The Curse of The Grape-Wine Drunkard

Widowed and poverty stricken, Flora, the character in Alex Haley’s posthumously published novel, Mama Flora’s House, has no recourse but to become a baby sitter for Mrs Hopkins who is white and a loathsome person if ever there was one --- at least to Flora, Mrs Hopkins is overbearing. Flora has a baby boy, a son, and an additional mouth to feed. She needs the job. As if by fate, her son is the age of Kevin Hopkins that being Mrs Hopkins’ baby and she ends up breast-feeding both boys, the latter with his mother’s consent as a matter of fact, her terms of employment entailed feeding the boy thus, wet nursing, they call it. It is one of the curious ironies of the perennially strenuous and often adversarial white-black relationship of the enigmatic southern United States, an irony that goes as far back as the antebellum era of the Peculiar Institution. For a mysterious reason, it is an ignored fact that black slave women would wet-nurse white babies while their mothers avoided performing their maternal role out of deference for the incomprehensible and, if truth be said, moronic etiquettes of the noxious and nauseating southern pseudo-aristocracy.

That Flora has to wet-nurse Mrs Hopkins’ son in the 20th century, way after the end of slavery, does sound anachronistic but that is not what catches the reader’s attention when reading Mr Haley’s novel. No, this vestige of the antebellum era rearing its ugly head in the urban setting of he bustling metropolitan Memphis pales into insignificance in comparison to Flora’s thoughts as she stares at Kevin. To Flora, Kevin’s cherubic features are reminiscent of Jesus bundled in an animal feeder bedded with straw in the manger and looks very angelic. She does not understand how this Jesus-like baby could have seeds of genocidal racism waiting to sprout as he grows older, the very same that had led to numerous murders of black boys whose bodies would be consigned to the watery grave of the mighty Mississippi river leaving no trace but bitter memories of crimes never punished. What is captivating about her fascinations, apart from her hopeless wishful thinking of making Kevin a kinder and gentler person through her milk issuing from her black breasts, is the fact that she does not see an “angelic cherub” in Willie, her own baby boy. It is testament to the power of image. Through her avid spirituality, she is a Christian, the archetypical southern Baptist fanatical variety, the image of Kevin as an angel was burnt and branded into her mind thus leaving an indelible mark that would not permit her to see the angel in baby Willie that is in baby Kevin. The rendition of the Nativity seen every yuletide portrays Kevin as the baby Jesus but not Willie.

Though Flora, Kevin, Willie and the nefarious Mrs Hopkins are fictional characters, there in nothing fictional about the psychological effects of the images, icons or the portrayals of Christian characters often seen in books or movies. One incident will forever be in my treasure trove of memories. In 1989, just a few days before Christmas day, a close and dear friend of mine gave birth to a bouncing baby girl. My friend, a very devout Christian who would not miss a single Sunday service even if there was a snow blizzard, a common occurrence in the lovely hills of West Virginia, was a member of the local Presbyterian church just a few blocks down Wiley Street from the Chemistry Department where I was a graduate student. As a disclaimer, let me say I am not trying to embarrass members of that church in Morgantown by being so specific; they are incapable of embarrassment, as this narration will prove. Anyway, it is part of the church’s tradition to commemorate the birth of Jesus by erecting a temporary manger in the sanctuary right at the base of the preacher’s podium and putting therein the baby that was born closest to Christmas day. The lucky child would play baby Jesus and the members of the congregation would worshipfully file past the child in the cradle while dubbing its forehead as if they would get some blessings from the exercise. Presiding over the farce would be the preacher.

It so happened that that fateful December of 1989 the church was blessed with the birth of just one baby, a black girl, my friend’s daughter. Rubbing her hands in great expectations, the parent of the innocent child waited for the honour of having her charming and cute baby adored by the entire church while the preacher, clad in his flowing gown looked and smiling admiringly while folding his hands covered in the oversized sleeves of his gown. Every parent dreams of things like this however trivial they might appear to some. My friend spent a long, miserable, cold and friendless winter after she was unceremoniously snubbed by the entire church. With incredulously straight faces, the entire church members opted to put in the makeshift manger a white baby born in October. There is nothing wrong with that but it was part of the church tradition that the child born closest to Christmas would play baby Jesus. It is possible that the church leaders had belatedly realized that Jesus was actually been born in September and that the December commemoration was deliberately instituted to coincide and eventually destroy the ancient “pagan” celebration of yuletide. I am very doubtful that they had suddenly had the intellectual epiphany and honesty to have remembered that Jesus’ birth was in September. It would not be beyond the realm of reality to state that the motive had racial undertones. Members of the Presbyterian church I alluded to should be ashamed of themselves notwithstanding their contrived pious looks as I once witnessed as they sang Leaning On The Everlasting Lord like they were marching though the gates of Heaven; a brood of vipers.

