“Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.” Chapter six of Light in August begins this way. Readers are given an extremely vivid description of one of Christmas’ most intimate memories, the one with the toothpaste. Though it may seem insignificant, when looking for secondary and tertiary meanings under the primary literal one, as readers we can infer the effects of toothpaste.
“Once in the room, he went directly on his bare and silent feet to the washstand and found the tube. He was watching the pink warm coil smooth and cool and slow onto his parchmentcolored finger when he heard footsteps in the corridor and just beyond the door.” There are many things in these few sentences. One, we know Christmas is a very quiet boy. It also seems clear that he is often unnoticed; “…he was like a shadow, small even for five years, sober and quiet as a shadow.” The interesting thing about shadows are even though they are associated with the dark, they need the light to exist. The squeezing of the toothpaste onto his finger airs on the side of sexual and phallic. There is an image of a worm-like thing coming out of a bigger thing, or maybe there is a suggestion of ejaculation. As the memory progresses Christmas is “squatted, among delicate shoes and suspended soft womangarments…pink-and-white…making his mouth think of something sweet and sticky to eat, and also pinkcolored…when he discovered the toothpaste in her room he had gone directly there, who had never heard of toothpaste either, as if he already knew that she would possess something of that nature and he would find it (p.120).” Before things were obviously phallic but very quickly there comes a switch between manliness and femininity. Christmas finds himself surrounded by womanly things and even seems to like it. He uses the word “delicate” which suggests a calm, gentle tone when describing or thinking about women. The toothpaste also belongs to the woman and he can taste something sweet and sticky, the implication blurred between whether Christmas is referring to the toothpaste or his ‘fantasy’ of woman. The toothpaste is also not his, despite being five, Christmas knows the toothpaste isn’t his and what he is doing is wrong; “When they went away, he would replace the toothpaste and also leave (p.121).” Christmas is semi-aware of the difference between right and wrong at a young age. Toothpaste also serves as a representation of modernity. Toothpaste is something from the city, maybe even only the elite use it. There is the obvious meaning of hygiene and cleanliness, also the toothpaste belongs to a dietician which is very ‘modern.’
In one memory we learn quite a bit about Christmas. He is like a shadow, which means he is quiet, often lurking, and often falls into the background, alone. He also seems to be ‘obsessed’ with modernity, represented in the toothpaste, but cannot handle it hence his vomiting. Or maybe for the reader it represents Christmas’ attempt at modernity but it is taken away from him. “Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.” Chapter six begins with this quote. What we believe is the truth stays longer with us than what we know we remember and maybe what we think happened never happened at all. Christmas shares a memory from age five. Who Christmas is at present and who he was at five are different, what Christmas understood to have happened could have changed with perception as he aged.
