Black Authenticity and Southern Gothic Horror in “The Watered Soul”
The first story in Spook Lights by Eden Royce
This post has spoilers! Trigger/content warnings include general anti-Black racism, American slavery, brief mentions of the history of and genocide in Rwanda, and brief, vague mentions of sexual assault.
We’re switching it up this week and talking about a short story, “The Watered Soul” by Eden Royce. I’m reading it in Royce’s 2015 collection, Spook Lights: Southern Gothic Horror, which I’m so excited about. This is the first story in the book and presents a great introduction to Royce’s style, craft, and storytelling priorities.
Quick summary and context.
The story follows a white man who thought he wanted to live forever. At some point in the 1700s or 1800s, he took a woman from her home, brought her to the United States “as his property,” (1) and abandoned her. We don’t know exactly what he was doing among the Hutu people (indigenous to Rwanda and Burundi in East Central Africa), but we can assume his intentions were harmful and supported colonization and the transatlantic slave trade.
Two hundred years later, at the time of the main story, the man calls himself Lucius Blacksmoke but still hasn’t bothered to learn the given name of the woman he kidnapped: Impuzamugambi. Until the very end, he calls her either “Hutu,” the general name of her people, or “Anna Lee,” the English name he imposed on her.
Centuries ago, Impuzamugambi gave Lucius eternal life, but no amount of time can fix his weak character and chronic lack of discipline. After assuming lots of different identities but being unable to outrun himself, and crushed under the weight of his own failures, he’s tracked her down one last time to ask her to end his life. He finds her running a “juke joint” outside Charleston, South Carolina. After several minutes of heated conversation that include Lucius sneering at the Black musicians and patrons, trash-talking their music, and accidentally severing three of the elderly Black barman’s fingers, Impuzamugambi cleanses his soul with an all-consuming fire.
Black Southern Gothic.
A lot of the horrific elements in “The Watered Soul” happen off the page. A lot of them are left up to our imagination as readers. We get a quick glimpse of Impuzamugambi’s journey across the Atlantic but we don’t see her immediate response to Lucius leaving her or the aftermath. But the subtlety and the fact that the story is told from Lucius’ perspective doesn’t detract from Impuzamugambi’s power. And I do like stories that make me work a little.
Spook Lights is self-defined as Southern Gothic horror fiction. This genre isn’t strictly or only horror but it often contains horrific elements, especially for Black Southern Gothic fiction. Southern Gothic as a genre developed in the early 1800s from the original Gothic novels of the United Kingdom and the Northeastern United States. (3) From the University of Maryland Library: “Common themes of Southern Gothic include flawed or disturbed characters, grotesque situations, often stemming from poverty, crime, violence or alienation.” (4) “The Watered Soul” definitely has these elements.
Horror means something different to everyone. Southern Gothic is often more understated than something like splatterpunk, which (from what I understand) uses and celebrates extreme themes and gore. This story deals with a lot of interpersonal trauma and horror, but we as the readers are removed from a lot of the direct action. Impuzamugambi and Lucius have an incredibly long, involved history together, but Royce gives us enough information about their relationship that we feel deeply for Impuzamugambi and fully understand that Lucius is the villain in her story.
The power of place.
Eden Royce is known for writing about the Charleston area, where she grew up, and the magic, people, and landscape of that region. “The Watered Soul” is set here but it’s primarily about people who aren’t natives. Impuzamugambi is from an unnamed village in the interior of Africa and Lucius is probably from somewhere else in the United States or Europe. Over the centuries that they’ve known each other, both have traveled thousands of miles, but end up in a noisy bar outside this historic city.
Impuzamugambi especially has been far from home with no option to return. The Hutu have a long and complicated history in their region. The 1919 Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I also “reallocated” colonial control of the area currently known as Rwanda and Burundi. Germany had previously held power there, but the treaty stated that these territories would be transferred to Belgian rule. (5)
Belgium is still notorious for their brutal colonization of the Congo region from 1885 to 1960. (6) (7) In Rwanda, the Belgians continued the German colonial practice of dividing Hutu and Tutsi people along class and racialized lines. (8) While the Hutu made up the majority of the population, colonial powers prioritized the Tutsi. (9) These interferences led to tensions between the two groups, which culminated in what’s known today as the Rwandan genocide. Between April 7 and July 15, 1994, approximately 800,000 Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa people were murdered. (10)
We learn Impuzamugambi’s real name only at the end of “The Watered Soul.” I Googled it to see if the meaning would help me read the story better and pages and pages of results came back about the Rwandan militia by the same name. The word means “Those Who Have the Same Goal.” (11)
I don’t know that Impuzamugambi and Lucius were ever aligned or wanted the same thing, except maybe at the very end of the story. She leaves her home “hand in hand” with him (12), but this isn’t the intimate gesture we usually assume it to be. We learn later that she was exiled from her community, having “lain with the pale stranger.” (13) Royce doesn’t get into the details of their encounter, but I’m ready to bet that it wasn’t consensual. Regardless of what the people in her village think about her willing participation, the power imbalance and probable language barrier make genuine, enthusiastic consent almost impossible. The other reason I think this is that Lucius abandons Impuzamugambi in the U.S. because she won’t meet his “needs.” (14)
Lucius’ inability to refuse “worldly pleasures” (15) is what keeps the water in his soul, according to Impuzamugambi. At the end of the story, she’s revealed to have a cleansing or purifying fire, which she uses to free Lucius from his eternal life. To me, water in the soul translates to a lack of discipline and self-control, a dependance on the physical. Lucius has all these problems and more.
