Paradise

by Toni Morrison

  Footsteps, then a knock, interrupted her sad, dead-end thoughts.

  The girl opened the door.

  “Connie?”

  “Who else?”

  “It’s me, Pallas. I called my father again. So. You know. He’s meeting me in Tulsa. I came to say goodbye.”

  “I see.”

  “It’s been great. I needed to. Well, it’s been forever since I last saw him.”

  “That long?”

  “Can you believe it?”

  “Hard to. You’ve fattened up.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “What will you do about it?”

  “Same as always. Diet.”

  “I don’t mean that. I mean the baby. You’re pregnant.”

  “I am not.”

  “No?”

  “No!”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m only sixteen!”

  “Oh,” said Consolata, looking at the moon head floating above a spine, the four little appendages—paws or hands or hooves or feet. Hard to tell at that stage. Pallas could be carrying a lamb, a baby, a jaguar. “Pity,” she said as Pallas fled from the room. And “pity” again as she imagined the child’s probable life with its silly young mother. She remembered another girl, about the same age, who had come a few years ago—at a very bad time. For seventeen days Consolata had been inside, alone, keeping Mary Magna’s breath coming and going, the cool blue light flickering until Mary Magna asked permission to go, bereft though she was of the last sacrament. The second girl, Grace, had arrived in time to hold off the fearful loneliness that dropped the moment the body was removed, letting Consolata sleep. Mavis had just returned with Lourdes water and illegal painkillers. Consolata welcomed the company which distracted her from self-pitying thoughts of eviction, starvation and an uncontrite death. Minus papers or patron she was as vulnerable as she had been at nine when she clung to Mary Magna’s hand at the railing of the Atenas. Whatever help Lone DuPres or Soane might offer could not include shelter. Not in that town.

  Then the girl from Ruby came. A cup of tears just behind her eyes. And something else. She was not anxious, as might have been expected, but revolted by the work of her womb. A revulsion so severe it cut mind from body and saw its flesh-producing flesh as foreign, rebellious, unnatural, diseased. Consolata could not fathom what brought on that repugnance, but there it was. And here it was again in the No! shout of another one: a terror without alloy. With the first one Consolata did what she knew Mary Magna would have done: quieted the girl and advised her to wait her time. Told her that she was welcome to deliver there if she wanted to. Mavis was jubilant, Grace amused. They took the field rent and drove off to shop for the expected newborn, returning with booties and diapers and dolls enough for a kindergarten. The girl, sharp in her refusal to have the midwife attend her, waited quietly sullen for a week or so. Or so Consolata thought. What she did not know until labor began was that the young mother had been hitting her stomach relentlessly. Had Consolata’s eyesight been better and had the girl’s skin not been black as an ocean lover’s night, she would have seen the bruises at once. As it was, she saw swellings and wide areas where the skin showed purple underneath, rather than silver. But the real damage was the mop handle inserted with a rapist’s skill—mercilessly, repeatedly—between her legs. With the gusto and intention of a rabid male, she had tried to bash the life out of her life. And, in a way, was triumphantly successful. The five-or six-month baby revolted. Feisty, outraged, rigid with fright, it tried to escape the battering and battered ship that carried it. The blows to its delicate skull, the trouncing its hind parts took. The shudders in its spine. Otherwise there was no hope. Had it not tried to rescue itself, it would break into pieces or drown in its mother’s food. So he was born, in a manner of speaking, too soon and fatigued by the flight. But breathing. Sort of. Mavis took over. Grace went to bed. Together Consolata and Mavis cleaned his eyes, stuck their fingers in his throat, clearing it for air, and tried to feed him. It worked for a few days, then he surrendered himself to the company of Merle and Pearl. By that time the mother was gone, having never touched, glanced at, inquired after or named him. Grace called him Che and Consolata did not know to this day where he was buried. Only that she had murmured Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: miserere nobis over the three pounds of gallant but defeated life before Mavis, smiling and cooing, carried it away.

  Just as well, thought Consolata. Life with that mother would have been hell for Che. Now here was another one screaming No! as if that made it so. Pity.

