Betty

Content Warning: This section mentions racism, colonialism, child sexual abuse and rape, incest, death, and murder.

The importance of memory manifests in positive and negative ways throughout the story. Landon remembers the wisdom of his mother and grandmother and passes it on to his children. In doing so, he keeps alive Cherokee traditions that the US government tried to eradicate. His generational memory is a means of preserving culture and an act of resistance against oppression. As the forces of colonialism sought to erase the collective memory of the Cherokee people—especially of those who remained in the East rather than participate in the forced relocation of their people Westward—sexual abusers in the novel seek to erase or silence the memories of those they abuse. Erasure of memory is a strategy used by oppressors to erase a person’s or community’s individuality and history, so holding onto one’s memory is an act of resistance.

When Landon teaches Betty about her heritage, which traces back to the Aniwodi clan of the Cherokee people, he tells her, “Our people are keepers of this knowledge. Remember this, Betty” (8). He shows her a strip of deerskin from his mother’s mother that reads, “Don’t forget who you are” (26), and explains that for a long time, they were not allowed to say that they were Cherokee because the Europeans would take their land. Landon understands the importance of memory because the colonizers attempted to take it from his people. In school, the teachers and students try to shame Betty out of her identity, saying that her people were weak, “savage,” and lazy. They seek to erase the true memory of her people by overwriting it with a false, racist memory, but Landon’s stories ensure that Betty knows the truth. In teaching his children to respect living things, he notes that “[t]he earth will remember” (99), personifying the earth to reflect that it can feel and hold onto memories just as his children do.

The men who commit abuse in the novel rely on shame to force the women they abuse into silence. This silence often takes the form of an enforced forgetting, and the repressed memories resurface in destructive ways. Alka describes to Betty how her father left a half-eaten chocolate bar on her chest after he raped her. While shopping in the market one day decades later, Alka weeps and eats half of each chocolate bar in a display, explaining later that “[o]nly half was [hers]” (200). Fraya refuses to acknowledge that Leland has been raping her for years. When Betty tries to talk to her about it, Fraya slaps her repeatedly until Betty says, “I don’t know anything” (235), literally recanting the memory of what she witnessed. Fraya’s unwillingness to acknowledge Leland’s abuse allows him the space to continue abusing her until he finally murders her.

Alka, Fraya, and Betty use memory as a way to stand up to evil men. Betty supposes that her mother continues to visit her parents despite their abuse to show them that she is “[a] woman who [i]s strong enough to remember everything” (182). By letting her father see her life and family, she forces him to remember what he did to her. She cannot escape these memories, so she refuses to let him forget. When Leland tries to destroy Betty’s written account of what he did to Fraya, Betty says, “You can’t destroy her story […] I keep it with me. No matter what you do to the paper, her story will always live” (440). By holding onto the memory of what he did, she forces him to face his own actions. Memories haunt the Carpenters, but they also serve to ground them and remind them who they are.