Interiority in Sorry to Disrupt the Peace

Throughout Sorry to Disrupt the Peace, Patty Yumi Cottrell uses language and imagery to convey her inner emotional state --- or at least the emotional state that she wants us to see.  Her narrative voice, with its distancing defiance and intermittent crudeness, pushes the reader away and constructs a defensive wall around herself.  This wall embodies her attitude towards her adoptive parents, the establishment and the world at large.  She only lets down this wall when overwhelmed by grief or when caught off guard by her own reaction to the events around her.  When she first learns of her brother’s death, for instance, and later when she begins uncovering clues about his life and his reasons for committing suicide, we finally see her vulnerability and are given the opportunity to feel the heart inside this damaged warrior.

The author uses vivid descriptions of interior living spaces to convey the emotional interiority of the narrative.  Her apartment in New York is minimalist and cramped.  Abruptly, on the day that she learns of her brother’s death, an enormous sofa is delivered and invades the space with its bulk and odor.  To re-establish some degree of order, she neatly dissembles the packing boxes that the sofa was delivered in, aligns their edges, and stacks them neatly for removal.  However, the intrusive phone call announcing her brother’s death has set her world in disarray and she breaks down in sobs on the couch that has invaded her ordered space.

When Helen arrives at her adoptive parents’ home, she describes it in rich sensory detail.  This house that she grew up in is a large dark, edifice with too many rooms.  Originally intended to impress the viewer, it is instead an empty structure, marked by disease, decay and dysfunction.   According to Helen, the house is “infected” with the contradictory morals of the church, of the upper middle class, and of her adoptive parents who wear their parenthood as a badge of honor but show little of the attentiveness or compassion that would warrant it.  The house’s many rooms suggest that a big happy Catholic family lives within, but it’s all just a front -- their family is small and adopted, their faith is made fraudulent by reports of incest and abuse, and rather than being a happy nurturing place, it is dark, dirty and neglected.  The putrid remains of a dead animal can never be removed from the woodwork in her brother’s closet.  All of the surfaces are dark with filth and, although Helen attempts to conquer them with a mop and bleach, the task is enormous and she makes little progress on her own.

The author also uses the imagery of buildings and containers to imply something about the state of their contents.  She describes the skull as the “housing” of the brain; the workings of the brain must be contained to keep them under control, lest their owner’s mind spill out into madness.  She describes her brother as a “husk of a human being” implying a delicate emotional state and an identity that is not fully formed -- or has lost its inner substance altogether.

Helen’s childhood home seems to be a veritable petri dish of disease, both literally and metaphorically.  She describes her adoptive parents as being “infected with cheapness,” which they spread throughout the rooms of the house.  Helen recalls the time when the whole house was “infected” with silverfish.  Most vividly of all, the decaying mouse in the wall in her brother’s room left a stench that could not be removed.  In this house, even the woodwork itself is diseased.

Spaces must be defined and kept under control.  As Helen professes, “arrange your room and you arrange your world.”  She finds peace in a “spotless condition.”  Cleaning and organizing are her way of asserting control over her emotional world.  Consequently, it is no wonder that her childhood home sends her into fits of vomiting, and dis-ease. 

Simultaneously, the natural world is disgusting and venal.  Her life is marked by a series of biological functions that she describes with repulsive detail – vomiting, shitting, bouts of acne, sweating, menstruation, and even a horrible infestation of bed bugs.  Sex holds no appeal or satisfaction for her -- unless her partner is a towel.  She is uncomfortable in her body, much in the way that she has not come to terms with her emotional self.  While the author drops hints of possible childhood sexual abuse – by the priesthood or by her adoptive father perhaps -- it is never clarified nor does it need to be.  It’s enough to know that her childhood has left her emotionally damaged, resigned to a power struggle with her mind and body.

Moreover, both she and her brother grew up uncomfortable with being Asian, and with the physical characteristics of their race.  In the narrow-minded world in which she was raised, her appearance has made her an outsider.  As an adult, she still feels like a social misfit and unrealized as a full human being.

When Helen learns the true cause of her brother’s death, she finally attains a degree of peace and healing.  In a desire to share her newfound understanding, she reaches out to her adoptive parents -- without success.  Moreover, in an attempt to create order and beauty in the dark and lifeless house, she has taken flowers sent for her brother’s funeral, and put them in a large bucket of water to keep them fresh -– only to discover later that the bucket was full of bleach, and the flowers are dead.   

In the end, her well-intentioned attempts to redeem the sadness of her brother’s death with a touch of grace can’t survive in this environment.  The reader can only hope that the healing will endure in Helen’s world.

Lisa Patten