Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Monday’s Not Coming, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Child Abuse
Family, Community, and Responsibility
Growing Up, Independence, and Friendship
Secrecy and Shame
Poverty, Social Support, and Desperation
Memory, Repression, and Trauma
Summary
Analysis
Claudia “step[s] into the fire” just after midnight. Ma screams that Daddy and others are out looking for her and that she can’t disappear without telling anyone. Claudia notices the difference: she’s been gone for three hours and Ma has most of the church congregation looking. Monday has been gone for months and no one seems to notice or care.
Ma won’t let Claudia talk until she notices that Claudia is bleeding and limping. Claudia says it must’ve happened in the fall. Exhausted by not getting answers for months, Claudia asks when Ma saw Monday last. Ma acts like Claudia slapped her, but says she saw her last before Claudia left for her grandmother’s. Claudia insists that Ma saw her after that—and when Ma says she didn’t, Claudia shouts for Ma not to lie. She says that Monday isn’t with Tip, isn’t with her aunt, hasn’t moved, and she never had the flu. Claudia asks Ma if she knew about the flu, and Ma sighs that it happened right after she lost the last baby. Claudia remembers that she didn’t leave Ma’s side for days and wonders what she missed. Claudia says that she thinks something bad happened to Monday, and Ma agrees.
When Ma admits that she knew Monday never had the flu, it confirms that she knew Monday suffered neglect and abuse at home—and never said anything about it. Claudia also realizes that she may be at fault here, since she was so caught up in Ma’s last miscarriage to really notice what was going on when Monday was taken out of her home for neglect. As Claudia asks for answers, she also steps into a more mature, adult role with her mother. She asks Ma to treat her like an adult and stop coddling her.
Themes
Ma cleans Claudia up and settles in her room to ice her knee. Claudia holds Monday’s journal, feeling like the world might explode if she opens it. She catches sight of the keyhole and realizes that her journal must have the same lock. Sure enough, when she tries her key, the lock clicks open. Claudia sees that most of the pages are full and wonders what Monday felt she had to write instead of tell Claudia. Claudia doesn’t know where to begin, but she decides to start at the beginning. But on the first page, Monday laments that Claudia can’t read and wonders if she’d be better in “the stupid kids’ class.” Claudia throws the journal under her bed.
Even after seeing Monday’s home and how terrifying Mrs. Charles is, Claudia still wonders what Monday could’ve written about in her journal. She believes that she and Monday shared everything and were totally honest with each other, so it’s a shock when the journal begins with Monday complaining about Claudia’s learning disabilities. This seems to corroborate April’s story that Claudia stifled Monday—and accepting this is uncomfortable. It makes Claudia question her entire friendship with Monday.
Themes
