Whistling Past the Graveyard

“Patti Lynn had a real family with a sister and three brothers and lived in a big house on Magnolia Street. She even had a dog.”

Starla’s portrayal of Patti Lynn’s family links to The Complexity of Familial Relationships, with Starla reinforcing a conventional image of a family unit. Starla thinks that a “real family” requires biological relations, a nice house, and a pet, but she’ll eventually learn that the term is fluid.

“Now you gone and done it. We dead. Dead. Dead. Dead.”

The phrase “gone and done it” shows how Wallace mixes Southern American English and AAVE. The repetition of “dead” reveals his intense awareness of the greater racist community. If people discover that Eula took a white baby, white people could kill her and him with impunity.

“No. Good Lord have a plan. Ain’t for nobody—even a white girl—to question.”

Starla thinks that Eula should take James back to the church, but Eula equates this action with avoiding injustice. She wants to care for James and believes that God has prepared her for whatever hardships James might bring. Eula, too, has a sense of humor, poking fun at racist norms by reminding Starla, a white person, that she’s not God.

“Wallace, he take care of me. He always take care of me.”

Eula can’t yet confront the abusive reality of her situation, perpetuating the lie that Wallace is a caring husband. The repetition of “take care of me” additionally suggests that she’s unsure and trying to convince herself that Wallace loves her.

“Whistling past the graveyard. That’s what Daddy called it when you did something to keep your mind off your most worstest fear.”

Crandall explicitly includes the title in the story, making a direct connection between the phrase and Starla’s narrative. The idiom is multilayered, as Starla doesn’t “whistle past the graveyard” but confronts her fears and the injustices she sees.

“I always keep you safe.”

While Wallace gaslights Eula into thinking he’s keeping her safe, Eula tells Starla the truth: She will protect Starla. The declaration foreshadows Eula’s devotion to Starla. She kills Wallace to save her and stays by her side during her fever. Put succinctly, Eula becomes Starla’s mother figure.

“Since you got no stomach for truth-stretchin’, you’d better go back to the trees and wait until we’re ready to go again.”

Starla continually lies to avoid detection and the racist laws and people she inevitably confronts. Her term for lying, “truth-stretchin’,” is humorous, as is her belief that she’s better at lying than Eula.

“He say, ‘Cash money.’ Won’t give credit to a colored.”

Crandall doesn’t explicitly identify the race of the teen boy at the gas station—she lets dialogue and diction do the work for her. He refers to Eula as “a colored,” and the othering alerts the reader that he’s white.

“‘A pedmint. You know, somethin’ too hard for them to get around.’ ‘Maybe you mean a impediment?’”

The word “impediment” gives Eula a chance to demonstrate her wide vocabulary. Starla mispronounces it, and Eula corrects her, revealing that she’s fluent in AAVE and Standard American English.

“Things are…unstable. And in this town…well, it’s very bad at the moment.”

Cyrena’s diction alludes to the civil rights movement and the associated unrest. The community is “unstable” and “very bad” because activists like Cyrena are trying to change the racist norms while racists violently attempt to preserve them.

“‘That’s what most white people say. They don’t want it to change.’ ‘Colored do?’ ‘Not all, but that’s because they’ve been taught to be afraid.’”

The dialogue between Cyrena and Starla suggests that Cyrena sees Black people as united in their fight against racism. Deviating from Reed’s beliefs, Cyrena believes that the Black people who don’t overtly support change are scared. She speaks for such Black people, denying them agency.

“[S]he loved them babies too much. She said that was the reason she changed to baking, too; too much baby love.”

Instead of using her energy to provide for children, Eula bakes, turning baking into a symbol for love. The care and attention she would have shown to babies, she gives to baking. Baking also further unites her and Starla, as Starla becomes her helper.

“I picked up a rock and broke one of the headlights. The sound of it shattering and little pieces of glass hitting the bumper made me feel better.”

