Tar Baby

by Toni Morrison

  “Michael? Oh, yes, sir. He’s fine.”

  “I’m thinking of going back. I think I should leave this place and go back to Philadelphia.”

  “What for?”

  “I don’t like it here anymore. No reason to be here now.”

  “No reason to be anywhere, Mr. Street. But I’d think carefully on it if I was you. Ondine and me, we like it down here. Philadelphia winters can be hard on old people. It’s nice and warm down here. Quiet too. We like it fine. Would you like a sip of Chablis now?” He put down the fork and went to the small refrigerator for a bottle of wine.

  “No,” said Valerian. “Not now.”

  “I would,” said Sydney. “I’d like a glass myself.” He worked the screw into the cork. “You sure you don’t want any?”

  “I said no.”

  “How are your bunions, Mr. Street?”

  “Corns. I don’t have bunions. I have corns.”

  “How are they?”

  “Sydney, you are drinking my wine.”

  “Next time that mulatto comes, I’ll tell him to bring you back a pair of huaraches.”

  “I don’t want any huaraches.”

  “Sure you do. Nice pair of huaraches be good for you. Make your feet feel good. This time next year, you’ll thank me for em.”

  “What do you mean, this time next year? I’m going back.”

  “I figure we’re going to be here a long time, Mr. Street. A good long time.”

  “What’s happening here. Something’s happening here.”

  “Don’t agitate yourself. Rest your mind.” Sydney put down the wineglass, and went to the record player. He held the arm over the record and turned to Valerian. “We’ll give you the best of care. Just like we always done. That’s something you ain’t never got to worry about.” He placed the arm carefully in the groove and turned the volume up high. Valerian smiled then, and his fingers danced lightly in the air.

  THE AIRPORT in Dominique is a long building made of pale yellow concrete blocks. If you didn’t know you were in the Caribbean, the paper in the ladies’ room would tell you. To an American the contempt in which the rest of the world holds toilet paper is incomprehensible. It is treated as though it were, in fact, toilet paper. Jadine stepped out of the stall and stood before the tiny mirror over the sink. She sudsed her hands generously with a piece of her own soap and rinsed them carefully. She wrapped the soap in a piece of wax paper, returned it to her traveling bag, from which she took a tube of hand lotion. She creamed her palms and the backs of her hands, then with tissue wiped away the lotion that had gotten under her fingernails. Unhurried at last, with thirty minutes before flight time. The frantic scampering over with. She had run away from New York City with the same speed she had run toward it. New York was not her home after all. The dogs were leashed in the city but the reins were not always secure. Sometimes walking with their owners they met other dogs and if they were unspayed and unchecked you could see a female standing quietly under the paws of a male who had not even spoken to her, just sniffed for purposes of identification. She thought it could be a shelter for her because there the night women could be beaten, reduced to shadows and confined to the brier patch where they belonged. But she could not beat them alone. There were no shelters anyway; it was adolescent to think that there were. Every orphan knew that and knew also that mothers however beautiful were not fair. No matter what you did, the diaspora mothers with pumping breasts would impugn your character. And an African woman, with a single glance from eyes that had burned away their own lashes, could discredit your elements.

  She still had plenty of time to take two Dramamines, comb her hair, check her makeup, but this ladies’ lounge was not designed for lingering. She was doing her eyes when a girl came out of the stall next to the one she had used. She had a short mop and a plastic pail of various cleansers in her hands. She wore a green uniform which looked even greener beneath her russet wig. Jadine glanced at the wig in the mirror and then back to her own lashes. The girl stopped dead and did not take her eyes off Jadine, who was flattered but wished she would not stare so. Then the girl approached her.

  “You don’t remember me?” she asked.

  Jadine turned around. The wig was so overwhelming it was awhile before she recognized her.

  “L’Arbe de la Croix,” said the girl.

  “Oh, wow.” Jadine smiled. “I didn’t recognize you. What are you doing here? You work here now?”

  The girl nodded. “You took the chocolate eater away,” she said.

