Book World: From a life of pain, TV writer finds the humor

By Danielle Henderson Viking. 304 pp. $27 --As I read Danielle Henderson’s memoir, “The Ugly Cry,” a book chock full of jokes, funny anecdotes and crackling dialogue, the words of a long dead White man kept thundering in my head like the voice of God.

“The secret source of humor,” Mark Twain famously noted over a century ago, “is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in heaven.”

“The Ugly Cry,” written by a 44-year-old Black woman, is a perfect illustration of Twain’s point.

In its early pages, Henderson writes that, as a child, she regularly retreated to her grandparents’ washroom to crack open books (once, she even fell asleep in the old claw foot tub). Henderson and her just-a-smidge-older brother, Cory, were raised primarily by their grandmother, Carole. If you’re conjuring an image of a doting old lady, go ahead and burn that idea to the ground. This chain-smoking matriarch is a figure less reminiscent of a quaint Norman Rockwell painting than Edvard Munch’s feverish, anxietyinducing “The Scream.”

As the author tells it, “I’ve never seen my grandmother bake a cookie, wear a shawl, give good advice, or hug a child unprompted. I have, however, heard her curse so intensely I swear she was making some of them up on the spot, watched her obsess over horror movies with an academic intensity, and listened to her frequent lectures about the reasons every woman should not only carry a knife at all times but fully be prepared to use it: ‘A man wants to put his hands on you? Carry a little secret knife. Cut his throat. Ask questions later.’”

These are the book’s first lines. It’s one barn burner of an opening.

A TV writer for series like “Divorce,” “Maniac” and, not surprisingly, “Difficult People,” Henderson has an aptitude for realistically rendering complicated characters. (She is also the brain behind the popular feminist Ryan Gosling memes, later spun into a 2012 book.) Grandma is a gag, but she can also be dismissive, cutting and occasionally downright cruel.

It’s hilarious when Grandma, in response to young Henderson’s delight at seeing her grandparents kiss, says, “What’s wrong with you, ya pervert?” with a laugh.

It’s amusing, if a tad cutthroat, when she brings her ruthlessness to board games: “In her world, every game was a blood sport meant to be won at all costs,” Henderson explains. “After rolling to see who went first, the Monopoly carnage began in earnest.”

It’s hardhearted, and wholly unnecessary on

Grandma’s part, when a very young Cory (at the time no older than 5) sustains a severe, excruciating burn one night, and she uses his misery as an excuse to gloat, haranguing him for not staying in bed. (“(BEGIN ITAL)’Now (END ITAL) look.’ ... Grandma stood firm in her smugness, more impressed with how right she was than how much we were all hurting.”)

Between the quips, behind the comedy, there is breathtaking sorrow. The book scissored my heart to shreds. All manner of violence - psychic, sexual, physical - is enacted on children. Perhaps chief among Henderson’s hurts: a walloping sense of abandonment.

Her mother, Robin, present during the early years of her and Cory’s life, is always out of reach, even when she’s near. (“I craved my mom, even when she was standing right next to me . ... I wanted her to gently touch my arm and laugh at my knock-knock jokes the way she did when strangers said anything at all,” the author writes. “What would it feel like to have my mom all to myself? For the rest of my life, I would never know the answer.”) When Henderson is about 7, Robin meets a man who takes what isn’t his and offers only pain. At age 10, Henderson and her brother are dropped off at their grandparents’ two-bedroom apartment, ostensibly for the weekend. They never share an address with their mom again.

Henderson’s grandmother and granddad, fooled into thinking they were finished with childrearing, are forced to cobble together the resources to raise two preteens. Grandpa continues working as a bartender; Grandma takes a job at a retirement home for nuns. Away from her mom and her abusive boyfriend, Henderson is free from external danger, but her sense of security never entirely returns.