Summary
Sani comments that he believes Moth tells stories similar to how she might dance: “sure & full & alive.” She says he sings like an oak tree, slow and strong and measured. The “Summer Song” they improvise during the trip acquires new lines. Their current favorite is, “Honey, all the clocks are against us.” They arrive in Four Corners, New Mexico, the only place in the country where four state lines meet. Sani believes the land remembers him, because the land is him. He can feel the Motherland cradling him at the Navajo Nation reservation. Moth feels better there than she has felt in Virginia. She believes she can leave her cocoon here.
They sleep in the back of the Jeep, then drive on to Window Rock, the capital of the Navajo Nation. Moth tells Sani it doesn’t hurt to apply to Juilliard. He says that sometimes singing is “too much truth.” He says his mind has locked his “violin voice away.” Moth smirks and says she hid the key in her mouth; she invites him to find it. She comments that kissing him feels like witnessing a blue sunset on Mars or a sea burial. She says it feels like home.
Moth marvels at Window Rock, Tségháhoodzání in Navajo, a natural feature where a hole is carved in a wall of light red rock. Sani says the first name given to it was “Ni’ Ałníi’gi, meaning “Center of the World.” Medicine men would travel from very far to collect water in woven tubs for Blessingway ceremonies. They arrive at Sani’s father’s home, which is small and filled with food. Sani’s father tells Sani his eyes look brighter, which is good. He doesn’t say hello to Moth as he leaves through the door. Sani says he is always like that “before he goes to heal people.” Moth figures it takes a lot of energy to heal others.
In Sani’s room are sketches. One shows a girl with black and gray moths for hair and a scar down her face “like the tip of a whip.” Moth grabs the picture and asks when he drew it. He shrugs and says, “years ago.” Moth comments that the girl is dancing. Sani says he dreamed of her face before, but her hair was a swarm of fluttering moths.
While they are in the house, Sani’s father, still not addressing Moth, leaves a cloth full of Sani’s mystery herbal pills. Moth wonders if they help keep Sani’s sadness from coming in typhoons; instead, he has steady waves. Sani takes the cloth of pills and throws it in the trash can. He says to Moth: “Maybe you won’t leave me.”
On their third night, Sani’s father, a medicine man, still doesn’t look directly at Moth. But he tells a story about a man dressed as a wolf who grieved too long at a grave and died because the spirit stayed and became a trickster. He warns them to fear ghosts. When Sani asks what is wrong with remembering too much, Sani’s father replies that “you forget why the breeze is a miracle & why the stars are a gift.” When Sani has a screaming nightmare, Moth softly sings him back to sleep.
Moth comments that Sani is sick and his father’s mystery pills cannot heal it. Sadness wears Sani like a suit. In Navajo medicine, the healing process has steps with a different healer dedicated to each. One man smokes out the problem, another prescribes herbs, another makes a mixture. But for all the times Sani has been through this process, his soul still feels broken. Moth overhears Sani’s father saying that Sani must take both of his pills—the herbal and Western kinds—consistently. Sani says he cannot see the truth clearly when he takes the medications consistently; that even the moon seems different. Sani sometimes flushes the pills down the toilet, but his father keeps refilling the cloth on the counter.
Two weeks after arriving in the Motherland, Sani and Moth go camping under a blood moon. Moth asks why Sani doesn’t talk to many people in his community. Sani says they think his mind is cursed. He says he used to think his mind was cursed too, but now he wonders if a curse is no different from a miracle. In front of the fire, Moth agrees to dance if Sani sings and plays. The sound of his voice sets her toes on fire. Dancing feels “like glass feathers falling on a silver city.” Afterwards they kiss, Moth feeling weightless and Sani breathless. Moth asks if Sani will keep singing and taking both of his pills. He says he doesn’t know if “the price of getting better is worth it.” When he asks if she’ll keep dancing, Moth says it’s different because she is guilty. He insists she is innocent.
Moth wakes at the campsite to a note Sani has left. In the form of song lyrics, he says that if she really knew him, she would not want him. He suggests it’s better to just leave now to lessen the eventual shock. It has a been a dream to be with her, but dreamers wake and cocoons break open eventually. Moth reads the note and sees he has left the food, water, and Jeep—like he is begging her to go. She curls into a ball and swears never to trust him again. She danced and he left, just like everyone else.
Analysis
McBride builds on the growing intimacy between Moth and Sani as they add more improvised lines to their “Summer Song.” Originally a creative activity Moth and her brother engaged in during summer road trips, the “Summer Song” becomes a motif as Moth encourages Sani to re-discover his singing voice. Sani responds by encouraging Moth to dance, saying he imagines how she would be “sure & full & alive”—adjectives that are ironic given her current state as a ghost. The mutual encouragement Moth and Sani give each other signals that the road trip is having its intended healing effect.
McBride also touches on the themes of transformation and healing from trauma with both characters’ comments about the palpable difference they feel upon reaching the Navajo Nation. Situated at the intersection of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado, the reservation is the largest land area held by a Native American tribe in the United States. Significantly, the Navajo Nation is one of the few US reservations located on the tribe’s traditional territory. Sani immediately senses his ancestral connection to the land; in a metaphor, he emphasizes the support and serenity he feels by speaking of the land as though it is “cradling” him as a mother cradles a child. Moth also feels a sense of peace on the land, and comments that she might be able to leave her cocoon. Unbeknownst to her, she will do exactly this when she moves beyond her purgatory-like state.
Although Moth feels an immediate sense that the land is welcoming her, Sani’s father ignores her presence entirely. Sani excuses his father’s rudeness by saying he is always like this before going to heal a person. However, by this point in the story, readers might notice that so far McBride has only shown Moth to interact with Sani. Sani’s father, like Aunt Jack and the kids at school, do not address Moth—because they cannot see her. Arriving at Sani’s father’s house also presents a bafflingly eerie moment for Moth when she discovers that Sani has drawn a portrait of her years earlier. In this instance of situational irony, Sani explains that she appeared to him in a dream.
By moving the story to Sani’s father’s house, McBride also reveals the source of the mysterious herbal capsules Sani has taken throughout the novel. It turns out that Sani’s father works as a traditional healer, bringing herbal remedies to people in his community. The theme of mental illness comes up again as Moth speculates that the herbs serve the same purpose as Sani’s blue-and-white pills: regulating his depression. However, Sani hints at the true purpose of the capsules when he tosses them in the trash and suggests that doing so might prevent Moth from leaving him.
As they continue to stay at Sani’s father’s house, Moth pays attention to the emotional distress Sani undergoes as he fights his father on the necessity of taking both his medications consistently. Hinting at Sani’s ability to see ghosts, Sani’s father warns his son that remaining in close contact with the dead for too long will pull him away from the joys and beauty of his life. Sani’s father states this in an indirect way, reminding his son of the importance of perceiving the natural world as a miraculous gift. In defiance, Sani continues to dispose of his pills, insisting that they blunt his ability to see the truth. Unbeknownst to Moth, Sani is referring to his ability to see her. But despite Sani’s insistence on remaining with Moth by refusing to take his pills, at the end of the chapter Moth wakes to the shock of him having abandoned her at the campsite.