  Jadine closed her smile and turned back to the mirror. There was nothing like an islander; they never had any chat—or manners for that matter. Conversation with them was always an interrogation and she was not about to explain anything to this child.

  “He was going to send me a wig, he said.”

  “Looks like he did,” said Jadine.

  “Not this one. I have a picture of the other one. It’s at home. Is he coming back? Can you get it for me?”

  “No,” Jadine answered.

  “You kill him?” asked the girl in a very matter-of-fact tone.

  Jadine slung the huge, lightweight traveling bag over her shoulder and removed her coat from the top of the stall where it hung. “I have to go now,” she said.

  “Thérèse said you kill him,” the girl insisted.

  “Tell Thérèse she killed him.”

  “No,” said the girl, perplexed. “Thérèse has magic breasts. They still give milk.”

  “I bet they do,” said Jadine.

  “But there is nobody to nurse them.”

  “She’s not looking in the right places,” said Jadine. Black pearls of hair were visible at the wig’s edge. The girl’s eyes were wide, still, the curiosity in them was the only thing that kept them from looking like an animal’s. A deer, thought Jadine. She has the eyes of a curious deer. She wished once more that she had had real talent—she’d like to draw her—deer eyes, wig and all. Suddenly she reached into the side pocket of her traveling bag. A few francs were shoved in there and she dropped the whole lot into the girl’s plastic pail. “Bye, Mary, I have to go. Good luck.” Jadine pushed open the door and was gone.

  “Alma,” whispered the girl. “Alma Estée.”

  ABOARD the 707 Jadine had free use of the seat next to her. Not many passengers in first class. She checked her five luggage claim tickets stapled to the envelope that held a copy of her one-way ticket to Orly. Everything was in order. As soon as the plane was airborne, she reached above her head to adjust the air flow. Bringing her hand down she noticed a tiny irregularity in the nail of her forefinger. She opened her purse and took out an emery board. Two swift strokes and it was gone. Her nail was perfect again. She turned her sealskin coat lining side out and folded it carefully into the empty seat beside her. Then she adjusted the headrest. The same sixteen answers to the question What went wrong? kicked like a chorus line. Having sixteen answers meant having none. So none it was. Zero. She would go back to Paris and begin at Go. Let loose the dogs, tangle with the woman in yellow—with her and with all the night women who had looked at her. No more shoulders and limitless chests. No more dreams of safety. No more. Perhaps that was the thing—the thing Ondine was saying. A grown woman did not need safety or its dreams. She was the safety she longed for.

  The plane lifted itself gracefully over the island; its tail of smoke widened, then dispersed. It was evening and the stars were already brilliant. The hills below crouched on all fours under the weight of the rain forest where liana grew and soldier ants marched in formation. Straight ahead they marched, shamelessly single-minded, for soldier ants have no time for dreaming. Almost all of them are women and there is so much to do—the work is literally endless. So many to be born and fed, then found and buried. There is no time for dreaming. The life of their world requires organization so tight and sacrifice so complete there is little need for males and they are seldom produced. When they are needed, it is deliberately done by the queen who surmises, b
y some four-million-year-old magic she is heiress to, that it is time. So she urges a sperm from the private womb where they were placed when she had her one, first and last copulation. Once in life, this little Amazon trembled in the air waiting for a male to mount her. And when he did, when he joined a cloud of others one evening just before a summer storm, joined colonies from all over the world gathered for the marriage flight, he knew at last what his wings were for. Frenzied, he flies into the humming cloud to fight gravity and time in order to do, just once, the single thing he was born for. Then he drops dead, having emptied his sperm into his lady-love. Sperm which she keeps in a special place to use at her own discretion when there is need for another dark and singing cloud of ant folk mating in the air. Once the lady has collected the sperm, she too falls to the ground, but unless she breaks her back or neck or is eaten by one of a thousand things, she staggers to her legs and looks for a stone to rub on, cracking and shredding the wings she will never need again. Then she begins her journey searching for a suitable place to build her kingdom. She crawls into the hollow of a tree, examines its walls and corners. She seals herself off from all society and eats her own wing muscles until she bears her eggs. When the first larvae appear, there is nothing to feed them so she gives them their unhatched sisters until they are old enough and strong enough to hunt and bring their prey back to the kingdom. That is all. Bearing, hunting, eating, fighting, burying. No time for dreaming, although sometimes, late in life, somewhere between the thirtieth and fortieth generation she might get wind of a summer storm one day. The scent of it will invade her palace and she will recall the rush of wind on her belly—the stretch of fresh wings, the blinding anticipation and herself, there, airborne, suspended, open, trusting, frightened, determined, vulnerable—girlish, even, for an entire second and then another and another. She may lift her head then, and point her wands toward the place where the summer storm is entering her palace and in the weariness that ruling queens alone know, she may wonder whether his death was sudden. Or did he languish? And if so, if there was a bit of time left, did he think how mean the world was, or did he fill that space of time thinking of her? But soldier ants do not have time for dreaming. They are women and have much to do. Still it would be hard. So very hard to forget the man who fucked like a star.

