Sarah's orphanhood

Sarah's orphanhood is not only the loss of Mae when Sarah is eight; it is the collapse of the fragile care that remained around her. Mae's death leaves her dependent on Rab, whose promise to care for her gives way to poverty, drinking, and finally her transfer to another man. Sarah carries the loss forward as self-blame, and, as Angel, interprets love and family through the expectation of abandonment.

Mae's Death and Sarah's Grief

In the winter Sarah was eight, Mae became ill and refused medical care, believing rest would be enough. Her condition worsened, and she asked Rab to take care of her daughter. Mae died the following morning. Sarah initially could not cry; she lay beside her mother's body, tried to wake her, and eventually wept that she wanted to die with her. Rab had to lift her away when men came to take Mae's body.

At the burial, Rab said Mae was better off dead because she was free from unhappiness. Sarah turned that idea inward: she imagined Mae free of her, and blamed her own birth for the life her mother had lost. When the men left, Sarah waited alone to see whether Rab would keep his promise. That night, fearing he would not return, she went to the docks and threw Mae's rosary into a garbage scow, asking what good it was. The gesture marks not a settled rejection of faith so much as a child's response to bereavement and unanswered need.

Rab's Promise and Its Failure

For a time, Sarah tried to care for Rab, covering him with a blanket after he passed out. The next morning he was remorseful and said he had to keep his promise to Mae, but he had little to offer beyond half a can of beans and the prospect of seeking help from friends. His affection and guilt did not make him capable of providing a secure home.

Rab eventually brought a stranger to the shack. The man gave Rab money and instructions to clean Sarah up and bring her to an address; Rab presented the arrangement as evidence that things would improve. The following day, he returned without money and told Sarah that this was the end. Though she begged him not to send her away and asked him to be her father, he did not keep Mae's promise. Orphanhood thus becomes inseparable from a second abandonment: the caregiver entrusted with Sarah's safety gives her over to someone else.

The Loss Carried into Adulthood

As an adult known as Angel, Sarah continues to experience the past as something she must force out of consciousness. When she remembers Mae's assurances that life would be different, she stops the memory and chooses numbness over renewed pain. The old expectation that people leave also shapes her response to Michael Hosea's offer of marriage: she assumes he will tire of her and hand her over, as others have done.

Her sense of guilt also appears in the way she understands forgiveness. Angel believes Mae was never forgiven despite repeated prayers, so she cannot imagine being forgiven herself and tries to make amends to Michael through more work. Later, she treats her inability to have children as proof that she does not belong with him and leaves so he can have a family. These adult choices are not the same event as her childhood orphanhood, but they show how its pattern of loss and self-blame persists in her understanding of love, worth, and family.

Narrative Significance

The novel links Sarah's childhood bereavement to Angel's later emotional defenses without reducing the loss to a single explanation for everything that follows. Mae's death removes Sarah's primary source of care; Rab's failed guardianship then confirms the insecurity she had already begun to absorb. Her later withdrawal and fear of hope echo that early sequence, in which promises of care cannot prevent separation.

The contrast between Sarah's desperate wish to remain with Rab and his decision to give her away makes the orphanhood a rupture of both family and trust. It also establishes a recurring tension in Angel's life: she longs for belonging, yet expects that attachment will end in rejection or betrayal. Her adult belief that she should leave Michael for his sake carries the childhood habit of assigning herself responsibility for other people's suffering into a new form.