44 Here Comes Coy to Save the Motherland

[alice wellintown]

The term, motherland, while sometimes synonomous with fatherland, has
the connotation of one's country of birth and growing up, with the
country respectfully being viewed as a benign mother, nurturing the
citizens as her children.

When Doc visits Hope, Juicegirl, daughter of Junkies Hope & Coy, after
realizing tha the adults were not going to read to her, races to the
Tube to watch one of the most violent post Itchy and Scratchy cartoons
ever produced and marketed to toddlers. At the end of the chapter she
rushes in to the room where DOc and Hope are drinking coffee and
talking about surf music and heroine and she recites the famous Mighty
Mouse, "Here I come to Save the Day." We learn that Hope, although she
was told that her child could be born addicted or addicted through her
breast milk, ignored that advice, but through some Grace, the child is
heroine free. Hope, with her new set of teeth and her tan, is also
free of junk. So is Coy. But sometimes when folks free themselves of a
monster they feel compelled to save the world from it or even take on
even bigger beasts. Coy, we could call it the big chill projection of
those Port Huron college boyz who grew up in comfort and moved onto
campuses, after making himself a slave to avoid the "slavery" of
suburban white middle class homogeneity, is not ready to save his
motherland from her addiction to mainlining her children up the dragon
to the heart of darkness and Apocalypse Now.

What a pair, this Coy Hope; a pair of ragged claws scuttling in and
out of bathroom through suburban doors and silent sleaze.