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by Toni Morrison

  The fourth time she did relax, since an hour of lying rigid was so tiring. She forgot about whether anybody was peeping through the Bantam cornstalks in Ethel’s garden or hiding behind the sycamores beyond it. Whether ten days of that surrender to the sun helped her female parts or not, she would never know. What followed the final sun-smacking hour, when she was allowed to sit modestly in a rocking chair, was the demanding love of Ethel Fordham, which soothed and strengthened her the most.

  The woman pulled a chair next to Cee’s on the porch. She placed on the table between them a plate of oven-hot biscuits and a jar of blackberry jam. It was the first non-medicinal food Cee was allowed to eat and the first taste of sugar. Eyes fixed on her garden, Ethel spoke quietly.

  “I knew you before you could walk. You had those big, pretty eyes. They was full of sadness, though. I seen how you tagged along with your brother. When he left you ran off with that waste of the Lord’s air and time. Now you back home. Mended finally, but you might just run off again. Don’t tell me you going to let Lenore decide again who you are? If you thinking about it, let me tell you something first. Remember that story about the goose and the golden eggs? How the farmer took the eggs and how greed made him stupid enough to kill the goose? I always thought a dead goose could make at least one good meal. But gold? Shoot. That was always the only thing on Lenore’s mind. She had it, loved it, and thought it put her above everybody else. Just like the farmer. Why didn’t he plow his land, seed it, and grow something to eat?”

  Cee laughed and spread jam on another biscuit.

  “See what I mean? Look to yourself. You free. Nothing and nobody is obliged to save you but you. Seed your own land. You young and a woman and there’s serious limitation in both, but you a person too. Don’t let Lenore or some trifling boyfriend and certainly no devil doctor decide who you are. That’s slavery. Somewhere inside you is that free person I’m talking about. Locate her and let her do some good in the world.”

  Cee put her finger in the blackberry jar. She licked it.

  “I ain’t going nowhere, Miss Ethel. This is where I belong.”

  WEEKS LATER CEE stood at the stove pressing young cabbage leaves into a pot of simmering water seasoned with two ham hocks. When Frank got off work and opened the door, he noticed again how healthy she looked—glowing skin, back straight, not hunched in discomfort.

  “Hey,” he said. “Look at you.”

  “Bad?”

  “No, you looking good. Feeling better?”

  “I’ll say. Much, much better. Hungry? This is just a no-count meal. Want me to catch a hen?”

  “No. Whatever you cooking is fine.”

  “I know you used to like Mama’s fry-pan bread. I’ll make some.”

  “Want me to slice up these tomatoes?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What’s all that stuff on the sofa?” A pile of cloth scraps had been there for days.

  “Pieces for quilting.”

  “You ever need a quilt down here in your whole life?”

  “No.”

  “Then why you making one?”

  “Visitors buy them.”

  “What visitors?”

  “People over in Jeffrey, Mount Haven. Miss Johnson from Good Shepherd buys them from us and markets them to tourists down in Mount Haven. If mine turns out to be any good, Miss Ethel might show it to her.”

  “Nice.”

  “More than nice. We scheduled for electricity soon and running water. Both cost money. An electric fan alone is worth it.”

  “Then when I get paid you could get yourself a Philco refrigerator.”

  “What we need with a cold box? I know how to can and anything else I need I go outside and pick, gather, or kill it. Besides, who cooks up in here, me or you?”

  Frank laughed. This Cee was not the girl who trembled at the slightest touch of the real and vicious world. Nor was she the not-even-fifteen-year-old who would run off with the first boy who asked her. And she was not the household help who believed whatever happened to her while drugged was a good idea, good because a white coat said so. Frank didn’t know what took place during those weeks at Miss Ethel’s house surrounded by those women with seen-it-all eyes. Their low expectation of the world was always on display. Their devotion to Jesus and one another centered them and placed them high above their lot in life. They delivered unto him a Cee who would never again need his hand over her eyes or his arms to stop her murmuring bones.

  “Your womb can’t never bear fruit.”

