46 pages • 1 hour read
Fire Shut Up in My Bones
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Chapters 5-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary: “Look-Away Jesus”
When Blow is ten, his older brother Nathan goes off to college, leaving him alone in his room. Haunted by the emptiness, he seeks refuge with his Uncle Paul, listening to the stories of his youth. One night, after falling asleep in Paul’s room, he wakes to find his uncle’s hand moving slowly across his hips. He leaves the room without saying anything, but he cannot reconcile his kind uncle with the act of betrayal he has just committed. He convinces himself that the act was somehow unconscious, not intentional, a useful lie when sharing a small house with an abuser. To make matters worse, Blow’s family represses their emotions. Blow wants to feel loved and validated, but he rarely gets that kind of approval. In his household, feelings are “soft” things not suited to boys.
His ambiguous sexual identity becomes apparent to his mother and to the outside world. His mother worries, and strangers see him as prey, so he learns to deflect the leering stares with an angry defiance, resolving never to submit to sexual predation again without a fight. To support his resolve, he turns back to religion, agreeing to be baptized, but as the sacrificial rite approaches, with Blow standing chest-deep in a pool of icy water, he panics: “Was the old me really going to be washed away?” (119). As the preacher submerges him in the water, fear of drowning takes over, and he thrashes in the preacher’s grip, soaking him and much of the choir. He emerges from the pool feeling utterly unchanged.
At 11, Charles and a classmate Roseanna become a “steady” couple, French kissing on the school bus. Roseanna is already sexually active, and her emotional distance acts as a balm for Charles, for whom simple physical contact is enough. With so many parents in the community working in other towns, Gibsland in the late afternoon is filled with unsupervised children and teens, many of whom are eager to explore their sexuality. One afternoon when Charles and Roseanne are alone, she leads him to her bed and undresses. He does also but has no idea what to do next. The encounter is interrupted by a phone call, and Charles leaves. The next day, Roseanne’s mockery confirms his failure as a lover and as a man. The experience, however, teaches him to question his own attractions: “Was I truly falling in love or manufacturing it?” (123).
Chapter 6 Summary: “Change”
Now in seventh grade, Charles attends the Coleman school, formerly the all-Black Coleman College. With his new school comes a new awareness of the changing cultural standards of Blackness and Black beauty. Lighter skin and straight hair are the acceptable norms now, and Charles, with his darker skin, feels left behind. Meanwhile, his IQ tests reveal a gifted child who warrants a special teacher once a week. Also, his family life grows more stable. His mother calms her temper and begins a new relationship. His father stops drinking and carousing and begins leaving food at their doorstep, an act of contrition for his years of neglect. He also takes Charles watermelon picking to help him earn money for a new computer. The work is hard, but Charles revels in time spent alone with a sober and attentive father.
The most profound change is a more heightened awareness of his sexuality, especially his attraction to men. While not overtly sexual, this attraction is rooted in tenderness and affection. Still, the attraction foments fear and frustration, given how closely he associates it with his abuse. The Biblical condemnation of homosexuality only intensifies the fear, and he becomes convinced that merely thinking of other boys is a sentence to eternal damnation. He begins to meditate to commune with the spirit of God, seeking revelation in the quietude of his mind. The practice gives him solace, and he begins to pray in class, on the bus, and even during a basketball game in which he scores the winning basket. When Big Mama moves in, sick and unable to get out of bed, Blow prays, believing God wants him to lay hands on his ill grandmother. He does, and the next day, she gets out of bed. Blow writes, “I was excited and in awe, but most of all, encouraged and affirmed in my faith” (133). As deep as his faith grows, however, it still doesn’t banish the thoughts of men.
That year, he attends the Hugh O’Brien Youth Leadership seminar, which includes a trip to Baton Rouge and a tour of the capital and governor’s mansion. When he meets the governor, Edwin Edwards, he decides that politics is in his future, specifically the Louisiana governorship. In preparation, he resists all temptation of men in his mind, but this act of resolve hollows him out emotionally. He recounts the story of a local woman convicted of murdering her four children. At the funeral, he cannot cry, so drained is he of feeling. Another important loss at that time is his basketball coach. Blow has become an adept point guard and is made captain of the team the year his coach dies. At the funeral, he worries that his lack of tears will stigmatize him, so he pretends to be overcome with grief and walks out.
