Keesha's House

Jason is the second voice the reader hears in the sections for the teen characters. Jason’s main conflict relates to Stephie. She’s pregnant, and he’s the father. Jason’s basketball coach encapsulates Jason’s dilemma when he says, “Now what? He’s not one to shirk / responsibility” (37). Jason dreams of being a college basketball star, and he has the talent to realize his goal. However, Jason doesn’t want to abandon Stephie and their child. Jason illustrates his conflict through a basketball simile. Jason says, “It’s like I’m playing forward for one team / and guard for the other” (46). When Stephie is in the hospital, Jason seemingly chooses fatherhood and Stephie over basketball. Instead of playing in the game, he goes to Stephie, upsetting his coach. When the baby dies, the obstacle of teen parenting vanishes, and Jason can go to college and play basketball. Jason notes his privilege. Comparing his life with the other teen characters, he says, “Sometimes I wonder if it’s fair” (104). Jason doesn’t know why adversity is disproportionately distributed.

Jason has the most tenuous relationship with Keesha’s house. The other six characters rely on it at some point for a mix of shelter and support, but Jason has a caring father and questions the tenability of the network created by the teens. Jason says, “[T]hey're okay now, but things go wrong” (104). He brings up the authorities, but he vows not to tell them. Nevertheless, the mention turns Jason into an outlier. The character with the weakest relationship to the house is the character with faith in the adults and systems that make the house necessary by failing the other teen characters.

Keesha is the titular character, but she’s not the main character, as she shares the spotlight with the other six teens. The title is somewhat misleading, as the house doesn’t legally belong to Keesha. It’s Joe’s house, and Joe inherited it from his aunt. As Joe is a bit older than Keesha and the other kids, Joe lets Keesha run the house, so she functions as the manager, and the young people who go there refer to the safe space as Keesha’s house. When Joe appears, the young people ask, “Where’d you come from? Ain’t this Keesha’s house?” (77). People speculate that the girls have sex with Joe in exchange for him letting them stay, but Keesha directly counters that rumor.

Arguably, Keesha is the most independent and vulnerable teen character. Stephie and Jason have their families, Carmen has her grandmother, Dontay has his foster family, and Katie and Harris have a brother-sister relationship. Keesha’s mother is dead, her little brother is murdered, and her father is a violent man due to his substance use disorder. Her closest ally is Joe, who helps her express her grief after Tobias’s funeral. Nevertheless, Keesha presents herself as on her own. She says, “[L]ooks like I’m the driver. I shift gears, / head uphill with all the life I've got—my own” (105). Though she manages and cultivates a supportive environment, Keesha still feels like she can only rely on herself, which is perhaps why she looks out for the other vulnerable teens.

Like Stephie, Dontay chooses to run away. Dontay feels oppressed by the many rules of his foster family, and he believes the foster family privileges their “real son” over him, as the former has his own bathroom, a key to the house, and, in general, “the whole crib on lock” (8). Dontay’s presentation of his foster family conflicts with that of his caseworker and his foster father, who admits, “The rules that make our own kids feel secure / don’t work that way for him” (79). The different perspectives don’t make Dontay—or the other teen narrators—unreliable. Rather, they show how truth is inseparable from a person’s feelings. Dontay feels like his foster family views him as inferior and disposable, so that becomes his reality.

Dontay’s narrative closely parallels Tobias’s story. Dontay and Tobias become entwined with Jermaine and Dan, who are involved with drugs. Tobias works for Dan, but Dontay makes a different choice. Dontay realizes, “[S]omethin’ bound to go wrong. It’s harder / to get outta this than in” (66). Dontay and Tobias’s narratives diverge: Dontay leaves Jermaine and Dan, and he lives. As Tobias chooses to work for Dan, he dies. The juxtaposition offers a warning of what can happen when people choose to become involved with dangerous people and drugs.

