Divine Secrets Of The Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Sidda finds a stack of letters addressed to Vivi at the boarding school, the first of which is from Necie, who expressed her grief at Vivi’s absence. Necie told Vivi that her brother and friends missed her dearly. There was also a letter from Vivi’s older brother Pete, another from Caro, and a longer letter from Teensy, who was frustrated about how difficult it was to get in touch with Vivi. Sidda is pained to think of her mother being ripped away from her family and friends at the age of 16. She wonders if her mother’s experiences, which shaped Vivi, then shaped Sidda herself as she was in her mother’s womb. She considers the possibility that she and her mother still remain connected in some incomprehensible way.

On the morning that Vivi left to boarding school, her mother, Buggy, woke her up early. Buggy had changed Vivi’s plans to leave in the afternoon without warning; she had forbidden Vivi from saying goodbye to anyone. She told Vivi this was her father’s decision; Vivi could sense a lie, and she protested that she needed to see her friends before she left. Vivi’s mother insisted she get dressed and get in the car with Pete, who drove, while their mother sat silently in the back seat. Vivi wondered if her mother loved her. Pete and Vivi’s mother left her at the train station, Pete looking sad and Vivi’s mother looking unexpressive. Pete gifted Vivi his pocketknife to protect herself, and she carved her name into the train station bench before leaving.

Within the letters are occasional notes from Vivi to the other Ya-Yas, in which she details the social isolation, poor living conditions, and strict rules of the school. The nuns picked on Vivi, the girls were woken early and had little privacy, and there were only showers, no baths. Vivi also sent a letter to her mother asking for forgiveness and apologizing for whatever she did wrong, but her mother only wrote back to say that she should be apologizing to God and the Virgin Mary instead. Soon after, Vivi became horribly ill due to malnutrition, exhaustion, and stress. She fainted and awoke days later in an infirmary. A kind nun named Sister Solange nursed her back to health, feeding her and showing her patience and tenderness. She gave Vivi a bath, and Vivi thought about how she still missed her mother despite everything.

After Vivi returned to classes, someone set her bed on fire as she slept. Vivi awoke screaming and did not stop for hours, and she was sent back to the infirmary. Sister Solange cared for her once again and helped Vivi escape the school by calling Teensy’s mother to pick her up. When Teensy and her mother arrived, the nun who ran the school protested their taking Vivi, but they insisted, and left with her immediately. Teensy’s mother told Vivi: “Life is short, but it is wide. This too shall pass” (230).

Vivi returned home, attempting to go back to her old life. She prayed for Jack’s safety and got to see him when he came home on leave and played his fiddle for her. Jack even played a song for Vivi’s mother, who was delighted and kissed him on the cheek, shocking everyone. In October 1943, Vivi was playing tennis when Pete arrived and told her to come to Teensy’s place. Vivi knew something was wrong and procrastinated, insisting on finishing the game. Pete then told Vivi that Jack had died after his plane crashed. Vivi went into immediate denial. At Teensy’s house, Teensy’s mother was screaming endlessly in the bedroom, and Vivi and Teensy witnessed her hitting her husband, accusing him of being the reason that Jack was dead. Vivi experienced the loss of her second mother that day, as Teensy’s mother was never the same. In the present, Vivi is getting a massage as all these memories come flooding back to her. She starts to cry, and the masseuse insists that she should let it out, so Vivi continues to cry.

Vivi remembers how Teensy’s mother’s began to live with a mental health issue after Jack’s death. She, Teensy, and Vivi went through a long period of denial in which they searched every day for signs that Jack was still alive. The pattern was only broken when Vivi’s mother prayed with the girls and reminded them that Jack was gone. Teensy’s mother slowly stopped leaving her room, and after several months of deep grief, she took her own life. Vivi regrets that Sidda never got to meet Teensy’s mother.

After her massage, she drives to Teensy’s house and they have a long heart-to-heart. Vivi confesses that she has a recurring dream in which Jack appears with a missing jaw. She also admits that she never loved Shep the way she loved Jack, and she says that Sidda in particular always seemed to sense this. Teensy insists that Vivi should talk to Sidda and clarify her past, but Vivi says, “Not my style. This is my luggage. These are my trunks” (255). Teensy reminds Vivi that Sidda carries her mother’s baggage, too. She tells Vivi to talk to Sidda about why she left the family when Sidda was four, and she threatens to tell Sidda herself if Vivi refuses.

Sidda finds a letter from Willetta to Vivi, thanking her for a cashmere coat. Sidda smiles, knowing that Willetta certainly deserved such gifts for all she did for the family. She wonders what inspired the gift, and she thinks back to how Willetta started babysitting her when she was just three. Sidda considers the injustice of the way white children are expected to let go of their love for their Black nursemaids as they grow up, and she misses Willetta’s hearty cooking.

Vivi starts going through her old belongings, intending to give away much of what she has. She finds a maternity jacket that reminds her of the early days of her motherhood, in which all four of her children were under five years old. At the time, Shep was almost always away duck hunting, and Vivi did not want to burden her friends, who all had children of their own. Vivi’s parents helped sometimes, but she was often alone or relying on her maid, Melinda, to help her. Vivi became exhausted, physically and mentally, and she began to feel resentful and even hostile toward her children and husband. When Sidda and Little Shep became sick with bronchitis, the coughing disturbed and irritated Vivi. When Melinda left to fulfill obligations for another family, Vivi begged her to stay, and even Sidda and Little Shep followed Melinda out into the rain. Vivi stopped taking care of herself and even skipped most of her meals. She felt as though motherhood was a hellish trap, and she thought that she “did not know that being a mother meant [she] would lie awake in torture, the weight of responsibility biting into [her] skin” (248).

On one particularly horrific night, all four children were sick, two with diarrhea and the other two were vomiting. Vivi ended up covered in both and spent hours immersed in the smell and sight of it. She managed to get Willetta to come over and watch the children one day, and then she escaped. First, Vivi went to a distant church and confessed to the sin of dark thoughts toward her children. Then, she pawned the ring her father had given her because it was the only way she could get money. She drove to the Gulf of Mexico and sat by the water, relaxing and refusing to miss her children. While there, Vivi had a dream in which Sidda’s deceased twin appeared to her as an infant. He sang to her and then told her to “wake up.” It was then that Vivi decided she would sacrifice these years to her children and pick herself up when they were grown up; she made a choice to be grateful for the family she had. She then went back home and got the ring back out of the pawn shop.