Symbol: The Orchard
The orchard is an important place in Twyla and Roberta’s life, as they often spend hours looking at the older girls in the orchard dancing, smoking, and hearing them talk about sex and other topics. Twyla dreams of the orchard often but decides that she doesn't really know why that is the case. Later, though, she learns that it is the place where the older girls pushed Maggie down and where Twyla and Roberta watched, wanting Maggie to be hurt and doing nothing to help. Thus, the orchard, with its twisted, bent trees, symbolizes Maggie and the trauma wrought on her body; as Maggie is a stand-in for the girls' mothers, the orchard is also a more general symbol of trauma and stunted growth.
Symbol: Maggie
Maggie is one of the most complicated symbols of the text. To Twyla and Roberta, she symbolizes their mothers, in all their deafness, dumbness, and inability to help their daughters. In a broader sense, Maggie also symbolizes the intersectional nature of marginalization in the United States. She is not white, she is a woman, she is disabled, and she is in a lower socioeconomic stratum; thus, she is shut out of opportunities for power, advancement, and acceptance by society at large.
Symbol: Grocery Store
A grocery store, especially a high-end one, symbolizes abundance. The fact that the two women meet here in their second encounter is telling, for both of them have come a long way from their straitened childhood. They are both married and have money, though Roberta has quite a bit more. They have come a long way since St. Bonny's, and though there are numerous complications in their relationship with each other, they are on a different playing field now.
