Fardos Bakjaji

Under the Wing of an Alcoholic Father: A Study of Childhood Domestic Abuse in Bernice L McFadden’s The Warmest December

Fardos Bakjaji

Abstract

This paper seeks to tackle the issue of domestic abuse in the Afro-American society through shedding the light upon the story of Kenzie, the protagonist of Bernice L. McFadden‘s The Warmest December. It also deals with the topic of alcoholism and how parents‘ addiction could turn children‘s life into hell. McFadden attempts to depict the traumatizing aftermaths of alcoholism legacy that indisputably pass to children through a cycle of violent actions.

Keywords: Domestic Abuse, Alcoholism, traumatizing aftermaths, violence.

Have you ever thought of asking what if the wing under which you seek love and solace is itself the source of your pain? What if the lap to which you run pursuing protection and security turns to be the source of fear and terror? Is undeniable that the hardest and most difficult experience one may go through is to be exposed to violence in a home that is supposed to be a safe haven and shelter. This paper examines domestic abuse in the AfricanAmerican society as represented by Bernice L. McFadden‘s second novel The Warmest December. Domestic abuse or violence has been one of the most dominant issues identified

in all types of families and societies regardless of racial, gender or age boundaries. Since domestic abuse takes place at home and since women and children are the most vulnerable categories in the society, they become targets of victimization and violence, however, this study aims to concentrate mainly on child abuse. Usually children seek support and love from their parents or caregivers but they seek protection before anything else. Kara Walker in her God Help the Child review states that:

As children we have gentle, wordless expectations that the big people in our lives will endeavor to keep us from harm, or, at the very least, not harm us. It‘s the sacrosanct social contract: that adults will feed, clothe and protect us, that they will keep our bodies alive long enough for us to devise adult survival strategies of our own.

Nevertheless, many children are subject to abuse within their own environment and by their own parents. People sometimes incorrectly link abuse with physical injuries or beatings only not taking into account that abuse could be physical, emotional, psychological, sexual and even verbal. Hence it is important to define what violence is and how children perceive it. Betsy McAlister Groves in her book Children Who See Too Much defines a violent event as:

[A]n action initiated by a human being that makes a child feel threatened, unsafe, or that results in harm to another person […]traumatic events initiated by humans carry more psychological risks than do natural disasters. The fact that humans carry out the violence seems to add an extra element of terror for children. (18)

Many novelists cover the topic of domestic abuse and violence in their writings and undoubtedly Toni Morrison has been the leading figure among all not to mention Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor, Bernice L. McFadden, and many other African-American writers. These authors offer true tales of their ancestors and their lives and thus autobiographical hints are to form part and parcel component in many of their books. Domestic child abuse and that driven by slavery and its traumatic experience form the core of Morrison‘s works. Both Morrison and McFadden share the same tendency towards weaving stories on black females and trace their horrifying childhood memories. Morrison‘s first novel The Bluest Eye is one of the best examples of various form of violence. It tells the story of Pecola, ―the brokenwinged bird that can‘t fly‖, a girl that is abused sexually, emotionally, psychologically, and physically to the extent that she is driven to insanity after the all she witnesses in her home and community.

But why most African-American writers deal with violence in their literary works? It is known that the entire African American experience is based on abuse and violence where black people endured all types of racism, victimization, oppression, and marginalization. On the other hand, Blacks who had been abused by their white masters attempted to figure out an outlet for their subjugated wrath thus they turn to be violent towards their women and children. This is what Cathy Spatz Widom conceptualizes as ―violence begets violence‖ which means that violence generates violence and that vicious and brutal cycle will eventually make the victims into future victimizers and the offenders future aggressors.

Many causes have been listed behind domestic abuse but alcoholism depicted in The Warmest December is to be considered one of the main causes of abuse and a logical explanation of Hy-Lo‘s mood swings. Life with alcoholic fathers is described as mere hell because ―They are unpredictable, undependable, and embarrassing […]. They are often angry and sometimes verbally or physically abusive.‖ Children especially female children who have prolonged exposure to traumatic events would ―tend to suffer from a broad range of psychosocial adjustment difficulties, including the inability to establish close relationships, sexual dysfunction, eating and substance abuse disorders, self-destructive thoughts and behavior, and posttraumatic stress disorder.‖ (70)

Published in 2001 and highly praised by various critics, The Warmest December approaches the topic of domestic abuse incredibly painfully. Bernice L. McFadden, a contemporary African-American novelist, portrays a house in which a child will not find puppies to play with but rather belts to be whipped with. Reading the novel, the reader will be absolutely certain that the novel is written by someone that has experienced alcoholism and domestic abuse due to the vivid depiction of the suffering. In one of her interviews, McFadden reveals that the novel contains many autobiographical elements and that by writing it she wanted to share her own story to inspire little girls to overcome their traumatic childhood. Kenzie-the narrator and the main character around her the novel‘s events revolve- is a black woman in

her thirties whose mechanism to repress her past memories is to drink alcohol. The novel shifts between the bitterness memories of the past and the dull and gloomy moments of the present.

