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Chapter 16
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Concrete Rose, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Masculinity and Fatherhood
Identity and Individuality
Loyalty, Gang Affiliation, and Family
Poverty
Summary
Analysis
On the day before Thanksgiving, Ma, Maverick, and Seven prepare for the three-hour drive to Evergreen Prison. It’s a miracle that they’re able to go at all, given all the paperwork they had to fill out for Seven. As Maverick packs the diaper bag, he calls Lisa. She hasn’t told Ms. Montgomery she’s pregnant yet; she believes that if she waits until Carlos is home for Thanksgiving, he’ll keep Ms. Montgomery from being too angry. Lisa still hasn’t said what she wants to do about the pregnancy, but Maverick is certain she’s just too nervous to admit she wants an abortion.
Lisa seems to genuinely fear her mother’s reaction, which might not bode well. But it’s a good sign that she trusts Carlos to temper Ms. Montgomery’s expected bad reaction. This makes it clear that while Lisa might not know if she can trust everyone in her life to support her, she does have some people (including Maverick and Ma) to lean on.
Themes
Lisa picks up the phone and tells Maverick that Carlos just got here. She’s going to wait to tell everyone until after Thanksgiving in case there’s drama. Maverick assures her that everything will be fine, and they’ll get through it. After a pause, Lisa says that she wants to have the baby and keep it. Maverick is shocked. Lisa has plans, and a baby doesn’t seem to fit with them—and now Maverick will have another baby to care for. Lisa insists that her parents will help, and she can get academic scholarships like Keisha. Her life won’t be over. Maverick feels like his life is over, and he’s silent for too long. Lisa snaps at Maverick for being unsupportive and hangs up.
Lisa is already starting to reorient herself and think about how life is going to change as she becomes a parent. She’s able to see this pregnancy as a positive thing that’s going to change her life, but not ruin it. Maverick, on the other hand, is looking at this from the position of already being a parent. He believes that having another child will be terrible, since it will intensify his academic and financial struggles and make it even harder for him to finish school. Lisa’s anger when Maverick doesn’t act as supportive as she’d like suggests that she fully trusted him to support her in whatever she chose.
Themes
As Maverick tries to strap Seven into the car, Ma observes that Seven is outgrowing his infant car seat. They get on the road, and Ma speeds as usual. Before they left, Maverick told her about Lisa wanting to keep the baby. She’d barely reacted. As they drive, Maverick stares out the window and wonders if he can handle another baby. He remembers Ma telling him that he’d miss being a kid one day, and now he gets it. He starts to cry—he’s never going to sleep, have money, or see his friends again.
With one baby he’s responsible for and another on the way, Maverick can’t get around the fact that he’s not a kid anymore. He’s growing up much faster (and in different ways) than he expected. But these changes also offer Maverick an opportunity to think about what he wants his life to be like, and who he wants to be. Now that everything’s changing, he may end up with more opportunities.
Themes
Evergreen Prison is in a tiny, predominately white town. The prison feels like a plantation, as it’s surrounded by fields that the inmates tend. After they park, Ma and Maverick wait in the long lines. Guards even pat Seven down to make sure that there isn’t something hidden in his diaper. In the visitation room, Ma grabs a table and buys one of every snack from the vending machine. After a few minutes, a buzzer buzzes and the inmates file in. Pops comes in last. He looks exactly like Maverick. He and Ma embrace, and then Pops hugs Maverick. Then, Pops turns to Seven, and the baby allows Pops to take him without much fuss. Though Pops can’t touch Ma or Maverick until the end of the visit, he can hold Seven the entire time.
Describing the prison as looking like a plantation again hints that the area surrounding Garden Heights is steeped in racism. The prison not only looks like a plantation, but it even seems to function much like historical plantations did. Enslaved Black people were forced to work on plantations, and here the prisoners (who are implied to be mostly Black, in contrast to the surrounding community) tend the fields. Visitors aren’t considered trustworthy either, as even Seven is considered a possible vehicle for smuggling contraband. Inside, though, Ma tries to make everything seem as normal as possible by buying snacks for everyone.
Themes
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Ma and Pops discuss traffic and Pops’s new job in the prison kitchen. The mood is light until Ma tells Pops that Maverick has something to tell him. Maverick looks down, shaking, and Pops tells him to look up and spit it out. Maverick says that Lisa is pregnant. Pops sits back and then asks Ma if she’s taught Maverick about condoms. Ma snaps that this isn’t her fault, and the two launch into an argument. Pops accuses Ma of neglecting Maverick to spend time with Moe, and Ma spits that she’s not putting her life on hold just because Pops is in prison. Then, Ma snatches Seven and walks to the other side of the room.
