Chap­ter 16 of If These Wings Could Fly focus­es on the narrator’s ongo­ing strug­gle with sleep­less­ness, stem­ming large­ly from an intense fear of the crawl space in the base­ment. This crawl space, con­cealed behind the stair­case, is a dim, damp, and seem­ing­ly insignif­i­cant area that becomes a pow­er­ful source of anx­i­ety for the nar­ra­tor. What should be a sim­ple, unre­mark­able space becomes trans­formed by the narrator’s imag­i­na­tion into a dark, fore­bod­ing place that fills her with dread. This irra­tional ter­ror is not caused by the phys­i­cal space itself, but by the unknowns it rep­re­sents, fuel­ing an ongo­ing sense of fear that keeps her awake at night. As the dark­ness of night envelops the house, the crawl space becomes a sym­bol of every­thing that is hid­den, a place that might con­ceal things far worse than its ordi­nary appear­ance sug­gests.

The narrator’s inabil­i­ty to sleep is wors­ened by the unpre­dictable emo­tion­al cli­mate of her home. Despite moments where every­thing appears peaceful—when laugh­ter fills the air, when flow­ers are admired, and when the house­hold mood is light—there remains an ever-present under­cur­rent of ten­sion. The nar­ra­tor is keen­ly aware that what may seem like calm at any giv­en moment could quick­ly shat­ter into chaos. Tomor­row could bring anoth­er out­burst of her father’s anger, which may result in a vio­lent con­fronta­tion that dis­rupts the entire house­hold. This knowl­edge of an impend­ing storm con­stant­ly looms over her, over­shad­ow­ing any fleet­ing moments of tran­quil­i­ty. It’s the uncer­tain­ty of not know­ing when the next emo­tion­al storm will hit that keeps her on edge, mak­ing it impos­si­ble to relax and ful­ly enjoy any peace­ful moment.

The crawl space, in the narrator’s mind, becomes much more than just a neglect­ed cor­ner of the house; it is sym­bol­ic of the buried trau­mas and unre­solved fears with­in her fam­i­ly. The real ter­ror does not come from the dark­ness itself but from the ambi­gu­i­ty and the poten­tial dan­ger that could be hid­den with­in it. The nar­ra­tor imag­ines that the crawl space could one day become a phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of every­thing that has been pushed down and ignored—buried mem­o­ries, sup­pressed emo­tions, and unre­solved con­flicts. This space sym­bol­izes the family’s col­lec­tive suf­fer­ing, the parts of them­selves they’ve tried to for­get but that still haunt them. The fear of the crawl space mir­rors the fear of the unspo­ken issues that loom just beneath the sur­face, always threat­en­ing to come to light. As the nar­ra­tor lies awake, she is not only fight­ing against the phys­i­cal dis­com­fort of insom­nia, but she is also bat­tling the psy­cho­log­i­cal toll of liv­ing in an envi­ron­ment filled with uncer­tain­ty and emo­tion­al chaos. The inabil­i­ty to sleep becomes a man­i­fes­ta­tion of her con­stant vig­i­lance and anx­i­ety, a direct result of the trau­ma she expe­ri­ences in her home life. The crawl space thus serves as a pow­er­ful metaphor for the larg­er emo­tion­al land­scape of the fam­i­ly, a place where every­thing they can­not face is stored away, qui­et­ly wait­ing to be revealed.

This chap­ter is a pro­found explo­ration of the men­tal and emo­tion­al strug­gles that arise from liv­ing in a home filled with unpre­dictabil­i­ty. The fear of the crawl space is just the tip of the ice­berg, rep­re­sent­ing a much deep­er well of psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­tress. The narrator’s insom­nia and her con­stant state of alert­ness reflect the toll that liv­ing in such an envi­ron­ment takes on her men­tal health. As she con­tem­plates the crawl space and the dark­ness that may lurk there, she is con­front­ed with the unset­tling real­i­ty that the true source of her fear lies not in the phys­i­cal space itself, but in the unad­dressed trau­ma that it rep­re­sents. This chap­ter speaks to the emo­tion­al scars left by a chaot­ic and unsta­ble home life, and the strug­gle to find peace when that peace feels per­pet­u­al­ly out of reach.