Opening
Eleven-year-old narrator Delphine Gaither flies from Brooklyn to Oakland with her sisters, Fern Gaither and Vonetta Gaither, to spend the summer with the mother who left them, Cecile Johnson (Nzila). Delphine manages fear, money, and manners while chasing small, private victories—only to collide with a mother who refuses warmth, food, or even company. These first five chapters lock in the novel’s central tension: a child forced into adulthood facing a woman who denies motherhood.
What Happens
Chapter 1: Cassius Clay Clouds
On a turbulent flight to California, Delphine, calm and watchful, reframes the plane’s bumps as punches from Cassius Clay to soothe her sisters. The trip is their father’s idea: it’s time the girls see the mother who abandoned them seven years earlier. In a flashback to their departure, Big Ma fusses at the gate, calling JFK “Idlewild” and Oakland a “boiling pot of trouble,” still stuck on “Cassius Clay” instead of Muhammad Ali. She tries and fails to recruit a glamorous Black woman to chaperone them.
Delphine carries two hundred emergency dollars hidden in her shoe and memories of Cecile that flicker like “projector slides”—partial, dark, and sharp. With no adult willing to claim them, she accepts full command: seatbelts, snacks, and silence. She steels herself for what waits on the ground.
Chapter 2: Golden Gate Bridge
As the plane descends, the pilot announces the Golden Gate Bridge is visible on the left. Delphine burns to see it, but she’s wedged between her sisters; Vonetta sulks and refuses to look, Fern doesn’t care. Delphine’s yearning to be a kid clashes with her job as caretaker—a live-wire conflict in her Coming of Age.
She decides at least one of them will see the bridge. Leaning over a protesting Vonetta, Delphine earns a scolding from the stewardess and a wash of shame—“disgracing the entire Negro race”—but catches the orange steel knifing through cloud. The win is brief. She snaps back into protector mode, steadying her sisters as the plane thuds into Oakland.
Chapter 3: Secret Agent Mother
At baggage claim, they wait for “mother.” Delphine tests the word and finds it empty—just a fact, not “Mommy” or “Mama,” sharpening the ache of Family, Motherhood, and Abandonment. A large white woman coos over them as “adorable dolls,” presses money into Fern’s hand, and blurs curiosity into condescension.
Then Delphine spots her: a tall, dark-skinned woman in men’s pants, hat, and dark glasses—like a secret agent. Cecile confirms to the stewardess the girls are “mine” and strides away, expecting them to follow. She takes a cab partway, where the driver calls her “Zilla,” then makes the girls transfer to a public bus, haggling for a free fare by lying about Delphine’s age. The distance between them is immediate, physical, and chosen.
Chapter 4: Green Stucco House
Big Ma insists Cecile “lives on the street.” Instead, they arrive at a small, prickly green stucco house with a lone palm tree bristling out front. Inside, the place is spare and spotless: no TV, no clutter, blank walls where Delphine dimly remembers writing and words. The house feels barricaded—kept clean against intrusion.
When Vonetta asks about a TV, Cecile mutters, “I didn’t send for you... Should have gone to Mexico to get rid of you when I had the chance.” Delphine decides: their mother is crazy. Back in the girls’ room, she shields her sisters by translating the cruelty—Mexico as “where women go who don’t want their babies”—and absorbs the blow herself, another step in Identity and Self-Discovery.
Chapter 5: Mean Lady Ming
Hunger finally pushes the girls to Cecile’s door. She seems startled they expect dinner and demands the emergency cash. After a tense pause, Delphine surrenders the shoe money. Cecile peels off ten dollars and orders them to fetch Chinese food from Ming’s—alone, at night—and bans them from using her kitchen: “No sense dirtying dishes.”
Outside, a boy on a homemade go-kart nearly clips them; Oakland feels off-kilter and unfriendly. At Ming’s, the owner—“Mean Lady Ming,” in Delphine’s head—assumes they want a handout before grudgingly taking their order. Delphine, bristling with fatigue and humiliation, decides she hates Oakland and would go home to Brooklyn tomorrow if she could.
