43 pages • 1 hour read
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“Another thing I found out right around that same time is that not knowing something doesn’t mean you’re stupid. All it means is that there’s still room left to wonder.”
Heidi compares foolishness and ignorance in this opening chapter quote. This idea follows her discussion on the color of dinosaur skin and her comment that facts are facts no matter who knows them. Heidi recognizes here that the unknown holds lessons and mysteries for everyone.
“Bernie taught me everything I know, and she was a very good teacher. When she explained things, they shot into my brain like arrows and stuck.”
Bernie teaches Heidi to read but also teaches her fascinating science facts and topics. Bernie might in fact be a good teacher, but Heidi is a mature, scholarly thinker who shows clear strength in discovery and learning, which contributes to the “arrows” of knowledge leaving an impact.
“You and your mama just fell through a luckier set of cracks, is all.”
Bernie does not appear to question the fact that Mama and Heidi have an apartment and utilities without any bills, considering the two of them unlucky in some ways but “luckier” than many people in other ways. Bernie reassures Heidi with this logic that Heidi and Mama are not stealing water, electricity, and living space.
“Shouldn’t a person know their history?”
As Heidi grows, she begins to question her background and how she and Mama came to live in the apartment that adjoins to Bernie’s. Bernie tells Heidi in response that not knowing Mama’s and Heidi’s history from before they knocked on her door does not matter; a history exists, and it will not change just for knowing it.
“Nothing. The worst would be if there was nothing.”
Heidi returns to the apartment with a pack of developed photographs found in a kitchen drawer. She is hopeful that the photos will give her some clues about Mama’s history and how they came to be living in the apartment. When Bernie asks if Heidi looked at them on the way home, Heidi says she was too afraid to look on her own; the fear is that the photos show nothing helpful in determining any part of her history, Mama’s background, or the mystery word soof.
“I imagined my heart flying out like a small, red bird escaping its cage, going off in search of a more promising person to live in. A person with a history. A person who knew.”
Heidi weeps on her bed, utterly frustrated when Mama names “Soof” in the photos without a definite answer as to who Soof is—herself, or the woman in the Christmas sweater. Heidi equates knowing about her own history with worthiness and identity; she thinks about her own heart leaving her for someone more knowledgeable about her background.
“When I looked over at Bernie, still pale and shaken from her single step outside, I know there was only thing to do.”
In this moment, Heidi decides to make the trip to Hilltop House in Liberty, New York alone. Bernie cannot leave the apartment due to her agoraphobia, and Mama has made it clear that she cannot handle public transportation. Consequently, if Heidi is to seek out Thurman Hill and the answers she seeks, it will have to be alone.
“You’re pretty deep for someone so low to the ground.”
Judi, the rough-looking woman who willingly makes the bus ticket purchase for Heidi in Reno, tells Heidi this. Judi asks why Heidi is going to Liberty, New York, and Heidi tells her that she “won’t know for sure until [she] gets there” (84). Judi refers to Heidi’s physical size in this quote in a way that juxtaposes wisdom with youth.
“Get a life, Heidi. Get a life.”
After Judi purchases the bus ticket with Heidi’s quarters, the clerk tells her to “get lost”; Judi responds with “Get a life.” Heidi recognizes that Judi’s usage of the phrase is an insult, but in this quote Heidi speaks the words to herself as an inspiring mantra-like saying, filled with anticipation of learning the truth about her background and Mama’s.
“I put Mama to bed alone for the first time in my life.”
After the argument between Bernie and Heidi over Heidi’s plans to go alone to Liberty, Bernie retreats into her own apartment, closing the adjoining door. She comes back to make dinner for Mama and Heidi but goes again, leaving Heidi to help Mama clean up and get ready for bedtime. Heidi has never helped Mama at bedtime before, always having relied on Bernie’s assistance.
“How could an October Wilinsky possibly understand about that?”
Heidi is jealous when Alice Wilinsky tells her about her family members’ birthdays in October, as she has nothing factual to offer about her own birthday. Assuming that Alice will not understand about her situation and the holes in her background, Heidi begins to fib to Alice, making up a life in which she lives with her grandmother, who loves to bake and knows Shirley Temple.
“The coffee had grown cold in the cup and the smell was working a darker kind of magic now.”
