In We The Animals, Justin Torres examines what happens when people can’t depend on those who are supposed to support them. Throughout the novella, the narrator and his brothers are left to their own devices, and though there’s nothing inherently problematic about giving children some independence, their parents are startlingly out of touch with their lives, saddling them with the emotional burden of caring for themselves. It’s worth acknowledging that this is also a byproduct of Ma and Paps’s unhealthy relationship, which is fraught with instability and abuse. Indeed, Ma’s mental health problems—undoubtedly tied to her embattled relationship with Paps—make it even harder for her to serve as a consistent source of support for her children. In fact, the boys often find themselves caring for her, doing whatever they can to make her feel better. In keeping with this, she comes to rely on them as if they’re her caretakers, not the other way around. This is a hefty burden to place on children, one that illustrates the extent to which giving and receiving emotional support isn’t always as straightforward as it might seem, especially in families dealing with violence and abuse. In abusive environments, Torres suggests, the way that loved ones care for each other changes, often by inverting the traditional roles of parent and child.
Because Ma’s instability makes it hard for her to be an attentive parent, the narrator and his brothers experience an inordinate amount of independence. This is evident as early as the second page of the novella, when the narrator explains that he, Manny, and Joel sometimes have to exert an enormous amount of effort to avoid waking her up, not wanting to disturb her. For long stretches of time, she stays in her bedroom with the door shut, and they feel it’s their duty to be as silent as possible. The narrator even notes that he and his brothers see this as “protect[ing]” her, as if allowing her to sleep is a way of helping her. And when she finally does emerge, she’s too confused and out of touch to serve as an effective caretaker, asking her children why they aren’t at school even though it’s the weekend, or sending them to borrow baking supplies from the neighbors in the middle of the night. Consequently, readers see that the boys tragically lack a reliable parent, since they fear their father and are unable to turn to their mother for support.
Needless to say, though, it is largely because Paps is so frightening that Ma finds it difficult to be a dependable caretaker. This is made overwhelmingly apparent when Paps brings her home one evening and falsely claims that she’s injured because the dentist started punching her while she was under sedation. In the ensuing days, she stays in her bedroom, and the boys once again do whatever they can to make sure she’s able to rest, eventually creeping into her room and gently examining her bruised face and showering her with love. In this moment, they become a source of emotional support for her, as she draws them close and derives strength from their love. Similarly, she later looks to them after packing them into the family truck and driving to a nearby park, intending to run away from Paps. After spending the day in the park, she expresses indecision, saying they can either leave Paps once and for all or return home. “But I need you to tell me what to do,” she says, effectively placing the burdensome decision on them and asking for guidance—the kind of guidance parents usually provide for children rather than the other way around. In this regard, she reverses the dynamic that traditionally exists between parents and their children, putting the narrator and his brothers in an impossible position by asking them to take on emotional responsibilities that she herself is unwilling (or unable) to face.
Despite the boys’ desire to care for their mother in whatever way they can, there are certain ways in which they simply can’t help her. After all, it’s one thing to tip-toe around the house and provide loving support for Ma when she needs it, but it’s another thing entirely to fully assume a caretaking role and relieve her of all responsibility. For this reason, the narrator and his brothers are unable to say anything when she asks them to tell her whether or not to leave Paps. To make this decision for her would not only exhibit a sense of emotional maturity and resolve that she herself can’t summon, but it would also completely transform the landscape of their lives. As young boys, the narrator and his brothers have never experienced anything other than what it’s like to live with Paps, meaning that they don’t even know what it would mean to leave behind their current life. Ma, on the other hand, has a better understanding of what leaving would do to her family, which is precisely why she should be the one making this decision. Furthermore, asking her children to decide is doubly unfair because they will likely feel guilty no matter what happens—if they leave their father (whom they do love, despite his abusive ways), they’ll feel bad, and if they ask Ma to stay, they’ll feel guilty about forcing her to continue leading an unhappy life. For this reason, they say nothing at all, so Ma quietly drives them all home. By spotlighting this tension, Torres shows not only that caretaking responsibilities can become especially complicated in families struggling with abuse, but also that it’s unfair (and ineffective) for parents to depend too heavily on their children to support them, since such support often requires the maturity of adulthood.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Support and Caretaking ThemeTracker
Support and Caretaking Quotes in We the Animals
And when our Paps came home, we got spankings. Our little round butt cheeks were tore up: red, raw, leather-whipped. We knew there was something on the other side of pain, on the other side of the sting. Prickly heat radiated upward from our thighs and backsides, fire consumed our brains, but we knew that there was something more, someplace our Paps was taking us with all this. We knew, because he was meticulous, because he was precise, because he took his time. He was awakening us; he was leading us somewhere beyond burning and ripping, and you couldn’t get there in a hurry.
But there were times, quiet moments, when our mother was sleeping, when she hadn’t slept in two days, and any noise, any stair creak, any shut door, any stifled laugh, any voice at all, might wake her, those still, crystal mornings, when we wanted to protect her, this confused goose of a woman, this stumbler, this gusher, with her backaches and headaches and her tired, tired ways, […] those quiet mornings when we’d fix ourselves oatmeal and sprawl onto our stomachs with crayons and paper, with glass marbles that we were careful not to rattle, when our mother was sleeping […].
We had learned not to correct her or try to pull her out of the confusion; it only made things worse. Once, before we’d known better, Joel refused to go to the neighbors and ask for a stick of butter. It was nearly midnight and she was baking a cake for Manny.
“Ma, you’re crazy,” Joel said. “Everyone’s sleeping, and it’s not even his birthday.”