Character Development
Across these chapters, Delphine learns that competence can’t conjure tenderness from someone determined to withhold it. Her authority expands even as her childhood contracts, and Cecile’s indifference turns from rumor into fact the girls must navigate.
- Delphine: Strong-willed, hyper-responsible, and strategic (hiding money, managing adults). She craves a child’s small joys—like glimpsing the bridge—yet snaps back into command whenever her sisters need her.
- Cecile: Eccentric and impenetrable, she refuses basic caretaking (no cooking, no rides, no welcome) and arms herself with rules and distance. “Zilla” hints at a separate identity she values more than motherhood.
- Vonetta: Dramatic and status-conscious, she sulks, complains, and wants attention, making Delphine’s job harder while revealing how abandonment stings in public ways.
- Fern: Literal and tender, she clings to Delphine, misreads adult euphemisms, and absorbs strangers’ gaze, highlighting the vulnerability Cecile ignores.
- Big Ma: Absent but loud in memory, she anchors the girls in tradition and suspicion, naming dangers and clinging to old names—“Idlewild,” “Cassius Clay”—as a bulwark against change.
Themes & Symbols
These chapters ground the struggle of Family, Motherhood, and Abandonment in daily logistics—rides, meals, beds, names. “Mother” becomes a fact without comfort, forcing Delphine to replicate the care Cecile withholds. The girls keep testing how far they can lean on Cecile; the answer keeps arriving: not at all.
Delphine’s Coming of Age accelerates in motion—on planes, buses, sidewalks—while Identity and Self-Discovery takes shape at thresholds: the airport curb, Cecile’s door, the line at Ming’s. Cecile’s secrecy gestures toward a public self that overshadows her private one, foreshadowing the world of Social Justice and Activism the girls are about to enter—even as they still need dinner, guidance, and kindness.
Symbols that sharpen this world:
- Cassius Clay vs. Muhammad Ali: A tug-of-war between past and present, safety and change—Big Ma’s names versus the world’s.
- The Green Stucco House: Prickly, self-contained, and decorative only on the outside; Cecile’s personality in architecture.
- The Kitchen (closed): A locked heart of the home; no heat, no food, no entry.
- The Golden Gate Bridge: A glimpse of wonder Delphine claims for herself before returning to duty.
Key Quotes
“I had disgraced the entire Negro race.”
Delphine’s shame after the stewardess’s scolding shows how heavily she polices herself in public. She is a child managing not only her sisters, but the gaze of America in 1968, measuring every move against judgment.
“I didn’t send for you... Should have gone to Mexico to get rid of you when I had the chance.”
Cecile’s blunt cruelty collapses any fantasy of reunion. The line names abandonment as choice, not accident—forcing Delphine to translate and protect, even from the truth.
“Mother” was only “a statement of fact.”
Delphine’s semantics reveal a survival strategy. By stripping “mother” of emotion, she creates language that matches reality and gives herself room to breathe.
“Our mother wore pencils in her hair, dressed like a secret agent... Now I got why our mother ran away. Our mother was crazy.”
Cataloging Cecile’s oddities lets Delphine settle on a simpler explanation—“crazy”—that hurts less than deliberate rejection. The list reads like evidence, even as it avoids the hardest verdict.
Why This Matters and Section Significance
These opening chapters lay the novel’s architecture: a child-parent reversal, a city in upheaval, and a mother whose art and politics take precedence over domestic life. We meet Delphine’s voice—precise, funny, wounded, and brave—and feel how quickly she shifts from craving a view to covering a hurt. The setting of 1968 Oakland sharpens every interaction; public scrutiny and private need collide at every turn. This foundation prepares the turn toward community, activism, and redefined family that follows, where care might come from unexpected places and forgiveness, if it comes, will be complicated.