  Miss Ethel Fordham told her that. Without sorrow or alarm, she had passed along the news as though she’d examined a Burpee seedling overcome by marauding rabbits. Cee didn’t know then what to feel about that news, no more than what she felt about Dr. Beau. Anger wasn’t available to her—she had been so stupid, so eager to please. As usual she blamed being dumb on her lack of schooling, but that excuse fell apart the second she thought about the skilled women who had cared for her, healed her. Some of them had to have Bible verses read to them because they could not decipher print themselves, so they had sharpened the skills of the illiterate: perfect memory, photographic minds, keen senses of smell and hearing. And they knew how to repair what an educated bandit doctor had plundered. If not schooling, then what?

  Branded early as an unlovable, barely tolerated “gutter child” by Lenore, the only one whose opinion mattered to her parents, exactly like what Miss Ethel said, she had agreed with the label and believed herself worthless. Ida never said, “You my child. I dote on you. You wasn’t born in no gutter. You born into my arms. Come on over here and let me give you a hug.” If not her mother, somebody somewhere should have said those words and meant them.

  Frank alone valued her. While his devotion shielded her, it did not strengthen her. Should it have? Why was that his job and not her own? Cee didn’t know any soft, silly women. Not Thelma, or Sarah, or Ida, and certainly not the women who had healed her. Even Mrs. K., who let the boys play nasty with her, did hair and slapped anybody who messed with her, in or outside her hairdressing kitchen.

  So it was just herself. In this world with these people she wanted to be the person who would never again need rescue. Not from Lenore through the lies of the Rat, not from Dr. Beau through the courage of Sarah and her brother. Sun-smacked or not, she wanted to be the one who rescued her own self. Did she have a mind, or not? Wishing would not make it so, nor would blame, but thinking might. If she did not respect herself, why should anybody else?

  Okay. She would never have children to care about and give her the status of motherhood.

  Okay. She didn’t have and probably would never have a mate. Why should that matter? Love? Please. Protection? Yeah, sure. Golden eggs? Don’t make me laugh.

  Okay. She was penniless. But not for long. She would have to invent a way to earn a living.

  What else?

  After Miss Ethel gave her the bad news, the older woman went into the backyard and stirred coffee grounds and eggshells into the soil around her plants. Blank and unable to respond to Ethel’s diagnosis, Cee watched her. A small bag of garlic cloves hung from her apron strings. For the aphids, she said. An aggressive gardener, Miss Ethel blocked or destroyed enemies and nurtured plants. Slugs curled and died under vinegar-seasoned water. Bold, confident raccoons cried and ran away when their tender feet touched crushed newspaper or chicken wire placed around plants. Cornstalks safe from skunks slept in peace under paper bags. Under her care pole beans curved, then straightened to advertise their readiness. Strawberry tendrils wandered, their royal-scarlet berries shining in morning rain. Honeybees gathered to salute Illicium and drink the juice. Her garden was not Eden; it was so much more than that. For her the whole predatory world threatened her garden, competing with its nourishment, its beauty, its benefits, and its demands. And she loved it.

  What in this world did Cee love? She would have to think about that.

  Meantime her brother was there with her, which was very comforting, but she didn’t n
eed him as she had before. He had literally saved her life, but she neither missed nor wanted his fingers at the nape of her neck telling her not to cry, that everything would be all right. Some things, perhaps, but not everything.

  “I can’t have children,” Cee told him. “Never.” She lowered the flame under the pot of cabbage.

  “The doctor?”

  “The doctor.”

  “I’m sorry, Cee. Really sorry.” Frank moved toward her.

  “Don’t,” she said, pushing his hand away. “I didn’t feel anything at first when Miss Ethel told me, but now I think about it all the time. It’s like there’s a baby girl down here waiting to be born. She’s somewhere close by in the air, in this house, and she picked me to be born to. And now she has to find some other mother.” Cee began to sob.

  “Come on, girl. Don’t cry,” whispered Frank.

