Tar Baby

by Toni Morrison

  Gideon got over the shame: the work at Isle des Chevaliers, which began for a season and had lasted three years, helped and so did the fact that the jokes and insults heaped on him by his family were nothing compared to the humiliations of immigrant life which U.S. citizenship did not change. Also the thought of being able to die in those coffee-growing hills rather than in those lonely Stateside places gave him so much happiness he could not hold a grudge or sustain anger for more than an hour. Unlike Thérèse whose hatreds were complex and passionate as exemplified by her refusal to speak to the American Negroes, and never even to acknowledge the presence of the white Americans in her world. To effect this she believed all she had to do was not look at them (or rather not look at them while they looked at her) so her face was always turned away when they addressed her and her glance (when it was not on her work) went to a distant point on the horizon which she could not have seen if her life depended on it. What they took for inattentiveness was a miracle of concentration.

  “Hush, Thérèse,” said Gideon. “They can hear you in the harbor. Finish making up your romance in your head. I have to go.” He stood up and rubbed the abused shoulder. “But you forgetting one thing in your story. One important thing. I said I saw him in the house, in the open. Open. Get it? Now there are five people living there. Not three. And two of them is white and the same two is the boss of everything as well. While you making up your story about what this one thinks and this one feels, you have left out the white bosses. What do they feel about it? It’s not important who this one loves and who this one hates and what bow-tie do or what machete-hair don’t do if you don’t figure on the white ones and what they thinking about it all.” He tapped her on the chest bone and left her sitting there with a half-finished plot on her tongue.

  Thérèse unplugged the hot plate and put the last of the Billy Blass towels in the dryer. Then she put all the white shirts and uniforms into the washing machine. The load was too tight and too much, but she had wasted time gossiping with Gideon so she left it that way. She sat down again on the chair and began sloshing the black socks of the bow-tie husband.

  It was true, she thought. She had forgotten the white Americans. How would they fit into the story? She could not imagine them. In her story she knew who the others were: the chocolate-eating man was a lover, the fast-ass a coquette who had turned him down; the other two were the traditional hostile family. She understood that, but now she had to get a grasp of the tall thin American who played in the greenhouse whom she had never seen clearly and certainly never spoken to. And also the wife with the sunset hair and milk-white skin. What would they feel? She realized then that all her life she thought they felt nothing at all. Oh, well, yes, she knew they talked and laughed and died and had babies. But she had never attached any feeling to any of it. She thought of her priest, the shopkeepers, the gendarmes, the schoolteachers Alma talked about, the two little French girls she took care of one day when the governess ran away, and the hundreds of French babies who used to nurse at her magical breasts. What went on inside them? Inside.

  Thérèse resented the problem and the necessity for solving it to get on with the story. “What difference does it make,” she murmured. “I don’t know what they would think about him, but I know for certain what they would do about him. Kill him. Kill the chocolate-eating black man. Kill him dead. Ah. Poor thing. Poor, poor thing. He dies and the fast-ass is brought low at last. Too late, bitch—too late you discover how wonderful he really was. How gentle, how kind. And you are full of remorse, but too late, cow, too too late; you will never have him now. And you machete-hair and you bow-tie you will think everything is all right now he’s dead, but no! you will suffer too, because the fast-ass is grief-stricken and will blame you for his untimely death and hate you forever. So you can go back to the States the whole pack of you and choke to death on your big red apples.”

  THE SKIN of the baby seals sucked up the dampness of her own. Jadine closed her eyes and imagined the blackness she was sinking into. She lay spread-eagled on the fur, nestling herself into it. It made her tremble. She opened her lips and licked the fur. It made her tremble more. Ondine was right; there was something a little fearful about the coat. No, not fearful, seductive. After a few more moments of nestling she got up and made preparations to take another shower and to get dressed. The clock showed twelve-thirty and she still had to phone Solange, answer letters, and see about Margaret. She would need soothing. Maybe they would take their fruit and cold consommé down by the fish pond or farther up the hill to the gazebo. Because of Margaret’s refusal to leave her bedroom, they had already missed their session of exercise and muscle-tightening calisthenics. Valerian would be in the greenhouse through lunch where he usually had a baked potato or some other single item. Only Ondine and Sydney ate a substantial lunch. Both had three very full meals a day and their menu was in no way related to what was served at Valerian’s table.