  THE MAN sat on the stone wall that separated Rue Madelaine from the sea. His legs hung over the ledge below which were rocks and a thin strip of dirty sand. To the left a rickety pier extended some two hundred feet into the water where black boys leaped, splashed, screamed and climbed back up to leap again. The garbage on the sand was mostly paper and bottles. No food garbage down here. Here, away from the tourist shops, away from the restaurants and offices, was that part of the boulevard where the sea threw up what it could not digest. Whatever life there is on the sand is desperate. A gull negotiated the breeze and swooped down on a black starfish. The gull pecked it, flew away and returned to peck again and again until finally the starfish yielded the magenta string that was its heart. The man watched the gull tear it out with a great deal of interest. Then he swung his legs over the wall and stood up. Shielding his eyes from the sun with his arm, he looked toward the market crowd: a half-block of cloth roofs, tables, baskets, pots, boxes and trays. His jacket was draped across his forearm—both hands in his pockets—as he started toward the market looking for Thérèse. Earlier he had taken the shuttle bus from the airport to the Old Queen Hotel and gone directly from there up the hill to the powder pink house, climbing slowly, carefully, keeping to the edge of the road where the dust gave way to grass. He moved like a man saving his strength, or one suspicious of trip mines.

  No one was in the pink house. The door was latched although the windows were open; a print skirt ripped down the back seam hung from one of the front windows and served it as both curtain and shade. He poked his head through and tossed a piece of hand luggage into the room. Then he walked back down the hill, nodding to a few passersby, and stopped at the house that sold meat pies and rum and sometimes lent hair clippers. He didn’t even try the little tin-can French he’d learned in Vietnam, he simply said Gideon? Thérèse? The owner and another man told him something he could not understand about Thérése, and mentioned Gideon’s name in connection with “taxi.” He nodded and smiled as though it was all brilliantly clear and continued down the hill. The morning he spent walking the streets, looking at the elegant houses turned into restaurants or offices, and the colonial administration buildings built like castles to last. Away from the town to the north and east were the frightened houses of the whites, hiding on sloped roads behind hedges of tropical flora. South was the business district collected mainly on Rue Madelaine and the tributaries running from it. The Blacks lived in the western hills in shacks and cement-block houses or along narrow streets on the west side of town where the sea spit up what it could not digest. It was unusually cool and his weather eye saw that a rainstorm might be due announcing the hurricane season. He walked the streets of Queen of France, glancing at the drivers of the taxis in case Gideon might be one. Three hours of walking and he was not tired. Had not been tired for days now. Being still was the problem. In the apartment in New York he could not sit for long—except to look again and again at the photographs she had taken in Eloe. A fat yellow envelope of pictures had lain unopened on the coffee table along with the keys. Having nothing quiet to do with his huge hands except finger his original dime, he opened the envelope and looked at the pictures of all the places and people he had loved. Then he could be still. Gazing at the photos one by one trying to find in them what it was that used to comfort him so, used to reside with him, in him like royalty in his veins. Used to people his dreams, and anchor his floating days. When danger was most imminent and he fell asleep in spite of himself they were there—the yellow houses with white doors, the ladies at the pie table at Good Shepherd—Aunt Rosa; Soldier’s mother May Downing whom they called Mama May; Drake’s grandmother Winnie Boon who switched them every spring; Miss Tyler who had taught him how to play piano, and the younger women: Beatrice, Ellen, and the children who had been born while he was away. The men: Old Man, Rascal, Turner and Soldier and Drake and Ernie Paul who left the service a first lieutenant and now had his own mortuary in Montgomery, Alabama, and doin fine. There were no photos of them, but they were there in the pictures of trees behind their houses, the fields where they worked, the river they fished, the church where they testified, the joints where they drank. It all looked miserable in the photographs, sad, poor and even poor-spirited.

