Traumatic Childhood In Toby's Black Boy

The character that will be discussed in this essay is Toby. Toby had a very traumatic childhood, with both of her parents dying when she was still young. Her mother became very ill, and the family was not able to afford the medication anymore, causing her mother to eventually die. Not long after her mothers death, her father became depressed and full of shame over his inability to pay for his wife’s bills. This eventually culminated into her father killing himself with a rifle while Toby was home; Toby then had to not only bury her own father in the backyard but also hide the rifle to avoid getting in trouble with the CorpSeCorps. She fled her former life, quitting college and disappearing from her old identity altogether; the lack of identification however made it hard for her
Blanco eventually had eyes for her, and she was warned by multiple girls that if she did not flee now she would be trapped there. Rebecca, one the girls that worked with her, told her “Stay off his radar,” she said. “Maybe you’ll be okay….But if he tells you to come to the office, look out. He’s real jealous. He’ll take a girl apart.” (69) She did not heed these warnings, and was indeed harassed by Blanco, to the point where she lost all hope and self-worth. She was eventually rescued by the Gardeners, who accepted her into their community, but the damage had already been done. Even when she was completely safe with the Gardeners, she would have flashbacks about her abuse from Blanco, and would always worry that Blanco would come and find her. During her stay with the Gardeners, she appears to feel distant from them, like an outsider. Her feelings of detachment are shown not just through her actions, but through the writing itself. Whenever the story focuses on Toby, the reader is not shown much of her emotion, instead focusing on the story itself and the world within