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Roberta’s Mother
Roberta and Twyla call the teenage girls at St. Bonny’s the gar girls, based on Roberta’s misunderstanding of the word “gargoyles.” The gar girls wear makeup, dance to the radio, and smoke cigarettes in the orchard. Roberta and Twyla are afraid of them and see them as “tough” and “mean,” but Twyla observes retrospectively that they were in fact “put-out girls, scared runaways most of them. Poor little girls who fought their uncles off.” The gar girls are thus a paradox of toughness and vulnerability, and illustrate how children who have suffered neglect and abuse can be misperceived as threatening. At the same time, the gar girls are a genuine threat, kicking Maggie to the ground and tearing her clothes. The gar girls therefore represent a cycle of abuse that Roberta and Twyla are desperate to escape.
The Gar Girls (The Older Girls) Quotes in Recitatif
The Recitatif quotes below are all either spoken by The Gar Girls (The Older Girls) or refer to The Gar Girls (The Older Girls). For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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I used to dream a lot and almost always the orchard was there. Two acres, four maybe, of these little apple trees. Hundreds of them. Empty and crooked like beggar women when I first came to St. Bonny's but fat with flowers when I left. I don't know why I dreamt about that orchard so much. Nothing really happened there. Nothing all that important, I mean. Just the big girls dancing and playing the radio. Roberta and me watching. Maggie fell down there once.
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I didn't kick her; I didn't join in with the gar girls and kick that lady, but I sure did want to. We watched and never tried to help her and never called for help. Maggie was my dancing mother. Deaf, I thought, and dumb. Nobody inside. Nobody who would hear you if you cried in the night. Nobody who could tell you anything important that you could use. Rocking, dancing, swaying as she walked. And when the gar girls pushed her down and started rough-
housing, I knew she wouldn't scream, couldn't—just like me—and I was glad about that.
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And you were right. We didn’t kick her. It was the gar girls. Only them. But, well, I wanted to. I really wanted them to hurt her. I said we did it too. You and me, but that's not true. And I don't want you to carry that around. It was just that I wanted to do it so bad that day––wanting to is doing it.
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The Gar Girls (The Older Girls) Quotes in Recitatif
The Recitatif quotes below are all either spoken by The Gar Girls (The Older Girls) or refer to The Gar Girls (The Older Girls). For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Recitatif
Quotes
I used to dream a lot and almost always the orchard was there. Two acres, four maybe, of these little apple trees. Hundreds of them. Empty and crooked like beggar women when I first came to St. Bonny's but fat with flowers when I left. I don't know why I dreamt about that orchard so much. Nothing really happened there. Nothing all that important, I mean. Just the big girls dancing and playing the radio. Roberta and me watching. Maggie fell down there once.
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I didn't kick her; I didn't join in with the gar girls and kick that lady, but I sure did want to. We watched and never tried to help her and never called for help. Maggie was my dancing mother. Deaf, I thought, and dumb. Nobody inside. Nobody who would hear you if you cried in the night. Nobody who could tell you anything important that you could use. Rocking, dancing, swaying as she walked. And when the gar girls pushed her down and started rough-
housing, I knew she wouldn't scream, couldn't—just like me—and I was glad about that.
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And you were right. We didn’t kick her. It was the gar girls. Only them. But, well, I wanted to. I really wanted them to hurt her. I said we did it too. You and me, but that's not true. And I don't want you to carry that around. It was just that I wanted to do it so bad that day––wanting to is doing it.
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