The Liars' Club

This chapter focuses on Karr’s mother’s background. Karr remembers a visit that she, Lecia, and their mother made to her grandmother’s house in Lubbock, where her mother was raised. Lubbock is described as a flat, dry landscape that is the near opposite of Leechfield, Karr’s hometown. Of Leechfield, Karr writes: “[T]he place was in a swamp, so whatever industrial poisons got pumped into the sky just seemed to sink down and thicken in the heat. I later learned that Leechfield at that time was the manufacturing site for Agent Orange, which surprised me not one bit” (34). She describes a game that she and the other neighborhood children would play, bicycling behind a DDT truck and seeing who could bicycle the slowest, without falling off of their bicycle: “Add to that the wet white cloud of poison the mosquito truck pumped out to wrap around your sweaty body [...] and you have just the kind of game we liked best—one where the winners got to vomit and faint” (41).

Karr’s mother (whose given name is Charlie) drives Karr and Lecia to their maternal grandmother’s house after a fight with their father, during which she threatens to divorce him. During the drive to Lubbock, a storm of locusts besieges their car. While in West Texas, they tour the cotton farm of Charlie’s wealthy cousin, Dotty, and stay for a few days in her fancy house. Karr remembers Dotty’s son Robert, who tried to entertain her and her sister and who later committed suicide after having served in Vietnam: “That was about the only story I ever heard implying that anybody in Mother’s family was inherently Nervous” (33). 

Karr describes her maternal grandmother as a severe and eccentric woman, who once made the toddler Charlie pose for a commemorative outdoor photograph, during the winter, when she was sick with pneumonia and was not expected to live through the night. She enlisted the teenaged Charlie in spying on the neighbors, and as a grandmother she is obsessed with chores, decorum, and order. At the end of the chapter, she arrives to stay with the family in Leechfield, for the reason that she is dying of cancer. She puts an end to the family’s offhand ways, hiring a maid and insisting on regular, formal dinnertimes. While Lecia adjusts to the new routine and formality that their grandmother instills, Karr detests it and fights it: “The worst part wasn’t all the change she brought, but the silence that came with it. Nobody said anything about how we’d lived before” (46). 

Despite her mother’s disapproval of her marriage, Charlie eventually returns with her daughters to Leechfield. Karr describes frequent and dramatic fights between her parents—fights which she and her sister would imitate, alone in their bedroom—along with her father’s assumption that they would never, despite these fights, divorce: “In his world, only full-blown lunatics got divorced. Regular citizens in a bad marriage just hunkered down and stood it” (35). Karr’s volatile family life causes their neighbors to give them a wide berth, and they are rarely solicited for help or invited to local functions.

Karr recalls how once her grandmother died of cancer, she and her older sister described to their neighbors the horrific progression of her grandmother’s illness to solicit sympathy. As she remembers, such stories often made her neighbors offer them candy and Popsicles. These stories also served to make her grandmother’s death cartoonish to Karr, rather than all too real and commonplace: “Real suffering has a face and a smell […] And it knows your name” (49). Karr recalls how once her grandmother died of cancer, she and her older sister described to their neighbors the horrific progression of her grandmother’s illness to solicit sympathy. As she remembers, such stories often made her neighbors offer them candy and Popsicles. These stories also served to make her grandmother’s death cartoonish to Karr, rather than all too real and commonplace: “Real suffering has a face and a smell […] And it knows your name” (49).

Karr then remembers visiting her grandmother in the hospital. Her grandmother’s leg has just been amputated, having first been sprayed with mustard gas, and the sight of it horrifies Karr. Her mother’s brittle fortitude also bewilders her. Her mother spends almost all of her time in the hospital, quitting her newspaper reporting job in order to tend to her own mother. She spends her spare hours painting a portrait of her mother in a studio that Karr’s father, along with his Liars’ Club friends, has recently built for her. Karr sneaks in to the studio to study the progress of the portrait, curious about the evidence that it gives of her mother’s inner life and about the artistic process in general. On an impulse, she defaces the finished portrait, painting a smear of orange on the figure’s mouth. She never confesses to this defacing, and her mother assumes a local vandal did it.

While Karr’s mother is capricious and unpredictable, Karr’s father is relatively steady and set in his ways. Karr is comforted by the Liars’ Club gatherings, including their building of the studio and a new garage bedroom for Karr’s parents: “With Daddy and his friends, I always knew what would happen and that left me feeling a sort of dreamy safety” (59).

