Roselily

“He glares beyond them to the occupants of the cars, white faces glued to promises beyond a country wedding, noses thrust forward like dogs on a track. To him they usurp the wedding.” 

The groom is from Chicago and is a Muslim invested in the race politics of the era. Being in the South and seeing White people—the descendants of slave holders, who profit from the continued disempowerment of Black people in the South—wounds his pride.

“She thinks of ropes, chains, handcuffs, his religion. His place of worship. Where she will be required to sit apart with covered head.” 

Roselily is concerned that the groom’s faith will force her into a subservient role. In her life up to this point, she has struggled economically and as a single mother, but she has had her independence, and she is worried that her marriage will change that.

“A chance to be on top. What a relief, she thinks. What a vision, a view, from up so high.” 

This is the trade Roselily is making: everything she has known for a prosperous life in Chicago. Though she is conflicted about the marriage, she knows that no longer living under financial strain will be a genuine relief.

“Was a good man but weak because good language meant so much to him he could not live with Roselily. Could not abide TV in the living room, five beds in three rooms, no Bach except from four to six on Sunday afternoons. No chess at all.” 

The father of Roselily’s fourth child is a man with education and refined taste, which he ultimately was not willing to compromise in order to stay with her. His rejection weighs on her as she enters into a marriage with another man she sees as distinctly different from her.

“But of course they know no reason why beyond what they daily have come to know.” 

This responds directly to the preacher’s words, “If there’s anybody here who knows a reason why.” Roselily knows that there are ways in which the marriage is a poor match, and she knows other people know it as well. The preacher’s words and Roselily’s own doubts and fears compete for her attention, demonstrating the story’s “theory of mind” effect by creating a realistic impression of distracted, interwoven thoughts.

“In the city. He sees her in a new way. This she knows, and is grateful. But is it new enough?” 

Roselily is concerned that she is, at heart, a poor single mother from the South, and that moving to Chicago with her new husband will not change that, despite what he thinks to the contrary. She knows that people’s expectations don’t always match reality.

“Her place will be in the home, he has said, repeatedly, promising her rest she had prayed for. But now she wonders. When she is rested, what will she do? They will make babies […] Her hands will be full. Full of what? Babies. She is not comforted.” 

Roselily has struggled to raise her children and provide for them. The groom, who is prosperous, will put an end to that struggle, but Roselily worries that her purpose in life will be taken from her without the independence that comes with working and earning her own money.

“Her husband would free her. A romantic hush. Proposal. Promises. A new life! Respectable, reclaimed, renewed. Free! In robe and veil.” 

In this instance of juxtaposition, Roselily is able to find one kind of freedom by submitting to a traditional—even constricting—role as a wife.

“She does not know if she loves him. She loves his sobriety. His refusal to sing just because he knows the tune. She loves his pride. His blackness and his gray car. She loves his understanding of her condition.” 

Roselily’s condition here is the condition of the poor Black Southerner. The groom’s politics seek to liberate and empower people like Roselily, who he feels have not had access to the same opportunity he has had. Roselily may not love him, but she loves that he values her and wants to uplift her, even as she realizes that his desire may come from principle as much as emotion.

“His love of her makes her completely conscious of how unloved she was before.” 

Through her ambivalence, Roselily sees that the groom truly loves her, and that his love is imbued with a desire to see her respected and taken care of, forms of care she has not had from anyone else in her life.

“The preacher is odious to her. She wants to strike him out of the way, out of her light, with the back of her hand. It seems to her he has always been standing in front of her, barring her way.” 

Roselily is conflicted about religion and its role in her life, especially with regard to the Christian church. Her desire to strike the preacher comes from her desire to cherish her own worth and to interrupt his authority over her life.

“Her husband’s hand is like the clasp of an iron gate.” 

With the marriage ceremony finished, Roselily’s fate is sealed, for good or ill. The imagery here is mixed: security and strength, but also imprisonment.

“He knows they cannot understand he is not a Christian. He will not explain himself. He feels different, he looks it. The old women thought he was like one of their sons except that he had somehow got away from them. Still a son, not a son. Changed.” 

The way the Southerners view the groom illustrates the struggles Black Americans had in the 1970s with regard to Black identity and Islam. Older generations had a hard time reckoning with how readily young people abandoned their Christian heritage, which younger generations associated with a heritage of slavery.