The Yellow House

Broom writes that she was born in distress and has “been in it ever since” (146). Her Uncle Junius is buried the day she is born in December 1979. Although this is Ivory Mae’s ninth delivery, Broom is her only cesarean section. Ivory Mae has two weeks of bed rest after the birth and heals slowly. No one tells Broom anything about how her father reacted to her birth.

In the summer of 1980, Simon comes home one day with a headache. Ivory Mae finds him slumped over in the bathroom. At the hospital, the doctors say Simon had an aneurysm and that even if he wakes from his coma, he will be a vegetable. Simon dies shortly after, the day before Father’s Day, at the age of 56. Ivory Mae was 39. After Simon’s death, Ivory Mae becomes more self-conscious about the house, which becomes Ivory Mae’s “thirteenth and most unruly child” (153).

The children take Simon’s death hard. Byron, the youngest son, stops speaking for several weeks. He later becomes a marine. Lynette has nightmares about the room where he died. Simon’s co-workers donate more than one thousand dollars to the family. At this point, Ivory Mae has six adult children, two teenagers, and four young children. Widowed twice, Ivory Mae decides not to date. Ivory Mae never managed money, bills, or learned to drive, but after Simon’s death, she learns quickly. Darryl is arrested shortly after Simon’s death for stealing computers from a school. Ivory Mae cannot afford to bail him out. Carl starts working. Broom describes Christmas Day 1980. She is a wandering child, always in motion.

Broom’s life growing up has five main places. The closest one is her own world. She describes it as a blur. Broom has poor eyesight, which she hides from her mother until she is ten. The furthest point in her life is her Grandmother Amelia’s house in St. Rose. Here, Broom experiences the country. Her house on Wilson Avenue, Pastor Simmons’s house-church that they attend, and Jefferson Davis Elementary are the other parts of her world.

In kindergarten, she becomes Sarah. Before this, she was Monique. She was called Monique because her brother Michael insisted that her name started with an M so they would be linked. He was tripping on LSD in the Charity Hospital psych ward when she was born. No one calls her Sarah until she goes to school. The children at school are Black and Vietnamese. Her peers call her Syrup, Surrah, or Searah. She doesn’t correct them. Her best friend is her next-door neighbor Alvin who is in third grade. Alvin is her first kiss. When she is seven, her mother studies for her nursing exams. She keeps failing the tests but tries again. Lynette goes to a school for gifted kids. Broom loves playing school, pretending to be the teacher. Always in a hurry and unconcerned about her appearance, Broom is very different than Lynette, who is beautiful and joins a lot of clubs.

On Lynette’s 13th birthday, Alvin’s brother Herman comes to the door and says that his mother died of pneumonia. There are rumors that Alvin’s mother, Big Karen, practiced voodoo. At ten, Broom gets glasses, and her experience of the world changes. She sees leaves on trees and sex workers on Chef Menteur Highway. She is particularly struck by the sight of “women’s heads bobbing up and down in the driver’s seat” (183) of police cars. Broom learns to remove her glasses to avoid seeing things she doesn’t want to see.