Summary
Chapter 8
Back at school, it’s first period, aka gossip central. As Josie unpacks her school bag, she listens in to the chatter of the girls around her. The conversation of Carly Bishop, one of the “beautiful people” at school who make Josie feels she doesn’t belong, stands out. At 18, Carly already goes nightclubbing, and is telling her friends that last night the club was “the pits” because it was full of “wogs" (a derogatory term for non-Anglo-Saxon Australians). Josie overhears Carly using the racist term, and she’s tired of Carly’s daily racist remarks, so she speaks up. Carly at first tries to appease Josie by saying she’s of course not a wog, but Josie’s not having it. She forces Carly to apologize, which Carly does half-heartedly. When Josie calls her out on her insincere apology, Carly tells her she has a right to say whatever she wants. Josie calls Carly a racist pig, Carly calls her a wog and makes a subtle dig about Josie’s illegitimacy. In response, Josie hits Carly in the face with her science book.
Of course, the girls get hauled into Sister Louise’s office, where Carly’s father is in rampage mode. Josie brook Carly’s noise with the book, and he demands Josie call a lawyer as they will be settling things in court. Sister Louise tries to deescalate the situation to no avail. Finally, Josie says her father is a barrister, which shocks everyone, and says she will call him. As Josie grabs a phone book and calls her father’s office, she’s shaking like a leaf. She knows that Michael Andretti won’t be coming to her rescue, but prays he will all the same. When she calls Michael is on another call, so she leaves a message with his secretary. Then, they wait.
About 30 minutes later, no one is more surprised than Josie when Michael Andretti comes walking into the principal’s office. He’s glaring at Josie, but he has come. Josie asks to speak with him in private, and Michael immediately asks what happened to staying out of each other’s lives. Josie confesses she was desperate, and promises if he manages to save her from expulsion she won’t bother him again. At first, she refuses to tell her father what Carly said to anger her, but finally confesses that the other girl called her a wog. This clears things up for Michael, who goes to talk to Carly’s father, and manages to cow the other man into letting the incident go. Sister Louise gives Josie an in-school punishment, and suspends her for the rest of the day. As Josie and Michael walk out, Josie asks him how court was in a loud voice so the other students can hear her. As her classmates look on, Michael tells her about his day. Josie walks along, finally knowing how it feels to walk alongside one’s father. For her, it’s a great feeling.
Chapter 9
One Friday after Josie, Poison Ivy, and Sister Louise have their weekly meeting, Sister Louise keeps Josie after to talk about the recent developments in her life. Despite the differences between her and Josie, Sister Louise genuinely does care, which makes Josie feel slightly guilty for all the mean thoughts she had about her principal. Sister Louise is surprisingly well informed about the goings-on in Josie’s life, and asks about the recent arrival of her father, her job at McDonald's, and even Jacob Coote. Josie tells Sister Louise that everything’s fine, and Sister Louise lets her go.
At home, Josie and Nonna Katia are excited for Christina to come home because Josie actually cooked dinner as a surprise for her mom. However, when Christina comes home she is nervous and geared up a fight. It’s revealed that she has a date planned, and needs Nonna Katia to look after Josie. Immediately, this starts a fight between Christina and her mother, who fears what people will say about Christina and accuses her of neglecting Josie. The two women go back and forth, with Nonna Katia accusing Christina of being selfish and only thinking of herself. She also says she knows Michael Andretti is Josie’s father, which sets off another round of arguing. In the end, Nonna Katia drives home, leaving Josie and Christina to their own argument.
Josie is afraid at how fast things seem to be changing, and starts to yell at her mother too. Her mother has been on dates before, but this man, Paul Presilio, seems far more serious. She begins to be rude to Christina, causing her to kick her out of her room. When her mother leaves, Josie realizes she never wants her mother to marry because she never wants it to be anything but the two of them. When Christina comes back, she goes to Josie’s room and tells her that she had an amazing time. For once, someone found her interesting not because she’s Josie’s mother or Katia’s daughter, but because she was herself.
Chapter 10
It’s been a few weeks since Josie started working at McDonalds, and yesterday made her realize it may not be the best job for her and Anna. Because of the restaurant’s location, a lot of “hoods” congregate there, including Jacob, Anton, and their noisy friends. So far, Josie has been ignoring Jacob, only because she’s afraid of what would happen between them. Yesterday, a group of creeps came in, and one of them was Greg Sims, Josie’s bully when she was 10. Greg recognizes Josie, and gives her a hard time, even refusing to pay for his food until some police officers happen to walk in. At that, Josie smiles in victory, which just riles up Greg even more. He and his hoodlum friends wait for Josie and Anna to get off of work, and are sitting on a fence by Anna’s car when the girls come outside. The boys begin to heckle and assault the girls, grabbing their things, forcing kisses on them, and making lewd suggestions. Just as Greg grabs the front of Josie’s uniform and starts to slobber all over her face, he’s ripped away from her. It’s Jacob Coote, and he begins to bash Greg’s face on the ground.
Josie, shaken by the violence, begs Jacob to stop, but then Greg says she’s a slut just like her mother. This sets Josie off, and now Jacob has to pull her back. Jacob threatens to hurt Greg if he ever comes near Josie again, and Greg and his posse slither off like snakes. Jacob tells Anton to take Anna home, and he yells at Josie to get on his motorbike. He’s upset at her for getting into such a dangerous situation. On the ride to her house, Josie cries the entire time because she’s mad at what Greg said about her mother, who Josie has recently also been unkind to. When they arrive, Jacob gives her a hanky, and tells her his mother taught him to always leave the house with a clean one. He then asks Josie out on a date, which shocks her. She tells him he’ll have to meet her mother, which makes him balk. They exchange insults back and forth, and Josie even calls him an ignorant Australian for generalizing about her culture. Still, they set the date for 7:30 Saturday night, and Jacob rides off.
