Summary
While Lisa’s parents travel to Namu, Lisamarie has been left with her Aunt Edith. Lisamarie does not feel well and has a hard time staying awake while Edith fixes them breakfast. She thinks about Jimmy and if what happened was an accident or not, and if he drowned. Remembering how much Jimmy loves to swim, she goes back to a time the summer after Uncle Mick returned when she and Jimmy would go to the beach every day in the summer. Lisa describes what it is like to swim in the cold ocean water.
She remembers playing with her cousins Tab and Erica and going to Erica’s house, leaving her brother behind. When she returns home, her mother is annoyed that she excluded Jimmy, telling her that she should appreciate that he still wants to do everything she does, because some day they will go their separate ways.
Lisamarie remembers swimming at the town pool with her brother. There, she has difficulty passing her swimming lessons, being scared of ducking underwater as the swimming test requires. She is determined to not be the only kid left in the shallow end and teaches herself to bob. Jimmy finds his love for the water there and becomes an excellent swimmer. Their difference in ability spreads over to a competition about who can learn to ride a bicycle first. Lisa has trouble learning to balance on her bike and ends up crashing and hurting herself. She is embarrassed that her brother can do things that she cannot.
After her accident, Lisamarie goes to play with her cousin Tab, who is the daughter of Aunt Trudy. At Tab’s house, they are left less supervised then at her other cousins’ houses. While Lisa’s parents go to a wedding, she and Jimmy are babysat by Mick at his apartment. There, Lisa asks Mick about being shot, and he tells her the story: he was on a reserve having tea with an old woman when a group of “goons” (Guardians of the Oglala Nation) came and shot them.
We are then taken back a year earlier when a cousin of Lisa’s dad died and the family attends the settlement feast. Lisa is not happy abut having to wear a fancy dress and go to what she sees as a boring event. Jimmy arrives late because he had a swim meet, where he won a medal. At the feast, there is tension when Ma-ma-oo and Aunt Trudy meet; something that Lisa does not understand yet. She does know that her father also has a difficult relation with Ma-ma-oo. After the feast, Lisa asks Tab about it and she tells her that Ma-ma-oo sent Mick and Trudy away to residential school when they were children, which created resentment.
Lisamarie describes the big contrast between her father and his brother, her Uncle Mick. Her dad had worked as an accountant and in local politics, while Mick was passionate about Native rights and did not like to do any “straight work.” One summer, Mick babysits Lisa and Jimmy several times and always takes them to the mall or for ice cream. The last time he was supposed to babysit, Gladys and the children arrive at his house they hear the smashing of glass. Mick is drunk and angry after the death of his idol, Elvis Presley. Mick takes off to visit Graceland without informing anyone, leaving Lisa’s family confused and upset.
One afternoon, Lisamarie is playing with Erica when a group of boys come and push her. She threatens to tell her mother, which makes them taunt her even more. Lisa jumps on one of the boys, Franks, and the two engage in a violent fight. Both children end up having to visit the hospital, and neither of them wants to apologize to the other.
Since Mick has returned from Graceland, he has lost his job and apartment, and Lisa’s family offers him their basement to stay. Mick insists he will stay with his friend Josh; someone who Ma-ma-oo had warned everyone about. That winter, Mick takes Lisamarie Christmas tree shopping. Mick’s view on Native American rights has influenced Lisa, who refuses to read a book in school that depicts native people as savages. Mick praises his niece for being “a little warrior.”
When Al takes Lisa to Mick’s house one day to be watched, he is surprised to find him with company: a man named Barry who smells like cigarettes. Barry was also a member of A.I.M.— the American Indian Movement— with Mick. Mick takes Lisamarie to Ma-ma-oo’s house, which is described as very rundown and shabby. We learn that Ma-ma-oo never locks her doors, but Lisamarie’s parents do, because they were once robbed by someone in the village.
It is Ba-ba-oo`s (Lisa’s grandfather) birthday, and although he is not alive, Ma-ma-oo honors him, taking Lisamarie to the Octopus Beds (a series of rocks at the ocean) with food and alcohol that Ba-ba-oo liked. They make a fire and put the items into the fire to feed him. Ma-ma-oo talks to her late husband as if he is right there and Lisamarie wonders how this is possible, but Ma-ma-oo insures her that he is there, just not visible. We learn that Ba-ba-oo died by drowning in the bathtub after falling.
Analysis
In this middle section of the chapter “Love Like the Ocean,” we dive more deeply into the complex and fascinating world of Lisamarie’s family. The majority of this part is composed of her reminiscing while staying at home with her aunt as her parents seek for her brother. The way Eden Robinson constructs the succession of scenes very much mirrors how memory works, jumping from one point to another based on less of a typical narrative arc and more so on an underlying theme that connects everything. For instance, Lisamarie takes us into different memories of her swimming with Jimmy after considering how ironic it would be if he had drowned, as he always loved to be in the water. And oftentimes the connection between different moments is not always obvious but something more fluid and intuitive that calls the reader to feel into the story more so than rationalize it.
Water is a very prominent symbol in these pages, from the present moment incident of Jimmy disappearing at sea, to the memories of swimming, to the death of Lisa’s grandfather in the bathtub. The ocean figures into the story as simultaneously a beautiful, life-giving presence that inspires a greater connection to nature and as a dangerous force that can swallow someone alive if not careful. This is a sentiment expressed when Lisamarie says: “Those who know the ocean know it doesn’t make friends” (46).
As we get deeper into the novel, Robertson begins to flesh out the characters in their full colors. She portrays what, on one hand, is a very tight-knit family. We see how Lisamarie’s extended family comes together to honor the death of a cousin. Lisamarie has many friends in her various cousins and there is an ease in the way the children spend time at each other's houses as extensions of their own homes. Yet at the same time, we are shown the melancholy and shadow that lurks within this family, particularly through the character of Mick, who is shown to have a problem with leading a stable life, in part due to his alcoholism. Mick also chooses to associate with others with the same addiction issues, such as Josh.
Here, Robertson draws a contrast between the beauty of Native culture and the harsh reality of life that often prevents characters from fully living in the way of their ancestors. Mick is very passionate about Native rights as a member of AIM and resists conforming to the standard modern life. At the same time, he is barely able to hold himself together at times, such as when he explodes with drunken anger after the death of Elvis. It is as if we are being called to question, what does it mean to be a Native person in 1970s society? The reservations ideally are supposed to maintain a sort of sanctuary for a historically oppressed group of people—but through the stories here we see how often much of the distortions of Western culture, such as gang violence and addiction, are perpetuated within these places.
We come to see how Lisamarie has been shaped by being raised in such an environment. Having witnessed many chaotic scenes—such as Mick’s behavior or the various conflicts between family members—she has grown up quickly alongside her cousins, who have all started smoking cigarettes at age 12. We also see how she has come to be sort of a tomboy. With a similarly aged brother who exceeds her in many physical activities, she is eager to prove herself, which we see plays out when she fights off a local bully with no remorse.
Lisa’s grandmother— Ma-ma-oo—is shown to be one of the characters who still actively practices tradition, such as when she makes offerings to her deceased husband and talks to him as if he is still right beside her. Her awareness of this mystical side of reality makes an impact on Lisamarie, whose parents have mostly turned their back on that way of life. We can see that Lisa understands the sacredness of her grandma’s rituals when she declines to tell her mother about the offering to Ba-ba-oo.
