49 pages • 1 hour read
The Many Lives of Mama Love: A Memoir of Lying, Stealing, Writing, and Healing
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Chapters 14-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 14 Summary: “All Buses Lead to the Same Place”
Hardin is accused of driving by Kaden’s daycare after being released from prison early, which violates her CPS probation. In court, the judge says he saw her walking to probation and knows the claim against her is false. He takes her out of drug court and into Family Preservation Court. Hardin learns that she must attend an outpatient program, which makes her angry. She must also meet with a private therapist. A judge sees her weekly to approve her progress or remand her. She is overwhelmed and miserable but stays clean.
To maintain her anonymity, she dyes her hair and takes the bus to her many appointments around town. By this point, she has lost her family’s trust, embodied in Dylan’s comment that “[t]rust is something you have to earn” (203).
DJ is released and finds Hardin on her last day of work release. Everyone has told Hardin to leave DJ, but when he appears, she feels relieved, and when he tells her that his mother will fund an apartment for them, she is happy. They make love, which Hardin says is an emotionless act. She admits her lack of love for DJ, but to DJ, she acts like a loving wife.
DJ’s mother funds an apartment and gifts them a car, and CPS approves this at a home visit. Later, Hardin finds DJ in the bathroom, where he admits to failing his drug test. She kicks him out and calls CPS and reports him.
Chapter 15 Summary: “Joint and Several”
Hardin is allowed to bring Kaden home shortly before his fifth birthday. She lives in fear of missing a deadline, accidentally skipping a drug test, or discovering false reports from people she’s harmed. She feels victimized and abused. She laments not being able to provide a lavish fifth birthday for Kaden and asks Darcy for help.
Meanwhile, DJ is released early from drug court despite his relapse, and the restitution they jointly owe is transferred fully to Hardin after DJ claims his mom paid his portion. Hardin goes back to the rehabilitation program from which she graduated and pours out her frustrations to the new director, who offers to buy Kaden the bunk bed curtains he wants. Hardin is granted full custody of Kaden, graduates from Sobriety Works and Family Preservation Court, and is on her own with exactly what she wanted. The only downside is that her record won’t be expunged. She states that this is unfair and evidence of the broken system.
Chapter 16 Summary: “Fucking Google”
Hardin complains about her inability to qualify for welfare benefits because of her past incarceration. She can’t find a job and can’t date. Her fortunes improve when she gets subsidized childcare after school for Kaden and is given a temporary job by Gemma. When that job ends, she applies for the director position of the program and gets it. She knows the system inside and out: knows the program and knows the players. Most importantly, they don’t care about her felonies. Before the job is approved, probation steps in and prohibits her from taking the job. Hardin suspects sabotage, but since she is unable to prove any wrongdoing, she is forced to withdraw from the position.
She finds a job as a content writer and then as a literary agent. She applies for food stamps but has to cut the appointment short to attend her interview at Idea Architects, the literary agency. She conceals the details of her past and gets the job, at which she excels. When her boss Googles her, he tells her to leave and come back later after he’s thought about what she concealed.
Her boss ends up giving her another chance, and she gets to keep her job. When credit card fraud is found on a company card, she tracks down the thief and warns him to stop, feeling good about herself for “using her powers for good” (237).
Chapters 14-16 Analysis
In this section, Hardin is released from prison and struggles to reenter society, eventually landing on her feet with help from multiple sources. Her extended family, reentry programs, subsidized childcare, and generous employer ensure that she will keep the opportunities she’s earned as long as she stays clean. Though she must navigate a problematic system designed to break rather than uplift its participants, Hardin has an easier time than others might in her position: She does not suffer from racial or socioeconomic discrimination, and she has a well-off family who provides her with housing and transportation. Her educational background helps her résumé stand out to employers, even when she falsifies her background. Her talent, hard work, and efforts to stay clean ensure that she does not squander the opportunities presented to her, and she even uses her criminal sensibilities for good when she recognizes a coworker committing fraud. In keeping with her narrative persona as a self-obsessed addict, she struggles not to place herself in the role of the victim despite the help she has received.
Further adding to her unreliability as a narrator, Hardin claims to feel no love for DJ, but when he is released, their reunification is filled with affection. This is only one example of Hardin’s words contradicting her actions, as they often do on her journey to take accountability. Hardin has learned to con and emotionally manipulate others as a form of survival and grapples with justifying her actions using moral relativism. Earlier in the memoir, she considers the morality of stealing: “[N]ot all stealing is considered a crime. Nobody was going to get prosecuted for stealing from me. I shake the thought away. Who am I to judge? I’m in no position to assess morality or integrity” (129). This typifies Hardin’s reasoning, which often emphasizes her powerlessness and then pushes back on this self-serving belief.
Other times, the narrative expresses Hardin’s powerlessness but does not push back. For example, when her record isn’t expunged, she says, “I’m facing brutal and inexplicable inequity and yet again, I can do nothing about it” (216). It may not be fair to expect an individual facing nearly insurmountable circumstances to express gratitude for their relative privilege, but Hardin’s first-person narrative voice often offers insights from a future perspective that shows her growth since the time of the narrative’s events. In this case, she does not reflect on the exceptions she has been granted.
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