Throughout the story, Starla can’t turn away from injustice. To punish the Jenkins brothers, she breaks their headlight, and the choice propels the drama. She goes back to exonerate Troy, which puts her in the midst of a sheriff. Thus, Wishful Thinking Versus Confronting Adversity is explored through Starla, who shows that confronting injustice without considering consequences is sometimes a negative trait.

“‘You got a name, don’t you?’ ‘Yes, sir. Nancy.’ ‘Nancy what?’ ‘Nancy Drew, sir.’”

The dialogue between the sheriff and Starla further subverts Starla’s suggestion that she’s an apt liar. She says that her name is Nancy Drew, the name of the famous teen detective who first appeared in The Hardy Boys books in 1930. The lie is ridiculous and funny, and since the sheriff doesn’t recognize the name, it also reveals his lack of culture.

“No. I was nothin’. And I’d been bad. But I paid. Paid and paid before Wallace save me.”

Eula confronts Wallace’s abusive behavior. He made her feel like she was “nothing” without him and presented himself as her savior. He viciously manipulated her reality, which qualifies as gaslighting.

“Remember when we bakin’, and what I say about overworked crust? You and me, we done pushed our luck ‘bout as far as a body dare.”

Eula uses the metaphor of making pie crust to illustrate her and Starla’s precarious situation. Eula’s foreboding is something of a red herring, as nothing notably adverse happens to her on the trip to Nashville. Then again, the trip to Nashville forces Starla to discover that Lulu isn’t a caring mother.

“I got to thinking hard. Colored water fountains never had a cooler like most of the white ones did. Didn’t colored people like cold water when it was hot as the hinges of Hades?”

The bus trip to Nashville makes Starla more aware of the impact of segregation and the ways in which racist norms deny Black people basic amenities, like cold water during the summer. To melodiously reinforce her point, Starla uses alliteration, connecting three words starting with “h.”

“The lady’s hair was so…big. And it was so blond it hardly had any color at all. She looked like her head had been wrapped in white cotton candy.”

Crandall uses imagery and diction to build suspense about the identity of Starla’s mom. Starla sees the woman and graphically describes her, but she doesn’t recognize her. The term “the lady” implies a stranger, but the twist is that “the lady” is Lulu.

“Something I’d heard Mamie say come back to me. ‘…shook her till Porter come and snatched that baby from her. What if he hadn’t been there? That girl isn’t fit to take care of a baby.’”

In Chapter 20, Eula confronts parts of her abusive past, foreshadowing Starla’s revelations in Chapter 26. In fragments, she remembers Lulu shaking her as a baby, and the abuse conflicts with her romanticization of Lulu. Starla begins to realize that her mother isn’t a caring person.

“He looked at her. ‘You want to come with us?’”

Porter gives Eula agency and doesn’t assume what she needs or that he and Starla know what’s best for her. The seemingly simple question recognizes Eula’s humanity and her capacity to make choices for herself.

“Dreamin’ about Eula and James being happy living out there with Wallace the Bear was as crazy as me thinking Lulu was famous and really wanted me and Daddy to live with her.”

Starla realizes that her thoughts about her mother were wishful thinking, linking her illusions to Eula’s refusal to see Wallace’s brutality. The term “bear” brings in the motif of bears, as Starla occasionally thinks of humans as bears to help her understand the impact of racism.

“We got to tell the truth—all of it. How a body to tell what comes out your mouth true or not if you don’t always speak true?”

Eula is done with lying and is ready to hold herself accountable and face the consequences. The pivot to “truth” suggests that Eula feels confident and safe. She trusts that the sheriff will believe Eula, and, though the sheriff is racist, he doesn’t contest Eula’s narrative.

“If you want to get a job back here, fine, but there’s plenty of room in this house for all three of us.”

Severity and antagonism characterize Mamie, but Crandall doesn’t omit Mamie’s vulnerability or need for connection. She doesn’t want to completely push away her son and granddaughter, so she invites them to live with her, though they turn down the invitation.