The terrible truth of what I am flares like a dry fall fire in my stomach, eating all the fallen pine needles.

I sit up and curl over my knees, rub my eyes against my kneecaps. Shortly after, Esch finally takes a pregnancy test and it came out positive! Now the symptoms of pregnancy are starting to kick in even more, at first she kinda blames China on how sick she’s feeling but then suggests to take the test, Esch is throwing up every other day, not eating as much since you do tend to get disgusted by certain foods while pregnant. Skeetah then asks Esch if she wants to come along with him to the grocery store to get dog food, while in the grocery store Esch secretly has her hands inside of her pockets ripping out a pregnancy test from the box and putting in into her waistband of her shorts that she was wearing. Esch is starting to not feel so well, she is having early pregnancy symptoms such as nausea, light headed as well as dizziness, the most common symptoms.

Hot to the point where it makes the water that’s inside of a well boil. She is birthing puppies.” (Ward 1)Īfter the birthing of the puppies, around August it is when it gets really hot. “Now China is giving like she once took away, bestowing where she once stole. In the beginning of the novel China, Skeetah’s adored pitbull is giving birth to puppies as she is being surrounded by everyone in the family. It’s hard in Esch’s position because she is the only girl in the family and she is still trying to learn the process of womanhood and it isn’t either, the children without having Mama struggle to take care of each other as well as there’s barely anything left in the family. Esch has to pretty much suck it up and live with all these men in their life bringing in the famous sport of all time basketball and to which can be disturbing to some people dog fighting. Besides that she is as well surrounded with more men in her life, her brothers friends Big Henry, Marquise and Manny. “Well, I’d had Esch’s character in my head for a while and I knew that I wanted to write a novel about her, about a girl that grows up in a world full of men.”Įsch is often surrounded by men, she’s grown up with having no mother figure but is being raised with her brothers, Skeetah, Junior and Randall by her alcoholic father. In an interview with Michel Martin, Ward mentions: Growing up without a mother not only taught Esch to be independent but at the same time developing on how to become a woman. Esch is a fifteen year old girl living with her family of her father and three brothers being considered to be the only girl in the family after her mother “Mama” unfortunately passed away as she was giving birth to Esch’s little brother Junior.

Salvage the bones book