River, Cross My Heart - Breena Clarke

Breena Clarke in this compelling novel 'River, Cross My Heart' writes about a 12 year old Johnnie Mae's who lives in Washington DC in the twenties.

 Her younger sister Clara Bynum  was drowned in the Potomac river when she was six years old and under the care of Johnnie Mae's. The effect of her death on Alice and Willie Bynum, their parents, is what the novel is all about. It is torn in between their old world of rural North Carolina and the new world at Georgetown.

Folks always say, "You come in this word alone, and you must leave it alone". They ought to know better. Because it isn't so. - Reminds me of my conversation with my father. 

 It's not that way at all. The child comes to life very much attached and stays attached and is mired all its life in a soup of relationships. This child struggles to be born. It comes out pushing and pulling with the cord attached and still holding on way up. The child has to pull and push and make a place for itself in and among all the people that are already here. 

To Willie, Clara was like his dead sister Merle. Losing a loved one, a family member, is like losing a tooth. After a while, those teeth remaining shift and lean and spread out to split the distance between themselves and the other teeth still left, trying to close up spaces. In this way, Johnnie Mae, her mama and papa and her aunt Ina shifted themselves to  close the space created by Clara's absence. So do we, This was 39 of 2020.