Make Lemonade

“This word COLLEGE is in my house,

and you have to walk around it in the rooms

like furniture.” 

Here, LaVaughn tells readers that the idea of attending college is so important to her, it’s become a physical presence in her life, as real as furniture. Both LaVaughn and her mother place so much weight on college because they see it as LaVaughn’s one chance to escape her inner-city life. College is something you must carefully “walk around” and treat with great respect, because if LaVaughn loses the chance to attend college, she believes she will be trapped in her bleak inner-city surroundings for the rest of her life.

“My Mom sunk her teeth into this one,

this college idea. Every time I look like I’m forgetting college

she reminds me some way.

My Mom has an attention span that goes on for years.”

In this quotation, the author again emphasizes the significance of college in LaVaughn’s life, and also develops LaVaughn’s relationship with her mother. LaVaughn’s mother is a focused, determined woman with her “attention span that goes on for years,” and as she models these traits for her daughter, LaVaughn also becomes determined to meet her goals. As the book continues, LaVaughn’s mother will continually “remind” her daughter to focus on education, even as other characters and events pull LaVaughn away from her goals.

“I heard somebody say Jolly didn’t face reality.

Jolly she says, ‘You say that?

Reality is I got baby puke on my sweater & shoes

and they tell me they’ll cut off the electricity

and my kids would have to take a bath in cold water.

And the rent ain’t paid like usual.

Reality is my babies only got one thing in the whole world

and that’s me and that’s the reality.’” 

Throughout Make Lemonade, characters such as LaVaughn’s mom suggest that Jolly is in denial about the true severity of her situation. However, this quote reveals that Jolly is fully aware of how dismal her daily life appears to outsiders. Yet Jolly feels a strong responsibility to support her children; her greatest “reality” is the fact that her children have no one but her to take care of her. Jolly deals with all the other problems she describes here—not being able to pay rent, living with constant messes—because she knows she can’t give up if she wants to continue being there for her children.

“If you want something to grow

and be so beautiful you could have a nice day just from

looking at it,

you have to wait.

Meanwhile you keep watering it

and it has to have sunshine

and also

you talk to it.” 

Here, LaVaughn gives Jeremy advice about the lemon seeds she’s helped him plant, and this advice also applies to life in general. Characters like LaVaughn and Jolly will need to nurture their goals like they would a growing plant, and exercise patience, in order to create something worthwhile. LaVaughn hopes to pass this lesson on to Jeremy, and while Jeremy does grow impatient, he continues to care for his “lemon blom” (25) throughout the novel.

“‘Some people make a bad bed. They just have to lie in it.’

It’s this tone of voice of a mother

that comes out of her.

How could she be soft and sorry one second

and then be such a hard referee the next?” 

This quote both illuminates LaVaughn’s mother’s character and presents one of the main dilemmas of the novel: the question of how much responsibility Jolly should bear for her difficult circumstances. LaVaughn’s mother is a “hard referee” with LaVaughn, as well as with Jolly, expecting hard work and achievement from her daughter, and when she sees someone like Jolly, who has made bad choices and doesn’t seem to be doing all she can to change her situation, LaVaughn’s mother is quick to judge her. LaVaughn’s mother doesn’t take into account the factors LaVaughn herself does, like Jolly’s youth and her lack of positive role models and adults who support her, which have forced Jolly into a “bad bed.” Yet at the same time, LaVaughn’s mother can be “soft and sorry” in a moment of crisis, as she comforts and cares for Jolly after the girl has been attacked.

“I feel my heart pumping vigorous.

I look at her and I say, ‘That won’t help.’

She thinks I mean there’s not enough. I don’t change my eyes

to help her misunderstanding. What I mean is

that money is not going to help her

because it’s saved to help me

not end up like her.

I feel very mixed but my eyes stay steady.”

Here, Jolly, having just lost her job, is about to ask LaVaughn to return some of the money she’s paid her for babysitting. LaVaughn feels “mixed”; she sympathizes with Jolly, yet she wants to protect herself and keep focused on her own goals, and she continues to wrestle with this inner conflict throughout the novel. However, she remains “steady” in her determination to do whatever she can to “not end up” like Jolly, and to save money for college and escape her poor neighborhood. This marks an important turning point for LaVaughn, as she decides that nothing will sway her from pursuing her goals, even if she must be a little selfish in the process.