While his religious devotion cycles in and out—he tries to keep it tethered to his life but without consistent success—he witnesses an exorcism of a neighborhood girl’s cousin. This kind of religious fanaticism, he claims, is not unusual. Belief in witches, magical talismans, and demon-expelling conjurers is embraced by many in his community, and these superstitions begin to pry Blow from his faith. Only later does he reconnect with faith as a simpler spirituality, seeing God in the natural world rather than in institutions and their representatives.
Chapter 7 Summary: “Another Boy’s Baby”
Now a senior and a popular athlete, Charles looks out for the unpopular kids, protecting them in a way no one protected him. With political aspirations still in his sights, he begins to emulate Martin Luther King for his “righteous stoicism” and Prince Charles for his regal bearing—that is, except on the basketball court where his aggression flows freely. After too many altercations on the court, his team is warned: One more incident, and they will be banned from the playoffs. During a game with a mostly white high school, the opposing team tries to provoke Blow into a fight. Realizing that taking the bait would jeopardize his team’s playoff chances and damage the town’s delicate racial peace, he controls his temper.
During that year, he begins dating Evelyn, a new girl who “walked with her chin held high—not arrogant, but confident. Cool” (149). One afternoon, with no discussion of birth control, they have sex, and Evelyn becomes pregnant. When the baby is born, Charles tells his mother, who responds, “You know that’s not your baby, right?” (151). Disappointed in his mother’s reaction, Blow feels profound love for this new baby.
That year, he also travels to Knoxville, Tennessee to participate in an international science fair, but the airline loses his project in transit. The event is a cultural awakening for him—his first time flying, his first time speaking with people of international renown, and his first time in real competition with people smarter than him. The day after he returns from Knoxville, he graduates as valedictorian and the recipient of several scholarships. A week later, visiting Evelyn and the baby, his cousin Faith remarks, “Charles, she don’t look nothin’ like you” (154). Blinded by his love, he couldn’t that the father is obviously Evelyn’s former boyfriend, now in prison. Her lies and betrayal leave another hole in Blow’s heart.
Chapters 5-7 Analysis
Blow’s sexual identity crisis and his roller coaster relationship with religion become inextricably intertwined, as he uses one as an antidote for the other. Being gay—or bisexual, in Blow’s case—as a young man in a society that values traditional masculinity is confusing and terrifying, especially when all the adults in his life refuse to broach any uncomfortable subject. Worse, when his physicality appears “effete” to his mother, the one person in his life from whom he craves approval, she hangs her head in shame. In a culture in which religion carries so much weight, Blow’s turn to the Church for solace makes perfect sense. Research has demonstrated a strong correlation between privation, especially in areas without a strong social safety net, and religious adherence (Miller, Merrill. “Why Are the Poor More Religious?” TheHumanist.com, 27 August 2014).
If this life means suffering and trial, one can always hope for better in the next. Blow’s life is surrounded by such trials: poverty, social instability, and sexual confusion. His saving grace is his intellect and his gift for introspection. Even at a young age, he has enough critical thinking skills to realize that the adult men in his world—except for his grandfather, Jeb, long deceased—are not appropriate role models, So rather than turning to drugs or alcohol, he turns to religion, and for a while, it is just the tonic he needs. Like all such remedies, however, it loses potency with time, and as Blow grows and matures, religion begins to feel like a perfunctory exercise and a ritual without depth. His burgeoning popularity, athleticism, and self-confidence become suitable substitutes for an increasingly distant God.
Perhaps the biggest change in Blow’s life comes in his new school environment. Having long carried the emotional baggage of the “slow” child, his seventh grade IQ tests prove the opposite. With this validation of his intellect, plus his natural athleticism and membership in the ranks of the popular kids, Blow’s self-confidence grows. In the grip of teenage hormones, he experiences sex for the first time, coupled with one of the worst betrayals of his life. Evelyn, the mother of the child he believes is his, uses him for his future potential. She sees in him a smart, compassionate young man who is a definite step-up from her last boyfriend. Hoping to ensure a bright future for her daughter, Evelyn is happy to perpetuate the lie that the child is Blow’s. The world he depicts is full of schemers, deceivers, and desperate people willing to tell any lie or manipulate any naiveté to get what they want. This world, however, is also sprinkled with the occasional good Samaritan: the coach who tries to turn his charges into good athletes and good men; peers like Russell and Alphonso who accept Blow for himself, insecurities and all; and even his mother, who, despite her fears for him which mitigate her ability to bestow unconditional love, goes through life with a hardened resolve to raise a morally upright family.
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