The Twelve Tribes of Hattie

Hattie and her children repeatedly invoke the idea of strength as a condition for personal responsibility. Before his experiences at the revival meeting in the South, Six connotes strength with manhood, power, and punishment. Although he is small and “delicate” by nature, Six’s accident makes him even more fragile, and he becomes convinced that “his own father was disgusted by his frailty” (51). Six resents his classmates who call him “a prissy boy” (51), and he yearns for the strength to punish them. He vents his anger by pummeling another “effeminate” (51) boy at school, but afterward Six understands that his own “weak body housed a weak, mean spirit” (68). When the people at the tent revival attribute spiritual power to him, Six resolves to “be what they wanted him to be” (72), although he is dubious. In the end, Six’s spirit does prove too weak and, as Hattie notes, he lives a life of fraudulence.

While considering his own irresponsibility as a husband, Franklin acknowledges that his father “was too weak” (179), too, but none of Hattie’s children accuse her of weakness. Indeed, they used to call their mother “The General” (235). Alice remembers Hattie’s “dangerous” rages (150) when money worries overtook her, and Cassie thinks of Hattie’s strength as something “grand and terrible” (220).

Hattie exerts her strength over her children through her rages and wrath but also through her silences. Nearly every one of them describes Hattie as distant, remote, “unfathomable,” or “secretive” (201). She withholds her deepest self—including her deep love—partly because that self is so broken by disappointed dreams, and partly because she cannot allow sentimentality to distract her from the work of feeding her family. After spending decades resenting Hattie’s coldness, Bell recognizes it as her mother’s way of protecting herself and her children from more suffering. Such self-discipline took all of Hattie’s effort, and Bell realizes her mother “was stronger” (218) than she herself could ever be. Because of her formidable strength, Hattie ultimately renounces the panacea that religion offers for despair, vowing to take responsibility for her own—and her granddaughter’s—salvation.

During the early days of Hattie and August’s marriage, when Hattie is not yet disillusioned, she anticipates owning a house where she will raise her family. August calls the house they rent on Wayne Street “an in-the-meanwhile house,” and Hattie adds, “Until we buy a house of our own” (3). Hattie’s dream house remains beyond her grasp for most of her life. Over the years, its absence becomes a cypher for the frustration and anger she feels as a mother whose hopes for prosperity are thwarted by class and race hurdles.

When Alice is grown and married to a wealthy doctor, she recalls that “[a]ll of their lives the Shepherd children had heard Hattie declare the family diminished because they didn’t own their house. Renting made them poor and common” (150). Hattie holds August responsible for their “diminished” circumstances. Just before she leaves him for Lawrence, Hattie reproaches August for spending so much money going out and “womanizing,” adding, “I have saved money for down payments on two houses and ended up spending it on light bills and clothes for these children” (96). For his part, August blames the larger social forces (“the game” [90], as he calls it) that limit employment opportunities for African Americans.

The novel’s final two chapters are set during 1980, and Hattie has the house she has longed for. In her 70s, she has reached the end of her journey (or “migration”) at last. Her achievement of this dream coincides with her resolution to “mother” Sala with more tenderness than she did her children. The house is Hattie’s confirmation that she has the power within herself to improve her life, despite her class and race disadvantages, and despite God’s indifference.