August 20, 2013
When looking for contemporary reads on my local library's ebook catalog, this particular book immediately stuck out to me. It was published a couple of years ago, and Ward's second novel has received much acclaim, and a couple of awards. It is the story of a dirt-poor family living in the Mississippi bayou, and how they deal with the arrival of Hurricane Katrina. I was a senior in high school when the disaster hit, and there was a lot of news coverage. One thing that I remember was all of the criticism about the government's lack of assistance to the poor, who didn't have the means to make it out of the path of the storm, and were left stranded and starving for days. The Batistes, the family around which the story is centered, is one such family.
The life that Esch and her brothers live seems miserable, even before the storm. Their widower father is an alcoholic, frequently out of work, and if he doesn't downright abuse his children, he is a merciless bully. In contrast, his two eldest sons, Randall and Skeetah, are soft-hearted. Randall, since the death of his mother, has been basically the primary caregiver for the youngest Junior (along with Esch, his sister and the narrator of the story, to help); Skeetah is sensitive, and the love that he has for his pit bull China is almost unnatural, but nonetheless heart-wrenching.
The Batistes live in the Pit, a property owned by Esch's parents (who died before their daughter). After Rose's death, the children really only had each other, and even as teenagers (with Junior, far younger at seven) they were very close. Esch reflects at one point that she doesn't have any girl friends; she mostly hangs out with her brothers and their friends (and fucks each and every one of those guys at one point). She is in love with Manny, who is gorgeous (in spite of...or in Esch's view, because of...a large scar on his face from a car accident), but he is an asshole. When she realizes she is pregnant, just days before Katrina hits, and she tells him the truth, he denies that the child could be his (though she's only been with him for the past few months). She beats him up; she is definitely a "tomboy," not afraid to hit or run fast, and it seems that the boys who hang around would probably accept her, even if she didn't put out. Her explanation is that "it was just easier" to let them do it then to say no; this would be the effect of not having a mother around to tell her any better, I suppose.
China has puppies at the beginning of the book. Unfortunately, one of the puppies falls ill and Skeetah has to snap her neck; another is torn apart by China herself; the other three drown and are lost when the hurricane hits. Skeetah had a lot of hope for those puppies. He had plans to sell them for a high profit, money that the family desperately needed. He even offered to use the money to send Randall, a star athlete, to basketball camp, where he would be exposed to college recruiters. China is a fighting dog; Skeetah makes money from having her fight against other dogs, no necessarily fights to the death, but one chapter describes one such dog fight, with the blood flying. Now, I certainly do not condone that sort of activity, and I could see why some readers would be turned off by this, or the descriptions of Esch, a young teenager, having sex with Manny...but their world is very different than the one I know, and I was able, for the most part, to withhold judgement. But he's not just the proud owner of a fierce dog; he is in love with China, devoted to her, and I couldn't help but feel at one point that he wished he were the father of the puppies, rather than another pit bull.
Skeetah's passion for his dog is in stark contrast to the way that Manny treats Esch, even though she is fiercely in love with him. He has no remorse for getting so young a girl pregnant...he's in love with someone else, a live-in girlfriend, but he doesn't even show Esch any kind of sympathy or support when he learns her condition. He even pushes her to the ground when she starts to fight him, a little pregnant girl. Esch is very close to her brother Skeetah, and I think she is drawn to him because she sees the love that he has for that dog, and she wants a man (or more specifically, Manny) to love her that way. That she could envy the treatment of a dog...
Big Henry is another friend, one who has never slept with Esch, but he is clearly in love with her. She comes to realize his worth at the end of the book, when he and his mother take the Batiste family in when their home is flooded. At the end of the book, Skeetah has lost China. When the family fled from their rapidly flooding house, climbing across a tree to their grandparents' old abandoned house on higher land, the truth about Esch's pregnancy came out. Claude, her father, in his shock, pushes her into the floodwaters. Skeetah sacrifices China to dive in after his sister, but as soon as the flood waters clear away, he is out on the Pit, awaiting his dog to return. He feels certain that she will come back, and Esch seems to feel it, too, although China's fate, and the fate of the impoverished and now homeless Batiste family, is unknown.
I also felt for Esch's brother Junior, whose birth resulted in their Mama's death. He never had a parent to love him, and he clings to Randall, who shows him affection but is no substitute for their mother. Skeetah shows both a mother's love and a lover's affection for China, and by the end of the book, Esch thinks that she will have the capacity to love her child, come what may. She draws strength from the strong female characters of mythology, and a motif of the story is Esch comparing her situation with the story of Medea, who was betrayed by her lover Jason after she had killed her brother and betrayed her father for him. I'm familiar with the story because of a text on Greek mythology that my dad got for me years ago. I loved that book, but unfortunately, my younger brother ripped it apart when he was a toddler. Oops! But Esch is able to stay with her family, and turn away from selfish Manny. Big Henry reassures her that she has her brothers, and him, to help take care of her.
Are the Batistes much worse off after the hurricane? It's unclear. It almost seems like they're drawn closer together. Claude seems like he might change in a positive way, be there for his children (and his coming grandchild) more; he feels guilty for pushing Esch into the floodwaters, and sincerely apologizes. I wouldn't exactly say that the story had a "happy" ending, but there is a bit of hope, and that's enough to satisfy me. At the very least, as the characters in the book reflect as they stand among their damaged possessions, they are alive. As long as they're living, there's always a chance.
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I imagine that China looks much like this, proud and grinning. There's a lot of negative press about pit bulls. Certainly they can be raised to be vicious, but I've come across pit bulls at, say, the dog park, and they never act aggressively towards me or little Rory. I know several people who champion for pit bulls, who try to do their part to quash the negative press.
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