My Beloved World: Chapter 24 Summary & Analysis

Sonia only feels sad and lonely when she’s not working, so her friends step up to distract her and help her feel better. Nancy Gray invites Sonia to sleep on her couch sometimes and acts as a counselor. She also takes Sonia shopping and tries to boost Sonia’s confidence. Sonia begins to realize that she doesn’t have her own sense of style, and she’d like to change that. By summer, Sonia knows she needs a break from Mami. Nancy suggests that Sonia join her in a group house on Fire Island. That house isn’t right for Sonia, but Nancy points Sonia to a quieter house and Sonia signs up sight unseen. On her first trip, she arrives late and gets lost. Her housemates are lovely though, and they play games and cook together. She’s still friends with everyone in that house.

Dating is hard, since Sonia still lives with Mami. Mami panics if Sonia is out late and yells at her to go to bed. Dawn suggests that Sonia rent the apartment next to hers in Carroll Gardens. It’s close to work and the community is close-knit. Sonia tells the landlord that she’d like Mami to see the apartment first, which immediately endears her to him. Marguerite lends Sonia the money for the deposit and teaches Sonia how to handle money. Having grown up living paycheck to paycheck, Sonia has never saved or taken on debt. With her own place, Sonia enjoys developing her sense of style.

The best part of living in Carroll Gardens, though, is Sonia’s friendship with Dawn. Sonia spends most evenings at Dawn’s apartment, chatting about work and discovering that their backgrounds are very common. Sonia loves Dawn’s husband, Ken, and Dawn’s children become Sonia’s unofficial godchildren. Sonia tells the reader that she always turns her friends’ families into her own family. She remembers Abuelita’s tribe, but she also remembers how Abuelita favored blood. Mami, however, treated everyone as family, blood or not. Sonia tries to emulate Mami. She joins one friend for Passover, Mami and Dawn for Thanksgiving, and spends Christmas with Junior. She visits friends like Ken Moy whenever she’s in the area.

Sonia says she loves children. She’s accumulated more godchildren than anyone else she knows—she’s godmother to Marguerite’s daughter, Alfred’s son, and some of those children’s children. Kiley, though, is different. Junior calls in the middle of the night to tell Sonia that he rushed his wife, Tracey, to the hospital. Sonia flies to Detroit immediately to be with them. Kiley is born at one pound, 11 ounces. Sonia feels close to Junior as she watches him try to keep it together; the prognosis isn’t good. Finally, after days, Tracey can hold Kiley. When Junior and Tracey move to Syracuse, Sonia takes every opportunity to spend time with Kiley.

Given how much Sonia loves children, people often ask when she’ll have children of her own. Because she’s diabetic, the risks are high, and Sonia still fears she won’t live to old age. She considers adoption, especially after Junior and Tracey adopt twins. Sonia sees the twins as proof that adoption is emotionally satisfying, but she decides to not become a mother. However, she didn’t make this choice because of her career. She thinks the idea of “having it all” is silly, as she believes that working parents consistently feel like they’re neglecting either their work or their children. Because of this, Sonia does whatever she can to make mothers feel comfortable in her chambers.

During Sonia’s time at the DA’s Office, women are just beginning to enter the legal field en masse. Dawn observes that only defendants accused of rape are happy about a female defender, and women at the office aren’t promoted as quickly. Casual sexism runs rampant; Nancy once asks a judge to stop calling her “honey” in the courtroom, and he ignores her. Sonia is often mistaken for an assistant when she’s in charge. Sonia is silent in these situations; Nancy and Dawn react loudly. Sonia believes the unequal treatment has to do with old habits dying hard, though she allows that the environment is “inhospitably male.” Sonia believes that she couldn’t have been so successful at the DA’s office as a mother, though she sometimes wonders if she’ll regret her choice. Ultimately, she knows that people can create families in all sorts of ways, including through friendship.