Before We Were Yours

“If my mother is intimately involved in the micro aspects of our lives, such as fretting over lint and planning for the family Christmas photo in July, my father is the opposite. He is distant—an island of staunch maleness in a household of women.” 

The quote indicts just how controlled Avery’s life is by her family and by her mother in particular, who needs Avery and the family in general to appear just so. Image is deeply important to her mother as is family standing, hence Avery’s alliance with Elliot, which will join two influential families. The quote also hints at the possibility of closeness and openness that seem to exist more readily between women in the space of the novel. Trent is the exception to this rule, and Avery is stunned by his emotional reciprocity with her. He is different than Elliot and the Senator who remain cool and unaffected by all things and others.

“This is what’s possible when love is real and strong, when people are devoted to one another, when they’ll sacrifice anything to be together. This is what I want for myself.” 

Watching an elderly couple celebrate their anniversary in the nursing home, Avery reflects on what a real partnership involves. She knows that it is more than fleeting passion, that it must last the test of time. She wonders if Elliot is someone she wants to spend the passing years together. She tells herself that he is and yet she cannot seem to bring herself to make the wedding arrangements, as if her heart is telling her something her head won’t accept.

“I remember May Crandall’s blue eyes, the way she regarded me with such desperation. I imagine her coming away with my bracelet examining it alone in her room, draping it over her wrist and admiring it with delight.” 

Avery is haunted by her first encounter with May. It is understandable, given that May grabs her by the arm and calls her a strange name (Fern). At this early point in the book, Avery’s view of May is filled with condescension. It almost seems like Avery imagines May as a child admiring a pretty trinket that she made off it. What Avery cannot yet grasp is that the bracelet is embedded with enormous meaning. It is May’s connection to her lost siblings and her lost past. 

Camellia looks towards the door and so do I. We both know nobody’s gonna walk through it tonight. We’ve never been alone in the dark before. There’s always been Queenie even when Briny was gone hunting or hustling pool halls or gigging frogs.” 

The Foss children are used to their omnipresence of their parents. If one is off the shantyboat, the Arcadia, the other is close by. The darkness and the isolation frighten the older girls who are able to see that this could be a bad sign. What they don’t know at this point is that this foreshadows a lot of time alone, in the dark, locked in a room at the Children’s Society Home.

“Finally, I do it. I turn the frame. Sepia toned and bleached, white around the edges, the image is a snapshot of a young couple on the shore of a lake or pond.” 

Avery realizes that she is prying intensely when she begins poking around May’s nursing home room in her absence. As soon as she is in that space, the photograph seems to call to her as if it offers answers or at least intense meaning to explore. When she at last gives into the call, she finds the image of Briny and Queenie.

“Something dies inside me—a little brother or sister I was planning to hold like a new china doll.”

Zede brings the news to Rill and her younger siblings that Queenie has lost both babies. It is easy to believe for Rill because she witnessed firsthand her mother in the throes of labor. But she feels the loss acutely of these siblings she didn’t even meet. This turns out to be a lie, as one of these siblings is in fact Grandma Judy, a sister who will be with her in her last years of life.

“Be glad if you got a nice mama and daddy […] Don’t ever get it in your head to leave them behind, if they’re good to you. Some sure enough ain’t.”

Silas, who offers this unsolicited advice to the Foss kids, has endured abuse at the hands of a drunken step-father. Running away was his only option for survival. After living alone and hopping railroad cars, Silas was eventually found by Zede, who serves as a sort of surrogate parent. This idea of not running away from those who treat you well later impacts Rill, as she realizes that even though the Seviers will never be Briny and Queenie, they can offer her love and safety, two things she and Fern desperately need.

“I look down at the two scared kids huddled together on the floor and then at Camellia. My sister’s eyes tell me that she’s figured out what I already know, enough though I don’t want to. We’re not headed to the hospital to see our mama and daddy.” 

