Hello again, and welcome back to The Short Spot, where we shine the spotlight on outstanding short stories that can be found in our collection! Our first highlight of 2021 goes to “Godmother Tea,” by Selena Anderson, which can be found in the 2020 edition of “The Best American Short Stories,” edited by Curtis Sittenfeld, and published yearly by Houghton Mifflin.
Sittenfeld says that reading the stories previously published in HM’s yearly anthology have made her feel “the way I suspect other people feel hearing jazz for the first time,” and that each story provides “windows into emotions I had and hadn’t had, into settings and circumstances and observations and relationships.” The 2020 anthology is highly reflective of the reverence that Sittenfeld holds for the series. She has pieced together a “striking and nuanced collection,” one which allows readers to “experience the transporting joys of discovery and affirmation, and to realize that story writing in America continues to flourish.”
Selena Anderson, originally from Pearland, Texas, obtained her B.A. in English at the University of Texas and received her M.F.A in Fiction Writing from Columbia University. She completed her Ph.D. in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston. Winner of the 2019 Rona Jaffe award, Anderson’s work “pushes the boundaries of realism and fantasy” in order to “explore and interrogate the ideas of race, identity, and Black womanhood in the American South.”
Anderson says that her favorite kind of stories to read are ones where the characters desperately want something. “It is not important to me why characters want certain things or whether or not they ultimately succeed in getting them,” she says, explaining that it’s “the wanting part that makes a character attractive” to read. “The wanting part makes the story timeless and universal,” she says, “because every one of us has wanted something. When we recognize this in another character it ignites something inside us that says, Yeah.”
In “Godmother Tea,” what main character Joy wants so desperately is a sense of self, of agency. She dismays early on that “my people who are still living don’t let me suffer the way I want to” in that they “express pride in the way I’m turning out.” Joy views herself critically, however, unsure entirely of the woman she is or wishes to become. She explains that her mother’s friends view her as “a dish that was difficult to get just right, but the special ingredients of an elite social circle, good home training, and private education have turned me into a well-spoken young woman full of potential.” On the other hand, Anderson writes Joy as though she feels has just begun baking a complicated dish, but without any of the proper tools or ingredients.
Joy’s home is furnished predominantly with pieces of “inherited furniture,” passed down to her from her mother. The beginning of “Godmother Tea” opens with the arrival of one such ancestral piece, “A life-sized mirror edged by baroque curling leaves, with slender gold feet,” that Joy looks upon with melancholy. Her mother claims the mirror will make the room appear larger, but Joy contends that she doesn’t “want anything of [hers] to look bigger,” as “A mirror would only reflect [her], plus all [her] sulky auras, plus the cultivated environment that had drawn [her] this way.” Soon after its arrival, Joy begins to see images of her ancestors within her reflection in the mirror. Imagining “dead relatives” looking through her eyes in “loving disapproval,” Joy sees “fragments of other women” who came before her. “A blink of the eye revealed some dormant part of my personality,” she says, “some no-longer-complete person who clutched her pearls at my audacity, the blasé way I naturally stood squandering my opportunities.” Through these fragments of women, the titular Godmother begins to take shape.
Joy describes the Godmother as “a slinky woman, still pretty in a violent sort of way” with a face that is “narrow and angled, her skull crested back in a tall forehead, her waved-up hair glistened with mineral oil and water.” She wears “a pair of gold slippers…a housecoat tessellated with hummingbirds” and a “pocketbook of leggy cigarettes.” From her arrival, the Godmother is quick, sharp, and entirely no-nonsense. She is “an ancestor who never really left, someone who’s here even when they’re not.” She is a metaphysical motivator, who “when life speeds through its continuum without pushing you forward,” turns her attention towards you. She serves as a subconscious embodiment of all of the elegance, candor, and self-assurance that Joy so desperately wishes she possessed.
During their first encounter, the Godmother provides Joy with both physical and spiritual sustenance, serving fried pork chops, collard greens, and advice that burns to Joy’s core. “Lower [your] expectations if you want to be happy,” the Godmother tells her, “You don’t have to change your heart, just your heart’s desire.” Anderson writes that the meal was too delicious to be describable. “If I could [tell you how delicious everything was,” Joy says, “You’d just cry and cry.”
Joy’s circumstances are far from what she had envisioned for herself. The two people closest to her—long time best-friend, Nicole, and former almost-fiancé André—are slowly but surely slipping away from her. She is not confident in herself, conscious of the way her speech is “too white,” unsure of her career prospects as a fine artist. The appearance of the Godmother, who is at times unrelenting in her psychoanalysis of Joy, annoys the young woman, as she is time and time again forced to examine herself through the Godmother’s eyes. “I wish you’d jump in the air and stay put,” Joy tells her, “You’re like a diss track I can’t turn off.”
Joy’s journey of self-reflection and growth is so beautifully written, funny and engaging, and melancholic in a way that not many things are. Selena Anderson is a phenomenal writer, and has enabled readers to see into a young Black woman’s life as she becomes more and more the woman she will be. The uncertainly of adulthood, of knowing whether you are making the right decisions, is readily apparent in this piece, as is the not-so-subtle “encouragement” one may find in those who have come before us. Though Joy hears many voices about who she is and who she might become, she inevitably realizes that while there are things out of her control, she is the only one with real agency over her decisions. “Nobody was going to explain to me my options,” she says, “I kept thinking someone was going to tell me what I was supposed to do next… But nobody was coming.”
If you are interested in reading “Godmother Tea,” it can be found online for free on Oxford American’s website, or in our collection in the 2020 edition of “The Best American Short Stories.”
Join us next time, where we’ll discuss another short story from the anthology. Until then, stay safe and happy reading!