The Circling Hand
- This chapter begins with our narrator (still unnamed) telling us what she did on holiday break.
- In the mornings, she identifies the sounds and movements her parents make while they get dressed.
- The narrator discusses how her mother prepares a bath for her or the special Sunday bath for her father.
- Can you guess the person our very observant narrator spends the most time watching? That's right, her mother! "How important I felt to be with my mother," she recalls (2.4).
- She witnesses her mother negotiating and bartering with Mr. Kenneth, a local meat and produce vendor.
- On the walk home, the narrator's mother protects her from the glaring eyes of a woman, one of her father's old flames. See the themes "The Supernatural" and "Women and Femininity" for more on the ways the mother deals her husband's evil exes.
- Reading Annie John might give you the feeling of reading a foodie twitter feed: we learn what the narrator eats for each meal, in what quantities, how her mother prepares the food etc.
- The events of this chapter take place mostly in the span of one day. When the narrator and her mother return home, the description of domestic chores continues.
- The mother washes and dries the white clothes on "a beautiful stone heap that my father had made for her: an enormous circle of stones, about six inches high, in the middle of our yard" (2.6). You'll notice that the stones are arranged in a circle and the title of the chapter is "Circling Hands."
- Lit analysis pro tip: It's a great practice to make note of the repetition of a word or idea while reading. Draw a star in the margin of your book. It will come in handy later when you start analyzing.
- At lunch, the narrator's mother and father talk and she watches them like she's watching the volley of a ball at a tennis match. "On and on they talked. As they talked, my head would move from side to side, looking at them" (2.7).
- Next, the narrator gives us her mother's story. "When my mother, at sixteen, after quarreling with her father, left his house on Dominica and came to Antigua, she packed all her things in an enormous wooden trunk that she had bought in Roseau for almost six shillings" (2.9).
- Although many passengers died on the boat, her mother and the trunk survived. The trunk now contains the narrator's clothes, photographs, and jewelry from her early childhood. This is one of the many lists in this book. You'll notice Kincaid likes lists. Check out the "Writing Style" section for more on this. When it was time to clean the trunk, as the narrator's mother "held each thing in her hand she would tell me a story about myself" (2.10).
- In the next section, we learn about the childhood experience of the narrator's father. His parent's left him as a child and went to South America. He lived with and grew very close to his grandmother, whom he slept with every night. At age eighteen, his grandmother died in her sleep lying next to him; "even though he was overcome with grief, he built her coffin and made sure she had a nice funeral" (2.11).
- After discussing her life story through the items in the trunk, the narrator's mother returns to her domestic duties, preparing supper, tea, picking herbs from her garden, occasionally giving the narrator a kiss as she passed her herbs. "It was in such a paradise that I lived" (2.13).
- The narrative jumps to the summer of the narrator's twelfth birthday. She has grown taller, her body is maturing and most of her old clothes no longer fit. Her mother tells her she is "on the verge of becoming a young lady" (2.15) and they can no longer wear matching dresses nor look through the trunk. This is devastating for the narrator: "To say that I felt the earth swept away from under me would not be going too far" (2.14).
- Basically everything changed for our narrator at this point.
- When the narrator's mother sends her to learn ladylike manners and take piano lessons and she fails at both, her mother turns her back to her in disapproval. Our protagonist didn't like these new changes to say the least.
- Another major change is the new school the narrator will attend in September. She needs new clothes, books, and she hopes she'll meet all new friends so she can re-invent herself.
- The narrator's mother is upset with her because she didn't make her bed perfectly. After returning from Sunday school with a certificate for best student, the narrator hopes to win back her mother's affection. Instead, she walks in on her mother and father in the bedroom. Her "mother's hand was on the small of her father back and it was making a circular motion" and her hand looks "white and bony" (2.20).
- It's ambiguous here how steamy this scene between her parents actually is (probably pre-ty steamy) but we know that everything changes after this.
- Although the narrator and her father go for their usual Sunday afternoon walk, the narrator refuses to hold her father's hand.
- The chapter ends with the narrator starting her new school. She is one of the youngest and brightest girls at school and she likes two girls named Albertine and Gweneth. Gwen is the subject of the next chapter.