Shuggie Bain: Chapter Four: 1989, The East End Summary & Analysis

As Agnes and Shuggie arrive in the city, Shuggie is amazed at how different it is from Pithead. Every inch of the main streets is brimming with life; people move about their day, the tenements go on for miles, and shops are crammed into every building. Above them, the sky feels very far away. The movers park in the middle of the street, and Agnes and Shuggie go upstairs to their new apartment. Shuggie grabs Agnes’s hand, even though he feels too grown for it, trying to hold her there—sober. He continues to pray they will be normal and new here. The apartment is small, and Shuggie knows Leek really can’t come home now. When Shuggie sees Agnes looking out the window at the city, he puts his arms around her. They stand there daydreaming, he hopes, together.

Agnes leaves to get tea and pastries. While she is gone, Shuggie sits at the window watching the building kids play in the large, enclosed back garden. He envies how carefree they are, but he also witnesses their brutality. He turns to his football book, continuing to commit scores to memory. As he is reading, Agnes comes home. He knows at once she has been drinking. She insists she hasn’t, but her denial only convinces Shuggie more. The alcohol on her breath is damning. He yells at her, accusing her of not even trying to be new here. Agnes is angry at him for ruining her fun. She storms off down the hall, and Shuggie can hear her knocking on all the neighbors’ doors to introduce herself. He knows all they will see is a woman drunk before noon.

The next day, Shuggie follows a boy his age to the secondary school. The building is massive, seeming to Shuggie like another tenement or city. He follows his neighbor all the way to his classroom, introducing himself as a “late enrollment” to the teacher once class has started. When the man asks his name, the other students jump in, calling him the same slurs his peers in Pithead had. He gives his name, causing another uproar as they point out the slight femininity of his voice and his proper grammar. His new classmates ask if he’s a ballerina, insisting he show them his dancing. Shuggie knows for certain in that moment that neither he nor Agnes get to be different here. He leaves the red football book in the desk.

A few months after Shuggie and Agnes move into their East End apartment, the neighbor who Shuggie followed to school on the first day—Keir—knocks on their door. He tells Shuggie he needs his help, and Shuggie agrees. He follows Keir down the road, thinking about the boy’s tanned skin and warm brown eyes as he walks. Keir tells Shuggie he is going to visit his girlfriend, and he needs Shuggie to keep her friend Leanne entertained. He turns around to assess Shuggie’s appearance, then fixes his jacket and hair in a more fashionable, masculine way. They arrive, and Keir chews some gum to freshen his breath. When he is done, he passes the chewed gum to Shuggie, who hesitantly pops it in his mouth, surprised at how enjoyable he finds it. After some convincing, the girls agree to come out with them.

As the couples walk toward the park in pairs, Leanne sneaks glances at Shuggie. Finally, she asks if he doesn’t have a dad because he looks funny. Shuggie tells her his father is dead, and Leanne responds that hers is too. She asks him if he likes girls, and Shuggie is surprised to hear himself admit he doesn’t know. In turn, Leanne tells him that she isn’t sure if she likes boys. She asks if he wants them to date, just for now, as they are trying to figure things out. He agrees, and the two hold hands. Leanne is taller than Shuggie and her arms are longer, but he finds it pleasant enough.

The four children reach their destination, a semi-private hillside past the park, under a bridge and overlooking the motorway. As Keir and his girlfriend begin making out, Shuggie and Leanne sit quietly watching the traffic. When Leanne shivers, he gives her his coat. The two wrap their arms around each other. Eventually, Shuggie’s gaze is drawn to the other couple, who are grinding and moaning. Shuggie finds that he likes the way the muscles in Keir’s arms and butt strain. Keir catches him looking and yells at him, but his attention soon goes back to the other girl. Leanne tells Shuggie he can feel her up if he wants, but he declines. He puts the comb Keir used to fix Shuggie’s hair in his mouth, enjoying the cigarette and hair gel smell of the other boy. Shuggie offers to comb Leanne’s hair instead, and she relaxes into his gentle touch.

While Shuggie brushes her hair, Leanne asks him if his mother drinks. Shuggie responds she does a little and wonders how Leanne knew. She tells him he looks too worried for his age. She confides in him that her mother drinks a little, too. Shuggie tells her that he’s worried his mother will drink herself to death, which would devastate him. Leanne tells him she thinks that’s what alcoholics want; they just kill themselves slowly. Shuggie feels himself opening to her as they talk, his load lightening in a way he didn’t expect.

Shuggie and Leanne continue to exchange war stories about their mothers’ drinking. They commiserate about never knowing what they are coming home to, having to hold back some benefit money to feed themselves, and the creepy uncles who are always making their mothers worse. Leanne tells him that her mother, Moira, made her try going to the AA support group for families. All the other kids’ mothers were mild drinkers and couldn’t understand the level of destructive behavior that drove her mother to drink aftershave and perfume when the alcohol ran out.

Shuggie tells Leanne that Agnes tried to kill herself the night before. Leanne asks if she took pills, slashed her wrists, or put her head in the over. Shuggie tells her that Agnes has done those things before, but this time she tried to jump out the window naked. He pulled her back in, but it terrified him. Shuggie admits that he feels like if she dies from drinking, it will be his fault. Leanne tells him that she probably will drink herself to death, but there is nothing he can do to stop it.

Agnes is at home waiting for Shuggie on a different day. As soon as he walks through the door, he tells her he’s hungry. She is livid, hearing only male entitlement in his plea. She asks Shuggie why he can’t ask about her day, but Shuggie just keeps repeating that he’s starving, they have no food, and she needs to do something about it. Agnes tells him that he has it better than her, because he gets a hot lunch at school at least. Shuggie responds that the older boys at school steal his meal ticket every day. He asks his mother what happened to the money—there is not enough alcohol in the house for the money to have been spent on just that—and Agnes admits she lost it at bingo. They look at each other. Shuggie says they’ll both starve, and Agnes agrees they probably will. 

