Gifted or Crazy???

Blog #6

After reading “Beccah”, I was left thinking about how the mother must have been crazy.  After all, she danced about when no music was on (not completely abnormal but for arguments sake it seemed a bit odd), bumped into walls, and appears to not take notice of her daughter while being entranced.  However, I read “Beccah” a second time and viewed the mother somewhat differently.  Instead of viewing her as mentally ill, I started to think that maybe she really was gifted.   Auntie Reno said “Some people-not many, but some-get dah gift of talking to the dead, of walking true worlds and seeing things one regulah person like you or me don’t even know about. Dah spirits love these people, tellin’ em for ‘do this, do that.’ But they hate em, too, jealous of dah living” (Keller, 199).  There is the notion that some people can in fact communicate with the dead.  They are the translator between the living and the deceased; passing on messages from one world to the other.  That is talent.  Despite her mother being seen as gifted, all Beccah wanted was her mother, in her truest form; a form that made her appear “normal.” Beccah also seemed to be pulled between two worlds; two opposing desires.  Not in the same sense of her mother but in her desires.  One part of her wanted desperately for her mother to be there and for no one to harm her.  But another part wished her mother away.  She prayed to the spirits and to her dead father to release her mother.  She offered up sacrifices that might possibly appease the spirits.  She believed that if the spirits were happy they would protect her but they could also inflict disaster.  “Always, when I went to hide the money in my room, I’d slip out a dollar bill, roll it tight as an incense stick, and lay it in an ashtray on the dresser.  Careful to hide from Reno’s eyes, I’d strike a match and burn the money for the spirits.  Then, pulling out my father’s picture, I would begin to pray to my only connection in the spirit world. ‘Please please please, Daddy. I’ll give you everything if you give my mother back.’ I begged, reasoning that as a dead preacher, my father would be able to get God to intercede on my mother’s behalf, or-as a spirit himself and in collusion with the other vengeful ghosts holding my mother captive-he might be persuaded by my own burnt offerings and bribes to free her” (Keller, 201).  In spite of all her efforts, her mother seemed destined to be partially controlled by the spirit world.  Her mother was convinced that she alone had killed Beccah’s father since she “wished him to death, every day I think, every day I pray, ‘die, die,’ sending him death-wish arrows, until one day my prayers were answered” (Keller, 201).  Would she go into a trance since she felt she had caused the death of her husband?  Was it he who was taking a hold of her?  Or was she truly crazy?  Was there any truth to her mother’s teachings about the spirit world and being careful with death thoughts?  Beccah seemed to think she was crazier than gifted and seemed to take her mother’s ramblings with a grain of salt until one day, she realized that her wish had been granted, her mother was dead.