Barrelhouse Reviews: Know the Mother, by Desiree Cooper
Review by Lisa Braxton
Wayne State University Press / March, 2016 / 112 pp
It is the rare author who has the ability to invite readers into a story, guide them along as they become familiar with the characters and the plot, and then issue a gut punch so carefully aimed that it leaves the reader stunned and breathless. Former attorney and Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist Desiree Cooper accomplishes that feat in her debut short story collection, Know the Mother. In 31 works of flash fiction, Cooper serves up an unflinching look at motherhood, womanhood, and girlhood. The collection features a woman in her first trimester of pregnancy, a young girl called to act when her mother goes into labor, a new mother having a date night with her husband, a mother who becomes a mother to her own mother who is on her deathbed, and many other girls and women. In all of the stories, the complexities of the female experience are laid bare, interlaced with themes of race, class, gender, and adultery.
As the daughter of elderly parents, the title story, “Know the Mother,” hit me particularly hard. Poignant, it explores a woman’s emotions as she faces the reality that her mother will soon pass away.
“Don’t leave me,” I plead beneath my breath. She twitches and my heart leaps—maybe she’s changed her mind and has decided to stay with me a little longer. But for the next three hours she gives me nothing to hold onto—
Racism is at the center of “Reporting for Duty, 1959.” Joyce, mother to boys Curtis and Junior, travels with her family from an Air Force base in San Antonio to their new assignment in Tampa, Florida. Her husband, Sgt. Douglas Carter, is at the wheel of their Buick.
After Cooper sets the scene with the boys horsing around in the back seat and The Drifters singing doo-wop on the car radio, we get a sense of what the family will be facing. The boys urge Dad to let the family stay overnight at a Holiday Inn before they get to their destination, and Joyce’s consciousness filters the action. Cooper does a skillful job of showing and not telling: “Joyce had been watching too, her hand holding the door handle so tightly that blue veins popped up like Highway 10 on Junior’s road map. She bit her lip nervously and turned to the boys.” As the tension increased, I wanted to take a break, put the book down, and take a short walk to decompress. But the story had already pulled me in. I pressed on until I got to the unvarnished reality that so many of us face, that we are seen as inferior and not worthy of the same degree of respect as the rest of society. The father returns to the car and responds to inquisitive Junior that the family was offered a room near the staff’s closet. When he asked for a different room, closer to the pool, one he knew was available because he’d overheard the clerk tell a customer that the hotel had plenty of vacancies, he was refused.
Social and political history also play into “The Disappearing Girl.” A mother is in a long queue of minivans at the school to pick up her daughter, “–the lone black child in a sea of white.” When her daughter utters the question, “Did you know that I am invisible?” the mother flashes back to 1967, when she felt invisible in the eyes of her first-grade teacher. “She calls on the other children; I don’t understand why she doesn’t see me. I stretch my hand higher, accent my eagerness with a few ‘Ooh, oohs,’ but she still gazes over my head to the dolt behind me with the ruby curls.”
Adultery and classism underlie “Night Coming.” Nikki, a highly accomplished private banker at a boutique agency, has mixed feelings about the fundraiser her husband wants them to attend that night to benefit an African American art museum. Layered over that tension are her mixed feelings about having relocated with him to his hometown, Detroit, leaving behind her clique in Atlanta’s black intelligentsia.
Twelve weeks into a pregnancy, Nikki discovers that her husband has been cheating on her. She is standing in front of Nkonde, a nail figure from the Congo, at the time: “According to the museum placard, when two parties reached an agreement, they’d drive a nail into its body to seal the deal. If anyone broke the promise, the Nkonde’s spirit would punish him.” This is fitting foreshadowing for what Nikki is about to discover about her husband.
The beauty, and the challenge, of flash fiction is that it must engage the reader quickly and dig deep while employing an economy of words and language. Readers who only have time for small, satisfying nuggets can find this form appealing. However, flash fiction pieces sometimes leave readers wanting more. I found that to be the case in “Cartoon Blue.” A lawyer who miscarries during a conference call feels she must proceed as if nothing has happened. The story ends with her in the bathroom stall following the call. I wanted to know more about the pressure she was under, pressure so intense that she felt she couldn’t excuse herself.
Know the Mother is refreshing in its honesty and boldness, venturing into the crevices and corners of motherhood and womanhood to places that aren’t always pleasant, but are natural and inevitable. Cooper has mastered the compressed form of flash fiction, delivering vignettes that pull you in, surprise you, and then let you go on one level—but keep you meditating on them at another, as the layers of meaning peel away one by one.
Lisa Braxton is an essayist, short story writer, and novelist. Her debut novel, The Talking Drum, is forthcoming from Inanna Publications in May 2020. She is a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow. Her stories and essays have appeared in Vermont Literary Review, Black Lives Have Always Mattered, Chicken Soup for the Soul, and The Book of Hope. Find her at lisabraxton.com.