God Help The Child

At the start of Chapter 2, Bride feels as if she is “melting away” (8). It all started when Booker Stabern, her lover for six months, told her one night: “You not the woman I want” (8). Bride surprised herself by telling her lover that she was not the woman she wanted either. Her boyfriend, irritated by this response, gathered his clothes and left. Bride kept expecting him to return, but he never did.

By the next morning she was angry, convinced her boyfriend had been using her as “money and a crotch” (8). Thinking over it, Bride concludes that their relationship was not particularly romantic, not like the love that is the subject of perfume commercials and love songs.

As Bride drank wine the next day, she allowed herself to miss him just a little—he was “one beautiful man, flawless even, except for a tiny scar on his upper lip and an old ugly one on his shoulder” (9). Bride thought about calling Brooklyn, her employee and best friend, about the breakup but decided not to because such drama was the usual state of affairs for Bride; perhaps maintaining some boundaries were in order now that Bride was a regional manager at Sylvia, Inc., the small growing cosmetics company where they work. Bride is overseeing her own cosmetics line, YOU, GIRL, and is proud of her success. She is not little Lula Ann Bridewell anymore, an unsophisticated country girl. She had changed her name to “Ann Bride” and then simply to “Bride” when she interviewed for a retail job at Sylvia, Inc.

As she made her way through the wine, Bride finally concluded that she was glad to be rid of her lover: he had never shared any details about his life, and on top of that, Bride had something important to do. She had saved up $5,000 in cash, purchased a Louis Vuitton backpack, bought a $3,000 airline voucher, and filled the bag with promotional YOU, GIRL cosmetics. When she had shared her plan to give these items to an unnamed woman scheduled to be paroled from prison, her lover had blown up at her and left.

As Bride dresses to go see the woman on her first day out of prison, Bride notices that every single strand of her pubic hair has disappeared. Finding no other hair loss, Bride shrugs this off and heads down the road in her Jaguar toward Decagon Women’s Corrections Center in Norristown, to meet the parolee, Sofia Huxley.

As Bride waits for the woman to emerge, she remembers what is was like to sit in a court room fifteen years prior testifying against Sofia and her husband during a trial. The prosecutor had assured Lula Ann that there was no way Sofia Huxley could hurt her.

Sofia finally emerges from the prison, still 6 feet tall. Seeing her reminds Bride of how incensed the audience in the court room was when Sofia, then a 20-year-old teacher accused of molesting children with her husband, entered. In the present, Bride notices that Sofia is thinner, aged, and pale (a problem some YOU, GIRL bronzer would fix).

Bride exits her car and offers Sofia a ride. Sofia, who seems rattled, refuses the ride and explains she called a cab. She eyes Bride suspiciously and runs to the cab to escape once it arrives. Bride tails the cab until it drops Sofia off at a shabby motel with a restaurant, which Sofia enters. In the restaurant, Sofia eats nonstop for a few minutes, then goes to her hotel room. When Bride knocks on the door immediately after, Sofia is at first fearful and then suspicious when Bride offers her all the gifts, an offer of help in Sofia’s life with no strings attached, Bride claims.

A split second after Bride finally identifies herself as the little girl who helped convict Sofia, Sofia physically attacks Bride, breaking her teeth and scraping off the top layer of the skin on Bride’s face as she hits her and later drags her out of the motel room. Bride manages to drag herself back into the car and escape. She decides not to call the police because the news might get out and ruin the launch of her make-up line. She finally decides to call Brooklyn, whom she thinks of as the only person she absolutely trusts.

Brooklyn arrives and takes Bride to the barely adequate local clinic. Brooklyn is shocked at the mess that Bride’s beautiful face is and suspicious when Bride claims the wounds and teeth are the result of a failed rape. The fact that Bride has a Louis Vuitton purse and a bag full of money undercuts Bride’s story, but Brooklyn backs off once Bride begins to fake crying. When she asks Bride why she is in a town like Norristown, Bride claims she is there to see a long-lost friend. Brooklyn knows this is a lie based on the money she saw. Bride is devastated by her ruined face, but a small part of Brooklyn thinks that the damage and recovery time might be just the opening Brooklyn needs to move up at the company. Brooklyn convinces Bride to leave the clinic and head home.

Bride rehashes the experience with Sofia and concludes that the woman “really was a freak” (36). Bride is having a hard time with the trauma of the experience but is grateful that Brooklyn is filling in and explaining Bride’s continued absence from work. During the trial, Bride was just one of five children who testified, and besides, Bride was the only person who showed up on Sofia’s release date. Bride is bitter that Sofia didn’t even hear her out before hitting her.

