"I think my love for books sprang from my need to escape the world I was born into, to slide into another where words were straightforward and honest, where there was clearly delineated good and evil, where I found girls who were strong and smart and creative and foolish enough to fight dragons, to run away from home to live in museums, to become child spies, to make new friends and build secret gardens."
Ward associates her love for reading as a child with coping. She read in order to participate in virtual realities which were more orderly and safe than her own, needing an outlet for her imagination and creativity. In these books, she learned about other girls who took risks and chose bravery, very important stories for her to have learned at the time.
"We crawled through time like roaches through the linings of walls, the neglected spaces and hours, foolishly happy that we were still alive even as we did everything to die."
Ward remembers her and her brother and their friends when they were younger living so carelessly, not in a negative sense. They spent their time without a worry or a thought about how precious it was. Looking back now, Ward reads these scenes as a kind of horror. To her adult sensibilities, fully possessing death anxiety, she interprets their actions as pure ignorance, not that death consciousness could have benefitted the children in any way. The ignorance is just frightening to Ward.
"We tried to outpace the thing that chased us, that said: You are nothing. We tried to ignore it, but sometimes we caught ourselves repeating what history said, mumbling along, brainwashed: I am nothing. We drank too much, smoked too much, were abusive to ourselves, to each other. We were bewildered. There is a great darkness bearing down on our lives, and no one acknowledges it."
Ward recounts the terrifying truth of she and her friends lived their lives. They were constantly running, fighting, trying to escape an overbearing voice inside them which repeated messages of worthlessness and fear. Unable to give words to this experience, they chose other outlets which often complicated their fear with shame and self-hatred. She identifies the speaking of the thing as the path out of this cycle.
"Both of us on the cusp of adulthood, and this is how my brother and I understood what it meant to be a woman: working, dour, full of worry. What it meant to be a man: resentful, angry, wanting life to be everything but what it was."
Ward and her brother were given models of adulthood characterized by suffering. Their parents were people beaten down by the length and experience of their lives, having resigned hope of any personal fulfillment. Consequently, the two kids adopted these attitudes. They believed life held nothing more significant for them than these models.
“Men’s bodies litter my family history. The pain of the women they left behind pulls them from the beyond, makes them appear as ghosts. In death, they transcend the circumstances of this place that I love and hate all at once and become supernatural.”
The statement affirms the conditions and suffering of people in her hometown particularly young black men that drive them to their untimely deaths. Though she states despite the loss felt by the women, the essence remains within the people they left behind. The main theme in the novel being death Ward handles the tragedy, pain, and trauma of losing the five men in her life who were either friends or family. She asserts how the women reap the painful loss of the men in the community thus their memories live through those who are alive.
“What my mother left unsaid: I’ll keep working, supporting us all, while you try to live your dream. Her sacrifice remained unacknowledged.”
Ward’s assertion recounts her mother’s resolution to be the main source of income after her father went on to try and achieve his dream business. The statement reflects the sacrifices of a member in the family, particularly the women in her community, in order for everyone else to live their dreams. Despite the aspirations being pipe dreams, her mother took the helm of supporting the family. Since Ward’s novel is an acknowledgment to the legacies or meaning of the people in her life, she affirms her mother’s unrecognized efforts that were left unspoken.
