Tar Baby - Toni Morrison

Jadine was enchanted. Wanted everybody dressed up and gave Ondine and Sydney their presents right after breakfast when she heard the plans, exacting a promise from her aunt that she would wear hers to dinner. It was hard to tell what Son felt. Perhaps he did not know himself. For such a long time a Christmas spent on land for him was an extempore dinner or party with miscellaneous people he never expected to see again. This was another, except that the imminent exit of one of those persons alarmed him. She said “before I go” on the beach. Not “before you go.” And he had had a brief encounter with Margaret that confirmed it. He was still apologizing all around and saw Margaret lying in a canvas-back chair, sunning herself in the shade and away from the wind too, so she could acquire a tan but not the aging of skin that would accompany it. Her place for this was on the patio outside the living room where the piano was, sheltered by the bougainvillea bushes. Next to her chair on a small glass-topped table was a box of stationery, Bain de Soleil, tissues and a half-glass of Evian, ice and lime. She was in a bathing suit and Son thought she was like a marshmallow warming but not toasting itself. That inside the white smooth skin was liquid sugar, no bones, no cartilage—just liquid sugar, soft and a little pully. Quite unlike her tips, where all of her strength was. Direction, focus, aggression, tenacity—all that was tough and survivalist in her lay in the tips of her fingers, the tips of her toes, her nose tip, her chin tip, and he suspected her breast tips were tiny brass knobs like those ornately carved fixtures screwed into the drawers of Jadine’s writing table. Even the top of her head was fierce, pulled back as it was into a red foxtail of stamina. She heard him approach and turned her head slowly. The minute she saw him, she reached for her towel. Son picked it up from the flagstones and handed it to her. His gesture was swift and accommodating so she did not fling it over herself as she had probably intended to do but simply held it in her lap.

“I scare you?”

“No. Yes,” she said. “I didn’t hear you come up.”

He did not comment on that so she said, “What is it?”

“Nothing. I just saw you out here and wanted to say hello.”

“Hello. Is that all?”

“That’s all.”

“It shouldn’t be. You should have more to say after what you did to me.”

“What did I do to you?” He was counting on the liquid sugar. Never mind the tips.

“You know what. You sat in my closet and scared the hell out of me.”

He smiled. “You scared the hell out of me too.”

“Bullshit,” she said.

“It’s true. Your husband was right; you were wrong. As soon as he saw me he knew I didn’t mean no harm.”

“He wasn’t there. I was. I was in that closet; I saw you.”

“What did you see?”

“I saw a big black man sitting in my closet is what I saw.”

“I’m not so big. Your husband’s bigger—taller—than I am. Besides, I was sitting down. What made you think I was big?”

“There are no small men in a closet. Unless the closet belongs to them. Any stranger in a closet is big. Big and scary. I thought—”

“You thought what?”

She looked at him out of the corner of her eyes and did not answer.

Son finished her sentence. “That I was going to—that if you hadn’t come in and turned on the light, I was going to stay there, wait there, until you went to bed and then I would creep out and GETCHA!” He laughed then, laughed like a ten-year-old at a Three Stooges movie. Mouth wide open, bubbly sounds coming from his chest.

“Cut that out. Don’t try to make fun of it.”

But he kept on laughing, long enough to make a little anger spread inside her. When he could stop laughing he said, “I’m sorry, I wasn’t laughing at you. I was laughing at myself. I was seeing myself do it. Or try to do it, and it looked funny. Me with my raggedy pants down around my ankles trying to get in your bed.”

“It’s not funny.”

“No, it’s not, but believe me it wouldn’t have been much of a rape. Sex is hard when you’re starving, but I thank you for the compliment.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Margaret spread the towel across her knees and picked up the iced glass. “And the part I do understand, I don’t believe.”

“When your son gets here, ask him. He’ll explain it.”

Margaret stopped sipping the water and looked at him. “How old are you?”

“About as old as your son.”

“My son is twenty-nine going on thirty.”

“Okay. Almost as old as your son.”

“He’ll be thirty March tenth.”

“Does he favor you or your husband?”

“Favor?”

“Look like. Does he look like you?”

“People say so. Everybody says so. The hair, of course, and his eyes are blue like mine. Everybody says he looks exactly like me. Nothing like his father.”

“He must be good-looking.”

“He is. He is. But tall like Valerian. Is that true? You’re shorter than Valerian?”

