51 pages • 1-hour read
And Then, Boom!
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Pages 121-164Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains descriptions of emotional abuse, child abandonment, and trauma due to poverty.
Note: These pages contain the poems “The Crow,” “The Chimera,” “Casserole Surprise!,” “Shepherd’s Pie,” “Snapped,” “Around and Around,” “Take Him Off My Hands,” “Reeling in the Food,” “Fish Fry,” “Fly Free,” “I Get It Now,” “One Sweet Moment,” “Losing More of Grandmum,” “Mom and Me,” “Maybe It’s Like Basketball,” “The Kiss,” “Silence,” “The Balloon,” “Texting,” “Zipped Lips,” “Couldn’t Help But Hear,” “Doomsday’s Left Hook,” “No Reply,” “The Bag,” “Tangled Webs,” “Should Have Asked,” “Abandoned,” “Rescued,” “The Luckies,” and “I Can’t Even Feed Me.”
Pages 121-164 Summary
Joey doodles Mom as a crow pecking at Grandmum’s belongings. Mom tries to take the quilt, but Joey fights her for it. When Mom gets distracted by Grandmum’s jewelry instead, Joey sees her as “part butterfly, part crow, and mostly storm” (122) due to her unpredictable nature. He does not want to deal with her at all, but now she is all he has.
People bring so much food that they have to freeze some of it. Joey and Mom make a game out of guessing what they will find in each casserole. Joey offers to do the dishes in an effort to keep his mom happy and discourage her from leaving again. He cries as he eats shepherd’s pie that reminds him of Grandmum’s cooking, and he realizes that Hakeem must have used Grandmum’s actual recipe to make it.
When Grandmum’s SNAP card is declined, Mom flies into a rage and grumbles about having to feed Joey. When he suggests that she get a job, she gives him the silent treatment, and he realizes that he has made a mistake. She then insists on taking all their clothes and sheets to the laundromat, and Joey understands that she will be angry all day.
Uncle Frankie offers to take Joey and his friends to a free fishing event. Nick insists that his mom won’t mind, but Hakeem’s mom asks lots of questions over the phone. Uncle Frankie asks Joey’s mom for permission, and she replies that anytime someone wants to take Joey “off [her] hands” (131), she will agree. Uncle Frankie teaches the boys how to fish. Joey catches a big fish and instinctively imagines taking it home to show Grandmum, then remembers that she is no longer there. Joey grudgingly invites his mom to the fish fry and is surprised when she agrees to go. She doesn’t cause any trouble, but she does stare longingly at the highway, and she asks whether Uncle Frankie always takes care of others.
Joey has a rare positive day with Mom. When they get ice cream, listen to music, and drive fast on the highway, Joey finally understands “the itch” that she gets to leave; he realizes how good it feels to escape all the reminders of unpleasant things. Joey tries to communicate his understanding by taking his mom’s hand. She flinches at first then squeezes his hand. Then she lets go, turns the car around, and drives them home.
One day, Joey sees a man driving the Fishbowl and confronts him, assuming that the car was stolen. When the man reveals that he bought the car and plans to sell it for scrap, Joey feels that he has lost more of Grandmum. He doodles a picture of himself as a balloon and his mom as a chimera holding it. He hopes that she will hold on tight. Mom tries to mitigate his expectations of her, claiming that she is not good at caring for others like Grandmum was. Joey is afraid of saying the wrong thing, so he just hugs her. He thinks he remembers her giving him a kiss on the forehead in the middle of the night.
Joey tries to stay quiet in the morning while Mom sleeps in. When he falls with a thump, his heart sinks when there is no response from Mom’s room. He opens the door to discover that she left during the night. He feels like a balloon floating away, and although he texts her, she does not reply.
Joey vows to stay silent about his mom’s departure because he doesn’t want to get her in trouble or find himself in foster care. Nick went to foster care for a while and said it was terrible. Joey reminds himself that his mom comes back eventually. Nick asks Joey if everything is okay. He overheard doors slamming and a car leaving. Nick notices Joey’s nose bleeding. Joey insists he is okay and refuses to talk about it.
Joey discovers that the heat has been turned off. He tries texting his mom, offering to be better and clean the house more, but she doesn’t reply. The cold water in the shower shocks him. When he misses Grandmum, he opens the bag with her quilt in it and smells her scent.