Like Alex Haley’s fictional character, Flora, they simply could not imagine a black baby as a just portrayal of baby Jesus. Only the Kevin Hopkins babies of this world could do that; which brings me back to Flora’s spirituality and its inherent mental dangers. The source of this unGodly mentality is Holy Writ itself, the fictional but dangerous Biblical tale of Noah, to be more precise. Flora herself accepts that the misery the blacks have suffered is a consequence of Ham’s iniquitous behavior after he witnessed his father’s nakedness. In her daily prayers, she feverishly asks Jesus, he of Kevin Hopkins’ cherubic face, whom she genuinely thinks is God’s voice, to intercede on her suffering people’s behalf.

Jesus is God’s voice and her people are suffering for the sins of their supposed ancestor Ham. Salvation will only come by accepting Jesus, though it mutually entails some degree of acquiescence to anti-Semitism at the very least. To Flora, it, the former, is self-evident truth taught to her by her grandfather, a man born in slavery. The Biblical peculiarity of the Peculiar Institution is epitomized by Flora’s beliefs. An insulting and a source and justification of genocidal acts, it was drilled into the minds of the slaves that their plight had nothing to do with financial expediencies of the of the plantation owners who sought to boost their profits by exploiting free labor from people least prone to the climatic vicissitudes of the tropical southern United States. Within the bowls of Holy Writ, it is said Ham’s descendants were banished to Africa where they devolved into spiritual decrepitude, forsaking God by worshipping “false idols.” Only accepting Jesus would absolve them, Flora’s “colored folks,” of the curse of Ham.

This curse, false and concocted, has caused a lot of untold suffering that even enumerating every incident cannot adequately express the agonies and groans that echo from the advent of Christianity to this day but the very least we should do is take another look at it with the non-jaundiced eyes of non-Bible thumpers. Following the fabled flood, we are told in the Bible, Noah anxiously waited for the water to recede and the deposited rich soil to lose enough water to make it arable. After it did, Noah who was a man of the earth, a farmer, planted a vineyard; Genesis 9:20, and he drank of the wine. By the way, pristine wine has 40 % alcohol, volume wise, which makes Budweiser seem like bilge water in comparison. Without any surprise, Noah was knocked flat out by the wine and, in his drunken stupor, slept uncovered within his tent. It was while he slept in his nakedness that Ham, the father of Canaan --- the verse makes it a point to mention that Canaan was Ham’s son --- saw his father’s nakedness and told his two brothers, Shem and Japheth, of Noah’s state. The two brothers took a garment and laid it upon their shoulders --- to avoid seeing the unsightly nakedness of Noah --- and went backwards, and covered the nakedness of their father, and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father’s nakedness. We are told, as the incredible story continues; And when Noah awoke from his wine, he knew what his younger son had done unto him --- seeing him naked. And Noah said; “Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. God shall enlarge Japheth and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.”

Now, any father would empathize with Noah as it regards the manner in which Ham had conducted himself, possibly a result of the folly of youth. As a father, Noah had a right to chastesize his son Ham but he did not. Noah spewed his bile on Canaan, Ham’s son as we were reminded right at the beginning of the above-quoted Biblical passage. It was Ham who saw Noah’s nakedness but the latter chose to direct his anger and invoke God’s retribution on his own grandson, the boy Canaan. Poor Canaan was made to suffer for the iniquities of his father Ham.

The story would have some veracity and be more palatable if Canaan was the only son of Ham the real culprit. We are told in Genesis 10:6 that Ham had four sons, these being; Cush, Mizraim, Phut and Canaan, seven verses after the evil curse was pronounced but we will not let this get into the way of our reasoning, much as some may want it to. Noah did not curse Ham, the real perpetrator. He spared Ham’s first son Cush for which we thank Noah. Phut escaped his irate grandfather’s wrath as did Mizraim. Again, we are thankful for that. The anger of grandpa Noah was aimed squarely at the poor boy Canaan and no reason was ever given in the Bible. This story did not happen. It is too incredible. If it did, we can safely say Noah was still drunk when he made the curse. There is absolutely no way a benevolent and omniscient God could sanctify the curse of a grape-wine drunkard after all, the very same Bible tells us wine is a mocker.

It is a sad commentary that humanity has to torture itself and find justification for its misdeeds by harkening to the curse of a grape-wine drunkard, a mere folk story that did not even happen.

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