  “Why not? I can be miserable if I want to. You don’t need to try and make it go away. It shouldn’t go away. It’s just as sad as it ought to be and I’m not going to hide from what’s true just because it hurts.” Cee wasn’t sobbing anymore, but the tears were still running down her cheeks.

  Frank sat down, clasped his hands and leaned his forehead on them.

  “You know that toothless smile babies have?” she said. “I keep seeing it. I saw it in a green pepper once. Another time a cloud curved in such a way it looked like …” Cee didn’t finish the list. She simply went to the sofa, sat and began sorting and re-sorting quilt pieces. Every now and then she wiped her cheeks with the heel of her hand.

  Frank stepped outside. Walking back and forth in the front yard, he felt a fluttering in his chest. Who would do that to a young girl? And a doctor? What the hell for? His eyes burned and he blinked rapidly to forestall what could have become the crying he had not done since he was a toddler. Not even with Mike in his arms or whispering to Stuff had his eyes burned that way. True, his vision was occasionally deceitful, but he had not cried. Not once.

  Confused and deeply troubled, he decided to walk it off. He went down the road, cut through paths and skirted backyards. Waving occasionally at passing neighbors or those doing chores on their porches, he could not believe how much he had once hated this place. Now it seemed both fresh and ancient, safe and demanding. When he found himself on the bank of Wretched, the sometimes stream, sometimes creek, other times a bed of mud, he squatted beneath the sweet bay tree. His sister was gutted, infertile, but not beaten. She could know the truth, accept it, and keep on quilting. Frank tried to sort out what else was troubling him and what to do about it.

  FOURTEEN

  I have to say something to you right now. I have to tell the whole truth. I lied to you and I lied to me. I hid it from you because I hid it from me. I felt so proud grieving over my dead friends. How I loved them. How much I cared about them, missed them. My mourning was so thick it completely covered my shame.

  Then Cee told me about seeing a baby girl smile all through the house, in the air, the clouds. It hit me. Maybe that little girl wasn’t waiting around to be born to her. Maybe it was already dead, waiting for me to step up and say how.

  I shot the Korean girl in her face.

  I am the one she touched.

  I am the one who saw her smile.

  I am the one she said “Yum-yum” to.

  I am the one she aroused.

  A child. A wee little girl.

  I didn’t think. I didn’t have to.

  Better she should die.

  How could I let her live after she took me down to a place I didn’t know was in me?

  How could I like myself, even be myself if I surrendered to that place where I unzip my fly and let her taste me right then and there?

  And again the next day and the next as long as she came scavenging.

  What type of man is that?

  And what type of man thinks he can ever in life pay the price of that orange?

  You can keep on writing, but I think you ought to know what’s true.

  FIFTEEN

  The next morning at breakfast Cee appeared to have returned to her newly steady self, confident, cheerful and occupied. Spooning fried onions and potatoes into Frank’s plate she inquired whether or not he wanted eggs too.

  He declined, but asked for more coffee. He had spent a sleepless night, churning and entangled in thoughts relentless and troubling. How he had covered his guilt and shame with big-time mourning for his dead buddies. Day and night he had held on to that suffering because it let him off the hook, kept the Korean child hidden. Now the hook was deep inside his chest and nothing would dislodge it. The best he could hope for was time to work it loose. Meantime there were worthwhile things that needed doing.

  “Cee?” Frank, glancing at her face, was pleased to see that her eyes were dry and calm. “What happened to that place we used to sneak off to? Remember? They had some horses over there.”

  “I remember,” said Cee. “I heard some folks bought it for a place to play cards. Gambling night and day. And they had women in there too. After that I heard they ran dogfights.”

  “What did they do with the horses? Anybody know?”

  “I don’t. Ask Salem. He don’t say nothing but he knows everything going on.”

  Frank had no intention of entering Lenore’s house to locate Salem. He knew exactly when and where to find him. The old man was as regular in his habits as a crow. He perched on a friend’s porch at a certain time, flew off to Jeffrey on a certain day, and trusted neighbors to feed him snacks between meals. As always, after supper he settled among the flock on Fish Eye Anderson’s porch.

