The Color of Water

 The Color of Water

By James McBride

Inspired by Deacon King Kong, I'm thinking about going down a James McBride rabbit hole. This one was much different than the two previous books I'd read (Kong and The Good Lord Bird). It's a memoir -- autobiography? -- in which he seeks his mother's story and, in so doing, helps frame his own.

See, it always appeared that McBride's mother, or Mommy as he calls her, was "different" than the twelve children she managed to raise in New York in the 1950s and 60s. They were black. She was white. The contrast elicited stares and comments and, more importantly for this book, sowed discord within McBride about his identity. What does it mean to be white? To be black? To be "mixed"? It didn't help that McBride's mother was tight-lipped about her past, about why, at a time when it was both (or either) formally and informally illegal for people with different skin tones to marry, Ruth McBride not once but twice married a black man, choosing a path that, from the outside, meant additional hardship in an already harsh world.

When she finally opens up about who she is, though, it is clear that the difference between Ruth and her children really were only skin deep. Ruth, it turns out, was a Polish immigrant, born into a troubled family who fled Europe amidst pogroms that broke out just before World War II. They eventually settled in Suffolk, Va., where they were outsiders that locals placed just above people of color in the social pecking order. It was a lonely place to grow up as an Orthodox Jew. It was made even lonelier by a father, Tateh, who was not only unloving but sexually abusive and vehemently prejudice against the black population he exploited at the store he ran, and a mother, Mameh, whose inability to speak English and debilitating bout of polio left her almost completely dependent upon Ruth. And so, when she could, Ruth fled. And when she arrived in her new home and fell in love with a black man, she was declared dead by the family, who sat shiva for her. Eventually, it became mutual. Ruth buried her past just as her past buried her.

All of this information, of course, helps McBride see his mother in a new light. Hers is a story of extraordinary determination and adaptation. It helps explain how she could shepherd twelve -- 12! -- kids through a child of economic poverty, but emotional wealth, and into college and the professional class. As McBride writes, "I felt like a Tinkertoy kid building my own self out of one of those toy building sets; as she laid her life before me, I reassembled the tableau of her words like a picture puzzle and, as I did so, my own life was rebuilt."

McBride's family history is fascinating. But equally interesting are the question the book seems to raise about stories and the responsibility we have to share them. McBride's mother is clearly pained by her past; she doesn't want to sit for his interviews to revisit this part of her life. It is so emotional that McBride never shares with her a recorded greeting from an old neighbor in Suffolk because it might put her over the edge. I found this an interesting choice. McBride clearly benefited from knowing who his mother really was. In the end, he seems to argue that telling stories, especially painful ones, set us and those around us free. And yet he withholds this part of the story from his mother. It's a small moment, but I think the one that will stick out to me. He is in a sense taking on the parental role. His mother had decided her children didn't need to know her past and so censored it; here, he is the censor. 

The book is also, of course, a contemplation of the role that race plays in our nation. It points out the progress that has been made and the many miles of road that need to be traveled. By touching on these timeless themes, of identity and stories and obligations and race, it seems like this book will be relevant for some time.