Sylvia Character Analysis

Somehow, my brother and I grew up motherless yet halfway whole. My brother had the faith my father brought him to, and for a long time, I had Sylvia, Angela, and Gigi, the four of us sharing the weight of growing up Girl in Brooklyn, as though it was a bag of stones we passed among ourselves saying, Here. Help me carry this.

The woman had staggered to the corner, grabbing for the stop sign and missing it before disappearing around the corner.

How were we to learn our way on this journey without my mother?

What keeps keeping us here? Gigi asked one day, the rain coming down hard, her shirt torn at the shoulder. We didn’t know that for weeks and weeks, the lock had been broken on her building’s front door. We didn’t know about the soldier who kept behind the darkened basement stairwell, how he had waited for her in shadow. We were twelve.

I can’t tell anybody but you guys, Gigi said. My mom will say it was my fault.

When boys called our names, we said, Don’t even say my name. Don’t even put it in your mouth. When they said, You ugly anyway, we knew they were lying. When they hollered, Conceited! We said, No—convinced! We watched them dip-walk away, too young to know how to respond. The four of us together weren’t something they understood. They understood girls alone, folding their arms across their breasts, praying for invisibility.

The parents questioned us. Who were our people? What did they do? How were our grades? What were our ambitions? Did we understand, her father wanted to know, the Negro problem in America? Did we understand it was up to us to rise above? His girls, he believed, would become doctors and lawyers. It’s up to parents, he said, to push, push, push.

When you’re fifteen, the world collapses in a moment, different from when you’re eight and you learn that your mother walked into water—and kept on walking.

When you’re fifteen, you can’t make promises of a return to the before place. Your aging eyes tell a different, truer story.

Somehow, my brother and I grew up motherless yet halfway whole. My brother had the faith my father brought him to, and for a long time, I had Sylvia, Angela, and Gigi, the four of us sharing the weight of growing up Girl in Brooklyn, as though it was a bag of stones we passed among ourselves saying, Here. Help me carry this.

The woman had staggered to the corner, grabbing for the stop sign and missing it before disappearing around the corner.

How were we to learn our way on this journey without my mother?

What keeps keeping us here? Gigi asked one day, the rain coming down hard, her shirt torn at the shoulder. We didn’t know that for weeks and weeks, the lock had been broken on her building’s front door. We didn’t know about the soldier who kept behind the darkened basement stairwell, how he had waited for her in shadow. We were twelve.

I can’t tell anybody but you guys, Gigi said. My mom will say it was my fault.

When boys called our names, we said, Don’t even say my name. Don’t even put it in your mouth. When they said, You ugly anyway, we knew they were lying. When they hollered, Conceited! We said, No—convinced! We watched them dip-walk away, too young to know how to respond. The four of us together weren’t something they understood. They understood girls alone, folding their arms across their breasts, praying for invisibility.

The parents questioned us. Who were our people? What did they do? How were our grades? What were our ambitions? Did we understand, her father wanted to know, the Negro problem in America? Did we understand it was up to us to rise above? His girls, he believed, would become doctors and lawyers. It’s up to parents, he said, to push, push, push.

When you’re fifteen, the world collapses in a moment, different from when you’re eight and you learn that your mother walked into water—and kept on walking.

When you’re fifteen, you can’t make promises of a return to the before place. Your aging eyes tell a different, truer story.