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Chapter 50. May
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
In her journal, Monday writes that she wishes Mrs. Charles was like Ma. She writes that last night, Mrs. Charles beat August until he couldn’t stand and then said he deserved it. Later, when April tried to get August up, he wouldn’t wake up. Mrs. Charles wouldn’t let April try to save August—instead, she made April put him in the freezer. Monday writes that she’s terrified and wants to tell someone, but she’s afraid they’d split up her siblings and that she won’t be able to see Claudia again.
Reading Monday’s journal gives Claudia some of the clarity she craves. Presumably, Mrs. Charles murdered August right before Monday started behaving oddly in the “Before” timeline. And now, Claudia sees that Monday had good reason to keep his death a secret—telling the truth and consequently being separated from her siblings and Claudia seemed far more frightening than staying quiet.
Themes
In another entry, Monday writes that August is still in the freezer. April is trying to find Aunt Doris, and everyone is talking about Ed Borough closing. Monday thinks they’ll either get split up or they’ll be on the streets. In the next entry, Monday says she almost told Claudia about August. She just messed up her hair. Monday says she wants to tell, but she’s afraid that Claudia might tell someone. What will everyone think of them? Monday writes that she shouldn’t be writing at all—Mrs. Charles would kill her if she found the journal.
In this entry, Monday confirms that her family lived in fear of losing their home for years. Losing their home would’ve been devastating and put them on the streets, which shows how vulnerable the Charles family was because of their economic situation. And just like Claudia, Monday is afraid of what other people would think if they knew about the abuse she and her siblings suffered. This shame kept her quiet—and allowed the abuse to continue.
Themes
When Tip has his press conference, he makes excuses and sobs. Claudia wonders why Monday’s family is comforting him when they didn’t bother to look for Monday. The police question April, Tuesday, neighbors, and school officials. Eventually, they figure it out. August has been dead for a year and a half—and Monday has been dead for at least 10 months. When the police came to evict Mrs. Charles, she wasn’t there. Instead, the police entered and found two kids in the freezer. They took Tuesday from April and eventually found Mrs. Charles “next door,” smoking. Everything seems to buzz.
The Charles family can grieve for Monday and Tuesday’s deaths. But at the same time, it’s possible to implicate them in the children’s murders and the fact that it took so long to locate them. When the police only discovered the bodies when they went to evict Mrs. Charles, it underscores that the city is driven by money. Had Mrs. Charles been able to pay rent, it’s likely that Monday and August’s murders may have gone unnoticed for much longer.
Themes
Hundreds of people attend the televised funeral. People cry, even classmates who had taunted Monday and called her a whore and a lesbian. Monday’s middle name is spelled wrong in the program. Daddy and neighbors carry Monday’s coffin into the church; Tip is too upset to carry anything. He wears a shirt with Monday’s face on it—a picture taken years ago. Since Mrs. Charles and Tip don’t have many pictures of her, Ma supplies seven years’ worth of photos. They cut Claudia out of every one, so she’s nothing more than a “mysterious arm” in those pictures. Claudia sits in the third row, staring at the matching pink and blue coffins.
While Monday’s death is obviously a tragedy, Claudia’s description of the funeral suggests that a lot of people fixate on publicly looking upset rather than actually grieving for Monday. In Claudia’s case, it seems to contribute to her trauma when everyone cuts her out of the photos of Monday, as it symbolically erases their friendship. No one else has to acknowledge now that Monday had a best friend who spent the last several months searching for her.
Themes
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Ma sits next to Claudia, frowning. She realizes that none of the attendees knew Monday—and Claudia isn’t sure she knew her friend, either. Pastor Duncan conducts the service and mispronounces Monday’s middle name. Claudia stares at April’s head and April’s Aunt Doris in front of her. Michael stands to the side. Once Pastor Duncan is finished, he invites people to speak for the camera. Shayla and Ashley speak and sob until someone escorts them offstage. Claudia doesn’t recognize anyone else who speaks aside from Ms. Valente. As the choir sings, Jacob puts a pink rose on Monday’s casket—and later, his photo ends up on the Time magazine cover. All Claudia can hear is a buzzing.
The funeral tells a story about Monday that Claudia finds unfamiliar and untrue. When Shayla and Ashley speak so emotionally, it may signal to others that they actually cared about Monday—when in Claudia’s experience, they were bullies who made Monday and Claudia’s lives miserable. The same goes for Jacob. He strung Monday along for months and helped make her life miserable at school—and yet, he’s the one who makes it onto the cover of Time magazine. All of this minimizes Claudia’s role in Monday’s life, making her feel like she doesn’t matter.
Themes
Claudia explains that when a person wakes up from a nightmare, it’s normal to find something grounding. Every morning after they found Monday, Claudia gets up and stares at the library. When it doesn’t turn into a cave of flesh-eating rodents, she gets up and starts her day. Everything, even her toothbrush, feels heavy, and oatmeal makes her want to vomit. She panics on the bathroom floor until she can breathe.
Everything Claudia experiences here indicates that she’s struggling to cope with immense trauma. The library helps her keep herself grounded in real life, and it reminds her of who Monday was. Monday loved reading and loved the library, and it’s where she left the most obvious breadcrumbs for Claudia to follow.
