Let me be
something
every minute of every hour of my life...
- Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Regulars to our read-zone
here would by now have conjectured the speaker of this beautiful quote! Ain’t
ya?
Yes! It’s by Francie Nolan,
the 11-year old lead character of the semi-autobiographical ‘Betty Smith’ novel,
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
Though this little girl Francie
is from a highly impoverished family, her imagination, her passionate love for
reading and her abundant zest for life have helped her greatly in giving her
those much-needed ‘flights of fantasy’ on the ‘viewless wings of poesy’ and for
her solace and sustenance in her life as well!
You may want to read more on li’l
Francie and her zest for life, on our past post HERE!
As Francie to Brooklyn, Selina Boyce to Brownstones!
Brown Girl,
Brownstones!
Now for more of Brown Girl, Brownstones!
Paule Marshall’s debut novel, Brown Girl, Brownstones, was first
published in the year 1959, the self-same year when our ever-favvy childhood comic
character Asterix was also first
published!
Brown Girl, Brownstones is
about Boyce! Selina Boyce!
A ten-year old, bookish girl, a
loner again, like Francie!
But Selina has much more obstacles
and hurdles through which she’s got to negotiate her way, to claim her own
sweet identity!
Theirs is a family of Bajan (or
Barbadian) immigrants who’ve now settled in Brooklyn in the United States!
Hence Selina has to find her way,
her space and her identity in an altogether new world all by herself!
Like the precarious aka
liminal predicament of Peri in Shafak’s Three
Daughters of Eve, Selina is caught between polarities in her parents, between two extremes!
As such, her descriptions of her mother
and father merit an intriguing study in itself!
With such a pragmatic mom
and an idealistic dreamer for a father, Perina oops Selina has to charter her
own identity and have a room of her own!
For example, her mother is keen
on selling away their ancestral land in Barbados and getting for themselves a
house in Brooklyn.
On the other hand, their
father Deighton Boyce is so fond of his homeland, and hence wants to build a
palatial white house in Barbados!
So when he comes to know through
Selina that their mother is planning to secretly dispense with their ancestral
land, he feels the shock of his life!
The dialogue that follows
bespeaks to the purest love of a daughter for her father in all its grandeur!
And yup!
Only a Paule Marshall could
have pulled off the following dialogues that happen between father and daughter with such elegance!
Here goes the conversation between
an idealistic, dreamer-father Deighton Boyce and his daughter Selina Boyce for y’all
to relish [in that beautiful West Indian (Barbadian) accent - ]
“Once I get started I gon
make ’nough money. Then these Bajan with their few raw-mouth houses will see
what real money is!”.
“Everybody gon say: Deighton
Boyce is one man that makes good money and lives good. He wear the best of
clothes”.
“He eat the finest. He
rides in the swellest cars”.
“That’s the way a man does do
things . . .”
His eyes flashed and the trumpet
flashed as he gestured with it. Seeing that golden streak in the twilit room,
Selina imagined that all the things he mentioned would magically appear.
He raised the trumpet and again
lowered it.
“Did I tell yuh I gon plant ladies-of-the-night
round the house?”
“What’re those?” she whispered,
remembering with a wrench the mother’s vow.
“A flower that does smell only
at night. When you in your bed you can smell it and it’s like the night-self is
the thing smelling so sweet . . . And in the front yard I gon have a flamboyant
tree. You ain never seen anything like that tree, lady-folks”.
“Daddy”, she whispered,
and he waved the trumpet, silencing her.
“And I got the house
clear-clear in my mind now. I gon build it out of good Bajan coral stone and
paint it white. Everything gon be white! A gallery with tall white columns at
the front like some temple or the other”.
A parlor with ’nough furnitures
and a dining room with glasses of every description and flowers from we own
garden . . .”
“Daddy”. She strained
toward him.
“And upstairs ’nough bedrooms
with their own bathroom—and every bathroom with a stained-glass window like in
a church. People gon come from all over to see those stained-glass windows . .
.”
Suddenly Selina leaped up, and
as the trumpet made another wide dazzling arc she grabbed it, screaming, “She’s
gonna sell it. She’s gonna sell it all”.
“What, lady-folks? Who
selling what?”
“Mother. She swore to Iris
Hurley and Florrie Trotman that she’s gonna sell the land. Your land”.
The shouted confession
took all her strength and, still clinging to the trumpet, she slid to the floor
at his feet.
He dropped beside her.
“Girl, what you saying? What you saying?” he demanded harshly and, grabbing her
chin, forced her head up.
When she saw his eyes and the
fear crouched there she knew that she should have said nothing—for it was like
shattering his life.
A fierce protectiveness
welled in her.
She knew suddenly that
she had to lull him with lies.
Slowly she raised her hand
to calm him and said softly,
“I . . . I’m . . . sorry, Daddy .
. . I didn’t mean . . . to scare you . . . It was . . . nothing”.
She was just kinda showing
off for them. Y’ know how she always fusses about it . . . and talks big about
what she’s gonna do if you don’t sell . . . But it was nothing . . .”
Under her soothing voice,
the fear dropped from his eyes and he rose, picking up the trumpet.
“She’s always talking big,” he
said with a short empty laugh, “but there’s not a thing she can do. Don let she
frighten you with her guff, girl”.
“But maybe you should write anyway
and ask your sister if everything’s okay . . .” she pleaded.
“But the very first money I
make from it gon be ours,lady-folks, yours and mine. And we gon lick it out
like sailors . . . Come, what you want? Tell me quick!”
Numbed, beaten, she murmured, “A
new coat, I guess”.
“A coat! Two coats! And a
big doll like you once had”.
“Oh, no dolls. Books”.
“We gon fill the house with
books”, he shouted and then paused.
No spoilers though! ;-)
Then follows for Selina, the
lead girl of the novel, a series of humiliations and dejections, which
devastate her morale completely.
How she emerges triumphant and
unscathed from all these turmoil, and finds for herself, her authentic voice
and comes to terms with her identity forms the crux and the rest of the story.
To sum it up, the novel traces
the growth of its lead character Selina from being a lonely and timid little
girl, to becoming a confident and cheerful young woman, who has, at last found
for herself a unique identity of her own, and a beautiful space of her own!
As a little Post Script, may I also
give a gentle little note of caution on this Paule Marshall read: Well, parental
advice might be needed while reading this novel! Hope you sincerely follow my
suggestion on that! :-)
Thank you
&
Happy reading folks!
image: amazondotcom