Karr’s grandmother returns from the hospital, with a pegged leg and a wheelchair. Although frail, she remains bossy and tyrannical. Her illness and her constant demands push Karr to get out of the house as often as possible. She plays with the neighborhood kids, which she remembers as both a chaotic and a strangely comforting ritual: “[T]here was almost something sacred about that pack of kids we got folded into. No matter how strange our family was thought to be, we blended into the tribe when we all played together” (63).

Karr is taken away from this comforting herd by a local teenaged boy, a charismatic ringleader. One afternoon, he leads her into an abandoned garage and rapes her; she is 7 years old at the time. Afterwards he walks her home, then disappears to watch a baseball game at the local park. She is frightened of being thought of as weak and vows that she will tell no one what has happened to her.

Karr then remembers visiting her grandmother in the hospital. Her grandmother’s leg has just been amputated, having first been sprayed with mustard gas, and the sight of it horrifies Karr. Her mother’s brittle fortitude also bewilders her. Her mother spends almost all of her time in the hospital, quitting her newspaper reporting job in order to tend to her own mother. She spends her spare hours painting a portrait of her mother in a studio that Karr’s father, along with his Liars’ Club friends, has recently built for her. Karr sneaks in to the studio to study the progress of the portrait, curious about the evidence that it gives of her mother’s inner life and about the artistic process in general. On an impulse, she defaces the finished portrait, painting a smear of orange on the figure’s mouth. She never confesses to this defacing, and her mother assumes a local vandal did it.

While Karr’s mother is capricious and unpredictable, Karr’s father is relatively steady and set in his ways. Karr is comforted by the Liars’ Club gatherings, including their building of the studio and a new garage bedroom for Karr’s parents: “With Daddy and his friends, I always knew what would happen and that left me feeling a sort of dreamy safety” (59).

Karr’s grandmother returns from the hospital, with a pegged leg and a wheelchair. Although frail, she remains bossy and tyrannical. Her illness and her constant demands push Karr to get out of the house as often as possible. She plays with the neighborhood kids, which she remembers as both a chaotic and a strangely comforting ritual: “[T]here was almost something sacred about that pack of kids we got folded into. No matter how strange our family was thought to be, we blended into the tribe when we all played together” (63).

Karr is taken away from this comforting herd by a local teenaged boy, a charismatic ringleader. One afternoon, he leads her into an abandoned garage and rapes her; she is 7 years old at the time. Afterwards he walks her home, then disappears to watch a baseball game at the local park. She is frightened of being thought of as weak and vows that she will tell no one what has happened to her.

Although Karr’s grandmother’s cancer has now spread to her brain, this only makes her behavior more severe and controlling. She is in favor of corporal punishment for Karr and Lecia, and even goes so far as to make her own bullwhip for their mother to use on them. Charlie complies with her mother’s wishes, but her whippings are halfhearted and perfunctory.

One day, while Lecia and Charlie are both at church, Karr’s grandmother summons her into her room, telling her that she is glad to have some private time with her and that there is something that she wants to show her. This turns out to be a photograph in a locket of a boy and a girl—two half-siblings that Karr never knew she had, from an earlier marriage of her mother’s. Their names are Belinda and Tex, and Karr now understands why their grandmother has sometimes called Lecia Belinda. She is repulsed by the smell around her grandmother, which she likens to the smell of water moccasins and which she now understands to be the smell of encroaching death.

Hurricane Carla is said to be heading towards Leechfield. Karr watches her mother watching the hurricane reports on television. She is highly attuned to her mother’s emotional state, and she knows that her mother’s stillness and silence may be a sign of another nervous breakdown. Even while many Leechfield citizens leave, Karr and her family stay where they are. Karr’s own father has stopped coming home from work, and Karr explains that this is the moment when he began to disappear from their lives: “It’s odd to me now how easily I let him leave our lives that fall at such an ugly time […] Maybe his absence was inevitable as we got older” (83).   

On the day of the storm, a national guardsman finally summons Karr’s family out of their house. He has to carry their grandmother, who has tried to sequester herself in their bathroom, to their car. Their mother drives them to their paternal aunt Iris’s house, which is an hour’s drive north of Leechfield. Despite the wild storm, their mother drives fast and recklessly, even while remaining eerily contained and calm. At one point they drive over a high bridge, and at the highest point of the bridge their car goes into a terrifying spin. Karr is unable to remember exactly how this happened, and she and Lecia remember the event—as they do many events from their childhood—differently; Lecia claims that it was Karr’s fault for distracting their mother. Their mother eventually rights the car and continues on, but their mother’s lack of affect and their brush with death traumatizes her.

She is too disturbed even to be comforted by their safe arrival at their aunt’s house. Once there, Karr and her sister are put in charge of keeping watch over their elderly grandfather. Their grandmother meanwhile goes into a bedroom to lie down. Karr goes in to see her and notices a trail of ants crawling down her strangely still and dangling arm: “I don’t know if I thought she was dead or what. All I knew was her state at that instant was way more than I’d bargained for” (96).

