An American Marriage: Part 1, Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

Celestial says that the night at the motel continues to haunt her memory, but that no fight can be fought with the past. In flashback, Celestial tells the story of Roy calling out their safe word and leaving the room, and her subsequent call to Andre. He tells her not to be angry every time Roy tries to come clean. Celestial is still smiling from the call when Roy returns. He apologizes to Celestial, saying he’d been embarrassed about his history because Celestial’s family is so seemingly perfect. Celestial remembers her mother warning her that she will always have to remind Roy that they are equals because of the insecurity caused by the difference in their backgrounds.

Roy says that he didn’t want Celestial’s parents to know that Olive was a teenager when he was born. Celestial reminds Roy that her own mother, Gloria, was her father, Franklin’s, second wife, and reveals that she was in fact his mistress for three years while he was still married to his first wife. By the time her parents married, her mother was already pregnant with Celestial. Her father hadn’t told her mother he was already married until they’d been dating a whole month. Celestial tells Roy that her mother was grateful her father didn’t tell her this, however, because she wouldn’t have dated a married man and he turned out to be “the One.” Celestial tells Roy that she never wants to benefit from deception and that she doesn’t want their child to inherit their secrets.

Celestial and Roy make love, and Celestial cries, believing that her tears are caused by “passion rather than premonition.” Afterwards, Celestial basks in her gratitude and affection for Roy as he drifts off to sleep. Suddenly, the door bursts open. Celestial remembers the door being kicked in, though the later police report claims a key unlocked the door. The  woman Roy met earlier that evening has claimed that a man had tried the door to her room and, finding it open, raped her; she believed it was Roy. Celestial claims Roy was with her all night.

Celestial tells the story, in flashback, of how she met Roy in college. After one bad year at Howard, Celestial transfers to Spelman. Roy and Andre are next door neighbors in their dorm room at Morehouse, and Celestial sometimes sleeps over in Andre’s room, though the relationship is strictly platonic. One night she and Andre hear a breathy voice calling out, “Roy. Othaniel. Hamilton.” Andre and Celestial joke about what they hear, with Celestial conjecturing that the woman is faking her orgasm and Andre countering that if she is, then all of the other girls Roy has brought home are too.

Celestial doesn’t meet Roy until a month later when he barges into Andre’s room unannounced. He is cordial, but Celestial notes that something about Roy is dangerous and that she doesn’t want anything to do with danger after what happened at Howard. They don’t speak again for four years, by which point Roy seems marked less by danger and more by “realness,” a quality Celestial now craves even as she questions what it means to be “real.”

Back in the narrative present, they hire a family friend named Uncle Banks to defend Roy, but he sits in jail for 100 days before his case goes to trial. Celestial remains in Louisiana for a month. When she sends the mayor the doll she made him, she is unable to seal the box to ship it to him. Roy tells Celestial that if he doesn’t win the case, he doesn’t want her to wait for him, but Celestial refuses to believe that things won’t work out in Roy’s favor.

The day before the trial, Celestial cuts off Andre’s dreadlocks. Everyone in the family dresses to look their most “innocent” during the trial. When Celestial is on the witness stand, the prosecutor asks what she and Roy had been fighting about that evening. Celestial pauses, and though Banks objects so she doesn’t need to answer, the pause casts doubt on her testimony, as though she’s hiding something. Banks has coached Celestial to show her passion for Roy, but she doesn’t know how to be anything but well-spoken in front of strangers. She reflects that none of the twelve jury members took her for her word.

Roy sobs upon being sentenced to twelve years in jail. In his weeping, Celestial recognizes all the tears he wasn’t allowed to cry before. She reflects on the night of the attack, remembering being pulled from the bed and Roy being dragged into the parking lot. On that night at the hotel someone pushed Celestial to the ground and she hit her chin on the pavement, leaving a scar. She and Roy lay beside each other on the ground as if in their burial plots.

Celestial writes Roy a letter saying that she didn’t think it was possible he would be put in jail. She doesn’t recognize herself because she feels so much has changed so suddenly, and she experiences the house as not “simply empty” but “emptied.” She tells him that, despite knowing he won’t receive mail for a month, she’ll write him every night.

Roy writes to Celestial saying that he hasn’t written a letter since high school and that this will be his first love letter. He tells her he wants to write something that will remind her of her love for him, but he feels his words are inadequate. He reminds her of the time she thought the hickory tree in the front yard was sick and so he hired a tree doctor to help it, reflecting that he shows his love through action. He also says that when he told her to make her art and he would worry about providing for them, that was another love letter.

