Swift River

“On either side of my bed, I have pictures of portholes I tore from a book, Cabin Class Rivals: A Picture History. They almost look real if you turn away quickly. The rest of the wall is covered with pictures of places I want to visit: the pyramids in Egypt, Stonehenge in England, the redwood forest, the New York Botanical Garden. ‘Why go all that way to see plants and trees? We have those!’ Ma says.”

Diamond’s collection of destinations she wants to see someday demonstrates the strength of her desire to leave Swift River and find a life for herself away from the town. By hanging them up in her room, Diamond keeps her focus on her goal and distracts herself from the realities of her difficult life in Swift River, where she and her mother lack money and transportation and where Diamond faces racism.

“[Sweetie] never forgave his father for taking Robbie away from her, especially to go to Swift River, of all places. Hating that town is like inheriting your granddaddy’s eyes—it’s in the Newberry DNA, crouched down inside every cell.”

In this letter to Diamond, Lena alludes to the complicated relationship that Diamond’s family has with Swift River. The racism multiple generations of her family experienced in that town drove most of her family away, yet Diamond finds herself still trapped in Swift River. Here, Auntie Lena’s simile likens The Intergenerational Harm of Racism to the inheritance of various physical traits, underscoring its deep-rooted nature.

“It has never occurred to me to ask Ma, Where are all the people? The friends? The bridesmaids in ugly dresses? Something about the photo makes me feel queasy and embarrassed, and I have to look away. They seem so alone together. At the beginning of so much alone together.”

As Diamond looks at the photograph of her parents on their wedding day, she describes her family as originating in isolation—an isolation that continued throughout her childhood as Diamond became the only Black person in her entire town after Pop’s disappearance. The oxymoron “alone together” foreshadows how this isolation would cause Pop and Ma’s relationship to one another to deteriorate.

“I’ve been thinking about the fact that families split apart over one thing, but the thing that keeps them apart is something else entirely. Toss in guilt and shame and then the years stack up like bricks in a wall you can’t climb over. I don’t want to be a woman who loses her people, Diamond. I wish I had been there for you as a child, given you a bigger circle of family so it wasn’t just you and your mama and daddy on an island by yourselves.”

Lena writes to Diamond because she realizes The Importance of Family Roots and understands that by keeping her distance, she has contributed to Diamond’s alienation from her family and heritage. Missing Diamond’s parents’ wedding due to fears about how they would respond to her orientation marked the beginning of Lena’s separation from the family, which the shame of not being there only exacerbated, keeping her from reaching out again and causing a new kind of pain.

“‘This will always be your house, Diamond.’ It was where Ma had grown up, where her own Ma had been raised, and her mother before that. ‘These are your roots.’ I pictured all of those women holding my ankles so I wouldn’t float away.”

Ma attempts to provide Diamond with a sense of connection to her maternal line, but Diamond still feels unanchored. This is in large part because of the distance between her experience of life as a Black woman and the experiences of Ma and her maternal ancestors, who are white.

“It’s not lost on me that Ma needs two hundred and fifty dollars to file our court petition, and I’m about to have two hundred and fifty in my hand that I won’t give her.”

The repetition of the dollar amount, coupled with the fact that both the court petition and driver’s education cost the same amount of money, emphasizes that Diamond has to make a choice between dwelling on the past and securing a future for herself. She knows that her mother would argue that Diamond does not need a driver’s license because she could stay in Swift River for the rest of her life. However, Diamond is unwilling to make that sacrifice, even to legally resolve her father’s death.

“The screaming is new; it comes when I feel so bad the words get stuck. I don’t know how to stop it once it starts. Something that needs to leave my body is leaking out of me; I scream until I’m empty. Then I’m back to me, until it fills up again.”

During their fights, Diamond screams at Champei, the only other person of color in the town and someone whom Diamond goes to great lengths to get close to, including learning about her language and culture. Desperate as she is for Champei to be her best friend, Diamond still finds that she has to scream—a wordless expression of her struggle as a Black girl in Swift River—which frightens Champei off.

“Thank goodness your mama and daddy at least told you they existed, lived a life. To be honest I never had the full story about that night myself. I guess we’re all guilty of looking the other way when something is too sad or shameful to speak on. When I first found out, I was same as you—didn’t know what to do with that anger. I can’t imagine what it must be like to live there, laying your head down at night on top of a graveyard built by the folks who did the killing.”

The painful legacy of The Leaving continues to haunt Diamond and her family. For Diamond to continue to live in Swift River, especially without her father, she has to contend with what it means to be the sole focus of the racial animosity that has been inherited by the next generation.

“But I still wonder if I’ll ever stop feeling like it’s my job to change people’s minds about me, about us, like I’m connected to them by an invisible thread until I can crack the code to their kindness and understanding.”

