In exploring the lives of others, real or fictitious, answering the question of what is good can be difficult. Halle Hill’s debut collection, Good Women, adeptly explores the meaning of goodness in people, which often the reader must judge in the context of their circumstances. These twelve moving stories sensitively portray Black women at various stages in life, each hoping for happiness and stability while finding their ways through adverse and often distinctively female experiences.
In each story, a woman is on the precipice of change, no longer accepting things as they are, but unsure of what to do next. Some have complex, troubled relationships with family members. Others have been mistreated and abused by men. All have failed in some sense, yet by design or luck, seize a moment to question or rebel, to take risks and assert themselves.
In “Seeking Arrangements,” a young Black woman travels on a bus with an older, sick white man to Florida to visit his family. She is both a conscientious caretaker and a reluctant lover, unhappy with her situation but resigned to it. Above all, she fears being judged. “When we board the bus, I’m nervous to hand my ticket to the driver. I worry she somehow knows. I worry she judges me for letting this white man pay my bills, but she doesn’t even notice us.” Yet, during her journey, she realizes she deserves more. “I am getting better at naming my needs,” she says. In “Honest Work,” eighteen-year-old Maudette works at the state fair while her mother Sylvia services male clients in their home. Maudette suffers from abysmally low self-esteem. “Most evenings, she walked in with her head held down, wiping away the crumbs from her gas-station powdered doughnuts. Her raggedy khaki Old Navy shorts rode up between her thighs, which made her tug at her crotch every five minutes.” Yet when one of Sylvia’s clients shows up at the fair, Maudette seizes an opportunity to extract an ounce of revenge. In “The Best Years of Your Life,” a woman who operates a for-profit college that defrauds its clients with expensive, worthless degrees is torn between guilt and needing to survive. One of her prospects, an older woman who wants to become a lawyer so she can help free her grandson from prison, tells her, “You’re a good woman. Your kindness is changing us, we won’t forget it.” The woman is “good” because despite her scam, she gives the grandmother hope.
Good Women also explores the complex relationships between family members as they change and evolve. In “Bitch Baby,” Celine tries to protect her gay brother Reggie from unhappiness and peril. “We’d heard the stories all our lives: about old Jeff Patton and his lovers, Mr. John Gilbertson’s thirty-year roommate, and fast Lacey McArthur’s harem of women. Would Reggie love it or end up like all the others: stripped naked, black and blue, and hung from a tree?” After a tragic incident, she realizes she cannot protect him from the world and has to meet him where he is. In “Hungry,” a woman undergoes a dangerous weight loss program at the same time her sick father is wasting away from kidney disease, the changes in her body mirroring her father’s rapid decline. Once told that “being fat was the worst thing any woman could ever be,” her obsession with calories, steps, and measurements becomes a way to mask her grief. In “Her Last Time in Dothan,” a seventh-grade girl visiting relatives of questionable character watches her mother dealing with the frailty of her grandmother, who barely recognizes her anymore.
Hill deals head-on with some of the challenges Black women face in white space. In “The Truth about Gators,” Nicki is forced into counseling after stabbing a man who abused her, creating a temporary version of herself to avoid being institutionalized. When she arrives at the Rabbi’s office, “I ask the white way, changing my voice to upper-middle-class, NPR-style vocal fry: brighter As, shorter vowels, tightness on the Ts.” In “Skin Hunger,” Shauna, a Black woman married to a white man, feels pressured by her community to have children. Her mother-in-law, mistaking her for a servant, asks her to throw away her dinner plate for her, smiling without apologizing and complimenting her on her braids. In “Bitch Baby,” Celine and Reggie clean houses under the suspicious eyes of their white employers, who attempt to bait them by leaving out their valuables, and when bringing flowers to Reggie in the hospital, demand that the vase be returned.
Hill allows readers to empathize with characters whose behaviors are sometimes unexplainable and less than admirable. In “The Miracle,” a woman in an abusive relationship hopes an unexpected pregnancy will change her life. She seems naïve yet good-hearted, simply wanting to make her husband a better person. “Barbie wouldn’t give up on him; and when they were alone, she saw the real Roger. He was funny, could sing and paint. He never forgot her birthday, always bought her fresh flowers and tiny trinkets, leaving her to wonder where this devil side of his came from.” In “Keeping Noisettes,” Lucille takes in destitute women who drift through town, sometimes neglecting the needs of her own daughter. She denies trying to be a savior. Yet when a serial wanderer named Janet appears at her doorstep, Lucille learns her limitations to change people.
Hill’s bold narratives leverage strong interiority and voice. She lets her characters have thoughts they shouldn’t have and lets them make bad decisions and fail. She puts happy endings aside, opting for her characters to take a small step forward or find a bit of clarity through the vast uncertainty of real life. These stories show how sometimes being a “good woman” is about adapting and enduring. It isn’t always about achieving something admirable and fulfilling, but rather, surviving long enough so perhaps, someday, she will.
Good Women
By Halle Hill
Hub City Press
September 12, 2023
Southern Review of Books 