Make Lemonade

As part of the Moms Up Program, Jolly takes swimming classes with Jilly while Jeremy takes his own separate swimming classes. Jolly and the other young moms joke about how they’re “all/gonna live in Palm Springs/with their own pools and their butlers” (163), but really Jolly is acquiring survival skills, including CPR. In addition to learning more academic, practical skills like “accounting and geography” (164), Jolly studies child safety, and as LaVaughn helps her study, soon both Jolly and LaVaughn know more about how to keep Jolly’s children safe.

For school, Jolly must complete a math assignment using her children’s favorite foods: she has to estimate how many Hershey’s Kisses Jeremy will eat in his life. Jolly gets confused, and both girls end up laughing; LaVaughn observes that she and Jolly have been laughing more and more about Jolly’s “Situation[s]” (166), as she calls them. These “Situations” include the fact that “not only 1 but 2 guys got [Jolly] so confused she got pregnant,” and “she thinks that billionaire in the newspaper/is gonna pay her rent” (166). Now, LaVaughn considers that maybe joking about her problems is Jolly’s way of “taking hold” (167), of dealing with her difficulties—although LaVaughn isn’t sure whether it’s the “right” or “wrong way” (167).

As LaVaughn is about to leave, Jeremy studies his lemon pot, singing “‘Lemon blom, lemon blom’” (167). Jolly suddenly turns serious as she contemplates how Jeremy, like all humans, “‘will die someday’” (168). LaVaughn doesn’t know what to say; she thinks that there aren’t “any words” to describe “what Jolly knows and I know and Jeremy don’t” (168).

Jolly is excited to tell LaVaughn a story she heard in her Parent Skills class. The story concerns a poor blind woman who treks to the market to buy one orange she’ll divide among her starving children. A throng of “‘bad boys’” (170) trip her so that she falls and loses the orange, but one of the boys apologizes and gives her back her cane and the orange. Yet when she returns home, the woman smells the fruit and realizes the boy replaced it with a lemon. She’s angry with herself for not examining the fruit more carefully when the boy first returned it to her, and Jolly identifies with the woman’s feelings. As Jolly says, “‘you go stumblin’ home,/ all bleeding or however you’re hurt—/and you say to yourself;/Well, gosh, I guess somebody give me a lemon./Ain’t I stupid […] I must’ve deserved it/if I was so stupid not to know’” (172).

Next, the old woman finds a “‘teensy bit’” of sugar (173), mixes it with lemon juice and water, and makes lemonade for her hungry children—and “‘that’s the point’” (173) of the story. LaVaughn feels that Jolly’s story is more effective than her mom, “with all the preaching and huffing” (173), and she wants to hug Jolly but stops herself. Then, on this same day, Jilly walks on two feet for the first time, “not knowing whether she’s gonna fall down/or fly” (174).

LaVaughn is “remotivated” (175) after Jolly’s story and decides to teach Jeremy to count. As part of the lesson, she gives him seven lemon seeds, along with a new pot and soil. LaVaughn is sure that because she’s using potting soil and fertilizer, the seeds will grow this time, and she and Jeremy slap each other five—another number Jeremy has just learned.

Jolly keeps an eye out for a response from the billionaire she’s written to, as she remains sure he’ll pay her rent. LaVaughn isn’t so convinced, but she thinks that now that Jolly is in school and motivated, “things don’t feel so falling apart around here” (178). While Jolly’s situation is still difficult, at least it isn’t “getting worse” (179).

Finally, a letter arrives from the billionaire, who says that when Jolly sends him a copy of her GED certificate, her “tenacity will be rewarded” (179) and he’ll give her a check. In the meantime, he’s sent a five-dollar check so she can buy something for Jeremy and Jilly. Neither LaVaughn nor Jolly knows the meaning of the word “tenacity,” but they both look forward to the time Jolly will receive her reward.

