Paradise

by Toni Morrison

  Richard didn’t believe either of the stories rapidly becoming gospel, and spoke to Simon Cary and Senior Pulliam, who clarified other parts of the tale. But because neither had decided on the meaning of the ending and, therefore, had not been able to formulate a credible, sermonizable account of it, they could not assuage Richard’s dissatisfaction. It was Lone who provided him with the livid details that several people were quick to discredit, because Lone, they said, was not reliable. Except for her, no one overheard the men at the Oven and who knew what they really said? Like the rest of the witnesses she arrived after the shots were fired; besides, she and Dovey could be wrong about whether the two women in the house were dead or just wounded; and finally, she didn’t see anybody outside the house, living or dead.

  As for Lone, she became unhinged by the way the story was being retold; how people were changing it to make themselves look good. Other than Deacon Morgan, who had nothing to say, every one of the assaulting men had a different tale and their families and friends (who had been nowhere near the Convent) supported them, enhancing, recasting, inventing misinformation. Although the DuPreses, Beauchamps, Sandses and Pooles backed up her version, even their reputation for precision and integrity could not prevent altered truth from taking hold in other quarters. If there were no victims the story of the crime was play for anybody’s tongue. So Lone shut up and kept what she felt certain of folded in her brain: God had given Ruby a second chance. Had made Himself so visible and unarguable a presence that even the outrageously prideful (like Steward) and the uncorrectably stupid (like his lying nephew) ought to be able to see it. He had actually swept up and received His servants in broad daylight, for goodness’ sake! right before their very eyes, for Christ’s sake! Since they were accusing her of lying, she decided to keep quiet and watch the hand of God work the disbelievers and the false witnesses. Would they know they’d been spoken to? Or would they drift further from His ways? One thing, for sure: they could see the Oven; they couldn’t misread or misspeak that, so they had better hurry up and fix its slide before it was too late—which it might already be, for the young people had changed its words again. No longer were they calling themselves Be the Furrow of His Brow. The graffiti on the hood of the Oven now was “We Are the Furrow of His Brow.”

  However sharp the divisions about what really took place, Pat knew the big and agreed-upon fact was that everyone who had been there left the premises certain that lawmen would be happily swarming all over town (they’d killed a white woman, after all), arresting virtually all of Ruby’s businessmen. When they learned there were no dead to report, transport or bury, relief was so great they began to forget what they’d actually done or seen. Had it not been for Luther Beauchamp—who told the most damning story—and Pious, Deed Sands and Aaron—who corroborated much of Lone’s version—the whole thing might have been sanitized out of existence. Yet even they could not bring themselves to report unnatural deaths in a house with no bodies, which might lead to the discovery of natural deaths in an automobile full of bodies. Though not privy to many people’s confidence, Pat gathered from talks with her father, with Kate and from deliberate eavesdropping that four months later they were still chewing the problem, asking God for guidance if they were wrong: if white law should, contrary to everything they knew and believed, be permitted to deal with matters heretofore handled among and by them. The difficulties churned and entangled everybody: distribution of blame, prayers for understanding and forgiveness, arrogant self-defense, outright lies, and a host of unanswered questions that Richard Misner kept putting to them. So the funeral came as a pause but not a conclusion.