Bride also remembers pointing out Sofia during Sofia’s trial and all the approval the mothers and fathers heaped on her in the immediate aftermath of the proceedings. Even Sweetness held Bride’s hand that day, a welcome change since Sweetness’s revulsion any time she had to touch her daughter was obvious to Bride from childhood. In the end, Bride is angry with herself for reverting during Sofia’s assault to the passive, put-upon girl she was years ago.

She thinks that maybe Booker was right to dismiss her after all. Bride discards almost everything Booker left behind, but she ends up retrieving the brush from his shaving soap and his razor and placing both in the medicine cabinet. She looks at herself in the bathroom mirror, recalling the makeover advice her designer friend Jeri gave her. His advice was that she should always wear white with small pops of color because doing so would make her dark skin stand out even more. She should go without makeup and wear tiny earrings (if any at all). He assured her that these choices would make people see her—“Just you, girl. All sable and ice. A panther in the snow” and “wolverine eyes” (40).

Following Jeri’s advice gave Bride the name of her make-up line and transformed her into an object of attention wherever she went. No one looked at her with disgust anymore. Looking at her face in the present, Bride notes that she is healed physically from the assault but still feeling down. She then takes out Booker’s shaving kit and shaves herself, pleased with the sensation and perfection of her face.

As she shaves, she remembers all the backhanded compliments and outright insults she received as a girl and how her teachers told her to go to community college instead of university. Bride was only able to get a stocking job in retail at first, despite her desire to work in sales. She finally got an ahead after following Jeri’s advice and then quickly advanced to the regional manager position, fulfilling Jeri’s belief that “[b]lack sells. It’s the hottest commodity in the civilized world” (42). Bride refashioned herself to the point that she got tired of the sexual partners who desired her or—in the case of a white man who wanted to irk his parents—use her blackness as a weapon.

Booker was the exception. Bride had touched and adored every inch of his body, including his scars. The blow of his rejection made her feel “[d]ismissed” (43) and “[e]rased” (44), even by an ex-felon like Sofia. Bride decides to take Brooklyn’s advice and go out. Bride is fully aware at this point that Brooklyn is making her own place at Sylvia, Inc. in Bride’s absence. Bride goes to the park, Booker’s shaving brush in tow, and the sight of an old couple makes her remember the night she met Booker, who grabbed her from behind at a concert to dance. Bride rubs the shaving brush on her skin and then heads home.

In this monologue, Sweetness opens by admitting she feels a little bad about her mistreatment of Lula Ann. The world was a racist, unkind place for little black girls then, so Sweetness was just looking out for Brides’s best interests by preparing her for this cold world. Sweetness believes her harshness paid off—look at Bride now and the swagger with which she moves. Sweetness was proud of her daughter’s role in convicting Sofia and her accomplices.

Sweetness thinks she was not a bad mother but that she “may have done some hurtful things” (48) to protect Lula Ann. She faults “skin privileges” (48) of the day, but she is sure Lula Ann must understand her actions. Still, she concludes: “What you do to children matters” (48). Lula Ann is attractive and financially successful, but she never visits.

Bride goes out to a trendy restaurant with Brooklyn, finally heeding Brooklyn’s advice that getting out will help pull her out of her depression after having been assaulted. Bride thinks that Brooklyn is such a good friend and observes how Brooklyn’s blonde dreadlocks make her stand out, especially to black men who date her.

During lunch, the two talk about the office, and Bride tells Brooklyn she wants to go on a low-key vacation. Brooklyn tells Bride she is too fragile to leave. The cosseting irritates Bride, who finally tells Brooklyn the truth about the assault and the testimony Bride gave against Sofia all those years ago. Brooklyn is disgusted with Bride’s naïve belief that Sofia would want to see her despite their history and even asks Bride if Sofia molested Bride as well. Bride denies this. Brooklyn tells her that seeing Sofia was just a failed effort to recover her power after Booker left.

Brooklyn then tells Bride that she needs a boost. Two weeks later, Brooklyn is as good as her word: she organizes a launch party to celebrate Bride’s new make-up line. Bride sticks to her all-white clothing as she dresses for the party, but she is disconcerted to find that her earring holes have completely disappeared. Bride strokes herself with Booker’s shaving brush to calm herself after this unnerving discovery.

The next morning, Bride wakes up with a random man in her bed. She got drunk at the party and picked him up. The man goes to the shower and leaves finally, allowing Bride to quit her pretense of being asleep. She discovers a note with the man’s name and number and a used condom in the trash. Bride finds that her pubic hair is still gone and that her earring holes are still closed. She calms herself by shaving again. She gets a terrible headache, however, and feels once again that she and her life are falling apart. She asks herself the same question: Why did Booker abandon her?