Themes
Claudia sits up all night watching the cycling news reports. She knows now that she was right, but it doesn’t give her any satisfaction. One morning, she turns on the news to watch more about Monday. She ignores Ma’s attempts to get her to eat as the news says that authorities are examining Monday’s body for signs of sexual trauma. At this point, Daddy yanks the TV off the wall.
Finally, the novel reveals how and why Claudia’s family’s TV is broken in the “After” timeline: Daddy broke it to stop Claudia from fixating on the news coverage of Monday’s death. It’s also worth noting that it doesn’t seem like Claudia is getting anything meaningful out of these “cycling” news reports. Watching them is just a way to remind herself of Monday.
Themes
A few weeks later, Ma explains that they’re going to visit April. At Aunt Doris’s house, Claudia and Ma ignore the news vans and hurry inside. It feels like a cave inside, but April sits outside in the sunny backyard, facing the back fence. Aunt Doris explains that April is having a hard time. She also says that she visited Tuesday in the hospital yesterday. Tuesday asked for Mrs. Charles and wanted to know when Monday is coming to play. The adults discuss the upcoming custody trial. The state wants to take parental rights from both Tip and Mrs. Charles, but Tip is fighting it. Ma passes Aunt Doris an envelope of cash from the congregation to help out.
Monday and August’s murders and the aftermath have been traumatic experiences for everyone. Tuesday seems to be suffering greatly from the trauma. Months ago, Tuesday told Claudia that Monday was hiding in the closet—but at that point, Monday was already dead. So Tuesday is, like Claudia in the “After” timeline, likely struggling to accept the reality of her sister’s death. Claudia is in no way the only one struggling to cope with the trauma.
Themes
Aunt Doris suggests that Claudia take April some lemonade so she can talk to Ma privately. Claudia heads into the backyard and puts the tray down next to April, but April doesn’t look up. Ma gives Claudia a pleading look from the doorway, so Claudia says hi and pulls up a chair. They discuss that the funeral was bogus. Ma and Aunt Doris watch the girls like they’re zoo animals—they might play or fight.
With Monday gone, Claudia and April may find that they have more in common. Talking about how horrible the funeral was is a start—they both recognize that the funeral was more about the publicity than it was about honoring Monday and August.
Themes
April asks if Claudia knows that she helped Mrs. Charles stuff August and Monday into the freezer. The buzzing starts, louder in Claudia’s head, as April says that the freezer wouldn’t close right since Monday was tall. April says that they should arrest her too. Mrs. Charles didn’t even tell her to put Monday in the freezer; April just needed more time. She explains that she was trying to make a plan. When they spent the month away a year ago, the authorities split the kids up. April couldn’t bear losing Tuesday if anyone found out. Claudia asks if April really hated Monday that much.
As April explains how desperate she was to protect her family, she shows how her desperation led to some truly horrifying actions. But at the time, they seemed necessary—April felt like she had to do what she did in order to save her own life and Tuesday’s. Just as with Monday, April’s shame and desperation kept her from asking for help because getting help far worse than having to figure things out herself.
Themes
Enraged, April says she’s given up everything to take care of her family, including Monday. Monday would’ve told the truth, and then the siblings would’ve been split up. With the eviction notices, April needed a plan. Claudia spits that Tuesday is “one step away from being one of them crazies on the Metro,” so she’s not better off. April says in a year she’ll be 18, and then it’ll be just her and Tuesday.
April’s reasoning doesn’t make any sense to Claudia, but the novel implies that this is because Claudia is comparatively privileged and has never had to do the kind of cost-benefit analysis that April did. Growing up in such a functional, loving home has shielded Claudia from having to consider what she might do in the same situation.
Themes
April asks if Monday ever told Claudia that April signed Monday up for the school lottery. This is another secret and makes Claudia flush. April says that Monday was smart, she was reading by age four. April filled out the paperwork at the library. Monday met Claudia and learned what life was supposed to be like. Now, April doesn’t know whether to hate Claudia, but she never had a Claudia in her life as a kid. Claudia realizes that she and April hate each other because they’re both jealous of Monday’s relationship with the other: April and Monday were sisters, while Monday and Claudia were soulmates.
Here, April shows how she actually did help Monday succeed and got her to a place where Monday could escape the abuse at home. As Claudia realizes that she and April were both jealous of the other’s relationship with Monday, she’s able to feel more empathy for the older girl. With this, Claudia starts to grow and learns to look at the situation through a more mature lens.
Themes
Claudia asks why Monday didn’t tell her anything. April explains that Monday just didn’t want Claudia to feel sorry for her, but Claudia says all she would’ve done was try to help. When April says that Monday wouldn’t have wanted that, Claudia points out that it wouldn’t matter—even if Monday hated her, Monday might still be alive. April cries and asks if Claudia is going to tell on her. Claudia thinks that April has always looked so much older. Now that she knows what April has been dealing with, it makes sense. But Monday is gone, and Claudia understands keeping a secret to protect oneself. She says she won’t tell. They discuss Tip’s interview, and then Claudia asks April if she can hear the buzzing.
Claudia proposes here that it would’ve been worth losing her friendship with Monday if it would have protected Monday from abuse and death. It’s absolutely essential, she suggests, to place another person’s wellbeing above her own selfish desires. But even as Claudia makes these leaps toward maturity, the buzzing she hears still shows that she’s struggling to deal with the trauma. And now that the novel has illuminated how the timelines fit together, it’s clear where all this trauma is leading: Claudia is soon going to forget again what happened to Monday.
Themes
