The Leavers: Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis

On the eve of her disappearance, Polly Guo picks Deming up from school. He has just gotten out of detention, but Polly doesn’t know this. Deming’s good friend Michael—who, along with his mother, Vivian, lives with Polly and Deming—covered for him by saying that he stayed late to work on an assignment. Deming is in fifth grade, and his academic performance is quite bad. “I don’t want you to be like me,” his mother tells him, reminding him that she didn’t finish eighth grade. Although he doesn’t say anything in response, Deming knows he’ll “barely” be able to make it through fifth grade, let alone eighth. As they walk home, Deming thinks about how his mother is a “restless” soul, and she complains about her day at the nail salon, saying she didn’t come to New York to “pick gao gao out of a stranger’s toe.”

Polly insists that Deming has to work hard in school so he can have a better life than her. She asks him if he thinks Leon—her boyfriend—seems happy at his job at the slaughterhouse, and when Deming says Leon seems fine, she points out that his back hurts all the time because of the hard nature of his work. “You don’t finish school, you end up cutting meat like Leon, arthritis by the time you’re thirty-five,” she says.

Winding through the snowy Bronx, Polly mumbles about how she was the first girl to leave her Chinese village. “I made it all the way to New York. I was supposed to travel the world,” she says, and as Deming anticipates her next sentence, she cuts him off, saying, “But then I had you. Then I met Leon. You’re my home now.” Letting this settle for a moment, she tells Deming that they’re moving to Florida, where she has found a job at a restaurant. Deming is taken aback and asks if Leon is coming, and when Polly assures him that he is, he asks if Michael and Vivian are also accompanying them. “They’ll join us later,” Polly says. Upset, Deming says he won’t leave, but Polly says he has to because she’s his mother and they must remain together.

Deming reminds Polly that they weren’t together when he lived in China for several years with his grandfather. “I was working so I could save money to have you here,” she says. Still, Deming remains unconvinced. Switching from Fuzhounese—which they’ve been speaking for the entire conversation—Deming says in English, “I’m not going. Leave me alone.” Hearing this, his mother raises her hand, but when he flinches, she envelops him in a hug.

At dinner with Michael and Vivian, Deming and Polly say nothing about Florida. Later, Michael and Deming lounge on the couch, and Michael rehashes a scene from school, when Deming tripped a bully named Travis Bhopa, who constantly makes fun of him and Michael for being Chinese. “Badass, Deming!” Michael said in the moment. That night, Deming wakes up when Leon comes home from the slaughterhouse. Listening to his mother whisper to her boyfriend in the dark on their side of the room, he suddenly hears Polly say, “Go fuck yourself,” but he falls asleep before he can discern what they’re talking about. The next morning, he asks Polly when they’re moving, and she says, “We’re not. Now hurry or you’ll be late for school.”

That evening, Deming and Michael watch television and wait for Polly to come home, but she doesn’t return from work. When Leon comes back from the slaughterhouse, he’s puzzled by Polly’s absence. Eventually, he receives a call, and when he gets off the phone, he tells Deming that his mother has gone away for several days to see some friends. When Deming presses him for details, Leon ushers him to bed.

A week goes by, and Polly doesn’t return. Deming looks through the apartment and finds her hand lotion and toothbrush, her socks, a pair of jeans, a sweater. Everything is in its normal place. He thinks about the last words he said to her: “When are we moving?” He also considers the fact that maybe she wouldn’t have disappeared if he hadn’t gotten detention or if he’d been willing to move to Florida. Day after day, he waits to hear her opening the apartment door. He even thinks about all the things he’d do if she came home, like study, complete his homework, or stop talking in English just to confuse her. One evening, Vivian comes home, and Deming yells, “You need to find her, she’s in danger.” Vivian assures him that she isn’t in danger, but when he asks where she is, she admits she doesn’t know.

Winter turns to spring, and still Polly is missing. Deming walks in on Vivian and Leon having a hushed conversation in the kitchen one night, and when they see him, they stop talking. At school, Deming apologizes to Travis Bhopa, thinking that “by sacrificing his pride,” he might be able to “guarantee” his mother’s wellbeing. “The worse he felt, the more it would make her return,” Ko writes. Thinking this way, he starts skipping meals and studying hard, hoping that getting an A in math will make his mother return. “She stayed gone,” Ko writes.