Pee-Ah-Nah Character Analysis

A third woman from their community who is both mentally ill and homeless. Kingston distinguishes her from the other “crazy ladies” in their neighborhood, for this one qualified as a “village idiot.” Also referred to as “a witchwoman,” Pee-Ah-Nah picks in the same “slough,” or swamp, where Brave Orchid and the children go to pick orange berries. She gets her name due to being old and in the habit of “riding to the slough with a broom between her legs.” She also “powdered one cheek red and one white” and “wore a pointed hat and layers of capes, shawls, [and] sweaters buttoned at the throat like capes, the sleeves flying behind like sausage skins.” The children are in the habit of running away from her, believing that, like a witch, she is chasing them. Other children say that she will boil them or tear them apart if she catches them. One day, they no longer see her. Kingston assumes that she has been “locked up in the crazyhouse too.”