42 pages • 1 hour read
Caucasia
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Part 2, Chapters 7-9
Part 2: “from caucasia, with love”
Chapter 7 Summary: “the color of underneath”
Part 2 opens with Birdie and her mother having been on the road for four years. Sometimes they sleep in Sandy’s dilapidated van, other nights they stay in motels in the small towns where the van breaks down. Sandy has decided that they will settle in a rural New Hampshire town “made up mostly of poor farmers and trailer parks, the world she said she most admired” (142). Birdie’s observation that her mother admires this world most reveals Sandy’s identification with the white community rather than a black or multiracial one. The town is close to a university, which Sandy says will make it easy for her to find a job. She tells Birdie that academics are “naïve” (142) and never check her references. For all her supposed racial consciousness, she does not attribute their implicit trust of her to the fact that she is white.
Birdie marvels at her mother’s transformation into a slender, demure, middle-class white woman. Sandy introduces herself as “Sheila” to her new landlords—the Marshes—wearing a V-neck sweater and Keds (148). Having lost 70 pounds, Sandy flirts with the white men she encounters. This behavior bothers Birdie because it makes her feel like her mother is becoming Sheila, rather than playing a part.
Mr. Marsh helps “Sheila” get a job as a professor’s research assistant, and “Jesse” meets the Marsh’s 16-year-old son Nicholas, who is home for the summer from Exeter boarding school. Birdie rides the Marsh’s horses and sometimes spies on the family, curious about their upper-class lifestyle.
Chapter 8 Summary: “soundtrack to a pass”
Chapter 8 details the beginning of Sandy’s relationship with Jim Campbell, a man she meets at a local bar, and Birdie’s difficulty adjusting to small-town social life as a white girl. A group of girls approach Birdie on the street and ask her what zoo she escaped from (168). Looking in the mirror later, Birdie describes her physical appearance as boyish, with a lanky ponytail, a unibrow, and a budding mustache. She realizes that she will never look like her sister: “There had been a time when I thought I was just going through a phase. That if I was patient and good enough, I would transform into a black swan” (180). Like any adolescent, Birdie struggles with her body’s changes, but in her case, the changes are racially tinged.
Even though Sandy continues to admonish Birdie not to trust anyone, she forms a close bond with Jim. Birdie insists that he is an undercover federal agent because he has a shaky backstory and a vague occupation. One day when the three of them are at the beach, a group of children approach Birdie and ask her where she is from. She makes up a story about being from India, living in a palace, and having slaves. She says that her parents, indicating Sandy and Jim, have stolen her from her real family. Jim tries to intervene, telling Birdie not to lie, but Birdie insists on her story, even as she runs away (186).
Chapter 9 Summary: “tintin in the congo”
The chapter opens with Birdie’s thoughts about her father: “My father was fading on me. Not the Jewish father. I could see David Goldman clear as day” (188). She envisions returning to Nkrumah to write about what it was like living among white people and about getting her old identity back. She looks through her box of negrobilia, trying to connect with a time, place, and people that feel increasingly distant.
The chapter details Birdie’s growing relationship with Nicholas and the Marshes. She and Nicholas spend more time together riding horses and lounging in the Marsh’s house. Nicholas calls her Pocahontas, while the Marshes note that they could be brother and sister. Being in the Marsh’s house so often gives Birdie the opportunity to spy on them. One day, she overhears Mr. Marsh talking to his wife about Sheila and Jesse: “I just can’t figure them out. The mother hasn’t a penny to her name, but you get the feeling she should” (194). It makes Birdie proud to overhear that the Marshes think she and her mother have class.
One day after riding, Birdie and Nicholas have a sexual encounter. Though Birdie likes Nicholas, she finds herself strangely unmoved as they kiss. She thinks about Alexis, a girl she knew at the women’s commune Aurora, and how excited she felt when they played “honeymoon” (199), a game of simulated sex.
Part 2, Chapters 7-9 Analysis
Chapters 7-9 chronicle Sandy and Birdie’s transformation into Sheila and Jesse Goldman. Although Sandy privately calls Mr. Marsh “the man” (152), she feels at home both with the high-class Marshes and the white working people of their town. Her connection to the town—and to her identity as Sheila—deepens when she meets Jim. Based on Sandy’s constant reminders to Birdie about how precarious their situation is, Birdie feels betrayed by her mother’s refusal to question Jim’s story. Birdie notes that both she and her mother are lonely (171, 173). Living with false identities takes its toll on them both, and as a result they seek male companionship. Sandy had wanted Birdie to become friends with the town’s working-class children and is annoyed that she has gravitated toward Nicholas, the son of the only wealthy family in town.
The difference between the men Sandy and Birdie choose highlights the irony of their situation. Sandy is a Wasp but gravitates toward the working-middle class. Birdie, raised as a black revolutionary, grows closer to the Waspy Marshes. When Mr. and Mrs. Marsh show them around the cottage, Birdie says she “was hungry for something unnamable” (148) as she watches their gentle, cultivated interactions. Both the Marshes and Birdie’s grandmother Penelope often comment on how Birdie could be French, Spanish, or Mediterranean. They praise her ambiguous looks in a way that fits into their Eurocentric idea of beauty. When Birdie and Nicholas are smoking pot together, he mentions that she “could be colored in the right light” (204). He quickly takes the comment back, telling her that she doesn’t look colored; she is pretty (205). The comment hurts Birdie, who always looked to her sister and the black girls at their school as the standard of beauty. She wants to tell Nicholas who she really is but realizes that both her race and her false identity would make their relationship impossible.
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