Wildwood

It’s never the changes we want that change everything.

Diaz begins “Wildwood” with this line that stands alone, apart from the story. It succinctly states the lesson of the story and signals a pattern of conflict and obstacles for its protagonist. Lola will learn over the course of the story what it is that she wants, as opposed to the undeveloped and immature idea of “change” that she originally craved.

She is standing in front of the medicine-cabinet mirror, naked from the waist up, her bra slung about her hips like a torn sail, the scar on her back as vast and inconsolable as the sea.

In this scene where Lola is summoned to the bathroom by her mother to feel for a knot in her breast, the similes Diaz uses here compare her mother to a distressed vessel. We learn that her mother has breast cancer that leads to a double mastectomy, years of sickness, and her eventual death. This language helps create a more vivid scene with stronger emotional impact. It also foreshadows the reveal of Belicia’s past trauma, wherein it is revealed she was beaten and burned.

A knot just beneath her skin, tight and secretive as a plot. And at that moment, for reasons you will never quite understand, you are overcome by the feeling, the premonition, that something in your life is about to change.

The theme of change recurs in this passage, and it’s attached to the threat of an ending. Lola’s mother has guided her hand to feel the knot in her breast. She doesn’t understand the feeling she gets and doesn’t understand yet what the knot means.