Roselily

“She dreams; dragging herself across the world.” 

At the moment of her wedding, Roselily is thinking about the whole of herself and her history. She has lived a full life before this moment—the world of memories she now recalls. Being dragged across the world calls to mind the enslavement of Black people as part of the history of the United States, implying that the marriage might be its own kind of bondage.

“He glares beyond them to the occupants of the cars, white faces glued to promises beyond a country wedding, noses thrust forward like dogs on a track. To him they usurp the wedding.” 

The groom is from Chicago and is a Muslim invested in the race politics of the era. Being in the South and seeing White people—the descendants of slave holders, who profit from the continued disempowerment of Black people in the South—wounds his pride.

“She thinks of ropes, chains, handcuffs, his religion. His place of worship. Where she will be required to sit apart with covered head.” 

Roselily is concerned that the groom’s faith will force her into a subservient role. In her life up to this point, she has struggled economically and as a single mother, but she has had her independence, and she is worried that her marriage will change that.