"Blessed Deliverance" Narrator

In “Blessed Deliverance,” the first person plural narration is representative of a group of five friends. This friend group is comprised of Walidah, Roni, Antonio, Cherise, and an unnamed teenage boy whose first person perspective emerges at the story’s end. At the start of the story, the five friends are nearing the completion of high school. They all live in Brooklyn, New York and attend the same school. For some time, the friends have spent every day after school together. Because they are young, their bodies feel “unbeleaguered, and intact,” not “dull at all,” and even “fascinating” (5). Delighting in their own youth and beauty, the friends therefore love to spend time in public places like “the Botanic Garden or in Prospect Park where on warm days” they can “flex and stretch” themselves out freely (5). They are, the narrator admits, at a point in their lives...