When
I stuck a plaited palm behind [a religious calendar] at the end
of Lent I would realize the pages had not been turned and bring
it up to date. Then I’d forget again. In my house, Christ was always
being born or rising from the dead.
Here, in a passage in Ida’s narration
in Chapter 20, we see how limited Ida’s involvement
with religion has been, and how death and resurrection have a prominent
role in the novel. Ida’s words, particularly the phrase, “Then I’d
forget again,” emphasize how frequently the women in her family
turn toward and then away from the church. It is interesting that
Ida mentions the “plaited” palm she places behind the calendar at
the end of Lent because the plait, a synonym of “braid,” is an image
Dorris uses to represent the intertwining narratives of the novel
itself. In the Christian faith, the palm is associated with death
and resurrection, and so the image of a plait combined with the
image of a palm frond could be read as a metaphor for the way the
death and rebirth are always overlapping and intersecting over the
course of the three generations. Death and rebirth in the novel
appear both literally and as the the death and rebirth of the characters’
identities. The plaited palm is symbolic of all the forms of death
that Ida, Christine, and Rayona experience over the course of their
stories.