52 pages • 1 hour read
Before We Were Yours
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 9-13Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary
Avery leaves the nostalgia tinged world of her grandmother behind and tries to get answers from her parents as they commute to a ribbon cutting together in the back of a limo. Honeybee, Avery’s mother, insists she has never heard of this person May Crandall before. She wonders aloud if Avery asked the all-important question of well-bred Southern women: “Do you know who her people are?” (87). Honeybee audibly laughs when she is told that Avery forgot to ask that, wondering how a person could forget such a question.
Avery leaves the company of her parents, who have no information to assist her in her detective work, and decides to make a trip to her grandmother’s old home. It is almost painful for her as she can “almost feel [her]grandmother on the Charleston style piazza” (91), but she realizes she will “never again come back to this place to be greeted by [her] grandmother again” (93). The best she can do is poke around in drawers to recover what she can of her grandmother’s past life.
She finds old letters and diaries hidden away in a drawer. She reads about her grandmother’s meeting of her grandfather, which Grandma Judy recounted as having found her prince with “not the slightest bit of doubt” (96). She also finds a repeated name for which she has no connection, Trent Turner. There’s a phone number, so Avery tries it. The person on the other end tells Avery that he has an envelope with information, but it can only be delivered into the hands of her grandmother.
Chapter 10 Summary
Rill and all the younger siblings wake up to their first full day in this place. It is still unclear to them where they are and why. Rill is overwhelmed and hugs a younger sister and cries in bed quietly while the others sleep. They are awoken a bit by a man stumbling in. The man walks between the cots and drops something on each one. Once he leaves the room, Camellia discovers the offering is a peppermint and “pops her into her mouth and munches it” (103). Rill is less sure what to make of the gesture. As she thinks to herself: “The older you are, the tougher the questions get” (103). Briny taught her to be cautious, so she decides to wait until the place offers more answers. She isn’t sure what is going to happen to the five of them but tells Camellia that she “bets today for sure” (104)they will go to the hospital to see their parents.
Once they leave their little bedroom full of cots and nothing else, they encounter another woman, Mrs. Pulnik. She is quiet but fierce in her warnings. If the children, especially Camellia, do not behave, they “will be given the closet” and, she warns them, “in the closet it is dark” (106). After this threat, they are told to go outside but not to go too close to the fence. While they are out there, they first encounter the little boy they saw yesterday with his sister. Rill asks where his sister is now and “his big brown eyes turn watery” (107). Rill tells him to stick by them. As they walk a little further, a gaggle of older boys appear, one of whom gawks at Rill. They offer the older boys their peppermint in exchange of passing by them unscathed. The older redheaded boy asks where they got the peppermints and tells them that the man who left them on their bed, Riggs, “ain’t the kind of friend you want” (109).
Chapter 11 Summary
Avery’s father’s health begins to improve, which leaves her feeling oddly unsettled. Her sisters urge her to take some time off, coaxing her by saying: “You look exhausted, Aves” (111). Avery gives in and decides to take some time to herself. The location she decides to take this respite in is Edisto, the site referenced cryptically in Grandma Judy’s diary as a place of some great personal importance. Avery decides that to get to the bottom of this mystery, she needs to be in touch with Trent Turner and see whatever he has in that envelope: “My only option is to confront him in person” (111). She heads off to do so.
Things are more complicated in person. When she arrives in Edisto, at the Turner Real Estate building, she encounters the man she spoke with on the phone. Avery tells Trent that she has her grandmother’s power of attorney, only to be informed: “It’s not a legal matter […] It’s more like…cleaning up some loose ends”(116). Avery decides that she will not give up and will just loiter in the office, although she bristles with resentment when Trent says, “I’m sure you’re used to getting what you want,” (118) alluding to the Stafford family’s privilege and prestige. In the end, Avery has to walk out without the documents.
