Two summers ago our car broke in half
like a candy bar on the freeway & we all spilled
onto the pavement as crumbled as sticky caramel-peanut filling....
Aunt Jack prayed & prayed & bit her nail beds ruddy—
but there is only so much prayer & if god takes sacrifices,
only so much blood to offer.
That day there was only enough prayer
& blood for one of us to walk out.
This passage, taken from the beginning of Me (Moth), introduces readers to the traumatic event that drastically altered the shape of Moth's life. Using a simile to describe the lethal accident, Moth compares her family's car to a candy bar that broke and spilled its filling onto the highway. Moth comments that her family members all went into the hospital but only she walked out. With this claim, Moth invites the reader to believe her version of events. However, as the book goes on, McBride will reveal that Moth is not the reliable narrator she purports to be.
After the accident & the scar like the tip of a whip
I changed schools to live with Aunt Jack in the suburbs.
I go to a school that is 94 percent white
with only six Black kids—who don’t talk to me.
This is nothing new.
Black kids sealed
their lips to me in New York, too.
In the chapter titled, "Now I Live a Secondhand Life," Moth provides the context for her post-accident life. Originally from New York, the orphaned teenager has moved in with her Aunt Jack, who lives in a predominantly white Virginia suburb. When students at her new school don't bother to engage her, Moth doesn't question it; she assumes these students are no different from those in New York who also ignored her presence. Later in the novel, Moth will look back on this assumption with greater clarity and realize that her fellow students ignore her because they can't see her. Unbeknownst to Moth at this point in the story, she is in fact a ghost. In an instance of situational irony, Moth finds that being a ghost is not dissimilar from her previous existence as a social outcast.
1. Don’t talk about the accident …
2. Like really don’t talk about it …
3. Praying about it aloud is okay, though.
4. Leaving offerings on the mantel for the ancestors is just fine.
5. Always have wine in the house.
6. Always have whiskey under the sink.
7. Never touch the urns—never.
8. Never mourn loud enough to make flowers wilt.
In "(Aunt Jack's) List of Rules," Moth injects some humor into the narrative by describing her aunt's peculiar method of grieving as though it is a list of rules Aunt Jack has asked Moth to follow. The list conveys that Aunt Jack is in denial about the accident, refusing to address what happened. Having grown up with a Hoodoo practitioner for a father, she prays to her ancestors and leaves offerings on the mantel. She also drinks heavily, ensuring she has multiple types of alcohol always available. Taken together, the list paints a picture of a person struggling to deal with the immense grief of having lost so many family members at once. However, Moth fails to understand that she is inadvertently haunting her aunt, whose erratic, fearful behavior can be explained by the fact she is sharing her home with her niece's ghost.
He sits & with shaky hands pulls a cloth with pills
hiding between the folds from his backpack.He puts two pills into his palm & takes them without water.
They remind me of seeds
& I worry they won’t grow in the way he needs them to.
His eyes close tight. He shakes his head & looks at me again.
He has a tattoo where his neck joins his shoulder
& a necklace that looks like it holds herbs.
Coming home from his first day at Moth's high school, Sani takes the empty seat next to Moth. Other students avoid the seat because they believe it is haunted by a girl who died of an asthma attack while sitting on it; this doesn't bother Moth, who still doesn't know yet that she is a ghost herself. In this passage, Sani immediately takes herbal pills after sitting. While it may, on first read, seem that Sani takes them to manage anxiety, the pills are actually a traditional remedy that Sani's father gives him to ward off the spirits Sani is susceptible to seeing and hearing. Sani's action suggests that he senses a need to take the pills when he meets Moth, but McBride makes it ambiguous whether Sani knows he is engaging with a ghost or simply perceives Moth as merely another student to whom he is drawn.
What conjure is this? I ask as the graveyard breeze
pats my chapped cheeks.
Grandfather bends down again,
digs deeper into the soil, places my cut nails,
a tuft of hair & a photo of us in the small pit
along with two tiny seeds & a crisp white feather.
He blows smoke
from his cigar into the hole.
This is long work. A finding spell,
for roots destined to twine.
Just after meeting Sani, Moth dreams about her grandfather, a "Rootworker"—a practitioner of Hoodoo. When Moth is ten, she accompanies Grandfather to a willow tree in a cemetery near Nashville, Tennessee. He prays for a particularly long time before burying Moth's nail clippings, hair, a photo of the two of them together, two seeds, and a crisp white feather. He also blows cigar smoke into the hole and pours fine whiskey into the soil. Grandfather is cryptic about the exact nature of the spell, but he explains that it is a "finding spell." Later in the book, the reader will understand that the mysterious work he undertakes in this scene is his way of ensuring that Sani and Moth will meet, as the white feather represents Sani. Having predicted Moth's untimely death, Grandfather arranges for Sani to guide Moth on her journey to the afterlife. In this way, it is Moth and Sani who are "destined to twine."