Diamond feels the weight of responsibility to represent all Black people to her all-white community and to convince them of their value and ability to belong to the community. Even with Shelly, with whom she is the closest, she has work to do to overcome racism.

“Shelly is leaving Swift River as soon as she gets her license. She acts like a person who is leaving soon. Leaving gives her courage for fuck yous and eat mes and the rest. When a woman called me n***** bitch in Cumbies last week after I bumped her by mistake, Shelly yelled, Fuck you dumb bitch, she’s not like that, and I wanted to say something, tell Shelly she didn’t get it exactly right. But I feel the same force in the opposite direction: I live here. I accept stuff I don’t want to. I love people who say terrible things. I want some of her leaving to rub off on me.”

The tension that Diamond feels in her relationship with Shelly comes to the surface in this interaction. By claiming that Diamond is “not like that,” Shelly implies that Diamond is different from other Black people and therefore ought to be accepted by Swift River—an implication that presupposes that most Black people do not deserve acceptance. While Diamond appreciates Shelly coming to her defense, her assumptions about Black people continue to make Diamond aware that she is not completely safe in Swift River, even with those who are relatively friendly.

“Swift River white folks start to talk to me like I’m one of them or at least I’m not as bad as a Canuck. Make it easier for me to move around town on my own now. Doctor is sending me out by myself on some of the visits he used to make, and people don’t put up too much of a fuss once they see I know what I’m doing. If someone starts to hassle me on the streets a mister might come along and say, Leave her be, she’s our Negro. She’s good and hardworking.”

Clara experiences a shift in her reception among the white community as workers from Canada become the target of their xenophobia. This makes Clara’s life easier on a practical level, but like Shelly’s words in the previous chapter, the acceptance Clara experiences is conditional and still predicated on racism; by claiming that she’s “good and hardworking,” the townsfolk imply that other Black people are not, while the description of her as “[their] Negro” is both possessive and tokenizing.

“I look around the room at these dopes and can’t help but think about the fact that Aunt Clara is probably responsible for half of their lives, if you do the math. I walk around thinking about this all the time now—her pulling out babies who gave birth to other babies who then became these meanies. It’s so intimate and thrilling and awful; a strange new thread that ties me to them.”

Now that Diamond has access to Clara’s letters to Sweetie, she realizes that there are multigenerational ties between her family and the white residents of Swift River. As a midwife, Clara brought the new generation safely into the world, yet these same people now have contempt for Diamond despite the service her great-aunt provided for the town. The recurring image of a “thread” connecting Diamond to the town speaks to the nature of the racism in sundown towns, where some people of color were simultaneously reviled and encouraged to remain because of the services they provided.

“My stomach flutters each time I pass by Ma and Pop. They stand in front of a fence, straight as boards, not touching. Everything around them blinks and whirls. They smile and wave when our faces catch each other, then freeze and frown when they think I can’t see. Like someone is pushing their on and off buttons. Like I am their on and off button, their power source. Something about this moment makes me know we are in very bad trouble. I am too little to be everything that holds us up.”

Though only a child, Diamond recognizes that all is not well with Pop and Ma and feels the weight of needing to keep the family together despite not understanding the dynamics that are causing problems. As she recognizes, this too much pressure and responsibility for a young child—a realization that only deepens her anxiety.

“The yellow light turns to red and I realize it’s flashing and there are cops who are dragging Pop and the man away, putting them into the back seat of a police car. There is a police car in the middle of the park. Ma is screaming. She pushes my head into her chest. Again, we are still. A bunch of river rocks in the churning, cold, cold water. The truth: I let go. On purpose. I let that money go. That’s what I remember.”

The reference to “river rocks in the churning, cold, cold water” evokes the Swift River in which Pop (presumably) later drowns. By letting go of the money and setting off the circumstances that led to her Pop’s arrest, Diamond chooses not to accept the responsibility her parents gave her to hold the family together in handing her that $100 bill.

“For the first time in my life I don’t care. I have Lena. I have Aunt Clara—a family army, or at least enough for a family band. Pop would say I have the wind at my back. There is something in this feeling I could chase down for the rest of my life. As soon as I decide to leave Ma, the whole world feels like Go go go. I worry that once I start moving I may never stop again.”

Having found support from the Black side of her family in the letters from Lena and Clara, Diamond no longer feels so alone. As a white woman who could not understand the weight of Blackness in a town like Swift River, her mother was not able to provide the connection that she needed.

“‘I’m not blaming you, Sweetie, but you have too much on your plate. They could have been killed. The boy needs his own mama,’ Robbie’s daddy said. ‘Clara raised up both of us! I want him to know her. I want to know her, again.’”

Diamond’s grandfather insists on taking her father to Swift River in response to an incident that scared the whole family that something terrible might happen to Robbie. Sweetie was not able to provide enough supervision to keep him safe, and Diamond’s grandfather valued the connection with Clara so much that he was willing to move back to Swift River.