After the hurricane, Karr and her family return to Leechfield. The hurricane has in fact not landed in their town, but has instead destroyed the nearby town of Cameron, Louisiana. The television footage showing flooded houses and water creatures swimming around in living rooms fascinates Karr. She is also morbidly fascinated by the human destruction that the hurricane has caused. Together with her grandmother’s recent death, this destruction makes her feel skeptical about the existence of God and jaundiced towards some of her more pious neighbors.

Karr’s grandmother turns out not to have died in Lubbock, but simply to have fallen into a coma; however, she dies a few days later, once they have returned to Leechfield. Karr and Lecia are informed of her death by their kindly principal Frank Doleman, who then drives them home from school. Their grandmother’s death upsets Lecia more than Karr, and this causes a rift between them. While the general idea of death haunts Karr, she is straightforward about being glad that her grandmother is gone.

Their mother goes alone to the funeral, telling Karr and Lecia that she thinks that the funeral will be too upsetting for them; the adult Karr suspects that she simply wanted to be alone: “Mother had left us at home because she was hurt. For her, being hurt meant drawing into herself” (103). Their father tends to the girls while she is gone, and when their mother returns from the funeral, the family takes a trip to the nearby McFadden Beach. It is an unappealing beach, especially with all of the fish washed up on the shore from the hurricane. Even so, Karr and her sister run into the water, while their mother disappears into a waterfront bar. Their father later joins their mother there.

Karr and her sister have been warned by their father about the man-of-war, with its poisonous suction cups and long strangling tendrils. Nevertheless, while their parents are both at the bar, Lecia goes too far out into the water and one attacks her. Karr must run to fetch her parents and is disturbed by their offhandedness and ineffectuality: “[T]hey seemed way too calm. I mean, neither of them lit a cigarette or anything, but it took a long time before either of them really did much” (115).

Eventually, with the help of some onlookers and nearby fishermen, Leica’s leg is extricated from the man-of-war’s grip and she is taken to the hospital. When she returns home, she is back to her old bossy self, although she is still physically weak. She charges neighborhood children money to look at her leg, makes Karr run errands for her, and at one point even pushes Karr into the pull-out laundry hamper. 

Karr remembers a Christmas Liars’ Club meeting, during which her father tells his drinking buddies a tall tale about his own father’s death. Karr knows her paternal grandfather to be alive. As her father tells it, his father fell through a roof on which he was climbing and accidentally hung himself. The tale arouses real fear in Karr, who has recently been preoccupied with death, and she asks her father what happens after you die. Her father replies flatly, “You lay down in a box, and they throw some dirt on you” (125).

After the New Year, Karr’s parents’ relationship becomes more fractious. Karr’s mother has been depressed and mostly bedridden, following her mother’s death. While both of Karr’s parents are heavy drinkers, Karr remembers her father as a steady drinker who could hold his liquor well; she remembers her mother’s drinking as heightening her already volatile moods. She recalls keeping track of the amount of alcohol that her mother consumed and keeping an eye out for danger signs. She remembers that when her mother listened to opera records while she was drinking, her mood would often turn nostalgic and wistful, and she would tell her children stories about her time in New York City. When her mother listened to blues records, on the other hand, it was often a sign of an imminent destructive outburst.

Karr’s mother happens to be listening to blues records during Karr’s birthday, even while she is preparing a special meal for Karr. Karr’s father has uncharacteristically agreed to come home for dinner. Karr’s mother and father soon get into a fight about the amount of money that Karr’s mother has spent on Karr for birthday gifts, which include a fancy black dress. The fight culminates with Karr’s mother throwing the pot of lasagna that she has been cooking out the window at Karr’s father, as he walks out of the house.

The family later attempts to salvage the party by going out to a local seafood place, a dinner of which Karr remembers little. She does remember their drive back home, which takes them across the Orange Bridge. As they are driving up the bridge, Karr’s mother again starts screaming at Karr’s father. She takes the wheel out of his hands, and attempts to steer the car off of the bridge: “She’s trying to take us over the edge. There’s no doubt this time” (139). Karr’s father rights the car by punching Karr’s mother unconscious, and they drive safely the rest of the way home. Once they pull into their driveway, Karr’s mother regains consciousness and immediately scratches Karr’s father’s face, leaving long marks. Karr is aware of their neighbors watching her parents’ altercation.

