Natasha Trethewey “Memorial Drive” Errata Naturae

We start from a real event, which unfortunately continues to occur today, that is, a death due to gender violence. Natasha Tretheway —the author of the book— is the daughter of Gwendolyn Ann Turnbough, killed by her partner, Joel Grimmette, the fifth of June 1985.

Natasha It has taken thirty-five years to go back to the disastrous events that happened then. Although everything revolves around that traumatic event, the author also recalls the past of her childhood and adolescence with her mother and her family.

His mother worked as the head of Human Resources at the Atlanta County Department of Mental Health, where they were living. She returns thirty years later to the place where she was murdered and remembers the last time she was shortly after dying, when she was nineteen years old. She will take few things, among them, some books, a belt and a plant to which her mother entrusted her care:

“I only kept a few books, a fairly heavy belt made of bullets and a plant that I was very fond of, a Dieffenbachia. Throughout my childhood, it had been my responsibility to take care of her. Every week she dusted and sprayed the top leaves of hers and cut off the bottom ones that had turned brown. "Be very careful with her," my mother warned me. It may seem like a small unnecessary precaution, but there is a toxin in the Dieffenbachia sap that oozes from the leaves and stems.”

Natasha Trethewey “Memorial Drive” Errata Naturae 2022 —The successive citations refer to the same author and book—.

At the time of birth of the author, in 1966, we speak of a southern state still immersed in a severe racial segregation. His black mother, barely 22 years old, her father was on a work trip. match the 26 of April, Memorial Day, date on which glorifies the old southand highlights the supremacy of White man. On numerous occasions she has imagined the author the hopes and expectations that her mother could have before her birth:

“I have often imagined her awaiting my birth, hopeful and nervous at the same time about the state of the world and the particular time and place I would arrive in it: a fierce desire taking shape within her.”

The interracial marriage of his parents was banned in mississippi. The author's father was white. The pro-rights causes were advancing slowly. Natasha establishes the difficult conditions for the black population —for his mother— that prevailed in the South:

“Unlike my father, who was and had been raised in Nova Scotia, hunting and fishing and enjoying the freedom to roam the woods, my mother had been a black girl in the deep south, cornered and tied to a world limited by segregationist laws.

Medgar Evers, leader of Movement of the Civil rights, had been gunned down in jackson —Mississippi— the 12 of June of 1963. Black and civil rights people mobilized, his grandmother among them, placing black flags on the beaches for Evers's death. It is necessary to record the marginality to which he underwent black population. Among them was the prohibition to entry in the beaches. When this ban was lifted, intolerance was still present, the author heard racist comments about her mother, such as "What a cute little thing, too bad it's black" and others of the style. In 1964 three more activists were assassinated. Faced with this state of agitation, the author tells us how her university parents fell in love with her:

“They met studying Literature, in a class on modern theater, and their conversations about books and plays stimulated them to see each other beyond the classroom, outdoors, in the afternoon, when they walked around the campus and outside it, between the gentle green hills of Kentucky.”

His parents, in 1965, escaped to Cincinnati, where they had the right to marry, the baby was already gestating —Natasha—. The writer tells us how as a child there were things for her that she questioned her parents, such as the skin color or the different treatment from the people to your father, "mister" or "Knight", to his mother, "girl", never "Mrs". That different treatment of her father and mother made her uncomfortable. On the outside she was not at ease. it just felt good, at home, with his family. The regards from his childhood along with his parents and his mother's family are happy:

"That's where all the wonders of my childhood took place, the fleeting happiness of my parents, my unquestioning belief that my life would always be the same as it was then, the intimate organization of everyday life with my mother's family."

They lived with their grandmother, next to his aunt sugar, which he evokes with veneration. Remember her handsome uncle Son, to your wife Lizzie, both with a fair skin tone. They had the house with air conditioning. Instead the aunt's house Sugar it was a humble masonry bungalow. He had returned from Chicago when she was born. She was ten years older than her grandmother. She had raised the Baptist church, Mount of Olives:

“She was the hero of the family: she stood up to everyone, white people included, and always had a witty, hurtful retort for her usual disparaging remarks.”

The author was impressed imposing height of her aunt Sugar —1'80 m.— and how chewed tobacco. He remembers many activities with his aunt, among them, go fishing. But sadly it evokes, as she sank into a progressive senile dementia.

The uncle Are He drove the school bus for the program for students with few resources, while his mother worked in the Administration in the same program. Her grandmother, to earn a little money, made cloth and later dedicated herself to sewing.

