“Jeez, I hope nobody got hurt. You’re very quiet. You’re mad I missed the play, aren’t you? I have two jobs, baby. You know how important they are to us. I’d give anything to have been there.” Cole keeps his head down and does not look at his mother while she is talking to him. After Cole’s mother finishes talking, Cole finally looks up at her. *ACT: Cole is keeping his head down because he has something else on his mind. He is not mad at his mother for missing the play. He seems to have been thinking about something for a while, and when he picks his head and looks at his mother, we are not sure what to expect him to say. **SEM: Cole’s mother’s accusation, “You’re mad I missed the play, aren’t you?” foreshadows his mother’s fight with his grandmother, which is why his grandmother hid in the back of his mother’s childhood dance recital.
“I’m ready to communicate with you now...tell you my secrets.” ***HER: An enigma is introduced as Cole changes the subject, disregarding what his mother said about the play. The shot-reverse-shot dialogue between Cole and his mother promises that we will eventually find out what Cole’s secret is.
“You know the accident up there? Someone got hurt. A lady, she died,” says Cole. “Oh my God, you can see her?” says his mother. “Yes,” says Cole. “Where is she?” says his mother as she is looking out the window and up the street. “Standing next to my window.” A lady wearing a bike helmet is standing outside of the car next to Cole’s window, with a gash on her forehead and blood dripping down her face. ***HER: When Cole’s mother is looking around to catch a glimpse of the accident, the viewers believe the dead lady is near the scene of the accident, a few car-lengths ahead of Cole’s mother’s car. The mother’s attempt to find the lady somewhere ahead of her car is fraudulent because the lady that Cole sees is right next to the car. The equivocation occurs when Cole’s mother looks at Cole, shifts her eyes over to Cole’s window, then back to Cole without any reaction. She does not see the wounded lady, but we as viewers do because we see what Cole sees.
“Grandma comes to visit me sometimes,” says Cole. “Cole, that’s very wrong. Grandma’s gone, you know that,” his mother replies. ****REF: Some cultures think it is wrong to communicate with the dead, let alone speak about the dead. I don’t quite understand why Cole’s mother thinks this is wrong. I was raised in a Jewish family, where we honor dead relatives and reminisce about fond memories with those dead relatives all the time. It’s not depressing for families like mine to talk about how we miss Bubby’s (Yiddish for grandma) matzo ball soup, or how much Bubby cared for me and my sister. We can bring up her name in a mundane conversation without offending any of our living relatives. Many different religions, such as those of the Native Americans, rely on communication with the dead to seek advice and foresee the future. However, it seems that Cole’s mother does not want to hear about her own dead mother. Cole is forced to raise his voice in order to get his mother to listen to him.
Cole reveals the conversation between him and his grandmother. “She said you came to the place where they buried her, asked her a question. She said the answer is, ‘Every day.’ What did you ask?” “Do…do I make her proud?” she tells Cole. Cole hugs his mother. ***HER: Cole’s secret, his ability to see and speak with dead people, is disclosed and proven. There is no way for Cole to know his dead grandmother’s answer to his mother’s question if Cole does not have a supernatural gift that allows him to communicate with the dead.
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