When Pops learns of Lisa’s pregnancy, he scolds Ma before he scolds Maverick. Lisa’s pregnancy, he suggests, is a failure on her part more than it’s a failure on Maverick’s. But as they argue, Ma also makes an important point. She implies that she feels like she’s putting her life on hold and perhaps has to conform to Pops’s parenting beliefs even though he’s in prison and isn’t around to enforce anything. He is, in other words, forcing her to live a life she doesn’t want.
Themes
Maverick insists to Pops that it was an accident, but Pops berates him. Babies, Pops says, aren’t accidents, like bad report cards or fights. Pops tells Maverick to say what his name means. After Maverick says his name means “independent thinker,” Pops asks Maverick why he wasn’t thinking. Pops sighs when Maverick tells him that the baby was conceived on the day of Dre’s funeral, but Pops still says that’s no excuse for “doing stupid shit.”
Insisting this baby was an accident is an attempt for Maverick to absolve himself of any responsibility. But readers will remember that Maverick and Lisa discussed that they didn’t have any sort of protection—and they chose to have sex anyway. Saying they had sex after Dre’s funeral is another way for Maverick to avoid taking responsibility.
Themes
Maverick snaps: he reminds Pops that it’s stupid to hide cocaine where his wife and son live. Pops tells Maverick to watch it, but he suddenly doesn’t seem so scary anymore. Maverick points out that Ma is working too hard, and he had to join a gang because of what Pops did. He admits he made bad decisions, but unlike Pops, he’s going to be there for his kids. Pops is silent. Maverick stands and says he’s done. When Pops says that they’re not done, Maverick insists that they are—he hasn’t had a dad since he was eight.
Both Maverick and Pops have made mistakes that have had meaningful consequences for the family. But Maverick is starting to think more critically about what kind of a father he’d like to be. He suggests here that he’s going to prioritize being around for his kids in person over anything else. Pops might’ve been able to provide for Ma and Maverick before he was imprisoned, but now he can’t support them financially or with his presence.
Themes
Maverick grabs the car key and heads outside. He knows he hurt Pops, but he doesn’t care. At the car, he pulls out his beeper and finds several pages from an unknown number. Maverick dials the number from the payphone and gets Tammy, who puts Lisa on the line. Lisa sounds like she’s been crying and says that Ms. Montgomery kicked her out. When Ma comes out with Seven an hour later, Maverick tells her everything Lisa said: that Ms. Montgomery got suspicious of the vomiting and said a bunch of things Lisa won’t repeat. Then she told Lisa to get out.
Both Maverick and Lisa have just lost people in their support networks. But the fact that Lisa is with Tammy suggests that Lisa still has friends to draw on. With their help and Maverick’s, Lisa will hopefully be able to get the help and support she needs.
Themes
Ma is angry with Maverick and ignores him the entire drive home. Back in the Garden, she drops him off at Ms. Rosalie’s. Ms. Rosalie lets Maverick in and sends him back to Tammy’s room. Lisa sniffs that Carlos didn’t defend her at all, and she never expected Ms. Montgomery to kick her out. Maverick says it’ll be fine; Lisa can come live with him. Lisa says Ms. Rosalie already offered her Brenda’s room, and when Maverick protests, Lisa says that this baby doesn’t make them a couple. She needs space.
To Maverick, there’s an easy fix for Ms. Montgomery kicking Lisa out: Lisa will just come live with him, Seven, and Ma. To him, that makes sense and is how things should be. But Lia insists here that although Maverick may be the father of her child, he’s being presumptuous to think that she’s going to take him back as her boyfriend because of this.
Themes
When Maverick reminds her that they’re in this together, Lisa snaps that Maverick didn’t seem very supportive this morning. She says if he wasn’t actually okay with whatever she chose, he shouldn’t have said he was. Now, she needs to do what’s best for her and the baby, and she’s not sure that Maverick is what’s best for her. She doesn’t want her baby to have a “gangbanger” for a father. Maverick protests that he’s working for Mr. Wyatt now, but Lisa knows he doesn’t have a plan beyond that, and she knows he’s still in the King Lords. Maverick accuses her of not understanding what life is like on the streets, and Lisa snaps that she and her baby deserve better. Hurt and angry, Maverick leaves.
As Lisa starts to think of herself as a future parent, she realizes that she needs to make tough choices about who’s there to support her and what kind of support they can offer. In her mind, Maverick isn’t very supportive or reliable—he could die at any moment because of his association with the King Lords. Further, she knows his job with Mr. Wyatt doesn’t pay enough to support a second baby. This is very insulting to Maverick, since in his mind, he’s doing everything in his power to get by—and to him, it seems like Lisa resents him for circumstances that aren’t his fault.
Themes
