On Fences: The legacy and erasure of black female suffering

I watched Fences, the screenplay by August Wilson, recently adapted into a film, starring and directed by Denzel Washington. And I must say: it was phenomenal. There’s something about the way the camera angled oh-so-slightly upon Troy’s (the protagonist) face—you were almost transported to 1968 and felt first-hand the element of black male suffering that was so prominent in the time. There’s was a depth to his emptiness that could only be pronounced in the first pour of the liquor every Friday evening. The stories he told were rife with contradiction, half-truths only available to the most experienced storyteller. We were captured.

But what apprehended my attention the most was what was not being said. It was the subtle lean of Rose’s (Troy’s wife) head against the backdoor, her inimitable smile at his posturing; the hang of the dusty apron fresh from preparing a hot meal—always one waiting for the hardworking man.

And in those moments of the grandiose, hard-to-hear stories of longing and life, tragedy and triumph, I was enraptured by Rose. It was her posture. She didn’t overpower the scene, but she didn’t fade either. Her interjections bore a power that wasn’t merely “stepping out place”. She commanded her existence be felt, even in the subtle, “oh, he’s just in there cleaning the cupboards.” There was a protection there, a solace there. An empty place longing to be filled, there.

It’s easy to read her silence as submission. And even easier to have her fade into the background, overshadowed by Troy’s plight, his black maleness centered for the world to see, nevermind the anchor to that black male hood: the black female.

So, what followed—the scene to end all scenes—came as no surprise. What was surprising, to me anyway, was the accuracy with which she depicted what I have, and many women I know have felt over the years.

It’s not easy for me to admit that I’ve been standing in the same place for 18 years.

Well I’ve been standing with you. I been right here with you, Troy. I got a life too. I gave 18 years of my life to stand in the same spot as you.

The proverbial male guilt. It is in this declaration that all things relationship hinge. The space that Troy occupies is seemingly his alone. He has disavowed the very nature of Rose’s existence in this space and time. He’s the one who has been standing, essentially alone, in the same place. And his inability to admit this is the wedge that drives the wedge, leaves no room, swallows the capacity for growth. We feel this lack, we sympathize with it; we understand the forces that black men have to reckon with daily. However, it disavows her capacity to steady him.

But Rose’s retort shatters her invisibility; she speaks to the place, in married black women in particular, that refuses to curtsy to male sanctioned silence and indiscernibility. I have been standing with you. Rose brings back to center the long and hard space of safety and security black women have had to occupy—without the certainty of reciprocity. However, it is her act of self-actualization that changes the scene: I got a life too.  I am alive, fully human. See me. It’s not a plea as much as it is a declaration. I am not the thing created for your use; there is power and functionality in my being. I am a thinking, feeling, woman. Created in divinity in the same space and time as you. And I chose to give—the existential sacrifice—in order that you might be. But I am standing with you.

As Rose, she subtly wilted under the weight and pressure of—like Moses who had to secure the victory for his people—keeping her hands held high. Yet there were no Aaron and Hur to stand by her side. She had to exist simultaneously: embodying those support systems for her husband while needing her own that were absent.

She wilted. Petal by petal. But stood.