Learning to Blame Our Mothers -- Possessing the Secret of Joy by Alice Walker

Negro women, said the doctor, are considered the most difficult of all people to be effectively analyzed. Do you know why?...Negro women, the doctor says into my silence, can never be analyzed effectively because they can never bring themselves to blame their mothers...  

I just finished reading Alice Walker's Possessing the Secret of Joy, and wish I had read it much sooner.  Although, I'm not sure if I would have been able to appreciate it as much years ago. The passage above appears early in the novel when the protagonist, a young woman named Tashi (AKA Evelyn) who went mad after she decided to have herself "bathed" -- a euphemism for genital cutting/mutilation, met for the first time an American psychiatrist. Initially, I found the doctor's observation a bit peculiar, even offensive. However, it stayed with me through the remainder of the story.  In fact, it seems that Tashi's story surrounds her efforts to do exactly that, learn how to blame her mother.

I don't believe the doctor meant blame our mothers for the mistakes we make, especially the type of mistakes one associates with youth. I believe he means that we carry the grief and burdens of our mothers; we perpetuate and reflect their oppression unquestionably. That we can easily blame a misogynistic society and all the violent acts that come from it (emotionally, spiritually, and physically) on men. However, it never occurs to us to blame our mothers for passing down and advocating the ideas and practices that keep women (all women) oppressed. (Walker, for natural reasons, takes note to use the word "enslaved" where one could easily use "oppressed" to do describe woman's plight.)

 The doctor says our inability to blame our mothers prevents black (and I believe black and brown women everywhere) from being effectively treated for psychosis. It cripples our ability to resolve the things that literally could drive us insane. It cripples our ability to become truly free.

At the end of the story, "the secret of joy," is revealed to be "RESISTANCE." Thus, can our lack of joy, of freedom, be rooted in our inability to blame our mothers for not resisting? For allowing their daughters to become victims of the same cruelty they suffered, to even encourage it? For allowing their sons to become the men who inflict such pain, who feel that they are men only via the oppression of women?

As I reflect on this book and ask myself why this passage has set off an "explosion" in mind, I think about how I have very few close male friends. All of them, those who have been around for years, have come from the wombs of women who have resisted, or at least cultivated the strength of resistance in their sons, even if they could not resist the oppression of their husband and fathers. All of whom I would be happy to have in my daughter's life, and that's saying more than I could express in this post.  This doesn't mean that I have not fallen for or befriended the type of  men I am not so proud to have called my own; men, who at the time, were good enough for my sunken self-esteem, but who would meet a bullet if the type ever sought the company of my daughter. However, the men who sprout from the wombs of resistance are those who I have loved (romantically or within a platonic friendship); I know they will be in my life for as long as I am on Earth. The others, some of whom I cannot even remember their names, have been long forgotten, never deserved a page in my journal, or hurt me in such an emotionally or physically violent way that my pain has sealed them from my conscious mind.

It feels so new, even a bit frightening to think about such things, because at this point in my life I am not particularly righteous, or resistant. I've always, even now when asked, labeled myself a womanist/feminist.  However, I now wonder if I still own the right to that label.

Blame them for what, I asked. Blame them for anything, said he. It is quite a new thought. And, surprisingly, sets off a kind of explosion in the soft, dense cotton wool of my mind.

Tashi, throughout the story, blames her plight and the death of a sister who died while she was being "bathed" on the village tsunga (Walker's fictional word for the woman who perform the ritual). During the climax of the story, Tashi and the tsunga (who has now become a "monument to her country") are discussing the death of Tashi's sister.  The tsunga asks Tashi why she has never blamed her mother for her sister's death, for it is her mother who helped to hold her sister down as she was being mutilated. It was her mother who initiated the ritual even though she new her daughter's blood did not clot as quickly as it should. It was her mother who never explained to Tashi the circumstances under which her daughter had died, under which her daughter had been, well, murdered. Even though these facts are obvious, Tashi struggles to come to terms with them and never seems to blame her mother. Maybe, indeed, it was not the act of mutilation that sent Tashi mad, but her inability to blame her mother for her sister's death? Or at least some combination of the two.

