The Sunday Following Mother’s Day

Anjuelle D. Floyd

Edward P. Jones’, The Sunday Following Mother’s Day, chronicles Madeleine William’s

search for the reason, or rather the man who killed her mother.

The story opens with a description of the silence in which the murder occurred—a night

in early April when Madeleine was four-years-old, and her brother, ten. The two not

learn of what had taken place until late next morning when their father’s sister, Maddie,

came and took them to her house.

Madeleine’s father, Samuel Williams, gave no defense of killing Madeleine’s mother,

only said, “I stabbed her a lot.” Samuel Williams Sr. was convicted and sentenced to

twenty-five years in Lorton Prison for killing his wife, the mother of his children.

Maddie Williams, Samuel’s sister, became guardian of Madeleine and her brother, Sam

Jr., when members of their mother’s family refused to care for them. Thus began

Madeleine’s journey through a world from which her mother had been so brutally taken

by her father.

During the ensuing years Aunt Maddie took Madeleine and her brother to visit their

Samuel Sr. in prison. Three years after their mother’s killing, Madeleine’s brother, Sam

Jr., then thirteen, stopped accompanying Madeleine on visits to see their father. Two years

later and having begun to steal and stay out all night, Samuel Williams Jr., then age

fifteen, left home. He did not return for a decade and a half. Nine-year old Madeleine,

continued living with their, Aunt Maddie. Madeleine never caused Maddie problems.
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(all excerpts taken from Edward P. Jones’, Lost in the City of 4

ISBN -00679258-X)
 The Sunday Following Mother’s Day
Anjuelle D. Floyd

When Madeleine reached age fifteen she stopped writing letters to Samuel Jr., who was

then enlisted in the military. Entering Columbia University she communicated with her

Aunt Maddie through letters. Madeleine also wrote to her father, Sam Sr., still in prison,

and whom Madeleine had long since stopped visiting.

Distorted memories of her father formed, and replaced Madeleine’s initial recollections of

her father, with those emerging from her depression and sense of loss, and her desire to

understand the man—her father—who had killed Madeleine’s mother—a woman

Madeleine had barely known and could now faintly recalled. For all intents and purposes

Madeleine was an orphan.

During her junior year at Columbia, Madeleine re-experienced the death of her mother

when the father of a three- years-old girl shot the child’s mother. The little girl attended

the pre-school where Madeleine volunteered. The similarities of Madeleine and the little

girl’s loss were uncanny. The little girl was three when her mother was killed. Madeleine

was four when her mother was murdered. The little girl’s father shot the mother four

times. Samuel Williams Sr. repeated stabbed Madeleine’s mother. Both had lost their

mothers at the hands of their fathers.

All this lay underneath Madeleine’s skin of memories when, with following her

graduation from Columbia, she gave birth to a son, later understood to be mentally
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(all excerpts taken from Edward P. Jones’, Lost in the City of 4

ISBN -00679258-X)
 The Sunday Following Mother’s Day
Anjuelle D. Floyd

retarded. Madeleine had named her son after her brother, Sam. Jr. Against the wishes of

all involved, Madeleine committed her son to a government facility. Madeleine had

refused to marry with or live the child’s father. Madeleine viewed her son’s condition as

punishment for her having named him Sam, which is also the name of her father.

Years later and unable to be visit her son at the Children’s Center on Mother’s Day as

planned she postpones the trip for a week later. On The Sunday Following Mother’s Day

Madeleine opens the door to her apartment and finds Samuel Williams Sr.—the man who

killed her and Sam Jr.’s mother, and who newly released from prison, also holds the same

name as Madeleine’s son—standing on the other side.

Much to her dismay Madeleine agrees to allow her father to drive her to see her son—his

grandson, Sam—at the Children’s Center. While there Madeleine recoils from her son,

Sam III, as he lay drooling upon a blanket spread over the ground, and next to Madeleine.

Hours later Madeleine is struck by her father, the elder Sam, whom she notices is

haphazardly dressed. Sam, the grandfather is pushing Sam, the grandchild, now in the

wheelchair, back toward the facility. Grandfather Sam has just returned from having

gone to get his grandson some ice cream, a trip during which the elder Sam’s car broke

down.

Madeleine is finally in touch with the anger underneath which sits her hurt looming
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(all excerpts taken from Edward P. Jones’, Lost in the City of 4

ISBN -00679258-X)
 The Sunday Following Mother’s Day
Anjuelle D. Floyd

furious.

The drive home is silent. Arriving at her apartment Madeleine leaves her father’s car and

heads upstairs. She does not hear him say, “I’m sorry.” Inside her apartment she locks

the door and takes a seat, her back toward the window as her father, Samuel Williams Sr.,

the grandfather of her retarded son, Sam, works to repair his car.

The Sunday Following Mother’s Day is as much about names and what they mean, and

symbolize, as it is a daughter’s loss of family with the death of her mother killed by the

daughter’s father. The name Sam means loss for Madeleine Williams. And yet she gives

this name to her son whom she later learns lacks the ability to comprehend and function

in the world as Madeleine, and we, know it.

Jones posits Madeleine’s son, Sam III, as a physical manifestation of what Madeleine,

and often, we as humans cannot understand and struggle to accept in our lives—

complexes and situations inherited from others that lay beyond our ability to alter or

improve—the uncertainties of life at the center of which sits an uneasiness concerning

ourselves.

11/03/2007 4
(all excerpts taken from Edward P. Jones’, Lost in the City of 4

ISBN -00679258-X)