Roy writes to Celestial again to tell her he received all her letters. In three months, he has had three cell partners. His current cellmate is Walter, an older man who has been incarcerated for most of his life. Roy writes letters for Walter in exchange for cigarettes that he then trades for other goods. The letters are mostly to women Walter meets through personal ads. Walter also lived in Eloe and wants to hear all about it and about Roy’s college life. He asks Roy how he got his name and Roy says he got the name from his father. The inmates call Walter “Ghetto Yoda” because of his tendency to advise other inmates. He tells Roy that they need to stick together because they’re both bow-legged.

Roy tells Celestial that it’s bad in jail and that no one, not even a murderer, deserves to spend more than a couple years there. The number of men in the jail is equivalent to the male population of Morehouse. He tells Celestial he put her on the top of his visitors list and that he’ll put Dre (a nickname for Andre) on the list, too. He thanks her for putting money in his commissary account and calls Celestial “Georgia” because he misses his home with her.

Celestial tells Roy that she will have visited by the time he gets this letter and that she’s already memorized the strict guidelines about how visitors should dress. She remembers seeing a wrongly-accused man and his accuser speak in college, but she can’t remember what they said. Celestial didn’t think that such a thing could happen to her or her loved ones, and she wishes she could sit down with the woman who accused Roy. Uncle Banks is preparing his appeal, and he reminds Celestial that things could be worse—Roy could have been shot during the arrest. She prays for him every night and says she wrote down every word of their conversation in the hotel room that night so that, when Roy returns, they can pick up where they left off. She tells Roy that she’s nervous to see him, but that she loves him as much as ever.

Roy thanks Celestial for visiting. He writes that he felt weird seeing her for the first time in front of so many people, and then begins to reveal something that has been kept secret to the readers up until now. Insinuating that Celestial was pregnant upon his sentencing but had an abortion, Roy tells his wife that their child would have had all of their family to help raise him until Roy was free, and that the child would have been something for him to look forward to upon his release. He then says what’s done is done, and that when they decided to have an abortion it was as though they were resigning themselves to the fact that things wouldn’t work out in the courtroom. He asks Celestial who else knows about the abortion and tells her he loves her.

Celestial tells Roy that she tries to force herself not to think about the abortion all the time, but that she feels sadness more than regret. She asks him not to send another letter like the last one and reminds him what it would be like to bring a child into the disgusting county jail to visit him. She reminds him how he told her she couldn’t have the child in this situation, and that whatever Roy is feeling about the abortion, she feels it more.

Celestial throws herself into her work of making the dolls. They remind her of a baby doll shop she went to as a child, and the sadness she felt at the idea the dolls didn’t have homes. She wants to sell her dolls to children because she can’t handle them looking at her, but she also can’t stop making them. She tells Roy that only Andre knows about the abortion. He took her to the appointment and reminded her that this wasn’t their last chance to have a baby, and she promises him that they can have as many babies as he wants when he gets out of jail. 

Roy writes back to deny that he forced her into anything. Celestial is a strong woman who wouldn’t just follow anyone’s orders. Celestial was relieved at the thought of not keeping the baby and didn’t argue with the suggestion. They both have responsibility for the decision.

Celestial tells Roy she left Howard University for Spelman after just a year because she had an affair with the teacher of her Art of the African Diaspora class. He was forty and married, while Celestial was eighteen. They were unofficially engaged, but he still needed to divorce his wife when Celestial discovered she was pregnant. He talked her into having an abortion to protect his wife from the embarrassment. After the abortion, the teacher broke up with Celestial.

Celestial stopped going to classes and the college called her parents, who filed a suit against the professor. Celestial returned home to Atlanta, where only her Aunt Sylvia was able to snap her out of her depression. Sylvia convinced Celestial that she didn’t want the baby to begin with and taught her how to make dolls out of socks to donate to the “crack babies” in the hospital. For Celestial, the dolls were a way to atone for aborting her own child. In her letter to Roy, she tells him that she promised herself that she wouldn’t put herself in that situation again. She sees the abortion of their child more as a miscarriage because, despite her body being fertile, her life was not. She again asks him not to bring up the subject.

Roy writes that he has two years done and ten more to go. Uncle Banks finally moves forward with the appeal. Roy dislikes how much money Celestial’s parents are paying Banks, and he vows to pay them back. He likes handwritten letters more than email because they’re like receipts, and he tells Celestial that he wrote an email for another inmate recently in exchange for an onion. He thanks Celestial for always writing him back, though he notes that most people don’t respond to paper letters. He asks for some photos, both old and new.

