- We get a long description about the Streets' huge house and the people sleeping in it. Apparently, Valerian and his wife Margaret don't sleep in the same room. Now that's character development.
- In a nearby room, Jade lies in bed dreaming about the past. She specifically dreams about a horrifying scene with lots of large women's hats, and we have no clue yet why these hats make her so upset.
- Her dream suddenly shifts to a memory of one of the times she went grocery shopping while she was in Paris. The memory is significant because Jade can remember being totally bowled over by a beautiful African woman whom she saw wearing a blazing canary yellow dress.
- We also get our first hint of the book's title when Jade remembers that the woman's skin looked "like tar against the canary yellow dress" (2.2).
- Jade even followed the woman around because she was so spellbound. She stared at the woman as she left the grocery store, and then…
- Then the woman finally saw her and spat on the ground in disgust. The spit sounds like it totally traumatized Jade. She really wanted the African woman in the yellow dress to like and respect her. But there's some part of Jade that realizes how different she is from the woman, even though they were both black.
- Jade has been educated at the Sorbonne, one of the finest universities in France. She has also spent a lot of time as a model in mostly white magazines, and the white rich man Valerian is the one who paid for her fancy education. In short, Jade is a bit insecure about how "authentically" black she is.
- She also wonders whether her white boyfriend Ryk is only going out with her because he's thrilled by having a black girlfriend.
- Next, the narrator switches to a sleeping Valerian and starts talking about his whole deal.
- Valerian has made all of his money off of a candy factory that he inherited through his family. He took over the company at thirty-nine and swore he wouldn't work there a day past sixty-five. But he actually worked until he was sixty-seven. Oh well. No biggie.
- The factory was always good to its workers. As it expanded, it avoided layoffs and always stayed in the town it started up in.
- When he had his son Michael, Valerian was relieved that he would have someone to pass the company onto. But as Michael got older, he became a radical left-wing thinker who wanted to help the oppressed people of the world instead of running a profitable business. Valerian knew that he and his son drifted apart over the years, and it was at this point he decided to build his greenhouse on his tropical island and spend the rest of his days with living things that he could control (like plants). Anyone picking up on some symbolism there? Good.
- Meanwhile, Margaret is asleep (as we mentioned) in a different room than Valerian. While she dreams, we learn all about her background, too. For starters, she is the daughter of two fairly unattractive people. She also had fiery red hair growing up, which neither of her parents had, and which made her father suspect her mother of cheating on him. But after some consideration, he remembered that he had two great aunts with super red hair, and that put his mind to rest.
- Margaret spent her young life growing up in a trailer home. So you can imagine that it was step up when she married the super rich Valerian Street at the age of seventeen.
- But as you also imagine, Margaret understood pretty quickly that she, a seventeen year old beauty queen from the country, didn't have much in common with her husband, a rich thirty-nine year old man with a posh life and swanky, older friends. Suffice it to say that Margaret started to feel lonely over the years. She made friends with the cook Ondine when she was younger, but Valerian ordered her to stop treating the servants like friends.
- And that should catch you up on some of our main characters. All they did in this chapter was sleep, but you can learn a lot from people's dreams.