Faced with so much company from her mother's family, the frequent absences from his father, because of their work as an Officer in the Royal Canadian Navy, they got along better:

“One of the few photographs I have of the three of us together is a formal portrait taken in 1969 in my grandmother's living room. It was the last one they did to the three of us.”

between the few memories what's wrong with it with his father and mother, includes a trip in a second-hand Lincoln that his father bought, to Mexico. Traumatic trip, because he almost drowned in the hotel pool and only rescues a photo on a mule.

After that trip, his father continued his graduate studies in an apartment in New Orleans. On weekends his parents took turns visiting each other.

His mother, Gwendolyn, was born in 1944 in New Orleans. Her grandmother was studying aesthetic school to be a hairdresser. They lived in the French Quarter. Her husband Ralph he had set sail with his naval military unit and a year later his grandmother finds out that he had married another woman. Hence they returned to Mississippi. His mother only saw his father once when she was 16 years old, she went to see him in Los Angeles, she stayed a week and when she returned she never spoke of him again, Natasha tells us.

pleasantly remember the closet from his mother, the dresses, the perfume:

"My mother's closet was full of clothes that she and my grandmother had sewn, and I loved the feel of all those clothes and the fact that they held a trace of her perfume."

His father I already saw writer qualities, in the author, as she reflects:

"Ever since I can remember, I remember my father telling me that one day I would be a writer, that due to the characteristics of my experience, there would be something that would be necessary for me to tell."

The relationship between his parents he went deteriorating and remember how both were preparing her for a inevitable outcome, which affected her for life, despite thinking otherwise:

“It took me a long time to realize to what extent I had accepted my parents' story, their image of my situation, their determined strategy of consolation. For most of my life I've told myself that this separation didn't bother me, that even at the time it seemed fine. I see now that it was just the first of many stories I've needed to tell myself over the years."

The next trauma, after the breakup of his parents, was the separation of his mother's family. The departure from mississippi in 1973, is associated in the author with the first trigger of a chain of adverse events, culminating in the disastrous year of 1985with the death of his mother. A period you prefer to forget:

“For a long time, I tried to forget as much as possible of the twelve years that passed between 1973 and 1985. I wanted to suppress that part of my past, in an act of self-creation whereby I tried to be constituted only by what I consciously chose. to remember".

There are some reflections of the author, very successful —that make us meditate—, around the forgot and his need, on certain occasions associated with trauma:

“But deliberate forgetting carries a danger: too much can be lost. Then it has been very difficult for me to recover the image of my mother when I needed it most.

Certain forgetfulness is necessary and our mind works hard to protect us from what is too painful for us.

But forgetting or trying to control the self in the trauma becomes complicated in the presence of the memory, and as lucidly points out Natasha, This is circular:

“If trauma produces a fragmentation of the self, then what does it mean to have control over the self? You can try to forget. You can go for a long time without making a complete turn, but memory describes a circular path.

From the trip to Atlanta, remember Natasha, which took them a day, how the car was loaded to the brim and how at a certain point smoke began to come out of the vehicle. She saw her mother cross herself, something that surprised her, since she belonged to the Baptist church. Ten years later she found out that she had converted to Catholicism. They both waited a long time for the tow truck to arrive.

The night before he had dreamed that something would happen so that he would not have to leave and he even thought that the breakdown had been his fault because as a child I was superstitious.

Atlanta it was more progressive in racial issues, explains to us Natasha. La mitad de la población era negra. Destaca el hecho de que en la escuela primaria de Venetian Hills, en los sesenta había estudiantes blancos y cuando ella entró a estudiar, solo negros. Esa época del colegio, la recuerda con agrado:

“At school it was the first place where I started to feel comfortable. I could go to the school bus stop alone and, in the afternoons, take walks daydreaming and picking the flowers that grew by the sidewalk, yellow daisies or black and white daffodils, while my mother stayed home quietly waiting for me.

In contrast to the placidity of the school, the nights at home were disturbing because of their night terrors. He did not dare to go to the bathroom or the kitchen, having continuous nightmares. He longed for the company of his grandmother. Her mother reassured her and urged her to think of happy moments, to overcome her fear. That time they spent together strengthened the union with his mother:

"My mother could not have known the mark that those few months we spent alone in a new place would leave on me, nor how passionately I would cling to our relationship as two, to the dyad that she and I formed."

