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The Darkest Child

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Plot Summary

The Darkest Child

Delores Phillips

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2004

Plot Summary
Set in Georgia in the 1950s, Delores Phillips’s debut historical novel, The Darkest Child (2005), follows thirteen-year-old Tangy Mae Quinn, an intelligent African American girl, as she battles to finish her education in the face of family tragedy, social upheaval, and her mother's unthinkable abuse. Before her death in 2014, Phillips worked as a nurse in a Georgia facility that tends to abused women and children.

It is 1958, and Rozelle "Rosie" Quinn has just quit her housekeeping job. Although she is still considered a second-class citizen in Parkersfield, Georgia, she is light-skinned and beautiful. Rosie has always felt she deserved better. Tangy Mae, Rosie's thirteen-year-old daughter, walks her home as Rosie moans in pain and announces to all the world she is dying.

Rosie is not dying, however, only having a baby—her tenth. This new little girl, Judy, joins the Quinns in the shack they call home. The oldest girl, Mushy, left long ago, unlike twenty-year-old Harvey and eighteen-year-old Sam. Both are kept home by Rosie's manipulative ways. Sixteen-year-old Tarabelle is cold and distant. Deaf and mute Martha Jean is fifteen years old. Tangy is next, followed by the softhearted eleven-year-old Wallace, and the youngest girls, Laura, Edna, and now Judy. All the children are beautiful, but Tangy Mae is the darkest-skinned of all, and Rosie hates her for it.



But then again, Rosie seems to hate all her children. She beats them mercilessly and without warning. Once she stabbed Martha Jean through the hand with an ice pick simply to scare all her offspring into obedience. She makes them drop out of school to get jobs, and then takes every penny of their money to spend on liquor or on pretty dresses for herself. At least the boys can work labor jobs. For Tarabelle (and Mushy before her), work means being sent to "the farmhouse," where men pay to have sex with them.

The one bright spot in Tangy's life is school. She is exceptionally intelligent and has devoured every book in the meager segregated library. She hopes against hope that she will be able to graduate high school and finally leave Parkersfield, but she worries what will happen to her younger siblings if she is not there. Besides, Rosie continually threatens to pull her from school to force her to get a job.

One day, Rosie tells Tangy to go to the post office. Martha Jean accompanies her, and there they meet Velman Cooper, a black man who takes an immediate liking to Martha Jean. She likes him as well, and despite the fact that she cannot talk, the two begin seeing each other in secret. Rosie nearly beats Martha Jean to death when she finds out about Velman. Above all, she fears her children leaving her. Horrified by this, Velman trades his car to Rosie in return for permission to marry Martha Jean.



Soon after, Tangy is playing outside with Laura and Edna when Rosie brings Judy out and flings her from the front porch into a rocky gulley. The children are horrified, and when the authorities arrive to investigate the death, Rosie plays the part of the grieving mother. She convinces them it was an accident. The incident serves as a stark reminder to Tangy of the possible consequences if she leaves. They cannot go to the authorities for help, because no one really cares what happens to black children.

As time passes, Tangy, now fifteen years old, struggles to stay in school. Racial tensions are running high in Parkersfield, and a black man named Junior (a friend of Tangy) is lynched. Sam is arrested for the murder because of his light skin. Witnesses say a white man did it, so Sam makes a convenient scapegoat.

Rosie brings home a string of men, one of whom asks to meet Tangy. He introduces himself as Crow and confesses that he is her father. He gives her some money and laments that Rosie turned down his offer of marriage because she wanted a light-skinned man. When Tarabelle nearly dies from an abortion performed with a clothes hanger, Tangy is finally sent to the farmhouse.



For the next two years, Tangy attends school when she can and goes to the farmhouse when ordered to. If she refuses, Rosie threatens to send Laura in her place. Harvey marries a woman whom he mercilessly beats. Tarabelle moves out. In the absence of Sam, Rosie's mental health gradually deteriorates. She often talks to herself and thinks bugs are crawling all over her.

One night at the farmhouse, Tangy is beaten badly, and Rosie finally has to return there to earn her own money. She comes home covered in blood, babbling that Junior's ghost murdered the man she was with, the same man who beat Tangy. Crow appears and confesses to the murder as revenge for the man having beaten Tangy. He gives her his mother's address and says that if Tangy ever needs something, she should contact her.

Rosie becomes catatonic and is sent to an institution. Meanwhile, Tangy and the younger children move in with Mushy. Rosie is soon released from the hospital and sent to Mushy's house, as well. While the family argues over what to do with Rosie, Tangy's graduation day arrives. Tarabelle offers to watch Rosie while the others go to the ceremony, but Laura warns that she saw them leave with kerosene and matches.



Mushy and Tangy race to their old house and find it ablaze. Rosie dances outside; Tarabelle has perished in the flames. Rosie says she killed Tarabelle because she had been trying to kill Rosie. With Edna safe with her father and Wallace under the protection of their grandfather, Tangy takes Laura and boards a bus headed far away from Parkersfield.

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