White Oleander

Astrid receives a notice that she is being moved again. She is taken to a beautiful home where Amelia and several girls live. Everyone speaks Spanish, and Astrid is immediately singled out. The girls warn Astrid that the home is not what it seems. The next day, Astrid notices a padlock on the fridge, and over the coming days, she finds that Amelia only feeds the girls dinner. Astrid starves to the point where her period stops. She learns to wait until the other kids at school are done eating lunch and takes their remainders out of the garbage.

One afternoon, Astrid wanders through Hollywood and finds herself in front of her old apartment. She wishes everything was a dream and she was still living a simple life with her mother. Astrid sends a drawing of herself “eating out of the garbage, furtive, with both hands, like a squirrel” (197) to her mother and receives one back from her cellmate, asking for more cheerful notes. Astrid eventually receives a reply from Ingrid, who urges her to call her caseworker and get moved again. When Amelia finds out that Astrid has been calling social services, she becomes enraged, ranting about Astrid’s lack of gratitude, her mother in jail, and her “hideous face” (199).