Plight and Passion

Virginia Commonwealth University VCU Scholars Compass Theses and Dissertations Graduate School 2014 Plight and Passion Lisa Williams Virginia Commonwealth University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd Part of the Creative Writing Commons © The Author Downloaded from https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/3479 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at VCU Scholars Compass. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of VCU Scholars Compass. For more information, please contact [email protected]. COPYRIGHT PAGE Lisa Williams 2014 All Rights Reserved i Plight and Passion A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University. by Lisa B. Williams Longwood University, B.A., 1991 Director: Thom Didato Graduate Advisor, English Department Virginia Commonwealth University Richmond, Virginia May, 2014 ii Acknowledgement The author wishes to thank several people. I would like to thank my great-grandmother, the late Hattie Carrington Taylor, for planting the seed of this story. Indeed, my great-grandmother was a wonderful storyteller, whose words grounded me in my heritage and pushed me beyond the boundaries of her front porch to a place where light and darkness converge, where voice and vision meet. I would also like to thank Dr. John McCown for his guidance with this project. Table of Contents Abstract………………………………………………………………………………iv Chapter One……………………………………………………………….…………..1 Chapter Two………………………………………………………………………….19 Chapter Three…………………………………………………………………………38 Chapter Four……………………………………………………………….………….44 Chapter Five……………………………………………………………….…………..59 Chapter Six………………………………………………………………….…………66 Chapter Seven……………………………………………………………….…………80 Chapter Eight………………………………………………………………….……….93 Chapter Nine………………………………………………………………………….104 Chapter Ten…………………………………………………………………………...115 Chapter Eleven………………………………………………………………….…….125 Chapter Twelve………………………………………………………………….……136 Chapter Thirteen………………………………………………………………….…...155 Chapter Fourteen………………………………………………………………….…..190 Abstract PLIGHT AND PASSION By Lisa B. Williams A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University. Virginia Commonwealth University, 2014. Major Director: Dr. John McCown, Professor of English, English Department. The goal of this thesis is to bring to life the countless stories of oppression, perseverance, and hope of African-Americans during the early twentieth century. I used two settings, the rural South and the industrialized North, to reflect the different challenges of surviving and thriving during times of segregation. Buck Carrington, in Part I of the novel that is set in Virginia, is forced to confront not only his own personal demons of lust and intemperance, but also the vices of hatred and racism. In the end, he loses everything. His wife, Helen, decides to leave Buck, and she ventures to the city, to Harlem, which is the setting for Part II of this novel. As a woman with no education, she must forge a path to independence by working hard and attaining an education, and incidentally, she finds love and self-confidence in the process. I used dialect and vivid description to characterize each protagonist, Buck as wild and hot-tempered, and Helen as reserved and shy, but strong-willed. I also used historical references and allusions to place the reader in the time period and to bring the many facets of African American culture and values to life. Chapter One Buck Carrington was a married man. A married man coming home, just in time for breakfast. His haggard appearance divulged his whereabouts. No need to wonder or to doubt where he had been for two days. Maybe the first time, but not now. His trousers were wrinkled and stained; his shirt tail hung out of the sides and back of his britches; coarse stubble rooted the chin and jaws of his coffee-colored face. He stank, of whiskey and tobacco. As he made his way down the stony path and up the porch steps, his wide nostrils flared to the familiar scent of downhome, Southern cooking that seeped through the kitchen window. Calloused hands reached for and inadvertently slammed the ragged front door, ceasing the chatter in the next room. The only audible sound now was that of rotting floorboards, which creaked under his gait as he made his way through the parlor and into the small kitchen. With downcast eyes, avoiding the penetrating stares of his wife and mother, he studied the marks his muddy shoes made over the grooves of the linoleum from the doorway to the corner, where the shabby wooden cabinet stood. “Boy, where in God’s name is you been?” his mother, Betty asked, lifting her broad frame from the table and ambling over to the tin bucket half full of suds. Wringing the soapy cloth and then kneeling to wipe up the mud he had just tracked over her clean floor, she