Toni Morrison - God Help the Child

Then came a day that changed him and his music.

—

Simply dumbstruck by her beauty Booker stared open-mouthed at a young blue-black woman standing at the curb laughing. Her clothes were white, her hair like a million black butterflies asleep on her head. She was talking to another woman — chalk white with blond dreadlocks. A limousine negotiated the curb and both waited for the driver to open the door for them. Although it made him sad to see the limo pull away, Booker smiled and smiled as he walked on to the train entrance, where he played with the two guitarists. Neither one was there, not Michael or Chase, and it was only then that he noticed the rain — soft, steady. The sun still blazed so the raindrops falling from a baby-blue sky were like crystal breaking into specks of light on the pavement. He decided to play his trumpet alone in the rain anyway, knowing that no pedestrians would stop to listen; rather, they closed umbrellas as they rushed down the stairs to the trains. Still in thrall to the sheer beauty of the girl he had seen, he put the trumpet to his lips. What emerged was music he had never played before. Low, muted notes held long, too long, as the strains floated through drops of rain.

Booker had no words to describe his feelings. What he did know was that the rain-soaked air smelled like lilac when he played while remembering her. Streets with litter at their curbs appeared interesting, not filthy; bodegas, beauty shops, diners, thrift stores leaning against one another looked homey, downright friendly. Each time he imagined her eyes glittering toward him or her lips open in an inviting, reckless smile, he felt not just a swell of desire but also the disintegration of the haunt and gloom in which for years Adam’s death had clouded him. When he stepped through that cloud and became as emotionally content as he had been before Adam skated into the sunset — there she was. A midnight Galatea always and already alive.

A few weeks after that first sighting of her waiting for a limousine, there she was again, standing in line at the stadium where the Black Gauchos were performing — a hot band, new, upcoming, playing a blend of Brazilian and New Orleans jazz, one show only. The line was long, loud and jittery but when the doors opened to the crush he managed first to slip four bodies behind her and then, when the crowd found bench seats, he was able to stand right at her back.

In music-powered air, with body rules broken and sexual benevolence thick as cream, circling her waist with his arms seemed more than a natural gesture; it was an inevitable one. And together they danced and danced. When the music stopped, his Galatea turned to face him and surrender to him the reckless smile he’d always imagined.

“Bride,” she said when he asked her name.

God damn, he whispered.

—

Their lovemaking from the very beginning was serene, artful and long-lasting, so necessary to Booker that he deliberately withheld for nights in a row to make the return to her bed brand-new. Their relationship was flawless. He especially liked her lack of interest in his personal life. Unlike with Felicity there was no probing. Bride was knock-down beautiful, easy, had something to do every day and didn’t need his presence every minute. Her self-love was consistent with her cosmetic company milieu and mirrored his obsession with her. So if she rattled on about coworkers, products and markets, he watched her mesmerizing eyes that were so deeply expressive they said much more than mere language could. Speaking-eyes, he thought, accompanied by the music of her voice. Every feature — the ledge of her cheekbones, her invitational mouth, her nose, forehead, chin as well as those eyes — was more exquisite, more aesthetically pleasing because of her obsidian-midnight skin. Whether he was lying under her body, hovering above it or holding her in his arms, her blackness thrilled him. Then he was certain that he not only held the night, he owned it, and if the night he held in his arms was not enough, he could always see starlight in her eyes. Her innocent, oblivious sense of humor delighted him. When she, who wore no makeup and worked in a business all about cosmetics, asked him to help her choose the most winning shade of lip gloss, he laughed out loud. Her insistence on white-only clothes amused him. Unwilling to share her with the public he was seldom in the mood for clubbing. Yet dancing with her in down-lit uncool clubrooms to tapes of Michael Jackson’s soprano or James Brown’s shouts was irresistible. Pressing close to her in crowded rap bars bewitched them both. He refused her nothing except accompanying her on shopping sprees.

Once in a while she dropped the hip, thrillingly successful corporate woman façade of complete control and confessed some flaw or painful memory of childhood. And he, knowing all about how childhood cuts festered and never scabbed over, comforted her while hiding the rage he felt at the idea of anyone hurting her.

Bride’s complicated relationship with her mother and repellent father meant that, like him, she was free of family ties. It was just the two of them, and with the exception of her obnoxious pseudo-friend Brooklyn there were fewer and fewer interruptions from her colleagues. He still played with Chase and Michael on weekends, some afternoons, but there were glorious mornings of sun at the shore, cool evenings holding hands in the park in anticipation of the sexual choreography they would perform in every nook of her apartment. Sober as priests, creative as devils, they invented sex. So they believed.

When Bride was at her office, Booker relished the solitude for trumpet practice, scribbling notes to mail to his favorite aunt, Queen, and since there were no books in Bride’s apartment — just fashion and gossip magazines — he visited the library often to read or reread books he had ignored or misunderstood while at university. The Name of the Rose , for one, and Remembering Slavery , a collection that so moved him he composed some mediocre, sentimental music to commemorate the narratives. He read Twain, enjoying the cruelty of his humor. He read Walter Benjamin, impressed by the beauty of the translation, he read Frederick Douglass’s autobiography again, relishing for the first time the eloquence that both hid and displayed his hatred. He read Herman Melville, and let Pip break his heart, reminding him of Adam alone, abandoned, swallowed by waves of casual evil.

Six months into the bliss of edible sex, free-style music, challenging books and the company of an easy undemanding Bride, the fairy-tale castle collapsed into the mud and sand on which its vanity was built. And Booker ran away.

Nothing. A call to our CO asking for more extended leave. Rehab. Emotional rehab — whatever. But nothing about where she’s headed or why until today. A note scribbled on a piece of yellow lined tablet paper. Christ. I didn’t have to read it to know what it said. “Sorry I ran away. I had to. Except for you everything was falling apart blah, blah, blah…”

Beautiful dumb bitch. Nothing about where she’s going or how long she’d be gone. One thing I know for sure she’s tracking that guy. I can read her mind like a headline crawling across the bottom of a TV screen. It’s a gift I’ve had since I was a little kid. Like when the landlady stole the money lying on our dining room table and said we were behind in the rent. Or when my uncle started thinking of putting his fingers between my legs again, even before he knew himself what he was planning to do. I hid or ran or screamed with a fake stomachache so my mother would wake from her drunken nap to tend to me. Believe it. I’ve always sensed what people want and how to please them. Or not. Only once did I misread — with Bride’s loverman.