il
I
Ii 6
FENCES
,'G
ood fences make good neighbors,"
a crusty old New England
character says in one of Robert Frost's poems, reflecting a
common sense of keeping things straight and insisting on distances between
people so that they don't become confused about boundaries.
things-private
Fences mark
yards from public sidewalks, pastures from fields, my prop-
erty from yours-and
the marking may feel good or ill depending
satisfied we are with our own property
ing or conquering
on bow
and place or how desirous of explor-
other worlds. But once fences are constructed,
it is hard
to pull them down, for even if tbey are only symbolic objects, they create
difference as well as mark it.
The "fences" we construct to separate our own kind from otbers, even
though mainly intended to keep out strangers or someone different from
ourselves, also hold us in. Feelings of being confined, cut off, fenced in, are
often felt especially strongly by those of us who want adventure,
new experience.
novelty,
Families, ethnic groups, nationality groups, tribes, social
and religious groups, gangs, fraternities
and sororities, neighborhood
groups, political parties, our "circles" of friends-all
build fences around
themselves both to keep others out and to keep "members"
fences are constructed
in. Often these
for laudable motives of identity or loyalty, but some-
times they end up seeming, even to the people they are meant to benefit
with security and identity, horribly confining and limiting.
Fences-literal
fences--do
not actually prevent the crossing of borders.
465
'tvv
.1.·\..UL.c,:')
Hunters
can climb over fences, and predatory
through.
Cattle find holes or sometimes knock down the fence. Fences
intimidate
"RECITATlF"
/
467
beasts get over, under, or
more than they actually repel or contain. The function of a fence
is to mark the border and discourage crossing it. It is a sign to outsiders not
to enter, an impediment
Toni Morrison
to invaders, a restraint upon insiders, a reminder
to anyone who tends to ignore borders or resist control. It is not a wall, a
bar, an absolute barrier.
A fence articulates difference, insists on the recog-
nition between us and them, mine and yours, what is "in" and what is
B
orn in 193', Toni Morrison grew up in Lorrain, Ohio, and was educated at
Howard and Cornell universities. For many years, she was an editor at Random House; she taught at Howard and Texas Southern universities, held the prestigious Albert Schweitzer Chair at the State University of New York, Albany, and
now teaches at Princeton University. Her novels include The Bluest Eye ([969), Su/a
([973), Song of Solomon (1977), Tar Baby (J98[), Beloved ([988), for which she was
awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and Jazz (1992). She won the Nobel Prize for Literature
in [993.
"out": it draws a line.
The risk in crossing a fence is always substantial,
when fences are social and metaphoric
perhaps the more so
rather than physical and actual. The
outsider who dares to marry into a family or ethnic group that has fenced
out outsiders takes a very large risk. So does an insider who dares to leave
the farm or village to try life in a big city or a foreign country.
is full of individuals
But history
who have dared to challenge barriers and cross lines,
sometimes because they were courageous and heroic, sometimes because
they were just headstrong
and foolish. The selections in chapter 6 will
"RECIT ATIF"
explore what happens when people cross fences.
The poems, stories, essays, and play in this chapter sometimes celebrate barriers as providing protection
denounce them as authoritarian
and definition; sometimes they
and constricting.
Mainly, though, they
explore the reasons that we construct barriers, whether to keep our "own
kind" in or the "other kind" out. The human conflicts described here are
considerable,
and the difficulties run deep. Every human step out of an
ordinary path challenges,
paths and patterns,
in one way or another, the limits of all established
and if such challenges represent necessary human
growth, they also represent
the crucial battlegrounds
of human history.
~r~
I,
My mother danced all night and Roberta's was sick. That's why we were
taken to St. Bonny's. People want to put their arms around you when you
tell them you were in a shelter, but it really wasn't bad. No big long room
with one hundred beds like Bellevue. There were four to a room, and when
Roberta and me came, there was a shortage of state kids, so we were the only
ones assigned to 406 and could go from bed to bed if we wanted to. And we
wanted to, too. We changed beds every night and for the whole four months
we were there we never picked one out as our own permanent bed.
It didn't start out that way. The minute I walked in and the Big Bozo
introduced us, I got sick to my stomach. It was one thing to be taken out of
your own bed early in the morning-it
was something else to be stuck in a
strange place with a girl from a whole other race. And Mary, that's my mother,
she was right. Every now and then she would stop dancing long enough to
tell me something important and one of the things she said was that they
never washed their hair and they smelled funny. Roberta sure did. Smell
funny, I mean. So when the Big Bozo (nobody ever called her Mrs. Itkin,
just like nobody ever said St. Bonaventure}--when
she said "Twyla, this is
Roberta. Roberta, this is Twyla. Make each other welcome." I said, "My
mother won't like you putting me in here."
"Good," said Bozo. "Maybe then she'll come and take you home."
How's that for mean? If Roberta had laughed I would have killed her,
but she didn't. She just walked over to the window and stood with her back
to us.
4