Chapter 11
The next day, Josie and her mother come back from grocery shopping, and Josie makes up with her mom. She asks her mom how she puts up with her when she treats her so poorly, to which her mom laughs. Christina is shocked by the humbleness and maturity Josie is exhibiting, and Josie explains that she’s tired of fighting with her mom. Josie then tells her mom about Jacob asking her out, but says her apology has nothing to do with it. At first Christina is hesitant, because she’d much rather Josie go out with someone she knows, like John Barton. However, she agrees to think about it. Before heading inside their house they talk to their neighbor, Mrs. Sahd, who complains about Gary and his other roommates. Once inside, Josie asks about Paul Presilio, and if he tried to sleep with Christina. This begins a frank conversation about sex and the AIDS epidemic, and ends with the mother and daughter hugging everything out on the stairs.
Chapter 12
The next time Josie goes to her grandmother’s house, she finally succumbs and asks her grandmother to see her photo albums. Nonna Katia gleefully pulls out her albums and tells Josie about life in Australia when she first arrived. At first, Nonno Francesco had work cutting cane in town, which left Katia oftentimes alone in their own room shack. Sometimes even snakes made their way into the room. One day, she went to the post office to get a letter from her sister, and the letter said their parents recently died. Katia became hysterical in the post office, but she didn’t speak English so no one knew what to do. Finally, an Australian man picked her up and carried her out into the back. The man’s name was Marcus Sandford, and they struck up a friendship despite not sharing a language. Nonno Francesco was away so Marcus would visit and help Katia around the house, until Francesco returned and put a stop to everything. After that, more and more Italians immigrated to Australia, even Nonna Katia’s pregnant sister, Zia Patrizia. As two women left alone in the bush while their husbands were away working, they drew comfort from each other. Nonna Katia continues to talk, but Josie’s mind drifts. She thinks how glad she is to not have lived back then, because she can’t imagine living in a time or country where she couldn't communicate with her neighbor.
Analysis
The ostracizing and casual racism Josie claims to have experienced at the hands of her classmates are on full display in chapter 9. Carly Pope, a quintessential Anglo-Saxon Australian rich girl from Josie’s school, calls Josie a wog when Josie stands up to her for using racist slang. Wog, a derogatory slang term used to describe “ethnic” or “immigrant” people, is offensive to Josie, who argues time and time again that Australia is just as much her country as it is any Anglo-Saxon’s. Racism and cultural differences come up again when Josie and Jacob interact after the fight at McDonald’s. Jacob is attracted to Josie and asks her on date despite believing that she’s not his type, but balks when Josie says he has to meet her mother first. Jacob, an Anglo-Saxon Australian, doesn’t understand why it’s necessary in Italian culture for him to meet a girl’s parents before taking her on a date. His confusion about his and Josie’s cultural differences leads Jacob to make a racist generalization about “ethnic” girls marrying young. For some reason though, Jacob’s comments don’t hurt Josie as much as Carly’s do, and she agrees to the date.
Besides establishing Josie as a strong and principled person who will stand up for what she believes in, the incident with Carly also serves to reintroduce Michael Andretti into Josie’s life. When Josie calls her father out of the blue to save her at school, she is tugging on familial bonds that she and Michael both claimed didn’t exist. And yet, despite initially agreeing with Josie to continue life as strangers, Michael answers her call. He comes and stands up for Josie as her father against Carly’s father. No one is more surprised than Josie when he appears, because she’s certain they severed whatever nascent bond they had that day at Nonna Katia’s barbecue. And yet, it seems that despite a 17-year absence, and wounded feelings on both sides, Michael and Josie seem to slide into their roles as father and daughter like a lost pair of gloves, forgotten but newly found. Though they still have a ways to go, as Josie walks with Michael through the halls of her school, she fleetingly feels what it’s like to walk beside her father.
Another facet of the family bonds theme is the relationship between mothers and daughters. As Josie explains in an earlier chapter, she and her mother are best friends who at times can get into loud arguments. Still, they are extremely close, in part because Christina’s relationship with her own mother is strained. From Christina’s childhood, she and her parents have had a difficult relationship, much to Christina’s confusion. When she became pregnant with Josie, her father kicked her out of the house, with no protest from Nonna Katia. Once Nonno Francesco died Christina was allowed back, but by then her already strained relationship with Nonna Katia had become even worse.
This is exhibited in the argument Nonna Katia and Christina have when Christina has her date with Paul Presilio. Even though Christina is a grown woman, Nonna Katia fears the judgement of the Italian community if it gets out that Christina is dating. On one hand it seems Katia cares more about society’s perception than her daughter’s happiness. On the other, perhaps Katia is fearful of Christina being hurt again like she was with Michael Andretti, and her criticism is her way of voicing worry and care. Like Christina when Josie asks to go on a date with Jacob, Katia is worried about her daughter’s safety. Thus, these relationships parallel one another.
The immigration theme is once again explored in Nonna Katia’s stories. This time, Josie finally succumbs to curiosity and actually asks her grandmother to see her cherished photo albums. These photo albums are among Nonna Katia’s prized possessions because they contain her memories of her past. They symbolize her connection to her past self, her experiences, and people she no longer sees regularly. By showing Josie her photo albums, she hopes to make Josie understand what life as an immigrant was like, and how she became the woman she is today. An important character introduced by Nonna Katia’s photo albums is Marcus Sandford, an Australian man she befriended. Despite saying that the Italians kept their distance from their Austalian countrymen, Nonna Katia was able to develop a good friendship with Marcus across linguistic and cultural lines. This is an impressive feat to Josie, who hopes she never has to find out for herself what it feels like to not communicate with her neighbors.
