Jasmine

Jasmine arrives home to see Du on the couch with one of his friends. She calls Karen’s Hot Line to report Darrel’s behavior, but the line is busy. When she confronts Du about the strange boy in their house, Du explains that the boy has given him the address of Du’s sister, the only one he has left. She lives in Los Angeles, and Du wants to go live with her: “Thank Dad for everything he’s done. Tell him I’m sorry” (220).

Du feels that now that Bud has a child on the way, he will not miss Du at all. Jasmine is stunned: The “prospect of losing him is like a miscarriage” (221). When she tells him she loves him, he runs into his room, afraid to cry in front of her.

Jasmine gets through to Karen and reports Darrel to her, but Karen is somewhat skeptical of Jasmine’s fear. While Jasmine waits for further word, fearing that Darrel may attack Bud, Du prepares to leave. His friend John will be there to pick him up shortly. Jasmine suddenly breaks down in tears; in her mind, Du was “my hero” (222). Before he leaves, Du turns to Jasmine and kisses her for the first time, saying, “You gave me a new life. I’ll never forget you” (223).

Walking into Du’s room, Jasmine chides herself for not having known earlier that he would try to seek out any family that remained. She stumbles upon receipts from a bank other than Bud’s where Du had invested and accumulated over two thousand dollars. She knows Bud will never forgive him for this.

Karen stops by the house. She called Darrel, who was “rambling all over the lot” (225). Karen notices the bottles of Bud’s medications, and the two women have an unexpected conversation where Karen says she was wrong about Jasmine. She believes that Jasmine has nursed Bud in a way Karen could not have.

Jasmine recognizes that Karen is still in love with Bud, tells Karen about Du’s return to his family on the West Coast, and the women drive to Darrel’s farm to check on him. When they talk to him, he seems fine, not drunk, or acting oddly—just hard at work on the farm. Darrel’s sudden reversion to normalcy frightens and worries Jasmine.

Bud accepts Jasmine’s explanation for Du’s disappearance—that he is visiting his sister and will return before school begins. The next day, Bud receives news that Darrel’s loan has been approved, and he and Jasmine drive over to see him right away. When they arrive at the farm, they see immediately that something is wrong. Darrel’s dog is dead on the road, and they can see that the hogs are panicked and have not been fed.

Angrily, Bud says there had better be an explanation for this inexcusable behavior by a farmer. As they approach the hog pen, they see the pigs leaping into the air desperately, trying to bite at the figure hanging above them: Darrel. He has hanged himself over his hogs, at just the height where they, driven carnivorous by their hunger, can eat away at his feet.

Days later, Bud begs Jasmine to tell him she loves him. Jasmine is contemplating the latest card from Taylor, whose trip to Iowa has been delayed by custody battles and work. Du has dropped out of school to work in a hardware repair shop. Darrel mother Carol sells the farm after Darrel’s funeral.

Finally, one day a car pulls in the driveway. It is Taylor and Duff. Duff begs her father to tell Jasmine all the lines he has been practicing on the trip there. Taylor says to Jasmine, “We’ll be an unorthodox family, Jase” (238). They plan to head west to California, and Jasmine thinks that she can visit her family—Du—there.

She struggles with the guilt of leaving Bud and thinks of his face as “the anguished face of a man who is losing his world” (239). She realizes that she is not choosing between two men, but between two concepts, two dreams, and two understandings.

Jasmine calls Karen and tells her that she is leaving to see Du, but Karen knows she is leaving Bud forever. She reassures Jasmine, “Don’t blame yourself” (239); but Jasmine feels not guilt, but a sense of relief. She is happy to no longer be Jane.

Jasmine cries into Taylor’s shoulder for all of her different “lives” and for all of her dead. Then she walks out the door with Taylor and Duff.