“I hate my mama. I loves my mama.”

The expression “I hate my mama. I loves my mama.” is a compact refrain for Van Go Jenkins’s divided attachment to Sadie Jenkins. Spoken in the wake of a confrontation and recalled again as he walks alone at night, it holds love and hatred together without reconciling them; its reversal and recurrence make contradiction the point rather than a problem the words solve.

Form and Contradiction

The expression appears in two closely related forms. During the argument, Van Go says, “Cause I hate my mama and I love my mama,” then insists, “I loves my mama. I hates my mama.” The accompanying narration compresses that clash into the named expression’s shorter wording. Later, the order reverses again: “I hate her. I loves her.” The shifts keep the two feelings in play while refusing to settle which one governs.

The grammar contributes to the effect. The repeated “I” gives each feeling its own assertion, while the nonstandard “loves” sits beside “hate” without softening it. The phrasing sounds less like a considered explanation than an insistence: Van Go names both attachments, but naming them does not make them compatible.

The Confrontation with Sadie Jenkins

The refrain emerges as Van Go challenges Sadie Jenkins directly. After she warns him not to speak to her that way, he answers with further insults and tells her not to think she can control him. The narration explicitly joins this defiance to his divided feelings: while staring into her eyes, he thinks that he hates and loves her. The expression therefore belongs not to a calm reflection on their relationship but to a moment when he asserts himself against his mother.

Sadie Jenkins responds in disbelief rather than answering his challenge in kind. Van Go withdraws to the living room, where he hears her crying and Baby Girl trying to comfort her. He later leaves after another outburst, knocking over a chair and slamming the door. Those consequences place the refrain beside the hurt his defiance causes: his attachment persists even as his actions drive a painful separation in the immediate scene.

Recurrence and Wider Family Feeling

Outside, beneath the passing police helicopter, Van Go thinks again about Sadie Jenkins: “I hate her. I loves her.” He also turns to his absent father, whom he says he hates wherever he may be, and then walks down the street. The refrain’s return amid these thoughts links his conflicted feeling toward his mother with the broader uncertainty and anger he voices about his family; the passage does not provide an account of his father’s whereabouts.

Later, after fighting a man and returning home with sore knuckles, Van Go lies in bed thinking about his children. The same opposed construction recurs as “I hate my babies. I loves my babies,” repeated and then left trailing off. The repetition extends the expression beyond the mother-son confrontation: in Van Go’s voice, love does not cancel anger, and anger does not prevent him from claiming love.

Narrative Significance

The expression’s force comes from recurrence with variation. First it accompanies face-to-face defiance, then it returns in solitary thought, and finally its structure shifts to Van Go’s children. Each appearance preserves the contradiction while changing its immediate object and situation. Rather than presenting a single settled declaration, the refrain shows how the speaker repeatedly returns to opposing feelings that remain unresolved.