  Reaching for a bottle, Consolata found it empty. She sighed and sat back in the chair. Without wine her thoughts, she knew, would be unbearable: resignation, self-pity, muted rage, disgust and shame glowing like cinders in a dying fire. As she rose to replenish her vice, a grand weariness took her, forcing her back to the seat, tipping her chin on her chest. She slept herself into sobriety. Headachy, sandy-mouthed she woke in quick need of a toilet. On the second floor, she could hear sniffles behind one door, singing behind another. Back down the stairs, she decided to catch a little air and shuffled into the kitchen and out the door. The sun had gone leaving behind a friendlier light. Consolata surveyed the winter-plagued garden. Tomato vines hung limp over fallen fruit, black and smashed in the dirt. Mustards were pale yellow with rot and inattention. A whole spill of melons caved in on themselves near heads of chrysanthemums stricken mud brown. A few chicken feathers were stuck to the low wire fencing protecting the garden from whatever it could. Without human help, gopher holes, termite castles, evidence of rabbit forays and determined crows abounded. The corn scrabble in neatly harvested fields beyond looked forlorn. And the pepper bushes, held on to by the wrinkled fingers of their yield, were rigid with cold. Despite the grains of soil blowing against her legs, Consolata sat down in the faded red chair.

  “Non sum dignus,” she whispered. “But tell me. Where is the rest of days, the aisle of thyme, the scent of veronica you promised? The cream and honey you said I had earned? The happiness that comes of well-done chores, the serenity duty grants us, the blessings of good works? Was what I did for love of you so terrible?”

  Mary Magna had nothing to say. Consolata listened to the refusing silence, more wondering than annoyed by the sky, in plumage now, gold and blue-green, strutting like requited love on the horizon. She was afraid of dying alone, ungrieved in unholy ground, but knew that was precisely what lay before her. How she longed for the good death. “I’ll miss You,” she told Him. “I really will.” The skylight wavered.

  A man approached. Medium height, light step, he came right on up the drive. He wore a cowboy hat that hid his features, but Consolata couldn’t have seen them anyway. Where he sat on the kitchen steps, framed by the door, a triangle of shadow obscured his face but not his clothes: a green vest over a white shirt, red suspenders hanging low on either side of his tan trousers, shiny black work shoes.

  “Who is that?” she asked.

  “Come on, girl. You know me.” He leaned forward, and she saw that he wore sunglasses—the mirror type that glitter.

  “No,” she said. “Can’t say I do.”

  “Well, not important. I’m traveling here.” There were ten yards between them, but his words licked her cheek.

  “You from the town?”

  “Uh uh. I’m far country. Got a thing to drink?”

  “Look you in the house.” Consolata was beginning to slide toward his language like honey oozing from a comb.

  “Oh, well,” he said, as though that settled it and he would rather go thirsty.

  “Just holler,” said Consolata. “The girls can bring you something.” She felt light, weightless, as though she could move, if she wanted to, without standing up.

  “Don’t you know me better than that?” the man asked. “I don’t want see your girls. I want see you.”

  Consolata laughed. “You have your glasses much more me.”

  Suddenly he was next to her without having moved—smiling like he was
having (or expecting) such a good time. Consolata laughed again. It seemed so funny, comical really, the way he had flitted over to her from the steps and how he was looking at her—flirtatious, full of secret fun. Not six inches from her face, he removed his tall hat. Fresh, tea-colored hair came tumbling down, cascading over his shoulders and down his back. He took off his glasses then and winked, a slow seductive movement of a lid. His eyes, she saw, were as round and green as new apples.

  In candlelight on a bitter January evening, Consolata cleans, washes and washes again two freshly killed hens. They are young, poor layers with pinfeathers difficult to extract. Their hearts, necks, giblets and livers turn slowly in boiling water. She lifts the skin to reach under it, fingering as far as she can. Under the breast, she searches for a pocket close to the wing. Then, holding the breast in her left palm, the fingers of her right tunnel the back skin, gently pushing for the spine. Into all these places—where the skin has been loosened and the membrane separated from the flesh it once protected—she slides butter. Thick. Pale. Slippery.

  Pallas wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand and then blew her nose. Now what?

  This latest phone call, which she had mentioned to Connie, was not very different from the initial one. Just shorter. But it produced the same frustration as what had passed for conversation with her father last summer.

