Adele Q&A: Flannery O’Connor

Adele: Mommy, who’s Flannery O’Connor?

Mommy: Someone I’ve always wanted to be like.

Adele: I like you.

Mommy: I’m your mommy. You don’t have a choice, especially while you’re nursing. Of course you like me. You won’t like me when you’re a teenager and I tell you you’re pretty. You’ll probably say, You’re my mother. Of course you think I’m pretty. You can’t take me to the fucking prom. That’s how I was.

Adele: I wouldn’t be so mean.

Mommy: Oh, I don’t know. Mean isn’t always a bad thing. Take O’Connor. She wasn’t mean, from what I gather. But she was biting. She bit people with her words. She said what she thought with figures of speech and euphemisms and self-deprecation. You had to figure her out, she was so smart. You had to catch up to her. She left the rest of us behind because she was so… I think… comfortable with herself and her work and her life. She’s this example, to me, of confidence.

 

Adele Q&A: Wrong Conversation Syndrome

Adele: Mommy, what’s Wrong Conversation Syndrome?

Mommy: A term I introduced to my African American Studies class last year, Petunia.  Basically, it means “mainstream media” coverage of just about everything, every story.

Adele: My favorite is about the hippo and her belly button.  No one ever writes about that.

Mommy: The example I used for my class was that Supreme Court case about whether lethal injection was cruel and unusual punishment.  The case they should have been arguing was how racism and classism shape and drive the prison system in the country (as does cruel and unusual punishment).  Everybody knows our penal system is racist.  Everybody.  From ordinary people like me to legal experts to prisoners to Corrections Officers.  Death row is a Black male death row, for the most part.  It can take anyone with a brain about 10 minutes to learn that this is true.  And yet we’re in the Supreme Court arguing about lethal injection?  Seems like the Wrong Conversation to me.

Adele: I’ve never seen a Black man.

Mommy: You’ve probably seen some, Adele, in the park or downtown or at the store or what have you, but no, we’re white folks, you and me and your daddy and your brother.  And alomst all of our friends are white, especially the ones we see often.   So you haven’t really spent any time with Black people in your 11 months of life.  Your brother hasn’t either.

 

Adele Q&A: Poem

Adele: Mommy, what’s a poem?

Mommy: Palpapble and mute, as a globed fruit.

Adele: I don’t like fruit. Just banana.

Mommy: Just kidding, Petunia. I don’t write poetry, so I don’t have the means to explain it very well. But a poem is an expression that takes the form of writing that most children love. Lots of poems rhyme, and children love that, and lots of poems become songs, and children love that. Poetry is actually everywhere. It’s how we think and feel and are, made into words.

Adele: Like feed me please, feed me peas?

Mommy: Yes, like that. It doesn’t have to rhyme, you know.

Adele.: Nurse me now, Mommy-Cow? 

 

Adele Q&A: Barbie Science

Adele: Mommy, what’s Barbie Science?

Mommy: Scientific studies that confirm our culture’s gender stereotypes. They hardly ever do, really, but it becomes Barbie Science when we say they do, like when people say that it’s natural for boys to shoot pretend guns with their fingers or for girls to prefer dolls over all other toys or for boys to be better with protractors or girls to be better with nurturing.

Adele: Guns are fun!

Mommy: You don’t know what a gun is yet, Petunia. Or a doll, really.

Adele: Can a doll have a gun?

Mommy: Only boy dolls in army or superhero or hunter clothes have guns. Girl dolls have shoes and little ponies and dogs with tiny combs to keep them groomed and nice. Girls like to groom. It’s just in them.

Adele: I want a doll that shoots people.

 

Adele Q&A: Women’s Issues

Adele: Mommy, this is contrived.

Mommy: Just ask me, honey. You’ll see. It gets better.

Adele: Mommy, what are women’s issues?

Mommy: Women’s issues are evidence as to why women aren’t equal with men. Like the wage gap. That’s a women’s issue.

Adele: I’m equal to boys! I’ll show them! I’ll stomp them!

Mommy: The fact that you need to show them you’re equal is a women’s issue, too. You shouldn’t need to show anyone anything. But you do.

Adele: But I want to show them. I’ll pound them! I’ll let them have it!

 

Adele Q&A: Barbie

Adele: Mommy, what’s Barbie?

Mommy: You, at 9 months old, are the perfect age for a Barbie.  You could pull her hair out, gum her, and whack her against the slats of your crib.  It would be wonderfully cathartic for me.   I mean you.  You.

Adele: What’s cathartic?

