Perfect Peace

The narrative shifts back in time to Emma Jean’s childhood. On the morning of Emma Jean’s eighth birthday, she finds her mother in the kitchen and tells her that she would like to celebrate the occasion. Emma Jean’s mother, Mae Helen, becomes furious and tells Emma Jean that she is selfish and is not special. She hits Emma Jean on the head with a cast-iron skillet, and Emma Jean falls to the ground. She forces herself to get up when her mother orders her to sweep the floor. Emma Jean eventually crawls to the broom and sweeps for a few minutes before Mae Helen orders her to collect eggs. Once outside, Emma Jean slowly walks to the chicken coop and faints outside its door. She wakes up when a chicken pecks at her arm. Emma Jean collects the eggs and brings them to her mother, who tells her to ask her sisters what they want for breakfast.

Mae Helen has three daughters—Emma Jean, Gracie, and Pearlie. She treats Emma Jean very differently than the other two girls. Gracie and Pearlie are the daughters of a man named Sampson Hurt; Mae Helen had sex with Sampson because he was paler in complexion than she was, and Gracie and Pearlie were born with their father’s soft hair and lighter skin. Emma Jean is the daughter of a man named Claude Lovejoy; he also had a fairer complexion than Mae Helen. However, when Emma Jean was born with the same dark skin tone as her mother, Mae Helen kicked Claude out of the house.

Back in their bedroom, Emma Jean tells her sisters that their mother hit her. Pearlie, the middle sister, teases Emma Jean, but Gracie scolds Pearlie and tells her to be nice to Emma Jean because their mother doesn’t like her. Emma Jean begins to cry, telling her sisters that she only wanted to celebrate her birthday. Gracie tells her to never ask their mother for anything and promises to take care of her. Years later, Emma Jean will tell people that the scar on her forehead is a birthmark, but it is easy to tell that Emma Jean is lying about this.

When Gus marries Emma Jean, he brings her to the home that he and his father built for them, and she loves it. Gus, who promises to live by his grandfather’s ideals, keeps his lawn beautiful and full of plant life to juxtapose the “ugliness” of the empty cotton field next to it.

The chapter shifts back to the present day, in which Henrietta tells Gus and his six sons that Emma Jean had a girl and has named her Perfect. Henrietta reenters the birthing room and tells Emma Jean that she cannot lie for her. Henrietta yells at Emma Jean and tells her that God will make her pay, and Emma Jean reminds her of her own deceit. Henrietta leaves Emma Jean’s home wearily. She sits shakily in her rocking chair and thinks, “Lies never work out the way you think they will” (35). She hopes that Emma Jean will face repercussions for her actions.

Gus sees Perfect for the first time. He confronts Emma Jean about tricking him into thinking that she had been through menopause, but Emma Jean tells him that she genuinely believed herself to be infertile. Gus brings Perfect out to her brothers and leaves for the Jordan River to complete what Authorly calls the “Great Cleansing.” The boys pass Perfect around and wonder what she will be like when she gets older. Authorly reminds them that Perfect is a girl and will not want to do “boy things” with them. Bartimaeus carefully walks to the Jordan River, where his father is crying in the rain. He joins his father on the riverbank, and the pair cry together for hours, cleansing their souls of all the emotions they have been holding in.

Later that evening, Emma Jean tells Gus that Perfect needs “girl things.” Gus states that they cannot afford such items because they can barely afford to feed their children, but Emma Jean insists upon it. In the living room, the boys discuss playing with Perfect. Mister is confused about why they cannot play together or even swim together. Authorly reminds Mister that Emma Jean claimed that if the boys saw a girl naked before marrying her, they would go to hell. Mister asks why girls play with dolls, and Authorly says that they are practicing to be mothers; men don’t have to practice because all they have to do as fathers is work.

The next day, Emma Jean’s sister Gracie arrives to meet Perfect. Gracie claims that she is glad that the baby looks like Emma Jean and not Gus. Gracie reminds Emma Jean that their mother is ill and asks Emma Jean to visit Mae Helen before she dies. Emma Jean becomes angry and argues with Gracie about her relationship with their mother. Gracie admits that she should have done more to help Emma Jean but argues that she was a child as well. Emma Jean says that she will think about seeing their mother, stating that if she hadn’t forgiven her by now, she would have killed her.