  Except for Salem, the men there were veterans. The two oldest fought in the First World War, the rest battled in the Second. They knew about Korea but not understanding what it was about didn’t give it the respect—the seriousness—Frank thought it deserved. The veterans ranked battles and wars according to loss numbers: three thousand at this place, sixty thousand in the trenches, twelve thousand at another. The more killed, the braver the warriors, not the stupider the commanders. Although he had no military stories or opinions, Salem Money was an avid player. Now that his wife was forced to spend most of her time in bed or in a lounge chair he was as close to freedom as he’d ever been. Of course he had to listen to her complaints, but her speech difficulty helped him pretend not to understand what she was on about. Another benefit was that he handled the money now. Each month he caught a ride to Jeffrey and took what was needed from their bank account. If Lenore asked to see the bankbook he ignored her or said, “Don’t worry none. Every dime is fine.”

  After supper on almost any day Salem and his friends gathered to play checkers, chess, and once in a while whist. Two tables were permanent fixtures on Fish Eye’s cluttered porch. Fishing poles leaned against the railing, vegetable baskets waited to be taken home, empty soda pop bottles, newspapers—all the gatherings that made men comfortable. While two pairs of players moved pieces around, the others leaned on the railing to chuckle, give advice, and tease the losers. Frank stepped over a basket of Detroit Dark Red beets and eased himself into the group of onlookers. As soon as the game of whist was over he moved to the chessboard, where Salem and Fish Eye pondered long minutes between moves. Into one of these pauses he spoke.

  “Cee tells me that place yonder—with the horses—the one that used to be a stud farm. She says it runs dogfights now. That so?”

  “Dogfights.” Salem covered his mouth to funnel the laugh coming out.

  “Why you laughing?”

  “Dogfights. Pray that was all they done. No. That place burned down a while back, thank the sweet Lord.” Salem waved his hand, urging Frank not to dislodge his concentration on his next move.

  “You want to know about them dogfights?” asked Fish Eye. He seemed relieved by the interruption. “More like men-treated-like-dog fights.”

  Another man spoke up. “You didn’t see that boy come through here crying? What did he call himself? Andrew, you ’member his name?”

&
nbsp; “Jerome,” said Andrew. “Same as my brother’s. That’s how come I remember.”

  “That’s him. Jerome.” Fish Eye slapped his knee. “He told us they brought him and his daddy from Alabama. Roped up. Made them fight each other. With knives.”

  “No sir. Switchblades. Yep, switchblades.” Salem spat over the railing. “Said they had to fight each other to the death.”

  “What?” Frank felt his throat closing.

  “That’s right. One of them had to die or they both would. They took bets on which one.” Salem frowned and squirmed in his chair.

  “Boy said they slashed each other a bit—just enough to draw a line of blood. The game was set up so only the one left alive could leave. So one of them had to kill the other.” Andrew shook his head.

  The men became a chorus, inserting what they knew and felt between and over one another’s observations.

  “They graduated from dogfights. Turned men into dogs.”

  “Can you beat that? Pitting father against son?”

  “Said he told his daddy, ‘No, Pa. No.’ ”

  “His daddy told him, ‘You got to.’ ”

  “That’s a devil’s decision-making. Any way you decide is a sure trip to his hell.”

  “Then, when he kept on saying no, his daddy told him, ‘Obey me, son, this one last time. Do it.’ Said he told his daddy, ‘I can’t take your life.’ And his daddy told him, ‘This ain’t life.’ Meantime the crowd, drunk and all fired up, was going crazier and crazier, shouting, ‘Stop yapping. Fight! God damn it! Fight!’ ”

  “And?” Frank was breathing hard.

  “And what you think? He did it.” Fish Eye was furious all over again. “Come over here crying and told us all about it. Everything. Poor thing. Rose Ellen and Ethel Fordham collected some change for him so he could go on off somewhere. Maylene too. We all pulled together some clothes for him. He was soaked in blood.”

  “If the sheriff had seen him dripping in blood, he’d be in prison this very day.”