Seeking the “we of me”
In 11th grade, I read Carson McCullers’ Member of the Wedding, and nothing was ever the same again. Now I have set up shop on a street named Carson.
When I was in 11th grade, my English teacher assigned us to read Southern master Carson McCullers’ Member of the Wedding. After that, I was forever changed.
The novel is about an adolescent girl, Frankie, whose mother is dead. Frankie lives in a bleak Southern town with her father, who is always at work. She spends her days with her younger cousin John Henry, who lives next door, and a Black maid named Berenice, who has a glass eye.
All summer, the three sit around a table covered in oil cloth that holds the smells and stickiness of their meals over the years. They play cards with sweaty hands and talk on the steamy back porch. Berenice shares her wisdom from a hardscrabble life that has included several husbands.
“The wedding” of the title is upcoming, to unite Frankie’s older brother Jarvis and his bride Janice. The ceremony will take place in the backyard.
Frankie, at that awkward, in-between stage of growing up, is desperately jealous of the young couple and their happiness and wants to run away with them. She says she doesn’t have a “we” of her own. When John Henry disputes that, saying, “You’ve got Berenice and me,” Frankie waves him away and says that doesn’t count.
Throughout the story Frankie prepares to join the wedding. She changes her name to F. Jasmine, a J name like Janice and Jarvis and one she finds more grownup than Frankie. She tries to stretch her close-cropped hair to look more glamorous, and she splurges on a grown-up evening gown, which Berenice declares, “just don’t do.”
Of course, in the end, Frankie is unable to be part of the couple and their bliss and is left with the her painful longing for a “we of me.”
Today, more than 50 years after I first read the book, I don’t fully understand why it moved me as it did, but my teacher and I still talk about it. He chuckles a little when he remembers seeing how it blew me away. I doubt he was surprised. He knew my background and that I lived under restrictions that prevented me from belonging to my peer group as I wished. I, too, longed for a “we.”
I do know the book sealed my resolve to spend my life writing. If an author could make me feel as understood as Ms. McCullers did, I wanted to try to do that for others.
Now, after a career that also included teaching, marketing, and management, along with writing, I have acquired a tiny cottage that seems perfect for devoting the rest of my life to writing.
And as fate or the universe or God would have it, it’s on Carson Street. I’ve already put a photo of Carson McCullers on the fridge. I feel her there with me. Life has come wonderfully full-circle, and I have set an extremely high bar for myself, attempting to fill her very talented shoes. In my own voice, I hope I can at least die trying.
