Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (35 page)

Tom's injured arm, disabled in a cotton gin accident, should be read as an injury like that of chattel slavery that highlights Maycomb's unwillingness to part with a history so deeply rooted in a white supremacist hierarchy. This hierarchy is further highlighted by Judge Taylor's dismissal of Tom's repeated effort to complete the oath. By allowing Tom to complete the oath without his hand resting completely on the text, Judge Taylor prevents him from participating fully in this performance of citizenship. It may seem out of character that Judge Taylor would growl at Tom. However, it is important to understand that Judge Taylor is a paradoxical character caught between his own personal awareness of the inequality of the law and understanding himself as the embodiment of the white supremacist legal system. The social contract that Stubblefield refers to is underscored by what Charles W. Mills calls the Racial Contract, the creation of “a racial polity, a racial state, and a racial juridical system” (13–14) that classifies nonwhites as subpersons, and functions to protect the “privileges and advantages of the full white citizens” (14). Mills refers to this contract as an “epistemology of ignorance” (18), or a willful “misunderstanding” (19) of the world that would otherwise result in a jarring confrontation with the systems as they truly operate. For whites, this confrontation is often avoided since it would threaten their secure position within this system (19).
2
In Judge Taylor's case, it is more comfortable for readers to believe that his dismissal of Tom's efforts is a gesture of kindness. After all, Judge Taylor did appoint Atticus as Tom's defense attorney. Yet, Scout also introduces Judge Taylor as “a man learned in the law, and although he seemed to take his job casually, in reality he kept a firm grip on any proceedings that came before him” (
TKAM
187). This introduction, particularly in the context of Mills, implies that Judge Taylor, although he may recognize the inequality of the law, will nonetheless uphold the law despite its support of white supremacy. As the representative of the law, perhaps he believes he cannot be the man to point out its inequality.
3

As Atticus begins his examination of Tom, he asks if Tom had been to the Ewell home before the instance when Mayella claimed she was raped. Tom honestly replies, “Well, I went lots of times” (
TKAM
217). At this response, Judge Taylor picks up his gavel, expecting a similar reaction to that of Bob Ewell's performance but is shocked to find quite the opposite—silence. Nonetheless, this silence performs to the same degree as the outcries of disapproval heard earlier during the trial and is a sign that the spectators are meditating on the events unfolding before them.

The silencing of the audience is broken with the sound of Tom's voice. Following some calming reminders from Atticus that he swore to tell the truth, Tom rubs his hands nervously over his mouth, and proceeds to explain that he did not rape Mayella, that Mayella in fact kissed him. At this point, the audience erupts, and Judge Taylor is forced to violently bang his gavel. It is almost as if Tom, a figure denied any voice in the community, suddenly becomes the mouthpiece for disrupting the racialized sexual narrative that constructed black men as deviants and white women as the inevitable victims of their sexual passes. Tom's gesture of rubbing his hand over his mouth is a physical performance of coaxing himself to speak. It is a way of helping him “overcome the internalization of subpersonhood” to bring what he has been forced to censor for white audiences—his voice—to the surface (Mills 118). The white audience's response is expected, as the performance begins to unfold beyond their comfortable expectations. The unlocking of Tom's voice disrupts not only the accepted social discourses but also the contract of the space. After Atticus's examination of Tom and before Mr. Gilmer can make it to the witness stand, the contract is breached, as Mr. Link Deas, Tom's employer, stands in outrage and addresses the audience saying, “I just want the whole lot of you to know one thing right now. That boy's worked for me eight years an' I ain't had a speck o'trouble outa him. Not a speck!” (
TKAM
222). As Mr. Deas addresses the audience, he creates a space for other members of Maycomb to also reach the contract. Outraged by another outburst, Judge Taylor demands that the court reporter delete anything past Tom's last statement. If we think of the court report as a kind of script to the case, it is significant that Mr. Deas's account is deleted from the record. Deleting the voice of Mr. Deas is a way of shaping the dominant discourse, asserting control over the memory of the case, imagining that there was no community opposition. However, it is simultaneously a gesture that recognizes the power of the audience to change a situation, an acknowledgement Judge Taylor is reluctant to give.
4

