"Things started to fall apart when my brother, Jaja, did not go to communion and Papa flung his heavy missal across the room and broke the figurines on the etagere(Kambili page 1)." Mama has some beloved ceramic figurines of ballet dancers that she keeps in the house. She always polishes them after Papa beats her. Mama, Kambili, and Jaja never speak of Papa’s violence, but polishing the figurines become a kind of euphemism for his domestic abuse. On Palm Sunday, the turning point for the family, Papa gets angry at Jaja’s open disobedience and throws his missal, breaking the figurines. As she cleans them up, Mama tells Kambili that she won’t need to replace them. This shows that something has changed in the family dynamic, and Mama won’t stand for violence anymore, just as Jaja asserts his independence by disobeying Papa. This being said, the figurines symbolize the silence the family lives with under the fear of Papa’s violence, and when the figurines are broken it means the beginning of freedom.
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