#758 The Foundations of the Earth- Randall Kenan
Maggie was a seventy-year old matriarch of a southern sharecropping family. The joy of her life was her grandson Edward who left some years ago to go to college in Boston. He never came back. She is left lonely and confused.
“Her [spiritual weight] born not of the sun but of profound loneliness, an oppressive emptiness, a stabbing guilt. Sometimes she even wished she was a drinking woman.”
Some years later, Edward dies and she learns that he had been living with another man, afraid to tell her of his homosexuality. God comes to her in a dream and tells her to avoid judgment and hate. She invites her son’s lover—a white man—to come south to visit her and tell her about the real Edward. She is open, albeit confronted with her upbringing, and finds peace in the life she sees. After all, she knows discrimination, and she knows respect.
Notable Passage: “Healing sleep, soothing sleep, sleep to make the world go away, sleep like death. Her mama had told her that sleep was the best medicine God ever made. When things get too rough—go to bed.”
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