continued, righteously shaking her head. Her large breasts shook, and her raspy voice broke to 1 the rhythm of her jerky movements. “I bet you—and Sammy Nash—done spent—all your money—on liquor—and them two half-white heiffas.” Though never acknowledged or regarded with envy by any of the siblings, it was always obvious that he, her only son and her youngest of five, had reaped the most attention (and the most anguish) from Betty, for she was bent on preparing him to be a man in a world where he would always be perceived as less than one. Her efforts evolved into a complex, unbalanced combination of taking an iron skillet or the edge of a broomstick to his head when she deemed it necessary and waiting on him hand and foot and answering to his every whim otherwise. Buck said nothing. His stolid air of silence made his wife shift uneasily from one side of her chair to the other. She eyed her husband, who had yet to greet her, who had a conscience that allowed him an appetite. He stood over the iron stove and scooped large helpings onto his plate. Gritting her teeth and rolling her eyes, she rushed out of the kitchen. The tail end of her robe whisked behind her as she stormed into the bedroom and slammed the loosely hinged door. Helen’s reaction stung, though Buck did not wince. He casually took a seat at the small table, and in quick movements, lifted the fork to his mouth, not because he was insatiably hungry, but because he wanted to avoid his mother, who rose to stand over him with her chubby hands perched on her wide hips. Buck’s palms dampened from nervousness, like they did when he was a boy and about to receive a whipping. As a grown man, he found the lashes of Betty’s wise, unsparing tongue just as intimidating. He lost courage, confronted by his mother’s sternness. “Buck,” she muttered, lowering her tone, “you mark my words, “don’t nothing good come from cheating on your wife and staying out all night. Don’t blame nobody but yourself when something terrible happen. You going against God’s word and breaking a commandment.” 2 She was silent for a moment and stooped again, scrubbing so hard the paper bag curlers in her head shook. Her voice broke to the pants of her labor. “Lord—knows, I—ain’t raise—no child—of mine—to act—like this!” Buck secretly acknowledged his mother’s comment; she spoke the truth, always had. Since he was twelve and his father had passed away suddenly—from a mule kick to the head on the Stinell plantation—he knew she had done her best to raise him singlehandedly, forcing him to adapt to and live under feminine reign. His sisters too had thrown in their fair share of a helping hand—to pull him from the shadows of sin and darkness. Mimicking Betty, their primary influence, thus thinking of themselves authoritatively, he had had to fight off three domineering, mouthy sisters for his space, his privacy, and his autonomy. “Mannish!” his elder sister, Hazel Belle, had called him and run home to tell Betty that they had spied him feeling up the Perkins girls around back of the house. “Too big for his britches!” they had yelled when they spotted him gambling by the riverside with his cronies and dragged him home by the ear. Motherly instinct had come natural to them, for Betty, with the no-nonsense tactics of a slave driver, had turned out three hardworking daughters (the youngest dead from scarlet fever). As a boy, Buck’s clothes were always mended and clean, his thick black hair was always slicked in promenade, and his dark brown face, knees, and elbows always glowed from the bit of lard she rubbed on them every morning before he left for the one-room schoolhouse. He envisioned the gnarl of her young, soft face, the color of cornmeal, as she rubbed her calloused hands over his smooth countenance. “The only thing worse than sun-burned, beet red white skin is ashy black. You black, but ain’t no excuse for ashy!” Nothing Buck did missed Betty’s eye, even when her back was turned. “Sit up straight at the table,” she would say, busy washing dishes at the aluminum sink. He would stare in 3 amazement at the back of her head, her auburn hair tied up in an old house rag. “And don’t chew with your mouth open!” she would scold, still facing the corner. Buck had listened to her preachings and naggings so much that oftentimes they rang in his ears like a soft echo, the most repeated ones being, “Always ack like you got home training. They expect us to act like monkeys, you know. And when white folks mistreat you, suck it up and keep your mouth shut! I don’t ever want to pull my boy down from no tree!” He tried to remember the latter each time Junior Stinell spat a jaw full of juicy snuff not an inch from his shoe and called him “boy” in that scoffing voice, the intense hatred turning his blue eyes to a shade of fiery violet.

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