LaVaughn turns from thinking about Jolly’s education to considering her own, and she reminds herself of all the classes she must take so she can attend college and become a teacher. LaVaughn is also interested in the Day Care Apprentice Program so she can learn “communication with little ones” (181); she seems inspired by her connection with Jeremy and Jilly. LaVaughn wishes she could ask her father if she should become a teacher, and if things will all “turn out okay” (182).

LaVaughn begins this chapter by saying she’ll “never forget […] the sound in Jolly’s voice” as she says “that one word” to her daughter (183). Jilly is “doing wrong things at the rate of 1 per minute” (183): turning on the stove, ripping her brother’s book, spilling nail polish—before she puts a toy plastic tarantula in her mouth and starts to choke. Jolly “whacks” (184) Jilly’s back and does CPR, yelling for LaVaughn to call 911—but Jeremy is already at the phone, pushing the 9 button before LaVaughn finishes the call for him.

Jilly has passed out and turned blue, and then her pulse disappears. On the phone, the 911 operator tells LaVaughn they should tilt Jilly’s head and open her airway, but Jolly is already doing so—she’s learned how in her CPR class. Jolly continues doing CPR and tells Jilly to “breathe” (188), in “a voice like an animal somewhere out in the dark/all reaching all alone” (188)—the voice that LaVaughn will never forget for the rest of her life.

Finally, Jilly vomits up a plastic spider leg while LaVaughn runs downstairs to meet the ambulance. The 911 responders take Jilly and Jolly to the hospital, and LaVaughn is left alone with Jeremy, “in charge of [his] disappointment” (190) as the boy witnesses a crisis he doesn’t understand.

Jeremy and LaVaughn stand “among the onlookers” (191) as the ambulance rushes off, and LaVaughn hears the observers whispering about how hard Jeremy and Jilly’s lives must be with their “ignoran[t]” young mom (191). LaVaughn, however, doesn’t agree: Jolly was able to save her daughter from choking, and how many of these people could do that? Jeremy, meanwhile, helped saved his sister by dialing 9 on the phone.

Back in Jolly’s apartment, LaVaughn cleans up Jilly’s throw-up, but she doesn’t want to stay there and asks her mom if she can bring Jeremy to spend the night. Her mom agrees, and LaVaughn leaves a notes for Jolly and takes the bus home. As Jeremy tells other bus riders what happened, in his understanding—how his sister threw up and his mom hit her and blew on her—LaVaughn thinks how Jolly never stopped fighting to “save her child from dying in front of her on the floor” (193).

LaVaughn arrives home and explains what happened to her mom, and her mom tells Jeremy “‘Your mommy she’s a hero’” (196), then picks Jeremy up and spins him around. She tells Jeremy he’s a hero, too, and LaVaughn tries not to “get spiteful” (196) about the way her mother looked down on Jolly in the past.

LaVaughn says that sometimes, when she thinks back on her time with Jolly, her most striking memory is of “my mother/whirling Jeremy around in the kitchen/and she’s telling him he’s a hero” (197). LaVaughn goes on to explain that several months have passed, and Jolly has a babysitting pool with another girl in her program, so she doesn’t need LaVaughn’s help anymore. Jolly almost has enough credits to graduate, and the school newspaper printed a picture of her and Jilly, with a caption about Jolly saving her child. Jolly never calls LaVaughn anymore—LaVaughn has “been broken off,/like part of her bad past” (198). LaVaughn now has a new job cleaning a church a few times a week.

One day, Jolly approaches LaVaughn in school and says, “‘You couldn’t guess what come up out of that dirt’” (198). LaVaughn feels her “heart […] stretching” (198) with the desire to reconnect and laugh with Jolly again, but Jolly just explains there’s “‘a little lemon thing’” (199) coming from Jeremy’s pot, before she walks off.

Again, LaVaughn thinks how odd it is of her to remember Jeremy with her own mom, and she “wonder[s] how it would be for Jeremy/in another place” (199), where he’d have matching clothes and even a father. Yet for just a moment, LaVaughn thinks that Jeremy “forgot all the fear and all the hardness” (199) as her mother lifted the young boy in the air, “her mouth wide open and full of praise” (200).