Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Master's Theses Graduate School 2002 Backwaters Tamika L. Edwards Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses Part of the Creative Writing Commons Recommended Citation Edwards, Tamika L., "Backwaters" (2002). LSU Master's Theses. 2434. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses/2434 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Master's Theses by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. BACKWATERS A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts In The Department of English By Tamika LaShon Edwards B.A., Louisiana State University, 1997 May 2002 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In loving dedication to my Mother, Olivia, my Earth Angel and my Great Titi Mary, my Guardian in the Great Beyond. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………………………………………………………………..…ii.... TABLE OF CONTENTS ……………………………………………………………………iii ABSTRACT ……………………………………………………………………………….….v PROLOGUE ………………………………………………………………………………….1 PART I …………………………………………………………………………………………7 Chapter 1 ………………………………………………………………………………………8 Chapter 2………………………………………………………………………………………21.. Chapter 3………………………………………………………………………………………31.. Chapter 4 ………………………………………………………………………………………46 Chapter 5………………………………………………………………………………………59. Part II ………………………………………………………………………………………….72 Chapter 6……………………………………………………………………………………….78 Chapter 7 ……………………………………………………………………………………….82 Chapter 8 ……………………………………………………………………………………….92 Chapter 9 ……………………………………………………………………………………….102 Chapter 10 ………………………………………………………………………………………112 Chapter 11 ………………………………………………………………………………………124 Chapter 12 ………………………………………………………………………………………143 Chapter 13 ………………………………………………………………………………………152 Chapter 14 ………………………………………………………………………………………161 Chapter 15 ………………………………………………………………………………………171 Chapter 16 ………………………………………………………………………………………181 Chapter 17 ………………………………………………………………………………………191 Chapter 18 ………………………………………………………………………………………199 iii Chapter 19 ………………………………………………………………………………………205 Chapter 20 ………………………………………………………………………………………223 Chapter 21 ………………………………………………………………………………………231 Chapter 22 ………………………………………………………………………………………240 Chapter 23 ………………………………………………………………………………………251 Chapter 24 ………………………………………………………………………………………260 Chapter 25 ………………………………………………………………………………………269 Chapter 26 ……………………………………………………………………………………….279 Chapter 27 ………………………………………………………………………………………285 Part III …………………………………………………………………………………………..291 Chapter 28 ………………………………………………………………………………………293 Chapter 29 ………………………………………………………………………………………302 Chapter 30 ……………………………………………………………………………………….311 Chapter 31 ……………………………………………………………………………………….318 Epilogue …………………………………………………………………………………………321 VITA …………………………………………………………………………………………… .322 iv ABSTRACT Backwaters is a novel heavily steeped in the supernatural. It chronicles the lives of a mother and son who have been disconnected from one another through a series of curses. Unaware of the other-worldly forces propelling their lives into chaos, each loses themselves to madness and isolation. Their only escape is in loving others too hard, and not each other enough. v PROLOGUE Funny. They thought his name would be more offensive, something more jagged than Acanthus C. Fontanbleu rolling off the tongue. They thought his name would match his face- both leaving the same twang that baking soda leaves in the back of the mouth, but only the face with the flaming eyes left the tart aftermath, the name however left something different-- something soft and sweet, even romantic (mad of course), but romantic all the same, like the names in white folks’ tall tales about armed knights and handsome princes sacrificing for their fair maid milds.... 1 Mrs. Abby Rubins She had an obsession with hair-- that’s how come the boy come out crazy just like her. The two used to keep to themselves real unnatural-like, combing in each others heads in private like it was something too dirty for other folks to see. I remember how they used to pull the shade in the morning time even before the sun got the notion to wake up. She’d be dressed in something soft and paper thin, and he in silk pajamas. Before I saw him in them things I ain’t never knowed them to be made that small. Back then it was rare to see silk in a colored household, muchless on a colored boy-child. Even some white folks in Backwaters couldn’t afford that luxury. But them two was strange that way, living as though they were royalty amidst the poverty in The Downs. Them two could barely afford a pot to piss in, but when it came to their hair, and putting clothes on their backs they spared no expense. I can remember the one time they forgot to pull the shade. That was some sight to see. Of course, it wasn’t my intention to