Why I Live at the P.O.

Content Warning: This section of the guide references includes outdated and offensive language, including racist and misogynistic slurs that are replicated in this guide only in direct quotes of the source material.

“I was getting along fine with Mama, Papa-Daddy, and Uncle Rondo until my sister Stella-Rondo just separated from her husband and came back home again.”

The opening line of “Why I Live at the P.O.” introduces all the key characters immediately. It also establishes the main conflict of the story, at least in the narrator’s eyes. Stella-Rondo has just left her husband and returned to her childhood home, yet the narrator focuses on the event’s impact on herself.

“Told him I was one-sided. Bigger on one side than the other, which is a deliberate, calculated falsehood. I’m the same.”

The main character claims Stella-Rondo caused the breakup between Sister and Mr. Whitaker by telling him that one of Sister’s breasts is larger than the other. The narrator interprets these words literally, but they take on metaphorical importance as the narrative unfolds and Sister demonstrates the one-sidedness of her perspective. The facts surrounding the breakup remain ambiguous, but the fact that Shirley-T. is “too big” to fit within the timeline of Stella-Rondo’s marriage to Mr. Whitaker suggests that Stella-Rondo may have had a sexual relationship with him when Sister was dating him—a notion that Sister does not seem to consider.

“She’s always had anything in the world she wanted and then she’d throw it away.”

Sister characteristically employs hyperbole to describe Stella-Rondo. This serves to establish the long-standing rivalry between the two sisters, a rivalry that drives the plot of the story.