#uncle bertie

DON’T WORRY, MAX. BERT’LL MAKE YOU LOOK REAL GOOD.

Toni recognizes Max’s queerness and fears it, but mostly she fears her daughter being hurt in the way that she’s undoubtedly seen happen to Bertie.  The core of their conflict being that she wants to provide for Max, since she’s a pillar in her community and she provides for everyone, at the salon, ushering at church, being motherly towards people like Clance who need it.  She does like Max as well as love her, but she can’t see Max living a future with the way she is, so she wants her to change all the same.  It’s such a realistic conflict with so much urgency in the time (and now too).  Edgar is much more accepting of Max’s reality because he didn’t experience losing Bertie the way that Toni did, and his family has been settled in Rockford for much longer, so he’s farther removed from the immediate need to establish himself in the community the way that Toni has.  Toni, on the other hand, knows how hard it is for Black women, and she knows how much more dangerous it is for people who are gender non-conforming and queer.  On the flip side of the coin, there’s Bertie and Gracie, who are pillars in their own community, who bring Max in and encourage her to learn of the world beyond Toni’s sphere.  All of them love Max, but none of them can tell her who she is.

For Lupe, motherhood is a complicated obligation.  We see her sending money home, so there’s someone she’s providing for, but we never find out who exactly that is to her.  From what she tells Esti, her family intervened and took her daughter from her because they thought she would be a bad influence in some way.  Bad influence in that she was a young, single mother?  That she was queer?  Something else entirely?  It’s not clear.  But whatever it was, Lupe recognizes, and regrets to an extent, that she has benefitted from being relieved of the responsibility of motherhood.  So when she’s forced back into a caretaker position, expected to meet all of Esti’s needs because she is the only one who can communicate with her, she resists.  It’s cruel, yes, to contribute more directly in Esti’s exclusion, while the others do it carelessly, out of ignorance and lack of effort.  But it’s an understandable response to the unfair expectations placed on her, especially given that she’s harshly scrutinized by her teammates and subjected to casual racism on a daily basis.  That’s not even getting into the ways that Esti reminds her of her daughter, and of the youth that she herself was denied, having a child at that age.  It’s all been denied to her, because, in letting go of her daughter, she lost all claim to those feelings.  In deciding to go find Esti, deciding to open up to her about it, she gets just a little bit of that back.  Her motherhood is inextricable to who she is, and so is her queerness, and so is baseball.  She’s never been allowed to have all three.  And opening up about it doesn’t fix that, but it’s something.  Esti’s forgiveness is something that Lupe rarely receives, but constantly gives.  And forgiveness is something we constantly deny mothers who give up their children.

Carson’s sister immediately mentions the absence of their mother on the phone and half-accuses her of leaving Charlie.  It’s not until later that we find out that Carson’s mother left when she was young, probably forcing her sister into that motherly role.  Carson clearly misses her mom, maybe idealizes her more than you’d expect from a kid who was abandoned.  I don’t know if Carson ever realizes it fully, but I think she takes comfort in knowing that, even if her sister and husband are disappointed about her running off to play pro ball, putting off having children for it, her mother would probably be proud of her decision.  Charlie’s accusation that “whatever made your mother leave is in you,” is heavy with the implication that her mother was queer.  That it was selfish to choose that over her family.  And it was.  But Carson decides to do it, too, because the newfound sense of self she has is more than any of the stability or love that her husband could give her.  In a way, it’s just the same as Greta confiding that she’d like to have children but could never put herself through commitment to a man.  I think a part of Carson knew that about her mother all along, which is why she shows such an unexpected amount of grace about being left behind.