Celestial writes back to Roy and encloses a few photos: some old photos and some new ones taken by Andre. Dre has a new girlfriend who is only twenty-one. She tells Roy that she’s put on some weight and secured a retail space to sell the dolls as high-end toys or low-end art, because she loves watching little brown girls receive the dolls. She has accepted Franklin as an investor instead of opening the business with Roy as they planned. She tells Roy that she’s kept all the pictures PG-rated but hopes that he’ll keep the new ones to himself and share only the older ones with his friends. She offers to put some money on Walter’s books, a.k.a. his commissary account too.

Roy writes to Celestial, telling her he misses everything about her and he can’t believe how much time they wasted fighting. He asks her to forgive him for all the times he could have made her feel more secure. He feels demoralized that he has nothing to offer her for all she does for him, and he tells her that he touches her with his mind and asks if she’ll try to do the same to him.

Roy writes to apologize for the last letter being a little “out there” and asks Celestial to write him back. Celestial writes to tell him he didn’t freak her out, but that she’s been very busy. She has a solo show coming up in which she will exhibit all of the portraits she’s made of Roy over the years. She tells him that working with images of him all day makes her feel as though she is spending time with him, and it causes her to forget to write.

Roy writes Celestial to ask if Olive is correct that Celestial is now famous. Celestial writes that she was featured in an article in Ebony and her doll won a contest at the National Portrait Museum. She’d made this doll for Olive based on one of Roy’s baby pictures and it was supposed to be dressed in Roy’s baby clothes, but Celestial couldn’t let it go.

Celestial tells Roy the story of how her mother’s family came to Atlanta. One day, at the general store, Celestial’s grandmother, pushing the baby Gloria in a pram, crossed paths with a white lady and her child. The little girl pointed at Gloria and said, “Look, Mommy! A baby maid!” Immediately after that, her grandparents moved to Atlanta to avoid that fate for their daughter.

Celestial tells Roy that about a year ago she had an incident that she didn’t tell him about because she didn’t want to worry him. She and Andre were walking to get food after setting up a show, and she was tired and hungry. She passed a little boy on the street who reminded her of Roy, and thought, “A baby prisoner.” She thought it really was Roy for a moment and broke down. Andre called Gloria and they calmed Celestial down, but Celestial couldn’t shake the idea. She made prison clothing for the doll, transforming it from a toy into art. This was her prize-winning doll, but when interviewed about it, she didn’t mention Roy, instead talking about her mother and Angela Davis’s protest of prisons.

Roy writes to Celestial that the idea of a shop was his idea, while she always dreamed of placing her work in galleries. He accuses her of being ashamed of him. He asks to see a picture of the doll, hoping he’ll like it more when he sees it. He tells her that her dolls might help raise awareness, but they don’t actually help anyone who is incarcerated. He tells her that if she doesn’t want to tell people her husband is wrongfully incarcerated, she can tell them that he was recently promoted from picking soybeans to picking up trash. He asks if Andre was at the award ceremony.

Celestial tells Roy his last letter upset her. She tells him that even when she tells people he’s innocent, all they focus on is the fact that he’s incarcerated, and she wanted to enjoy the honor that she was being awarded. She tells him she won’t dignify his question about Andre with a response.

Roy tells Celestial that his cellmate Walter took Celestial’s side in the argument. Walter sees the negative association of incarceration with African American life and reminds Roy that it’s a miracle Celestial has already overcome all of the other negative stereotypes she could have fallen prey to. Roy apologizes to Celestial. He pulled up the article about her at the library and was happy to see she still wore his ring on her finger. He writes her another letter asking if she received his apology and asking her to please write back. 

Roy writes to Celestial’s father, saying that he feels he has a lot in common with Mr. Davenport. He recalls the day he asked permission to propose to Celestial, and the way “Mr. D” told him her hand wasn’t his to give—and that Roy might not know Celestial as well as he thought if he believed that approach might work. Now, Roy tells him that Celestial hasn’t visited in two months and he hasn’t heard from her either. Roy asks his father-in-law if he will talk to Celestial on his behalf. He knows that being married to an incarcerated man is a sacrifice and that all he has to offer her is his character. He asks that Mr. Davenport keep the letter to himself.

Mr. Davenport writes Roy to tell him that Gloria prays for him every day. He revises Roy’s story about asking him for Celestial’s hand in marriage, saying that he only told Roy that Celestial had a mind of her own. He tells Roy that he proposed to Gloria three times before she accepted. He tells Roy that he’ll ask Celestial why she hasn’t visited, but that a marriage is between two people. He adds that he is sure his daughter will be loyal to Roy in the same way Gloria has always been loyal to himself.