“We must have looked like some kind of family

going along in our separate kinds of walks:

Jeremy dancing his Hacky sack dance,

Jolly shimmying her shimmy of

‘I got no problems, no babies’ dad disappeared on me

and I ain’t been fired from my job,’

Jilly bouncing on my arm and humming

and leaning out from my hip like a flag waving itself.

A family from the continent of I don’t know what.”

In this quote, LaVaughn articulates the novel’s focus on family, and particularly on new forms and definitions of family, like the makeshift family formed by teen mom Jolly, her two children, and babysitter and friend LaVaughn. In this moment, LaVaughn implies for the first time that she feels like an actual part of Jolly’s family, rather than an observer. Having come to care deeply for Jolly and her kids, and taking on a parenting role with the children—she’s the one holding baby Jilly here, not Jolly—LaVaughn sees herself as part of Jolly’s family unit. As a result, LaVaughn is invested in helping Jolly, who does have problems, despite trying to cover them with a confident “shimmy.”

“Mr. Jeremy takes his new seeds and he gets a chair

and he climbs up to the pot

and he puts his fist of seeds over the dirt

and a brief light comes around him from the window

and he looks just like those picture books.

Where Mom wears an apron, Dad comes home from work,

cookies are always coming out of the oven

and everybody has those NO PROBLEM

looks on their faces.”

This quote is both an example of the lemon pot symbolism repeated throughout the novel—Jeremy is planting the new lemon seeds LaVaughn brought him, still hoping to grow a lemon tree and, symbolically, to grow hope—and an exploration of the book’s theme of family. Here, LaVaughn imagines Jeremy as part of a traditional, ideal family where Jeremy would experience “NO PROBLEM[S]”—a stark contrast to his real life as the son of a poor teenage mom. Jeremy’s family doesn’t fit a neat mold, but despite that, LaVaughn tries to create hope for Jeremy through the lemon seeds and the promise of new life and growth.

“‘Your face, LaVaughn. It’s in your face.

Behind your face, really, It’s a discontent

with how things are. Even more of it lately.’

Her voice gets very low now and she leans close.

‘And I don’t want to see you in this neighborhood

when I’m old and still teaching here.’ Then she thinks

and she says, almost whispering,

‘Unless it’s because you’re a teacher too.’” 

Here, LaVaughn’s goal of attending college and escaping her bleak environment has become so obvious that it’s visible “in [her] face. Her teacher can see her growing “discontent” and encourages LaVaughn to reach for her dreams—another example of the important role of education and educators throughout the novel. LaVaughn also suggests that LaVaughn could be “a teacher too,” planting a seed that grows into LaVaughn’s idea of joining the Day Care Apprentice Program and perhaps studying to become a teacher in college.

“Guess what. Jolly got a B one day

and then three more B’s

and then she did A work in typing

and she had all her columns lined up

on the what you call it the master list

and that made another A.

And her not being even in any school all those years.

At first she pretended it didn’t make a difference

what grades she got

and then she changed her mind.”

This quote also emphasizes the important role of education in Make Lemonade. Here, Jolly’s classes and grades are significant not only because of the knowledge she learns, but more importantly because of the boost to her self-confidence it brings her. Just as Jolly “change[s] her mind” here, she learns she can change in bigger ways as well, breaking out of her limited expectations for herself to become a strong student. If Jolly can make these changes in school, the reader hopes, she can make them in her outside life as well and build a better future for herself and her children.

“But Jolly: I watched her doing her homework sometimes

and her eyes go everywhere but on the paper.

She wants the TV on, even without the vertical hold,

just to listen to while she’s doing her worksheets.

But then, who could expect work habits

from somebody spent more time pregnant

than she did in study halls?” 

Here the author reminds readers that even though Jolly is making a real effort to do well in school, her past experiences mean she faces much greater challenges than the average student. Again the author stresses the importance of education—or in this case, a lack of education—as Jolly’s earlier decision to drop out of school means she’s lost the chance to develop valuable skills she needs to succeed in life.

“I say to her—

and I’ll be sorry till the day I die—

I say to her, she’s standing with the light from the bathroom

Over her shoulder, and in the background Jeremy’s boats are sloshing,

I say to her, ‘That the way you did the birth control too?

Part way is good enough?’”

