Jazz

by Toni Morrison

  “They’re wrong about her. I went to look for my ring and there is nothing crazy about her at all.

  “I know my mother stole that ring. She said her boss lady gave it to her, but I remember it in Tiffany’s that day. A silver ring with a smooth black stone called opal. The salesgirl went to get the package my mother came to pick up. She showed the girl the note from her boss lady so they would give it to her (and even showed it at the door, so they would let her in). While the salesgirl was gone, we looked at the velvet tray of rings. Picked some up and tried to try them on, but a man in a beautiful suit came over and shook his head. Very slightly. ‘I’m waiting for a package for Mrs. Nicolson,’ my mother said.

  “The man smiled then and said, ‘Of course. It’s just policy. We have to be careful.’ When we left my mother said, ‘Of what? What does he have to be careful about? They put the tray out so people can look at the things, don’t they? So what does he have to be careful about?’

  “She frowned and fussed and we waited a long time for a taxi to take us home and she dared my father to say something about it. The next morning, they packed and got ready to take the train back to Tuxedo Junction. She called me over and gave me the ring she said her boss lady had given her. Maybe they made lots of them, but I know my mother took it from the velvet tray. Out of spite, I suppose, but she gave it to me and I love it, and only lent it to Dorcas because she begged so hard and the silver of it did match the bracelets at her elbow.

  “She wanted to impress Acton. A hard job since he criticized everything. He never gave her gifts the way the old man did. I know she took stuff from him because Mrs. Manfred would die before she bought slippery underwear or silk stockings for Dorcas. Things she couldn’t wear at home or to church.

  “After Dorcas picked up with Acton, we saw each other like before, but she was different. She was doing for Acton what the old man did for her—giving him little presents she bought from the money she wheedled out of the old man and from Mrs. Manfred. Nobody ever caught Dorcas looking for work, but she worked hard scheming money to give Acton things. Stuff he didn’t like, anyway, because it was cheap, and he never wore that ugly stickpin or the silk handkerchief either because of the color. I guess the old man taught her how to be nice, and she wasted it on Acton, who took it for granted, and took her for granted and any girl who liked him.

  “I don’t know if she quit the old man or just two-timed him with Acton. My grandmother says she brought it on herself. Live the life; pay the price, she said.

  “I have to get on home. If I sit here too long, some man will think I’m looking for a good time. Not anymore. After what happened to Dorcas, all I want is my ring back. To have and to show my mother I still have it. She asks me about it once in a while. She’s sick and doesn’t work in Tuxedo anymore, and my father has a job on the Pullman. He is happier than I’ve ever seen him. When he reads the papers and magazines he still grunts and talks back to the printed words, but he gets them first and freshly folded and his arguments aren’t so loud. ‘I’ve seen the world now,’ he says.

  “He means Tuxedo and the train stops in Pennsylvania and Ohio and Indiana and Illinois. ‘And all the kinds of whitepeople there are. Two kinds,’ he says. ‘The ones that feel sorry for you and the ones that don’t. And both amount to the same thing. Nowhere in between is respect.’

  “He’s as argumentative as ever, but happier because riding trains he gets to see Negroes play baseball ‘in the flesh and on the lot, goddamnit.’ It tickles him that whitepeople are scared to compete with Negroes fair and square.

  “My grandmother is slower now, and my mother is sick, so I do most of the cooking. My mother wants me to find some good man to marry. I want a good job first. Make my own money. Like she did. Like Mrs. Trace. Like Mrs. Manfred used to before Dorcas let herself die.

  “I stopped in there to see if he had my ring, because my mother kept asking me about it, and because I couldn’t find it when I rummaged around in Mrs. Manfred’s house after the funeral. But I had another reason too. The hairdresser said the old man was all broke up. Cried all day and all night. Left his job and wasn’t good for a thing. I suppose he misses Dorcas, and thinks about how he is her murderer. But he must not have known about her. How she liked to push people, men. All except Acton, but she would have pushed him too if she had lived long enough or if he had stayed around long enough. It was just for attention or the excitement. I was there at the party and I was the one she talked to on the bed.

