Abuse and Escape in “The End of Tennessee” https://ift.tt/bZGgqoT
The saying “There is no place like home” resonates differently for memoirist Rachel M. Hanson. In her memoir, The End of Tennessee, Hanson describes a traumatic childhood that was nearly inescapable, during a time and at a place in which Hanson was held captive, abused, and manipulated. Her memoir is a beacon of hope for the abused and a manifesto for healing.
Hanson wastes no time in haunting the reader with her story. In the initial chapter, she tells us she will eventually run away from home at the age of seventeen after suffering the inappropriate advances of a neighbor, her mother’s manipulations, and her father’s inaction.
Hanson’s use of sensory language foreshadows the tension and terrain of her story. Right away we are in the Tennessee mud, smelling the cows, and watching the rain fall:
At my back, pastures spread far, darkened where dairy cows huddled for warmth in a slow January drizzle.
She was “the mother” to her younger siblings, the foundation for the entire family, and ultimately a child who was manipulated into responsibilities far too senior or appropriate:
I focused on her tangled hair, matted in places. I wetted a washcloth with warm water and used it to wash her face and hands, and then I put clean clothes on her little body, tossing the dirty dress she’d worn inside out in the laundry.
Hanson loses her innocence when a neighbor offers her his piano and his hands linger on her hair — a “question in his fingertips.” After his unwanted advances, she revolts by cutting her hair. The neighbor is a prelude to what others will come to demand from her. Everyone expects something, nothing is free, and the costs are high.
Early on we learn that Hanson’s mother, a religious fanatic, keeps the kids out of school. “God doesn’t approve of schools,” she says. She is distant, dismissive, and completely unequal to the responsibility of caring for the numerous children she continues to produce. When Hanson is sick, her mother leaves her older brother to care for her:
Seth gives me a dirty t-shirt to wipe my mouth and then takes me upstairs and searches for the pink Pepto medicine that is supposed to fix nausea. I am too relieved to be out of the basement to worry about making my mother angry…
On another occasion Hanson falls asleep in the bathtub but is commanded by her mother to feed her younger sibling.
My lips are blue and my teeth chatter and the thought of chores leaves me more tired than ever.
Her mother often leaves her children to bathe in her own dirty bathwater:
I don’t want to get into the water because it looks murky and gross. I try not to think of my mother’s dead skin, hair, and dirt floating in the water.
Hanson’s mother even issues a warrant for her arrest when Hanson runs away.
Sadly, Hanson’s father enables his wife, and does more damage than the mother due to his passivity. On one occasion Hanson schedules breakfast with her father for father-daughter time. She asks her mother to wake her up to ensure she’d be ready when her father leaves the next morning. Instead, her mother fails to wake her and takes her place at breakfast with her father. Hanson’s father does not inquire why Hanson is not there, nor does he intervene. Later in the book Hanson recalls her father’s broken promises:
Later, when I run away, I wonder why my father made a promise he had no intention of keeping, of offering help he would never give.
Hanson is a storyteller. She details the background of neighbors, employers, friends, and ballet teachers. As she recalls each person and memory, it is as if we are at a kitchen table listening to town tales, and we need to know how each ends. Hanson brilliantly ricochets back and forth in time, giving the reader each character’s timeline, critical to understanding what transpires. And her historical notes help us understand the time and culture in which she grew up. We learn that her older broth Seth is not actually her father’s son. We learn that Lucy, the daughter of a farmer Hanson worked for, was murdered by her husband when she tried to leave him. And we learn that it was Hanson’s ballet teacher and an attentive police officer who were responsible for Hanson’s ultimate freedom.
The End of Tennessee is a balance of love, hate, and healing. Hanson takes the reader through her childhood, her struggle to escape Tennessee, and finally into her young adulthood. The reader is left with the revelation that while we may be able to overcome our present, we cannot outrun the past. Our past will continue to shape us as we heal and transform into something else entirely.
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