Flying away

Domestic abuse runs in families, children often learning and later imitating the violent behavior of their parents when they have families of their own. How can this cycle be broken? Connie May Fowler explores this question in her striking 1996 novel Before Women Had Wings.

Set in Florida in the 1960s, during the Johnson administration, the story is told by Bird, a little girl whose actual name is Avocet. Her mother wanted to name her daughters after birds, and her older sister got Phoebe. Avocet, being so unusual, was soon replaced with the nickname Bird. And bird imagery flies in and out of the novel, including its title.

In Bird's family, her father often beats her mother after both have spent a night drinking, and then her mother beats her two daughters. These beatings are often brutal and graphic, such as a coffee mug struck hard into Phoebe's face and Bird being whipped with a belt, the buckle end striking her bare back repeatedly. Their mother confesses that her father beat her as a child.

Following Bird's father's death — was it suicide or murder? — their mother takes the girls to Tampa and moves into an old motel. She works in the office to pay for their cramped quarters, while buying food and alcohol with government checks. Every night Bird's mother resumes her drinking, while her two daughters walk on eggshells.

Miss Zora, an old and mysterious black woman, also lives on the property. Bird's mother dislikes her and tries to get the motel owner to evict her, but Bird forms a deep relationship with this woman who, despite her apparent wisdom, has lost contact with her own daughter. White authors often have difficulty creating authentic black characters, choosing to bestow on them moral perfection and often mystical powers. They can have similar difficulties with Indian characters in western novels. Fowler comes close to this, but in the end she makes Miss Zora a realistic, imperfect and vulnerable human being.

Bird and Phoebe dream of flying away from their abusive home, yet they love their mother deeply, just as their mother loves them when her anger is under control. Fowler finds a way to make love provide the answer to this terrible situation.