Journey

Eleven-year-old Journey lives on a rural family farm with his older sister Cat, his grandmother Lottie, and his grandfather Marcus. His mother, Liddie, named him Journey, as if wishing her own restlessness on him. Before spring of his eleventh year, Mama stands in the barn with a suitcase and promises to send money for the children. Grandfather tells her that is not good enough. Mama says she will come back, but Grandfather says bluntly that she will not. In a surge of anger, Journey hits him.

In the weeks that follow, Grandfather takes up photography with a camera Cat gave him. He photographs everything on the farm, including failed self-timer portraits of himself. When he offers the camera to Journey, the boy refuses, seeing no purpose in photographing a place and people he already knows. Grandfather snaps a surprise photograph of Journey, who reacts with fury. Grandfather later takes another picture that captures Grandma smiling, Cat laughing, and Journey's face staring into the camera with fierce anger that becomes the focal point.

The first envelope arrives from Mama: two packets of money but no letter and no return address. Journey insists she simply forgot the address and declares he will start a travel account so he and Cat can visit her. Then he breaks down crying in Grandma's arms. Grandfather clicks the camera. When Journey demands to know why, Grandma answers softly, "Because he needs to" (8).

Grandma brings Journey a photograph album. She shows him a picture of herself as a girl on the Fourth of July, 1930, the day she met Grandfather, and tells him that the camera knows. She then shows a photograph of Mama at the same age: Everyone around her laughs and plays, but Mama sits gazing into the distance. Grandma explains that Mama always wished to be somewhere else. A memory surfaces: Journey at five or six, following Mama across a rain-washed meadow. He falls into the brook, and the arms that pick him up are Grandfather's. Mama has walked on without looking back.

Journey's best friend Cooper arrives carrying his baby brother Emmett in a sling. Together with Cat, they look through the album; Cooper mistakes a photo of young Mama for Cat, since they look so alike. When Grandfather hands Journey the camera so he can hold Emmett, Journey instinctively takes a photograph. Without his glasses, Grandfather's face looks strikingly familiar. As Grandfather bounces Emmett on his knees singing the nursery rhyme "Trot, trot to Boston," a fragmented memory stirs in Journey: slanting light, bouncing on someone's knees while staring at white buttons on a blue shirt. But the face above the shirt is missing. Cat shows an old photograph from the album of a boy holding a horse's reins. Cooper says it could be Journey. The boy is Grandfather as a child, and Journey sees his own face in it.

On the hottest day of summer, Grandfather sets up a family photo with the self-timer before insisting Journey drive the car to town. As the timer counts down, a small airplane drones overhead and everyone looks up. The shutter clicks unnoticed, capturing them all gazing at the sky. Grandfather says seriously that there is no such thing as just a picture.

When summer rains confine everyone indoors, Journey finds the photograph he took of Grandfather bouncing Emmett. The blurred, soft-edged image looks like a painting or a memory, and for a moment Journey feels as though he is Emmett, sitting on someone's knees. Grandfather tells him a thing does not have to be perfect to be fine: "Things can be good enough" (27). Journey asks whether Mama left because he was not good enough. Grandfather insists it is not Journey's fault. Journey then claims he remembers sitting on his Papa's lap, that Papa sang to him and held his hands. He asks where the baby photographs are. Grandfather reveals the truth: Mama tore them up.

Journey retreats to bed for two days. Cat pulls off his blankets and declares he is hiding, not sick. After the rains, a stray cat appears at Journey's windowsill and settles on his bed. Grandfather invents the name Bloom, glancing at a vase of peonies. Bloom turns out to be pregnant and bonds most deeply with Grandma despite her pretended displeasure. Journey photographs Grandma whispering to Bloom in the garden, their faces almost touching. When Grandfather sees the picture, his eyes fill with tears.

One day Bloom leads Cat and Journey into Mama's stripped room, where they find a box under the bed filled with hundreds of torn photographs: fragments of faces, arms, a baby's hand. Cat calls it murder. Journey vows to tape them back together and works alone for hours by lamplight. Cooper tells him gently that it is impossible. Journey realizes Mama tore up even Grandma's photographs, and in that moment he knows Mama is never coming back.

At Cooper's house the next morning, Journey walks through rooms lined with family photographs. Cooper's mother says that sometimes the truth is behind the pictures, not in them. Cooper rides Journey home, and they find Bloom has had four kittens in the box of torn photographs.

Journey announces he wants to take a family picture. He positions everyone, counts down, and runs to get into the frame. He tumbles into Grandfather's arms, and Grandfather holds him across his lap like a newborn. Journey stares at the button on Grandfather's shirt, then up at Grandfather's face. The shutter clicks. That evening Mama calls. Journey tells her that a cat has come who is a very good mother and that the cat is staying with him forever.

In the barn, Journey tells Grandfather that Mama never said she was sorry and dismissed the torn photographs as only pictures. Grandfather explains that after Papa left, Mama believed good things were always ahead, never worth looking back on. Journey says he told Mama that if she sent words instead of money, he might visit someday, and that nothing is perfect but sometimes things are good enough.

Later, while picking raspberries, Cat tells Journey that Grandfather takes pictures not because he likes cameras but because he wants to give Journey back everything Mama took away.

Two months after Mama's departure, Journey wakes at four in the morning and walks barefoot to the barn. Inside, Grandfather has built a darkroom. He reveals the contents of a large envelope: the negatives of Mama's torn photographs, found in her room. Mama tore the prints but did not destroy the negatives. From one negative, he develops a photograph of Mama and Papa smiling at baby Journey, the baby's hand reaching out. Journey stares at the image and realizes his father's face is one he does not know. He then voices the novel's central revelation: The memory he has carried all summer, sitting on someone's knees, the white button on a blue shirt, "Trot, trot to Boston," was not his father. "It was your face," he tells Grandfather (80). Grandfather is not surprised. He points to the family photograph where Journey lies in his arms and says that was the moment Journey knew.

They walk through the barn, and Journey trails his fingers along the walls, touching the hay as though claiming it as his own. Grandfather takes his hand. At the barn door, Journey says quietly, "Once they loved me" (81). Grandfather's hand tightens. They open the door, and the night has ended. The sun has come up.