Reading Group Guide
Questions for Discussion
1. What was it like to read Mathilda's story in her own words, with phrases directed at you? Why does Mathilda sometimes lie to the reader? Do you think she is consciously manipulative, or do you believe she is lying to herself?
2. Reread the book's epigraph. Do you agree with G. K. Chesterton's statement that the desire for justice is related to innocence, while the desire for mercy is related to wickedness? How do Mathilda's feelings about justice and mercy evolve over the course of the book?
3. What makes Mathilda's friendship with Anna so unpredictable? Who was your best friend when you were their age? How was that relationship different from the friendships you have now?
4. What do you think lies behind Mathilda's desire to be "awful"? What does she seem to want? Do you sympathize with her? What were the most irrational thoughts you had as a teenager?
5. What does the current relationship between Ma and Da, combined with the legacy of their passionate younger days, teach Mathilda about love?
6. Mathilda has heard a lot about sex and has many beliefs about its power and pleasures. How does she want to use sex? What type of gratification is she looking for when she pursues Kevin? Discuss Mathilda's understanding of Helene's sexuality. In your opinion, how accurate are her perceptions about her sister?
7. Is Mathilda wise to stop trusting adults? What kind of role models are they in regard to dealing with her sister's death? Do you believe, as Mathilda states, that "Grief is an island"?
8. Why is it important for Mathilda to believe that Helene was pushed? What do you think lies behind Mathilda's brutal fantasies?
9. What drives Mathilda's compulsion to save strands of hair? Discuss other instances of her magical thinking. How do these thoughts serve her? Are they helpful or debilitating?
10. An award-winning playwright, Victor Lodato makes his debut as a novelist with
Mathilda Savitch. Does it affect your reading to know that a man created Mathilda's voice? Can you think of other instances where a male writer convincingly renders a female interior life?
11. Try to see the adults in this novel-including parents, teachers, and the Tree-apart from Mathilda's views and judgments. Are they doing the best they can? Do you think Mathilda misunderstands, at times, their behavior and intentions?
12. Discuss Mathilda's feelings of responsibility in regard to her sister's death. How much does self-blame drive her actions?
13. How did your image of Helene change throughout the novel? Why does Mathilda have such mixed feelings in regard to her sister? Do you think her version of Helene's life is a fantasy, or did she know her sister better than anyone else in the family did?
14. What do you think Mathilda is looking for when she decides to go to Desmond? How is she different when she returns?
15. Why doesn't Mathilda tell Louis the truth? What is she trying to accomplish in her last moments with him? Why doesn't she tell her parents what she uncovered about Helene?
16. Discuss the backdrop of terrorism running throughout the novel. How does it affect Mathilda's perception of the world? How does it shape the emotional state of a new generation of teenagers?
17. How does dark comedy enhance Mathilda's storytelling? What passages made you laugh out loud (even if laughter seemed inappropriate)?
18. Discuss the final scene between Ma and Mathilda. What common ground do they share? Why are they silent when they are reunited? What do they communicate to each other without words?
Read an Excerpt
1
I want to be awful. I want to do awful things and why not?
Dull is dull is dull is my life. Like now, it’s night, not yet time
for bed but too late to be outside, and the two of them reading
reading reading with their eyes moving like the lights inside
a copy machine. When I was helping put the dishes in
the washer tonight, I broke a plate. I said sorry Ma it slipped.
But it didn’t slip, that’s how I am sometimes, and I want to be
worse.
I’ve hurt things, the boys showed me this. Pulling legs off
spiders and such. Kevin Ryder next door and his friends, they
let me come into their fort. But that was years ago, I was a
child, it didn’t matter if I was a boy or a girl. It would be
against the law to go into their fort now I suppose. The law
of my mother. Why don’t you stay home? she says. Be careful
out there, every time I walk out the door. But is it just
words I wonder, how much does she really care? Who is she
really thinking about when she thinks about me? I have my
suspicions. And anyway, do the boys even have a fort anymore?
It was probably all destroyed a long time ago. It was a
fort in the woods made from sticks and blankets and leaves.
Things like that don’t last forever.
And besides, now I know things about my body I didn’t
know back then. It’s not the innocence of yesteryear, that’s
for sure.
