56 pages • 1 hour read
Root Magic
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Chapters 11-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary
October passes quickly. Jez grows closer to Susie, and they walk home together every day, though Susie never comes to Jez’s house. Jez has more homework, which she works on diligently after school. She feels like she sees Jay less since they’re in different classes, and he sometimes stays after school to hang out with his friends. He wears a root bag around his neck but can’t tell Jez what’s in it. She feels like they don’t know each other anymore. Jez never goes to the marsh but misses it.
In November, Doc has Jay and Jez make bottles of oils to sell in his shop. When he goes outside after teasing her, she follows, and she notices that he’s shaking. He tells her he needs help and instructs her to go to the marsh. He’ll get their mother. His voice quivers, telling Jez that she needs to go to the big oak. Recognizing that something is wrong, she grabs a pitchfork and goes down to the marsh. There, she finds an injured coyote stuck in a trap. She knows that the creature would eat their chickens and that Mama and Doc would kill it. However, she wants to help it.
She takes her Devil’s Shoestrings bracelet and unbraids it, laying it in a circle around the coyote. Then, she uses the pitchfork to open the trap. The coyote pulls its leg out just as Janey and Jay appear. Janey is surprised it’s near the marsh, as it’s their trap, kept inside Doc’s cabin. It came from her grandmother, who helped someone who was escaping slavery after he’d been trapped in it.
They hear the coyote howl, and Jez points at it. Janey corrects her, saying that it was a red wolf.
That night, Jez wonders how the trap got to the marsh, thinking that perhaps Deputy Collins took it out of Doc’s shed the night of Gran’s funeral.
Chapter 12 Summary
At school one day, Lettie pours water over Jez’s head at lunch, saying that water melts witches. Jez yells back at her, and a teacher sends her to the nurse, making Lettie clean up the water. Jez starts to feel like maybe she is a witch since she is learning magic.
In Miss Corrie’s office, Jez spots a bottle of potion she helped Doc brew. She explains that the other kids tease her for rootworking and the police persecute rootworkers. She adds that she wants to help her family. She worries that she can’t protect her family. Miss Corrie explains that she might be feeling stressed since she’s thinking about her family so intensely. She says that she bought the potion from Doc because her family used to be rootworkers, but they gave it up before she was born, forgetting the traditions. She emphasizes that what makes Jez vulnerable is something that also makes her special. Miss Corrie gives her a note to leave early.
At home, Jez sees a police car and hears the sheriff arguing with her mom about the animal trap. She wants him to arrest Deputy Collins, but the sheriff responds that the deputy hasn’t done anything he can put him in jail for yet. He has to follow certain rules before he can arrest him. Janey replies that she’s worried Deputy Collins will try to hurt someone, adding that when Jez and Jay were little, the deputy came over and beat their dad, which is why he left.
Listening from another room, Jez is shocked and thinks that her mother is trying to protect her. Then, she calls for her, acting like she just arrived back from school. The sheriff leaves, and after he does, Janey emphasizes that she keeps secrets from them to protect them. Jay comes home, and they go to look for more traps in the marsh.
Chapter 13 Summary
At the marsh, Jay and Jez become separated, and Jez feels like she’s always on her own. Then, she hears a voice, saying that they are also alone. She sees something in the water, dipping up and down. The voice then says, “I am so empty, lonely girl. Are you empty like me?” (187). Feeling drawn to it, Jez gets closer and sees a doll. Dinah is in her pocket and starts to move, seemingly panicking. When Jez reaches her hand to pick up the doll, her fingers go through it, and she’s pulled toward the pool of marsh water. She feels something pulling her arm. She tries to escape, but she took off her bracelet so it could dry after Lettie poured water on her. She yells, hearing the voice saying that she belongs to it now. She feels like something is piercing her side but doesn’t see anything.
She tries to think about what magic she can use to escape, worried that she’ll soon run out of air. More invisible pins poke her body. Then, she calms herself down and allows her spirit to separate from her body. She floats up, seeing her body in the pool, and she starts to feel her ancestors around her, telling her that they’re with her. Feeling connected to everything around her, she causes ducks to float out of the water, creating a ripple so that Jay and Doc can see her. Jay pours muddy liquid into the water, and Doc helps her escape.
Jez’s spirit returns to her body, and despite the holes in her dress from where she’s been poked, Jez feels strong after knowing that her power extends beyond her body. Doc tells her that they have to tell Janey what happened.
Chapter 14 Summary
Jez recounts what happened back at the house. When she’s finished, Janey says that it wasn’t a doll in the water. Jez is confused since Janey doesn’t do root, but her mother explains that that was her decision and that she learned lessons from Gran, just like her children are from Doc. Janey says that what captured her was a poppet, which is a doll filled with magic that can be used like a trap to harm people. She adds that they have to stay away from the marsh because if someone left a poppet, it means that they’re trying to capture her and take her magic.
One morning, Jez hears her mother talking to a customer about how Jez only wants to eat rice, and the woman suggests that Jez might be reaching puberty and that it “[m]ight be time for her woman trouble” (201). Jez is nervous, thinking that if she’s a woman, she won’t be able to run around or carry Dinah with her.