Son nodded. “He’s got at least two inches on me.”

“Huh,” she said, “I wouldn’t have thought so. Well, Michael is every bit as tall as Valerian, but he does look more like me. Inside though, that’s where he’s really beautiful. Do you know what he’s been doing? for a year now? He’s been working on an Indian reservation. With the young people there, teenagers. There’s a lot of suicide among Indian teenagers. The conditions are awful, you know. You would not believe. I visited him when he was in Arizona. Well, some of the tribesmen have money but they’re just—well, they don’t really help their own. Most of them live in terrible conditions and they are very proud people, you know. Very. Michael encourages them to keep their own heritage intact. You’d really like Michael. Everybody does.”

He listened. She took sips of the Evian and lime as she talked, her knees covered with the towel. She was looking at him now. Relaxed. Interested in what she was saying. Interested in his hearing it, knowing it, knowing that her son was beautiful, wise and kind. That he loved people, was not selfish, was actually self-sacrificing, committed, that he could have lived practically any kind of life he chose, could be dissolute, reckless, trivial, greedy. But he wasn’t. He had not turned out that way. He could have been president of the candy company if he had wanted, but he wanted value in his life, not money. He had turned out fine, just fine. “Jade knows him,” she said. “They used to see each other during the summers she spent with us. Oh, he’ll be thrilled to see her again. She’s not leaving till a couple of days after Christmas so they’ll have some time together.”

Son did not blink—he took it in and nodded his appreciation of Michael into his mother’s face. She was leaving soon. Margaret was perspiring a little bit on the forehead. A light glisten on the healthy and cared-for skin. Her blue-if-it’s-a-boy blue eyes wide open, not squinting in the sun for it could not get to her under the shade of the bougainvillea. Just the heat, and she was warming and marshmallow soft. But her tips were terribly sharp.

THEY SERVED themselves from the sideboard and drank wine in some haste to hurry the dismal affair along. The forced gaiety was helped into some semblance of naturalness by Jadine with much cheery help from Valerian. Sydney was awkward but subdued. Ondine was irritable, her aching feet encased in high heels with zircons up the back.

“The turkey is very tender, Mrs. Street,” said Sydney.

Margaret smiled.

“Not bad at all,” said Valerian, who had none of it on his plate. “Geese makes excellent turkey.” He glanced at Margaret to see if she would be amused. She seemed not to hear.

“Lot of fat in a goose.” Ondine was slicing her ham. “It should be cooked on its breast, not on its back.”

“Oh, but I like the juices.”

“That ain’t juice, Jadine, that’s grease,” Ondine answered.

Valerian lifted his fork like a toastmaster. “Margaret has a surprise for us. Made it last night.”

“What?” asked Jadine.

“You’ll see. An old family recipe. Right, Margaret? Margaret?”

“Oh. Yes. Right. It wasn’t hard.”

“Don’t be modest.”

Sydney looked at Ondine with what he hoped was a stern gaze. They say it’s a surprise, his eyes seemed to be saying, let’s agree and be surprised. Ondine kept her eyes on her ham.

“Is that the phone?” Margaret was alert.

“Would you get that, Sydney?”

“I’ll get it.” Margaret was rising from her chair.

“No, let Sydney.”

No one spoke as Sydney left the room.

“Dr. Michelin,” said Sydney when he returned, “calling to say Merry Christmas. I suggested he call back later.”

“I thought it might be the airport,” said Margaret.

“Airport, what for? You heard the final news.”

“I asked the office to call if there was going to be a break in the weather.”

“The weather is in Boston, not California.”

“How do you know that?”

“I think,” said Jadine, “that the radio said there were storms all over.”

“Downed the telephone lines too, I suppose,” said Valerian.

“Probably, yes—” Margaret’s voice was a bit shrill.

“Well, he’ll be sorry,” said Valerian. “He’s missing some very good food and some very good company. We should have thought of this before. Give Ondine a day off, and you get to show off in the kitchen, Margaret. It’s good to have some plain Pennsylvania food for a change. This is an old-fashioned Christmas.”

“Too bad Gideon couldn’t come.” Son, who seemed to be the only one genuinely enjoying the food, had been silent until then.

“Who?” asked Valerian.

“Gideon. Yardman.”

“His name is Gideon?” asked Jadine.

“What a beautiful name. Gideon.” Valerian smiled.

“Well, at least we knew Mary’s name. Mary,” said Jadine.