TEXT I ACTUALLY SEND SANI
I used to dance.
Do you sing & play often?
TEXT SANI SENDS BACK
Honey, you’ve been dancing since I saw you.
I used to sing often. I used to play often.
TEXT I SEND BACK
Sani, you are always tapping something.
Your voice plucks out notes
even when you are talking.
TEXT SANI SENDS BACK
I guess we are both muffling
our passions, for reasons.
TEXT I SEND BACK
For reasons …
After Sani asks her several times to call him, Moth takes her aunt's phone and begins this text exchange. As Moth and Sani get to know each other better, they stumble onto the subject of their respective creative outlets, dancing and singing. Both talk of these passions as something they no longer engage in. However, they notice in each other a tendency to let their preferred forms of artistic expression shine through in the way they move or speak. Even though Moth says she no longer dances, Sani observes that she dances constantly. Similarly, Sani has a musical way of speaking. The exchange ends with them agreeing that they both have reasons for suppressing their creative energy, hinting that Sani, like Moth, is dealing with trauma that is stifling his artistic freedom.
She doesn’t say it to my face;
she is not that brave.
I don’t know if me borrowing her phone
& replacing it with John the Conqueror root
was the last straw. I am bad like that—
sometimes I take what I should not
because I live too hard
& that is why the devil nips at me.She leans on the fireplace, screaming at the urns,
offering oranges to the spirits.
Small hiccups erupt from her lips
like hopeless bubbles popping around the house.
I can’t do this. I am leaving for the summer (she screams).
I need to get away. I can’t live with your ghosts (she whispers).
In the chapter titled, "Aunt Jack is Leaving for the Summer," Moth comments on how her aunt reaches a breaking point. Moth, still unaware that she is a ghost, assumes that her aunt is fed up with having to look after her. On the first read, it appears as though Aunt Jack is being an irresponsible guardian to her niece by abandoning Moth for the summer without explanation. However, when Aunt Jack says she can't "live with your ghosts," she is being literal.
I whisper “Summer Song”:
I want to suffocate your sadness,
I want to run away with you. Please run away with me.
He nods
& nods
& nods.
When Moth stands outside Sani's mother's house and watches through the window, she witnesses Sani's stepfather being emotionally abusive. Soon after that incident, Sani arrives distraught on Moth's doorstep. He explains that his stepfather physically assaulted him, and his mother did nothing to stop the man's abuse. In this passage, Moth calms Sani by suggesting they run away together for the summer. Without responsible guardians in their lives, the two teenagers bond over their dysfunctional home environments and seek refuge by fleeing together.
I wonder if he knew
that our car would split in two
& our family would split in two
& my face would split in two.
We dig & dig,
find the photo of my grandfather& me, hands linked
like chains in a fence,
but both our faces are rotted away—
gone.
The feather is
still as crisp
as the day it was buried.
During their road trip, Sani and Moth stop at the Nashville cemetery where Grandfather cast his long spell with Moth. Upon digging up the hole, Moth discovers that the photograph of herself and Grandfather is still intact. However, in an eerie visual image, the faces have rotted out of the photo paper. Strangely, the white feather Grandfather buried has suffered no deterioration. With these visuals, McBride hints at the fates of the people represented by the objects used in this spell. While Moth and Grandfather have both died, with their faces "rotted away" appropriately, Sani, represented by the feather, lives on to do Grandfather's bidding and be Moth's guide.
Sani’s dad opens a drawer,
cradles a photo between
his shaking hands
like a precious offering
before he gently places
the image on the table
next to Sani’s sketch.
My fingers grow toward it.
Sani’s fingers beat me to it.
Why do you have a photo of Moth? he asks.
Sani’s dad whispers:
Her grandfather
gave it to me
a long time ago.
She feels different
because this was planned.
This is Hoodoo work.
After Sani and Moth have been at Sani's father's house for two weeks, Sani's father suddenly asks his son to sketch Moth. Moth doesn't understand the request, particularly because Sani's father has ignored Moth for the duration of the visit. At the novel's climax, Sani's father shows Sani of photo of Moth and Grandfather to compare to the sketch. Sani's father confirms that Sani feels drawn to Moth because her grandfather determined with his graveyard spell that they were destined to meet. In a dramatic shock to both Moth and Sani, McBride reveals that Moth has been a ghost for the entire novel. Sani, having had a gift for seeing the dead from a young age, was selected by Grandfather to be her guide as she struggled to find her way to the afterlife. With this revelation, Sani understands that, however much he loves Moth, their connection has been the work of a powerful Hoodoo practitioner, and Moth must move on to join her ancestors.
