Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir

Rick Trethewey told his daughter many stories from early literature, particularly Classical literature. Though Natasha integrates the stories of numerous mythological figures into her narrative, the one who repeatedly emerges is that of the prophetess Cassandra. In the short stories that Rick began to write about his family life, Natasha was renamed Cassandra. He believed that his daughter would serve as a vision of the nation’s future. He also believed that her identity would give her unique foresight, or a sense of what the country would become—multicultural and more accepting. The symbol of Cassandra is also significant in relation to Natasha’s feelings about Joel. Like the prophetess, Natasha relied on signs, most of them physical, which she believed gave early clues to his character. Throughout the memoir, she relies on an additional sense, developed through both empirical evidence and superstition, to help her survive life with her stepfather. At the same time, when Joel became abusive toward Natasha, she remained silent about it, out of fear that, like the prophetess, no one would have believed her warnings.

During her teen years, when Natasha encountered Joel at a football game, sitting in the stands, she wonders if the brief greeting that she had mouthed to him saved her life. Her sense of knowing to say something, of knowing how badly Joel needed validation, may have kept her alive. On the other hand, Natasha has the gnawing feeling, driven by her guilt, that her course of action may have precipitated her mother’s death. Thus, Natasha is both at home in superstition and discomfited by it—a paradox that becomes especially pronounced during her underwhelming visit to a psychic. 

There are several instances in the memoir in which Natasha recalls dreaming about the ground under her or the ceiling above splitting in two, revealing a wide chasm. The feeling of her world coming apart starts not long after her parents’ divorce and persists due to her feeling that Joel’s presence would only deepen her sense of feeling apart from her mother. That sense of separation becomes particularly pronounced after Natasha learns about Joel’s abuse of her mother, which made it more difficult for Gwen and Natasha to interact.

Division and separation are motifs that recur throughout the book, referring not only to Rick and Gwen’s divorce, but also Natasha’s separation from her extended maternal family; the lingering racial divisions which resulted in white flight from Georgia; and Natasha’s ultimate separation from her mother due to Joel murdering Gwen. The earthquake metaphor reiterates Natasha’s feelings of things having been destroyed, even if the destruction, like an actual earthquake, had a purpose.

Stone Mountain is a literal monument dedicated to the legends of the Confederacy. The memorial was erected in Atlanta in 1865, at the end of the Civil War. The figures of Generals Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee rise out of the soil in bas-relief beside that of former Confederate president Jefferson Davis. Natasha, her mother, and her brother, Joey, lived in an apartment at the base of the monument around the time of her mother’s death.

Stone Mountain is also a symbol of the racist lineage that Gwen resisted and that, according to Rick, Natasha’s existence served to challenge. Additionally, the monument is a testament to the persistence of the White supremacist patriarchy that made it difficult for Gwen’s accusations of domestic violence to be taken seriously. This absence of protection, as well as an adequate infrastructure both to tend to abused women and to prevent their victimization, created the circumstances that led to her death.

Natasha connects the monument to her birth and her early life. She was born on the 100th anniversary of Confederate Memorial Day—the holiday, like the monument, existed to “[glorify] the old South [and] the Lost Cause” (16). Her proximity to the monument, in both space and time, connects her to a lineage that both affirms and negates her existence. The Old South denied the validity of interracial unions, despite the existence. On the other hand, the idea of race and the strict categorizations that the antebellum South created the notion of Natasha’s biracial identity.

Stone Mountain is symbolic of the nation’s deeply entrenched ideas about race and gender, as well as the nation’s tendencies to deny or mythologize unpleasant aspects of its history. The problems, like the monument, are deeply entrenched in the soil.