Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America

Fiction | Anthology/Varied Collection | YA | Published in 2019

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“The Trouble With Drowning” by Dhonielle ClaytonChapter Summaries & Analyses

“The Trouble With Drowning” Summary

Lena, who has a twin sister Madeleine, comes often to sit under the bridge connecting Washington, DC, to Virginia and look out at the water. Three bodies have been pulled from the river this summer, and she thinks of them and her own fear of drowning. Often, after leaving, she goes to Adams Morgan and smiles at strangers so they will buy her cigarettes, which she does not smoke but lights because they remind her of Madeleine.

Lena reflects on how different she and Madeleine are. While Lena does everything she can to make her mother happy, Madeleine often acts out, dressing and doing her hair in ways that upset her mother. As they lie on the floor of Madeleine’s loft, Lena notices the burn marks on Madeleine’s thighs where she puts out her cigarettes, as well as fresh cuts along her wrists.

At dinner, their family eats in silence until their mom brings up the cotillion rehearsal, a ball for the wealthy families of the area for their daughters and sons to dress up and be “shown off.” Lena is adamant that she does not want to go, but her mother insists she go with James, Madeleine’s boyfriend.

James lives next door to them, with a tree between their houses. Lena crosses the tree and goes in through James’s window. She tries to kiss him, but he stops her.

At the rehearsal, James and Lena dance together, but Lena cannot force herself to smile or be interested in it. Eventually, Lena asks James to leave. The two get into a cab—where Madeleine joins them—and go to the bridge.

On the river’s edge, James becomes increasingly more concerned about how Lena is behaving. Lena stands extremely close to the edge, as Madeleine warns her she is too close. James tells Lena that she has become too obsessed with the water. When James asks her if she is going to be okay, Lena angrily snaps back, asking him the same question. James responds with “I lost her too” as he begins to cry (284), revealing that one of the bodies to wash up at that shore was Madeleine’s.

Lena and James sit together and burn an entire pack of cigarettes, tossing them into the river. As she throws each one, Lena imagines a different part of Madeleine disappearing. Eventually, Madeleine disappears, but James remarks on how a part of her will always be with Lena.

“The Trouble With Drowning” Analysis

The story “The Trouble with Drowning” uses the supernatural element of Madeleine’s ghost to explore the issue of teen suicide and its impact on the survivors. Throughout the text, it is not explicitly clear that Madeleine is dead—since, for Lena, who struggles with Madeleine’s death, she is not. Instances of foreshadowing, such as Lena’s mother’s anger toward Lena for being up in Madeleine’s room, the family’s silence at dinner, Madeleine’s self-inflicted cuts and cigarette burns, and the use of phrases like “because of all the things that happened” (263), collectively paint a picture that something has happened to Madeleine. However, it is never made explicitly clear until the climax of the text. Through this foreshadowing, the text conveys the impact that Madeleine’s suicide has on her surviving sister. Lena struggles with Madeleine’s death and has physically manifested that grief and longing for her sister.

In the denouement of the text, after the truth of Madeleine’s death is revealed, Lena discovers the Importance of Support Systems. As she sits with James at the place of Madeleine’s death, the two ritually burn and toss each cigarette from Lena’s pack into the river. These cigarettes serve as a symbolic representation of Lena’s final act of letting Madeleine go and fully processing her grief. Since it is through her willingness to share her grief with James—who also mourns Madeleine’s death—the text shows that it is through connecting with others about feelings of sadness and grief that begin to heal.