45 pages • 1 hour read
Deborah WilesLove, Ruby Lavender
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2001A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 20-27Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 20 Summary: “August 1”
Dove asks Ruby to come to tonight’s operetta performance. Dove has been interviewing Melba, who talks a lot about her dad. Melba recounts how he taught her about all the constellations. Ruby thinks of how Garnet took her stargazing and the firefly poem he taught her. Melba shows Dove where the accident happened, and Ruby confirms that she takes the long way to town to avoid that bridge. Dove offers to show Ruby exactly where the car went over. Initially, Ruby doesn’t want to know. Then she looks at the black-eyed Susans and thinks about how Eula asked her to mark the anniversary of Garnet’s death with a remembrance. She changes her mind. She picks some flowers and tells Dove she’s ready.
Chapter 21 Summary
Dove points out where the car went over, and Ruby tells her the accident was Ruby’s fault. Garnet and Mr. Latham planned to stay at a hotel in Raleigh that night, but Ruby begged her grandfather to come home, and Melba heard her. Ruby thinks the accident would not have happened if she’d not asked Garnet to return, and Melba does too. Dove tells Ruby that Mattie said Garnet “never spent a night away from Miss Eula and he wasn’t about to start that night” (161). Ruby is hugely relieved to think that her grandpa would have come home regardless of what she said. Dove leaves Ruby, and Ruby tosses the flowers into the lake, telling her grandfather goodbye. Just then, Melba arrives.
Chapter 22 Summary
Ruby’s legs turn to jelly, so she sits down. Melba sits too. She tries to apologize, but Ruby won’t let her. Ruby yells at Melba for killing her chicks, and Melba accepts responsibility. They sit in silence. Melba tells Ruby that she wonders if her dad was scared that night, if he was awake, or if he thought about her. Ruby doesn’t want to hear this, and she orders Melba to leave. Melba says she misses her dad, and Ruby feels numb. Melba walks away.
Chapter 23 Summary
Ruby can hear peeping from Bemmie’s egg, but she can’t stop thinking about Melba. She thinks about her grandfather and his lemon drops and how all the fight seems to have gone out of Melba. She hasn’t gotten a letter from Eula in over a week. She decides to go to the schoolhouse, where Melba will be performing.
Chapter 24 Summary
Ruby slips inside the back door and hears singing. Melba wears a blue-checked dress like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, but her wig and makeup remind Ruby of the Wicked Witch of the West. Melba walks underneath a tree, which is part of the set, and Ruby can see how happy Melba looks. Just then, a piece of chicken wire snags Melba’s wig and pulls it from her head, as she’s about to sing. Her scalp is blue, and she is almost completely bald.
Chapter 25 Summary
The audience gasps, and Ruby can see Melba’s terror. Melba tries to remember her lines about the dear memories of childhood, but she falters. Ruby rushes onto the stage, saying the first thing that comes to her. Ruby tells Melba she “remember[s] him so well” (179), how he taught Melba about the constellations, and Ruby asks if he taught Melba the firefly poem too. She takes off her hat, which is Eula’s, and places it on Melba’s head. Ruby recites the firefly poem and pretends to catch one, as does Melba. Ruby tells everyone in the audience to find a firefly. Ruby links her arm through Melba’s, leaving the stage to thunderous applause.
Chapter 26 Summary
Melba thanks Ruby, apologizing for the chicks, and Ruby says she knows it was an accident. Ruby says she’s sorry about Melba’s dad and Melba’s blue head. Melba is sorry about Ruby’s grandpa. Mrs. Ishee tells the girls to bow for the audience, but Ruby wants to go home. Leaving, she finds Rosebud outside. Bending to pick the chick up, Ruby spots a pink envelope in the maple tree. In the letter, dated today, Eula writes that she saw what Ruby did for Melba and is so proud of her. She tells Ruby to come to the Pink Palace and bring the other girls.