Awful is easy if you make it your one and only. I pinch
Luke sometimes. Luke is our dog. You can’t pinch all dogs,
some will bite. But Luke is old and he ’s a musher, he ’s all
about love love love and so he ’d never bite you. I pet him for
a few minutes all nice and cuddly and then all of a sudden I
pinch him and he yelps and goes circling around the room
looking for the mystery pincher. He doesn’t even suspect me,
that’s how blind with love he is. But I suppose if you held a
gun to my head—did I love him, didn’t I love him?—I guess
I would have to say I loved the stupid dog. He ’s been with us
forever and he sleeps on my bed.
If you want to know, I was born in this house with this
dog and those two, teachers of all things. A blue house. If
you look at it from the outside, you’d swear it had a face, the
way the windows are. Window eyes, a window nose, and a
door for a mouth. Hi house, I say whenever I come home.
I’ve said this for as long as I can remember. I have other
things I say, better than this, but I don’t tell anyone. I have secrets and I’m going to have more. Once I read a story about
a girl who died, and when they opened her up they found a
gold locket in her stomach, plus the feathers of a bird. Nobody
could understand it. Well, that’s me. That’s my story,
except what are they going to find in my stomach, who
knows? It’s definitely something to think about.
For a second as I watch them reading, I think Ma and
Da have turned to stone. So where is the woman with snakes
in her hair, I ask myself. Is it me? Then I see the books moving
up and down a little and so I know Ma and Da are breathing
thank god. Luke is a big puddle of fur on the carpet,
off in dreamland. Out of nowhere he farts and one eye pops
open. Oh what’s that? he wonders. Who’s there? Some guard
dog, he can’t tell the difference between a fart and a burglar.
And he ’s too lazy to go investigate. As long as they don’t
steal the carpet from under him, what does he care. I can
pretty much read his mind. Animal Psychic would be the
perfect job for me. The only animals I’m not good at getting
inside are birds. Birds are the lunatics of the animal
world. Have you ever watched them? Oh my god, they’re
insane! Even when they sing I don’t a hundred percent believe
them.
I hate how quiet it is. One smelly dog fart and then nothing,
you almost think you’ve gone deaf. A person in my
position begins to think about things, death even. About
death and time and why it is I’m afraid sometimes at night
sitting and watching the two of them reading and almost not
breathing but for the books moving up and down like something
floating on top of the ocean. And is Ma drunk again is
the other question, but who’s asking. Shut up and mind your
own business, I think. She ’s a free man in Paris. Which is a
song Ma used to sing when there were songs in the house.
Ancient history.
Oh, and infinity! That’s in my head again. That will keep
you up all night, the thought of that. Have you tried to do it?
Think of infinity? You can’t. It’s worse than the thoughts of
birds. You say to yourself: okay, imagine that space ends, the
universe ends, and at the very end there ’s a wall. But then
you go: what’s behind the wall? Even if it were solid it would
be a solid wall going on forever, a solid wall into infinity. If I
get stuck thinking on this, what I do is pull a few hairs from
the top of my head. I pull them out one at a time. It doesn’t
hurt. You have to have the fingers of a surgeon, separating
the hairs and making sure there ’s only one strand between
your fingers before you pluck it. You have to concentrate
pretty hard on the operation and so it stops you from thinking
about other things. It calms you down.
He’s reading a book about China and she ’s reading the
selected prose of Ezra Pound, that’s the long and the short of
it. She ’s got her shoes off and he ’s got them on. Venus and
Mars, if you ask me. And I’m the Earth, though they don’t
even know it.
When I get a little bunch of hairs what I usually do is
flush some of them down the toilet and then the rest I keep in
a jar. I know this is dangerous because if someone found the
hair they could use it to make a doll of me and then I would
be under their power forever. If they burned the doll I would
die, I would disappear. Infinity.
“What are you doing?” Ma says. “Stop picking at yourself.”
She crosses her legs. “Don’t you have something to
read?”
Books again. I could scream. I mean, I like books just fine
but I don’t want to make a career out of it. “I’m just thinking,”
I tell her.
She says I’m making her nervous staring at her like that,
why don’t I go to bed.
Ma was beautiful once, before I knew her. She ’s got pictures
to prove it. She was a beauty nonpareil, my Da says.
Now she looks like she’s been crying, but it’s just the reading,
and the writing too. Grading papers all the time and
scribbling her notes. If she cries I don’t know anything about
it, I’m not the person to ask about that. If she wanted to cry
I wouldn’t hold it against her. She has plenty of reasons.