As Gracie leaves, she is convinced that Emma Jean will not visit their mother before she dies. She thinks about Perfect and believes that, like Emma Jean, she is ugly, but she knows that the baby will be loved anyway. Gracie thinks about Emma Jean’s last encounter with their mother. Mae Helen had come to visit Emma Jean and had immediately begun to insult the children and Gus. Fed up, Emma Jean told Mae Helen to leave, yelling at her for the mistreatment she experienced as a child. Mae Helen left, seemingly unbothered.

Emma Jean thinks about how frustrating it is to love her mother and also hate her. That night, after Gracie leaves, Emma Jean dreams of talking about boys with her sisters on the bank of the Jordan River. In the dream, the siblings talk about beauty, and Gracie and Pearlie tell Emma Jean that it is impossible to be “dark and pretty” (55). This statement once devastated the young Emma Jean. Emma Jean wonders how her family on her father’s side looks, and her sisters tell her that they live in the “Bottoms” and are “dirty” people.

The narrative shifts to an earlier time frame in real life. One day, Claude Lovejoy, Emma Jean’s father, approached her and told her how beautiful she was. Emma Jean was antagonistic toward her father, but he showed her kindness and asked her if she would like to come and live with him. Emma Jean refused, causing Claude to cry. He told her that one day, she would regret listening to her mother. At age 16, Emma Jean attended her father’s funeral and overheard her cousins and aunts speaking about how great a person he was.

Gus tells Bartimaeus not to tell anyone about their crying. Gus claims that keeping one’s business to oneself is the first lesson in becoming a man. Later, the boys do their mother’s chores because she is exhausted after giving birth to Perfect. Sol and Mister try to cook breakfast for the family, but they burn some of the food. The boys fix a plate for their mother and present it to her. She tells them that she will be fine in a day or two and thanks them for their work; she is careful to make sure that they know that they are appreciated. Outside, James Earl and Authorly cut wood for the stove. James Earl comments that Gus and Bartimaeus “sounded funny” yesterday when they were crying in the woods. Authorly tells him not to talk about Bartimaeus and their father’s business. The boys all gather to eat, and Authorly leads them in prayer. After they eat, Sol begins singing, and Mister hums along. Everyone listens as they complete their chores, finding comfort in Sol’s voice.

At the end of the day, Bartimaeus comes into Emma Jean’s room and begs her to allow him to hold Perfect. Emma Jean refuses at first, but she relents and lets him hold her. Bartimaeus runs his fingers gently over her face to try to map her features out in his mind. He comments that Perfect has the same nose that he and Gus do, which makes Emma Jean nervous. She tells him to hand Perfect back to her and kindly tells her son to go rest after a hard day’s work. As he leaves, Bartimaeus thinks that Perfect felt “eerie” to him, but he is unsure why.

Six weeks later, the family introduces Perfect to their church congregation. Emma Jean enters the church wearing a hat into which she has tucked “too many” flowers, and she dresses Perfect in a white dress with several yellow bows in her hair. The church congregation is shocked by her display, and they aren’t sure how to react to Emma Jean. Emma Jean enjoys the attention, but Gus sits in the back of the church with his sons, clearly embarrassed. When Reverend Lindsey asks if any parents want to dedicate their children to God, Emma Jean leaps up, and Authorly pushes Gus up to the front.

As the congregation whispers about Emma Jean, the reverend asks for the name of Emma Jean’s baby, which she proudly announces is Perfect. The congregation erupts in disbelief. The reverend wants to tell her that naming a child Perfect is “definitely blasphemous,” but he decides to proceed with his prayer anyway; the prayer discusses perfection and how nobody can truly be perfect, and this angers Emma Jean. As the reverend ends his prayer, Emma Jean stomps back to the pews, yelling that God told her to name her child Perfect, so she must be perfect. One of the other members of the congregation, an unhoused person nicknamed “Sugar Baby,” repeatedly yells, “That baby ain’t right” (69), which makes Emma Jean even angrier. After church, Emma Jean approaches Sugar Baby and yells at him again, but the man just repeats his statement. A woman from the congregation named Mamie, who had been gossiping about Emma Jean, asks to see Perfect up close. When Mamie comments about how closely Perfect resembles Gus and her brothers, Emma Jean gets nervous and leaves. Gus finds himself similarly approached by some of the men in the congregation, and he gets frustrated by his inability to make witty comments or think on his feet like his peers.