Chapters 5-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary: “Tennessee Waltz”
Beth wakes up next to Jake, her face fully swollen and her body bruised. As she leaves her room to go downstairs, she notices how quiet the house is and assumes that the kids are in school. Only when she sees the clock does she realize that she missed Boogie’s court appearance. She quickly rationalizes that she wouldn’t have been able to go, given her appearance. She walks through her children’s rooms, recalling how Grace told her to apply for a bigger house. Beth confirms once again that she could not have made it to the appointment after comparing herself to Polly’s corpse-like doll, Sweetie.
Beth moves to her older sons’ room and takes notice of the posters of Black boxers. She sees in the boxers’ eyes the same kind of hurt that she recognizes in Jake and in his own violence. As she goes downstairs to retrieve a smoke, she also collects one of the many spare changes of clothing that she has hidden away throughout the house, intimating that once, in his anger, Jake threw Beth out of their home completely naked for all their neighbors to see. She finds four bottles of beer in her fridge and drinks all of them to dull the pain in her body.