  Maybe they were right about this place all along, Pat thought, surveying the townspeople. Maybe Ruby is lucky. No, she corrected herself. Although the evidence of the assault was invisible, the consequences were not. There was Jeff, his arm around his wife, both looking properly sorrowful but slightly majestic too, for Jeff was now sole owner of his father’s furniture and appliance store. Arnold, suddenly a very old man with a persistent headache, and enjoying his own bedroom now that Arnette had moved out, stood with bowed head and roaming eyes that traveled everywhere but near the coffin. Sargeant Person looked as smug as ever: he had no landlord expecting a field fee and unless and until the county auditor got interested in a tiny hamlet of quiet, God-fearing black folk, his avarice would go unabated. Harper Jury, uncontrite, was wearing a dark blue suit and a head wound that, like a medal, gave him leave to assume the position of bloodied but unbowed warrior against evil. Menus was the most unfortunate. He had no customers at Anna’s anymore, in part because his ruined shoulder restricted his facility with barber tools but also because his drinking had extended itself to many more days of the week. His dissipation was rapidly coming to its own conclusion. Wisdom Poole had the toughest row to hoe. Seventy family members held him accountable (just as they had his brothers, Brood and Apollo) for scandalizing their forefathers’ reputations, giving him no peace or status, reprimanding him daily until he fell on his knees and wept before the entire congregation of Holy Redeemer. After testifying, recommitted, renewed and full of remorse, he began tentative conversations with Brood and Apollo. Arnette and K.D. were building a new house on Steward’s property. She was pregnant again, and they both hoped to get in a position to make life unpleasant for the Pooles, the DuPreses, the Sandses and the Beauchamps, especially Luther, who took every opportunity to insult K.D. The most interesting development was with the Morgan brothers. Their distinguishing features were eroding: tobacco choices (they gave up cigar and chaw at the same time), shoes, clothes, facial hair. Pat thought they looked more alike than they probably had at birth. But the inside difference was too deep for anyone to miss. Steward, insolent and unapologetic, took K.D. under his wing, concentrating on making the nephew and the sixteen-month-old grandnephew rich (thus the new house), easing K.D. into the bank while waiting for Dovey to come around, which she seemed to be doing, because there was an obvious coolness between her and Soane. The sisters disagreed about what happened at the Convent. Dovey saw Consolata fall but maintained she did not see who pulled the trigger. Soane knew, and needed to know, one thing: it had not been her husband. She had seen his hand moving over to Steward’s in a cautioning, preventing gesture. She saw it and she said it, over and over again, to anyone who would listen.

  It was Deacon Morgan who had changed the most. It was as though he had looked in his brother’s face and did not like himself anymore. To everyone’s surprise he had formed a friendship (well, a relationship anyway) with somebody other than Steward, the cause, reason and basis of which were a mystery. Richard Misner wasn’t talking, so all anyone knew for certain was the barefoot walk that took place in public.

  It was September then and still hot when Deacon Morgan walked toward Central. Chrysanthemums to the right, chrysanthemums to the left of the brick path leading from his imposing white house. He wore his hat, business suit, vest and a clean white shirt. No shoes. No socks. He entered St. John Street, where he had planted trees fifty feet apart, so great was his optimism twenty years earlier. He turned right on Central. It had been at least a decade since the soles of his shoes, let alone his bare feet, had touched that much concrete. Just past Arnold Fleetwood’s house, near the corner of St. Luke, a couple said, “Morning, Deek.” He lifted his hand in greeting, his eyes straight ahead. Lily Cary helloed from the porch of her house near Cross Mark but he did not turn his head. “Car broke down?” she asked, staring at his feet. At Harper Jury’s drugstore, on the corner of Central and St. Matthew, he felt rather than saw watchful eyes traveling alongside him. He didn’t turn to see nor did he glance through the window of the Morgan Savings and Loan Bank as he approached St. Peter. At Cross Peter he crossed and made his way to Richard Misner’s house. The last time he was here, six years before, he was angry, suspicious but certain he and his brother would prevail. What he felt now was exotic to a twin—an incompleteness, a muffled solitude, which took away appetite, sleep and sound. Since J
uly, other people seemed to him to be speaking in whispers, or shouting from long distances. Soane watched him but, mercifully, did not initiate dangerous dialogue. It was as though she understood that had she done so, what he said to her would draw the life from their life. He might tell her that green springtime had been sapped away; that outside of that loss, she was grand, more beautiful than he believed a woman could be; that her untamable hair framed a face of planes so sharp he wanted to touch; that after she spoke, the smile that followed made the sun look like a fool. He might tell his wife that he thought at first she was speaking to him—“You’re back”—but knew now it wasn’t so. And that instantly he longed to know what she saw, but Steward, who saw nothing or everything, stopped them dead lest they know another realm.