Throughout Make Lemonade, LaVaughn has struggled with the question of how much blame Jolly deserves for her current problems, and here LaVaughn judges Jolly more harshly than she has before. LaVaughn’s words echo her mother’s, who has criticized Jolly for not “tak[ing] hold” (35) of herself and her situation throughout the book. While LaVaughn is more sympathetic toward Jolly, a part of her clearly shares her mother’s view, and here, she can’t hold her opinion back any longer. While Jolly and LaVaughn reconcile after this fight, their disagreement foreshadows the way the two girls will drift apart from one another by the end of the book.

“I thought about how I was blaming Jolly

for having Jilly when she should know better,

and then here comes Jilly on her own steam

all the way across the floor

to land here like a boat nobody expected.” 

After LaVaughn accuses Jolly of making bad decisions and not taking responsibility for herself, Jilly crawls all the way across the floor for the first time, arriving before her mother, where the two embrace. Here, LaVaughn realizes that at this point, the question of whether or not Jolly should have become pregnant doesn’t much matter; Jolly has children, and at this point she is trying to care for and connect with her children, as LaVaughn has just witnessed. In addition, LaVaughn references her Steam Class, or self-esteem class, when she says that Jilly crawls “on her own steam.” The author reminds readers how important self-esteem class is to LaVaughn, and offers the hope that Jilly will grow up with a sense of self-esteem as well.

“‘He rototilled,’ says Jolly, ‘and his name was Jeremy.’

Me, I’m listening to this discovered name of her little son.

So that’s where she got it.

From a time when she had some kind of folks.

Or something like folks.

Red shaky Jell-O salad

and they laughed in the kitchen

and he wore a yellow necktie.

‘It’s for the garden, it’s a machine.

It turns the soil. So you can plant. You have to rototill.

Otherwise nothing grows.’”

Here, Jolly reveals for the first time that she did experience life with a real family, and she named her own son Jeremy after one of her foster mother’s grown sons. Clearly, Jolly valued her time with a family and hopes to honor and recreate that as much as possible. From her foster family, Jolly learned that you have to take care of something—in this case, rototilling a garden—or else “nothing grows.” Just as the adult Jeremy cared for Jolly’s foster family’s garden, her young son Jeremy cares for his lemon pot, encouraging new growth.

“‘And Gram said to me, she said,

“Now you come back to see me too,

just the way Jeremy does.

You do that, Jolly. Don’t you never forget your Gram.”

And she laughed

and brushed her cats.

But she died,

so I couldn’t go back and see her; ever.’”

Here, Jolly describes the moment she lost the only family she ever had, as her foster mother, “Gram,” died. Clearly, the feeling of connection, of belonging to a family unit, was extremely important to Jolly; she believed that even after she left Gram’s house, she could return to see her and maintain the family bond. When Gram dies and Jolly can’t “ever” return to see her, she feels cut off and alone. Without a family to support her, she begins to make unwise choices.

“She’s building up steam, this Jolly is.

‘You even thank them for it,

and you go stumblin’ home,

all bleeding or however you’re hurt—

and you say to yourself,

“Well, gosh, I guess somebody give me a lemon.

Ain’t I stupid.

Ain’t I dumb. I must’ve deserved it

if I was so stupid not to know.”

Here, Jolly identifies with the main character of a story she’s heard in school and is now recounting to LaVaughn. The woman in the story was tricked into taking a lemon rather than an orange home to her starving children, and Jolly has been given many lemons as well—for instance, when she was sexually harassed by her boss and fired. Jolly has always felt she “‘deserved’” the lemons because she allowed herself to be tricked, but now she is developing a new sense of self-worth. In a reference to her self-esteem class, called Steam Class, LaVaughn says that Jolly is “building up steam”—becoming angry and realizing that she deserves to receive more than lemons in her life.

“‘and she makes lemonade.

And she feeds it to her starving little ones.

And that’s the end of the story.

That’s the point of it.’”

Jolly is inspired by the ending of the story she’s heard in school, when the poor woman makes sweet lemonade out of a sour lemon, making the best of her unfortunate situation, and feeds it to her hungry children. Jolly, like this woman, must try to make the most of difficult circumstances, for herself as well as her children. This story gives Jolly new hope that she can make her life better, no matter how sour the lemons she’s received might seem.