Despite this deletion, Mr. Deas is not the only member of the community whose physical performance imprints itself on the memory of each person in the courtroom. Dill, angered with Mr. Gilmer's examination, is unable to control himself from bursting into tears. As Tom explains that he was motivated by pity to help Mayella with her chores, Mr. Gilmer's examination, which Dill calls “acting” (
TKAM
226), assumes an arrogant and defensive tone as he begins to feel his own position as a white man disrupted. Both Mr. Deas and Dill have reactions that seem involuntary. Mr. Deas seems unable to control himself and abruptly stands up from his seat, and Dill's tears are spontaneous and sudden. It is this spontaneity that creates this space as a community performance, where unpredictability works against the scripting or acting out of social roles. In short, it is Tom's assertion of self, seen in his control over his body and of his voice, that invites the remarkable response and performance from the audience.

The Post-Performance: Getting to
Know Boo Radley's English

Audience participation in a performance does not end as soon as the performance ends. Often audience members will take the performance with them.
5
Jem and Scout have a particularly difficult task as they continue to make sense of the outcome of the trial with the democratic rhetoric they learn in the classroom. Bob Ewell, who holds a grudge against Atticus after the trial, clearly carries that performance with him, and in a drunken rage, he targets Jem and Scout as they return from a school Halloween function. Boo Radley, having heard the struggle, saves Jem and Scout by stabbing Bob Ewell and proceeds to carry the unconscious Jem back to the Finch house, as Scout, struggling to see through her costume, follows shortly behind. After Dr. Reynolds arrives at the Finch residence to check on Jem and Scout, Heck Tate, Maycomb's sheriff, begins to question Scout about the events. As she communicates to Mr. Tate that “Mr. Ewell was tryin' to squeeze me to death,” she states that Ewell was suddenly pulled away from her as she heard someone “coughing fit to die” (
TKAM
309). When Mr. Tate asks Atticus to tell him who it was, Scout tells Mr. Tate that he can ask the man himself, and in a pointing gesture, draws attention to the man, who, Scout explains, “was still leaning against the wall. He had been leaning against the wall when I came into the room, his arms folded across his chest”—Boo Radley (
TKAM
310).

Unlike Tom, who speaks in the novel, Boo Radley's performance relies solely on his body language. While Tom represents the minority model of disability, Boo is identified as the medical model
6
by the familiar greeting he receives from Dr. Reynolds while at the Finch home and by Scout's description of him at the scene of the attack as someone “coughing fit to die.” As a representative of the medical model, Boo is subjected to a scrutinizing medical gaze that constructs his body as “abnormal.” Even Scout, who is quick to admit her wrongdoing for pointing at Boo, is unable to entirely remove herself from social constructions of normality. When she is properly introduced to him, her eyes move methodically from “his hands to his sand-stained khaki pants . . . up his thin frame to his torn denim shirt” and finally to his face (
TKAM
310). When observing the features of his face, Scout takes note primarily of what is
absent
from his features, including his cheeks, which “were thin to hollowness”; gray eyes so light in color, she thought he was blind; and his “dead and thin” hair (
TKAM
310). It is Scout's notice of what, to her mind, is missing from Boo's physical form that highlights the way he is constructed by the dominant social discourses.

Boo's personal story reaffirms that his disability was constructed. As a youth, Boo fell in “with the wrong crowd” (
TKAM
11), traveling with the Cunninghams from Old Sarum, who were “the nearest thing to a gang ever seen in Maycomb” (
TKAM
10). Although the boys did no real damage, they were the topic of discussion both in town and from church pulpits. After an “excessive spurt of high spirits” when they borrowed a car for a ride in the square and “resisted arrest by Maycomb's ancient beadle Mr. Connor,” the boys were brought up on a number of serious charges (
TKAM
11). Boo's father, Mr. Radley, who was “so upright he took the word of God as his only law” (
TKAM
12) was so mortified by his son's behavior that he chose to lock him in the house, never opening the doors and windows to the outside as he used to do. While the other boys attended school, Boo was refused the experiences of growing up by his father. When Boo did make a reappearance in Maycomb County gossip, it was for having apparently stabbed his father in the leg with a pair of scissors. Despite these seemingly wild actions, “Boo wasn't crazy, he was high-strung at times” and Mr. Radley refused to press charges or send him to an asylum, although “Nobody knew what form of intimidation Mr. Radley employed to keep Boo out of sight” (
TKAM
12). The pieces of Boo's history reveal that his behavior is a result of his victimization, not of any inherent disability.
7
Under the judgmental gaze of his father and as the speculative gossip from curious town members, it is no surprise that Boo becomes “high-strung.” His social anxiety is a symptom of his isolation, and he stays in his home to avoid the diagnostic gaze that he would experience outside.

