Annie John

Annie John Summary | Chapter 1 Summary

A girl says that when she was ten, she thought that only people she didn't know died. She came to this conclusion while spending her summer holiday at a house on Fort Road. Usually, the family lived on Dickenson Bay Street in a house her father built with his own hands. They were staying on Fort Road because their real house needed its roof repaired.

From the yard of the Fort Road house, the girl could see a cemetery in the distance. She didn't know what it was until she asked her mother what those specks of people were doing out there. Sometimes people would come early in the morning and her mother told her they buried children in the mornings.

The girl is afraid of dead people because she never knew when they might turn up. Sometimes they would appear in a dream or sometimes leaning against a tree. She knew that once they saw her, they would not give up until she joined them. Her mother had known many people who had died, including her own brother.

When the family moved back into town, the girl could no longer see the cemetery. Up until now, she still knew no one who had died. One day, however, Nalda, the daughter of her mother's friend, died. The girl's father built Nalda's coffin and carved flowers into the side of it. Because undertakers didn't prepare children, her mother bathed and dressed the dead child of her friend. The girl had a hard time looking at her mother's hands for a long time after that, and wouldn't let her mother touch her or help her with her bath. The girl told everyone at school about Nalda's death and they shared stories of their knowledge of death and they were each amazed.

The girl loved another girl named Sonia, who was a dunce. Even though she would torment Sonia until she cried, the girl also gave Sonia answers to the homework and even helped her spell her own name. Her other friends screwed up their noses when the girl would mention the dunce. At recess, the girl would buy Sonia frozen treats with money she had taken from her mother's purse. Then Sonia was absent from school for a short while because her mother had died suddenly. The girl couldn't bring herself to speak to Sonia ever again: she seemed to be such a shameful thing, a girl whose mother had died and left her alone.

Soon after, Miss Charlotte from across the street died. The girl tried to imagine what Miss Charlotte looked like dead, but she couldn't. She had seen Miss Charlotte lying in her bed asleep once and that's as close as she could come. Her mother did not allow her to go to the funeral.

Almost everyone at school had seen a dead body, so the girl started going to funerals to see what it was all about. When she would hear the church bell toll, she would find out who had died and go to their home or the funeral parlor. However, the first time she saw a dead person she wasn't sure how to react because she had never seen that person alive so she had nothing to compare it to.

One day a girl her own age died. She didn't know anything about the dead girl except that she was the girl with the humpback. The day of the funeral, the girl ran out of school and headed to the funeral home, where the adults assumed she had been a friend from school. The dead girl looked the same except her eyes were closed and she was very still. As the girl stared at the body, she kept her fingers curled up in her palms to make sure she wouldn't point and risk her fingers dropping off right then and there. When she walked home, she wondered if the humpback girl would ever come for her and then her father would have to make her own coffin.

When the girl arrived home late, her mother asked her where the fish were that she was to have picked up for dinner. The girl fibbed, but then saw that the fish were frying in the pan. The fishmonger had brought them to the house when the girl hadn't shown up. As a punishment, the girl had to eat alone outside and her mother would not kiss her goodnight. Her mother did come and tuck her into bed.