SINGLE PARENTAL IN LONG DISTANCE LIFE (1989)

WOMAN’S PLACE IN THE 20TH CENTURY

Women have always been the basis of the family. Their role in the society has been to maintain the family in a very harmonious framework so as to pacify the household and favor a good education of children. But their role does not only focus on maintaining the family in a peaceful and harmonious atmosphere but they have also to work hard in order to support their families which sometimes are managed by irresponsible and selfish men only busy chasing beautiful women. Thus living in an extreme poverty, African-American women were compelled to remain in the South and exploit the farms to survive or migrate in the North where they had also to face racial hardships. 5 Section One: Self Assertive Women Women in Long Distance Life live and share their households with men who always humiliate and betray them. They do their best to conquer women but once they achieve their purpose; they begin to change and abandon them for other ones. And sometimes, women are left with many children to educate and support. To succeed their children’s education and their management without for the most of the time their father’s help require that women be strong and really assertive to face this situation. A woman such as Naomi is a great example of this kind of women. Naomi the main character of this novel is a daughter of a Sharecropper. She gets married with Isaiah, who is also a farmer. Together, they were farming in order to survive the extreme poverty that reigned in the South precisely in Spring Hope. In this poverty, Naomi and her husband were hardly living under the powerless glimpse of her relatives who were also hardly living. In Spring Hope, farming was almost the only activity and getting a plot of land was extremely difficult due to the strong exploitation of lands by the great peasants. This situation had increased the poverty because many men found themselves without any plot of land to exploit some of them had very little surface to grow and the others were employed as farmers by the owners. As a consequence men had difficulties to support their families. Many of them abandon their wives and families and those who stayed were living in difficult conditions with their wives so life was hard and they did not get any other mean to earn enough money to satisfy their families’ needs. In front of this situation, Naomi who had an acceptable husband who was not mistreating her and not difficult to convince, preferred to exile in the North for better living conditions. She couldn’t continue to see her relatives living in that situation. Under the influence of her friend Cora who migrated since a long time, Naomi also convinced her husband Isaiah who finally left her go. It was not as difficult as they no longer had an infant because their child was dead. Then Naomi, migrated from Spring Hope in the South towards the industrial North to escape poverty. She settled in Washington D.C in 1926 and fully conscious of the situation she left home, Naomi doesn’t lose much time to gain her life. She begins by the small jobs 6 that were proposed to black people such as: servants, baby-sitting, cleaning, and cooking. In the same time she was playing numbers. In record time, she earns much money and realizes everything she’d always wanted. She buys a very big and nice house, a nice car and acquainted with a gentleman she loved very much. With Rayford Johnson, they formed a very nice couple and lived the life that Naomi was always dreaming. They lived in her very big apartment and Rayford Johnson was a teacher and a great intellectual who really helped Naomi in her life. He was so correct and proved her his love to a certain point that Naomi trusted him. Rayford was even running Naomi’s rents. Every month he gathered all the money from the rent of her apartments and helped Naomi to manage that money and to well invest it. Naomi was leaving paradise and people couldn’t imagine her joy when her parents came to visit her in Washington D.C in her new house after her great success. They were proud of their daughter who has left from nothing to realize all these marvelous things. For that, her father could not hide his joy; he answers Naomi: “I am proud of you, Naomi. Real proud. But you got to understand. I’ve worked another man’s land for over twenty years and just barely kept my family from starving. My daughter comes north and gets so much it puts me to shame. Tell me how I’m posed to feel about me. sure I’m proud of you”1 . As reflected in this passage Naomi was a hardworking woman who believed in herself. Thanks to her effort she makes it and succeeds her life. Her parents were really happy for her when they visited her in her town in Washington D.C. Her assertiveness can be perceived in her decision to go to Spring Hope when she got pregnant. After her first baby’s death, the one she had with Isaiah her first husband, Naomi during the time she was fulfilling all her dreams that is to know earning money, living with 1 Marita Golden, Long Distance Life, New York, Random House, 1989, p.39 7 the man she loved, she will get also pregnant of Esther. And she chooses Spring Hope to have her baby. As the following quotation states: “When I got pregnant, then I had everything I’d always wanted, I went back home to Spring Hope to have my baby. Back then, no matter where you lived in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, wherever, home was where you come from, and it was just natural to go home to do something as important as having your child”2 . Naomi believed in roots and loves her parents. Washington was more developed and as a consequence should have better equipped hospitals than Spring Hope, but she preferred returning near her family and mother to deliver. She is really a proud and assertive woman. An assertive woman is a respectable one who does not always depend on men and who may support herself or her children if needs be without her husband’s help. Naomi was this kind of woman. She paved all alone her own way; because when she came in Washington, she was not without difficulties and yet this doesn’t prevent her from going forward and making her life successful and joyful without anybody’s help. Esther her own daughter witnesses it and recognizes her mother’s bravery in what follows: “I don’t know if I could’ve done what you did. Mama, you had no road map when you left down there and came up here and you found your way pretty good” .