Uncle Frankie notices that Joey’s mom hasn’t been around. Joey lies and claims she is cleaning houses. Uncle Frankie reminds Joey that he can ask for help, but Joey insists he is fine.
The seeds in the milk jugs sprout. Nick and Hakeem help Joey plant them in the ground. Joey wishes he has asked Grandmum more questions about how to garden.
Joey watches a man abandon a dog and a cardboard box right in front of the bowling ball pyramid. Joey discovers two puppies in the box and decides to care for the dogs. He carries the pups to his house and names the mother dog Lucky. The dogs want to play and sniff the house for food. Joey wonders how he will feed them when he can’t even feed himself.
Pages 121-164 Analysis
In this section, Joey demonstrates Children’s Resilience amid Hardship as he tries to survive in an increasingly precarious situation. The death of his grandmother causes his already dysfunctional relationship with his mother to unravel rapidly, and her departure is foreshadowed by her escalating irritation with the mere prospect of caring for her son. Joey’s mom, who had previously been a looming presence in the background, now becomes central to the plot and action. Without Grandmum, Joey’s mother is the only adult guardian in his life, but she openly scorns this essential role, admitting outright that she would be happy if someone would “take Joe off [her] hands” (131). Her unpredictable moods and lack of reliability create a tense home environment that forces Joey to live in a constant state of fear and hypervigilance.
Because Joey worries that his mother will leave and that her love and support may be withdrawn at any time, he internalizes his fear and blames himself for her behavior. In an attempt to exert some form of control over an impossible situation, he puts immense pressure on himself and tries to be the perfect child by keeping quiet, offering to help around the house, and saying whatever he thinks she wants to hear. This self-erasure becomes a survival strategy that causes Joey to bury his own emotional needs in an unsuccessful attempt to keep her from abandoning him. This dynamic is particularly damaging because Joey cannot properly grieve the loss of Grandmum, and he also faces real material insecurity when his mother leaves again. Ultimately, her abandonment has harsh emotional and physical consequences, especially when it comes to The Impact of Food Insecurity.
Faced with the harsh reality of his mother’s absence and her indifference to him, Joey thinks to himself, “BOOM! Mom got The Itch. She left me” (147). In addition to explaining the title of the novel, this dramatic statement simultaneously portrays Joey’s youthful perspective and his cynical, quasi-adult resignation in the face of this latest misfortune. His mother’s disappearance fulfills Joey’s worst expectations and dashes his deepest hope: that she would love him enough to stay. Although he has tried to empathize with her by imagining how it might feel to leave “behind everything and everyone that reminds you of anything bad” (138), his own responses to poverty and misfortune prove that, unlike his mother, he has the resilience to stay and face difficult life challenges. However, by empathizing with her, he refuses to process his own anger and instead turns his pain inward, denying himself the justified outlet of blame or frustration.
After his mother leaves, Joey’s unwillingness to broadcast his desperate circumstances illustrates the issue of Addressing the Social Stigma of Poverty, and he feels intense shame about his home situation and his mother’s neglect, abandonment, and emotional disconnection. These factors prevent him from opening up to his friends or to Uncle Frankie, and he stolidly refuses to ask for the help that he desperately needs. In addition to feeling ashamed of having been abandoned, he still wants to earn his mother’s love, and his silence is meant to protect her from getting in trouble for her own choice to abandon him. In her absence, Joey’s physical challenges also intensify. Without an adult in the house, he must now worry about adult concerns such as bills, hot water, and food supplies. These tasks are difficult for a child to manage even under normal circumstances, but Joey is also weighed down by his unprocessed grief and uncertainty, and he struggles to formulate a clear plan for survival while coping with overwhelming emotional demands.
In the middle of this crisis, Joey’s decision to rescue the abandoned dogs adds another layer of meaning to his predicament, for he clearly identifies with the dogs, feeling that they, just like him, have been left without resources or support. In choosing to take the dogs home, Joey models the level of care that he has never received from his own mother. This act of caregiving highlights Joey’s empathy and aligns him with Grandmum’s values, for even as he experiences loss and hardship, he continues to give what little he has to those in need.
Unlock all 51 pages of this Study Guide
Get in-depth, chapter-by-chapter summaries and analysis from our literary experts.
- Grasp challenging concepts with clear, comprehensive explanations
- Revisit key plot points and ideas without rereading the book
- Share impressive insights in classes and book clubs