“Warmth spread from his center of power to his chest as the blood left his body. The Girl lay still beneath him until her breath became the only sign of life in the pile of hay. She felt the blood draining from him, comfortably warm against her now cool skin. It was like the first time her mother had been able to give her a real bath” (Gomez, pp. 11-12)
Already very early in the novel’s start, Gomez is addressing the racialized sexual violence black women were subjected to the deeply rural, slave-reliant antebellum state of 1850’s Louisiana. This brings to the forefront themes of a villainous objectifying gaze on black female bodies that may very well be at the crux of the novel. Consider the power placed on the phallic symbol of the white rapist: “his center of power” (11). The text is not concerned with racial violence alone. The center of this white man’s power is literally imbued onto his genitalia. The violence on display is profoundly gendered and embedded in patriarchal power structures that flowed through proslavery thought at the time. So, it makes perfect sense that his bleeding out on top of The Girl is a comforting warmth that triggers memories of her first “real bath” from her mother. A gory death that covered her in her attacker’s blood is characterized as “comfortably warm” (11). Not gross, not sticky, not a substance she is trying to wash off in a hurry. This act of violence soothes her. As this rapist is dying, “his warmth spreads” (11). Typically a death via stab wound is represented as a body getting colder as the blood leaves it and decomposition begins. But here, the warmth is spreading. It relieves The Girl’s distress. When violence becomes an ordinary aspect of one's life, when your very survival is dependent on killing another human being– one whose success and livelihood depends on your suffering– blood is a comfort. Gomez is posing questions about what it means to be living in a constant state of precarity. What does it mean when an entire diaspora of people’s lives are mitigated through racial and sexual violence? What happens when your freedom and your survival are only accessible through another type of violence: a defensive wound? Within the broader context of our class, how does a country reckon with a bloody past in a current political era that erases any historical documentation of its violent history? Where do the wounds go, and how can they heal?