The Grass is Singing: Chapter 9 Summary & Analysis

Months pass. Mary goes about her work wearily, and when she is not working sits still, thinking about nothing. Dick has become increasingly irritated with her nagging of Moses. The chickens begin to die, and Mary cannot bring herself to care. The only part of her that remains active and alert lies in her relationship with Moses. Then, one day, Moses hesitantly announces that he wants to leave at the end of the month. Mary is left speechless, and—to her horror—begins to cry in front of him. Eventually, she exclaims: “You mustn’t go!.... You must stay!” Moses gets a glass of water, hands it to Mary, and tells her to drink. He then tells her to lie on the bed, even gently pushing her toward it with his hand—and Mary notes that this is the first time she has ever “touched the flesh of a native.” He then covers her feet with her coat and leaves. Mary sleeps until the late afternoon. When Dick comes home, he asks if she is ill, and Mary replies that she is just tired. As usual, he acts as if she is “not really there, a machine without a soul.”

A week passes, and Moses does not mention leaving again. Eventually, he turns to Mary at a random moment and says: “Madame asked me to stay. I stay to help Madame. If Madame cross, I go.” He asks her if he works well, and she says yes, which leads him to ask why she is then “always cross.” Mary feels the same anger rise up inside her, but says nothing.

A few months later, when Mary refuses lunch, Moses makes it for her anyway, telling her she must eat. There is a new dynamic between them; Mary feels “helplessly in his power.” Moses begins asking her questions in a new, familiar tone, such as when she thinks the war will be over or if Jesus would approve of people killing each other. Mary bristles at the “implied criticism” of this second question, and says that Jesus is “on the side of good people.” Later, she asks Dick where Moses comes from, and Dick explains that he is a “mission boy,” a group of people Dick disapproves of because he believes native people should not be taught to read and write.

Mary has started having nightmares during her long sleeps. She dreams that Moses forces her to touch him, and during the days she feels wary of his kindness to her. In February, Dick becomes ill with malaria. The doctor comes back and scolds Mary for not having mosquito-proofed their house as he advised. Charlie Slatter is also present, and silently daydreams about what he will do when he takes over Dick’s farm. This time Mary does not take over the supervision of the farm workers while Dick is ill. Mary instead stays up tending to Dick at night, and one day Moses asks if she’s been staying up every night, before offering to take over and look after Dick himself. At first Mary refuses, but Moses insists.

Mary lies tensely on the sofa, listening for sounds from the bedroom. When she eventually falls asleep, she dreams that she is a child again. She sees her mother and her father in a moment of physical affection and runs away in disgust. Next she dreams that her father is forcefully holding her head in his lap. She then believes that she has woken up, and is in the house on Dick’s farm—yet Dick is dead. She sees that Moses has opened the window, and blames the cold for Dick’s death. She then feels Moses coming toward her, and as he gets nearer he fuses with the figure of her father. Mary screams and wakes up.

Moses is standing sleepily next to Mary, holding a tray of tea. He puts the tray down and assures her that Dick is asleep. Moses asks Mary why she is afraid of him, and she unconvincingly assures him she is not. That day, Dick gets steadily better, and within a week he is back at work. However, Mary hardly notices her husband; she feels “possessed” by Moses’s presence and the power he exudes over her. Mary can only relax when Moses has left the house; she longs to ask Dick if they can fire Moses, but says nothing. She senses that Moses, with his “easy,” nonchalant attitude, is also waiting for something to happen. They are two “antagonists,” but he has the upper hand.