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Chapter 11. The After
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Monday’s Not Coming, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Child Abuse
Family, Community, and Responsibility
Growing Up, Independence, and Friendship
Secrecy and Shame
Poverty, Social Support, and Desperation
Memory, Repression, and Trauma
Summary
Analysis
Mrs. Charles grins and tells Claudia and Monday, dressed as matching bees, to let her check their candy for razor blades and drugs. The girls buzz at each other as Ma greets April, who stayed with baby Tuesday while the girls went trick-or-treating. Ma touches Tuesday’s cheek with a faraway look in her eyes and says she’s perfect. Claudia rushes to Ma, pulling her out of her trance, and asks if Monday can sleep over. Ma agrees.
It's hard to tell if Mrs. Charles is joking or not about looking for razor blades and drugs in the girls’ Halloween candy—here, the novel makes it unclear if she’s just a concerned parent, or if she’s prone to believing in conspiracy theories. Meanwhile, Ma’s faraway expression when she looks at baby Tuesday suggests that she misses having a baby around—something that will come up again later in the novel.
Themes
In the kitchen, Monday watches Mrs. Charles closely in case she steals candy while August plays under the table. Monday and Claudia skip to the fridge. In low voices, Mrs. Charles asks if Ma saw Shayla’s mom’s face—it looked like her husband kicked her. Ma says she’ll pray for her, but Mrs. Charles insists they have to do more. They argue about whether that sort of thing is “private married folks’ business,” as Ma insists, or whether they should contact a doctor. Mrs. Charles asks Ma to talk to Shayla’s mom’s grandma, who attends the same church. She asks if Ma would want Claudia seeing her like that.
Here, Mrs. Charles suggests that it’s a community’s responsibility to protect its members from danger and abuse. This is why she begs Ma to intervene on Shayla’s mom’s behalf. To Ma, though, domestic violence is a private concern between two spouses and it’s not her place to intervene. (Later in the novel, both Ma and Daddy will take this same perspective as it relates to Monday’s home life.) But mentioning that they could contact a doctor about the abuse shows that these women do have access to a system that will help them intervene.
Themes
Ma and Mrs. Charles don’t like each other, and Ma’s eyes narrow. To relieve the tension, Claudia asks if she can use the computer. Ma sniffs that it has a virus still, and Mrs. Charles insists the government tracks people through computers—it even monitors what books people check out from the library. Claudia asks why anyone would care. Mrs. Charles says they want to get inside people’s heads, but Ma cuts her off and sends Claudia and Monday upstairs. Monday darts away but comes back and hesitantly kisses Mrs. Charles when she asks.
Here, Mrs. Charles shows that she is indeed prone to buying into conspiracy theories. Claudia is rational, though, so she recognizes that the government doesn’t care what she checks out from the library. It’s worth noting that Monday seems to not want to kiss her mother before running upstairs, which implies that she and Mrs. Charles don’t have a very affectionate relationship.
Themes
Claudia dawdles, afraid to leave Ma and Mrs. Charles alone. The women continue to discuss contacting Shayla’s grandma, and Ma insists it’s not her place—even when Mrs. Charles spits that Shayla’s dad will kill her mom soon. She insists that Ma has a responsibility to help. Ma looks up in time to see Claudia, so Claudia races into her bedroom. Monday says that even though Shayla says her mom had an accident, it was actually a punch. Claudia insists there’s no way to know for sure, but Monday says they can’t know that it didn’t happen, either.
Mrs. Charles insists that there’s a clear, moral reason to intervene: they will, on some level, be responsible if Shayla’s dad kills her mom. This suggests more broadly that keeping people safe is a community endeavor. Monday’s insistence that Shayla’s dad definitely hit her mom raises questions about how she’s able to say this with such certainty. It suggests she might have firsthand experience with abuse (and can thus recognize the signs of it), which Claudia has indicated is true in the “October” chapter.
Themes
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Monday stares out the window and asks if Claudia really thinks the government is tracking their library books. Claudia shrugs; even if they’re being tracked, they’re just checking out “kiddie books.” The next day at church, Ma talks to Shayla’s grandma. After Shayla’s grandma talks to the school, Shayla’s dad goes into hiding.
Claudia has nothing to hide, so it doesn’t matter to her if the government is tracking her library books. This begs the question, then, of why Monday is so curious about whether the tracking is real. When Shayla’s dad goes into hiding, it shows that speaking up for someone suffering abuse can have meaningful, positive consequences.
Themes
