Nuggets of observation, but too few of them

This book is slightly curious for being one of those about a black girl, but her blackness is very much in the background of the story, not seemingly all that important to her life story at all. In fact, for most part, Nadia Turner may as well be of any colour, for all the difference it makes to the story.

Nadia Turner lives in a small town, called Oceanside, with her father, a Marine, and a mother who blew her own brains out with a gun. The people seem to revolve around their church, headed by their pastor First John. His wife is called the first lady, oddly enough. Their son is Luke Shepard, who is waiting tables because his once promising career in sport was ended before it began, with a serious injury to his leg. Nadia is seventeen and Luke is already in college, twenty one years old. Nadia is grieving her mother and Luke is kind to her. They fall in love, Nadia gets pregnant, she has an abortion, Luke deserts her, then she leaves her hometown to go to university and does not return for many years.

Nadia has a single friend called Aubrey, who lives with her sister and her sister’s girlfriend, because when she lived with her mother, her mother’s boyfriend regularly abused her with her mother’s compliance. Aubrey is the opposite of Nadia of course, shy where Nadia is bold, the good girl wearing a purity ring while Nadia is wild and reckless. Unsurprisingly, after Nadia has left town, after Luke who sustains a further injury and was comforted by Aubrey, Luke and Aubrey become a couple.

Upper Room Chapel is where the ‘mothers’ meet – they seem to call all the older women (in their 80s and 90s) serving in the church, mothers. The whole town is very religious and church going. There are a lot of mothers in this book, which makes the title appropriate. Nadia is always haunted by her dead mother, and herself ‘unpregnant’ as they call women who have had abortions. Aubrey also has mother issues, and is absolutely dying to become a mother herself. Luke’s mother, Latrice, is the first lady and very controlling and judgemental.

When her father lands up in hospital, Nadia finally comes home for a long stretch, and then of course, trouble begins again in the eternal triangle of two women best friends and one man.

It is not that color is not raised as an issue here and there in the novel. For example, the others tell Nadia,

”[…] ‘You think life is for wandering about, lookin’ for what makes you happy? Those just white girl dreams and fantasies.’” (p233).

Or when a black man is explaining why he wouldn’t want a son:,

“Too dangerous,” he said. ‘Black boys are target practice. At least black girls got a chance’” (p240)

And when she is studious, Nadia knows

“Every black girl who was even slightly gifted was told this [first black lady president, just watch]” (p12).

But these are rare instances sprinkled around the book. For most part, because most of the story is not told in the vernacular, and only a very small part of the dialogues come across as black speech, it is hard to even remember the characters are mostly black.

There are occasional interesting indications of intersectionality too, of race and class. When Nadia is studying law and recovering from a breakup with a serious boyfriend, she sleeps with Zach, who has

“blond hair ruffled like a Kennedy. His father, grandfather, and great grandfather had all been attorneys. She was the first-generation student who checked out textbooks from the library because she couldn’t’ afford to buy them, whose stress about her mounting student loans only offset her fear of flunking“ (p190).

Nadia and Zach both know their sleeping together is just casual and there will be no relationship, let alone future together. Nadia observes that

“He [Zach] liked to refer to his whiteness the way all white liberals did: only acknowledging it when he felt oppressed by it, otherwise pretending it didn’t exist” (p190)

These lovely nuggets of observation go nowhere, however. And are seemingly just incidental, and not central to the plot.

Overall, it is a nice read, an easy read, but it is never clear what exactly the book is trying to say. The mothers have the last word, they catch a final glimpse of Nadia now in her thirties,

“We see the span of her life unspooling in colorful threads and we chase it, wrapping it around our hands as more tumbles out. She’s her mother’s age now. Double her age. Our age. You’re our mother. We’re climbing inside of you” (p275).

That’s how the book ends. I am not entirely sure I understand the last part of mothers within mothers.

[For another take on this book, see Susan’s review]

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