I’ll Be Home Late Tonight – Susan Thames

Book Rating: 4.5/5 Stars

"Time comes when you get to choose between what you create and what you are given"

Susan Thames explores the unique relationship between a teenage girl and her mother, as the latter drags her young one into a journey that threatens to tear two apart but, in a way, also brings them even closer. Set in the 1960s, the book delves widely on the topics of motherhood, growth, and later on racism.

After June’s husband abandons her for a rich woman, she too decides to vacate her mother’s house and travel to anywhere that she and her daughter will find it comfortable enough to stay in. Years earlier, her tiny family had moved in to her mother’s with the hope that her salesman hubby would soon find a better job and get a better home for the family- a hope that continued to dash away with time.

Lily, from whose point of view the story is told, seems to be the only one who admires both  parents and her grandmother, despite their many flaws: The grandma, though full of love and warmth, daydreams about angels once in a while, and has attempted many times to jump from the attic and the high-rise windows of her house.

And June is an excessively nagging wife who complains about everything bad and downplays every good her husband does.  We also realize later that she is a whore who would go the mile to sell her 14-year-old daughter to prostitution. To be fair, however, poverty - and Lily’s obsession with men- were still going to lead her into the sex trade anyway, with or without her mother’s intervention.

In their journey, Lily and June run into relatives who are ready to accommodate them, but June always messes up in one way or the other and the two are sent parking. Far away from “home” and  money running out, the two turn into wooing men not only for money, but also for a place to take shower and sleep.

Despite acting snobby at times and thinking rather too maturely, Lily is still a child inside: She wants to go to school, make friends, play, and date her age mates.  When they manage to stay long enough in a place, Lily does make a few friendships- friends who are tough enough to ignore the girl’s outward meanness and look at the vulnerable personality inside her. But soon, all friendships are abandoned as she and June make another journey.

Lily finally realizes that her life is doomed as long as she continues to follow her mother’s aimless travel. She plans to escape from June, never to see her again. But where would she go? To a father who she still loves but who has rejected her? To her deranged grandmother who has refused to pick her calls ever since she and mummy left her shouting stark naked at the parking lot? To the relatives who kicked them out after June slept with one’s husband and introduced the other’s son to drug abuse?

Fortunately, one part of Lily’s personality comes to play at the right time and puts a short break to their suffering: Lily has a surprisingly warm heart for colored people - in fact too warm for her mother’s comfort. Unlike June, Lily refuses to perceive racism as a “normal” thing, and so tries to fight it in her own way.

While on one of their bus trips to nowhere in particular, a row ensues between the bus driver and a black woman. Lily stands in to defend the woman, leading to both ladies being ordered to leave the bus. Fearing that she will lose her daughter again, June follows suit, but with lots of bitterness, for her daughter has just wasted their expensive bus tickets.

It turns out that the black woman is looking for an assistant in her small restaurant business. Ignoring  June’s racist attitude, she welcomes mother and child into her house. At last, Lily is proud that, for once, she created her own choice rather than dragging along in June’s.

Even though troubles and disagreements between mother and daughter continue arising once in a while, Lily and June seem to have resigned to the fact that one is nothing without the other. And  for now, at least, they have a roof to sleep under. And June has a constant job with an employer who neither cares about what color she believes in, nor whom she has sex with.

I’ll Be Home Late tonight  reminds parent that LOVE and RESPONSIBILITY only work best when they go hand in hand.