Bride has a memory, one she shared with Booker: Bride was playing with her mother’s makeup one day and peeked out of window when she heard what she thought was the meowing of a cat. What she saw instead in the alley beside her apartment was Mr. Leigh, the landlord, sexually assaulting a small white boy who whimpered in pain. When Mr. Leigh saw Bride looking, he called her a “nigger cunt” (59). When Bride told Sweetness, her mother—likely fearful of losing the apartment—told Bride not to tell anyone.

When she told Booker and expressed her regret that she never told anyone else, he comforted her and assured her that she was not responsible for the evil actions of others. His words made Bride feels safe and understood. Back in the present, Bride wonders if she conflated what she saw Mr. Leigh doing with what Sofia Huxley was accused of doing. The crude, racist, sexist language Mr. Leigh had used against her was akin to the bullying she experienced (but accepted silently) while in school. The bullying was like a “a poison, lethal viruses” (60) that made Bride immune to being brought any lower. Now, she is “a deep, dark beauty” (60) whose natural, “elegant blackness” (61) is a commodity and the ultimate revenge on the people who ridiculed her.

Brooklyn is acting regional manager now that Bride has extended her leave. Brooklyn has been invaluable, firing for Bride her maid, whom Bride describes in racist terms. Nevertheless, Brooklyn’s calls are increasingly more infrequent.

In this monologue, Brooklyn remembers when Booker first entered Bride’s life. Brooklyn mistrusted him from the very start because of the way Booker crossed boundaries by grabbing Bride at the concert on the night the two met. Booker never mentioned having a job. Brooklyn was sure that the thing between Bride and Booker was just about sex and Bride’s neediness. She is not surprised Booker ghosted Bride. She recalls the day she stripped and climbed in Bride’s bed to seduce Booker while Bride was out one day. Booker rudely turned down her proposition and didn’t even look at Brooklyn when she put her clothes back on. Brooklyn knows if she had been subtler, she could have had Booker, and she thinks that Bride is clueless about what kind of man Booker truly is.

In this monologue, Bride rifles through the assorted items in Booker’s remaining duffel bag and realizes how little she truly knew about Booker. She knew he had an advanced degree, but the collection of dense books—one in German—makes her realize that Booker had an interior life that was completely hidden from her. She liked that mysteriousness when they were still together. It meant most of their conversation was about her or Booker’s lectures on boring subjects like California’s water rights. Unlike her girlfriends, she was never able to refer to Booker by his job, the thing that seemed to be most important to other people when it came to boyfriends. The truth was that Booker ghosted her.

Bride rifles through her mail. She discards a begging letter from her mother but is excited when she discovers a pawn ticket for Booker Stabern at a nearby pawn shop. Brooklyn calls at that moment to ask about the man (Phil) Bride took home. Bride tells Brooklyn she needs to get out of town and is too hung over to talk. Bride heads over to the pawn shop.

In this monologue, Sofia talks about her life after the encounter with Bride. Sofia—forbidden to work with children because of her conviction—first found a job in home healthcare. She liked the quiet after the terrifying noise of prison and enjoyed feeling appreciated. She had to quit, however, because her client’s grandchildren visited her. She next worked in a nursing home where people went to die. Sofia disliked the institutional nature of the place because it reminded her of prison.

Sofia was in prison for fifteen years. She was on the bottom of the pecking order because of her conviction for molestation of children, but she now sees that the other criminals in prison with her were not selective in victimizing people, including children. Sofia’s cellmate, Julie, was in prison for smothering her profoundly disabled daughter. Sofia and Julie worked in the sewing shop, which runs on prison labor. Julie tried to hang herself at one point and became even more withdrawn after being gang raped and becoming the prison wife of a feared prisoner everyone called “Lover.”

Sofia only heard from Jack, her husband, twice during her incarceration. The two letters were heavily censored and filled with jumbled accounts of abuse and vitriol. Sofia’s parents sent care packages but never contacted or visited her. She had never been pure enough for her ultra-religious family and suspected her sentencing was a relief to them. Sofia passed the time in prison by reading, a welcome relief since the only book allowed when she was a girl was the Bible.

On her release date, Sofia looked at world and saw it anew. She reveled in the colors, the free air. She got sick from the food she bolted down. When Bride—whose name Sofia cannot remember—came to her door that day, Sofia was incensed that Bride thought money was recompense enough for 15 years in prison. When she struck Bride with her fists, Sofia felt like she was wrestling the Devil her mother had warned her about. After Sofia threw Bride out, she collapsed on the floor and waited for the police to arrive. They never came.

When Sofia got up, she finally remembered that “freedom is never free” (72). Bride’s unintended gift to Sofia was the release of 15 years of pain. Sofia now feels free of “filth” and is “clean and able” (72).