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Sparkle (2)
What lies would you tell yourself to survive? Sapphire took on a daunting task with The Kid. As a sequel to Push, she lets readers delve into the traumatized psyche of Precious’ nine-year old son after he was orphaned by her AIDS-related death and left to trade sexual abuse for facimiles of a home.
Tortured and neglected by adults and by the system that should have protected him, in a ten-year span we follow Abdul from a violent foster home, to repeated rape in a Catholic facility, to a short-stint with his limited great-grandmother, to his teen years spent under the thumb of a 60-year old man who professes being in love with the boy while sexually abusing him. When Abdul finally leaves, he lives in a loft with friends who are creating experimental dance theater, and when bits of reality crash in to his consciousness he begins to confront the impact of his horrific early life.
He survived the unrelenting torture in many ways that are typical to trauma survives, and Sapphire excels when showing through vivid and disturbing stream of consciousness passages how Abdul (who at times also is called J.J., Jamal, Arthur, Papi, and Adbul-Azi Ali) copes. He dreams and dissociates, and he fantasizes actions where he takes the personas of Crazy Horse or King. He deludes himself, about his own actions, family history and about the intent, actions or feelings of others. He is highly sexualized and becomes a rapist, finding release by preying on younger and weaker boys, all while convincing himself that he is not gay and that he is actually kindly befriending his victims. He is often confused, is a completely unreliable narrator, and he deftly protects himself from obvious facts, including from his own self-loathing.
The book also soars when Sapphire knits intellectual themes together through imagery. Names, being misnamed and being lost in the system are important motifs in the book, as are the views from buildings, kaleidoscopes and mirror imagery. Art as escape and healer is a frequent focus, with the intact parts of Abdul surviving through the grace of dance, music and his independent readings about the artist Basquiat. The inner voyage, release and the powerful physicality of dance is celebrated in fully evoked observations and interior monologues as a welcome respite to the many equally intensely described sex and abuse scenes that define Abdul’s narrative. Sapphire’s skillful ability to present such rawness means that The Kid certainly will be triggering to many abuse survivors and too violent and vulgar for others, but readers may find that the brutality is redeemed by Sapphire’s artistry just as art in general can redeem trauma.
The novel is flawed, and the narrative suffers when Sapphire shifts the lens away from Abdul’s to his great-grandmother and his friend My Lai. The passages offer information and comparison for Abdul to weigh his life against, but they are tedious, indulgent and ring false. So too, do the major characters representing the social work and medical system who seem to exist only to transmit information and to represent corruption. I was left with the feeling that the book deserved better, especially since that weakness affected the ending and added to the sense that the character of Abdul deserved better.
Overall, though, Sapphire’s ability to takes readers on the wild, complicated, harrowing ride in Abdul’s tortured brain succeeds. At times our hearts should break for the kid at the center of the story, and at times we should be repulsed by him, but somehow I did neither. Perhaps this is by intent, or perhaps it is a result of the drags in exposition, but the novel's effects, surprisingly given the content, are more intellectual than emotional.
He just is, shattered, disenfranchised and as broken as the pieces of mirror he leaves on the floor after smashing it -- and in that way Sapphire helps readers break our own delusions. After meeting Abdul we can’t pretend we think social services helps children like him, we can’t bluff that we understand what makes someone a perpetrator, or what the costs of survival are for African-American kids affected by the legacy of slavery compounded with the AIDS crisis, or that all children really matter to our society. We can’t even pretend we know The Kid’s true name.
