26 pages • 52 minutes read
Heart Berries
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Chapters 5-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary: “Your Black Eye and My Birth”
As soon as the baby is conceived problems begin. Mailhot must come off her medicine because of the pregnancy and begins to scream at her son Isaiah and question Casey’s every word. She is both confused and disgusted by her behavior, though it often feels “justified” (68). She and Isaiah move in with Casey, and it's contentious. Mailhot realizes she can’t trust Casey and worries that he will leave her the way he did at the hospital. She attends her first MFA residency in Santa Fe, and Casey drives her. On the way, Mailhot discovers text messages on his phone that prove he was cheating on her months after they’d agreed to be monogamous. She punches him in the face, and he develops a black eye. She feels more comfortable at her residency among other Indians, though she struggles with her mental health. On the way back, she considers getting an abortion. The doctor recommends a late-stage procedure because of her severe bipolar symptoms, but Mailhot can’t go through with it. She reflects on her mother and motherhood. She finally gives birth to the baby, who had caused her so much pain that during labor, she feels as if the pain doesn’t compare to the torture she endured during pregnancy. She calls the baby a Thunder Being, because of his immense power.
Chapter 6 Summary: “I Know I’ll Go”
Mailhot writes about her father, Ken. He was a drunk artist, deeply talented, who was beaten to death in a hotel room over either a stolen cigarette or a sex worker. In his final years, he was homeless, and the state gave him a hotel room next to violent young men and prostitutes. Mailhot lived with her father for years as a child and sat on his lap while he painted. He shook when he didn’t drink. Mailhot’s mother sent him to rehab multiple times, to no avail. Eventually, he left after Mailhot’s grandmother hired a distant cousin to beat Ken. When Ken returned home, his family was gone. He destroyed the house in vengeance. Years later, Mailhot found him living in a town called Hope with her older sister’s childhood friend and five new children. The last time she saw him was when he came to her door to tell her a White filmmaker was shooting a documentary about his life. Mailhot didn’t let him in because her brother and sister were still terrified of him. She saw the documentary later and didn’t like how it portrayed him. Despite the pain he caused, she loves and admires him. She thinks “I don’t think I can forgive myself for my compassion.” (85)
Chapters 5-6 Analysis
In these chapters, Mailhot considers what kind of Indian she should be, and what obligations she has as a Native woman.
Mailhot writes about her father, a talented, abusive, drunken artist. She compares herself to him, and the pain of this comparison is clear—she fears she will become him, a stereotypical Indian. She dreams of dying an “Indian death,” which is part acceptance of her inherited trauma and part fear. Mailhot connects to the artistic heritage of her father, but knows he is also a monster. She struggles to understand how she “should” connect to her father and cannot reconcile the compassion she feels for him with his violent behavior.
Mailhot also considers her obligations not only as an Indian daughter, but as an Indian writer. She debates how she should and should not depict Native characters. She wants to show their humanity and not fall into stereotypical behavior, but she also recognizes that alcoholism, drug abuse, and violence are part of her inheritance as a Native woman. In the struggle to know how she “should” depict her community, Mailhot finds it difficult to acknowledge the hard truths.
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