67 pages • 2 hours read
Laura McBrideWe Are Called to Rise
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2014A 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 21-24Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 21 Summary: “Bashkim”
After Baba’s intense abuse of Nene, Bashkim’s family is driving home in silence and fear, but Bashkim is glad they are no longer fighting. He tries to comfort Tirana when a police car signals them to pull over. Baba panics. When the officer asks sternly for his license and insurance, Baba becomes frozen and simply says he is a citizen and that the officer needs a reason to pull him over. The officer asks Baba to step out because his taillight is broken, but Baba still refuses to cooperate. Finally, he steps out, shaking. The officer asks Nene to show the necessary papers, but instead of following his instructions—like Bashkim wishes she would—she also protests, saying they can’t afford a ticket. Tensions escalate when Baba blames Nene in Albanian and the officer tells them to be quiet. Nene finally gets the papers and steps out to hand them over, but the officer is surprised and orders her to stay on her side. Another officer appears, and Bashkim steps out because he wants to comfort his mother but hesitates due to the situation. The yelling continues, and Bashkim begins to cry and runs to Nene. The officer orders him to get back in the car.
The officers are confused, and Bashkim is wondering what they think is being said since his parents are yelling in a foreign language. When Nene yells, “For the love of Allah, just kill me and my children” (202)—which she often says in frustration—one of the officers mistakes her statement as a potential threat. As if in slow motion, Bashkim watches as the officer aims his gun at Nene and pulls the trigger. In disbelief, Bashkim tells himself that the gun isn’t real. Nene slumps over, short of breath. Baba begins screaming, and the officers seemed panicked. The first officer tells the other to put away his weapon, and the second officer says Nene had a knife. One officer seems upset that his partner discharged his weapon. The first officer checks on Nene and tells the second officer to “go easy” with Baba and put him in the squad car. He calls to the officer who fired his pistol by his name—Nate—and calls an ambulance.
Chapter 22 Summary: “Avis”
Avis turns on the local news to see the headline: “Las Vegas police officer shoots woman at traffic stop” (203). Before anything is revealed, she begins to cry. Her motherly instincts tell her that her son was involved, just as she knew about his previous accidents and disasters before he admitted to them. Avis goes online to find more information. She reads that an unnamed woman was killed and that two kids were present. Avis sees missed calls from Jim and Lauren; she calls Jim. He explains Nate was the officer involved, and Avis says she “imagined” that was the case. Jim is upset that Avis would think that and defends Nate, claiming they don’t know what happened and that he and Darcy are going down to the station to see him. Jim believes Darcy can get a good lawyer to help Nate, and Avis, holding back her anger, hangs up the phone.
As more news reports come in, there are claims that witnesses saw the woman carrying a knife. Jim calls again, and for a moment, Avis finds hope that maybe her son was defending himself. She remembers how he has changed since war, and she is conflicted about thinking of her son as someone capable of killing an innocent woman—though she knows the truth. She blames herself for not being proactive in helping Nate sooner and recalls her own childhood with a neglectful mother. She alludes to a vague memory of children crying, two adults fighting, and gunshots. Rodney calls after she hangs up with Jim and asks if it was Nate. He is drunk and asks Avis if she remembers Mark—an abusive Vietnam war veteran that their mother once dated. Avis wants to talk to Rodney about everything but doesn’t.
Avis has a flashback of a time when Mark began abusing Sharlene. As a young girl, Avis takes Rodney to hide in a closet. There, Rodney grabs a nearby gun that they stole from one of Sharlene’s previous boyfriends. Without thinking, Avis grabs the gun and goes into the front room. She aims it at Mark. He moves towards her, but Sharlene is quicker and takes the gun from her daughter’s grip. She tells Mark to leave, and after backing off, he lunges at her. Sharlene pulls the trigger. She misses, and Mark scrambles away. When police arrive, they try to console Sharlene and the children. Avis is angered that her mother never once looked to see if the bullet hit one of them.
Avis fears her memories and decides to go upstairs and grab the gun in her dresser. She tries to dispose of it by throwing it in the toilet but begins to laugh at the ridiculous sight of it. This moment releases her, and she embraces herself as a survivor, someone who was “wildly, brilliantly brave” (213) as a girl and has overcome the odds to become who she is. She takes the bullets and throws them in the trash.
Chapter 23 Summary: “Roberta”
Robbie has been working as a Court Appointed Special Advocate for 13 years and has seen every imaginable family scenario. Since she is experienced, she is given the privilege to choose her cases. When she hears about the police shooting and learns about the children, she knows they will end up in foster care and is determined to get involved. She prepares for the case by doing research and gathering her contacts.