Black Authenticity.
I wrote several notes about Lucius in my book that just say “shapeshifter.” He’s so slippery and inauthentic, and he knows it. But that doesn’t stop him from making himself the victim over and over again. But he criticizes Impuzamugambi for having a woman playing the drums on stage (16), which is apparently a departure from her culture of birth.
Royce does an amazing job of making Lucius unsympathetic to us as readers and, at the same time, making him perpetually sorry for himself. He’s a tragic white man who grew up wealthy enough to have a harpsichord in the home but couldn’t help but squander opportunity after opportunity. He’s been alive for over two hundred years, and what does he have to show for it?
Impuzamugambi, on the other hand, is only ever direct and open. She’s honest about what Lucius has done to her, how his choices have impacted her, and her feelings. And Lucius can’t handle it.
The contrast between a Black woman who has no choice but to survive alone in a hostile country and the white man who has chance after chance to better himself and keeps failing is so compelling and real.
With the rise of the internet and social media, we’ve been having a lot of conversations about authenticity. From what I’ve seen online and experienced in real life, a lot of white people expect Black people, especially Black women, to conform to their stereotypes and expectations. These expectations are different depending on where we work or how we interact with them, but if we don’t act “right,” we can be punished with everything from being passed over for a promotion or scholarship to outright violence. Code switching, constantly modulating the volume and tone of our voices, and working hard to find the perfect amount of makeup are all ways that we protect ourselves. It’s almost impossible to show up as our authentic selves and be supported or rewarded.
This is why I love that Impuzamugambi has made her own space outside Charleston, for the Black community there and full of Black people. Even though Lucius constantly talks down about her establishment, we can read between the lines of his racist and classist disdain to admire her for her perseverance.
Impuzamugambi’s place is great as the setting for her final confrontation with Lucius not only because it’s the opposite of his aesthetic and everything he values, but because it’s her territory. She has the upper hand for once, and I love that for her. It’s something she’s built and maintained and made successful. But she should never have been forced away from her home and made to survive on her own.
Bringing it all together.
I’m always interested in stories that tackle the aftermath of trauma. For Impuzamugambi, I would imagine that the traumas from Lucius have never really gone away. That’s horrifying in itself — centuries on centuries of being abandoned, hunted, tracked down, and abandoned again. No closure or end in sight. The type of horror Royce uses in “The Watered Soul” is more subtle than in other stories — there’s no inhuman monster lurking in the dark — but the problem is that monsters are human more often than not. Lucius has kidnapped, stalked, and abused this woman over 200 years, blames her, and pities himself. After everything he’s done to her, he still feels entitled to Impuzamugambi’s time, energy, and assistance. Men like him exist in real life, and they are terrifying.
More to think about.
Below are some questions to ask yourself and prompts for further research. Email me at blackhorrific@gmail.com and follow me on Tiktok (@domi_aaaaaa) if you want to talk more!
- What else do you want to learn or read about Black Southern Gothic fiction?
- Do you have a favorite Black Southern Gothic author? I’d love recommendations!
Sources:
(1) Royce, Eden. “The Watered Soul,” Spook Lights: Southern Gothic Horror, 2015, pg. 7.
(2) Pauls, Elizabeth Prine. “Hutu,” Britannica, n.d., https://www.britannica.com/topic/Rundi-people.
(3) “Gothic Literature in Special Collections,” University of Maryland Libraries, n.d., https://lib.guides.umd.edu/gothicliterature.
(4) “Gothic Literature in Special Collections,” University of Maryland Libraries, n.d., https://lib.guides.umd.edu/gothicliterature.
(5) “Rwanda: A Historical Chronology,” PBS, n.d., https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/rwanda/etc/cron.html.
(6) Luebering, J.E. “Belgian Congo,” Britannica, n.d., https://www.britannica.com/place/Belgian-Congo.
(7) Momodu, Samuel. “Congo Free State, (1885–1908),” January 20, 2023, https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/congo-free-state-1885-1908/.
(8) “Rwanda: A Historical Chronology,” PBS, n.d., https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/rwanda/etc/cron.html.
(9) “Rwanda: A Historical Chronology,” PBS, n.d., https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/rwanda/etc/cron.html.
(10) “Rwanda,” University of Minnesota, College of Liberal Arts, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, n.d., https://cla.umn.edu/chgs/holocaust-genocide-education/resource-guides/rwanda.
(11) McKenna, Amy. “Rwanda genocide of 1994,” Britannica, n.d., https://www.britannica.com/event/Rwanda-genocide-of-1994/Genocide#ref1111309.
(12) Royce, Eden. “The Watered Soul,” Spook Lights: Southern Gothic Horror, 2015, pg. 2.
(13) Royce, Eden. “The Watered Soul,” Spook Lights: Southern Gothic Horror, 2015, pg. 5.
(14) Royce, Eden. “The Watered Soul,” Spook Lights: Southern Gothic Horror, 2015, pg. 5.
(15) Royce, Eden. “The Watered Soul,” Spook Lights: Southern Gothic Horror, 2015, pg. 5.
(16) Royce, Eden. “The Watered Soul,” Spook Lights: Southern Gothic Horror, 2015, pg. 2.