Shortly after, the fateful company of the disturbed Joel, which the author ironically nicknamed, "BigJoe". She tried to gain the girl's trust. Bill Natasha like when his mother worked, he took her in his idolized and spotless Ford Galaxia, always having mistrust and fearing that she would leave her abandoned at any moment. Shortly after going out with him, her mother announces that she is going to have a little brother, that she has married Joel and that they will be moving to a bigger apartment. The news disturbed the girl she still was:

“”Now you have a stepfather and a stepbrother”, I said to myself. To this day, I still don't know if my mother ever found out that that was the story I leaned on for years, repeating it over and over to distance myself from this new family she didn't want to have."

Actually the child, who will be called Joe, will be her brother, the son of her mother—not another woman, as she initially thought—and her stepfather.

Natasha is linked to cassandra, daughter of Hecuba Y priam, kings of Troy. Apollo being rejected by her, cursed her, suppressing the ability to influence people with her gift of prophecies. The author has regrets for not having revealed to her mother her fears about her stepfather, who, taking advantage of her mother's absence, tormented her in different ways. At that time, she thought that by revealing her thoughts around her violent stepfather, her predictions would come true. The fact is that this ballast has always been with her:

“I often wonder if our lives would have been different if I had told my mother, from the beginning, the things that she couldn't know. For example, that Joel used to pester me in various ways when she wasn't home.

There was always some little thing he accused me of, some transgression he invented so he could punish me. “I know very well how to straighten you out,” she would say. “You're like those retarded kids your mom works with. You should be hospitalized."

will inevitably occur family changes. live in a larger house with mod cons. With a pool. But the stepfather wants more. He wants that Natasha change his last name. She opposes, communicating it to his mother:

“It is a year of great changes and now he wants you to change your last name. You tell your mother no.

—Quiero conservar mi apellido —Le explicas.

You don't want a new last name that will erase your father's. And above all, you don't want Joel to erase the person you've been your whole life."

new move therefore, new school, Are the constants in his short lifetime:

“This is the fourth time you have moved in five years and the third time you have changed schools. Luckily, you love this school, as you loved the previous two, especially because of Mrs. Messick. You love his serious, no-nonsense demeanor, the way his brown hair streaked with gray frames his face like a hat, the fact that when he doesn't believe something he's told, he says, "Bullshit!" glasses with arms on hips”.

Joins another mishap. His mother has a new position, as director of personal in a Center of disabled mental of Georgia, therefore, shorter time to share between the two.

and painfully, Natasharemember to listen to first physical abuse of his mother, from his room:

“You are in fifth grade the first time you hear how your mother is beaten.

Then you hear it, Joel's loud punch to your mother. And then her voice, almost a moan, but calm, rational; “Please, Joel. Please don't hit me anymore." As far as you know, it's the first time. But most likely it isn't."

The fears he had about his stepfather are confirmed. As a result of the mistreatment of his mother, his own life turns upside down. In the studies he decenters. Currently trying to put himself in her place as the girl she was, even in writing have to put one barrier, as if it were another person, to bear the suffering:

"Look to you. Even now you still think that you can, through writing, distance yourself from the girl you were, distance yourself through the second person, as if the one to whom all this happened was not you.

It adds another adversity. The two of them can barely vent together because of the vigilant presence of the abuser.

An exhaust valve is daily that his mother bought him. She has a lock. Their stepfather -couldn't be less- profane, breaking the padlock and reading it. But his first act of resistance, is to openly reflect what you think of him:

“Stupid son of a bitch!” I wrote. “Do you think I don't know what you're doing? You wouldn't know what I think of you if you weren't reading my diary.

I was also sure that he would never say anything to me, that he would prefer to act as if he had not read the words I had dedicated to him. From that moment on, every time she looked at me, I held her gaze. The image of my words filled the space between us. She had started to put me back together.”

She vividly remembers, the author, announcing at home that she had been promoted to editor of the school newspaper and that I wanted to be a writer. Before the opposition of stepfatherHe still remembers his mother's words:

—He will do-WHATEVER-HE-WINS

I have replayed this scene in my head countless times. “He will do-WHATEVER-HE-WINS”. Still today I hear in my mother's voice, in her measured self-control, the origin of mine”.

The police found a his mother's notebook, classifying it as evidence. It is shocking as it narrates the process of disintegration of the couple, their failed attempt at joint therapy that only happened once, and the ultimate escape of home. Twenty five years later, Natasha would access it:

“When I finally escaped it was a grey, rainy and cold day. I had come into my daughter's room the night before and told her that we were going to leave and that she should stack up the things that she wanted to take with her, and that I would pick her up at school. My son woke up sick. I helped him get dressed and put him on the bed. My husband left around half past seven. He had an hour before leaving for John's office. It took me an hour and twenty minutes to do everything. I took winter coats etc. to a friend's house, rushed things into the car and grabbed my son and dog."