  “I thought about it for three months and when I heard he was still at it, crying and so on, I made up my mind to tell him about her. About what she said to me. So on my way home from the market, I stopped by Felton’s to get the record my mother wanted. I walked by the building on Lenox where Dorcas used to meet him, and there on the porch was the woman they call Violent because of what they said she did at Dorcas’ funeral.

  “I didn’t go to the funeral. I saw her die like a fool and was too mad to be at her funeral. I didn’t go to the viewing either. I hated her after that. Anybody would. Some friend she turned out to be.

  “All I wanted was my ring, and to tell the old man he could stop carrying on so. I wasn’t afraid of his wife because Mrs. Manfred let her visit and they seemed to get on okay. Knowing how strict Mrs. Manfred was, all the people she said she would never let in her house and that Dorcas should never speak to, I figured if Violent was good enough for her to let in, she was good enough for me to not be afraid of.

  “I can see why Mrs. Manfred let her visit. She doesn’t lie, Mrs. Trace. Nothing she says is a lie the way it is with most older people. Almost the first thing she said about Dorcas was, ‘She was ugly. Outside and in.’

  “Dorcas was my friend, but I knew that in a way she was right. All those ingredients of pretty and the recipe didn’t work. Mrs. Trace, I thought, was just jealous. She herself is very very dark, bootblack, the girls at school would say. And I didn’t expect her to be pretty, but she is. You’d never get tired looking at her face. She’s what my grandmother calls pick thin, and wears her hair straightened and flat, slicked back like a man’s except that style is all the rage now. Nicely trimmed above her ears and at the kitchen part too. I think her husband must have done her kitchen for her. Who else? She never stepped foot in a beauty shop or so the hairdressers said. I could picture her husband doing her neckline for her. The clippers, maybe even a razor, then the powder afterward. He was that kind, and I sort of know what Dorcas was talking about while she was bleeding all over that woman’s bed at the party.

  “Dorcas was a fool, but when I met the old man I sort of understood. He has a way about him. And he is handsome. For an old man, I mean. Nothing flabby on him. Nice-shaped head, carries himself like he’s somebody. Like my father when he’s being a proud Pullman porter seeing the world, and baseball and not cooped up in Tuxedo Junction. But his eyes are not cold like my father’s. Mr. Trace looks at you. He has double eyes. Each one a different color. A sad one that lets you look inside him, and a clear one that looks inside you. I like when he looks at me. I feel, I don’t know, interesting. He looks at me and I feel deep—as though the things I feel and think are important and different and…interesting.

  “I think he likes women, and I don’t know anybody like that. I don’t mean he flirts with them, I mean he likes them without that, and, this would upset the hairdressers, but I really believe he likes his wife.

  “When I first went there he was sitting by the window staring down in the alleyway, not saying anything. Later on Mrs. Trace brought him a plate full of old-people food: vegetable stuff with rice and the cornbread right on top. He said, ‘Thank you, baby. Take half for yourself.’ Something about the way he said it. As though he appreciated it. When my father says thanks, it’s just a word. Mr. Trace acted like he meant it. And when he leaves the room and walks past his wife, he touches her. Sometimes on the head. Sometimes just a pat on her shoulder.

  “I’ve seen him smile twice now and laugh out loud once. Then nobo
dy would know how old he is. He’s like a kid when he laughs. But I had visited them three or four times before I ever saw him smile. And that was when I said animals in a zoo were happier than when they were left free because they were safe from hunters. He didn’t comment; he just smiled as though what I said was new or really funny.

  “That’s why I went back. The first time was to see if he had my ring or knew where it was, and to tell him to stop carrying on about Dorcas because maybe she wasn’t worth it. The next time, when Mrs. Trace invited me to supper, was more to watch how he was and to listen to Mrs. Trace talk the way she did. A way that would always get her into trouble.

  “‘I messed up my own life,’ she told me. ‘Before I came North I made sense and so did the world. We didn’t have nothing but we didn’t miss it.’

