“As I dangled there in the sky from His hand, I knew He didn’t want to let me go. But I also knew that if He did not let go, He would be ruined by holding onto me. So in that choice, I let go of Him. I had to, for His sake. I had to fall as the Devil, so He could stay the God.”
This passage is written at the moment Sal is recounting his fall from grace. When we read between the lines, he’s speaking about his father back at the farm. To a child, the parent is the god. The figure directing their life, sheltering them, educating them. When Sal speaks up at the farm and says he wants a better life than that of his father’s, his mother slaps him and calls him the devil for his disrespect. But Sal’s disrespect is not to say he doesn’t love his father, despite the abuse. And he’s willing to be the lesser one, if it means his father will be able to feel significant. That is the gift from the son to the father. He allows him to remain in charge, the one in the clouds.
One of the mysteries surrounding Sal is whether he is of earth or of heavenly charge. And this man and woman back at the farm, are they real? Or are they something more? When I look at Sal and his relationship with his abusive father, I see the father as an example of America. If you’re a person of color, America is something very different to you than it is if you’re white. For Sal, America is a place of abuse. Each strike from the father is the abuse people of color suffer every day in America. In a particular scene in the novel, Sal’s father lays a rope around their house. He says he wants to try to be good. We see this attempt by America every day, promising to be better to minority communities. And yet, every day we see women, men, and children continuously targeted for their race. By the time the father has cut the rope, the fields have dried. As we say in the book, “His American chance was going to grave.” He blames Sal and the abuse continues.
This is not far-fetched from the politics of our country. When we feel our American dream slipping from us, there is a tendency to blame someone else for that loss. Sal’s “father” is doing the same. This symbol of the rope goes back to the symbol that became prominent in the 19th century which is that of the black victim with a rope around their neck, swinging from the trees. When I look back at my papaw’s experiences, being a man of brown skin in white towns, I reflect back on that abuse he endured, too, knowing how lucky he was to escape the same fate as Sal.
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