what’s real?
by Susan Weber
Two weeks ago a cast of characters dreamed up by Donna Tartt in her indelible book, The Goldfinch, traipsed into my reading room and let things rip. I’ve just been undone by the ending, as in heaving sobs in unabashed oceanic waves.
I first encountered it in Canada. In December the book-savvy partner of my eldest son handed me her copy. “Some of it’s hard to read,” she said. I had some hard to read non-fiction going at the time, so I left The Goldfinch in Winnipeg and headed home.
As world pandemic crept into the headlines, I continued to work through White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo. A discussion group down the street was in full swing, and I had a lot to learn. How white privilege serves me and powerful forces collude with me to deny it exists. If you’re white and starting to think this is an awkward direction to be taking this, bingo, you’re getting the visceral gist of DiAngelo’s point. Examining our whiteness is uncomfortable at the very least.
I should know. When Ohioans were told to stop doing things like book discussions, I prepared to socially distance myself out of the study group—really no choice guys, can’t be helped—when, damn. The church basement organizer knew how to Zoom.
Just before the library closed, I took out a copy of The Goldfinch. There it sat on a pile of books as I tuned in to Wednesday night discussions. A thirty member group had shrunk to about a dozen. Black attendees, with no obligation to help white people see our entitlement, stayed for reasons only they can know. They kindly, firmly shared their experience, bearing witness to our discontent. They wagered their precious time on the outside chance we’d want to trade in our learned helplessness for stamina to fight this thing. What thing? Racism pure and not so simple.
The Goldfinch had been eying me from the book pile all this time. My reclusive nature compounded by stay at home directives had begun to send out hairy, viny branches that were blotting out the sun. Maybe it was loneliness, maybe it was grief around my deep-rooted racial indifference, but I picked up the novel and began to read.
I’d compare that experience to strapping into the cockpit of a souped up roller coaster, bolting out the gate, twisting, turning through the stratosphere suspended over tangled tracks below—horrified, gratified, stupefied, way too electrified to look away. The story felt as real and vivid as a lived life’s peaks and valleys as it finally rolled to its conclusion.
In the white fragility group we came to our last chapter too. Eyes had been opened at least a crack, hard truth revealed, lessons duly noted. Plans were made to take more steps toward the racially conscious selves we’d rather be. Ours was a gentle parting.
But no matter how enlightening a non-fiction work, no matter how worthy the content, fiction hits us in a different place. Story pulls our analytic self into the chaos of not knowing. This can be a fertile place for change. The Goldfinch unnerved, dismantled, and reassembled me. The fate of the characters was my fate, their resurrection my boundless joy. As their story wound down, the last few perfect words set me on the same old earth. Did I know myself in the aftermath? Sort of, yes, though differently. I didn’t know I had such tears to shed for beauty. And I don’t know what comes next. I sit here watchful, waiting. Robin on a sky blue egg.
Painting by Carel Fabricius is in the Public Domain