We are in 1983. admit to Gwendolyn and his family in a Welcome Center. His stepfather, knowing that Natasha would be in the athletic field of the University, he came to see her, a short time later. Produces shaking chillsas his intention was assassinate the author, but being friendly, his stepfather changed his plans. Knowing those facts, marked her since then:

“Then I still didn't know to what extent that scene would haunt me over the years – even before reading the documents – thinking that my attitude towards him had been a kind of betrayal of my mother. Had she noticed at that moment, had she first noticed with her body, that what I had done was going to change the course of events? If he had killed me then, as he claimed was his plan, he would have been caught, convicted, and jailed. By smiling and greeting him, he had inadvertently saved me.”

They grant him divorce to its mother. The three move to a new apartment of Memorial Drive. Su padrastro se había internado en el hospital de veteranos de guerra, pero en contra de la opinión de los psiquiatras, podía salir cuando quisiera. Junto a su madre, limpia la casa, recogen las cosas y la ponen en venta, antes de que el padrastro saliera del hospital.

Occurs shortly after first assassination attempt on Gwendolyn. Thanks to a series of circumstances, Natasha notify the police and arrest his stepfather, when the worst was about to happen.

It's summer of 1984 and together with his mother and brother they celebrate the one year sentence of "BigJoe".

The author emphasizes again that that need to forget, the deprives of to remember everything that happened with his mother and to a greater extent, to be able to capture it in writing:

“The writer in me now says that I would have been relentless, that I would have documented so accurately what our lives were like in the years leading up to the tragedy in order to remember it better than my memory now allows, with all its omissions and fixes. But at that time she had begun to get rid of a lot of memories, out of a kind of necessity, without knowing that there would be things that she would eventually want to recover at all costs ”.

When you get out of jail, Joel harasses to phone calls to Gwendolyn. The prosecutor needs evidence to arrest him and the calls are recorded, which testify to the ex-husband's threats. transcribe Natasha telephone conversations, reflecting the degree of madness to which they arrive abusers, which they achieve believe their own lies.

occurs the capture order of the judge at one o'clock early morning of June 5, 1985. Unfortunately, the policeman in charge of providing protection to his mother, he leaves at dawn, when his mission was to stay; producing the murder of Gwendolyn Ann Turnbough, at the hands of the ex-husband.

For a young daughter, the death of the mother at an early age will always produce a trauma that will last for life, but it leaves a greater mark, if, as in the case that she tells us Natasha Tretheway —y tantos otros que siguen ocurriendo—, tiene lugar a raíz del maltrato continuado y del asesinato, finalmente.

The origin of the book occurs —as the author stated in an interview—, as a result of the granting of the Pulitzer prize of Poetry in 2007, for the book of poems, Native Guard. Her notes talked about her, her father was mentioned, Eric Tretheway, también poeta y de su madre apenas nada.

It is true that he had thought about it before, but he always put it off. Finally, from there he wanted to give voice to his mother, because much of his vocation of writer, owes it to Gwendolyn.

It not only recounts the events that occurred in 1985, but also goes back to its childhood and the fight of his mother and her family, before the racial intolerance. But in addition, a very important part of the author's feelings about the past, again at the time of writing, relives them. She herself, in the book reveals that while she is writing it she has dreamed more times of her mother than her since her death. She undoubtedly has influence of poetry, why Natasha he is a poet, above all, and that can be seen in his prose. Previously, the poetry served him as catharsis, as he reflected in an interview in 2020:

Shelley said: "Poetry is a mirror that makes beautiful what is distorted." Writing poems, particularly the elegy poems about my mother, did this for me."

Natasha Trethewey to Lisa O'Kelly in The Guardian, 2020

It so happens that his stepfather was released from prison in 2019. In the same interview, Lisa ask Natasha about this circumstance, the author responding that thanks to the fact that she moved from Atlanta to Illinois in 2017, she has less fear, but obviously, there is always the risk that she could be attacked.

The book is touching, measured and reflective. It is memory, but also forgot, as a means of palliating the affliction caused by remembering. Feelings of guilt, when he thinks that he could have warned his mother in time, of the violent character of his future aggressor. There is not an iota of gratuitous sentimentality. And above all, Natasha manifest, his inner tear.

Throughout the work reference is made to a series of interpreters of soul, which they liked so much Gwendolyn Y Natasha. But I consider that the lament of the blues is more appropriate for the content of the book. Hence I leave this gem of a disk, ransom from female vocalists, which at the time hardly had an impact:

Blue Girls Vol. 3, 1924 – 1938

©Document Records, 1999 🔗