Linden Hills

Willie Mason is from Wayne Avenue, the collection of apartment buildings that sit just outside the entrance to Linden Hills. Willie, unlike his friend Lester, grew up in poverty, with an alcoholic father and five brothers and sisters. Willie dropped out of school when he was sixteen, hoping to pursue a career as a poet, and is struggling to make ends meet with intermittent jobs. Both intelligent and highly empathetic, Willie is an outsider in Linden Hills, and so we often view this world through his perspective, as a place he is constantly trying to decode. Willie is also the only one who suspects that something might have happened to Willa Nedeed, Luther Nedeed’s wife. After he speculates that Luther lied about his wife baking a cake, Willie begins dreaming about Mrs. Nedeed and knows, somehow, that “she was waiting for him” (273). It is also impossible to ignore the similarity between “Willie” and “Willa,” which suggests that the two are undeniably linked, especially because Willie is the one who, unsuspectingly, frees Willa from her basement prison.

Lester has been best friends with Willie since the seventh grade. Unlike Willie, he grew up in Linden Hills, in the smallest house on Fifth Crescent Drive. Lester finished high school but, much to his mother’s horror, never went on to college. Like Willie, Lester wants to be a poet, and he thinks that you can’t write poetry shut up behind university walls. Although Naylor’s narrative follows Willie and Lester’s descent through Linden Hills as a play on Dante’s Inferno, Willie is the character we spend more time getting to know. As a result, Lester appears more like Willie’s guide, having grown up in Linden Hills and knowing how it works and some of the residents. He is saved from the fate of the other Linden Hills residents precisely because of his friendship with Willie.

Willa Prescott Nedeed is the wife of the current Luther Nedeed. We first meet Willa when she is locked in the basement and after the death of her son. We don’t learn her first name until halfway through the final chapter, when she reassumes her autonomy after years of subjugation as Luther’s wife. Willa’s narrative is printed in a different typeface than the rest of the text, which helps give her story its own distinctive voice and tone. What’s more, while the rest of the narrative goes on in the external world, Willa’s section takes place only in the Nedeed mansion basement, and so is inevitably more introspective. During her imprisonment, Willa must come to terms with her son’s death as the result of her husband’s cruelty; she is also able to recognize her own role in this outcome. She realizes that she has been complicit in her own oppression because she wanted the Nedeed name and all that came with it: “Her marriage to Luther Nedeed was her choice, and she took his name by choice. She knew then and now that there were no laws anywhere in this country that forced her to assume that name; she took it because she wanted to” (278).

Ruth and Norman Anderson, friends with Willie and Lester, live in one of the “dilapidated garden-apartment buildings” on Wayne Avenue (33). Ruth once lived in Linden Hills and chose to leave the neighborhood. After her first marriage dissolved, Ruth decided to marry Norman—a resident of Wayne Avenue—rather than staying in Linden Hills, a decision that most people couldn’t understand. However, Ruth sees Linden Hills for what it is and believes that she is better off living in a small, empty apartment on Wayne Avenue. Ruth’s husband Norman, although a loving husband most of the time, suffers from psychotic breaks every few years. Despite this, Ruth stays with Norman because of the time when, amid a breakdown, he was able to care for her when she fell sick.

Norman Anderson, married to Ruth Anderson, gentle and compassionate most of the time, but unable to hold down “a job for more than a year and nine months” (34). This is because every few years, he has “the pinks”—or a psychotic break—and believes that pink slime is covering his skin (34). As a result, he uses “his teeth and bare nails,” or even “jagged sections of plates and glasses, wire hangers, curtain rods,” to itch off the slim, at which point he is committed to a hospital until “the pinks” subside (34). Because of this, the Anderson apartment is devoid of anything sharp or easily breakable, such as china plates, to prevent him from harming himself during a psychotic break.

Winston Alcott lives in Linden Hills, and we meet him on his wedding day. Riding beside him in the limousine is David, his best man and former lover and partner of many years. Winston has sacrificed his relationship with David to pursue a life of superficial success—retaining his career as a corporate lawyer and securing a home on Tupelo Drive. In a flashback, we see a conversation between Winston and his father, in which his father says, “So do you think a black man can afford to have these type of rumors hanging over his head?” and where the implied rumors refer to Winston’s homosexuality (77). However, we also see a conversation between Winston and David where it is clear that Winston had a choice. He could have left Linden Hills and lived elsewhere so that he and David could be together, but he has chosen this life instead.

Living on Third Crescent Drive and aspiring to Tupelo Drive and career advancement at General Motors, Xavier can afford no mistakes. However, he has fallen in love with Roxanne Tilson—Lester’s sister—who is both black and opinionated. He doesn’t know whether to pursue his relationship with Roxanne by marrying her—which would be seen as a crack in his “fragile” existence—or try to forget her: “So he feared this rapid descent into the essence of Roxanne while knowing no other way to be complete” (99). Xavier seeks advice from Maxwell Smyth, who warns him not to marry any woman who can think for herself.

Maxwell is not a resident of Linden Hills; however, he is Xavier’s mentor at General Motors, as “they were the only two black men on the tenth floor at GM” (100). Maxwell has spent his whole life trying “to make his blackness disappear” by carefully training himself to walk, talk, eat, and socialize in a way that might make him race-less (102). He sees his “blackness” (102) as a “handicap” (103), one he can overcome: “his entire life became a race against the natural—and he was winning” (104). Maxwell also perpetuates many of the stereotypes regarding poor, black communities, seeing his own success as an example of what people can do, and so is unable to recognize “that the majority of black folks in this country are poor, have been poor, and will be poor for a long time to come” (114). Maxwell also expresses misogynistic opinions in his conversation with Xavier; when describing why his own engagement fell apart, he says, “She just didn’t appreciate the problems I was going through. And if a woman can’t do that, at least she should be quiet and stay out of your way” (110).

We meet Laurel Dumont mainly through the perspective of her Grandmother Roberta, who spent every summer looking after Laurel in her small house in Georgia. Now Laurel, formerly a competitive swimmer, works at IBM and lives in a house on Tupelo Drive that belongs to her husband’s family. However, finding that her life—despite containing all the marks of success—feels both empty and “wrong,” Laurel has stopped going to work and has let her marriage fall apart (227). After Nedeed tells Laurel that she can no longer live in the house on Tupelo Drive because her husband has filed for divorce, Laurel commits suicide by flinging herself off the diving board and into the empty pool. Laurel exemplifies how the Linden Hills neighborhood—and its empty ideals—can destroy a person and cause of their ultimate demise.

Michael Hollis—the reverend of the Mount Sinai Church, the primary church in Linden Hills—is an alcoholic. He lives alone after his wife left him because of his chronic adultery. In response to the Nedeed mansion being numbered 999 Tupelo Drive, the reverend has numbered his home 000 Fifth Crescent Drive—obvious references to the numbers that often denote the devil and the holy trinity (151). The reverend has become despondent and depressed preaching to a congregation of people who are “plastic” and unfeeling, and who do not reciprocate the passion with which the reverend preaches. He uses alcohol to replace religious and spiritual fulfillment—a dark and profound metaphor for the moral depravity at the heart of Linden Hills.