In 's
"," the narrator speaks of herself, her home and her two very different
daughters.
There had been a fire ten or twelve years before that had harmed
Mrs. Johnson's daughter, Maggie. However, as the house burned, the narrator saw her other
daughter's face and the hate she had for their home. As the story goes on, the reader comes to
understand that it was what it meant living in such a house that Dee hated,
more than the house itself. Dee would never be satisfied to live in such a place, or have the
meager life her mother and sister have.
Mrs. Johnson has had a difficult
life. There is no mention of having a husband to help her on her homestead. Quite
matter-of-factly, she acknowledges (with some pride) that she can "kill and clean a hog as
mercilessly as a man." One year she "knocked a bull calf straight in the brain between
the eyes with a sledge hammer..." She had the beef hung up to cure before the sun went
down. Not a complainer, she has done what needed to be done. Mrs. Johnson is a realist; she is
also comfortable with who she is.
Maggie is almost the shadow of a
person.
"How do I look, Mama?" Maggie says,
showing just enough of her thin body enveloped in pink skirt and red blouse for me to know she's
there almost hidden by the door.
Her mother describes
Maggie's behavior as similar to that of a dog that might have been hit by a car, now lame and
looking for someone to be kind to her. She is quiet and unassuming. She has the posture of one
who hopes not to be noticed.
Dee, on the other hand, has been a force to be
reckoned with since she was young. She is more attractive than her sister. She was the one to
leave home after her mother and the church put together the funds to send her to school in
Augusta. She learned, then and forced her learning on her uneducated mother and sister
...forcing words, lies, other folks' habits, whole lives upon us
two, sitting trapped and ignorant under her voice.
Dee
showed no desire to help her mother or sister advance through learning, but wants to control
them with what she knew. It demonstrates how far removed the life she lives
is from that of her past and her family.
Dee wanted nice things. Her clothes,
though gifted to her mother and worn before, were transformed so that Dee was proud to wear
them, as they transformed her from a country girl to a woman with prospects:
At sixteen she had a style of her own: and knew what style
was.
Now Dee comes to visit and makes a dramatic
entrance. Not only is she wearing long and flowing African garb and real gold jewelry at her
ears and on her wrists, but she also carries herself like a princess. She treats her mother's
house and homestead like they are part of a museum rather than the remnants of a life
she once lived herself. She takes a photo of the place, and another of her
mother and sister. Like an outsider looking in, she has no connection with these people or her
ancestors.
Dee arrives with grace and style. With her is a stocky man who
tells them to call him Hakim-a-barber. As they approach, Mrs. Johnson addresses her daughter by
her name. However, Dee corrects her and tells her that her name is now "Wangero Leewanika
Kemanjo," and that Dee "is dead." She refuses, she explains, to be named after
the people who "oppressed her," though she was actually named after her aunt, and the
family has passed down the name through countless generations.
Changing her
name is just another way in which Dee has attempted to break away from her family and its
far-distant past. While she may express the need to remove herself from a young woman descended
from slaves, she seems more embarrassed than entitled in her new "position" in the
world. She sees no value in things that belonged to her grandmother or mother except as they can
be used to promote the new identity she has created. The benches and the butter dish are not
worthwhile because they were hand-made by someone in the family, but because they will fit
nicely in her new homewhich is an extension of her new identity. Both have been created in the
image Dee wishes to adopt for herself: how she hopes to be seen by the
world. There is nothing to connect her to the men and women who came before her, making
her personal transition possible in the first place. She has no regard for
her mother who worked so hard to provide Dee with a home, and managed to send Dee away to
school. She has no compassion for her injured sister.
Dee changed her name
because she was ashamed of where she came from and did not want to be known as a poor kid that
started out in hand-me-downs. She has changed her name and appearance to disassociate herself
from her family, descended from slaves. She has returned only to take things that she believes
will be admired in her home, not because she acknowledges the significance of the sacrifices of
those who lived before her. In this way, Dee is very different from Maggie.
Maggie is actually the daughter who is richer by far because she sees the pricelessness
of the things and people of her past. Maggie is not defined by the past. Dee, ironically, is
completely defined by the past she is trying to reject. Dee doesn't really know who she is, but
Maggie (like her mother) knows exactly who she is. Maggie is not only
satisfied with her situation, but also happy with the life she will carve
out for herself with her soon-to-be husband, along with the patches of the past, sewn into a
quilt she will use everydayspecial because of the history it comes with, and the love of the
women who created it.
No comments:
Post a Comment