stare. Usually by that time in the morning I’d be up in the kitchen putting some coffee on for me and my Clement. It had become a habit for me to just glance over expecting to see the dingy white shade pulled down just so, but that morning, weren’t no dingy white showing, so I couldn’t help but stare. And that’s when I saw him stroking her ginger colored cotton candy mass with that sterling silver brush-- the kind with the bristles made exclusively for white folks’ hair. There she was sitting at her dresser mirror, and him behind her stroking like there weren’t 2 no tomorrow, and her closing her eyes and moaning. With every pull and snag she’d let out this soft sound that seemed to me too intimate for a Mama to be sharing with her son. The sound seemed barely there, but I had good ears and I heard. I couldn’t do nothing but stare and listen. It wasn’t until the boy caught my eyes in the looking glass, and stopped his stroking that Dahlia opened her eyes. First she saw the alarm in his baby browns, then found the confusion in my own. Shame colored both of their faces in a bright, almost cherry red. I figured I had seen something I wasn’t supposed to have seen, so I busied myself with the salt and peppershakers on the table, and pretended I hadn’t seen a thing. But out the corner of my eye I could see her slowly stumbling towards the window to pull the shade. The boy hadn’t moved an inch. I suppose he was still in shock. Seem like it took forever for her to reach that shade- as though she was floating and falling all graceful-like at the same time. But that boy he couldn’t move none. His eyes were too busy searching my face for forgiveness, even though by then I had turned my attention to the salt and peppershakers. When she finally reached the window she ain’t say a word to me, and I ain’t say a word to her. She pulled the shade and ain’t nobody see or hear from them two for a whole week. She thought seven days was long enough for me to forget, but it weren’t. That episode was haunting me all in my conscience to the point where I couldn’t even sleep at nights. That boy’s baby browns was all I could think of-- them searching my face all over for forgiveness, and me looking away like I ain’t seen a thing. 3 It’s funny how time changes some things, and not others. It had been twenty years since that episode, yet in the courtroom just the other day that boy’s baby browns searched my face for forgiveness in much of the same way they had back then. For some time I had been coming to the trial religiously, like most of the other colored folks in Backwaters. It had come to the point where even white employers didn’t mind some of their workers taking off to go see some colored boy be brought to justice. They wanted him burned, but they would settle for a lynching. I suppose they wanted to teach the rest of us a lesson, that is of course to keep our “place”, and that colored folks couldn’t just go around killing folks whenever they so pleased. The only good that come out of the whole thing, if you could call it that, was that white folks finally stood up and admitted that a colored’s life was worth something-- enough that is to carry out a long tedious trial just to avenge their death. Oh no, of course they’d never admit that-that was the purpose of the whole thing. I mean, how would it look for them to be avenging the life of some colored woman, when it was clear that a white woman’s life far outweighed that of any colored, male or female? We were living in the South afterall, how could you expect anything less? I suppose they just figured if he could hurt one of his own kind, it was no telling what he would do to one of their kind, so justice must be brought about-- even if it did mean they would have to defend the honor of some colored woman in the process. I don’t truly know why any of the other coloreds came to the trial. I can only 4 speak for myself. I came out of fascination. It’s odd to say, and I feel guilty about even admitting it and all, but I just had to be there. I wanted to know if he truly done it, and why. It all seemed so unreal, like something come out of the silver screen. It was like we were all on the outside looking in, with a big wide screen separating real from unreal. I lived right next to the boy and his Ma for as long as I can remember. In fact, I helped bring the both of them into this world, but that had no bearing on our contact. They both were so distant from everybody in Backwaters-- colored and non-colored, family and non-family, it didn’t matter. They lived in their own silent picture show. The trouble came when the boy tried to cross over, and couldn’t adapt, and I suppose that’s one of the reasons why he supposively killed that girl the brutal way he did.