The Leap

“They loved to drop gracefully from nowhere, like two sparkling birds, and blow kisses as they threw off their plumed helmets and high-collared capes. They laughed and flirted openly as they beat their way up again on the trapeze bars.”

The narrator describes Anna Avalon and Harry Avalon using a simile that compares them to birds and then follows this up with further avian imagery: They wear plumed (feathered) helmets and they “beat their way up” as if on beating wings. The imagery underscores the glitz and romance the narrator associates with this period of her mother’s life.

“In the final vignette of their act, they actually would kiss in midair, pausing, almost hovering as they swooped past one another. On the ground, between bows, Harry Avalon would skip quickly to the front rows and point out the smear of my mother’s lipstick, just off the edge of his mouth.”

The Flying Avalons’ flirtation is part of their act, and the “smear of […] lipstick” provides proof that they did, in fact, meet in midair. This midair meeting symbolizes how people’s lives come together and thus develops the theme of The Unlikely Miracle of Life. Erdrich’s diction includes lively verbs—“hovering,” “swooped,” “skip”—that emphasize the life and energy of the pair.

“That afternoon, as the anticipation increased, as Mr. and Mrs. Avalon tied sparkling strips of cloth onto each other’s face and as they puckered their lips in mock kisses, lips destined ‘never again to meet,’ as one long breathless article put it, the wind rose, miles off, wrapped itself into a cone, and howled.”

The narrator quotes a newspaper article, revealing how indirect and speculative her access is to her mother’s past and developing the theme of The Difficulty of Knowing the Past Through Story. She also shows that she knows the limits of her sources, describing it as a “long breathless article”—implicitly criticizing it for a maudlin interest in Harry’s death.

“The explanation—I know from watching her go blind—is that my mother lives comfortably in extreme elements. She is one with the constant dark now, just as the air was her home, familiar to her, safe, before the storm that afternoon.”

The narrator speculates about why her mother would choose to work in the trapeze act while pregnant. She uses her mother’s current state of blindness—being “one with the constant dark now”—as a metaphor to allow her to understand her mother’s comfort with the trapeze.

“Three people died, but except for her hands my mother was not seriously harmed until an overeager rescuer broke her arm in extricating her and also, in the process, collapsed a portion of the tent bearing a huge buckle that knocked her unconscious.”

This passage describes the ironic situation of Anna surviving a nearly deadly accident only to be injured by the rescue attempts that follow. The narrator uses understatement—the “overeager rescuer”—to convey the violent damage that was done to Anna after the performance. This is in contrast to the calm competence with which she lowered herself to the ring after the lightning strike.

“She was a girl, but I rarely thought of her as a sister or even as a separate person really. I suppose you could call it the egocentrism of a child, of all young children, but I considered her a less finished version of myself.”

The narrator here shows self-awareness of the way her perceptions limit her abilities as a narrator. She cannot consider her sister outside of her own story, or from the view of the mother who mourns her.

“The carved lamb looms larger as the years pass, though it is probably only my eyes, the vision shifting, as what is close to me blurs and distances sharpen.”

The stone lamb is suitable for the grave of a child due to its Christian connotations as a treasured and innocent being under the care of a shepherd. It also carries connotations of sacrifice, echoing how, in the narrator’s limited view, the sister might have needed to die in order for her to live. As a result, both the lamb and sister seem to “loo[m] larger” over the years—a disturbing presence in the narrator’s life.

“I wonder if my father calculated the exchange offered: one form of flying for another. For after that, and for as long as I can remember, my mother has never been without a book.”

This passage refers to the narrator’s father as giving Anna the world of books in “exchange” for her circus life. The narrator sees her father as having “calculated” this and assesses Anna as having come out worse in the bargain. The passage, however, is ambiguous. It could also refer to other flights of imagination—i.e., the stories of her world travels that Anna gave her doctor in exchange for the reading lessons. In either case, it illustrates The Compromises From Which People Make Their Lives.

“That is the debt we take for granted since none of us asks for life. It is only once we have it that we hang on so dearly.”

The narrator engages directly with the reader, including them in a collective “we” for the only time while stating what she considers the central truth of her story: that people cling to life desperately even while they take for granted the chances that brought them into life. Her choice of verb—“hang on”—is significant in a story about trapeze work. Although the story celebrates survival, its premise (and its title) implies that surviving sometimes requires “letting go.”

“I was seven the year the house caught fire, probably from standing ash. It can rekindle, and my father, forgetful around the house and perpetually exhausted from night hours on call, often emptied what he thought were ashes from cold stoves into wooden or cardboard containers. The fire could have started from a flaming box, or perhaps a buildup of creosote inside the chimney was the culprit.”

The source of the house fire is a significant ambiguity at the heart of “The Leap.” The narrator devotes considerable speculation to the idea that it might have been her father’s forgetfulness and exhaustion—the result of his long hours in country practice—that caused the fire, while also leaving open the possibility that it was only mechanical.

“As soon as I awakened, in the small room that I now use for sewing, I smelled the smoke. I followed things by the letter then, was good at memorizing instructions, and so I did exactly what was taught in the second-grade home fire drill.”

This passage engages in direct characterization of the narrator; she describes herself as an orderly child who “followed things by the letter.” Erdrich then demonstrates those qualities indirectly by showing the narrator carrying out the actions of the fire drill.

“My mother asked him to unzip her dress. When he wouldn’t be bothered, she made him understand. He couldn’t make his hands work, so she finally tore it off and stood there in her pearls and stockings.”

As Anna prepares to rescue her daughter, she receives no help from her husband and must strip herself until she stands before the crowd of volunteers “in her pearls and stockings.” This echo of her circus costume days is both a symbolic flouting of convention and a return to her essential self.

“I didn’t see her leap through air, only heard the sudden thump and looked out my window. She was hanging by the backs of her heels from the new gutter we had put in that year, and she was smiling. I was not surprised to see her, she was so matter-of-fact.”

Anna is characterized as cool and even cheerful under pressure, revisiting the skills of her youth to rescue her daughter. Even in this climactic moment involving the narrator herself, the narrator emphasizes her distance from full knowledge of events: She “didn’t see [her mother] leap through the air,” only heard her.