Transcendent Kingdom

Gifty talks about the final days of Nana. He starts to steal things from their mother, first her wallet and checkbook, then the car and dining room table. He also flies into rages and breaks things, punching a hole in the wall and smashing the television. He is so aggressive that Gifty and her mother barricade themselves in Gifty’s room with a chair against the door. Then one seemingly normal day after he has been gone only one night, a police officer shows up at the door to tell them that Nana overdosed on heroin in a Starbuck’s parking lot. After this, Gifty says, “I didn’t write anything in my journal that night or for many years thereafter” (265).

Gifty discusses her relationship to sex and how she lost her virginity. As she says, “For years I hadn’t been able to reconcile wanting to feel good with wanting to be good” (268). Nevertheless, she loses her virginity at a social mixer in New York the summer after she graduates college. She enjoys the experience and sees the man again, despite still having feelings of guilt and shame around sex.

Gifty also comments on Nana’s funeral.