NEW
Library Project
Volume 4, Number 1 - Fall 2005
Lancaster Youth Find
Meaning in Hurston's "Sweat"
by Anndee Hochman
Into
the lobby, past the metal detector, through five doors that snap shut as
you pass, there is a room where teenagers find glimpses of their own hurt,
struggle and triumph in stories by Peter Cameron, Milly Jafta and Zora
Neale Hurston.
It’s Hurston’s “Sweat” that is
on the table tonight at the Lancaster County Youth Intervention Center, a
way-station for kids aged 10-18 who have been removed from their homes.
When they leave, they go to foster homes, residential drug treatment
centers or back to their families.
This evening there are nine girls and
nine boys, seated at separate tables, shuffling their feet—in regulation
plastic slippers or gray sweat socks—against the linoleum floor. Scott
Feifer, 7th-grade teacher and People and Stories
coordinator—introduces “Sweat” by noting that Hurston was both a
writer and an anthropologist who “was trying to capture the way people
talk.”
Then he reads the story of Delia,
whose labor as a washwoman keeps her husband, Sykes, in food and shelter;
he, in turn, abuses her verbally, frightens her by bringing a snake into
the house and spends his money on other women. Finally Delia’s love
transmutes to rage: “ ‘Ah hates you, Sykes,’ she said calmly. ‘Ah
hates you tuh de same degreee dat Ah useter love yuh.’”
At the story’s end, Sykes is bitten
by the snake, the instrument of his terror campaign, and dies while his
wife crouches outside the house, listening to him plead and suffer.
As Feifer finishes, L. waves her hand
to speak. “Delia worked so hard to please that man. I’m glad he got
what he got.” Across the room, a slight boy named T. concurs. “I think
the woman did love him, but I don’t think he loved her.”
Miss Heather, one of a half-dozen
staff members who perch on chairs around the room, speaks up: “He wanted
her for what she had to offer. It took her physically down, from doing all
that hard work.”
T. points out that others in the community knew of Sykes’ abuse, but no one dared confront him. “They were scared to tell him the truth. He was Mr. Tough Guy.
“How many of you have ever been
bullied in your own house?” Feifer asks gently. Hands rise silently from
all corners of the room.
Staff and kids peel apart the
story’s ending—Was Sykes finally sorry? Did Delia purposely let him
die?—then move beyond it to what they know of the scrambled world. Why
do people stay in abusive relationships? Can you continue to love someone
who’s hurt you? How do people change?
“What I have
appreciated about this particular series,” says Feifer, “is that kids
who are not with parents and families see the staff engaging in the
discussion, taking the stories, themselves, and the kids seriously.”
“When you talk about the story, you
see how other people take it, and the way you think about it changes,”
says L. “You start to think about it on other levels.”
They turn back to the final pages of
“Sweat,” and someone points out that, as Sykes is dying, Delia rises
from the flowerbed where she’s hiding as “the sun was growing warm.”
Across the room, L. nods vigorously. “I like what you said. It’s her resurrection.”