"After Rosa Parks" by Janet Desaulniers

[Barbara]

"After Rosa Parks" is the next story on our schedule. You can find it in our anthology, The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction. So far, I haven't been able to find another source for it online.

There are so many threads going through this story. Desaulniers opened with Ellie's son, Cody, who is trying to survive his new world living with first one parent, then another, after a divorce. He also is trying to get used to kindergarten after not experiencing preschool. As a retired early childhood teacher, I was most interested in Cody. However, his mother, Ellie, is compelling as well. Her responses to her son drew me in. Also, as a teacher, I was profoundly disappointed in the responses of the nurse and the playground lady. I longed to have a position of authority in that school so that I could have a talk with them.

Then, we have Frank, Ellie's brother and that hits like a ton of bricks. I really liked him too. It feels, at that point, like there us a permanent dark cloud hanging over this family.

So, what do you think of the ending? I think that the whole meaning Desaulniers intended is there in that final paragraph, Is it that both she and her son are realizing that they don't need to be bound by the arbitrary rules around them?

Also, what do you think about the pairing of MLK and Rosa Parks and their struggle for freedom with what she and her son are learning? I'm a bit uncomfortable with that. It seems a stretch to compare the restrictions of the first two with the second two.

[Steve]

While I patiently await some answers to Barb's question that may enlighten me regarding what of value I am to take away from this story, I shall babble about something that troubles me. Some may recall how baffled I was some years ago by the proposition that a barn burned down in a short story as a result of a milking machine over-heating, something that I considered an absurd proposition. This is akin to that.

He shook his head. "It gets worse," he said, smiling lightly. "They went ahead and scheduled me for more tests and then this clerk called back and told me I don't qualify for this treatment. 'This is not a service-related ailment,' he told me. 'The VA treats only the indigent and service-related ailments.'"

That is simply not true, and a mere modicum of research would have told the author that it's not true. Since that passage is critical to Frank's part in this story, it seems to me that a little research was more than justified.

[Barbara]

That sounded wrong to me too, Steve, so I checked with a friend who retired from the Navy after 24 years. He said the same as you. The VA would have treated him. He wouldn’t have been able to go on military related disability but he would have had treatment. Depending on how the VA was functioning at the time, it might have taken a while though.

I’m surprised that this story has continued through the process of being included in anthologies, etc. without an editor catching that error. Any ideas how that happened?

[Steve]

I have given more thought to this. We know that Frank had disciplinary problems in the Army. (The term "brig" is usually reserved for naval confinement facilities, but I am not going to get even more picky.) We do not know the nature of his discharge. Even if he was given a less than honorable discharge, it would probably have been determined that it was "honorable for VA purposes" unless . . . unless it was the worst of all Dishonorable Discharges.

But then it occurred to me that Frank may be lying to Ellie about that entire situation as an excuse to move on and get out of his current situation with her.

* * * * * *

I gave this story a second chance yesterday and reread it. I am glad that I did . . . I think.

Then he would have missed what he said was the only real lesson of the army, which was that people who tell you what to do--no matter what reasons they claim--are performing an act of aggression. You're in their way, is what Frank had written to her; they'd just as soon you die.

I now regard that as the most important passage in the story. Frank has devoted his life to finding living situations in which nobody tells him what to do. It appears to me that this also is at the heart of Cody's problem with school. He gets a stomach ache when teachers tell him what to do. Obviously, that attitude makes life more difficult, but there is also some validity to it. Rosa Parks is a person who refused to do what some told her to do and to excellent effect.

I need to give all that more thought.