At the Cheyenne bus stop, Heidi buys a cup of coffee just so that the smell will remind her of Bernie, who loves coffee and drinks several cups a day. In the phone booth, the scent at first is comforting, but when Heidi learns the phone lines are down and begins to feel panicky and sick, the cold coffee smell only contributes to her nausea.
“Besides, what if you want to study something Bernie doesn’t know about?”
Georgia Sweet reacts with these words when Heidi tells her that Bernie homeschools Heidi and will teach her that way through her college years. The subject quickly changes to how Georgia’s mother studied home economics in college, but the moment reveals that Heidi has not thought about her own educational future.
“Liars have tells.”
Heidi notes this info from Georgia Sweet in her notebook. Georgia, a budding psychology major, tells Heidi about body language and the ticks or gestures evident in a person when he or she lies. Heidi tries it out with the story about Shirley Temple coming to bake at her house, but Georgia is too interested in the lie to watch for a tell.
“Can I hold the jar?”
The ABC Cab company offers a free ride to anyone who can guess the correct number of jellybeans in the jar on their counter. With her money stolen before arriving in Liberty, Heidi worries that her luck is gone; once she is holding the jar, however, she makes the correct guess and requests the free ride to Hilltop Home.
“She was me. Heidi It.”
Heidi catches sight of her own reflection in the cab window when she gets in for the ride to Hilltop Home. After three days of bus travel and a rainstorm, she does not recognize the image as herself, and wonders why the girl is alone.
“Am I soof?”
Heidi is shocked when Elliot, a mentally disabled man at Hilltop Home, calls her soof. A caretaker, Ruby, asks who Heidi is, but Elliot is the one to reply, saying soof again. Heidi tries asking Elliot if she, Heidi, is soof, an idea she never had until that moment.
“Thurman Hill stood very still. Looking at the photo in his hand, and as I watched, the color completely drained from his cheeks, until his face was absolutely powder white.”
In this moment Thurman Hill figures out exactly who Heidi is, and his anger boils up at the idea of “trouble” coming back to him. His reaction mystifies Heidi, and she does not understand why he tells her that she has no business coming to Hilltop Home.
“The face of the watch was blue, but there were no numbers on it, just four letters: S-O-O-F—one letter each at twelve o’clock, three, six, and nine.”
As Heidi drifts off to an exhausted sleep in the spare room of Roy and Ruby’s house, she begins to dream. She sees Mr. Thurman Hill and his gold watch with the letters of soof standing for the numbers. In her dream, Mr. Hill refuses to reveal what he holds in his hand, then turns into a bird that flies away.
“I knew who the Santa was.”
Heidi shows more of the photographs to Ruby after staying the first night in Liberty at Roy’s and Ruby’s home. Now that she met Thurman Hill, she recognizes Mr. Hill’s skinny shape and gold watch in the photo of the Christmas party, and realizes he is the one dressed as Santa.
“There must be some reason he’s not telling the truth.”
Ruby tells Roy this when she sees that Mr. Hill is present in the photographs of the Christmas party. Ruby witnessed Mr. Hill looking at the photos the day before and heard him insist that Heidi’s mother was not someone he ever knew or who ever came to Hilltop Home. Photos, as Heidi points out, do not lie, and in this statement, Ruby acknowledges that Mr. Hill must be lying.
“I paid a small fortune not to know.”
Mr. Hill tells Heidi the truth about her background, admitting that he paid off Diane DeMuth to keep Sophia’s pregnancy secret. He later mentions that the money is now gone.
“Even though my grandmother and my mother died almost thirteen years apart, it felt as if I had lost them both on the same day.”
Heidi refers to the fact that she learns of the deaths of her grandmother Diane DeMuth and of Mama on the same day—within hours of each other. The anticipation of learning about Mama’s and her own background compounds this loss, and the shock of Mama’s death hits Heidi extremely hard.
“They were trying to make it seem normal, but nothing was normal anymore.”
Heidi spends the first few days after Mama dies with Roy and Ruby and sees that they attempt normalcy for her sake. Ruby plans to make a pot roast, and Roy tells Heidi as he leaves for work how good it will be. Heidi cannot feel normal, however; for her, everything changes without Mama in Reno.
“Soof wasn’t Mama’s name; soof was mama’s word for love.”
Heidi makes this revelation as she prepares to speak at Mama’s graveside service. Elliot called Mama Soof when he could not pronounce Sophia, but Heidi sees now that when Mama used it, it was not a reference to Elliot’s name for her but to love in general.
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By Sarah Weeks