The Darkest Child
By: Delores Phillips / Narrated By: Bahni Turpin
Length: 15 hrs and 23 mins
Breathtaking! Stunningly written! Exquisitely narrated! -JUST- How MANY slugs to the gut can you handle...?
Ahhhh jeez! Did you read the Publisher’s Summary? And then you went off and got The Darkest Child, started listening to it… and now you’re wondering: What On EARTH?!
Yeh, it’s like that…
Cuz see, when this story about young Tangy Mae Quinn opens, we’re thinking, based on the PS, that this brilliant, inquisitive, Uber-intelligent girl will be looking at her “beautiful, charismatic” mama, Rozelle, and she’ll have some sense of self, some sense of hope, some sense that there’s a future out there for her. That, as her mother finishes her work as a maid for a white family, as she blows hard, declares she’ll have to quit, declares she’ll be dead in a day or two? Well, suuuurely, based on the PS, Tangy Mae is thinking to herself: SOME day, SOME day soon, there’ll be a way out of here, out of this.
You know, that there’s a scrap of sanity and heart held deep within Tangy, an indomitable sense of spirit. Or something.
Uhm, nope.
Mama Rozelle being a wispy, always at Death’s door, kinda sorta odd duck descends, descends quite rapidly into one of the most horrific Hells ever written.
Oh my, if you can’t handle the first beating of Rozelle’s ten or so children, you’d better back out and back out, like, posthaste. Cuz it only gets worse. That Death’s door? It’s yet another of Rozelle’s pregnancies, just one out of many, all children sired by different God Only Knows Who fathers, and as this latest one is Judy, as dark, as black as Tangy Mae is, has Rozelle disgusted in a nightmare sort of way.
Lemme see if I can grab the story for you here, the plot.
That Tangy is head of her class and has been chosen to integrate the nearby all-white school? Baaaaarely in this book.
There’s Momma (Rozelle) making each of her children drop out of school to start bringing in money… ostensibly for food (But, we imMEDiately discover that there’s rarely food in their shack, there’s always hunger) and shelter (No electricity, running water, rain falls through the tin roof… and rent is never made for the white man who owns this hovel the LARGE family of Rozelle and children live in—Rozelle in the bed, her children on the floor).
There’s violence, endless violence done unto these children. There’s the most twisted sorts of manipulation, whether it’s Rozelle tarting up Tangy’s 9-year old sister to “Go to the Farmhouse” cuz Tangy didn’t want to, willing to whore-up this little girl for a few dollars and booze, or it’s Rozelle declaring Tangy is pregnant and unable to attend that school, pulling back when a stipend is offered—she’ll acquiesce, Tangy is No Longer Pregnant… but then NOPE, Tangy will NOT be going there. Just cuz.
Brutal beatings, belt buckles whipped into faces, the endless tearing down of hopes, dreams, basic personality.
There is just sooo much BLOOD pouring in this book.
What’s worse? Jim Crow South of the 1950s with the whites involved violating, raping, mutilating our characters? Or is it the mother who is S’POSED to be the safe harbor but is instead insane on so many different levels. Rozelle is, after all, the product of brutal gang-rape, immediately viewed as Satan Spawn from birth. Light-skinned, one of various white men who beat and brutalized her mother as her father, Rozelle is still considered Black. Does being so light, so attractive as fair-skinned, yet still subjected to humiliation and violence breed discontent… batshit insanity? Did having a mother who vented the Bible at her, as Satan Spawn, cause the insanity? Sprinkled with holy water? Or was that piss?
We don’t ever know because this book, the stories held within, are all desperate, desperate, DESPERATE people living in abject poverty, struggling with alcoholism and drug abuse, they’re violent to foes, violent to loved ones, ready with a bottle to swill from, or a ready fist to the face. Doesn’t matter, no reason. This book just goes THERE. When the “best” man in the story is considered to be a decent person -because- he refused to force intercourse on a tween? Never mind that sex is forced upon ALL Women (And GIRLS) ALL The Time? Nah, HERE not raping a tween makes for a Man Of Integrity.
Stunning, breathtaking, then let’s throw in that the inCREdible Bahni Turpin is the actress here. That woman has NEVER turned in a bad performance. Even those rare occasions where the material she was given was lamer ‘n dirt, Turpin does what she can, and she never skimps. HERE? Oh jeez, she’s beYONd Scary As HELL. Rozelle is a woman of constantly changing moods, soft and silkily loving words that soothe her children, followed by beating their faces to bloodied, swollen pulps. Howling when her favorite child is arrested and serves time (And just on a happy little aside: Rozelle makes a deal to get this son a lawyer… but Tangy Mae, just a girl, is forced to the Farmhouse to service him. Rozelle feels this is a reasonable price, is happy for the chance). That Turpin can do a scared sick little girl, fighting, clawing, biting, and then switch to the man who beats her, uses her, forces her head between his legs? Turpin is fearless. Rather, there should be a capital on that: Fearless. From shrieks, to begging, to manipulating, to the calm before the devastating storm.
The highest accolade that Audiobook Accomplice can offer? “Freaking” Status: The awesome Bahni Freaking Turpin. I can’t wait to hear another of her performances, just praying it ain’t so goshdanged HARROWING…
When all is said and done, do stay past the last lines of The Darkest Child for the first and only chapters that author Delores Phillips penned, the sequel she started before her death. While the ending is VERY abrupt, takes place after a maelstrom of hell, terror, death, and hopelessness, those first few chapters add just a bit of extra context and outlines for how a very damaged young woman might make her way in the world After So MUCH Of The Very WORST has happened.
The writing is glorious, such descriptive imagery. The setting is a brutal time, a brutal place.
The narration is perfection.
But I fell asleep during one of Rozelle’s meltdowns (Probably just ‘cause I have a tendency to dissociate when PAIN IS OVERWHELMING!!!), and the nightmares I had were…?
Well, they were as NOTHING compared to the Hell That Flows throughout this story.
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