26 pages • 52 minutes read
Heart Berries
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Chapters 3-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 3 Summary: “Indian Sick”
Mailhot styles this chapter in the form of a letter to her ex-lover, Casey. She writes from a psychiatric hospital where she has committed herself because she is struggling with depression and has no will to live anymore. She reflects on the White logic of Casey, who thinks she’s crazy, and the lack of understanding of her ancestral and spiritual values at her therapist’s office. She refers to checking herself in as “signing a new treaty” (18). Mailhot takes up the daily activities of the ward—coloring, tidying her room, attending group therapy. She struggles with the dichotomies of White forgiveness—in her culture, “we carry pain until we can reconcile it through ceremony” (26). Mailhot writes about her conflicted feelings toward her mother, who was vicious, neglectful, powerful, and independent. Before her death by stroke, Mailhot’s mother met Paul Simon and starred in a documentary about an ex-lover and activist named Sal Agador. Like all the other men in their lives, Paul Simon seemed like a savior but failed them. Mailhot is diagnosed with bipolar II, an eating disorder, and PTSD upon her release on Christmas Day. She continues to struggle at home, feeling degraded, and lost in the pain of being loved and loving someone. To heal herself, she remembers the neutrality of her hospital bed.
Chapter 4 Summary: “In A Pecan Field”
Mailhot writes about her continued love for Casey, despite their fraught relationship and his lack of communication after her hospitalization. She begins to date a man she knew in college named Eric, who is also bipolar and accepts her for who she is. She tells him about Casey, and he explains that she shouldn’t manipulate herself for a man: “…there was nothing I could do to convince you [Casey] that I was not crazy, and why would I want to?” (55). Mailhot applies to an MFA program, and after Casey comes up during a meeting with a professor, she confronts him. They begin another love affair. Mailhot’s therapist believes Casey is using her because he doesn’t want a relationship but claims to love her. Mailhot catches Casey sending flirtatious letters to a friend, Lillis. He watches Lillis’s dog, which causes an argument. Mailhot realizes that she is more worried about Casey loving her family than her own son’s emotional well-being, and realizes he isn’t the right man for their family. Despite this, they get drunk and have sex in a pecan field. They conceive a child. Mailhot explains that she is writing this convoluted story for her children, who deserve to understand “how terrible our love was, and why we chose it” (65).
Chapters 3-4 Analysis
In these chapters, Mailhot focuses on cultural contrasts she encounters after leaving the reservation. She discusses the differences between her belief systems versus the Western medicine she is subject to while at a psychiatric hospital and critiques the rational problem-solving of Western doctors, who don’t understand that her method for managing depression is “reconciling” her pain. This logic-oriented Western belief system extends to Casey as well, who uses “economic” (14) language. When compared to Mailhot’s lyrical and non-linear method of expression and storytelling, this practical focus on meaning and reason is a challenge and a threat.
In this section, Mailhot also struggles with different kinds of love. She feels the validation of her lover, Eric, who also struggles with bipolar and reminds her that she doesn’t need to “convince [Casey] that I was not crazy” (55), and that the task would be impossible anyway. Despite Eric’s acceptance of her behavior and her personality, Mailhot chooses Casey because she seeks approval by the logical White man. There is also an element of passion that she finds in Casey, which Eric could never give her with his “aimlessness” (65). Caught between cultures, Mailhot struggles to choose a love that gives her the power she needs, rather than the power she wants.
The use of the second person in this section is also significant. Mailhot addresses the text to Casey and refers to her children as readers at the end of Chapter 4. By writing to a specific audience and a specific “you,” Mailhot is pleading. She is also sincere; the reader feels as if they are being let in on a family secret. Though she speaks to a specific audience (Casey, her sons), Mailhot finds a universal voice to speak about pain, trauma, and the confusion of love.
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