Walk Two Moons

Sal skips back to the moment when Gram and Gramps announce their plans for a cross-country trip. Sal’s father encourages her to go, ostensibly to keep an eye on his eccentric and accident-prone parents, but really because Lewiston is the place where Sal’s mother is “resting peacefully” (5). Sal feels an urgent need to reach Lewiston by her mother’s birthday: “During the week before we left, the sound of the wind was hurry, hurry, hurry, and at night even the silent darkness whispered rush, rush, rush” (6). Sal spends the first half hour on the road anxiously praying to trees. At that point, Gram and Gramps ask her to entertain them with a story, and Sal settles on the story of Phoebe, her mother, and the “lunatic.”

Phoebe’s story begins the day Sal and her father arrive in Euclid. After a brief visit with Mrs. Cadaver, whom Sal does her best to ignore, Sal and her father drive two blocks over to their new house. When school starts three days later, Sal recognizes Phoebe. Unlike most of the other students, who are talkative and curious about Sal, Phoebe is reserved. One day, however, she approaches Sal at lunch and praises her for her bravery; she’s impressed because Sal earlier picked up a spider and deposited it outside the school. Sal feels she’s scared of many things, but Gram interrupts her story to reassure Sal that all Hiddles—including Sal’s mother Sugar—are brave. Sal reflects that her mother, whose parents were very straitlaced, never felt entirely at home in the Hiddle family: “She would tell my father, ‘You Hiddles are a mystery to me. I’ll never be a true Hiddle.’ She did not say this proudly. She said it as if she were sorry about it, as if it were some sort of failing in her” (13).

Phoebe invites Sal to dinner. As the girls walk to Phoebe’s house after school, they pass Mrs. Partridge—Mrs. Cadaver’s blind, elderly mother, who’s sitting on her porch. She asks the girls to approach, correctly guessing Phoebe’s age after feeling her facial features. As the girls walk away, Phoebe expresses anxiety about Mrs. Partridge and Mrs. Cadaver, who only recently moved to the neighborhood. She then tells a story about a man at the State Fair who claimed to correctly guess people’s ages. Whenever Sal interrupts or asks a question, Phoebe replies, “That’s what I’m telling you,” which Sal thinks makes her sound like an adult (19).

Phoebe introduces Sal to her mother, who’s baking a blackberry pie; Sal claims to be allergic to avoid painful memories of her own mother. In the privacy of her bedroom, Phoebe tells Sal all the reasons she considers Margaret Cadaver suspicious: her last name, her “spooky” red hair (22), her voice that sounds like “dead leaves all blowing around on the ground” (22), etc. She also claims to have figured out what happened to Mrs. Cadaver’s husband.

Gram tells Sal she used to have a friend like “Peeby” (24): a woman named Gloria, who tried to persuade Gram not to marry Gramps because Gloria was infatuated with him. Gramps pulls into an Ohio rest stop, worrying Sal: Her grandparents have a tendency to get into trouble—they were once arrested for “borrowing” the tires off a senator’s car (25)—and she doesn’t want to waste time. At the rest stop, Gramps spots a woman whose car has broken down and goes to help. Claiming the problem is snakes underneath the hood, he pulls out all the car’s pipes and hoses. The woman eventually must call a mechanic, and Sal and her grandparents get back on the road.