Piecing Me Together

Maxine is Jade’s mentor in the organization Woman to Woman. She is an upper-middle-class black woman and a St. Francis alum. Jade and Maxine’s relationship gets off to a rough start when Maxine stands Jade up at her first-ever Woman to Woman meeting. Jade sees Maxine for the first time when Maxine comes to Jade’s family home after missing the meeting. Jade observes her standing on their family doorstep: “She’s way too pretty to be here for E.J. Her hair is crinkled and wild, all over the place—but on purpose. She’s somewhere in the middle of thick and big-boned. I want to look like that. Instead I’m just plump” (39). At the beginning of the novel, Maxine treats Jade as someone to be fixed, and whose fixing will edify Maxine. By the end of the novel, Maxine has seen how she has been mistreating Jade. Chief among the changes that she makes, Maxine begins listening to Jade, trying to hear what she really needs. 

Sam Franklin is one of Jade’s best friends at St. Francis. She is white with dark brown hair that she usually wears pulled back into a “mess of a ponytail” (11). Sam is from Northeast Portland, an impoverished and almost completely white neighborhood in the city. She is one of the only other scholarship students aside from Jade; they bond over the experience of being from poor families at a school where their peers are incredibly wealthy. Jade meets Sam because they both take the 35 bus to school. Sam has trouble seeing racial bias in everyday life, even when Jade points out how racist incidents affect her. Sam and Jade stop speaking to one another for a period, but once Sam learns to listen to Jade’s feelings about the race-related discrimination she faces, their friendship is repaired. 

Jade’s mother is divorced and works two jobs to support her family. Jade is her only child, but her younger brother, E.J., also lives with them in their small house in North Portland. Jade’s mother is perpetually tired and under stress: “And though she is resting, I can tell by her face that there is no peace for her, not even in her dreams” (21). When Jade wants to quit Woman to Woman, her mother forbids it, advising Jade that even imperfect people like Maxine have something to teach her. Jade and her mother have a close relationship: “Mom looks at me with her knowing eyes. She can tell I’m upset. She always knows how I’m feeling, even when I don’t know how to put it in words” (35).