“It start to rain and Jacques pulls us under the roots of a fallen tree, the pit in the earth so deep, it made a small cave. It’s dark and I can barely make out his face, but his eyes look scared, his breath sound scared. 

We have to stay put, he says. It’s safer to be here for the night, with the bears and bobcats, than out there on the streets with white folks. He angry, very angry. I don’t know what I feel, but it’s the thing after fear burn a hot hole into your gut. Empty and sore.”

The contrast between the “bears and bobcats” and the white townspeople speaks to how dangerous it is for both Clara and Jacques in Swift River. Jacques knows that they have a better chance fighting nature itself than facing the penalty for being out after dark in a sundown town like Swift River.

“‘After next week, you won’t need to work so much. It’ll just be like a fun, after school thing.’

‘Ma, we won’t just get a suitcase full of money after court.’

‘Very soon after,’ she says. ‘Something to look forward to. Don’t you want things to look forward to?’

‘I already have things to look forward to.’ I feel the fire of leaving spread through my whole body.

‘I know you’re keeping secrets from me, Diamond. Please stop. Please.’ She catches me off guard.

‘I don’t know. Maybe soon?’ I say. She looks at me like the secrets might destroy her.”

Diamond does not want to hurt her mother, but she needs to leave Swift River. Knowing that her mother wants her to stay with her in the family home, though it would mean being isolated from Black people for Diamond’s whole life, Diamond keeps secret her driving lessons and her plans to leave as soon as she possibly can.

“Inside our happy car bubble, Shelly fiddles with the radio, but there are no good songs. She begs for the Rolling Stones on the tape deck and Mr. Jimmy gives in. He doesn’t usually allow cassettes; says they use up more of the battery. I hold my breath and pray it’s not the album with ‘Brown Sugar’ on it, where Mick Jagger sings Scarred old slaver, know he’s doing alright. Hear him whip the women, just around midnight. I’m afraid that Shelly might love the chorus too much to notice. Brown Sugar, how come you taste so good? Brown Sugar, just like a Black girl should. I want Shelly to hate this song. I want to taste so good. I want a song to be for me.”

Diamond is repulsed by a song with racist lyrics that she fears Shelly might like. At the same time, Diamond longs for what the song ostensibly describes—someone who wants her and wants to be with her. The tension between the two desires shows in her thoughts about the song; it is not “for” her—it relies on a stereotyped and sexualized image of Black womanhood—but the idea of being desired as a Black woman is nevertheless powerful.

“I think about what Swift River would be like if the Black people hadn’t left, if it was full of normal, like this family, if roots stretched back to olden days when my people filled the streets and went to church and worked in their gardens and ran a whole mill.”

Diamond sees the contrast between her current, isolated reality and what her life could have been like if a Black community still existed in Swift River. Forced to constantly focus on defending herself against racist attacks, she recognizes the need for kinship with others who accept her and celebrate her humanity.

“Rick looks sexy when you squint your eyes; he’s the boy you end up with after the popular one rejects you. He’s the one you were supposed to be with all along. Together, we all look like the end of the movie. I try and imagine the Black family here with us and it won’t work. Pop always said I sit inside the crack that splits the world in two.”

Diamond’s desperation to belong extends to trying to make Rick acceptable as a romantic partner. Underpinning this struggle is her biracial identity; she straddles the white and Black worlds, which is an all but impossible thing to do given the gap between the two. Indeed, her father implies that racism has fundamentally restructured the world along binary lines, raising questions about where someone like Diamond could possibly belong.

“The courtroom looked tired instead of ravenous, worn-down wood and worn-down people, pictures of dead judges in a room full of empty metal folding chairs on a peeling linoleum floor. Our judge, an older man with giant white dentures, looked over our files and lisped, Looks good. The woman in the registrar’s office next door stamped the death certificate saying, You two enjoy this beautiful weather. That was the thing about a racist town. It got to decide when it would be kind.”

The description of the courtroom highlights its age and defunctness, underscoring the absurdity and indignity of the fact that Diamond and her mother must comply with its procedures to get the paperwork approved to declare Pop dead. There is no way to know beforehand whether the judicial system will give them trouble or simply approve their request.

“Ma, I didn’t thank you. I couldn’t bring myself to do it, couldn’t tell you how much it meant to me. It felt like a concession, like absolution. I wasn’t ready. But I told Pop as I sat in Ladybug. I got a new red bike. It’s a ten speed. It’s so nice I don’t even want to ride it. Something happened to Ma and me and we’re pretty banged up. I’ll never hitch again. I got my license. I screamed the best part. We have land, Pop! We have family! Everything seemed possible. Thank you, Ma. Thank you.”

Diamond recognizes that Ma did her best to create a positive environment for her daughter despite the many challenges she faced. Looking back on this time later, Diamond can thank her mother without absolving her of the harm she also did.