which he depends. Therefore, when his mother announces that they are moving away from Middletown to live with Matt, Vance feels that his safety valve has been removed, making his whole way of life riskier. This metaphor of a safety valve or safety net is one that Vance threads throughout the book, always referring to the presence of his stalwart parental figure, Mamaw.
This chapter also marks Vance’s return to therapy, but this time, it is his therapy session, rather than his mother’s. At this session, the therapist shares with Vance a chronicled history of outbursts, “some going back to a time I couldn’t remember.” This falsely revised version of history dreamed up by Vance’s mother provides a perverse parallel to the lively, legendary family history to which Vance has referred throughout the book, including the Blanton men’s exploits and Papaw’s relation to the feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys. Just like the family history of which Vance is proud, these stories date back before Vance himself can remember, and he cannot attest to their truth or falsehood. However, unlike his family history, this revisionist history created by his mother tells a warped version of her relationship with Vance, twisting the Vance family’s storytelling tradition into something false and ugly.
Searching for a way to make sense of the way his mother continued to disrupt his life, Vance invokes the words of a teacher at his former high school, who said, “‘They want us to be shepherds to these kids. But no one wants to talk about the fact that many of them are raised by wolves.’” This metaphor, which compares harsh, irresponsible parents to wolves, illustrates the social predicament Vance chronicles throughout the book, namely the push and pull of the positive influences a community can have on children and the harm a chaotic family life can have on them.
What makes this chapter particularly heartbreaking is Vance’s return to his biological father, who in some ways represents the idyllic American home. Vance’s depiction of his time staying with his father is, at least in part, close to the sitcom-esque idealism that his Uncle Jimmy described earlier in the book. “We fished in Dad’s pond, fed horses, and grilled steaks for dinner,” Vance writes. Unlike his mother’s various homes, Vance’s father has established a household where no one raises their voice or throws plates, and Vance feels he’s finally part of a classic American family. Tragically, however, Vance cannot be himself in this household, due to his father’s devout religion, leaving Vance feeling more trapped than ever. Ultimately, Vance’s journey from one household to the next is made even more heartbreaking because of this: because he has experienced both the ideal family home and abusive family homes in a short time, Vance feels more lost than ever, homeless because he has too many homes to feel safe.