  “Who ever heard of that? Living in the City was the best thing in the world. What can you do out in the country? When I visited Tuxedo, back when I was a child, even then I was bored. How many trees can you look at? That’s what I said to her. ‘How many trees can you look at? And for how long and so what?’

  “She said it wasn’t like that, looking at a bunch of trees. She said for me to go to 143rd Street and look at the big one on the corner and see if it was a man or a woman or a child.

  “I laughed but before I could agree with the hairdressers that she was crazy, she said, ‘What’s the world for if you can’t make it up the way you want it?’

  “‘The way I want it?’

  “‘Yeah. The way you want it. Don’t you want it to be something more than what it is?’

  “‘What’s the point? I can’t change it.’

  “‘That’s the point. If you don’t, it will change you and it’ll be your fault cause you let it. I let it. And messed up my life.’

  “‘Messed it up how?’

  “‘Forgot it.’

  “‘Forgot?’

  “‘Forgot it was mine. My life. I just ran up and down the streets wishing I was somebody else.’

  “‘Who? Who’d you want to be?’

  “‘Not who so much as what. White. Light. Young again.’

  “‘Now you don’t?’

  “‘Now I want to be the woman my mother didn’t stay around long enough to see. That one. The one she would have liked and the one I used to like before…. My grandmother fed me stories about a little blond child. He was a boy, but I thought of him as a girl sometimes, as a brother, sometimes as a boyfriend. He lived inside my mind. Quiet as a mole. But I didn’t know it till I got here. The two of us. Had to get rid of it.’

  “She talked like that. But I understood what she meant. About having another you inside that isn’t anything like you. Dorcas and I used to make up love scenes and describe them to each other. It was fun and a little smutty. Something about it bothered me, though. Not the loving stuff, but the picture I had of myself when I did it. Nothing like me. I saw myself as somebody I’d seen in a picture show or a magazine. Then it would work. If I pictured myself the way I am it seemed wrong.

  “‘ How did you get rid of her?’

  “‘Killed her. Then I killed the me that killed her.’

  “‘Who’s left?’

  “‘Me.’

  “I didn’t say anything. I started thinking maybe the hairdresser was right again because of the way she looked when she said ‘me.’ Like it was the first she heard of the word.

  “Mr. Trace came back in then, and said he was going to sit outside awhile. She said, ‘No, Joe. Stay with us. She won’t bite.’

  “She meant me, and something else I couldn’t catch. He nodded and sat down by the window saying, ‘For a little while.’

  “Mrs. Trace looked at him but I knew she was talking to me when she said, ‘Your little ugly friend hurt him and you remind him of her.’

  “I could hardly find my tongue. ‘I’m not like her!’

  “I didn’t mean to say it so loud. They both turned to look at me. So I said it even though I didn’t plan to. I told them even before I asked for the ring. ‘Dorcas let herself die. The bullet went in her shoulder, this way.’ I pointed. ‘She wouldn’t let anybody move her; said she wanted to sleep and she would be all right. Said she’d go to the hospital in the morning. “Don’t let them call nobody,” she said. “No ambulance; no police, no nobody.” I thought she didn’t want her aunt, Mrs. Manfred, to know. Where she was and all. And the woman giving the party said okay because she was afraid to call the police. They all were. People just stood around talking and waiting. Some of them wanted to carry her downstairs, put her in a car and drive to the emergency ward. Dorcas said no. She said she was all right. To please leave her alone and let her rest. But I did it. Called the ambulance, I mean; but it didn’t come until morning after I had called twice. The ice, they said, but really because it was colored people calling. She bled to death all through that woman’s bed sheets on into the mattress, and I can tell you that woman didn’t like it one bit. That’s all she talked about. Her and Dorcas’ boyfriend. The blood. What a mess it made. That’s all they talked about.’

  “I had to stop then because I was out of breath and crying.

  “I hated crying all over myself like that.

  “They didn’t stop me neither. Mr. Trace handed me his pocket handkerchief, and it was soaked by the time I was through.

  “‘This the first time?’ he asked me. ‘The first time you cried about her?’

  “I hadn’t thought about it, but it was true.

  “Mrs. Trace said, ‘Oh, shit.’

