46 pages • 1-hour read
The Gilda Stories
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Chapter 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 2 Summary: “Yerba Buena: 1890”
Forty years later, Gilda wakes up in the guest room at Sorel’s gambling parlor in Yerba Buena, California. Since Bird departed New Orleans to seek her own Native people, Gilda has sold Woodard’s and traveled across the West, wearing men’s clothes to pass unnoticed and deepening her connection to nature and animals.
On her first day, Gilda receives a warm welcome from Sorel and from Anthony, Sorel’s gentle companion of the past 100 years. They introduce her to Eleanor, a striking redheaded vampire who takes Gilda out to the dressmaker the following day as Gilda no longer owns any women’s clothes. Gilda feels a strong but conflicted attraction to Eleanor. The women have a brief confrontation with a disdainful vampire named Samuel who later corners Gilda on her walk home, makes racists comments, and warns her to stay away from Eleanor and from Yerba Buena.
Back at the gambling salon, Gilda expresses surprise to Sorel that anyone could think ill of the charming Eleanor; he explains that while she’s a member of his family, Eleanor “lives through deception, the thrill of conquest” (78). She caused Samuel’s wife’s death and turned him into a vampire irresponsibly. They also briefly discuss Bird, and Sorel reassures Gilda that the separation is natural for growth and that Bird will return.
Despite Sorel and Anthony’s warnings, Gilda takes an outing with Eleanor the next day across the bay to Mount Tamalpais, where they climb to the top and are able to safely enjoy the fog-filtered sun (a rare treat for a vampire). They discuss their childhoods and deepen their connection. Weeks pass, and Gilda and Eleanor spend more time together, including a trip with Sorel and Anthony to the opera. (The music stirs something in Gilda, who hasn’t been affected by song since the plantation.) Gilda tells Sorel she believes Eleanor is overcoming her youthful indiscretions. Privately, she is also increasingly attracted to Eleanor.
One night while they are walking the streets, Eleanor takes Gilda into a sudden embrace in the shadows, and they kiss intensely. Then Gilda realizes Eleanor is taking her blood, and before she can decide whether she wants this, Samuel appears and attacks them with an iron pipe, furious that Gilda has not left as he demanded.
As they struggle with Samuel, Eleanor and Gilda argue about whether to kill him. Gilda balks, not wanting to take life, and insists Eleanor should do it herself if she must. Eventually Eleanor orders Gilda to kill Samuel for her. Realizing Eleanor’s perception of her, Gilda says, “I’m no longer a servant, Miss Eleanor. We been freed” (99) and departs the scene.
Distraught, Gilda returns to Sorel and Anthony. Both men tell her that this has been a valuable lesson about their lives as vampires, and about love and loss. Through her sadness at losing both Eleanor and Bird, Gilda realizes they are right and decides to stay some years in Yerba Buena and continue to learn from the older men’s experience.
Chapter 2 Analysis
Gilda’s time in Yerba Buena is the adolescent phase of her life as a vampire. She is only beginning to learn how to live this lifestyle and thus far has only experienced it in Louisiana where she was turned, with Bird the only fellow vampire she’s known. Leaving New Orleans is comparable to a child journeying from home for the first time in a coming-of-age novel. She has to make her own way in the world for the first time and acutely feels Bird’s absence—especially because Bird is a combination of mother, sister, and lover to Gilda. A coming-of-age novel, or Bildungsroman, often shows a conflict between a young person and the rules of their society, and Gilda experiences this in Yerba Buena as she tries to learn from Sorel and Anthony how the vampire world works.
Yerba Buena itself is a metaphor for this part of Gilda’s life, as it is in its adolescent phase as a city. Most of the American West was still developing at the turn of the century; though Yerba Buena has many of the cultural resources of a big city, like the dressmaker’s shop and the opera, it is primarily inhabited by gamblers and traders, and its streets are muddy, with planks for sidewalks. Sorel compares its developing phase to Gilda’s, saying, “Now is the time for […] [l]aying claim to the things you know but aren’t yet certain of. Yerba Buena is just the place for this” (65).
The fog in Yerba Buena is a consistent presence in this chapter. The streets are cloaked with it, giving the city the atmosphere of a mystery novel and allowing Samuel to skulk out of the mist to attack Gilda on more than one occasion. More metaphorically, it represents Eleanor’s clouded sense of morality and her deceptive behavior. However, the fog does have benefits: It protects Eleanor and Gilda from the sunlight when they visit the peak of Mount Tamalpais, allowing them a closer look at a sunset than vampires can normally enjoy and giving them a chance to commune with nature and with one another. It is fitting in light of Eleanor’s fiery, risk-seeking character that she takes Gilda literally too close to the sun.
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