The Salt Eaters

Personal and Public Health Conditions in the Black Community remain a thematic focus in this section. Velma’s husband thinks that at first, “He’d grown afraid for her. [...] Then he’d grown afraid of her” (162). Part of his fear of her comes from the fact that he cheated on Velma and she discovered the truth. He also understands that one of her mental health conditions is burnout from her work at the academy. Other people in Velma’s life, such as her friend Ruby, also express concerns about her. Ruby says, “I think she’s lost her marbles. [...] she asked me the other night [...] When is it appropriate to commit suicide. [...] Stone crazy. Those fumes at the plant have eaten up the sister’s brain” (215). In addition to the pressures of family life, Velma has the pressures of working at—and potentially sabotaging—the plant. Her activist actions become emotionally overwhelming, adding to the mixture that leads to her mental health crisis. The anecdotes in these sections show a lack of community support for Velma, from her husband to her friends, who speak about her crisis deprecatingly. Again, Velma’s condition is a microcosm for her community at large. As Minnie heals Velma through a communal ritual, so will the community need to unite to heal the Fracturing in Black Activism.

Keeping with this theme, Ruby, seeing Velma’s burnout, comments that “Women for Action is taking on entirely too much” (198). Ruby tries to scale back what the group is involved in, which can ease the mental load of these women activists. This group is separate from the academy, which has its own factions. Ruby says, “They’ve gotten so insulated and inbred up there in the cozy corner of the Academy’s east wing having their id ego illogical debates, no one even sees them anymore” (199). There is a separation between academics and other types of activists, reflecting an evergreen divide in activism between theory and praxis. Neither can exist without the other, but many people privilege one over the other.

The suggestion that the plant contributed to Velma’s condition also speaks to Uterine Issues, Sexist Oppression, and Reproductive Justice. As the plant poisons the Earth, it also poisons the figurative mother of the Black community. This also brings in African diasporic religions and their emphasis on Mother Earth spirits and their suffering at the hands of environmental atrocities and misogyny. Corporate power leaks into the Earth, Velma, and Black spirituality and fertility.

Another group includes Campbell and the game players who come to the café where he works. While Campbell is connected to the academy, he hopes to reach a wider audience with his game, Disposal: “It was an exasperating game, guaranteed to either drive you nuts or urge you to joining the international antinuclear movement, or at least send a check to Mobilization for Survival” (208). He tests his theories about the game on the café regulars. This also continues the connection between nuclear waste and the harm experienced by the Black community. However, like Obie, Jan—a friend of Velma’s—and other members of the community long for wholeness. Jan recalls what “Mrs. Heywood said: Keep the focus on the action not the institution; don’t confuse the vehicle with the objective; all cocoons are temporary and disappear” (199). This echoes Obie’s desire for all the factions and groups to work together, in and out of the academy. This also foreshadows Velma’s shedding of her “cocoon” at the end of the novel, as Blackness is united around her.

The structure of the novel continues to be nonlinear in this section. The experience of this can be described in the quote: “Time. Time not speeding up but opening up to take her inside” (171). This is from a memory that Velma has of being in a marsh, but it also applies to the delays and stalling in the narrative. The motif and symbol of salt links different threads of the narrative. For instance, in the marshes, Velma “was drifting, her gaze skimming the grasses, sliding to the far side of the marshes, its borders outlined by the salt froth on the inside, the crusty short grass and salt-stiff calamus on the outside” (170). The phrase salt-stiff appears in a different point of view where the narrator follows Campbell, whose “shirt [is] salt-stiff after a jog” (172). Salt is associated with stiffness in both Velma’s memory and Campbell’s present—the repetition of salt aids in moving between different times. There is a connection between salt and liberation in African diasporic religions, salt being a balm and a way to unite people. It is stiff here because the Black community is not using it properly and connecting. In African diasporic religions, salt is also seen as a tool for warding off evil spirits.

Music is also used to move between people and locations in Claybourne. For instance, the music from Geula’s dance class “drifted out over the trees toward the Infirmary, maqaam now blending with the bebop of Minnie Ransom’s tapes” (168). The reader is taken on a journey with the music. As it reaches another place, the narrator focuses on that place. Music also connects Velma and Minnie during the healing. The music touches her: “music pressing against the shawl draped round Velma, pressing through it against her skin” (168). Minnie’s shawl becomes an important symbol at the end of the novel when Velma sheds it as part of her healing journey. Here, that symbol starts to come into focus. The novel also continues to emphasize this connection that music establishes in the Black community, resolving the fracturing in Black activism. Music unites characters and their perspectives here and will serve as a tool for weaving together Black voices by the novel’s end.