After school that day, Jez waits for Jay, thinking he might want to walk with her after her run-in with the poppet. However, Susie offers to walk home with her. Jez agrees. They see the branches of a tree rustle across the street, and someone shouts. Jez investigates, and Susie comes with her. They find Jay’s bag on the ground. Then, they see Jay with another boy, and he’s holding out his hand. The other boy has a small knife. Jez intervenes, surprising Jay, and the other boy explains that they were going to each make a small cut on their hands and mix blood to be blood brothers. The boy runs off, and Jay is upset because he wants a brother. He runs off.
Jez feels like she isn’t enough. She and Susie walk home, and Jez explains that she feels distant from Jay. Susie asks if there’s a part of rootwork that can fix it, and asks if it’s real magic. When Jez doesn’t answer, Susie goes on, saying that her family doesn’t do root magic and that they think she shouldn’t be friends with people who do. She doesn’t think Jez will hurt anyone, but Jez can’t come to her house.
Jez replies that it’s a part of her family and that it’s real magic to her. When they get closer to her house, Jez asks if Susie wants to come over. She says she can’t but gives Jez a hug before running off.
Chapter 15 Summary
Still mad, Jez decides to make some rice, but Jay appears, reminding her that she’s not allowed to eat before dinner. She threatens to tell their mother about the other boy and the knife. They fight, and Jay teases her for not having many friends. They wrestle, and when they spill the rice, they realize that they’re in trouble. Jez says that they never kept secrets before, and Jay says he just wasn’t sure how to talk to her about what he was feeling. They apologize to one another. They talk about their respective friends, with Jay saying that the other boy is named Tony.
They turn to talking about their dad, and they wonder if he had a reason for leaving. They hope it’s a good reason.
Then, Janey comes home.
Chapters 11-15 Analysis
In this section, Jez believes that perhaps she has gotten her wish as her friendship with Susie grows stronger. However, she also feels more and more distant from Jay, as their relationship starts to change now that they’re not in the same class together. As twins, they have been linked with one another for so long, and it is difficult for her to think that they might be on diverging paths. This is evident when Jez thinks, “I started to miss him. We used to do everything together, talk about everything. Now it seemed he had friends and spots and games, all these things that didn’t include me” (158). Little does she know that Jay feels similarly, and they fight about feeling distant from one another—because their family continues to emphasize how important it is that they stay close, they reconcile, knowing that they will always be family. Additionally, they face separate issues, as Jez is predicted to soon begin her period, and Jay longs for a brother. Though they are twins, the world responds differently to them, and Jay’s friends think rootwork is interesting, whereas Jez is mercilessly teased. As a boy and a girl, they face different obstacles within society, and these differences sometimes make them feel alienated from each other. Ultimately, despite the different challenges they separately face, they will always protect each other as twins and rootworkers.
The theme of Learning Rootwork and Gullah Traditions also appears in Jez’s conversation with Miss Corrie. The nurse expresses a distinct cultural loss since her family stopped practicing root magic, and relaying this, it is clear that she feels more cut off from the past. She says that Jez still has “the stories and songs […] and that’s a special thing to hold on to,” which reinforces the importance of Jez’s rootwork (176-77). Hearing this from someone outside of her family shows Jez that she is special and that others see this too, even if she is getting teased by other students. In this sense, Miss Corrie serves as an important symbol of longing for the past, as well as offering Jez good-natured protection as an adult who seeks to encourage her.
In this section, Jez is also confronted with her first challenge as to handling an animal within rootwork, which she has thought of as unethical. When she encounters what she believes is a coyote, she knows that members of her family would let it die. However, in line with the motif of caring for the land, she sees her root practice as unwilling to allow harm to come to creatures, even if it means that it could interfere with her life. She knows that a coyote would kill her chickens, but she selflessly opts to let it survive anyway, marking a specific difference between herself and her ancestors, and thus the choice one has in their own specific practices even when they draw from ancestral foundations. Jez will continue to build on her own interpretation of right and wrong through her decision to save Susie, even though boo-rags have traditionally gone after rootworkers, demonstrating Jez’s continued growth in deciding the specifics of her own rootwork practices. Further, Jez faces real danger in the form of the poppet, which creates a setting of ominous tension at the marsh. This danger doubles as a victory, as Jez is able to push herself outside of her body to manipulate the water to allow Jay and Doc to free her. As the challenges she faces deepen, so too do her powers. However, this creates greater conflict, as whatever lingers near, and within, the marsh to threaten Jez and her family also bears witness to her significant power, for which she is already persecuted for at school.
This section of chapters deepens Jez and Jay’s understanding of rootwork and provides the novel’s rising action. Jez’s encounter with the poppet is critical in helping to cement her status as a rootworker, giving her the confidence to protect herself and faith in what she is doing. Chapter 15 also further builds the tension about what happened to Daniel, since neither child knows what happened to their father. Jay’s admission that “[h]e might be dead, Jezzie” foreshadows Deputy Collins’s revelation that he killed Daniel, reminding the reader to pay attention to mentions of Daniel and recognize that Racism in the Jim Crow South deeply affected every Black family and their experiences (218). Further, mentions of Daniel provide greater insight into Janey’s character, as she says that she has kept secrets to protect her children after suggesting that her husband left after being attacked by Deputy Collins. Though she does not practice rootwork, Janey is a fiercely protective mother who uses non-magical means to safeguard her family.
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