Shuggie tries to figure out how to feed them, and he decides he will try to steal some crisps from a street vendor like Keir taught him. When he stands to leave, though, Agnes interprets it as Shuggie leaving for good. She calls him a cab, telling him to leave and not come back. He begins to cry, trying to hold onto her, but she won’t hear reason. Agnes tells him everyone always abandons her, and now he can have his wish and leave too. Shuggie insists that that he wants to stay, that he would even stay to starve with her, but she has made up her mind. She watches him climb hesitantly in the taxi, feeling that he’s just proven her right.

In the cab, Shuggie sits for a long time. He keeps waiting, hoping Agnes will change her mind and come down. She doesn’t. Eventually, he asks the taxi driver to take him to the South Side, where Leek lives. He doesn’t know the address, having only been once before, but he is able to find it because the apartment is above a bank. When they arrive, the driver finds out Shuggie doesn’t have any money. Shuggie promises that his brother will pay the fare, but the driver won’t let him out and threatens to take him to the police. Desperate, Shuggie tells the driver he will give him sexual favors. The man is shocked, seeing how young Shuggie is. He unlocks the doors, and after a few minutes, Leek comes down to pay him.

Inside, Leek asks why Agnes kicked Shuggie out and how long she’s been drinking this time. Shuggie says he doesn’t know on either account, but he believes he just needs to try harder to keep her sober. Leek tells him again she’s never going to stop drinking. Leek makes Shuggie instant noodles, and the two sit in silence watching TV. Shuggie scans the room, observing Leek’s haphazard collection of spare dishes and furniture. In the corner, he sees a stack of boxes and realizes his brother is moving away. He feels even more alone.

Shuggie asks Leek what he thinks is going to happen to Agnes. Leek tells him that she’ll end up homeless on the street most likely, but Shuggie can’t picture his posh mother there. Leek argues that when Shuggie is gone, Agnes will have no safety net. Shuggie responds that he will never leave her, then. Leek tells him that he can’t stay with Agnes forever. Shuggie asks why Leek never came for him, and Leek explains that he had no means to care for him. Now, Shuggie will need to find his own way out, just like he and Catherine did.

There is a buzz at the door. Leek looks at Shuggie, horrified. Shuggie admits that he may have told Agnes where Leek lived, or at least the landmarks. Leek answers the buzzer, then gathers all the change he can find before leaving. After a while, he returns, angry and exhausted. Agnes has called the taxi service and given the driver a bag full of canned custard, which she instructed him to take to Leek’s, promising he would pay the fare on the other end. Leek has to spend the last of his money to do so.

The brothers cannot believe it when there is another buzz on the door. Leek springs the electric meter for more change. He is gone longer this time, and he is very quiet when he returns. Leek tells Shuggie the cab will take him home. In the second bag is Agnes’s phone. Shuggie and Leek both know this is a terrible sign, indicating that Agnes is done reaching out. If she plans to hurt herself, there will be no way to ask for help. Shuggie realizes the custard was a goodbye.

In March, Agnes’s birthday comes around, and Shuggie presents her with daffodils and the change he’s collected from the benefit money so she can play bingo to celebrate. She is thrilled. It is the police who bring her home in the morning. She never made it to bingo, instead spending the night walking through the city without her coat or shoes. Neither Shuggie nor Agnes can acknowledge each other when she arrives. Instead, Shuggie runs her a bath and makes her tea to soothe her soreness from a night in the cold. He leaves for school, but realizing he has some money in his pocket, he climbs on a city bus instead.

Back in Sighthill, the neighborhood where Shuggie was born and the family had once lived with Wullie and Lizzie, Shuggie rides up to the 16th-story breezeway where they used to live. He sits with his arms and legs through the blocks by the stairwell, hanging over the city. He feels heavy. From his pocket, he pulls out a card from Leek. He has found good paying work somewhere Shuggie has never heard of, and he’s found a nice girl too. In the card, Leek has taped a 20-pound note. There is also a page tucked inside, covered in drawings of a boy playing with toy horses. Looking at it, Shuggie realizes that Leek had always seen exactly who Shuggie was. When he finally gets too cold, Shuggie heads home.

At home, Shuggie finds the phone off the hook and the phone book covered in Agnes’s notes and scratched through names. Beside where Agnes sleeps in a chair, Shuggie finds the empty beer cans and vodka bottle she’s been nursing all day. Agnes throws up in her sleep, and Shuggie uses some toilet paper to clear and clean her mouth. He sits looking at her, then tells her he loves her. He apologizes for not being there to help her when she was out alone the night before. He takes off her shoes and rubs her feet as he tells her about going up to Sighthill.

Shuggie removes Agnes’s bra for her too, rubbing at her chest when she starts hacking in her sleep. Her head rolls back, so he moves it back to a safe angle. He tells he that he’s going to stop attending school as soon as he can and move them away from here. He asks where she wants to go, suggesting a few places. Shuggie listens to her unconscious breathing.  He takes off her skirt for her and removes her dentures, then rubs her scalp gently.

Agnes coughs up bile again in her sleep. He goes to grab the toilet paper but freezes. Looking down at her, Shuggie realizes Leek is right. Agnes’s head falls back, and she begins to choke on her vomit. She starts shaking, her brow furrowed. As he thinks to help her, though, her breathing stops and her worried face relaxes. Shuggie cries at her feet for a long time before rising. When he does, he wipes the bile from her face, fixes her hair, replaces her dentures, and applies fresh lipstick. To him, it looks like she is just sleeping when he kisses her goodbye.