“Nope,” said Son.

“No?”

“Thérèse.”

“Thérèse? Wonderful,” said Valerian. “Thérèse the Thief and Gideon the Get Away Man.”

Ondine looked up. “They didn’t steal that chocolate, Mr. Street. That was this one here.” She nodded her head at Son.

“Chocolate? Who’s talking about chocolate? They stole the apples.” Valerian got up to go to the sideboard for some more mashed potatoes and gravy.

“Gideon stole apples?” asked Son.

“Yep.” Valerian’s back was to them. “I caught him red-handed, so to speak. Them, rather. She, Mary, had them stuffed in her blouse. He had some in each pocket.”

Sydney and Ondine both stopped eating. “What did he say? When you caught him?” Sydney was frowning.

“Said he was going to put them back.” Valerian rejoined them and chuckled.

“So that’s why they didn’t come back to work. Ashamed.”

“Oh, more than that,” said Valerian. “Much more than that. I fired him. Her too.”

“You what?” Ondine almost shouted.

“Ondine,” Sydney whispered.

“You didn’t tell us,” she said to Valerian.

“Beg pardon?” Valerian looked amused.

“I mean…Did you know that, Sydney?”

“No. Nobody told me anything.”

“Mr. Street, you could have mentioned it.”

“I’ll get someone else. I’ve already spoke to Michelin, I told you that.”

“But I thought that was temporary help, until they came back after Christmas, I thought.”

“Well, Ondine, it isn’t temporary help I’m asking for. It’s permanent because they are not coming back.”

“Please stop bickering,” Margaret said softly. “I’m getting a headache.”

“I never bicker, Margaret. I am discussing a domestic problem with my help.”

“Well, they are guests tonight.”

“The problem is still of interest to everybody at the table, except you.”

“Certain things I need to know,” Ondine was talking into her plate, “if I’m to get work done right. I took on all sorts of extra work because I thought they were just playing hooky. I didn’t know they was fired.”

“Ondine, what would you have done differently if you had known? You would have grumbled, and tried to make me keep them on. And since they were obviously stealing, and the whole house was upset anyway, I did what I thought was best.”

“I wouldn’t have tried any such thing, if they stole. I don’t condone that.”

“Well, they did and I let them go and that’s that.”

Son’s mouth went dry as he watched Valerian chewing a piece of ham, his head-of-a-coin profile content, approving even of the flavor in his mouth although he had been able to dismiss with a flutter of the fingers the people whose sugar and cocoa had allowed him to grow old in regal comfort; although he had taken the sugar and cocoa and paid for it as though it had no value, as though the cutting of cane and picking of beans was child’s play and had no value; but he turned it into candy, the invention of which really was child’s play, and sold it to other children and made a fortune in order to move near, but not in the midst of, the jungle where the sugar came from and build a palace with more of their labor and then hire them to do more of the work he was not capable of and pay them again according to some scale of value that would outrage Satan himself and when those people wanted a little of what he wanted, some apples for their Christmas, and took some, he dismissed them with a flutter of the fingers, because they were thieves, and nobody knew thieves and thievery better than he did and he probably thought he was a law-abiding man, they all did, and they all always did, because they had not the dignity of wild animals who did not eat where they defecated but they could defecate over a whole people and come there to live and defecate some more by tearing up the land and that is why they loved property so, because they had killed it soiled it defecated on it and they loved more than anything the places where they shit. Would fight and kill to own the cesspools they made, and although they called it architecture it was in fact elaborately built toilets, decorated toilets, toilets surrounded with and by business and enterprise in order to have something to do in between defecations since waste was the order of the day and the ordering principle of the universe. And especially the Americans who were the worst because they were new at the business of defecation spent their whole lives bathing bathing bathing washing away the stench of the cesspools as though pure soap had anything to do with purity.

That was the sole lesson of their world: how to make waste, how to make machines that made more waste, how to make wasteful products, how to talk waste, how to study waste, how to design waste, how to cure people who were sickened by waste so they could be well enough to endure it, how to mobilize waste, legalize waste and how to despise the culture that lived in cloth houses and shit on the ground far away from where they ate. And it would drown them one day, they would all sink into their own waste and the waste they had made of the world and then, finally they would know true peace and the happiness they had been looking for all along. In the meantime this one here would chew a morsel of ham and drink white wine secure in the knowledge that he had defecated on two people who had dared to want some of his apples.