“Now that Jolly knows about the blind lady and the lemon,

and walking rules ain’t familiar to Jilly

but she walks anyway,

and Jeremy looks everywhere

out of those pools his glasses make,

and Jolly keeps on doing her homework most of the time,

and they’re back and forth to school and Day Care—

things don’t feel so falling apart around here.”

In this quote, LaVaughn observes how Jolly and her children’s lives improve after Jolly joins the Moms Up Program. While Jolly’s children receive the care they need, including glasses for Jeremy, Jolly herself gains a new perspective from her classes. She sees how she can improve her life and begins to work toward that improvement; as a result, her life and her family are no longer “falling apart.”

“I want to talk to my Dad. One conversation. That’s all. One.

[…] I want to ask him would he help me pay for college

if he could come back alive.

I want to ask him should I be a teacher.

I want to ask him will things turn out okay.

Is that too much to ask?”

LaVaughn does not mention her father, who was the accidental victim of a shooting, too often throughout the novel, so this quote near the end of the novel has special significance. Throughout the book, the author has emphasized the importance of family, and here LaVaughn clearly wishes her father were still a part of her family; she yearns for an idealized, traditionally complete family, rather than the one she has. LaVaughn particularly wants her father’s advice on her new idea of becoming a teacher, which may have been influenced by her time spent babysitting and, in a way, teaching Jeremy and Jilly throughout the novel.

"What I’ll never forget

when I’m long gone out of here

and this place is all torn down with a bulldozer—

What I’ll never forget—

It was the sound in Jolly’s voice when she said

that one word to Jilly.”

When LaVaughn looks back on her time spent with Jolly and her children, she won’t necessarily remember the harsher aspects of Jolly’s existence—her dirty house, getting fired, coming home with her face cut up—but she will always recall how Jolly sounded as she told Jilly to “breathe” and saved her daughter’s life. LaVaughn will remember Jolly not for her faults, but for the way she gave everything she had to save her daughter. Here, the author suggests that like LaVaughn, the reader should focus on Jolly’s love for her children, rather than the mistakes Jolly has made.

“It’s then Jolly says that word to Jilly, between blowing.

She says in a voice I never heard in her or anybody else,

a voice like an animal somewhere out in the dark

all reaching all alone,

 she makes such a sound,

so clear I never heard a word so clear in my life,

 or so soft,

‘Breathe, Jilly.’”

Here, LaVaughn vividly describes Jolly’s desperate, instinctual fight to save her daughter’s life. With “a voice like an animal,” Jolly has gone beyond reason and is acting on pure instinct and emotion, doing everything she can to protect her child. Jolly is “reaching all alone,” an image that recalls her earlier revelation that she feels like an astronaut adrift in space, completely disconnected from the rest of the world. However, Jolly does connect, as her words reach through to her daughter, and Jilly breathes—and survives.

“How many of these neighbors

ignoring Jolly for her ignorance and bad luck

could go down on their knees

and save their kid from choking to death

this afternoon

while the world was going on outside in the sunshine?”

Jolly’s neighbors look down on Jolly because she’s a teen mom, but Jolly has a deep love and sense of responsibility for her kids that allows her to support them when they need it most. Significantly, Jolly’s participation in the Moms Up Program has taught her the CPR skills she needs to save Jilly. Again, Wolff illustrates the life-changing power of education here. At the same time, the author depicts Jolly’s absolute devotion to her daughter, using the intense image of Jolly “go[ing] down on [her] knees” for her baby girl.

“And it’s kind of strange

that of all the pictures I might remember, from that whole time,

sometimes it’s only Jeremy up high in my mother’s kitchen.

I look up there where he’s swinging round and round

and there’s his pants too short

and his socks not matching,

plus one of them slid down into his shoe

and his shirt’s all tore at the neck.

And I wonder how it would be for Jeremy

in another place,

even in another time

where he’d have new clothes

that would go together in their colors and a dad.”

On the last pages of the novel, the author addresses one last time the theme of family, as LaVaughn thinks that ideally, Jeremy would have a traditionally-complete family that would support him materially and emotionally. Her words also bring to mind LaVaughn’s own missing dad, and the support that she, like Jeremy, has not received because her family is incomplete. In the end, both LaVaughn and Jeremy must find ways to maintain hope and thrive, despite their less than ideal circumstances.