“What are you writing?” I said to her once. “The great
novel,” said she. I didn’t know she was joking. For a long
time I thought maybe she really was writing the great novel
and I wondered what sort of part I had in it.
“Go upstairs,” she says. “Your hair could use a wash,
when was the last time you washed it?”
She likes to embarrass me in front of my father, who has
managed to keep his beauty, who knows how. He doesn’t
care if I have dirty hair or not but still, you don’t want to be
pointed out as a grease-ball in front of someone like him. Impeccable
is what he is, like a cat.
“I washed it yesterday,” I say.
Ma turns to me and does that slitty thing with her eyes,
which means you’re a big fat liar, Mathilda.
“Good night Da,” I say, running up the stairs.
“Good night,” he says, “sweet dreams.” This is his standard
but it’s still nice to hear it. At least it’s something.
“And wash that hair” is the tail of Ma’s voice following
me up the stairs.
Ma is funny, she either says nothing or else she has to get
in the last word. You never know which Ma to expect and I
can’t decide which one is worse. Lately it’s mostly been the
silent Ma. Tomorrow I’m going to break another plate. It’s
already planned.
_____
In my room I look in the mirror. It’s amazing how you have
the same face every time. Or is it only a trick? Because of
course you’re changing, your face and everything. Every
second that goes by you’re someone else. It’s unstoppable.
The clock ticks, everything is normal, but there ’s a feeling of
suspense in your stomach. What will happen, who will you bec
ome? Sometimes I wish time would speed up so that I could
have the face of my future now.
After the mirror I line up a few papers and books on my
desk so that they’re even with the edge. I also make sure not
one thing touches another thing and that everything is equal
distance apart. It’s only an approximation, I don’t use a ruler
or anything. I’ve been doing it for about a year now, the lining up of
things. It’s like plucking the hair. Basically it’s magic
against infinity.
When Da comes in my room I’m sitting on the bed.
Maybe I’ve been here for an hour, who knows.
“I meant to take a shower,” I say. “I forgot.”
He sits next to me and he tries to look at me, except he ’s
not so good at it anymore. His eyes go wobbly, almost like
he’s afraid of me. He used to pet my hair, but that was practically
a million years ago, when I was a baby. Still, it’s a
nice moment, just the two of us sitting next to each other. But
then all of a sudden she’s there, sticking her head in the door.
“I know,” I say, without her having to say anything. I
know, Ma.
“Are you okay?” she says. But it’s not even a real question.
I wish it was but it’s not.
Da gets up to go and he pats my dirty hair and I suppose I
should be ashamed, but what do I care about anything anyway.
That’s part of being awful, not caring. And then what’s
part of it too is the thought that suddenly jumps into my
head. The thought that it could be a person’s own mother
who might make a doll with her daughter’s hair and throw it
into a fire. She’d watch the flames eat it up and then she’d
dance off to bed laughing and having sex and bleeding little
drops of perfume all over the sheets as if there was nothing
to it. I wouldn’t put it past her.
But don’t get me wrong. I love her. This is another one of
my secrets.
The thing is, I can’t love her, not in the real world. Because
this would be degrading to me. To love someone who
despises you, and she just might. You should see her eyes on
me sometimes. Plus she’s not even a mother anymore, she’s
just a planet with a face. Da at least has hands.
“Good night Ma,” I say. “Good night Da.” And they
just leave me like that and they don’t make two bones
about it. Walk out, whoosh, and where do they go? All I
know is I’m not tired and I’m not taking a lousy shower and
I’m not reading a stupid book for school about the King and
Queen of Spain. I’m just going to sit on this bed and if I
want to pull a few hairs from my head I will, and no one can
stop me.
_____
Six hairs. Brown, but when I look close I can see it’s almost
red where it comes out of my head. Like the hair of another
person. Like another person inside me, and she ’s just starting
to squirm her way out like a sprout. This is not in the least bit
frightening. I’ve actually been expecting her.
I know you can’t see anything from where you are.
You just have to believe me.
2
School started again a week ago and I’m very happy to report
that Anna McDougal, my best friend, is in my class. Overall
it’s an interesting mix of people this year. No one but Anna
has any relevance to the story of my life, but a list is always
a good thing. I’ll give it to you with thumbnails.