Roy writes to Celestial, mentioning that he wrote to Franklin to ask him to talk to her. He recalls the first time he visited Celestial’s parents’ home and the way they sat on the porch as her father rolled a blunt, and how he felt welcomed into the family. He shares his shock to discover that his cellmate is actually his biological father. When Roy was helping Walter with something, he saw his full name on his face sheet, Othaniel Walter Jenkins, and knew in that moment that he must be his father. People in prison had called him Roy’s pops, but he’d just assumed it was a joke.

Roy backtracks to explain that Olive knew Walter had fathered quite a few children already, and when he found out Olive was pregnant he left her, too. When she went out looking for him, someone told her he was in Eloe, but he was already gone. She did find a job and a husband there, though. Roy tells Celestial that he felt like a sucker when he found out the truth about his cellmate, and that he understands now how Celestial felt upon learning that Roy hadn’t told her about his being adopted by Big Roy.

Walter tells Roy that his first instinct when Olive told him she was pregnant was to run, and Roy worries he reacted similarly when Celestial told him she was pregnant. Walter forces Roy to admit that life in prison improved once Walter became his cellmate. He says while Big Roy will always be his father, Walter is his “old man” while in prison. He asks once more for Celestial to come visit him.

Celestial writes to Roy to ask for his forgiveness. She says that initially she didn’t visit because she was going through a lot, but recently she had just been busy with work. Her employee Tamar is going to mind the shop soon so that Celestial can visit. She asks if she’ll be allowed to meet Walter as well as for his commissary information, so that she can put money in for the holidays.

Roy writes to Celestial to thank her for visiting. He tells her that something about her seems different and asks if she is all right. He says he’s not asking if she’s seeing someone else. Celestial is uncertain how to respond to Roy’s question. She says change can be expected, as he’s been away for three years and they’re growing older. Celestial confirms that Roy’s ring is on her finger.

Roy writes to tell Celestial that Olive has lung cancer. He asks if Celestial will visit Olive, apologizing for running up his list of debts with her. He can tell she feels obligated by all that he requires of her, but he needs to know Celestial’s opinion of the situation because he believes Big Roy is withholding information from him.

Celestial writes to Roy to apologize for writing a letter she promised herself she would never write. She says she can no longer be his wife, though she feels like she was never given a chance to fully occupy the role. After seeing the way Big Roy behaved at Olive’s funeral, Celestial saw how weak her connection with Roy was. They aren’t able to share their lives with each other, both unable to bear hearing about the other’s days even when they visit. She tells him she’ll continue to support and visit him, but she can’t do so as his wife.

Roy tells Celestial she should do what she has to do, but that plenty of women are more dedicated to their incarcerated men than Celestial is. He tells her not to visit as a friend. Celestial asks that Roy consider her perspective, and how things like being strip-searched each time she visits are slowly diminishing her spirit. Roy writes back that he is innocent, and Celestial says that she is, too.

Roy writes Celestial formally discontinuing their relationship. He asks that she not come to visit him. He then writes to Uncle Banks, telling him to release him as his attorney and to remove Celestial from his visitors list. Uncle Banks writes back to say that the Davenports intend to retain him so he may continue his lawyerly duties. He urges Roy to reconsider removing Celestial from his list, adding that Roy’s case has been the most upsetting of any he has worked on and that he believes they possess the same determination. He acknowledges that the appeal being denied was a disheartening setback, but that there is still hope. He recommends that Roy stay connected with those people who remind him he had a life outside the prison.

Roy writes Banks to accept his continued services and to say he’ll leave Celestial on his list, but to please not tell her that this is the case. Roy promises to repay the Davenports and Banks for all he has done, saying he is Roy’s only hope.

Celestial writes Roy on their anniversary to tell him she’s thinking of him. She mentions that, while married, they used “November 17” as a safe word to halt a fight, and hopes that maybe now they can use it to resume communication. She writes him again to wish him a merry Christmas. She writes once more to say that she finds his refusal to see her unkind. He writes her back to ask that she please respect his wishes. Celestial writes to wish Roy a happy birthday. She writes again around the anniversary of Olive’s death to say she’s thinking of him.

Roy writes Celestial after having been incarcerated for five years to say that he is coming home, since his conviction has been vacated. He tells her he should be free in time for Christmas and regrets not answering her letters, saying that he hasn’t heard from her in more than a year. He says that while he knows they can’t start over, he believes there’s a reason she hasn’t divorced him. Roy tells Celestial this note is a love letter.