I've yet to find the strength to blame my mother, her mother, my aunts, and other motherly figures in my life. I have never been able to blame my mother for (at least through the eyes of a child) putting the happiness of men before my own; I blame her illness. I never blame her for not treating her illness. Thus, I have always been able to forgive her; I have always allowed her to return to my life only to bear her burdens again. However, I have always been able to blame my father for his absence; I have never blamed his alcoholism. I believe that if it was the other way around, maybe I could begin forgive him?

I have never been able to blame one of my aunts for her coldness, her bitterness, her jadedness; I blame her ex-husband for destroying her life, her happiness, instead of blaming her for her inability to resist the depression that consumes her. Thus, I tolerate her judgment, her perpetual criticism, and the fact that she can just be a downright Bitch sometimes. I have yet to blame my grandmother for her submission to men and the fact that she encourages me to do the same; I blame her generation. Thus, I regard her advice as wisdom. I don't blame my other aunt for her annoyingly passive ways and hoarding; I blame her father who left her when she needed his strength the most. Thus, I am one of her many enablers.

I have yet to blame my mothers; I have yet to possess the secret of joy. I only pray that as I grow, so will my resistance. I only can hope that my own daughter will find the courage to blame me.

2016 © Stephanie M. Henderson

The Griot & Darnell Walker

I've known Darnell Walker for years now, and each year his growth amazes me. Many in our circle know him for his poetry, but his talents extend way beyond the world of words. Check him out at The Griot...

he me akim, call it dat ting, keep ya body

Lil Dirty Rasta Boy
banging drums and Amerie
on his earphones
told this
young
black
girl
that she was his own heart
but she thought he said he was hard
speaking in tongues
she didn’t comprehend
he tried it in Tre
he tried it in French
he tried it in Spanish, Arabic, Deutch, and Gha
but all she could do
was get high from the residue left on his dark lips

Breathing

starring into a crisp abyss of kisses and study time
I rewind until I can
find the place
where pleasantly pink nail polish
and a dog with no tail sat happy
Then go from there
to understand the absence
of fathers
and daughters estranged from their brothers
bought and sold for the exchange
of used books and soiled sheets
she blinks and thinks that "this shit ain’t all that bad nigga"

"I know you think that you got it all…"
but as this shit hits the fan and cracks through
the support beams of a single mother’s dreams
her rusty red brown hair beems
as rosy cheeks get kissed by old men
who look like Saunta Clause on the hard.
woodn’t it be great if we could ejaculate
the gifts that would be in our stocking this year?
Yes Breathe baby
Spinnin crazy and windin’ durty she lets it all out in sweat
Breathe Baby – fuck it all and breathe!

On Baltimore and Gay

Between the police headquarters and McDonald’s
Between blinding neon X’s and scrolling marquees
Between 11 and 4
Between her left and right legs
Stuck in the middle of making money and staying sane
Stuck in the rapture of the quick money and private dances

Between the glistening rain-pelted palm leaves
He spots her,
He the notorious boa that haunts the dreams of children
An Ebony creature with fur as silky Black as the night that cloaks her
She thinks she’s hidden

Under the unsure patter of light that blinks from the tall offices
Among the entangling vines and poisonous-dart-orange and indigo blue blossoms
Among the screeching tires and fighting cats
Among dirty condoms and garbage cans
Under the gazing shadow of the night sky

Against the choking sweat of his constricting hands
Against the shame of long nights and aching feet
She fights until the leaves and broken bits of bark are coated with fire ant red

Amid falling petals of dogwood
Playful pink and wistful white
Plentiful and plush
Her young brown curls fly about her as she dances for her mother
"What kind of man should I marry?"
Her mother looks at this tiny version of herself and begins to pray

"When I love
I love hard
When I love
I love Strong
When I love
I won’t do you wrong
So love me pretty mama all night long"

Roll & Lock

It was my first time touching
his seductive, thick, courageous
Creative, authentic, relaxing and eye-opening
Crown of hair.

It was the first time I touched a black man that intimately.
Not intimately in the way of a kiss, or a caress,
but Intimately

in the way you carefully share buried secrets

In the way you bond with your mother,
Your Father.

in the way he said,
no, twist it this way

in the way that I felt I was completing a task that other
Queens before me had done for their kings.

