#447 October Brown- Maxine Clair
Rattlebone is a fictional black community just north of
Kansans City created by Maxine Clair for this collection. Written to represent
the Midwest black lives of the 1950’s, it’ll be interesting to compare it to
the Toure’s The Portable Promised Land I started yesterday that represents a
fictional black community in the big city.
October Brown was a teacher in Rattlebone. Her story starts
with a fit she had in public as a child when her father attacked her mother.
The fit was so crazed that it left her with a mark on her cheek, a devil’s
kiss, and a reputation that frightened and intrigued her new students.
“We imagined that a woman surrounded by such lore would have
to have a bad temper, a flash fire that could drive her from her desk to yours
in a single movement, dislodge you by your measly shoulders, plant you hard on
the hardwood floor, tell you in growling underbreaths of wrath to stand up straight…”
It was a big year for Irene, not only because her new
teacher wasn’t anywhere nearly as bad as she thought, but because she was about
to become a big sister to a new baby brother. Things change quickly though, and
change can turn quickly to chaos.
Notable Passage: “Intuition is the guardian of childhood.”
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