  “Then the two of them, they just looked at me. I thought they would never say another word until Mrs. Trace said, ‘Come to supper, why don’t you. Friday evening. You like catfish?’

  “I said sure, but I wasn’t going to. The hell with the ring. But the Thursday before, I thought about the way Mr. Trace looked at me and the way his wife said ‘me.’

  “The way she said it. Not like the ‘me’ was some tough somebody, or somebody she had put together for show. But like, like somebody she favored and could count on. A secret somebody you didn’t have to feel sorry for or have to fight for. Somebody who wouldn’t have to steal a ring to get back at whitepeople and then lie and say it was a present from them. I wanted the ring back not just because my mother asks me have I found it yet. It’s beautiful. But although it belongs to me, it’s not mine. I love it, but there’s a trick in it, and I have to agree to the trick to say it’s mine. Reminds me of the tricky blond kid living inside Mrs. Trace’s head. A present taken from whitefolks, given to me when I was too young to say No thank you.

  “It was buried with her. That’s what I found out when I went back for the catfish supper. Mrs. Trace saw it on Dorcas’ hand when she stabbed her in the coffin.

  “I had a funny feeling in my stomach, and my throat was too dry to swallow, but I had to ask her just the same—why did she mess up the funeral that way. Mr. Trace looked at her as though he had asked the question.

  “‘Lost the lady,’ she said. ‘Put her down someplace and forgot where.’

  “‘How did you find her?’

  “‘Looked.’

  “We sat there for a while nobody saying anything. Then Mrs. Trace got up to answer a knock at the door. I heard voices. ‘Just right here and right here. Won’t take but two minutes.’

  “‘I don’t do no two-minute work.’

  “‘Please, Violet, I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t absolutely necessary, you know that.’

  “They came into the dining room, Mrs. Trace and a woman pleading for a few curls ‘just here and here. And maybe you can turn it down up here. Not curled, just turned, know what I mean?’

  “‘You all go up front, I won’t be too long.’ She said that to Mr. Trace and me after we said ‘Evening’ to the hurry-up customer, but nobody introduced anybody.

  “Mr. Trace didn’t sit at the window this time. He sat next to me on the sofa.

  “‘Felice. That means happy. Are you?’

  “‘Sure. No.’

&nb
sp; “‘Dorcas wasn’t ugly. Inside or out.’

  “I shrugged. ‘She used people.’

  “‘Only if they wanted her to.’

  “‘Did you want her to use you?’

  “‘Must have.’

  “‘Well, I didn’t. Thank God she can’t anymore.’

  “I wished I hadn’t taken my sweater off. My dress stretches across the top no matter what I do. He was looking at my face, not my body, so I don’t know why I was nervous alone in the room with him.

  “Then he said, ‘You mad cause she’s dead. So am I.’

  “‘You the reason she is.’

  “‘I know. I know.’

  “‘Even if you didn’t kill her outright; even if she made herself die, it was you.’

  “‘It was me. For the rest of my life, it’ll be me. Tell you something. I never saw a needier creature in my life.’

  “‘Dorcas? You mean you still stuck on her?’

  “‘Stuck? Well, if you mean did I like what I felt about her. I guess I’m stuck to that.’

  “‘What about Mrs. Trace? What about her?’

  “‘We working on it. Faster now, since you stopped by and told us what you did.’

  “‘Dorcas was cold,’ I said. ‘All the way to the last she was dry-eyed. I never saw her shed a tear about anything.’

  “He said, ‘I did. You know the hard part of her; I saw the soft. My luck was to tend to it.’

  “‘Dorcas? Soft?’

  “‘Dorcas. Soft. The girl I knew. Just cause she had scales don’t mean she wasn’t fry. Nobody knew her that way but me. Nobody tried to love her before me.’

  “‘Why’d you shoot at her if you loved her?’

  “‘Scared. Didn’t know how to love anybody.’

  “‘You know now?’

  “‘No. Do you, Felice?’

  “‘I got other things to do with my time.’

  “He didn’t laugh at me, so I said, ‘I didn’t tell you everything.’