I was meticulous in the way I
worked. The way I worked
my fingers.
In and out
Up and around
Slipping and sliding.
The bitter, yet inviting smell of beeswax and weed
All rolled into a ‘lock.
My soft breaths and his sweat
All rolled into a ‘lock.

The salty, sweet, caramel melody of our love making.

I just felt blessed to be able to swim in this strong sea
Of a Black man’s beautiful hair.
It was coarse and rough,
yet he was gentle and guiding
no girl, twist it this way

I walked away with grease on my palms
A new found freedom in my hips
And his small puffs of hair in my comb

The Unraveling of a Young Revolutionary

As he masturbates
to the ominous
Red star hanging above the fireplace
the calming, deep tones of
a husky female voice

blast boldy from silver speakers.
I watch,
wishing my thighs
were his fingers, my pussy
his fist.
I watch through a haze of four-day-old contacts
and wet dreams.
I cannot believe I put up with this
revolutionary bullshit.
If you would only just kiss me
I would melt,
 no fall
shyly,
into the sweet tea honey smell of your chest and rest

for days
You promised me a revolution.
All I’m getting is a young,
Black artist
who writes pity poems.

An impotent promise

of spontaneous cunnilingus
and treasure hunts.
Yet I stay and watch
as square blocks with messages zip across a screen
and you text at the other end of the couch
I watch.

Not yet fully grown,

you are completely frustrating

and forever anxious, waiting
for more.
A person eating, no gnawing on homemade Black Beans and Fish,
but whose tongue remains numb
with his mother’s milk.

I watch, and wait patiently, lovingly
For caresses and gunshots.

Motherhood at Night

The sirens wake her,

sleep distrub abruptly, she wails for me.
When a lullaby and coo is not enough
I know the warmth of my breast will be.

Drowsy and blind,

we search for ourselves in the night.
Our hair is loosed and so are our heads
so we speak in tongues.

Our bond is nuclear,

She proved God to me. For her,

I must be both human and forever,
grateful and fierce.

Balance My Heart

You balance my heart
On shards of thick brown and green glass
As I try steadily to slow my breathing
Each inhale is piercing and each exhale exhausts

As I try steadily to slow my breathing
You stroked and I screamed.
My muscles stretched wide and burned so
I desperately sought your lips for comfort.

As our muscles stretched wide and burned
Our pasts worked hard to cool.
We sparked one more --
Sweated, spanked, kissed, and rocked.

We spark another one;
you rub into me;
smelling of citrus, a sharp wind, and kush.
We are ablaze my love.

My Mom is Crazy

My mom is crazy. My mom is bipolar. I know it's not nice to call her crazy, but it seems to be the best way to sum it up when people begin to wonder. Being her daughter, I almost make the claim now with affection. I've learned to accept her crazy; as I've grown (hopefully wider), I've also learned that every person and every family has their crazies. I've always told folks, I can only speak for my own.

As a girl, I didn't know my mom was bipolar. She was MOM, perfect, and the way a parent should be, because, as a child, how do you know any different? She encouraged my love of words, enrolled me in music lessons, tutored me and helped me with homework, provided food and shelter, and defended me at all costs. She was a good mom. But, there is usually a time in a child's life when she realizes her mom is flawed. Although I have never studied child pyschology, I am sure this moment must contribute to one's "coming of age." My moment sent our relationship spiraling downward.

I never remember my mother being single. There was always a man around, sometimes different "friends" at the same time. I do believe my mother deserved a love life, I just wish I hadn't seen so much of it. She once said, "I love being in love."  A few years ago I had a conversation with a bipolar coworker, and she said that bipolar people, when manic depressive, usually have a vice. My mother's has to be a weakness for men and spending more than she could afford. She remarried when I was 10. I had only met the guy (and his demon of a son) once, while I was getting my hair braided. Two weeks later he and his son had moved in, a couple of months afterward, they were married. He was okay, his son was satan on Earth, and I hated him. A few years later, they divorced. My mother began to sleep; she slept too much.