Chapter 12 Summary
May, formerly Rill, begins to understand the workings of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society where she now lives as a veritable prisoner. She has to sneak around, listening from the other side of doors and windows as workers talk to get a clearer understanding of what might be about to happen to her and her siblings. She takes comfort in thinking that the other children are legitimate wards of the state, yet Rill tells herself: “We’re lucky we’re not. We belong to Briny and he’ll fetch us, soon as Queenie gets well” (122). In the meantime, Rill tries her best to look after her siblings. She tries to keep an eye on Stevie, whose “big sister hasn’t turned up again […] Miss Tann gave her to somebody” (122). As a result of sorrow and stress, Stevie cannot stop bedwetting and is punished for it.
Rill also forms an unlikely friendship with one of the other boys that she previously thought of as a bully. James, who warned hers against trusting Riggs, asks Rill to be his girlfriend. She relents just to be left alone but says she won’t kiss him. Instead, they sit together holding hands, and she decides: “Maybe I don’t mind too much” (129). James promises to smuggle her extra tea cakes and other kids leave Rill alone, knowing she is spoken for. James tells her that he “doesn’t want new parents” and that he is “going to need a wife” (219). He tell Rill: “We can go live on the river, if you want” (129). Shortly after this conversation, James is sent off to a workhouse, as Miss Tann believes that “a boy who is old enough to pursue girls is old enough to work” (130). Rill feels guilty over their relationship and getting him sent away. The only bright spot in their life in the home is when the Shelby County Library comes to visit. Rill asks for a book about the river and is loaned Huckleberry Finn to share with her siblings. Shortly afterwards, she and all her siblings with the exclusion of Camellia are taken on a party where they are put on display as charming, blond, curly haired foundlings.
Chapter 13 Summary
Avery decides to consult her Uncle Clifford, hoping that he might inadvertently give up some clues to a detail or chapter of Grandma Judy’s life that was previously closed. He does tell Avery one bit of info that surprises her, that her grandmother wrote a society column which Avery realizes is “otherwise known as the weekly gossip” (140). As incredible as this is to Avery, it suggests to her that Grandma Judy was more interested in secrets than Avery every imagined. Uncle Clifford discourages her from digging too deeply, telling Avery: “Oh, let your grandmother’s secrets stay secret” (140).
But Avery can’t resist. She goes back to her grandmother’s house and locates her old typewriter. It is there on the typewriter ribbon which she extracts from the machine that she at last finds a clue. There is a message, one that is written backwards. In the message, her grandmother tells Trent that she is desperately looking for any remaining records from the Tennessee Children’s Home Society. Propelled by this discovery, Avery again calls Trent, who this time relents and tells her, despite the late hours since it is after midnight, to come over and they will talk.
Chapters 9-13 Analysis
This part of the novel is a section of uncanny, unsettling discoveries for both of the book’s principle voices. For Rill, who is still vacillating between her real identity given to her by her parents and her life on the river and the new one foisted on her by the workers of the children’s home, it is time to piece together what is happening to her and her siblings. She comes to see that she is being held against her will, as are all the children at the home. They are “wards of state,” the children of the Tennessee Children’s Home. Her mind and heart resist the appellation that she is also one. She tells herself that her parents will return even as Camellia tells her that they should accept that Briny is likely in jail and Queenie dead. Rill refuses to focus on this. Instead, she focuses on staying close to her siblings and to Stevie, whose sister has been sent off somewhere else. She makes an unlikely alliance with James. Although it is short lived, their severed relationship demonstrates to her just how desperate Miss Tann and Miss Murphy, the women who preside over the home, are to control the children. Appearances matter a great deal since the children are items to be placed and sold. She and her siblings are bathed and dolled up for an event for this reason, because of their charming, cherubic blond curls.
On Avery’s side of the story, discovery also figures in prominently in this part of the book. She learns that there’s quite a bit that she doesn’t know about Grandma Judy. Looking through her grandmother’s things, especially her own journals, gives Avery insight into a past she didn’t realize her grandmother had. Her grandmother had secrets and was interested in secrets, even writing a gossip column at one point in her younger years. Avery tries intimidating Trent Turner to get his envelope of information but decides at last that diplomacy is better, that she needs to lay bare her deep desire to know who her grandmother was, why a photograph sparked a deep memory that her family didn’t even know she had. It is this sincerity that moves Trent to cooperate with Avery’s inquiries.
Unlock all 52 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
