Beds by Toi Derricotte

Beds is an essay about Toi Derricotte’s conflicting emotions about an abusive yet loving father.  The essay takes place within Derricotte’s childhood home and revolves around her love-hate relationship with her father.  The essay also takes place in many of Derricotte’s childhood locations, such as her catholic school and her apartment building’s surroundings.  Derricotte describes how her father neglected her as an infant and how she was forced in to scolding hot water. Derricotte’s complex relationship with her father damaged her emotionally causing her to beat her own cat when it disobeyed her.  Derricotte’s relationship with her father shows how a parent’s own actions are rubbed off onto their child.  In her own words Derricotte states “It wasn’t my father’s thought that I took in; it was his language.” (Derricotte 58.) By this Derricotte means her father’s actions are his language and that she now communicates by his language, like when she beats her cat for disobeying her orders.  Derricotte directs this essay towards children of a similar parent who fight the urge to speak in their parents’ language.  Derricotte uses a dichotomy to represent the two opposites of her father.  The one part being the loving father who plays with her as a child and makes her dinner.  The other part of the dichotomy being the abusive father who neglected her as a child and who would beat her for crying.  This dichotomy helps the reader understand the confusion Derricotte faced as a child about understanding the difference between love and hate.  Derricotte certainly accomplished her purpose of showing how a parent’s actions or “language” can rub of on a child.  This is supported by Derricotte’s own words “What a horrific irony that the abuser is the one most taken in, most remembered; the imprint of those who were loving and kind second.” (Derricotte 56.) This displays how the abusive side of her father is the language she speaks in her adult life, the imprint of her father’s hate forever within her. Toi Derricotte is a published author and poet who has received the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, which she received in 2012. 

Child Abuse Lasts

“Child abuse... Is a mental health issue"

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