I don't remember exactly how I got the news, but I know it was shortly after I had arrived at my grandmother's after school. My mother had been committed to Shepard Pratt for an attempted suicide; she had eaten an entire bottle of Tylenol (or something like that). Although I resented my mother deeply for moving practically strangers into our home, I still had a childlike image of her. However, from that day, our realtionship was never the same; she was no longer MOM. I remember crying, but not feeling sadness. The news was numbing. I became cold to the world, and I never remember anyone asking me how I felt about it, but always silently urging someone to inquire. I believe that simple gesture of offering a listening ear and heart would have saved us. I internalized the emotions. I cannot fully recall memories from that period; they are the blacked-out pages of girl's diary. Eventually, I thawed. Not only did I regain feeling, I began to boil. I remember feeling abandoned, and then angered by that abandonment. What kind of mother would leave her child alone in the world on purpose? My answer, a terrible one. Every piece of advice or guidance, every repremand, every word of wisdom from my mother's mouth was permanently damaged. How could I take the advice of someone who is mentally ill? Those were my thoughts at age 14...a dangerous and vulnerable time in girl's life to no longer have faith in the guidance from her mother.

I moved in with my aunt for 9 months. I dated, I lost my virginity, I had my first brush with domestic violence, and my first break up, all without my mom. Due to reasons I won't get into here out of respect for my aunt, I moved back in with my mom. At that point, we were more like roomates than mom and daughter. Yes, she paid the bills and kept a roof over my head. However, anything beyond that, I had to provide on my own. Clothes, extracurricular activities, etc. I got my first job and became what I have found to be both a blessing and a curse--independent.  People still ask us "Well who's the mom and who's the daughter?" Not because my mother looks so much younger than her age (although she is beautiful), but because I was always the mature one, some have even argued (dare I say it), the more conservative one. My aunt say that once I hit puberty, it was almost like my mother felt she had to compete with me. I'm still not too sure what she means by this, but I get her drift.

Now, when people said, "Girrrllll, your mother is crazy." Instead of giggling in agreement, I would reply, "No, she really is." When she would make unnecessary or derailed comments, I now believed people were laughing at her, instead of with her. I regret never defending her, but the abandoment I felt from her suicide attempt has only begun to lift itself from my heart.

For a brief peiood during my teenage years, my mom dated a drug dealer. I wasn't fully aware he was a drug dealer, but knew something just wasn't right about him. I know this sounds bad, but he seemed so below my mom. He had nothing to offer her. Unbekown to me, my mother was also not paying the bills. The house was going into foreclosure, and so we moved into a 2-bedroom apartment on the other side of the city with this guy. (I only knew him by his nickname, Rock, nothing else.). All of this, most likely the result of her illness. During this period, I fell in love for the first time (yes, I lost my virginity before I fell in love), but instead of my mom taking us on our first date, it was my aunt. Eventually their relationship desovled, and with the help of family, we moved back into our house.

I went away to college, escaping a controlling, verbally abusive, and jealous boyfriend; escaping a city that stiffled, no suffocated the dreams of low income black girls; escaping a high school where I never had a best friend but was sufficiently popular (I also thought that most of my classmates had no commendable priorities or goals); escaping my mother and her men. Because she was not treating her illness, I knew that she had to be a ticking a timebomb, and I did not want to be around for it.

The summer before my senior year, the bomb began to tick loudly, again. My best friend, who had just graduated from college, was living with my mom.  Since going away to college, I had never planned on coming back to Baltimore other than to visit. I had an apartment with friends near campus, and worked year round. However, since the bestie was home, I came back to visit for a bit. She had warned me that my mother had started to act a bit wild, but I really didn't think anything of it.

I came home to my mother dating a guy my age.  In fact, he blantantly came on to me and my best friend in front of my mother. She thought it was funny. I went back to school.  A few weeks later my best friend calls to tell me there was a "For Sale" sign in front of the house. I asked my mom and my family what's going on, and found out that my mom was about to lose the house, again. She had quit her job. A few weeks after that, I found out I was pregnant by my best friend (that's a story for another post).

When I called to tell my mom she responded "I can't handle this. Get an abortion," and hung up the phone. She called back a couple of days later to talk more, but the conversation did not include much else. Flash foward a few months, my mom is living with me in Virginia, and all hell has broken loose between us. She had put some money away in an account we shared to pay the rent every month.  She went through that in 3 months -- tens of thosands of dollars in 3 months, and she didn't have a job, and I could not afford the apartment by myself working part-time as a bank teller. She moved in with my grandmother, and I made the long trek back home 7 months pregnant to live with my Aunt and Uncle.  I stayed with them only a few months, and moved into my own place shortly after my daughter was born.

