Figuring it out as they go along: Rivers Solomon's "Whose Heart I Long to Stop with the Click of a Revolver"

Rivers Solomon's "Whose Heart I Long to Stop with the Click of a Revolver" is a story about inter-generational trauma, but the "inter-generational" is a little muddled, because the mother had her daughter at sixteen, making the inter-generational gap between them a little closer than it is for most parent-child trauma pairs.

In fact, "Jo," the self-named mother of "Whose Heart," is still sort of a kid herself. She admits to not feeling like an adult. Her worldview seems to be largely composed of the kinds of notions a precocious teenager who has only read the "great works" one gets exposed to in high school would have. She chose her name from Little Women, and refers throughout the story to works of Joseph Heller, Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allen Poe, Edward Thomas, and James Joyce.

Jo's whole life, in fact, is a lot like one of the best-known characters of 20th-century literature, Lolita. Jo left home at about twelve and immediately ran into "Mr. Wheelock," who took an interest in her for being mature for her age. Because Jo felt like an ugly black girl, she quickly fell under his spell, because he seemed to think she was beautiful. By sixteen, she was pregnant with Mr. Wheelock's baby. When Jo wanted to give the baby up for adoption and Mr. Wheelock threatened her with physical violence over it, Jo shot and killed him.

It's not clear exactly what happened after that. She did give the baby up, and it turns out that Mr. Wheelock had already willed her a house and enough money to live on. Jo endured some kind of questioning from police and lawyers, but it doesn't seem like she went to jail or faced charges.

Eighteen years later, Jo meets the girl she gave up. I say "girl," but that's not quite clear. Jo's daughter tells her, before they even meet, that she is trans and that she has changed her name to Luciana, or Luz. Jo asks, "You mean trans, like, you're transsexual?" Luz responds with "Trans like gender is dead."

Which left me wondering: was Luz born a biological male who identified as female, and has now transitioned? Luz does seem to be taking medications to support a gender reassignment surgery. Or was Luz born physically a woman, but now considers herself non-binary? If that's the case, though, what is the medication for? We don't know what Luz's original name was. Jo keeps calling Luz her "daughter" and using pronouns like "she" and "her" with Luz, but is that because Jo doesn't get it, or because Luz really identifies as female? Jo wonders if Luz is gay like Jo is, which made me feel like maybe Luz identified as a lesbian female. Ultimately, I wasn't really sure what the deal with Luz was.

Neither is Jo, and she blunders her way through trying to connect with the girl. Luz has all kinds of questions. She's just aged out of the foster care program, and while Jo can give Luz a place to stay, she can't really answer any of the questions like Luz wants. That's because Jo still hasn't resolved her own traumas.

This is never clearer than in how Jo craves the reassurance of a gun. Jo takes guns with her everywhere. She fires them weekly. That's because a gun is the only thing Jo has ever experienced in life that can even the odds life has dealt her:

"Imagine a large man gifted with athleticism and strength, favored in life because of his class and wealth and color. Now imagine a child, young and poor and thoroughly pathetic. See the two of them together, in a room, butting heads. 

Now imagine the scene again, but this time the child has a gun, and the man does not. He steps back, suddenly fearful of her scrawny figure, her shaking frame, her tearing eyes. Everyone fears the bullet, no matter what gift the invisible puppeteer has bestowed upon him."

Luz has her own trauma she's dealt with in foster care, but we never learn about it. There are, in fact, many details withheld from us that might have made the story's arc clearer. As the story stands, the best we can puzzle out is that both characters have a lot to figure out before they can move forward. Jo wants to help Luz, but she needs to help herself, first. The climax, in which Jo shares a small bit of knowledge that she didn't learn from Mr. Wheelock, is a very early step in her healing. It's something she has independent of him. This isn't a thunderous climax with a profound character shift. It's a microscopic move toward trying to get better.

Some stories take a clear, almost prescriptive approach to what a character ought to do to overcome her problems. Others are content to simply report on the character and what issues she faces. This story is more just reporting the facts as Jo and Luz try to figure out their way.

Both characters have tried to define their own realities. They've both given themselves their own names. However, they both find there are constraints to defining or re-defining yourself. Jo laments her own "obvious" choice, taking a name from Little Women, and as soon as she learns about the name Lucinda, Jo places it as belonging to Catch-22, even though that wasn't the association Luz wanted. We can try to remake ourselves and the world around us, but often we find we're just trying the same solutions others have already tried and failed at.

Still, you have to try something, because the only other choice is to give up. "Whose Heart" is a brief tribute to those who fire shots in the dark at whatever demons are coming for them.