Like Stephie, Dontay returns to his family, but Dontay’s perceptions about his foster family don’t substantially change. He admits he’s “almost happy,” but he still feels like a pet that the family can get rid of. Dontay’s main wish is a reunion with his parents, who, as the story ends, only have to serve three more months in jail for an unspecified crime.

Carmen’s primary conflict is substance use disorder with alcohol. She is friendly with Dontay, and after she gives him a ride home, she gets pulled over and put in a juvenile-detention center. The police find a “half-smoked blunt,” and Carmen had “one beer” a couple of hours before driving. Carmen also has a record. As Carmen spends most of the narrative in juvenile detention, her narrative functions separately from the other teen characters. As she doesn’t have much to do in the bleak juvenile detention, Carmen writes. She says, “They give us two sheets / of paper, once a week, for letters, and I treat them like new shoes / to take me where I want to go. I write things down to keep my inside self alive” (53). Carmen’s character reinforces poetry’s ability to convey complex emotions. While each character expresses intricate feelings in their poems, Frost shows Carmen as she writes. The action transports her to a different place and brings catharsis—a quality often attributed to poetry writing.

Almost all of the teen characters experience external changes. Their precarious situations compel them to manage an array of environments and possibilities. Yet, internally, most of the teen characters remain mindful and resilient. Carmen transforms internally: She chooses to stop consuming alcohol. Her change alters her environment, leading her to Keesha’s house, where the teens don’t judge her for not drinking.

Harris’s conflict begins when he tells his parents he wants to take a boy to the winter dance. The announcement reveals his gay identity, and Harris’s father is vehemently anti-gay, so he kicks him out of the house. Harris’s mother isn’t anti-gay, but she doesn’t stand up to her husband, so she becomes complicit in her son’s displacement. Harris’s mother takes him to lunch and tries to reconcile, but Harris is unforgiving, stating, “Blah, blah, blah. Neither of my parents has enough / backbone” (97). Like the other teen characters, Harris is tough, and he gets a job, goes to school, and lives out of his car until Katie familiarizes him with Keesha’s house.

Aside from his resilience, Harris is caring, humorous, and endearingly naive. About his wish to go to the dance with another boy, Harris realizes, “What made me think I could have danced with him / in public?” without coming out as gay (13). Harris’s father isn’t the only character who expresses anti-gay beliefs: Students bully Harris at school because of his sexuality. Yet Harris has a sense of humor about his gay identity, and Dontay helps Harris laugh about the oppressive norms when Dontay jokes, “We'll find a cure / for you someday” (108). Harris also looks out for other people. At the library, he’s aware of predators and watches out for the younger people.

Katie’s primary conflict centers on her mother’s new husband—her stepfather—who’s abusive. He’s physically abusive, as he twists her army after she knocks over one of his trophies. He’s sexually abusive since he invades her room at night and tries to touch her. Like Harris, Katie’s mother doesn’t challenge her husband, though Katie’s version of events makes it unclear what her mother knows. Katie says, “I didn’t tell her what he tries to do / to me when she works late” (14). However, when Katie’s mother visits her at Keesha’s house, Katie tells her mother that she’ll return if the husband leaves. Nevertheless, Katie’s mother presents herself as ignorant. The mother worries that Joe is “molesting” Katie. About Katie, the mother says, “She gets that look on her face / like I should know what’s wrong without being told” (83). Arguably, Katie’s mother is ready to listen, but Katie isn’t prepared to communicate with her. However, as the parent, it is also reasonable to conclude that Katie’s mother should confront her husband, as the circumstances must be severe in order for Katie to move out. Further, though her mother might not know about the molestation, she does know about the non-sexual violence.

Another conflict for Katie is her work-school balance. When the bus alters its schedule, Katie worries that she won’t have enough time to go from school to the Pancake House. The situation showcases Katie’s precarity. Her life is fragile, so one change, like the bus schedule, can upend the delicate composition. Harris’s appearance brings relief, as he can give her rides to the Pancake House. Harris and Katie become like brother and sister, and Katie also thinks of Keesha as a sister. All three live in the house when the story ends, so they function as a family.