Libby Harris has a disastrous mole on the tip of her nose. A
shame really because she’s very quiet and nice. Her father is
a lawyer and so she’ll probably have plastic surgery eventually.
Sal Verazzo is pretty much the fattest person in the
school. Black hair, possibly shoe polish. Thinks he ’s a rock
star. Completely deranged.
Sue Fleishman is tall and has curly hair. She doesn’t walk,
she sort of slides across the floor like she’s wearing slippers.
A stupid way to move but the boys drool over her.
Barbara Bradley always has snacks. She ’s allowed to eat
them during class. Supposedly she has a disease.
Jack Delaney is an admirer of mine, but we ’ve never spoken.
He has a shirt with a rude monkey on it. Sex addict or
will be.
Mimi Brockton is crippled! I’m always watching her, I
can’t get enough of her. Red hair. I know I’m not supposed
to say crippled, but it’s really the best word.
Donna Lavora has thrown up several times since she ’s
come to this school. Will not do well in life.
Max Overmeyer looks like he lives in a shack. Doesn’t
smell right. Probably a victim of poverty.
Eyad Tayssir has perfect white teeth but you hardly ever
see them. He ’s not a big smiler. Middle Eastern, I’m not sure
exactly what country.
Mary Quintas supposedly has a great singing talent but
I’ve heard better. She wants to be snob sisters with me but
I’m not interested.
Lonnie Tyson still thinks he ’s going to be an astronaut.
Good muscles.
Carol Benton is the worst. Conceited, big breasted, and
loud. Unattractive but worshipped by men. Doesn’t like me
apparently.
Bruce Sellars is funny and I hear he knows magic. I’ve
seen him speaking to Carol Benton unfortunately.
Chris Bibb, known as Dribble, came back to school with
a tan. It doesn’t make sense on him.
The lovely Anna McDougal of course. With whom I
have an important but stormy relationship. More on this
later.
Kelly Graber has bad teeth. I suspect she ’s unloved.
Good at sports.
Lisa Mead eats liverwurst. Every day!
Lucas London is very pale but I don’t think albino. When
he talks his hands shake. He ’s like a lamb. He’s so small you
almost want to carry him.
Avi Gosh is the one person smarter than me. He has the
eyes of a girl, but he’s very confident. Rich. Sometimes wears
sandals.
I’m probably forgetting a few people but if I am there ’s
probably a reason. Some people are like ghosts, you can’t
capture them, or if you do it’s nothing but a blur.
But really it’s amazing to be around so many different
kinds of people every day. Sometimes I watch them and it’s
like
Animal Planet. Everyone ’s alive and hungry and sometimes
Sal Verazzo is so crazy to tell a story that spit starts flying
out of his mouth. And in the morning just before class
begins, when everyone ’s talking at the same time, it’s like a
radio caught between stations. But not two stations, more
like a hundred. You can’t make heads or tails of what anyone’s
saying. It doesn’t even sound like English, it sounds
like bubbles coming up out of boiling mud. If I listen too
long, it starts to bother me. It’s probably what hell sounds
like. I saw hell once in a movie, and it was pretty incomprehensible.
I had to turn it off.
3
I have a sister who died. Did I tell you this already? I did but
you don’t remember, you didn’t understand the code.
My sister’s name was Helene. Helene and Mathilda.
Everyone always said we were the opposite of each other.
Night and Day was the famous expression. I’m the younger
one, but it still feels backwards that Helene died first.
She died a year ago, but in my mind sometimes it’s five
minutes. In the morning sometimes it hasn’t even happened
yet. For a second I’m confused, but then it all comes back. It
happens again.
She was sixteen at the end. Practically seventeen, just a
few months to go. But sometimes, the way she dressed, you’d
think she was even older. Plus she had an excellent way of
moving. A person who didn’t know her might think she was
showing off, but the truth is she just had a natural sway to
her. And then add to that her legs. They went from here to
Las Vegas, which is how Ma once described the length of
them.
Some of the memories I have of Helene are from the beginning
of my life, when I was a baby. Ma looks at me like
I’m crazy when I tell her I remember the day Helene was carrying
me, and then she started running and she climbed over
a fence with me still in her arms.
“What fence?” my mother says.
“A white fence,” I say.
When I say this my father puts his hand on my arm.
“Stop,” he says. Lately that’s getting to be his favorite word.
I think about Helene a lot, but basically I’m not allowed
to talk about her. To Ma and Da, I mean. Not that this is a
rule. It’s more like a law, I suppose.
