The Push: Mother. Daughter. Angel. Monster?

At seven months, Violet starts napping for more than 20 minutes, giving Blythe the opportunity to write again. However, when Violet wakes after two hours, Blythe often puts on headphones and lets her baby cry for even hours as she continues writing. One day, Fox comes home early and catches Blythe writing and listening to headphones while Violet screams from the nursery. He rushes to Violet, telling her, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry” (56).

That night, Fox coldly tells Blythe that she needs to see a therapist. For years, Blythe will remember that day with shame.

In Blythe’s childhood home, the basement is kept boarded up; Cecilia still cannot bear enclosed spaces because of the time Etta locked her in the pickle cellar. On a particularly hot day, Blythe begs Cecilia to open up the basement because it will be cooler down there. In response, Cecilia punches Blythe in the face, knocking out one of her baby teeth.

Later that day, Cecilia apologizes, explaining with uncharacteristic candor her own mother’s cruelty. However, when Blythe reaches out to touch Cecilia, she flinches.

A doctor tells Blythe that she’s not suffering from postpartum depression. Instead, he recommends that Blythe get back to doing things she used to love, like writing, though she knows Fox won’t be happy about that.

One day, Fox comes home to see Violet laughing as Blythe dances to music in the kitchen. That night, Fox tells Blythe she should return to writing. Blythe recalls, “I’d passed whatever test you were putting me through” (62).

One day at the park, 11-month-old Violet points to Blythe and says, “Mama,” much to Fox and Blythe’s joy. When they get home and put Violet to bed, Fox pulls Blythe into the bathroom to have sex, their first time in months. Violet starts to stir and then cry, but Fox insists on finishing with Blythe in the shower. Blythe recalls, “You’d wanted me more than her. I was repulsed with myself for the satisfaction this gave me, [...] for letting this turn me on as much as it did” (65).

By the time they finish, Violet has already stopped crying. Nevertheless, Fox quickly retreats to Violet’s room, tossing Blythe a towel “like my teammate in a locker room—you used to dry my body off slowly” (65).

When Cecilia is in the sixth grade, Etta insists on making her a dress for a school dance. The dress, however, is too small, tearing as Etta forces it onto Cecilia. Cecilia refuses to wear the dress to the dance, causing Etta to grow angrier and angrier. Through this incident, Cecilia learns that she holds some power over Etta: the power to make her angry.

At Violet’s first birthday party, Blythe’s friend takes a photo of the young family looking full of joy and love: “The three of us, exactly as we were supposed to be” (71).

A few weeks later, Violet stops sleeping during the night, waking every two hours without fail. The lack of sleep leaves Blythe physically and emotionally ravaged. She wants to send Violet to daycare, but Fox adamantly disagrees: His mother raised him until he started school, and he wants the same for Violet.

On a particularly bad day, Violet repeatedly bangs her head against the wall, which causes a red welt. When Fox comes home that night, he finally relents and allows Blythe to send Violet to daycare three days a week. To this day, Blythe can still feel the profound sense of relief she felt when first dropping Violet off at daycare: “She didn’t look at me when I said good-bye and I never turned around as I walked away” (77).

During a visit from Fox’s parents, Blythe stays home with Helen and Violet while Fox goes to a hockey game with his father. As Blythe tries to give her a bath, Violet thrashes violently and bites Blythe’s cheek. Despite Helen’s sympathy, Blythe is humiliated that this happened in her presence.

Blythe again mentions the boy named Sam, wondering what his first memories would have been. She believes they may have been the tiles on the wall at the swimming pool changing room: “I go back to that change room often. Looking for him in those tiles” (84).

When Violet is three, Blythe and Fox go out of town for a friend’s wedding, leaving Violet with Helen. Upon returning, Blythe excitedly goes into Violet’s room, where she is sleeping. However, when Violet opens her eyes, Blythe can sense her disappointment that her mother—not her father—is leaning over her bed. Violet asks Blythe to send in her father to lie down with her.

Later, Blythe expresses her concern that Violet prefers Fox, but Fox tells her, “It’s all in your head. [...] You’ve created this story about the two of you, and you can’t let it go” (86).

In the third grade, Blythe and her classmates are asked to invite their parents to a tea party at school. Blythe doesn’t even bother telling Cecilia. Yet somehow Cecilia finds out about the tea party, arriving wearing a stylish dress and looking “like an actress” (90), according to Blythe’s classmates. As part of the tea party, Blythe and the other students make paper flowers for their mothers.

That night, Seb asks Cecilia what happened to the flowers Blythe made her. She says she doesn’t know, and when Seb keeps needling her, she erupts: “I went, didn’t I? To the fucking tea? I was there. I sat at the little table and played along. What more do you want from me?” (92).

When Violet is four, her preschool teacher calls Blythe and Fox in for a meeting. In a kind and gentle tone of voice, the teacher lists a series of cruelties that Violet committed: One boy refuses to sit near her because she twists his fingers until he cries; she stabbed one girl in the thigh with a pencil; and that very day, she put rocks in a classmate’s underwear.

Fox believes that Violet is simply testing boundaries because she is bored and too smart for that school. Blythe’s response is simply that she isn’t surprised, which greatly angers Fox. That night in bed, Blythe feels vindicated: “I’d been living with a terrifying, unrelenting suspicion about my daughter, and I sensed that someone else could finally see it, too” (95).

Blythe attends a controversial art exhibit featuring photos of children accused of committing gun violence, some of it deadly. She stares at the children’s faces for hours, imaging herself as one of their mothers.

After school, Violet says she’s going to hurt a boy named Noah who said he did not like her. Blythe spends the following day in a panic, but at the end of the school day the teacher says Violet had a good day. That night, however, Blythe finds a clump of blond hair in Violet’s clothes and remembers that Noah has blond hair.

When Blythe confronts Violet about it, she says Noah cut his own hair and she helped him clean up. However, the next day when dropping Violet off at school, Blythe watches as Noah, head buzzed, runs from Violet to his mother and buries his face.

Violet is now five. One day at a playground, Blythe watches her stand at the top of a slide, staring as a boy named Elijah runs toward her from one end of the playground structure. When he passes near Violet, Elijah plummets to the ground and lands on his head. As his nanny screams, Violet looks down at Blythe with expressionless eyes.

At home, Blythe replays the incident in her mind over and over, wondering if she saw Violet’s leg lift as Elijah passed. Ultimately, however, Blythe comes to a resolution: “No. She didn’t trip that child. She wasn’t close enough to him. No, I was not the mother of someone who could do something like that” (103).

That night, Blythe receives the call that Elijah is dead. When told, Violet shrugs and returns to her jigsaw puzzle. Fox insists she needs time to process it.

The day of Elijah’s funeral, Blythe and Fox leave Violet with a babysitter while they attend the proceedings. When they come home, they find a picture Violet drew of two children, one of whom is crying and has blood on the chest.