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Ayah’s Mother
Danny is Ayah and Chato’s son and Ella and Jimmie’s brother. When he is very young, he is taken by white doctors who claim he has some kind of genetic disease. On his rare visits home, Danny tries to communicate with his mother in Navajo but quickly loses the language. For Ayah, he symbolizes a gradual loss made all the more painful by what little he remembers of home.
Danny Quotes in Lullaby
The Lullaby quotes below are all either spoken by Danny or refer to Danny. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Lullaby Quotes
Ayah could see they wanted her to sign the papers, and Chato had taught her to sign her name. It was something she was proud of. She only wanted them to go, and to take their eyes away from her children.
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The sun warmth relaxed her and took the fear and anger away. She lay back on the rock and watched the sky. It seemed to her that she could walk into the sky, stepping through clouds endlessly. Danny played with little pebbles and stones, pretending they were birds eggs and then little rabbits. Ella sat at her feet and dropped fistfuls of dirt into the breeze, watching the dust and particles of sand intently.
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It was worse than if they had died: to lose children and to know that somewhere, in a place called Colorado, in a place full of sick and dying strangers, her children were without her. There had been babies that died soon after they were born, and one that died before he could walk. She had carried them herself, up to the boulders and great pieces of the cliff that long ago crashed down from Long Mesa; she laid them in the crevices of sandstone and buried them in fine brown sand with round quartz pebbles that washed down the hills in the rain. She had endured it because they had been with her.
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Ayah watched the government car disappear down the road and she knew they were already being weaned from these lava hills and from this sky.
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Danny Character Timeline in Lullaby
The timeline below shows where the character Danny appears in Lullaby. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Lullaby
...is alone at the shack the day white doctors come to take her other children, Danny and Ella, away from her. She does not understand their English, as they have not...
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...their papers will make the white doctors leave, but they do not, instead gesturing at Danny and Ella. Sensing Danny’s fear of the men, Ayah sweeps him and Ella into her...
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...signed the papers, there is nothing they can do to prevent the men from taking Danny and Ella.
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Losing Danny and Ella this way feels worse to Ayah than if they had died. Indeed, she...
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...children did, not with Chato. She hates him, not for allowing the doctors to take Danny and Ella, but for teaching her how to sign her name. She recalls that “the...
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The bar patrons’ fear reminds Ayah of the first time the white people brought Danny and Ella back for a visit. During this visit, Danny acts shyly and Ella does...
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The last time Ayah sees Danny and Ella, it is summer, and Ella looks at her the way the men in...
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