  Jadine came out of the shower as moist as she was when she went in, so she dressed as slowly as possible in order to prevent more perspiration.

  The emperor butterflies were back now agitating the air. Jadine watched them languidly as she brushed her hair and bound it into a knot at the top of her head. Then she pulled a few strands over her ears and temples to soften the look. On impulse she put on her coat again and she was looking in a full-length mirror judging the effect when the smell hit her. She moved a little to her left to see what the mirror reflected behind her. There he stood in mauve silk pajamas, his skin as dark as a riverbed, his eyes as steady and clear as a thief’s.

  “Morning,” he said, and smiled bringing once more into view the small dark dogs galloping on silver feet. Jadine could not find her tongue. She was staring into the mirror at his hair. Last night, sitting with Valerian in the soft light of the dining room, it had looked merely long and unkempt. Here, alone in her bedroom where there were no shadows, only glimmering unrelieved sunlight, his hair looked overpowering—physically overpowering, like bundles of long whips or lashes that could grab her and beat her to jelly. And would. Wild, aggressive, vicious hair that needed to be put in jail. Uncivilized, reform-school hair. Mau Mau, Attica, chain-gang hair.

  “Good morning.” He said it again.

  She struggled to pull herself away from his image in the mirror and to yank her tongue from the roof of her mouth. She was sober now and the thought that she had not grasped fully the night before, the picture that only Margaret had seen clearly, was framed for her now in the fruitwood of the mirror: this man had been living among them (in their things) for days. And they had not known it. What had he seen or heard? What was he doing there?

  “Hey. I was saying good morning to you.”

  She turned, freed at last from the image in the mirror.

  “You could knock, you know.”

  “The door was open.” He gestured to the door behind him.

  “But it’s still a door and can be knocked on.”

  He seemed to close his eyes to her without shutting the lids, and what was left of his smile disappeared into his beard and the riverbed darkness of his face.

  This is wrong, she thought. I shouldn’t make him angry.

  “I’m sorry, but you startled me. Did you sleep well?”

  He nodded but did not return the smile she dredged up to her own lips.

  “The shower doesn’t work,” he said, glancing around the room.

  “Oh.” She laughed and, to hide her confusion, shed her sealskin coat, throwing it on the bed. “There’s no handle. Just push the knob in the center. It’ll come on. It took me a while too, at first.”

  He looked past her to the sealskin coat sprawled on the bed. Jadine flushed as though he could see the print of her nipples and thighs in the pelts. He walked toward the coat and the bed. The pajamas they’d given him were too small—the sleeves ended somewhere between wrist and elbow and the pants leg came to just above his shins. As he stood looking at the coat she could not tell whether he or it was the bla
cker or the shinier, but she knew she did not want him to touch it.

  “I’ll get Sydney to get some clothes for you if you like.” Then thinking of Sydney’s response to that chore she added, “Or Yardman. Yardman can get some things for you.”

  “Who?” He turned away from the coat.

  “Yardman. The gardener.”

  “That his name?”

  “No.” She smiled, searching for the leashes of the small dark dogs. “But he answers to it. Which is something, at least. Some people don’t have a name of any kind.”

  He smiled too, moving away from the bed toward her. “What do you like? Billy? Paul? What about Rastus?”

  “Don’t be funny. What is your name?”

  “What’s yours?”

  “Jade.”

  He shook his head as though he knew better.

  “Okay. Jadine. Jadine Childs.” She reached for a cigarette.

  “Can I have one of those?”

  “Sure.” She gestured toward the escritoire for him to help himself. He pulled out a Gauloise filter, lit it and began to cough.

  “Been a long time,” he said, and for the first time looked vulnerable. Jadine grabbed the leashes.

  “Keep the pack,” she said. “There’s plenty more if you want them.”

  He nodded and took another drag with a little more success.

  “Who’s the copper Venus?” he asked her.

  Jadine dropped the leashes. “Where did you see that?”

  “I didn’t see it. I heard it.”

  “Where?” She could not find them, they were gone.

