We Take Me Apart by Molly Gaudry Reviewed by Kadzi Mutizwa
Back when I first set about to become a book editor, Molly Gaudry is the kind of uncommon writing talent that I idealistically hoped/expected to semi-routinely discover and cultivate. But I spent enough time on the trade book publishing scene to understand that having something like this come across an editor’s desk is much more of a red-letter privilege than any kind of a right. An epic poem of epic mastery, We Take Me Apart centers on a girl (the narrator) who grows into a woman who grows into a heroine. And like most bona fide heroines, she remains nameless and fanfare-free. Brought up in an undisclosed non-American country, the narrator introduces the reader to the inner workings of the socioeconomic class divide through the eyes of a child who’s a member of (what’s considered) the wrong caste. Her only nearest and dearest is her mother, a domestic worker who cooks and cleans for wealthy families. So predictable are their days and hours that they “have no need for a timepiece.” Despite all of the material suffering, the narrator is raised to “scrub away” the unkind words of “fine tall ladies with short tempers.” When other children tease her about the way she looks or when she overhears one of the snobs in her midst “define play clothes as rags,” it’s her mother’s words (assuring her that her appearance “was not so bad”) and her mother’s actions (anointing her with a homespun crown of red leaves, declaring her a queen) that stick. As the narrator segues into young womanhood, she develops into a gifted seamstress, someone who stitches together disconnected pieces and fragments to make them whole. A random male houseguest whisks her away from home, gallantly offering to pluck her from the bleak tedium, and help her launch a more lucrative dressmaking career. He becomes both her lover and her entrée into the world of creature comforts. She’s not the only impoverished ingénue to run off with the first seductively solvent male stranger that saunters along. But this narrator isn’t as emotionally vulnerable as many of those who have stood in her “canvas sneakers.” And it quickly becomes pretty clear that this inner strength and groundedness—a “single red leaf was worth more to [her] than a dozen red roses’ petals scattered on [her] bed with pink candles all around”—is moored in the wholeness of her mother’s unshakeable love. As soon as she realizes that her knight has a few too many chinks in his not-so-shining armor, and their honeymoon period comes to a violently screeching halt, she cuts her losses and takes her wanderlust elsewhere (with the couple’s household dog in tow). An itinerant seamstress weaving in and out of setting after setting, and new experience after new experience, she gathers the fragments of each setting and experience to stitch together a self-made tapestry of a life. There are some who never stop nursing their grudges about the indignities their hardscrabble journeys have hurled their way. But this narrator-heroine chooses to become a healer instead of a hater, leveraging her craft into a singular art form. For example, she designs (avowedly impermanent) dresses out of flowers, to make other women feel distinctively stylish, attractive, and “protected,” if only for a day. The same visions of community empowerment lead her to fantasize about taking a messianic mission trip with her mom, flying over huddled assemblages of people who have had to struggle the way that they have, to “take away all hurt” and “wash them at length with [their] tears until there is no longer any such thing as complication in their lives.” A seamstress of the human situation, she won’t abide by the notion that there are any prescribed limits to mending bits and pieces of scraps and fragments into something respectably whole. Much like her flower dresses, this heroine’s seemingly indefatigable stamina turns out to be impermanent. The lurking, hulking ogre of pain eventually succeeds in pushing itself into the forefront. Yet even then, she takes her edges off by losing herself in flashbacks of her “kind,” “capable,” and “never disappointed” mother—her own, stitched-together pain management system. There’s a languid, yet firm, Marguerite Duras quality to Gaudry’s writing and, like a Duras masterpiece, We Take Me Apart is as savorable as an expensive, hard-to-come-by bottle of Burgundy. This is the kind of book that you not only can read in one sitting, but one that you probably should try to drink in all at once, slowly and solemnly, in order to fully appreciate the adulation-worthy undulation of Gaudry’s verses. Don’t settle on taking We Take Me Apart apart—submit to the majesty of its wholeness.
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Kadzi Mutizwa is a Midwesterner who currently lives and works in New York.
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