A Child Called It: Chapter 6 Summary & Analysis

After Dave’s stabbing, Father spends less and less time at home. He makes excuses, but Dave doesn’t believe them. When Father is home, Mother doesn’t hurt Dave as often. One evening, Father helps Dave do the dishes, and tells him, “Some day, you and I will both get out of this madhouse.” This makes Dave feel a little better. Later, however, Mother stops Father from helping Dave. Afterwards, Dave senses, Mother has “complete control over everybody in the household.” One day, Father tells Dave that he’s sorry for everything, and Dave notices that Father has dark circles under his eyes and lots of gray hairs.

During one period when Father is gone for work, Mother starves Dave for ten days. She makes sure that Dave eats no food, locking the freezer and throwing all the food down the garbage disposal. Dave survives by drinking water. By the sixth day, Dave is so weak that he can barely move. When Dave begs for food, Mother laughs and sarcastically calls him a “poor baby.” After ten days, however, she gives him a plate of cold leftovers and tells him he has two minutes to eat. Dave has no idea why Mother treats him so horribly. As his brothers eat their dinners and watch television, he silently curses them.

When Father is away, Mother forces Dave to clean the bathroom with ammonia and Clorox. She locks him inside, so that the air becomes misty, and Dave’s eyes began to burn. Even though he can barely breathe, Dave cleans the bathroom quickly, for fear of angering Mother. He places the ammonia and Clorox as close to the door as possible, both to protect himself from the fumes and so that Mother will inhale some of the fumes when she opens the door. Later that night, Dave coughs up blood.

During the summer, Mother makes Dave mow lawns and give her the money he earns. The previous Easter vacation Mother also made Dave mow lawns, and set a high quota for Dave. Frightened that he wouldn’t meet his quota, Dave stole nine dollars from a little girl. When the girl’s father told Mother about Dave’s theft, Mother beat Dave. That summer, Dave continues mowing lawns, and some of his customers take pity on him and feed him. Once, Dave brings his lunch into the car when Mother picks him up; furious, mother throws away the food before Dave can eat it. That summer, Dave begins to give up on God. He decides that God must hate him for letting him live in such miserable conditions.

One day, Mother summons Dave to the bathroom, where he finds her filling the tub with cold water. Mother forces Dave to push his head underwater. At first, she won’t let him up for air until he thrashes and digs his fingernails into her shoulder. Then, Mother tells Dave to lie in the water, his nostrils “barely above the surface of the water.” The water is extremely cold, but Dave is too frightened of Mother to protest. Hours pass, and Dave’s brothers walk in and out of the bathroom; instead of being friendly, they glare at Dave and ignore him. Around dinnertime, Mother yells for Dave to get out of the tub; she doesn’t let him dry himself before putting on his clothes. Mother forces Dave to sit in the shadiest corner of the backyard, out of the sun, while she serves food to her children and husband inside.

In the coming weeks, Mother begins to use the “bathtub and backyard treatment” on Dave more and more often. Dave’s brothers bring their friends into the bathroom to look at Dave; when they ask Dave’s brothers what Dave did to deserve this, they just shrug and say they don’t know.

Fall arrives, and Dave begins the fourth grade. For the first two weeks, the class has a substitute teacher, who gives the good students ice cream and plays pop records. Dave earns ice cream in his second week. That Friday, Dave tells the substitute that he doesn’t want to go home for the weekend and begs to stay a little longer. The substitute lets Dave stay longer and listen to another record. Then Dave runs home, where he begins his chores, and afterwards, Mother forces him to sit in the backyard in the cold. Dave begins to cry—the substitute teacher has been so kind to him that he’s developed a crush on her.

By October, Dave’s life has gotten even worse. Bullies tease him, and he has a hard time finding food. After school, Mother makes him vomit to prove that he hasn’t eaten anything that day. She whips him with a chain, forces him to sit in cold water for hours, beats him, and forces him to mow lawns to earn money for her. Dave stops praying to God, and concentrates on surviving, one day at a time.

One morning, Dave is sent to the school nurse. At first, Dave tells the nurse the lies Mother has instructed him to repeat. But gradually he begins to trust the nurse, and tells her the truth about Mother. The nurse takes notes, and tells her to come visit anytime he wants. Later on, Dave learns that the nurse became interested in seeing him because of reports from the kind substitute teacher who gave him ice cream early in the year.

In late October, Dave’s brothers carve pumpkins for Halloween while Dave sits alone in the cold bathtub. Dave can hear Mother telling her other children ghost stories and treating them with love and warmth—he’s so furious that he wants to scream. Later, Mother goes into the bathroom and orders Dave to go sleep in Father’s bed. Lately, Dave notes, Mother has been sleeping in the same bedroom as her sons, while Dave sleeps in Father’s bed. That night, Father comes home late, and goes to sleep next to Dave without saying a word.

Christmas is a rough time of year for Dave, because he doesn’t get to go to school. For Christmas, he receives a pair of roller skates, which he later learns are another instrument of torture: Mother forces Dave to skate outside without a jacket in the cold while the other children stay warm inside.

In March, Mother goes into labor, and Father takes her to the hospital. Dave is very relieved to have Mother out of the house, even for a few days. While Mother is in the hospital, Father lets Dave play with his brothers, and serves everyone sandwiches. The brothers play at their neighbor Shirley’s house. Shirley is kind, and reminds Dave of Mother in the “days before she started beating me.” A few days later, Mother comes back from the hospital with a new baby named Kevin. Within weeks, everything is back to normal: Mother is cruel to Dave, and Father stays out of the way. However, Mother becomes close friend with Shirley. When Shirley is around, Mother pretend to be a loving parent. When Shirley asks Mother why Dave isn’t allowed to play with his brothers, Mother makes up various excuses. Then one day, without warning, Mother severs all ties with Shirley, and goes around the house calling her a “bitch.”

One Sunday, Mother tells Dave that she’s sorry, and that she wants to “make up for all the lost time.” She holds Dave tightly, and they both start to cry. Dave asks mother, “Is it really over?” Mother replies, “It’s over, sweetheart.” She gives Dave a warm bath and dresses him in the new clothes he got for Christmas, which he hasn’t been allowed to wear all year. Dave begins eating meals with the rest of the family, and Mother allows him to watch television with the rest of the family.

Shortly afterwards, a woman from social services arrives and asks to speak with Dave. The woman asks Dave if he’s happy; Dave says that he is. When the woman asks if Mother ever hits him, Davis hesitates. He realizes that Mother has been spoiling him recently so that he’ll lie to the woman from social services. Feeling like a fool, Dave tells the woman that he’s only punished when he’s a bad boy. The woman nods and leaves. Afterwards, Mother screams at Dave and hits him several times in the face. Afterwards, Dave thinks that, at the very least, he got “two good days” with Mother, even if Mother was only pretending to love him.

Early in the mornings, Father wakes up in the same bed as Dave and kisses him goodbye, whispering, “Try to make her happy and stay out of her way.” Although Father doesn’t know it, Dave cries every morning when Father leaves—Dave loves Father and always feels that he’s never going to see him again.