God Help the Child

As a city person, Bride is skeptical when she pulls into the small town of Whiskey, California. She doesn’t understand why Booker would have chosen to come to a place like this. Her body hasn’t undergone any more changes, but Bride is worried that she hasn’t had a menstrual period for two or three months. Bride tries and fails to put out of her mind the idea that she’s turning “back into a scared little black girl.” She pulls into a mobile home at the address for Booker that she got from Sally. After steeling herself, Bride knocks on the door. When a woman answers, Bride says she’s looking for Booker. The woman isn’t surprised—she says she gets a lot of Booker’s mail—but also says that Booker doesn’t live there. He does live nearby, though, the woman tells Bride. Then she invites Bride inside.

The woman says her name is Queen. She says that Bride looks hungry, and she proceeds to feed her thick soup. While they’re eating, Bride tells Queen she’s looking for Booker because he left her one day with no warning. Queen tells Bride that Booker leaves everyone. Queen says, “Left his own family. All except me.” She then explains that Booker left his family after his family moved on from grieving Booker’s brother (Adam), who was murdered when they were both kids. Bride is surprised that she doesn’t know any of this information about Booker and his life. Queen shows Bride some of the writings that Booker has sent her. She then tells Bride that she should go see Booker, who lives in the last house by the stream. Bride is concerned about going because she is convinced, after her physical transformations, that she is no longer beautiful.

When Bride arrives at Booker’s house, Booker yells, “You? Get out!” Bride runs at Booker and slaps him. He hits her hard enough to knock her down. Bride then smashes a beer bottle over Booker’s head. When Booker regains consciousness, Bride says, “You walked out on me […] without a word!” Booker asks why Bride wanted to bring presents to a monster—a child molester. Bride tells Booker that she lied in court. Sofia was innocent, she claims. She explains that she went to the motel to make amends, but Sofia beat her up. “And I deserved it,” Bride says. Bride tells Booker that she lied because she wanted her mother to be proud of her and to hold her hand. Booker explains that his brother, Adam, was killed by a “freak, a predator.” The two sit in silence. When Booker starts to speak again, he sees that Bride has fallen asleep.

Queen comes to Booker’s house and sees Bride asleep. She helps Booker move Bride from the chair and into bed. Queen takes her time walking back to her house. “They will blow it,” Queen thinks. She thinks Booker and Bride will both cling to stories of their own sorrow and let those stories get in the way of love. At his house, Booker sits on his doorstep and thinks through his relationship with Bride. He then writes in his notebook about Adam and how Adam’s death has impacted him. He writes that he doesn’t miss Adam at this point—it’s more that he misses the feeling that Adam’s death caused, a feeling so strong that it defined Booker but didn’t leave room for Adam.

Bride wakes up in Booker’s bed following a long, dreamless sleep. After confessing the sins of her childhood, she feels “newly born.” She tells Booker that she saw the writings he sent Queen. Booker says maybe he sent them because he liked them too much to throw away and knew Queen would hold onto them. Bride says she got the address in Whiskey from the pawn shop where his trumpet got fixed. She says she brought the trumpet too, and it’s in the trunk of her Jaguar. Booker is overjoyed. “I love you! Love you!” he yells and then runs down the road to Bride’s car.  

By the time Booker and Bride get to Queen’s house, a crowd has already gathered. Smoke billows from the windows as flame consumes the wooden house. Bride and Booker crawl in to drag out Queen’s unconscious body. When they get her out, an ember in Queen’s hair lights. Bride takes off her shirt to smother the fire, though not before it has consumed Queen’s hair. Sirens of ambulances and fire trucks whine in the distance. Queen starts coughing and spitting. The crowd seems transfixed by Bride’s “lovely, plump breasts.” Bride is full of glee that the transformation of her body seems to have been reversed. Bride and Booker follow the ambulance with Queen in it to the hospital.

Booker and Bride regularly visit and care for Queen in the hospital. In the cafeteria at breakfast, Booker asks Bride about her job. “I don’t know about my job and I don’t care. I’ll get another one,” Bride says. Booker takes Queen’s earrings, which hospital staff removed in order to bandage her head, from his pocket. He gives them to Bride. She feels her earlobes and realizes that the holes are there again. Booker says everything in Queen’s house is gone except for the earrings. He says he called his family to ask them to try and get a hold of Queen’s children. When they go back to Queen’s room, Queen says, “Hannah? Hannah?” Booker explains that Hannah is Queen’s daughter who is in medical school. He says that Hannah had said her father “fondled her,” and Queen didn’t believe her. “The ice between them never melted,” Booker says.

Queen seems to be making a steady recovery, but then her blood count drops, and her temperature rises. She is attacked by a hospital-borne virus, as “sneaky and evil” as the fire that destroyed her house. Twelve hours later, Queen is dead. Booker and Bride decide to spread Queen’s ashes in the river. At the impromptu ceremony, Booker tries to play “Kind of Blue,” but it is off-key. In a fit of sadness he hasn’t felt since Adam’s death, Booker throws his trumpet into the water. In Bride’s car after Booker has scattered Queen’s ashes, Bride says, “I’m pregnant.” Booker offers her his hand—the hand Bride “had craved all her life.”