Daughter; A Novel

The gifted author of the acclaimed memoir The Prisoner's Wife delivers a deeply penetrating work -- an emotionally shattering first novel that explores the perils of silence and illuminates the fragile complexity of the mother-daughter bond. On a winter night in Brooklyn, Aya Rivers, a vibrant nineteen-year-old black girl, is shot by a white police officer in a case of mistaken identity. Her mother, Miriam, a rigid and guarded woman, rushes to the hospital. As Miriam desperately waits at Aya's bedside, she falls back into memories of her own youth, when her life took a series of tragic turns as she struggled for independence and dealt with the end of her relationship with Aya's father. But as Miriam's recollections of love and regret descend upon her, this woman who has spent nearly every day of her life in an emotional prison finds that her wounds slowly give way to healing and a tentative hopefulness. With the lyrical economy of poetry, asha bandele tells a powerful story that boldly confronts timely and troubling issues. Daughter is an unforgettable portrait of one extraordinary woman and her journey -- from secrecy to openness, from the silence of isolation to the beauty of connection.

asha bandele, features editor and writer for Essence magazine, is the author of The Prisoner's Wife and a collection of poetry. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her daughter.

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Chapter 1. Eight Manchester Place: Wednesday, 7:15 A.M. It was a morning thick with winter and a surprising sun. And the light was early. It was gliding down the two-block road, down the stripped-down street, down past where the old frame houses wore their paint like rags and did not concern themselves with frivolities like manicured front lawns or usable porches. The light coasted until it came to the corner where the small brick two-family house stood, stiff and alone.Eight Manchester Place. That was the home. Well kept and clean, it was a reminder of what this neighborhood, this street, had once looked like. Here had been a community born during the migrations of the 1930s and 1940s, organized by the push and power of the 1960s, rocked by the horse and recession of the 1970s, asphyxiated, cut, cast out, and cracked in the 1980s. Still, there was light somehow. Even in this final decade of the century, with all its bruises and deep-set abrasions, there was light somehow, and this morning it was coming in early.It was coming in and Aya Rivers, who lived on the second floor of 8 Manchester Place with her mother, Miriam, was trying to sit up under it. Cross-legged in a chair at the dining table, beneath the window and furious spider plant, Aya was reading from an anthology of poems for her Black women's literature class. She was particularly fixated on a Sonia Sanchez verse, when she called out to her mother. "Mom, you gotta hear this," she said.Miriam answered in that same mild voice she always used no matter what the circumstance, "Okay, okay, but quickly. I have to leave a little earlier than usual today. There's a big meeting at work."There was always something whenever Aya wanted to talk to her mother. All the trouble she had caused and now, finally, at nineteen, Aya was doing what her mother had asked of her. She was in college and was making excellent grades. She'd been off probation for seven and a half months, and hadn't done anything that would raise an eyebrow with anyone, anywhere. She was trying so hard to be that thing, that neat and perfect thing her mother always wanted her to be.But it always came back to, how? Not how to become, but how to forever be that thing? With all the swerves and wild twisting that the day could bring, how? That question had never been sorted out clearly for Aya. Her mother would tell her to get proper rest, to eat, to study, and to be on time. But she never told her how to make sense of the confusion and all of the hurt stacked up inside her, stacked and cluttered, chaotic, and dusty.As much as she could then, Aya relied upon the judge, her probation officer, and even her mother when they said, Just follow the rules. Please, her mother would plead. Just do what they say. Which Aya did. But it didn't help that no one ever said what to do when the rules didn't make sense, when the rules were stupid.That's where Aya had always stumbled. When she came across a rule that didn't fit into her life. But for the last seven and a half months, and even before that, back when she still had to report to Mr. Wright, Aya had followed the rules, even when they seemed ridiculous. Like the curfew that was so crazy it almost dared her to violate it. The year Aya was turning eighteen years old, she was supposed to be in the house by six o'clock on weekdays and by eight o'clock on Fridays and Saturdays.Now, with probation over, she no longer had a court-ordered curfew, but Miriam still insisted that Aya be home as early as possible: eight o'clock Sunday through Thursday. The weekends were negotiable. But not by much. Every now and again, Aya would push, though lightly. She would mumble something about wanting to hang out -- just hang out -- and Miriam would not only remind Aya of the girl's own troubled history "just hanging out," but she'd also make a cryptic reference to Aya's father. Something about how he learned the hard