  When he was not looking at the pictures, he had telephoned her friends and acquaintances. Her women friends knew nothing but suggested he come over and talk about it; the men he would not call. So he paced, walked the streets, listened to the telephone that did not ring, waited for the mail and finally made up his mind to go back to Isle des Chevaliers. Start there in order to find her. He left the keys with the super and the photos on the table, and it was hard to sit still on the airplane; hard to sit still on the sea wall, so he stood up and walked toward the market. Maybe Thérèse was there.

  The afternoon sun had knocked away the earlier chill and the air was damp and much too warm. A smallish crowd of local buyers and tourists milled about the stalls and stands. There were more people selling than buying. He stopped before a tray of meat tarts thinking to buy one, but the smell turned his stomach and he moved away. Farther down he could see crates of bright red bottles of soda. Something cold to drink, he thought, might be better. As he turned in that direction, he bumped into two young Germans with cameras. Automatically he looked toward where their cameras were focused. There she was, hat intact, mouth moving a mile a minute, her broken eyes cheerfully evil. He stepped in front of the cameras and said No to the Germans. No, and shook his head. The young men looked angry for a second and then, glancing at each other, shrugged and moved on. He stood close to Thérèse for a full minute before she recognized him and shrieked, “Chocolate eater! Chocolate eater!” almost knock
ing her tray of smoked eels to the ground.

  “This place is closed,” she said to a would-be customer, “fermé, madame, fermé,” and packed up her eels, her folding camp stool and her wooden crate—none of which she would let him carry as they made their way up to the powder pink house. Thérèse laughed and chattered about the weather and her girlhood all the way but once in the house she became shy and formal, making him uncomfortable and unable to sit. To break the awkward atmosphere he initiated a pointed conversation.

  “Have you been back over there?” he asked her.

  She spit on the floor for an answer and added nothing to it.

  He smiled. “What work does Gideon do now?”

  “Hires out,” she said. “To taxi men.”

  Drumming up business, he guessed, at airports and hotels for the men who owned their taxis. They would tip him for the fares he got them. Thérèse grew silent and formal again. Like a duenna she avoided his eyes but watched him nonetheless. Quietly (all she needed was lace in her hands) guarding some virtue that was only in her mind. The atmosphere of starch returned until he remembered something. He’d put his plastic-wrapped airplane snack in his hand luggage: a pastrami on a roll, a tiny packet of pasteurized cheese, one of mustard and an apple. He opened the bag and presented it to Thérèse, whose happiness, instead of being cheerful, was so deep it was solemn.

  “Eat,” he told her, but she wouldn’t. She left everything just as it was, patting the Saran Wrap fondly. Then she turned to him and said, “I was a pretty girl.” He looked at her and thought perhaps it was so. Perhaps. He couldn’t tell, and didn’t care. “Pretty” was inapplicable to what he liked about her. She repeated it. “I was a pretty girl.”

  “I’m sure you were,” he said smiling.

  “No one remembers now how I was. I was a pretty girl. A pretty girl.” She patted the snack package and he could see that there was some relationship between the present he had given her and her recollections of her youth and beauty. He thought she was going to go on about it, but she stopped and lingered with that thought, patting the plastic wrap tenderly. He had decided to excuse himself from the awkwardness and walk around outside when Gideon came in. The day’s disappointment ran from his face as soon as he saw Son. He put the paper bag he was carrying on the table and encircled Son in his arms.