The other memory I have is Helene and I are in a hole and
it’s dark and wet. Somehow we ’re upside down. I remember
water getting in my mouth. Maybe we ’re in a well is my first
thought.
“You never fell in a well,” Ma says.
“What about a grave,” I say, “or a ditch? People fall in
holes all the time,” I say.
Ma goes white like I’m the vampire of questions. My
beautiful Da looks at me and I stop.
The thing is, Helene died from a train. That’s the problem.
She didn’t jump, a man pushed her. We don’t know who
this man was and the police say, at this point, we probably
never will.
I wasn’t there when it happened. Neither were Ma and
Da. Why she was at the train station is still a big question. A
boyfriend is what I think. Helene had lots of them, sometimes
even boys from other schools in other towns. She was
pretty popular. She had red hair, it was the most amazing hair
in the world.
It happened on a Wednesday, which is such an ordinary
day. It happened in the middle of the afternoon. A man
pushed Helene in front of a train, it’s unbelievable. I always
think it’s a mistake. But then it proves to be correct.
Do you believe in curses? That there can be a curse on a
person or on a bunch of people at the same time, like a family
curse? How will we all die? I wonder. And when?
Helene was going to be a singer. She was a singer. There
are recordings. Da made them on his old tape recorder. No
one can listen to them now, they’re the most dangerous thing
in the world. On one of the tapes it’s Da singing some stupid
song with Helene. Both of them are laughing as much as
singing. If you listened to it now, it would be Da singing with
a ghost. The laughing would kill you.
Ma says the recordings are lost but I know where she
keeps them. Plus, I have things hidden too. In my room, under
my bed, I have some of Helene ’s school notebooks. I
have letters and drawings and birthday cards. I also have
some e-mails she printed out. And there’s tons of stuff still
left in her room. A person, even a sixteen-year-old, leaves a
lot of stuff behind. For a long time I couldn’t look at any of
it, but then I realized there might be clues. I’ve started to
spend more time in H’s room, but only when I’m alone in the
house. It’s a better room than mine and I wouldn’t mind living
there. Ma would never allow it though. Sometimes I
leave the door to H’s room open, even though I know it irritates
her.
I remember once, when I was little, I was looking out H’s
window and I saw a hummingbird. Come quick, I said, but
by the time Helene came over it was gone. Maybe it’ll come
back, she said, and we both stayed by the window for almost
a minute, waiting. I guess we didn’t have anything better to
do. When I think of the two of us standing there, waiting for
that stupid bird, it drives me crazy for some reason. I feel like
screaming.
Why does a person push another person in front of a
train? Does it have a meaning for the person, the pusher?
The explanation of most people is madman. The voices of
demons telling him to do it. But how did he get away is my
question. It doesn’t make sense. Two men at the train station
said they tried to grab him but he slipped away. He just
pushed her and then he took off. The police say it happens all
the time.
In my mind it’s almost as if the man disappeared after he
did it. Like he had one job on Earth. To kill Helene. And after
that there was nothing left for him to do but vanish.
I hate him. The feeling is tremendous. I’ve never felt anything
like it. If we knew who the man was he’d be in jail. We
could go to the jail and ask him questions. Ma and Da
wouldn’t but I would. I would be all over him. Even if it was
the voices of demons I would pull the demons out of him and
make them explain. I would use every bit of my magic.
Next Thursday it will be the day Helene died all over
again. It’ll be exactly one year. I marked it in my calendar
like this: H.S.S.H. Which is Helene’s initials the right way
and then backwards. If you stare at the letters it’s almost like
someone telling you to be quiet. Ma and Da haven’t said anything
about the big day. I want H.S.S.H. to be a day we’ll
all remember. If Ma and Da think I’m going to ignore it,
they’ve got another thing coming.
The thing is, Helene was supposed to live forever. That’s
just the kind of person she was. You always felt she had some
secret power that was going to make her immortal. I wish I
could describe to you the color of her hair but there ’s nothing
to compare it to.
If the man was caught he’d probably be electrocuted. But
electricity doesn’t kill demons as far as I know.
People say the hair was like pennies, but it was better
than that.
And she smelled like lemons. When I said this out loud
once, Ma looked away, but Da said he had to agree. He whispered
in my ear. He said I was right. He said it was lemons all
the way.
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