  Jesus Christ where the hell are you? We thought you were dead. Thank God. They found the car but it’s bashed to hell on one side and somebody stripped it. You okay? Oh, baby. Daddy. Where is he—boy is his ass over. Tell me what happened. Your bitch mother’s not making any sense as usual. Did he hurt you? Daddy, no. Well, what? Was he alone? We’re suing the school, baby. Got them by the short hairs. It wasn’t him. Some boys chased me. What? In their truck. They hit my car and forced me off the road. I ran and then— They rape you? Daddy! Hold on sweetheart. Jo Anne get me that detective guy. Tell him I got Pallas. No, she’s okay, just get him, will you? Go ahead, baby. I’m Where are you? Will you come and get me Daddy? Of course I will. Right away. Do you need money? Can you get to an airport, a train station? Just tell me where you’ll be. Wait. Maybe you should call the police. The local ones I mean. They can get you to an airport. Tell them to call me. No. You call me from the station. Where are you? Pallas? Where you calling from? Pallas, you there? Minnesota. Minnesota? Jesus. I thought you were in New Mexico. What the hell’s up there? Bloomington? No, Saint Paul. Are you near Saint Paul, sweetheart? I’m not near anything, Daddy. It’s like country. Call the police, Pallas. Make them come get you, you hear? Okay, Daddy. Then call me from the station. Okay. You got that? You’re not hurt or anything? No Daddy. Good. Okay, now. I’ll be right here or Jo Anne will if I go out. Boy what you put me through. But everything’s going to be okay now. We’ll talk about that asshole when you get back. Okay, now? Call me. We have to talk. Love you, baby.

  Talk. Sure. Pallas didn’t call anybody—police, Dee Dee, or him—until August. He was furious but wired her traveling money all the same.

  If they had laughed behind her back before Carlos, if they had joked at her expense then, it came to her only as pale sensation: a broken gesture upon entering study hall; an eye slide as she turned away from her locker; an unstable smile as she joined a crowded lunch table. She had never been truly popular, but her address and her father’s money hid the fact. Now she was an open joke (Pallas Truelove ran off with the jaaa-ni-tor don’t you love it?) that no one tried to hide. She was back in that place where final wars are waged, the organized trenches of high school, where shame is the plate-shifting time it takes to walk down the hall, failure is a fumble with the combination lock and loathing is a condom wafer clogging a fountain. Where aside from the exchange of clothes and toys, there are no good intentions. Where smugness reigns, judgments instant, dismissals permanent. And the adults haven’t a clue. Only prison could be as blatant and as frightening, for beneath its rules and rituals scratched a life of gnawing violence. Those who came from peaceful well-regulated homes were overtaken by a cruelty that visited them as soon as they entered the gates. Cruelty decked out in juvenile glee.

  Pallas tried. But the humiliation wore her down. Milton pumped her about her mother. He had been warned about the consequences of marrying outside his own people, and every warning had come true: Dee Dee was irresponsible, amoral; a slut if the truth be told. Pallas was vague, noncommittal in her answers. He was still pursuing a lawsuit against the school for its lax and endangering environment, not to speak of its criminally inclined employees. But the “victim” of the “abduction” had gone willingly; and the destination of the “across state lines” journey was the “victim’s” own mother. How criminal could that be? Was there something going on in the father’s home they should know about? Something that made the daughter want to, eager to, escape to her mother? Furthermore, nothing untoward had happened on school grounds—except the repair of the “victim’s” car and safe guidance home. Also the “abduction” took place during the holiday when the school was closed. Moreover, the “victim” had not only gone willingly, she had cooperated and deceived to voluntarily accompany a man (an artist, even) who had no priors and whose demeanor and work at the high school was exemplary. Had she been assaulted by him sexually? The “victim” said No, no, no, no. Did he drug her, give her something illegal to smoke? Pallas shook her head no, remembering that it was her mother who did that. Who were these people who hit your car? I don’t know. I never saw their faces. I got out of there. Where to? I hitched and some people took me in. Who? Some people. In a church kind of place. In Minnesota? No, Oklahoma. What’s the address, phone number? Daddy, give it up. I’m home, okay? Yeah but I don’t want to have to worry about you. Don’t. Don’t.

