EMPRESS INK: "Our Women & What They Think"
Issue #6
April 25th 2003

This Fine Cloth
by Lily of Harlem

You gave me Breath, and through you it flowed and filled my body with life. - And yet, though we shared the same essence, your life & spirit sustaining me within, from the beginning we were forced worlds apart.

You trained my Eyes, and showed me visions of your world through example. - Though unknowingly, they included visions that scarred me for the rest of my days.

You left me unconcluded Memories of you, me, we; which laid a journey to be embarked upon to find us. And though I know the bond between us should be strong, there are many broken weaves in this fine cloth of Lineage called Family. The weave has not been woven accurately, and I am left to mend the pieces of the past so that I may continue to create a covering for my future, and the future of those who have yet to come through.

The novel ‘ Breath, Eyes, Memory’ by Edwidge Danticat, explores the bonds both broken and strong between three generations of women, who are all very much different, but by blood, culture, traditions, superstitions and fears are very much the same. A child gives birth by default, to a strange little thing that she never asked nor wanted for. Yet forced into her reality, much like the brute force of her rape came forth a baby girl. A child, who was not conceived in love, would also suffer the loss of the love of her own mother, only to receive in unconditionally from her Aunt and Grandmother. In the existing conditions; suffering from mental & emotional strain of her sexual attack, the poor rural village of a political and economically unstable country, and the judging opinions of a small town, a young mother fled from it all, hoping to find peace and refuge, and a way to leave her old and damaged life behind. This included leaving her daughter until she could manage the means to financially support her. But when the time came for mother and daughter to reunite, and live life together as a family, they found that they were still forced worlds apart. Though in many ways they were the same. They were both lost and struggling to find one another to somehow define and complete who they were.

A young mother desperately trying to reconnect with her feeling, emotions, experiences of a ‘Real Person’ who is living a ‘ Real Life’, and trying to do so through her daughter. She desires to feel whole again, without fears. For her, her daughter is the catalyst in doing so. If she is a mother, then she must do what it is a mother should do, and that simply is to care and provide for your child so that they may provide for themselves and perhaps you someday. However, it is crucial to strengthen the family by offerings of support, understanding, encouragement, sensitivity and all other intangible things a child needs to develop. Everything that is important for them to be spiritually and emotionally sound. Their bond was never made and therefore could not be fortified.

She was a young child that never truly understood why she didn’t have the love and care from her mother like she received from the women close to her. On the outside, she never expressed a lack of love and happiness, but subconsciously she fought the fear of being taken away by a mother she never knew. How could she show a woman, who she has always been curious about, that she did not long for her care or protection? That she had had it always, and it was everything she knew back home. She had been told that living with her mother was the right thing to do, and that she was to be respectful and obedient. But there was so much to learn and say that being respectful and obedient didn’t allow. And so the weave is weakening and the bond does not have the opportunity to be established yet again.

Too often we are lost in our emotional strains and obligations to the past, that we loose all sight into our future. There are so many of us who are raised by parental obligation but little more than, that our hearts, souls and psyches’ are malnourished. The strength and spirit of our family and the bonds that were forged by our fore fathers and mothers are dying. Habitually we superimpose our own fears and mistakes upon the young ones we raise. This problem is not contained to one country or race but is ever breeding and growing in our own backyards. In this modern society, we are losing us, and our bonds have not been fashioned between young and old. Our families are multiplying but our stories are not being told. Our lessons are not being taught and our connections, our strengths our love has not been sewn. We find that a household of family becomes a household of strangers.

So we must begin again. Not only with the births of those to come, but to look to the existing families to fill our bodies with the breath of life. To show our eyes the visions of the world, but more importantly, the examples of love! And, to form, strengthen and fortify the bonds within our families in our to ensure our memories of ‘We’ are healthy and fulfilling. We can no longer afford to be lost and searching for one another to define ourselves in these times. If we do not mend the broken weaves of our family, there will be more lost to us then our lineage.

EMPRESS INK Vol.1