She calls her nephew, Ari, who works at LVPD. She asks about Nate, and Ari reveals that he was a risk but an ideal hire for the police force—a war hero, a local kid, with a dad who works at MGM Resorts—though he knows Nate has had some incidents of getting too drunk after work. Robbie then asks about Bashkim’s father—Sadik Ahmeti—and it’s clear to her that with his precarious history, he won’t retain custody of the children. Robbie is thorough in her work and lists all the people—both important and seemingly trivial, such a neighbor or pediatrician—whom she plans to talk to in order to make the best decision for Bashkim and Tirana’s futures.
Chapter 24 Summary: “Avis”
It has been one day since the shooting, and Avis goes to visit Nate. Lauren’s parents are in town, and she’s with them, so Nate and Avis are alone. Avis senses Nate’s discomfort but is glad to be alone with him. When she asks for details about the incident, Nate is angered because he thinks Avis doesn’t believe his story—that he was protecting the kids and his partner. Avis believes that he thinks he was doing the right thing, but she acknowledges that his decisions haven’t been rational lately.
They begin to argue: Nate is defensive that his own mother doesn’t believe him, and she tries to explain that she does and simply wants him to seek professional help. He rants about the way he was raised, with too much expectation and pressure as the only child, and Avis is unsure about why he is blaming her. Then Nate breaks down crying and says he is “going out of my mind” (224) not because of Avis or Jim, but rather because of what he had to do in Iraq. Nate begins to confess the horrors of warfare—children exploding, his fellow soldiers being blown apart, the fear of anything happening at any moment. After a lengthy outburst, Avis tells Nate she loves him as he cries with his head down.
Avis gathers herself and is convinced that every act of kindness and compassion matters—from picking up trash to tipping a maid to congratulating a winner. She reminisces about the days when she was a young mother, hanging out with a group of her girlfriends—also young mothers—and how they would wish to live somewhere besides Vegas. She recognizes how easy and special Vegas was to families like hers and families of all kinds. She celebrates Las Vegas and the eclectic diversity of the people there:
We created a community out of nothing. And we were proud of it. And maybe we didn’t look like a lot of other communities out there. We weren’t much alike. One of us had turned a trick in a casino before she finished high school. Others of us had gone to college (231).
Even though life in Vegas can be imperfect for some, it can be perfect for others, and Avis embraces how all of it matters, even if temporarily.
Chapters 21-24 Analysis
The shooting of Nene is the novel’s climax, in which many of the story’s elements and characters finally clash, resulting in tragedy. The cultural miscommunication of Bashkim’s Albanian parents, the PTSD of Nate’s war experience, the anger and violence of men, and the loss of innocence erupt when Nate’s pistol is fired. Avis is certain that Nate is in the wrong, and her motherly instincts and experience around abusive war veterans lead her to believe that somehow Nate reacted poorly (rather than defending himself properly) and took a mother’s life.
Unlike Sharlene, Avis uses her role as a mother to become involved in her son’s life, offering support rather than simply condemning him. After Nate explodes at her with anger because he thinks she’s not on his “side,” she lovingly responds: “Nate, what are you talking about? Stop this. I am on your side. I will always be on your side. I think you need help. I think something happened to you, in Iraq, this last time. I think you need to see a doctor” (223). Despite her own unraveling life, she taps into her strength as a mother to continue supporting her son and suggest a practical and genuine solution—one that other people in Nate’s life are either too scared, too dishonest, or too uninvolved to suggest.
After the shooting, Bashkim’s future is more precarious than ever. He already experienced an unhealthy situation living with Baba’s trauma and distrust of institutions, but with the loss of Nene’s care, he and Tirana are more vulnerable than before. Roberta’s chapter reveals how dedicated she is to helping children in this situation. Roberta can only provide this level of support to children by volunteering and losing time with her own family, which her husband Marty calls her out for. She stays true to her goal of helping others because she knows how small acts of kindness or carelessness can forever change someone’s life outcome:
There are cases that I just can’t forget, that stick. Marty always wants to know why. What it is. I don’t know, I think it’s the ones where something small changes everything. Where the tiniest act, the smallest space of time, the most inconsequential of decisions, changes a life. A split second separates the long-lost friends who either see or miss each other at an airport. And from that, a relationship does or does not develop, perhaps a lifetime partnership, perhaps even children. Human beings who might or might not have existed. Whole lives born out of the most fragile of happenstance (246).
Roberta epitomizes the novel’s theme of selflessly caring for others—how one person’s commitment of trust and diligence can save lives, and how the lack of love and compassion in our world leaves the most susceptible victims to the whim of an ineffective and sterile judicial process. Bashkim and Tirana have no chance without the involvement of others—mostly women and mothers—like Robbie and Avis. Since they have lost their own mother to the violent and problematic trauma of male toxicity, the roles of Avis and Robbie (as well as others) will carry more symbolism and weight. With the loss of Nene’s character as the primary mother in this story, Avis begins to strengthen her role in Nate’s life, suggesting that the destruction (or conservation) of families hinges on the women.