Chapter 27 Summary
Ruby sits on the ground and cries until she’s out of tears. She chastises Rosebud for following her after she’d told the chick she would be back. A sweet feeling spreads through her when she realizes Eula is home, and she tells Rosebud that “Life does go on” (188). Ruby hugs the chick and runs to her grandmother’s house.
Chapters 20-27 Analysis
Ruby’s growth continues as she confronts her grief and finally develops empathy for Melba. When Dove tells her about Garnet’s unwillingness to spend a night away from Eula, Ruby can let go of the guilt she carried for so long. The removal of guilt and Ruby’s knowledge that the chicks’ death was an accident for which Melba feels responsible helps Ruby empathize with her previously thought-to-be nemesis.
However, this ultimate empathy does not come without a struggle. Ruby notes the similarity between her relationship with Garnet and Melba’s relationship with her father with a “tiny shiver,” revealing how this fact is unpleasant to her. At the bridge, when Melba wonders aloud what might have gone through her father’s mind that night, “Ruby wouldn’t hear this, wouldn’t think about this” and orders Melba to leave (169). Because Ruby has been angry with Melba for so long, she would rather continue to be angry than confront the reality that Melba also lost someone important and they have something in common. If she allows herself to empathize with Melba, her anger will diminish, and she must confront the ways she and Melba are alike. She knows how Melba must feel—to be blamed and feel responsible for an accident—so she “[can’t] get Melba out of her head” after Melba’s apology at the bridge (170).
Melba’s anger at Ruby too has diminished because she now understands how terrible blame feels. In a deviation from Wiles’s previous characterization of Melba, she now acts as though “All the fight was out of [her]” (171). Both girls here develop an understanding of The Varied Responses to Grief and Loss, especially how being angry or blaming someone else can make grief feel more bearable. Though Ruby goes to the schoolhouse ready to confront Melba, her newly developed empathy does not allow her to further humiliate the girl who has already endured the loss of her father and her hair. Just as Melba’s anger at Ruby for the accident protected her from experiencing the full weight of her grief, Ruby’s anger at Melba felt more manageable than her sense of loss when the chicks died. However, now that each girl’s empathy grows, they cannot sustain their anger toward each other.
Wiles’s allusion to the movie, The Wizard of Oz, demonstrates The Sourness and Sweetness of Life. Though Melba wears a blue gingham dress like Dorothy’s, her makeup and wig remind “Ruby of the Wicked Witch of the West wearing the wrong clothes” (174). Melba’s appearance highlights her similarity to the lemon drops Garnet loved: their combination of sweet and sour. Like Dorothy, who has been separated from her aunt and uncle, Melba longs for the time in her childhood before she experienced loss. However, due to this loss, she can be angry and destructive and hurt others, especially when she feels hurt like the Wicked Witch of the West.
Wiles shows that Melba unfairly targeted Ruby, and Ruby does the same thing: each girl acted like the Wicked Witch, blaming someone else for a tragic accident, and Dorothy, grief-stricken over a situation beyond her control. Melba misses her dad and blames Ruby, and Ruby grieves the chicks’ deaths, blaming Melba. Even Dorothy’s most famous song, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” references lemon drops, Grandpa Garnet’s favorite candy. Ruby and Melba have Dove to help cool their conflict, but it is ultimately the two girls themselves who learn to empathize with each other.
Realizing that Rosebud followed her to the schoolhouse, despite having told the bird she’d be home soon, helps Ruby come to terms with her grandmother’s trip and accept The Persistent Progression of Time. Just as Ruby feared Eula would choose to stay in Hawaii despite her promise to return, Ruby assumes Rosebud must have feared she would not come back despite reassuring the bird she would return. When Ruby reflects on her grandmother’s return to Halleluia, she tells the chick, “Life does go on, Rosebud” (188), though Ruby once thought it would not. Realizing that her earlier behavior and beliefs made as much sense as a chicken’s prompts Ruby to laugh at herself. With her newfound sense of empathy and resilience—even in the face of hardships and pain—Ruby realizes she can do better, starting fresh with a new day tomorrow.
Related Titles
By Deborah Wiles
