One afternoon, on the way home from church, I asked her if God was black or white.The Color of Water is the result of author James McBride's attempt to discover his enigmatic mother's past, and the more he learned, the more he realised that he was not the man he thought he was. Ruth Shilsky McBride Jordan's history was more interesting and more tragic than McBride could have imagined, and as he exhumed the family's ghosts, he was forced to fix their places in the narrative of his own life. Written as both an autobiography and "A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother", this book alternates between their two points of view, and as I listened to this on audiobook, the experience was very enjoyable, with two excellent narrators who sounded like they were just telling stories, often with good humour in their voices; never with self-pity.
A deep sigh, "Oh boy, God's not black. He's not white. He's a spirit."
"Does he like black or white people better?"
"He loves all people. He's a spirit."
"What's a spirit?"
"A spirit's a spirit."
"What color is God's spirit?"
"It doesn't have a color," she said. "God is the color of water. Water doesn't have a color."
Ruchel Dwajra Zylska aka Rachel Deborah Shilsky aka Ruth McBride Jordan, was two-years-old when her family emigrated to America. Having been born into a family of Orthodox Jews, they were lucky to have left Poland in the early 1930's, but her father, an itinerant Rabbi, didn't leave for political reasons: he had married Ruth's mother (a woman half-paralyzed from polio) simply because she had a sister who could sponsor their move to America, and more than anything, Ruth's father wanted to be rich. The family -- poor and outcast wherever they went -- never spent more than a year in any one town, as the Rabbi's yearly contract would never be renewed. After spending a year at the synagogue in Suffolk, Virginia, Ruth's father decided to put down roots and opened a grocery store on the black side of town. With very few Jews in Suffolk, Ruth was ostracised at school and forced to work long hours in the family store. The children had no freedom, wore second-hand clothes, watched helplessly as their father berated and abused their long-suffering mother, and Ruth was often molested by her father. Despite her father's racism and cheating of his black customers, Ruth's first boyfriend was black (a fact that could have gotten him lynched at that time), and after spending summers with her mother's family in NYC, Ruth decided to move there after high school and loved the Harlem scene. Ruth met and married a black man -- Dennis McBride -- in 1942 and her family disowned her. They started a Baptist church together, Ruth converted to Christianity, and despite their essential poverty, Ruth later recalled these as the happiest days of her life. Dennis died as Ruth was pregnant with their eight child -- the author -- and after some time, she married again; another black man named Hunter Jordan. Together, they had four more children, and when he later died, Ruth was left to raise twelve children, all of whom she eventually sent to college; all of whom eventually became Doctors, Professors and other professionals.
From James McBride's point of view over these years, the family life was workable chaos. Even while his stepfather was alive, Hunter Jordan didn't live with them during the week (only showing up on the weekend with money and groceries), and as their mother worked the third shift (getting home at two in the morning), it was the older kids who raised the younger. They were hungry, their clothes were old but neat, they slept three to a bed, were told to never have friends over or tell anyone what their home life was like, and all of the children were expected to excel at school. The family would suffer racial slurs whenever they went out together (primarily from white people), and despite race being an obvious issue in their home, Ruth refused to talk about it: when James asked her point blank once if she was white, Ruth replied "I'm light-skinned" and shot down follow-up questions. By the time James was a teenager, his older siblings were political and entranced by Black Power, and although that left James confused by his relationship with his mother, he, too, was attracted to militancy. When his stepfather died, James became a delinquent: skipping school, "smoking reefer", snatching purses, and robbing box cars of wine. He eventually did graduate high school and then college, and despite his gifts in both writing and music, Ruth expected James to work in a profession. When James decided to expand an article he had written about his mother into a book, it took him eight years and much investigation to discover the details that appear here.
This story is at first blush incredibly inspiring: the Orthodox Jewish family who fled Poland before the Nazis; Ruth escaping her evil father; marrying two black men for love despite systemic racism; raising twelve mixed-race children -- during a period of social upheaval -- to become successful professionals; Ruth even went to college herself when she turned 65, receiving a degree in Social Work and eventually volunteering with inner-city children. It's inspiring, but really, the household James grew up in must have been bedlam, with the inmates in charge. I don't understand why someone with no money (and no time to pay them attention) would have twelve kids, and after Ruth knew the pain and loneliness of being the only Jewish kid in her school, she still sent her own children to the best public schools she could force them into; often making each the only black kid in their school (which even their teachers resented). Ruth hid her past from her children, refused to answer personal questions, and although there is a loving vibe throughout James' memories, there simply wasn't enough of Ruth to go around. With the older kids raising the younger ones, the lack of food, and messy living conditions (James describes when they had a dog and no one would clean up its messes in the house), this home sounds like the kind that Social Services would bust up today. And yet…Ruth's focus on education was so forceful that all twelve of her children went to college -- most receiving post-graduate degrees as well -- and that must be some measure of success (and I seriously doubt the results would have been as impressive had these twelve kids been put into foster care). Because James seemed to have trouble integrating his mother's history into his own, her secrecy must have had effects that I can't even imagine, but that's what makes The Color of Water so intriguing: Ruth (in the 1930s-40s South) and James (in the 1960s-70s NYC) lived through times of intense racial strife, and their story has both a particularity and a universality that transcends race and politics and speaks, finally, to the power of love and family. In the end, Ruth did the best that she could.