  Earlier that September morning he had bathed and dressed carefully but could not bring himself to cover his feet. He handled the dark socks, the shiny black shoes for a long while, then put them aside.

  He knocked on the door and removed his hat when the younger man answered.

  “I need to speak to you, Reverend.”

  “Come on in.”

  Deacon Morgan had never consulted with or taken into his confidence any man. All of his intimate conversations had been wordless ones with his brother or brandishing ones with male companions. He spoke to his wife in the opaque manner he thought appropriate. None had required him to translate into speech the raw matter he exposed to Reverend Misner. His words came out like ingots pulled from the fire by an apprentice blacksmith—hot, misshapen, resembling themselves only in their glow. He spoke of a wall in Ravenna, Italy, white in the late afternoon sun with wine colored shadows pressing its edge. Of two children on a beach offering him a shell formed like an S—how open their faces, how loud the bells. Of salt water burning his face on a troop ship. Of colored girls in slacks waving from the door of a canning factory. Then he told him of his grandfather who walked barefoot for two hundred miles rather than dance.

  Richard listened intently, interrupting once to offer cool water. Although he did not understand what Deacon was talking about, he could see that the man’s life was uninhabitable. Deacon began to speak of a woman he had used; how he had turned up his nose at her because her loose and easy ways gave him the license to drop and despise her. That while the adultery preyed on him for a short while (very short), his long remorse was at having become what the Old Fathers cursed: the kind of man who set himself up to judge, rout and even destroy the needy, the defenseless, the different.

  “Who is this woman?” Richard asked him.

  Deacon did not answer. He ran his finger around the inside of his shirt collar, then started on another story. It seemed his grandfather, Zechariah, was subject to personal taunts as well as newspaper articles describing his malfeasance in office. He was an embarrassment to Negroes and both a threat and a joke to whites. No one, black or white, could or would help him find other work. He was even passed up for a teaching job at a poor country primary school. The Negroes in a position to help were few (the depression of ’73 was severe), but they took Zechariah’s dignified manner for coldness and his studied speech for arrogance, mockery or both. The family lost the nice house and were living (all nine of them) with a sister’s family. Mindy, his wife, found work sewing at home, and the children did odd jobs. Few knew and fewer remembered that Zechariah had a twin, and before he changed his name, they were known as Coffee and Tea. When Coffee got the statehouse job, Tea seemed as pleased as everybody else. And when his brother was thrown out of office, he was equally affronted and humiliated. One day, years later, when he and his twin were walking near a saloon, some whitemen, amused by the double faces, encouraged the brothers to dance. Since the encouragement took the form of a pistol, Tea, quite reasonably, accommodated the whites, even though he was a grown man, older than they were. Coffee took a bullet in his foot instead. From that moment they weren’t brothers anymore. Coffee began to plan a new life elsewhere. He contacted other men, other former legislators who had the same misfortune as his—Juvenal DuPres and Drum Blackhorse. They were the three who formed the nucleus of the Old Fathers. Needless to say, Coffee didn’t ask Tea to join them on their journey to Oklahoma.

  “I always thought Coffee—Big Papa—was wrong,” said Deacon Morgan. “Wrong in what he did to his brother. Tea was his twin, after all. Now I’m less sure. I’m thinking Coffee was right because he saw something in Tea that wasn’t just going along with some drunken whiteboys. He saw something that shamed him. The way his brother thought about things; the choices he made when up against it. Coffee couldn’t take it. Not because he was ashamed of his twin, but because the shame was in himself. It scared him. So he went off and never spoke to his brother again. Not one word. Know what I mean?”

  “It must have been hard,” said Richard.

  “I’m saying he never said another word to him and wouldn’t allow anybody else to call his name.”

  “Lack of words,” Richard said. “Lack of forgiveness. Lack of love. To lose a brother is a hard thing. To choose to lose one, well, that’s worse than the original shame, wouldn’t you say?”