No one offers any answers to the Foss children at first. When they are initially picked up, the children are told that they will be allowed to go see their parents, that they are just being cleaned up some to be presentable enough for the maternity ward. Rill knows in her heart that it’s not true but is one to always hold out hope. Camellia is built differently. She confronts ugly facts head on and at times attempts to foist them on Rill. She is tough and refuses to be self-deluding, which is what makes her such a danger to Miss Tann. Camellia is not a child who can be fooled.

“The rest is history. A marriage of political dynasties. My mother’s grandfather had been a North Carolina representative before his retirement and her father was in office at the time of the wedding. […] Important people live here still. Not just anyone is allowed to enter.” 

Reputation and image are everything to the Stafford family, but they are not alone in putting emphasis on that. Avery’s family keeps company with other important families. And as she herself notes, they only keep company with those they find important. Pedigree is vital, yet there is so much about the truth of their lineage that they are completely in the dark about, secrets they could never imagine.

“There’s no way I can let this thing drop now. I need to find out what I’m dealing with here. I’ll have to unearth some other sources of information and I know where I intend to start digging.” 

Avery expects to get a straight story from her grandmother, despite her grandmother’s advancing dementia. Theirs has always been a tight bond, and it is almost incomprehensible to Avery that her grandmother could be keeping anything form her. She longs for that closeness, to know who her grandmother really is and what she is really about. But the detective work she is about to engage in offers another kind of satisfying closeness. For one, it offers Avery the chance to have a legitimate reason to revisit her grandmother’s home.

“The kids cluster close to me, even the ones I don’t know. I hang on to Fern on one hip and Gabion on the other. My arms are starting to go numb but I’m not letting go.” 

When the Foss children are separated from their parents, Rill is forced even more into the parental role. She does all she can to keep her siblings by her, refusing to let go and protesting loudly when they are separated. Her strong maternal presence attracts other children to her who seek her protection from the malicious and abusive adults.

“I can almost feel my grandmother on the Charleston style piazza along the side of the house. Climbing the stairs, I half expect her to be there. It’s painful to realize that she’s not. I’ll never again come to this place and be greeted by my grandmother.” 

Avery’s grandmother’s home is a haunted place for her, even though her grandmother is still alive. She has vivid memories and the place is suffused with emotion and nostalgia. Like the river’s edge and the Arcadia when Rill returns to it, this place is occupied by the ghosts of loved ones and experiences of familial love. It is a bittersweet experience, remembering the love without being able to recapture it.

“Are all of us going or just some? I can’t leave the babies here. What if these people hurt them? I have to protect my brothers and sisters, but I can’t even protect myself.” 

After just a short time in the orphanage, Rill begins to see the impossible job she’s been tasked with. She needs to somehow keep the Foss children together and to protect them from harm. However, she realizes that this is not in her control, a brutal reality to face.  

“But the redheaded boy just grins. He leans close to my ear, near enough that I can smell his stinky breath and feel his heat on my skin. He whispers, ‘Don’t’ let Riggs get you by yourself. He ain’t the kind of friend you want.’” 

Even though Rill’s life has been precarious on the river, with the Foss family dealing with food insecurity often, she has never experienced the danger of sexual predators. She is on the cusp of puberty herself and is noticing her own growing and changing body. It takes a boy that has been molested to tell her that Riggs, who offers the kids peppermints in exchange for their friendship, is not what or who he seems, that he is waiting for the chance to molest Rill too.

“Guilt niggles at me instantly. Should an engaged woman—even a lonely one—be reacting this way? [...] The time difference is difficult. He’s focused on his job. I’m focused on family matter.” 

As soon as Avery meets Trent, she feels the palpable chemistry between them. Because she is engaged and promised to someone from a family as important as her own, she feels ashamed. And yet she knows that their worlds are pulling them in different directions. For her now, family is key, both her father’s health and her grandmother’s mysteries.

“[Y]ou’ve got to slip past the cellar doors. Riggs keeps them open and if he can, he’ll get kids in there with him one way or another. Nobody talks about what goes on down there, not even the bigger boys.” 