Mommy: Cathartic is when you release a lot of pent up emotion in a way that you find gratifying.  I’m actually just kidding.  I don’t have anger at Barbie anymore.  I’m just thinking that on this 50th anniversary of a doll that actually, tangibly, and undeniably has the potential to make girls feel like shit about themselves and objectify themselves and bow over toilets and make themselves vomit after they consume a lot of fast food or candy or meat that’s ground from the bodies of sick animals–I’m thinking that maybe someone from the producer class should step up and change this.  I mean, really!  Is any capitalist retailer going to grow some ethical balls and just say, enough?  We care about the children and girls in this country and we’re going to stop producing this crap?  Or maybe produce something else that will sell and be, I don’t know, less harmful?

Adele: What are ethical balls?  Can I play with them?

Mommy: Moral leadership.  I mean moral leadership, Adele.  I mean volunteering to take responsibility for the power you have.  And no, you can’t play with them.

Adele: I’m going to cry if you don’t give me some ethical balls.

Mommy: You have ethical balls, Honey Bear.  I mean, you will develop ethical balls through reading and writing and talking to me about things and enduring my advice and counsel on things that you come across, like miniature sex blow up dolls that we think are fun and harmless for girls to play with.  Can I play with this, please?  You might ask.  And I’ll say, Hell no you can’t play with that–that doll is an example of sexism molded in plastic and you cannot have it in the house.  And then I will try to explain, but maybe I’ll come at it from a different angle, like the fact that plastic is poison or something, and you will not cry until I give in, because I will take you to the park instead.  I will take you on a nature walk and we can watch tadpoles and wade in the creek and look for frogs that don’t have 3 heads and extra legs.

Adele: Extra legs!  Extra legs!  Can I have one?

Mommy: Where was my mother, huh?  And anyway–where was my father?  I realize that taking me to a goddamned park was too much for him, but god.  Maybe some conversation about what I was playing with?  A word of caution?  Anything?  You’d think the men in this country wouldn’t want their daughters playing with miniature sex blow up dolls, but I guess people are okay with this in general.

Adele: I want ethical balls!  I want ethical balls!

Mommy: Me, too, Petunia.  On this 50th anniversary of the Feminist Anti-Christ, let’s all have some.  Ethical Balls for everyone.

 

Adele Q & A: Technology

Adele: Mommy, what’s technology?

Mommy: It is the best thing that has ever happened to the world.

Adele: Like boobies?

Mommy: Better. It enables us all to connect.

Adele: With each other?

Mommy: Yes, Petunia. We can keep in touch no matter what. We can find out all about people we used to find annoying or unimportant or attractive through Facebook, say. People just love Facebook.

Adele: I love faces!

Mommy: I know you do, Petunia, so Facebook is probably just the thing for you. And then there’s Twitter. I learned about it just last night.  Everybody’s doing it.

Adele: Twitter like birdies?

 

Adele Q&A: Valentine’s Day

Adele: Mommy, what’s Valentine’s Day?

Mommy: It’s a day where corporations and restaurants make lots of money. People buy stuff.

Adele: I thought that was Christmas.

Mommy: People buy stuff on Christmas, too, but they don’t go out to eat. So corporations still get the money, but yummy local restaurants don’t.

Adele: I think yummy local restaurants should get money, too. Can we go out to eat this Christmas?

Mommy: No, Petunia. I like to make turkey and stuffing and all kinds of other meals for you on Christmas.

Adele: That’s not very giving of you. And I thought we all need to spend money.

Mommy: We do. But no one has much of it to spend.

Adele: Then how are things supposed to get better?

Mommy: Obama, Petunia.

Adele: Our President.

Mommy: Not just our President: our liberal-centrist President. He has taken out an enormous loan for our country that might fix some things.  Except education.

Adele: Will it feed people?

 

Adele Q&A: Therapy

Adele: Mommy, what’s therapy?

Mommy: A giant wheel, Petunia.  You get in and then run and run and run around like a hamster.  Like a long trip on a ferris wheel, or a log-rolling competition in your nearest pond.  It’s a wonderful and endless circle.

Adele: I love circles.  Your boobie is a circle.

Mommy: Yes, Petunia!  It is.  You would know a circle when you saw one.  No mystery to you.

 

Adele Q&A: War

Adele: Mommy, what’s war?

Mommy: It’s when countries or groups fight each other for something.

Adele: For what?

Mommy: Land, money, control of the government, access to something, what one group might consider honor or dignity or love.  But what we don’t tell children about war, especially when they’re as little as your brother, is what it’s really about, Adele–so I’m going to tell you now. And it’s really, really horrible. Sit down.

Adele: I don’t know how yet. I’ll fall over like a wounded Weeble and hit my head on the floor.