Chap­ter V begins with the nar­ra­tor wak­ing up ear­ly on her thir­teenth birth­day, brim­ming with excite­ment but find­ing that the day feels strange­ly ordi­nary. She had hoped for some extra­or­di­nary event or new­found abil­i­ty, but noth­ing hap­pens to sug­gest that this will be a day unlike any oth­er. Feel­ing a bit dis­ap­point­ed that she hasn’t sud­den­ly devel­oped mag­i­cal pow­ers, she qui­et­ly gets out of bed, care­ful not to wake her younger sis­ter, Gyp­sy, who is deeply immersed in the com­fort of her stuffed ani­mals. As she steps into the kitchen, the nar­ra­tor makes her­self a bowl of cere­al and sits down on the sofa, where a strange thump­ing sound sud­den­ly catch­es her atten­tion. Curi­ous, she fol­lows the noise and dis­cov­ers some­thing remarkable—Samson’s tur­tle, which she had thought was dead, is stir­ring from hiber­na­tion. This unex­pect­ed turn of events leaves her with an unset­tling feel­ing, remind­ing her of the urgency she feels about this sig­nif­i­cant day in her life.

The fam­i­ly soon pre­pares to leave for the church in Hebron, where a par­ty is planned to cel­e­brate her birth­day. The nar­ra­tor is dressed in a spe­cial dress that her father had picked out for her, a ges­ture that brings back sweet mem­o­ries of a time when her father’s pres­ence was a com­fort. How­ev­er, the joy of wear­ing the dress is tinged with sad­ness, as her father is now in the hos­pi­tal, unre­spon­sive after her grandmother’s pass­ing. As they dri­ve to the church, the nar­ra­tor can’t shake her wor­ries about her father, won­der­ing if he will ever wake up. While she doesn’t pos­sess the super­nat­ur­al abil­i­ties that her broth­ers seem to have, she believes that her unique gift lies in her abil­i­ty to awak­en things, much like the tur­tle emerg­ing from hiber­na­tion. This belief in her spe­cial tal­ent fuels her hope that she might be able to help her father, despite her uncer­tain­ty.

When the fam­i­ly arrives at the church, the birth­day par­ty is already in full swing, and the nar­ra­tor is tak­en aback by the vibrant atmos­phere, which far exceeds her expec­ta­tions of a sim­ple gath­er­ing. The excite­ment of the cel­e­bra­tion is over­shad­owed by her grow­ing anx­i­ety, espe­cial­ly when her broth­er Fish warns her about the poten­tial dan­gers of using her abil­i­ty in such a crowd­ed place. Despite Fish’s con­cerns, the nar­ra­tor remains con­fi­dent in her abil­i­ty, feel­ing cer­tain that she can use her unique gift to help her father. Just as she begins to gath­er the courage to explain her thoughts, she is dis­tract­ed by Will Junior, who pulls her into the chaot­ic cel­e­bra­tion, shift­ing her focus away from her con­tem­pla­tions about her father’s con­di­tion and her grow­ing sense of pur­pose.

This chap­ter illus­trates the narrator’s inter­nal strug­gle as she grap­ples with the weight of her emo­tions and the uncer­tain­ty sur­round­ing her abil­i­ties. Her hope to use her gift to help her father reflects a uni­ver­sal desire to have con­trol over dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances, espe­cial­ly when faced with the help­less­ness of not being able to change what’s hap­pen­ing around her. The pres­ence of the tur­tle, awak­en­ing unex­pect­ed­ly, serves as a metaphor for the narrator’s own poten­tial, sug­gest­ing that like the tur­tle, she too may have a latent pow­er wait­ing to be real­ized. The ten­sion between her desire to act and the dis­trac­tions that pull her away high­lights the inter­nal and exter­nal con­flicts she faces, which adds emo­tion­al depth to her jour­ney. As the day unfolds with the chaos of the par­ty and the grow­ing real­iza­tion that her pow­ers might be real, the nar­ra­tor is left at a cross­roads, unsure of how to move for­ward but deter­mined to find her way. The nar­ra­tive not only explores themes of fam­i­ly, loss, and hope but also the awak­en­ing of poten­tial, both lit­er­al­ly and fig­u­ra­tive­ly, that will shape the course of the nar­ra­tor’s future.