We Deserve Monuments

YA fiction 

     "Mama Letty was saying these men--the same men whose home I'd been in, whose hands I'd shaken--were the same men who killed my grandfather.

     How the fuck was I supposed to explain that?"

     Avery, protagonist of Jas Hammonds' We Deserve Monuments, counts the bullet holes in a highway sign as her family draws close to what she expects to be a wasteland.  Her maternal grandmother's cancer has taken a turn for the worse.  She and her parents are going to care for her until the inevitable.  

     A lot of teens in Avery's situation would be raising Hell.  This detour from real life happens at the beginning of her senior year in high school.  She's come up with a protective mantra:  Get in.  Get out.  No drama.  Focus forward.  In other words, this is only temporary so don't get involved.

     She'll find out quickly that's more easily said than done.  

     Her mother, Zora,  and grandmother can't be in the same room without fighting.  Their bickering seems to be a continuation of their relationship from that long ago time before Zora took off for college and rarely looked back.  Avery thinks that's kind of selfish on her mother's part.  Given the circumstances, why can't she let bygones be bygones?  And her mom won't give her a clue about what's going on.

     Two girls, long time best friends, in her class bring her into their by invitation only circle.  Simone is the girl next door, the daughter of the woman who had once been close friends with her mom--a friendship that has grown quite frosty.  Jade is a rich white girl who lives in an actual plantation house.  Her father and stepmother (There are rumors that her father had paid someone to kill her mother so he could marry the employee he was already knowing in the Biblical sense of the word) own and run a very fancy hotel that has added a ritzy spa.  The relationships across the generations and even among the girls are sometimes quite tumultuous.

     Avery at first plans to pretty much ignore the grandmother who greeted her with:  

     "'I know this ain't Avery,' Mama Letty said now.  She followed Carole and Simone's lead and zeroed in on my lip ring.  "Out here looking like a fish caught on a hook.  She a lesbian now too?'" 

     Simone and Jade convince her to build a relationship with Mama Letty while there still is time.  It isn't easy to elicit more than grunts and sarcasm.  But when she manages to build some trust her grandmother shares some very inconvenient truths concerning the grandfather she never got to meet and the town she's becoming a part of.

     A lot of important themes--racism, both systemic and individual, sexuality, family conflict, and trauma--enter into this narrative.  The combination in the hands of a less skilled writer would come across as agenda driven.  Hammonds gives it the feel of real life.

     I sure hope that they are working on another novel even as I write this.

On a purrrsonal note, even though she came to my family instead of us moving in with her I had the experience of unexpectedly caring for a medically frail older relative.  My mother's aunt hit the point where she couldn't take care of herself.  We call it Alzheimers now.  Back then it was senility.  As the only non brain damaged daughter I ended up doing a lot of the work.  I didn't know what the hell I was doing.  And she couldn't remember from one day to the next who I was.  She was always telling Mom to fire "that girl".  That added to my other responsibilities made then social life I needed impossible.

So here's the weird thing.  When she died I'd been on my own for years.  I was finally, ten years later than my classmates, starting college.  I'd taken advantage of a wilderness camping before classes start program.  One night participants were sitting around a campfire.  The air was unusually still.  Smoke was rising straight up.  Suddenly it felt like a wind whipped through me for just a moment.  I thought she's gone.  I looked at my watch and noted the time.  Sure enough when I talked to my mother on the phone she told me that was the moment her aunt passed.  To this day I have no clue why it happened.  I like to think she was telling me she was on her way to a place where her essence would no longer be trapped in a deteriorating brain and body.

Jules Hathaway 

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