After being in the orphanage for a while, Rill gets a better sense of the lay of the land. She knows where she can listen outside the door to hear adults talk of which kids will next be sent off to “viewing parties” to be bought up by rich couples. She knows too that there are places where one is more susceptible to being caught by Riggs and drug off to be raped in the dark.

“‘I’ve had such a brilliant vision, I must admit. Fair haired cherubs for a fair summer season. Yours for the asking! Perfect, isn’t it? All the little blonds.’” 

The tight blond ringlets of the majority of the Foss siblings are one item that makes them so desirable to Miss Tann. There is a demand for not just white children, but blond haired, blue eyed children. Camellia is the only brown-haired sibling and for this reason is not taken to the “viewing party.” Instead, she stays at the home where she is easy prey for Riggs.

“It’s gibberish at first but I’ve been around Grandma Judy long enough to know how a typewriter ribbon works. It rolls as the key strike. The letters have to be in some order.”

Avery goes hunting through her grandmother’s day journals, old newspaper columns, and correspondences, but nothing stands out to her. She knows there is a clue hidden and likely in plain sight. It turns out that the clue is available to her on the typewriter ribbon, but she has to transcribe the message because it has been written in reverse. To Avery, this is a clear sign that the information was meant to be kept as close as possible. 

“I don’t care. I can’t feel anything—not the summer-dry grass crunching under my feet, not the stiff shoes the workers gave me this morning. Not the hot, sticky evening air or the too tight dress tugging […] I’m cold on the inside.”

Gabion, called Gabby by the Foss siblings and Robby by Miss Tann, is the first of the pack to be separated. It is a terrible awakening for Rill as she sees how truly powerless she is to protect her siblings. She imagines Briny storming in and grabbing Gabion back but knows it won’t happen. She can’t even fully protest without being dragged away from the scene by orphanage workers.

“And just like that, Camellia’s gone. The last thing I see of her is a worker hauling her off down the hall, caterpillar wrapped in a bedsheet so she can’t kick or hit.”

Rill loses two siblings in one day through two different circumstances. She loses Gabion to a wealthy couple who seem to find delight tossing him in the air and fussing over him. She loses Camellia when Camellia again rebels. The workers restrain her and cart her off. It is the last time Rill ever sees her sister alive.

“I heard her tell one of the kitchen workers that her daddy died last year and her mama’s sick with dropsy and she’s got four little brothers and sisters living on a farm up in north Shelby County.”

Miss Dodd is the only comfort to Rill in the entire space of the Tennessee Children’s Society Home, and she turns out to be only a temporary comfort. The details of Miss Dodd’s life situation are important because like Rill, she is the eldest sibling trying to provide for younger ones. She believes that the children in the home are all orphans, and when she learns otherwise, she does the right thing and contacts the authorities. Miss Tann promises hell to pay for this, that Miss Dodd will too lose her siblings as they will be rounded up and sold off next.

“A man and woman step in the hall, bringing Lark with them. The man is handsome, like a prince in a book of fairy tales. The woman is beautiful with fancy hair and pretty lipstick. Lark is wearing a frilly white dress. She looks like a tiny ballerina.” 

Again, Rill must stand by and watch her sibling get adopted by strangers in front of her. As with Gabion, it is clear that Lark is going to a home of privilege and comfort. The man and woman seem so unlike Briny and Queenie that they could just be character in a fairy tale to Rill. Lark too is being made into a storybook character, dressed up for a new life.

“I clutch her and dream about Arcadia then and it’s a good dream. We’re all together again and the day is so sweet, it’s like the drops of syrup from a honeysuckle vine. I stick out my tongue and taste and taste […] I run along the sandbars with my sisters and hide in the grass and wait for them to come and find me. Their voices are soft through the mist so I can’t tell how close or far they are.”

After losing two of her sisters—Camellia and Lark—as well as her baby brother Gabion, Rill tries her best to access them in her dreams. She clings to Fern, the last sister left to her, and imagines that they will somehow locate her. Even in her dreams, her sisters are elusive, and she is waiting to be discovered and reunited.