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Chasity Mitchell
Dr. Murdock
English 1001
18 September 2014
Project One: Mother’s Story Retold
The purpose of this essay is to retell the story of John’s and Robby’s mother. Later, I will
then explain the importance of her story and how it connects to John’s and Robby’s by using
quotes from John’s story, Our Time.
John’s mother was a calm and non-judgmental type of person. She was willing to help
and great with seeing the good inside of people, even when they didn’t show it. She looked at the
big picture before making any assumptions about anything. His mother was a woman of fairness.
“Her relations with people in that close-knit, homogenous community were based on trust,
mutual respect, common spiritual and material concerns,” (Wideman 433). John’s mother was
the type of woman, you would go to talk to about your problems and when you were done
talking, and everything would be okay. This all changed once, her son’s, Robby, friend Garth
died.
John was one of the better children. “You’d misbehave but I could talk to you or smack
you if I had to and you’d straighten up,” (Wideman 428). John’s mother could express her
feelings to him and John would listen. They could talk about how different the two were, of her
children. John would become angry listening to the stories of the actions his brother was putting
forth because they were dangerous and causing a lot of hurt to their family. John believed that
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because Robby was his brother, it was only a stage of wilderness he was going through and
would only last until he got his head together and decided to start doing right, like the rest of
their siblings, (Wideman 429). Because John was over 2,000 miles away, he didn’t have to deal
with the everyday troubles of his brother Robby, like their mother did.
Robby was never the perfect child. He got into trouble, he hung out with the wrong
crowd, and anything a typical boy did, growing up in the bad part of Homewood, with no set
goals. But after his friend’s death things got worse. He began stealing from his mother and
others, lying and he began hanging out in the streets more. He even became a dope fiend and
ended up killing someone. But that was the way he coped with Garth’s death. That was the way
Robby stood out from the rest of his family and he got his attention. “Didn’t want to be like the
rest of youns. Me, I had to be a rebel,” (Wideman 443).
With Garth’s death, it was like Robby no longer had a reason to try to be better and
things never did. Although Robby wasn’t the best child, his mother loved him unconditionally.
“He’d done wrong but he was still Robby and she’d always be his mother…she would find room
to exercise her love,” (Wideman 432). She would do anything to help him and try to keep him
out of trouble, even though Robby was already at the age, where he was going to do what he
wanted to, no matter who it affected. This hurt his mother a great deal because she always
wanted the best for him and Robby ended up in prison. She tried to fight it but it wasn’t much
she could do because she knew that what Robby did was wrong. “She extended the benefit of the
doubt. Tried to situate herself somewhere in between, acknowledging the evil of her son’s crime
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while simultaneously holding on to the fact that he existed as a human being before, after, and
during the crime he’d committed,” (Wideman 432).
His mother began to really resent Garth’s death. She came to the conclusion that if the
doctors would have did their job right, that Garth wouldn’t be dead. That Robby wouldn’t be
where he is or how he is. “Before she told Garth’s story, my mother had already changed, but it
took years for me to realize how profoundly she hated what had been done to Garth and then
Robby,” (Wideman 431). His mother began to not give people the benefit of the doubt. To
receive people of how they portrayed themselves. She expected the worse now. She knew that
the world was not a good place and that being black and a woman, she had little authority. “She
could see their side, but they steadfastly refused to see hers. And when she realized fairness was
not forthcoming, she began to hate…She’s peeped their hole card. She understands they have a
master plan that leaves little to accident, that most of the ugliest things happening to black people
are not accidental but the predictable results of the working of the plan,” (Wideman 433).
Her story had something to do with Robby’s and Johns because it shows how events in
society can have a huge effect on people. It shows the side of John’s hard times in life with
having to look at his mother the way she was and also her side of Robby’s story and Robby
really knowing how she really felt about it all. In Robby’s story, he talked about his guilt of what
he put his mother through and how sorry he was. “I wanted Mom to know I knew what I’d done.
In a way I wanted to say sorry for spoiling her life. After all she did for me I turned around and
made her life miserable,” ( Wideman 447). In his mother story she never really blamed Robby
for any of it. Her story tells why Robby and John, feel the way they do. If her story was never
told, we would have never knew why Robby felt so guilty and ashamed, why it hurt John so
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much to look at his mother. “I’d listen and get angry at my brother because I registered not so
much the danger he was bringing on himself, but the effect of his escapades on the woman
who’d brought us both into the world,” (Wideman 429). And most importantly, why she was the
way she was before and after the death of Garth.
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Works Cited
Wideman, John. “Our Time.” Ways of Reading An Anthology For Writers. Tenth Edition.
Anthony Petrosky, David Bartholomae, Stacey Waite. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2014. 420459. Print.