Everyday Courage. Niobe Way
Malcolm seems more confident this year as he virtually struts into the room and sits down in a chair he has nearly outgrown. He begins the interview by telling Mike that he still lives with his mother and younger sister and “nothing particularly” has changed over the past year except that his mother now works as a receptionist at a local hospital.
When Mike asks Malcolm about his relationship with his mother this year, Malcolm says:
We, like, respect each other. We don’t communicate too much on certain things. Some things you know we—I talk with my friends or whoever. But we talk about certain things, you know, like she communicates. She’s sick of something, she tells me. And she tells my sister too ’cause she doesn’t want nothing to be a surprise. She goes to work. That’s really influenced me ’cause she proves to me that she’s strong. She doesn’t have the best of health, but she feels that she’s strong. She goes to work, gets up, like that.
Malcolm’s response conveys a closeness to his mother although he still maintains certain boundaries within this relationship. He admires and respects her strength, worries about her health, and seems to appreciate her frankness. It is unclear, however, whether Malcolm reciprocates this directness. Malcolm once again says his relationship with his mother is the most important of all of his relationships: “It’s just my mother ’cause she’s the one really supporting me and stuff, you know. None of [my friends or girlfriend] are.”
Malcolm’s mother, however, doesn’t always support him:
Last night I cooked for everybody—my mother and I ate and my—my mother’s friend came over ’cause he was watching my little nephew. So then he ate, you know. Then my sister comes in with McDonald’s almost every night and stuff. Eating that nasty stuff too much.
So she doesn’t really eat at home that much?
No, like she keeps getting stuff to drink, bringing it up to her room, leaving it there. And she don’t clean up and then when my mother argues about no one cleaning, that’s not true and that’s what gets me mad. That’s really the only thing. Because you know I clean because I see my mother working and sometimes she like works three to eleven and then sometimes she works a double shift so she don’t get off until seven in the morning. So then, you know, I be trying to clean up, but I can’t be all cleaning, plus doing my schoolwork. Then I have the responsibility of the dog … I walk her myself and stuff like that.
Malcolm’s frustration with his sister’s behavior and his mother’s accusations, as well as his desire to take care of his mother, and perhaps his sister, are immediately apparent. The variability of Malcolm’s relationship with his mother is evident in his stories—he admires, respects, and cares for his mother and is also angry and frustrated with her. Perhaps he also feels a bit guilty that he does not help her as much as she needs. Unlike many of his male peers in the study (see chapter 6), Malcolm is consistently willing to speak about the range of his feelings for his mother. He seems comfortable with Mike’s questions and willing to reflect on the details of his relationships.
Speaking about his sister, Malcolm does not suggest a similar range of feelings. He is angry at her irresponsibility and outraged that, though younger than Malcolm, she expects to enjoy the same privileges. Because she is not doing as well in school as Malcolm, however, his sister is not allowed to stay out late, go to movies, or attend concerts, and Malcolm says this causes a lot of tension in their relationship:
Okay, does that come into play between the two of you [that his sister is not doing as well in school as he is]?
Well, not really. My mother doesn’t bring that up ’cause she doesn’t try to compare us. I just try to prove—show my mother that I’m capable of doing good. You know, being responsible and stuff. ’Cause I slept late this morning and she woke me up and it was 7:00. Supposed to be here [at school] at 7:30. I got here on time.
You were here even though you slept in late?
Yeah. Washed up, ironed my clothes, everything.
Moving swiftly from a discussion of his sister to a discussion of the extent to which he is responsible, Malcolm demonstrates the intensity of his desire to “prove” to his mother, and perhaps to Mike, that he can take care of himself. He clearly wants to continue having the privileges his mother gives him and to be respected by her. He is also, perhaps, competing with his sister for his mother’s praise and attention.
Malcolm says that although he had no interest in seeing his natural father, his father recently visited him at home:
To me he’s just a stranger, really. When he came over, I didn’t know who he was. I had like the door open, screen door locked. He knocked on the door, he was all talking about—He didn’t even say “Hi,” that’s how much communication we got. He didn’t even say, “Hi.”
Did he know you?
Yeah, he knows me ’cause he said he walked in, he was all—he was like, “Can I use the bathroom?” Like who are you? He was like, “I’m your father.”
Wow, what was it like seeing him after so many years?
Didn’t do nothing to me. It just made me mad the way he came to the door and stuff. You know, all talking about, “Can I use your bathroom?”
It must have felt kind of weird or strange in some way.
It didn’t really faze me. I just saw him as a stranger.
The “I” statements in Malcolm’s story (“I didn’t know who he was. … Didn’t do nothing to me. It just made me mad. … It didn’t really faze me”) suggest that he is denying his anger while feeling angry. He does not want to be “fazed” by the presence of his father, but his shaky tone indicates otherwise (this was the first time that he can remember meeting his father). While his sister will occasionally have contact with their father, Malcolm prefers not to have any.
As you’re getting older, do you ever think that you want to talk to your father about anything? I don’t mean about problems that you have, but about any feelings you have toward him not being around when you were growing up?
No, ’cause I feel I turned out pretty good, so you know. It probably would’ve been more better. I would’ve had an easier view. I’m not saying that I had it hard, ’cause I had plenty of time to play and all, but I’m just saying, you know, I don’t feel nothing.
In his shifts from saying he “turned out pretty good” to “it probably would’ve been more better” to “I don’t feel nothing,” Malcolm suggests, once again, that he is trying to ward off feelings of hurt and anger. “I just try to, like, grow up, take things as they come. I don’t try to be like ‘[I] depend on nobody’ or ’you’re not here, now we’re having all this trouble.’ You know, I feel we can do for ourselves.” The absence of his father, Malcolm maintains, has made him neither wary nor desirous of dependency. He seems resolute not to be affected by his father’s absence.
When Mike repeats the previous year’s questions about having any adult males who he looks up to, Malcolm says:
Not really, ’cause there wasn’t really nobody around besides my mother’s boyfriend. He was, you know, cool and all. He liked to tell us things. He used to play with me and my sister. But besides that there was nobody else because [my mother] was always trying to do for us. She’d like come home, clean, and all that stuff. And then after a while, I just like—somehow she—I just took over that role really. I started cleaning and stuff. Trying to keep things in shape, whatever. Keep my room neat so everything would be decent.
Malcolm’s repeated stories to Mike of his duties at home suggest pride but also, perhaps, a sense of feeling overwhelmed (his frequent reference to needing “to relax” also suggest a sense of burden). The roles at home have changed since last year so that now Malcolm appears to feel more like the mother and/or father