The stories told by Rayona, Christine, and Ida are all part of a greater story, a story of their family, their time, and their shared heritage. This story can only be told in full if their narratives are looked at together. The metaphor of the braid represents the three strands of hair that are woven, pulled one over the other and merged until a final whole is created. .
The first strand represents the granddaughter of Ida and the daughter of Christine: Rayona. In order to gain a better understanding of the feelings as well as the misconceptions Rayona has towards her own mother, we need to look into her thoughts. What seems absurd to Rayona may only be the perspective that is shown through her own eyes. When Rayona has to deal with her drunken mother she says, "I listen, eavesdropping into her life, while she lights Kent after Kent and the room fills with smoke while she kills the bottle. Those evenings always end with Mom's thoughts returning either to the day in Tacoma when Dad proposed to her, or to something about her brother, Lee, who was killed in Vietnam. She confuses who I am and asks me if I knew him, asks me if he had any last words for her. Those nights I help her to bed." (p. 26) Christine looks at the situation under a completely different light: "In school they had taught her all this crap about drinking and how bad it was for you, smoking too, and she was convinced I used more than I did, that I was an alcoholic. Sometimes I found myself sneaking around my own apartment like some kid, hiding a bottle of V.O. in a shoebox and dreaming up excuses to satisfy her." (P. 238) Christine feels that she is not the drunk that Rayona paints her personality with. She is tired of Rayona constantly nagging about the dangers of alcohol and tobacco. The difference between these two quotes is evidence of the power of subjectivity, and how differently two people can see the same thing. Through each section, we learn vital information in which we were left out in the previous one.