My mother had no income, and was living with her aging mom whose dementia was progressing into Alzheimer's.  By this time it seemed that she had calmed down, and her personality was beginning to come back to the middle, so to save money, and help her out a bit I suggested that she be my daughter's daycare provider. Our relationship blossomed with the birth of my daughter, and we thought what a miracle a child could be to a family. But again, my mother has an illness, and unless you believe in divine intervention, an illness does not go away without treatment.

Earlier this year, I began to see signs of my mother's manic depression creeping up. She began to talk in circles, make irrational arguments, and suddenly the world was against her. She honestly believes that her family is out to get her, when they've been the only ones there for her in her time of need. She has cursed out my aunts and uncle, and my daughter's other grandmother. She got a Facebook page and started spreading horrible stories about the family, including part of the family who have a big political name in this city. She sent emails about the family to the mayor and other politicians. She told my cousin to go kill himself, knowing he has a history of depression.  Then a few days later she would call up everyone like nothing had ever happened; an apology has never escaped her lips.

 Every conversation began to turn into an argument. My daughter's father and I agreed that we should plan to put her in conventional preschool, but wanted to wait until he went off to the Air Force and it was more affordable.  Six weeks before her planned preschool start date, my mother blew up in our faces one morning refusing to care for my daughter. I had not responded to my mother's recent attempts to get me fired up, but this time she cursed in front of my daughter, and even slammed the door in our faces. That was it, I went off. I went on a rampage. She began to yell about how her male friends say I use her and am mean to her. I don't even know these men. They don't know our history, or what we've been through. I responded with, "Them niggas only ever gave you a hard dick to sit on!" That was the last thing I said to my mom in weeks. I regret it; it was mean. However, I do believe my point was valid.

Because I worked in publishing, with daily deadlines and had no daycare, I lost my job.  It's been nearly 2 months since this incident, and my daughter and I have only been to see her once. My aunts are obsessed with her illness. It depresses them both, one just takes pity and prays about it, the other seems to want to chat for days about it. I've told them both either to shut up about it, or don't speak to me. The entire situation is exhausting, and I am struggling to bounce back. (After losing my job, I lost my car, and nearly my apartment.)

I remember envisioning my mom in a way that she could never be without treating her illness. I did not want to "strip her of her personality" as my mom would yell during heated arguments between us, and I never wanted to see her "unhappy" or "couped up in the house." However, I did imagine my mother as a more blanced version of herself. I simply wanted her calmer. I imagined her to be more comforting, and more of a guide to help me navigate life. Unfortunately, my mother has never lived up with that image, and as I grow wiser I don't expect her to anymore.

My mother acknowledges her illness, but has only seeked treatment once in my life that I can remember. I have read that bipolar disorder is genetic, and mental illness does run in our family. Thus, there is a fear always lurking that one day it will appear. I have seen a doctor four times in the last five years simply to confirm that I am sane, because my fear of beign bipolar sometimes consumes me. I see myself making similar mistakes with men, and although I am considred a smart girl, you can't teach about those things in school. (Needless to say, I am a daughter of the fatherless tribe.) I find myself panicking that a fault or flaw of mind is the result of hormonal imabalance or defect. My aunt says that the mistakes I am making are not the result of a mental illness, but of never having a parent I could depend on as a young adult. She tells me this not to give me an excuse for my mistakes, but to let me know that these mistakes are just that; I should learn from them and move on.

No one explained to me, at least in a way I could comprehend, how it would be to live with a parent who has a mental illness. I feel that my relationship with my mom could have been so much better if I knew about her illness before she tried to kill herself (she was diagnosed in her early twenties, and had tried to comit suicide at least once before). I always ask myself, why didn't my family try harder to make me understand? Why didn't they seek professional help for me?

With time, that image faded and I became to accept and appreciate my mother for who she is, but after this last incident, I am not sure where our relationship will go from here. I love my mom, but I feel that in order to protect myself and my daughter, I must stay away now. This is the longest I've gone not speaking to her, and my daughter misses her terribly. I am fiancially facing a hard road in front of me, and I can only carry my burdens. It saddens me, but my mother is a burden I no longer can carry.