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71. Complications
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in With the Fire on High, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Coming of Age and Teen Parenthood
Creativity vs. Professional Norms
Food and Connection
Caregiving, Independence, and Identity
Support, Community, and Mentorship
Summary
Analysis
On Wednesday, two days before the deposit is due, Emoni approaches Chef Ayden. Chef has been happier and clearly relieved since the Winter Dinner, and he calls Emoni “the fund-raiser of the century,” a sentiment Emoni doesn’t share. She’s been able to come up with another $100 thanks to her clothing sales and a gift from ’Buela, so she slides the money to Chef and asks if she can have more time for the deposit. Chef says that if he’d known, they could’ve worked something out, but he’ll speak to Principal Holderness and pay her deposit himself if he has to. But Emoni can tell that, like ’Buela, that’s a lot of money for Chef Ayden to come up with in a few days.
As Emoni sees it, she’s actually a bit of a failure as a fund-raiser, since she has no idea how to come up with the other $200. But though Chef Ayden seems pretty unrelatable at the beginning of this conversation, when he begins by praising Emoni, he looks far more relatable by the end. Emoni suspects that he, too, lives more or less paycheck to paycheck, as she and ’Buela do. So, though Emoni doesn’t get what she needs or wants out of this conversation, she does grow a bit closer to her teacher.
Themes
On Thursday morning, Emoni just wants to stay in bed. She soothes Babygirl, who wakes up from a bad dream, and tries not to snap at ’Buela. On the bus, Emoni hides from Angelica by checking her email. She has an email from Aunt Sarah, but it’s from a website and not her normal email address. The first thing in the email is a dollar amount: $300. Then, Aunt Sarah writes that she got the aunties and cousins to pitch in so Emoni has pocket money for Spain. She says she’s proud of Emoni and that Emoni’s mom would be proud of her, too. Emoni trembles. Now, Emoni knows there’s lots of magic in the world.
It turns out that Emoni’s support network is bigger and stronger than she thought. Aunt Sarah has never helped out like this before, but in this instance, she serendipitously comes through and shows Emoni that she (and Emoni’s other Raleigh relatives) care about her and want to see her succeed. That Emoni thinks of this as a kind of magic highlights how unexpected this kind of support is for her.
Themes