Despite Mr. Radley's wish to keep Boo out of an asylum or a juvenile detention facility, Boo's home effectively functions like an institution. It is a place known for its signature coldness of closed doors and windows that keep Boo from moving beyond its perimeters into a new social space. Moreover, Boo is still judged and diagnosed by his family as being unfit for society. The way Boo chooses to occupy the corner in the Finch home, the place in the room that has the most borders, similarly mirrors the borders that have been built around him and that have situated him on the periphery of the community. When outside the space of his home, Boo seeks similar borders, hoping to escape notice. In a protective gesture, Boo stands with his hands crossed. It is only when Scout points her finger in his direction
8
that his protective shell is cracked, and he reacts by anchoring his body and placing his arms flat against the wall.

As Boo stands awkwardly in the corner, Scout notices that “his palms slipped slightly, leaving greasy sweat streaks on the wall, and he hooked his thumbs in his belt. A strange spasm shook him, as if he heard fingernails scrape slate, but as I gazed at him in wonder the tension slowly drained from his face” (
TKAM
310). Boo holds onto the wall and then onto the loops of his pants in an effort to gain control of his visceral reaction to fear. Those instances when he seems to be losing control—when his hands slip and when he experiences some kind of spasm—stand as important performance moments. Just as Tom had to lose control of his hand in front of the courtroom to gain some control of the space, Boo has to allow himself to lose control under a discerning gaze in order to re-familiarize himself with his own body in this context. In other words, only by
losing control
of his body does Boo
regain
control. In his subtle removal of his hands from the wall, his spasm, and his slight smile to Scout, he comes to recognizes that Scout's gaze is not one of judgment or negative diagnosis but rather reflects a gesture of friendship and acceptance.

After Dr. Reynolds leaves the room, having given Jem some medication to relive his pain and enable him to rest, Scout observes that Boo, still lingering in the corner, stood with his “chin up peering from a distance at Jem” (
TKAM
319). It seems Boo tries to maintain a distance between himself and Jem, perhaps a reproduction of the aesthetic space that most members of the town maintained with him. Scout invites Boo to approach the bed and look more closely at Jem, as “an expression of timid curiosity was on his face, as though he had never seen a boy before. His mouth was slightly open, and he looked at Jem from head to foot” (
TKAM
319).
9
In the expression of curiosity that comes over Boo's face and in the way he looks at Jem, his gaze moving from head to foot, Boo reproduces his own version of the diagnostic gaze that is both curious and methodical. Suddenly, he inverts the politics of staring and the medical model of disability, and with the comfort of Scout, performs this inversion in a location that is also the stage of his own community performance. To Boo, a community performance exists on the smaller scale in the home of Atticus Finch, where Mr. Tate, Atticus, Jem, Scout, and Dr. Reynolds represent the whole. In a final moment before asking Scout to take him home, Boo, while looking at Jem, reaches out to stroke his hair but then lets his hand fall to his side in a gesture that reflects his reluctance to have a close involvement with others. Assured by Scout that it is alright, Boo gently touches Jem's head. The tenderness that Boo brings to Jem is also a final inversion of the medical model that so often separates the person from the body. Boo's short performance outside of the borders of his home requires a re-scripting of the medical model that relies not on a diagnostic gaze but on gentleness. More importantly it requires understanding the languages that Boo speaks. As Boo and Scout sit in the shadows of the porch listening to Atticus and Mr. Tate discuss the best way to handle the events, Boo indicates to Scout with a squeeze of her hand that he wants to return home. In this moment, as Scout begins to lead Boo back to his home, she embraces a gentleness similar to that exhibited by Boo toward Jem. Most importantly, Scout begins to understand “his body English” (
TKAM
319). As readers, we are also being invited to learn this language.