  Deacon looked down at his feet for a long time. Richard stayed quiet with him. Finally he raised his head and said:

  “I got a long way to go, Reverend.”

  “You’ll make it,” said Richard Misner. “No doubt about it.”

  Richard and Anna doubted the convenient mass disappearance of the victims and, as soon as they got back, went to look for themselves. Other than a sparkling white crib in a bedroom with the word DIVINE taped to the door, and foodstuffs, there was nothing recently lived-in about the place. The chickens were wilding or half eaten by four-footed prowlers. Pepper bushes were in full flower, but the rest of the garden was lost. Sargeant’s cornfield the only human touch. Richard barely glanced at the cellar floor. Anna, however, examining it as closely as her lamp permitted, saw the terribleness K.D. reported, but it wasn’t the pornography he had seen, nor was it Satan’s scrawl. She saw instead the turbulence of females trying to bridle, without being trampled, the monsters that slavered them.

  They left the house and stood in the yard.

  “Listen,” Anna told him. “One of them or maybe more wasn’t dead. Nobody actually looked—they just assumed. Then, between the time folks left and Roger arrived, they got the hell out of there. Taking the killed ones with them. Simple, right?”

  “Right,” said Misner, but he didn’t sound convinced.

  “It’s been weeks now, and nobody has come around asking questions. They must not have reported it, so why should we?”

  “Whose baby was in there? That crib is new.”

  “I don’t know, but it sure wasn’t Arnette’s.”

  He said it again, “Right,” with the same level of doubt. Then, “I don’t like mysteries.”

  “You’re a preacher. Your whole life’s belief is a mystery.”

  “Belief is mysterious; faith is mysterious. But God is not a mystery. We are.”

  “Oh, Richard,” she said as though it was all too much.

  He had asked her to marry him. “Will you marry me, Anna?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.”

  “Why not?”

  “Your fire’s too stingy.”

  “Not when it counts.”

  She had never expected to be that happy and coming back to Ruby, instead of making the great announcement, they were sorting out what looked like the total collapse of a town.

  “Should we take those chickens? They’ll all be eaten anyway.”

  “If you want to,” he said.

  “I don’t. I’ll just see if there’re any eggs.” Anna entered the henhouse wrinkling her nose and stepping through a half inch of chicken litter. She fought a couple of them to get the five eggs that she thought were probably fresh. When she came out, both hands full, she called, “Richard? Got something I can put these in?” At the edge of the garden a faded red chair lay on its side. Beyond was blossom and death. Shriveled tomat
o plants alongside crops of leafy green reseeding themselves with golden flowers; pink hollyhocks so tall the heads leaned all the way over a trail of bright squash blossoms; lacy tops of carrots browned and lifeless next to straight green spikes of onion. Melons split their readiness showing gums of juicy red. Anna sighed at the mix of neglect and unconquerable growth. The five eggs warm umber in her hands.

  Richard came toward her. “This big enough?” He flicked open his handkerchief.

  “Maybe. Here, hold them while I see if the peppers are out.”

  “No,” he said. “I’ll go.” He dropped the handkerchief over the eggs.

  It was when he returned, as they stood near the chair, her hands balancing brown eggs and white cloth, his fingers looking doubled with long pepper pods—green, red and plum black—that they saw it. Or sensed it, rather, for there was nothing to see. A door, she said later. “No, a window,” he said, laughing. “That’s the difference between us. You see a door; I see a window.”

  Anna laughed too. They expanded on the subject: What did a door mean? what a window? focusing on the sign rather than the event; excited by the invitation rather than the party. They knew it was there. Knew it so well they were transfixed for a long moment before they backed away and ran to the car. The eggs and peppers lay in the rear seat; the air conditioner lifted her collar. And they laughed some more as they drove along, trading pleasant insults about who was a pessimist, who an optimist. Who saw a closed door; who saw a raised window. Anything to avoid reliving the shiver or saying out loud what they were wondering. Whether through a door needing to be opened or a beckoning window already raised, what would happen if you entered? What would be on the other side? What on earth would it be? What on earth?