Essay: You Can't Help the Rufus Weylin in Your Life

By Pippa Abernathy

Editor's Note: This piece contains spoilers for Kindred ​and mentions topics such as abuse, slavery, and other potentially triggering topics. 

After an unacceptably long time, I finally had a chance to read Octavia Butler's Kindred. ​It was a telling narrative of the ways women, particularly Black women, are expected to support a white man without question. It also highlights the way that familial bonds are used to manipulate and further abuse those who are victims of it. 

Though I am not Black, Butler's work finally helped me realize I couldn't help my own Rufus Weylin: my ex-boyfriend. 

Sparknotes summarizes Rufus' personality succinctly: "He longs to be loved but expects to always get his way, using coercion and violence if he is denied." 

Thomas Weylin, Rufus' father, is partially to blame for this. The cruel, unrelenting plantation owner set plenty of terrible examples for his son. His main offense being that he feels entitled to own slaves, which is rooted in his inability to see a problem with benefiting for it. You can blame "the times" all you want, but Dana's presence and influence on the boy could have easily been enough to separate himself from what was clearly a terrible, systemic problem. 

Rufus predictably follows in his father's footsteps, but he still sees himself as "better" than what he could be. But ultimately, Rufus is control of his own decisions, and the power and entitlement his father demonstrated was more appealing to him despite having better morals as a child. He sees nothing wrong with holding Alice captive as his "wife", claiming that he loves her too much to let her go (talk about Nice Guy™ Syndrome). When Alice seeks freedom, he punishes her by pretending to sell their children, resulting in her dying by suicide. By this point, Dana finally realizes that Rufus cannot really be "saved", despite her best efforts. Like the other enslaved people on the property, Dana feels obligated to stay loyal to Rufus to ensure her ancestors — and Dana herself — stay alive. 

While my ex was not nearly as violent or coercive as Rufus, he did have traits that mirrored the temperamental and demanding man. Perhaps it stemmed from the toxic, privileged thinking that men like Rufus use to justify their own delusions and thirst for control. If things did not go his way or he didn't get an opportunity he believed he was entitled to, he would pout or complain. He would ask me to "help" him with certain tasks, which ended up being more than helping, but an attempt at making me do the work for him. 

His parents often came to his rescue when he felt helpless or unable to do something on his own. They also held quite a bit of power over his head, telling him that if he didn't do something the way they wanted him to, there would be some sort of punishment. I was used as a mouthpiece for their manipulative tactics as well. They criticized the way I lived my own life, which included parts separate from him. I became uncomfortable at family gatherings, wondering if all of them had the same perception of what I was "supposed" to do in order to be accepted as family. I thought whether or not I was cruel for trying to make him step away from his family sometimes to pursue another chapter of life with me. One that wasn't completely devoid of his family, but one that didn't rely on it and wasn't defined by it.

Instead, he was a puppet, and happily so for his own comfort. When the people in his life, both family and friends, would disrespect me, he failed to properly assert my importance in his life. Like Rufus, he told me he loved me, but had no problem with me taking cruelty from other people for the sake of maintaining a false sense of security and peace. If it threatened his comfort zone, it never mattered how much it hurt me. 

I didn't have to cut away from my ex like Dana had to "take care" of Rufus, but it did have to be quick and painful. I knew if it wouldn't he would somehow find every excuse to keep me there, and like Dana, I'm a loyal and dedicated person. But never enough to compromise myself and what is right.