Sitting beside his bed and looking to his dying body, Kenzie sinks into her memories dominated by Hy-Lo‘s punishments (his name suggests his capriciousness); memories shaped by burning a cigarette into her little palm, broke her ribs and causing the death of her brother. His physical abuse was inseparable from verbal abuse; she recalled his words with her heart aching to the memory of her dead brother ―son was not a term I‘d ever heard him use. Meathead, stupid, idiot, those were his pet names for Malcolm‖ (The Warmest December, 168). She recollected her visits to the liquor store to buy bottles for him and how ―the aroma of alcohol covered me like a wool blanket‖ (130) and how he was the reason for her mother‘s addiction came to her. She remembered how many times she witnessed Hy-Lo beating her mother while she was capable of hearing only ―the sound of my breath and the beating of my

heart‖ (123).Kenzie recalled how she was beseeching her mother to allow her to stay at her grandmother‘s house in an attempt to escape her father‘s abuse. She eagerly desired to run away but could not. Cathy Spatz Widom emphasizes this point by stating that ―many runaway children are not running toward something, but rather are running away from something-a home life in which they were subject to abuse.‖ Kenzie‘s school admission was her lifejacket and her first step towards getting rid of Hy-Lo. During holidays, she refused to visit her family and preferred to stay with her friends and their families as if standing ―close enough to feel a part of something joyous[…]But as much as I tried to avoid who I was and what I had come from, it still managed to find me and remind me‖ (18,207). Throughout the incidents of the novel, McFadden graphically illustrates how powerless the child is in the grip of an appallingly abusive parent.

As a grown woman, Kenzie started drinking in order to forget her miserable situation and to mitigate the pain of her lingering memory. She also developed a fear towards men and was hesitant to have a relationship with one of her colleagues because ―he was a man too, and HyLo‘s actions had blemished his record and the record of most men I would come into contact

with for many years‖ (162). In her early years, Kenzie hated her father; even wishing him to die but as a grown woman, she tried very hard to forgive him not even knowing the reason why she is visiting him during his last days in the hospital. However, towards the end of the novel, Kenzie comes to get rid of her hatred after meeting the nurse who tells her that her father is a victim just like her. Kenzie is shocked to know that her father was himself a subject of his mother‘s abuse:

She told me of the abuse Hy-Lo and his brothers had suffered. The times Gwenyth beat them across the bottoms of their feet and then had them stand barefoot in the

snow, or barefoot in the summer on the black tarmac of the street, as punishment for some childish misdemeanor or failing grade. Hy-Lo‘s story started out bad, curdled and soured in the middle, and ended up worse.(219)

Kenzie finally is portrayed as a woman who is now able to think of herself as a ―veteran[s] of some long-ago battle now able to laugh.‖(173)

This paper is an attempt to highlight the topic of domestic violence caused by an alcoholic father, its unsightly scars, and post-traumatic disorder. Bernice L. McFadden is a rare talent who has a growing interest in depicting the sufferings of African-American women. What characterizes McFadden‘s writings and works is the redemptive voice and the skill in getting the readers to know the characters and their scars so intimately-and watch them strive to heal so McFaddenly.

Works Cited

 Groves, Betsy McAlister. Children who See Too Much: Lessons from the Child Witness to Violence Project. Beacon Press Books, 2002.  McFadden, Bernice L. The Warmest December. Akashic Books, 2001.  Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Plume Book, 1994.  Rosenthal, Sarah Simms. The Unavailable Father: Seven Ways Women can Understand,

Heal, and Cope with a Broken Father-Daughter Relationship. Jossey-Bass, 2010.  Walker, Kara. Review of God Help the Child, by Toni Morrison. The New York Times.

April 13, 2015. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/19/books/review/toni-morrisons-godhelp-the-child.html.  Widom, Cathy Spatz. ―The Cycle of Violence.‖ Science, vol. 244, no. 4901, 1989, pp. 160–166. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1702789.Accessed 29 Mar. 2020.