Section two: Sins of the Fathers

Men in Long Distance Life are presented as irresponsible. They do not care about either their wives or their children. They spend all their time sinning in chasing girls and as a consequence betraying their wives and children they had before. Thus it seems like that men are only interested in love and women. They are ready to do everything to achieve their aims; as it is well said in the following quotation: “It was women and love that men could not live without”  . Esther’s father understood very well men’s strategy and way of living. To protect her and prevent Esther from these eventual betrayals and practices of men towards women Mr Johnson warned his daughter. But as women also get a heart and can’t live without loving and being loved, they are always suffering so they are betrayed and mistreated in their inner comfort. For that matter that same Esther in spite of her father’s warning up, she will be victim of this men’s irresponsibility and lack of respect. By the time she was going out with Randolph, this latter did not consider her; he loved her but never marries Esther. During their relationship he did not respect her even when he needed to see Esther, he only called her and Esther displaced to find him wherever he wanted or he was. This shocked Esther’s mother who could not digest her daughter’s easiness and lack of respect towards herself. She could not hide her anger and shouted: “You’re no whore, can’t no man just call up here and you Come running. Not my daughter. Not in my house (…). What kind of man is this anyway? Why can’t he show himself? Show his face? Come meet your mama? Respect you and himself enough for that?”10 As we can notice it, Randolph was irresponsible, didn’t care about Esther’s family as he could see her with a mere telephonic call. By the way it shows his weaknesses and how he is immature and irresponsible. And Naomi couldn’t help noticing how sort of man he was. 9 Marita Golden, Long Distance Life, op.cit.p.63 10 Ibid, p.104 13 His irresponsibility goes beyond that because by the time he was going out with Esther, he had abandoned his wife and children for a long time. He stayed much time without seeing his wife. Mary was looking after the children all alone. Due to his betrayal and distance from his real wife and family, his sons were hungry against him; the author notices: “He had not slept with Mary in over a year. His two sons warred with him, defying and ignoring him, their contempt fed by his betrayal of their mother” 11 . Then Randolph was negatively seen and viewed in his own family as he was rejected by his own sons. They supported their mother, showed her all their affection for however hard and difficult the situation was she stayed with them. Somebody as Wayne the younger one as he was 14 years old was even ready to fight it out with Randolph, his father so he was fed up seeing his father fighting with their mother. When men were intending to go out with a girl or a woman, to get her, they were ready to do and state everything. They even promise what they can’t offer or give. As dominated by their desire to satisfy their sexual desire, men go up to lying for nothing. It is in this prospect that Randolph states that: “I’m not gonna lie, he rushed on. Say I hate my wife. Tell you a bunch Of bullshit about how I’m miserable. (…) I want you. And nothing and nobody else matters. I want you but don’t ask me to be or do what I can’t”12 . 11 Marita Golden, Long Distance Life, op.cit.p.155 12 Ibid, p.192 14 To convince and persuade Esther, Randolph dares to deny his love for his wife. To only please and get Esther, he lies her and by the way, he injures her and shows a lack of respect towards the woman who gave him babies and sacrificed herself for a long time to take care of him and to satisfy him. Another indicative aspect of Randolph sins, lack of maturity and respect towards women is his behavior with Naomi. However when she notices that her daughter was going out with a married man who never came to visit Esther; she was both shocked and betrayed by her daughter. As she tried to forbid Esther from going out the latter refuses and keeps frequenting him. Naomi as a responsible and good mother decides to meet Randolph. Unfortunately her effort and intention were empty as Randolph even jogged the woman; he told her: “I hurt her already. I heart her every time I leave her and go home to sleep beside my wife” 13 . A man could not be more irresponsible than Randolph. He ridiculed the mum who came to plead for her daughter. She asks him to leave her daughter before he hurts her as he will not marry her being a married man. Randolph did not find anything to answer her than; he was already hurting her as he left her every time and returned next to his wife. Randolph was so much sinning that he did not deserve to be given a wife; because he did not know their value. He considers them as objects just useful to satisfy his lust. He much loves women and spends all his time chasing girls and does not respect any of them. But his love for women is understandable and can be easily explained. When he was a child, his father brought him up in an environment where he could not have close relationships with women; Naomi reveals: “Yet no one of the women of his youth penetrated the hermetically Sealed world his father created for him. And so, in the years since he had left his father’s house, Randolph had sought in the love of women what he had been denied in all the years before”