Transcendent Kingdom

Gifty describes what her mother said she was like as a baby. She had Gifty at 40, and both the pregnancy and birth were difficult. She also says, with regards to Nana, that “the glory of his birth cast a long shadow” (65-66). Gifty was born into this shadow, never able to match up to her brother. Moreover, her mother did not try to conceal her feelings about her brother’s superiority. She notes how this “matter-of-fact,” unsentimental attitude crossed over into cruelty when Nana died.

Gifty talks about this in connection with the “Still Face Experiment” (72), practiced in the 1970s. The experiment involves the mother of a baby engaging with her child with positive facial expressions, then presenting a blank, expressionless face. Gifty sees similarity in the cold back her mother presents to her when lying in bed in her apartment.

This short chapter features two more of Gifty’s journal entries. In the first, she talks about how she and her brother had a race to the car after church. The second asks God to let her brother get a dog. They are notably simple and positive entries.