The oil refinery where Karr’s father works has been on strike, and he must struggle to keep up with his bill payments. Karr recalls watching the complex, yet apparently casual, exchange between him and the local pharmacist. Karr’s father gives the pharmacist regular small payments towards his debt, and the pharmacist demurs each time before accepting the payment: “The movements of it were both so exact and so fiercely casual that I never for a minute doubted that this whole money thing was, in fact, not casual at all, but serious as a stone” (142).

Karr’s mother has meanwhile inherited a significant amount of money from her own mother, on whose land oil has recently been found. Karr comes home from school one day to discover a letter to her mother from a lawyer, detailing the amount of money that she will inherit and their plans to lease the land. While the adult Karr cannot recall the exact amount of money that her mother inherited, she remembers that it seemed like a dizzying amount to her child self: “I just remember my index finger stumping from one zero to the next. I counted till it hit me that we were in the one hundred thousand dollar range, just one zero shy of the million mark, that magic number that sent dollar signs flying through movie montages” (147).

Karr then registers the silence and the disorderliness of the house. She walks through the house, calling for her mother. She sees that all of the mirrors in the house have been broken and smeared with lipstick. This is a more chaotic version of some of her mother’s earlier artistic projects, including covering Karr’s and her sister’s bedroom window with improvised curtains made out of wax paper and melted crayons. She finally finds her mother in her studio, sitting and feeding all of her own mother’s old mail into the stove. Karr immediately intuits that her mother is drunk and disturbed and that she should not bother her.

Karr’s mother then goes on a frightening rampage through their house, a scene that Karr only remembers in pieces. At one moment Karr’s mother is in Karr’s and her sister’s bedroom, throwing all of their toys and clothes into a box; she is muttering to herself about being a “hausfrau” (153), and her actions seem like a furious, childlike caricature of cleaning house. Karr then remembers her mother outside in their yard, feeding all of their things into a large bonfire. She feels certain that the neighbors must have noticed this alarming scene but decided not to get involved. She also speculates that her father might have heard from a neighbor what was happening but equally decided to ignore it and to stay where he was: “Daddy could turn the volume on any portion of the world up or down when he had a mind to” (155).   

Karr eventually finds her own internal distance from her mother’s rampage, going into a self-protective state of stillness and disassociation. Her mother therefore seems small and almost harmless to her when she is standing over her and her sister Lecia, holding a knife over their heads: “She’s just a head like a ball and curly scribbles for hair […] This stick figure holds a triangle knife with a star glinting off its end” (157). No one else having intervened, Karr’s mother then puts her own end to this scene. She calls an ambulance on herself, telling the doctor that she has “killed” (158) her daughters, and is sent away to a psychiatric ward.

After their mother has been sent off to the hospital, Karr and her sister must face down the taunting of neighborhood kids. According to Karr, this taunting was commonplace in her neighborhood, and no affliction or hardship was too severe to escape it. She describes the ritual harsh teasing as a backhanded form of sociability and solidarity: “The theory behind it held that not mentioning a painful episode was a way of pretending that the misery of it didn’t exist” (161).

Karr remembers her father telling a story about his own difficult mother, during a Liars’ Club meeting. This meeting takes place in a bayou cabin, following a duck hunt. Karr’s father’s story is periodically interrupted by the weary squabbling of Shug, the one black man in the group, and Cooter, who is white and openly racist. Karr’s father describes a fierce whipping that his mother gave both him and his older brother, after they disobeyed her by swimming in a high river after a flood. Karr’s father claims he then poured turpentine in his brother’s sores, in order to get revenge on him for telling their mother the truth about what they did. Karr is troubled by this story for what it reveals about her father’s capacity for backhanded meanness: “I’ve seen him fight, but I’ve never seen this sneaky meanness he talks about at the Liars’ Club” (170).

Karr’s father takes her and her sister Lecia to visit their mother at the psychiatric ward, which is a plain brick building in the middle of a vast field. They do not go inside the building, but rather talk to their mother through a heavily screened window. Karr remembers her mother as looking like a ghost, the layers of chicken-wire between them wiping out her features. She can tell that her mother is crying from the broken sound of her voice. Lecia talks to their mother after Karr does, and Karr is jealous of their more intimate and forthcoming conversation and of the fact that they kiss goodbye through the window.   

Karr associates her mother’s white palm against the hospital window with another traumatized woman’s white-palmed hand. One morning, while her mother is still in the hospital, the wife of Bugsy Juarez, the kindly local pharmacist, stops by their house. This woman’s hands are still covered with flour from having been making biscuits; she tells Karr’s father that Bugsy Juarez has just shot himself in their garage. Karr registers her white handprint afterwards on the kitchen counter and it haunts her: “It put me in mind of Mother every time I passed by, till Lecia finally sponged it off before supper” (175).