42 pages • 1 hour read
Deesha PhilyawThe Secret Lives of Church Ladies
Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Story 9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Story 9 Summary: “When Eddie Levert Comes”
Daughter cares for her mother who suffers from Dementia. Because of her illness, the mother is much kinder now than she used to be. The mother believes that Eddie Levert, a famous musician who she once had a one-night stand with, is coming to pick her up for a date. She fixates on this and every day it is the same—she tells her daughter to help her get ready for Eddie to come and pick her up.
Daughter has a difficult time reconciling taking care of her mother after being abused by her during childhood. Growing up, Daughter was darker in color than her two brothers, and her mother often treated her differently because of it. Still, she cares for her elderly mother, even though her brother lives close by and could help out, but he rarely does. Daughter leaves for dinner with an old friend and lover and breaks down crying; she is sad that after all of the years of taking care of her mother, her mother barely knows who she is because of the dementia, but she gets excited when her brother comes around, who has hardly helped to take care of her at all. Her mother’s life is categorized into two parts: before being “saved” and after being “saved” by the church. Before being saved, her mother slept with various men and drank excessively, but after being saved, she quit her old ways. On both ends of her conversion, though, she took out her hurt and bitterness on her daughter.
Daughter washes and styles her mother’s hair and tries to get some peace from her about the past. There are moments when her mother seems lucid, but overall, she’s unable to give Daughter what she hopes for. The mother continues to wait for Eddie Levert.
Story 9 Analysis
This story revolves around a mother-daughter relationship. Daughter is basically stripped of an identity outside of her role as a “daughter, housekeeper, cook, babysitter, nurse, slave” (159). She was the object of her mother’s hurt and rage while her two brothers did what they pleased. Since she was young, she was called “Daughter” so frequently that she had to say her real name out loud every once in a while just to hear and remember it. Her brothers, Bruce and Rico, were always known by their real names.
As she grows up, Daughter finds herself once again in the role of daughter, housekeeper, cook, nurse. A perpetual cycle of being stuck at the mercy of her mother, but this time, without the wrath of her mother hanging in the balance. Daughter finds that reconciling her past with her mother is difficult because her mother has no memory of the hurt that she caused to her daughter, yet she still doesn’t fully appreciate all that her daughter does for her. She basically sees her daughter as a home nurse, while she continues to show preferential treatment to her son Rico, who does much, much less for her than Daughter does.
The mother BC (before church) “didn’t seem to care if her children heard her having sex,” but when she found Jesus and the church, things changed (171). Rather than the love of a man, she found the love of Jesus; however, for Daughter, this wasn’t much better for her mother, because Jesus “nevertheless demanded everything” (171). The mother never really found true love, and her quest for it in men and in Jesus left her unavailable to her Daughter, who really needed her love. In her old age and with dementia, roles reverse, and Daughter finds herself taking care of her mother–bathing her, doing her hair, feeding her, laying out her clothes. She carries on her mothers’ delusions of Eddie Levert, almost in a sense of defeat knowing that her mother will never be what she hopes and needs her to be.
Interestingly, the mother has again turned her attention to a man in the fictional Eddie that will never fulfill her expectations. Philyaw draws parallels between real men and God; the mother is so focused throughout her life on these men (first in sexual conquests, then in God, then in Eddie) that she doesn’t recognize the care and consideration of the daughter she ignores.