  “The woman who comes to work here. She talks to herself out in the washhouse.”

  Now she had them again, safely back in her fingers. “Mary. It must have been Mary.” Jadine laughed. “That was a publicity thing. When I was modeling they called me that. I wonder how Mary knows about it. I don’t think she can even read.”

  “You were a model?” He narrowed his eyes with interest.

  Jadine walked over to a large straw chest. As she left the Karastan her gold-thread slippers clicked on the tile. After rummaging awhile she pulled out a fashion magazine with her face on the cover. When she handed it to him he sat down at the desk and made a flute sound between his teeth. And then another as his eyes traveled from the crown of her head to the six centimeters of cleavage supported (more or less) by silver lamé. Her hair in the picture was pressed flat to her head, pulled away from her brow revealing a neat hairline. Her eyes were the color of mink and her lips wet and open. He continued the flute sounds and then opened the magazine. After flipping the pages for a few seconds he came to a four-page spread of her in other poses, other clothes, other hair, but always the same wet and open lips.

  “Goddamn,” he whispered. “Go-oddamn.”

  Jadine said nothing, but she held on tight to the leashes. The look on his face made her smile. He examined the pictures closely, whispering “shit” and “goddamn” softly to himself at intervals.

  “What does it say?” He put the magazine flat on the desk, turned at an angle so she could read and translate the text.

  “Oh, it’s just stuff about me.” She leaned on the edge of the desk facing him and the magazine. “Where I went to school. Things like that.”

  “Read it to me.”

  Jadine leaned over and translated rapidly the important parts of the copy. “Mademoiselle Childs…graduate of the Sorbonne…an accomplished student of art history…a degree in…is an expert on cloisonné, having visited and worked with the Master Nape…. An American now living in Paris and Rome, where she had a small but brilliantly executed role in a film by…” She stopped. The man was tracing her blouse with his forefinger.

  “This,” he said, lifting his finger from the picture to point at the caption beneath, “what does this say?”

  “That’s just a description of the dress. Natural raw silk…honey-colored…”

  “Right here it says ‘fast lane.’ What’s that about?”

  “Oh, they’re trying to be hip. It says, ‘If you travel as Jade does in what the Americans call the fast lane, you need elegant but easy-to-pack frocks.’ Then it goes on about the jewelry.”

  “What about the jewelry?” Now he traced the heaps of gold necklaces above the honey-colored silk.

  “The total worth of it is—” she calculated quickly from francs into dollars—“thirty-two thousand dollars.”

  “Thirty-two thousand?”

  “Um-hm.”

  “Shit. And the earrings? Do they talk about the earrings?” He was looking at a facing close-up of her, from the nose down to the first swell of her breasts, which featured earrings, a sculptured piece around her throat and again the wet and open lips.

  “Lovely, aren’t they? Antiques. They belonged to Catherine the Great.”

  “Catherine the Great. A queen, huh?”

  “Empress. The Empress of all the Russias.”

  “She give them to you?”

  “Stupid! She’s been dead for almost two hundred years.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah.” She drew out the word and made it as flat and American as she could. But she was smiling at the same time.

  “They must be worth a lot, then.”

  “Quite a lot. Priceless.”

  “Nothing’s priceless. Everything has a price.” He was tracing again, circling Catherine’s earrings with his forefinger. Jadine felt her earlobes prickle as she watched him.

  “Well, half a million, certainly.”

  “Half a million? Shit.”

  “Don’t you have any other word to express awe?” She tilted her head and fastened her big minky eyes on him.

  He nodded. “Goddamn.”

  She laughed then, and for the first time there was no tension in it at all. He merely smiled and continued fingering the photograph. “Are these your clothes or did they just let you use them for the pictures?”

  “They’re mine. Some were given to me after I was photographed. A kind of payment.”

  “And the jewelry? They give you that too?”

  “No. That was mine from before—except the earrings. They were on loan from the Russians. But the rest is part of my own collection.”

  “Collection, huh?”

  “Why? Are you a thief?”

  “I wish I was. Be a lot easier for me if I could steal.”

  “If? What do you call what you were doing in this house for days? Or were you planning to give Ondine back her chocolate?”