  Pallas didn’t feel well. Everything she ate added a pound in spite of the fact that she threw most of it up. Thanksgiving she spent alone, with food Providence had prepared. Christmas she begged relief. Milton said No. You stay right here. Just Chicago, she said, to visit his sister. He agreed, finally, and his executive secretary made the arrangements. Pallas stayed with her aunt till December 30, when she took off (leaving a reassuringly misleading note). At the Tulsa airport, it took two and a half hours to hire a car and driver to take her all the way to the Convent. Just a visit, she said. Just to find out how everybody was, she said. And who, besides herself, she could fool. Nobody apparently. Connie glimpsed in an instant. Now what?

  Consolata tilts the fowl and peers into their silver and rose cavities. She tosses in salt and scours it all around, then rubs the outer skin with a cinnamon and butter mixture. Onion is added to the bits of neck meat, hearts and giblets speckling the broth. As soon as the hens are roasted brown enough and tender she sets them aside so they can reclaim their liquids.

  Lukewarm and shallow, the tub water rose only to her waist. Gigi liked it deep, hot, heavy with bubbles. The plumbing in the mansion was breaking up: producing colored water, heaving and sometimes failing to rise to the second floor. The well water passed through a wood-fed boiler nobody other than herself was interested in preserving. She was an habitual nuisance, trying to accumulate gallons of piping-hot water from a decrepit system that was worse than ever in winter. Seneca, of course, had helped out, bringing several pails of steamy water from the kitchen stove to the bathroom. For bubbles she poured in grains of Ivory Snow and whipped the water up as best she could, although the result was a disappointing slime. She had asked Seneca to join her in the tub, got the usual refusal, and although she understood why her friend preferred not to be seen naked, Gigi couldn’t resist teasing her about the infrequency of her bathing. The bloody toilet tissue she had seen, but the ridges on Seneca’s skin had only been felt under the covers. Blunt and obnoxious as she could be, Gigi could not ask her about them. The answer might come too close to the bleeding black boy scene.

  She stretched her legs out and lifted her feet to admire them, as she had done many times when she ran them up K.D.’s spine while she lay in the loft and he sat wi
th his naked back to her. She missed him, now and then. His chaotic devotion, full of moods and hurts and yearning and lots and lots of giving in. Well, she had dogged him a bit. Enjoyed his availability and adoration because she had so little experience of either. Mikey. Nobody could call that love. But K.D.’s version didn’t stay fun for long. She had teased, insulted or refused him once too often, and he chased her around the house, grabbed her, smacked her. Mavis and Seneca had pulled him off, used kitchen equipment on him and got him out of there—all three of them answering his curses with better ones of their own.

  Ah, well. This is a new year, she thought. Nineteen seventy-five. New plans, since the old ones had turned out to be trash. When she finally got the box out of the bathroom tile, she whooped to find it full of certificates. The bank officer was tickled, too, and offered her twenty-five dollars for the pleasure of framing them or putting them in a display case for the amusement of his customers. Not every day you could see documentation of one of the biggest scams in the West. She held out for fifty dollars and stomped out of the bank ordering Mavis to just drive, please.

  She would make Seneca leave with her. For good this time. Get back in the fray. Somehow. Somewhere. Her mother was unlocatable; her father on death row. Only a grandfather left, in a spiffy trailer in Alcorn, Mississippi. She had not thought about it too carefully, but now she wondered exactly why she had left. The fray, that is. It wasn’t just the bleeding boy or Mikey’s trick about the couple making out in the desert or the short guy’s advice about clear water and entwined trees. Before Mikey, the point of it all was lost to entertainment and adventure. Provocative demonstrations, pamphlets, bickering, police, squatters, leaders and talking, talking, so much talk. None of it was serious. Gigi lifted soapy hands to reclasp a roller in her hair. Neither a high school nor a college student, no one, not even the other girls, took her seriousness seriously. If she hadn’t been able to print, no one would have known she was there. Except Mikey. “Bastards,” she said aloud. And then, not knowing which of the bastards infuriated her most, she slapped the awful bathwater, hissing “Shit!” with each stroke. It calmed her after a while, enough for her to lean back in the tub, cover her face and whisper into her dripping wet palms, “No, you stupid, stupid bitch. Because you weren’t tough enough. Smart enough. Like with every other goddamn thing you got no staying power. You thought it was going to be fun and that it would work. In a season or two. You thought we were hot lava and when they broke us down into sand, you ran.”