Praisesong For The Widow

Thomasina wakes, catching Avey in the living room with her bags all packed. She is a thin, light-skinned woman who danced in a chorus line as a young woman. Avey does not answer her immediately, feeling that she has already left and expecting Thomasina to be angry. When Avey finally tells Thomasina that she is leaving, Thomasina is shocked. She takes in Avey’s elegant and finely made clothing, which is carefully matched and arranged on her body. Breaking from her trance-like observation of Avey, Thomasina calls Clarice in, who asks if Avey is truly leaving. Clarice is concerned, but Thomasina is irate. As she goes on about all the money Avey will lose, Avey’s mind is elsewhere; she imagines herself stepping off the boat, a cab taking her to the airport, finding a nearly empty flight back to New York, and envisions ordering a glass of wine as the plane takes off. Clarice is visibly disheartened by Avey’s decision—her shoulders and face fall, revealing Clarice’s belief that it is her fault Avey wants to leave.

Thomasina angrily points out that Avey will be stuck on the island with no clean water to drink. This reminds Avey of another cruise they took—when Thomasina danced in a parade and Avey felt ashamed to see “while faces laughing” and “white hands applauding” (25). Reaching a boiling point about Avey’s departure, Thomasina cries out that she can’t go anywhere with “niggers! They’ll mess up ever’ time!” (27). Rather than being offended, Avey, to her own surprise, smiles, feeling complimented. Avey rises, ignoring Thomasina and moving to apologize to Clarice. However, something in Clarice gives her pause; she suddenly feels she must move away from Clarice to avoid a curse. Avey leaves to settle her bill and plans to return for her luggage. 

Avey is inspired to abandon here cruise for two reasons: a dream and a parfait. She knows better than to tell Thomasina this, otherwise her companion would really think her crazy. Three nights before, she woke in a panic; Avey had a dream. This was unusual because she had not truly dreamt since the ‘60s—when nightmares of “cattle prods and lunging dogs” mixed with “high pressure hoses” (31). She dreamt, once, that she found her daughters in the ruins of the Birmingham Sunday School that was bombed in 1963. After that, her dreams stopped all together. When she began dreaming again three nights ago, it was of her great-aunt Cuney.

As a child, Avey would spend Augusts with her aunt on Tatem Island, and the old woman would tell her the same story as they walked to “the Landing” (32). Cuney, as a young woman, had been kicked out of church for dancing once; at first, she denied it, but then claimed that “the Spirit [was] moving powerfully in her” (33). Though she had been banned for only one night, Cuney never returned, indignant with innocence. It was said, then, that the Landing became her religion. She would go out, joined by the “elderly men and women […] who stills held to the old ways” and they would move their bodies, claiming the “the Spirit took hold” of them (34). It was not meant to be dancing, but Avey thought “it felt like dancing in her blood” (35).

The tale Cuney always told Avey was of the Igbos’ arrival to the Landing: that they had arrived to the shore, took a long look around in silence, and then walked back towards the water—for the “pure-born Africans […] could see in more ways than one”—passing the ships and walking on the water like it was “solid ground” (39). Cuney’s grandmother, who was there, said hearing them sing and how happy they sounded made her mind follow them out, even though her body stayed behind. Nobody else in Tatem believed the tale, but Cuney was certain of it, even looking at Avey with grief and disappointment when the young girl asks her why the Igbos did not drown. Cuney pointed out that Jesus was never said to have drowned when he walked on water.

In her dream on the ship, Avey finds her aunt waiting out on the Landing, beckoning towards her niece to join her. Cuney had insisted on naming Avey “Avatara,” after her grandmother, who everyone else thought was crazy. Avey, though, could not help but believe that, by repeating the Igbo’s story every summer as a child, her aunt had “entrusted her with a mission she couldn’t even name yet had felt duty-bound to fulfill” (42). Avey dreams that she pulls against her aunt’s hold, Cuney’s face wearing sadness and disappointment again. They begin to fight in earnest, hitting each other back and forth. When Avey glances around, seeing her neighbors from back home are watching them fight and that white faces are mixed in with black. Avey is furious at her aunt, whose eyes are filled with “anguished love and disappointment” (45).