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Chapter 51. The Before
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
Daddy gently nudges Claudia awake. She looks to the library to ground herself as she comes up from her nightmare, and then throws her arms around Daddy and sobs. He soothes her and then says he has surprise. She opens a box to reveal an iPhone in a purple case. Daddy explains that he and Ma have had it for a while and have been trying to shield Claudia from what happened. But maybe if she has it, she’ll be able to remember consistently.
Even two years after Monday’s death, Claudia still associates Monday with the library and looks there for guidance and comfort from her friend. When Daddy gives Claudia the phone, it signals recognition that shielding Claudia from reality perhaps wasn’t the healthiest option. They may have tried to shelter her to protect her—but now, Daddy realizes that Claudia has to continually face her trauma in order to heal.
Themes
At 3:15 a.m., Claudia is still awake, perusing articles from two years ago. She clicks on an NBC video. The newscaster says that eight CFSA workers will be fired after failing August and Monday. In an interview, a police officer says he’s never seen anything like this. The house was filthy and failed several safety codes. Then, the newscaster plays the recording of Ms. Valente’s 911 call. In the call, Ms. Valente explains that Monday is missing and there’s something wrong with Mrs. Charles. This call, the newscaster explains, wasn’t the first one made on Monday’s behalf—a nurse made a report a while ago. Now, city officials are exploring policy changes to stop this from happening to someone else.
As Claudia dives into the news coverage of Monday’s death, she gains insight into how dramatically the systems that should’ve protected Monday failed in that regard. The firing of eight CFSA workers suggests that eight people failed to protect Monday, while it’s clear that the authorities also ignored Ms. Valente’s 911 call (which was presumably made after Ms. Valente visited Mrs. Charles, months before Monday’s body was discovered). The aside that the city is hopefully going to change their policies offers hope that the city will take Monday’s death seriously and work to patch up the holes in its reporting systems.
Themes
In the next video, Claudia recognizes Monday’s neighbors. Most of the neighbors say that Mrs. Charles loved her kids and never hit them. The newscaster says that residents of Ed Borough hope that this crime will stop D.C.’s redevelopment plan, which will put many residents in homeless shelters. Some people believe that Mrs. Charles suffered a mental break because she feared eviction. One neighbor says that of course Mrs. Charles “went crazy”—buses of white people drive around Ed Borough like they’re on safari these days.
Here, the novel calls into question whether the Ed Borough community really would’ve been able to protect Monday and August—it seems that few of Mrs. Charles’s neighbors are willing to say that they suspected her of such violence. But the novel also shows that Mrs. Charles’s actions didn’t happen in a vacuum—she was, perhaps, pushed over the edge by city policies that treated her like a problem to be removed, not a person.
Themes
Claudia looks out at the library. She imagines Monday’s ghost sitting there, the place she loved most, reading. Claudia finds Michael’s number already programmed into the phone and calls him. Groggily, he asks her what’s wrong. She asks why reporters didn’t talk to her when they spoke to all Monday’s neighbors. She wonders if they thought she wasn’t smart enough, since she went to the TLC. Michael says Claudia doesn’t get it. She knew from the beginning that something was wrong, so she’s smarter than even those agents who got fired. She’s not dumb because she has some trouble reading.
Here, Michael makes the case that intelligence comes in many different forms. Being able to read without extra help, for instance, isn’t what made Monday smart, while needing some extra help doesn’t make Claudia unintelligent. What matters most, Michael suggests, is that a person can think critically and is willing to speak up when they see something wrong.
Themes
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Michael says he doesn’t know anyone as smart or as brave as Claudia. He recalls how ready she was to save Monday when she figured it out. Claudia bursts into tears and sobs that she didn’t save Monday. Michael says she actually did: Claudia saved Monday from having to be at home, and she did that for years.
Michael makes another important point here: by being Monday’s friend and giving her a safe space to escape to, Claudia may have lessened the abuse Monday suffered at home. Claudia should be proud of having done this, as she made Monday’s life less miserable than it might have been otherwise.
Themes