She studied the clock for a good while, shook her head quickly back and forth, and then focused on Joel; she bored deep in his eyes as if she was looking past his eyeballs, into the lower part of his brain. Her mascara was all smudged and her hair was stiff and thick, curling black around her face and matted down in the back. She looked like a raccoon caught digging in the trash: surprised, dangerous.
“I hate my life,” she said.
“Mutts,” he said. “You ain’t white and you ain’t Puerto Rican. Watch how a purebred dances, watch how we dance in the ghetto.” Every word was shouted over the music, so it was hard to tell if he was mad or just making fun.
He danced, and we tried to see what separated him from us. He pursed his lips and kept one hand on his stomach. His elbow was bent, his back was straight, but somehow there was looseness and freedom and confidence in every move.
“Loving big boys is different from loving little boys—you’ve got to meet tough with tough. It makes me tired sometimes, that’s all, and you, I don’t want you to leave me. I’m not ready.”
Then Ma leaned in and whispered more in my ear, told me more, about why she needed me six. She whispered it all to me, her need so big, no softness anywhere, only Paps and boys turning into Paps.
I grabbed hold of both of her cheeks and pulled her toward me for a kiss.
The pain traveled sharp and fast to her eyes, pain opened up her pupils into big black disks. She ripped her face from mine and shoved me away from her, to the floor. She cussed me and Jesus, and the tears dropped, and I was seven.
Of course, it was impossible for me to answer her, to tell the truth, to say I was scared. The only one who ever got to say that in our family was Ma, and most of the time she wasn’t even scared, just too lazy to go down into the crawlspace herself, or else she said it to make Paps smile, to get him to tickle and tease her or pull her close, to let him know she was only really scared of being without him. But me, I would have rather let go and slipped quietly down to the lake’s black bottom than to admit fear to either one of them.
But the incident itself played and played in my mind, and at night, in bed, I could not sleep for remembering. How Paps had slipped away from us, how he looked on as we flailed and struggled, how I needed to escape Ma’s clutch and grip, how I let myself slide down and down, and when I opened my eyes what I discovered there: black-green murkiness, an underwater world, terror. I sank down for a long time, disoriented and writhing, and then suddenly I was swimming—kicking my legs and spreading my arms just like Paps had shown me long before […].
[…] when I looked at her face she looked like she was in pain, but she didn’t look frightened, like it was a kind of pain she wanted.
[…] The faucet poked into the base of her spine, and it must have hurt her, all of it must have hurt her, because Paps was much bigger and heftier, and he was rough with her, just like he was rough with us. We saw that it must hurt her, too, to love him.
Then we were all three kicking and slapping at once, and they didn’t say a word, they didn’t even move; the only noise was the noise of skin and impact and breath, and then our protests, why don’t you come find us, why don’t you do what you’re supposed to do, come and find us, why don’t ya, because you’re bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, why don’t you do right, why can’t you do right, we hate you, come and find us, we hate you, everyone hates you, you better come and find us, next time, next time you better come.
We hit and we kept on hitting; we were allowed to be what we were, frightened and vengeful—little animals, clawing at what we needed.
Ma flipped the ignition, and the engine jumped to life. We drove back the way we came, and eventually we pulled into the driveway, home again. We had been terrified she might actually take us away from him this time but also thrilled with the wild possibility of change. Now, at the sight of our house, when it was safe to feel let down, we did. I could feel the bitterness in my brothers’ silence; I wondered if Ma felt it too.
See me there with them, in the snow—both inside and outside their understanding. See how I made them uneasy. They smelled my difference—my sharp, sad, pansy scent. They believed I would know a world larger than their own. They hated me for my good grades, for my white ways. All at once they were disgusted, and jealous, and deeply protective, and deeply proud.
Then Joel was behind me, locking my arms in a full nelson. I tried to shrug him off, but it was no use. They were both drunk; Manny held that damn branch right in front of my face. I imagined the welt of it slamming across the side of my head. And I wanted it.
“Either you’re fucked up, or you’re getting fucked up. Which one will it be?”
Look at us three, look at how they held me there—they didn’t want to let me go.
“Go ahead, Manny, hit me with that stick. See if it makes you feel better.” My voice started strong but ended soft, a whisper, a plea. “Just fucking beat me with it.”
If the lot was full enough, I could emerge from the hedge and walk between two parked buses to the men’s room without anyone’s seeing. There was no one to explain any of this to me; I figured out the routine on my own, in small, paranoid steps. For weeks I’d been sneaking to this bus station, lurking, indecisive. I hid in the stalls, peeked through the cracks. At the sink, I washed and washed my hands, unable to return the frank stares in the mirror. I didn’t know how to show these men I was ready.
“You want me to make you,” the driver said. “I’ll make you. I’ll make you.”
And I was made.
I trudged back in the predawn. The winter sky was clouded over, all pink gloom. I wanted to look at myself as he had; I wanted to see my black curls peeking out from under my ski cap. What did he make of my thin chest? What did he make of my too-wide smile? He had blasted the heat, but the cold clung and hovered at the back of the bus. The cold gathered in the tips of those fingers, so everywhere he touched me was a dull stab of surprise. I wanted to stand before a mirror and look and look at myself. I opened my mouth and stretched my voice over the buzz of passing cars.
“He made me!” I screamed. “I’m made!”
Paps lunged, and my brothers, for the first time in their lives, restrained him. But that restraint shifted before my eyes into an embrace; somehow, at the same time that they were keeping him back, they were supporting him, holding Paps upright, preventing him from sliding to the floor himself, and in that moment I realized that not just Ma, but each and every one of them had read the fantasies and delusions, the truth I had written in my little private book.
