Toni Morrison - God Help the Child

Don’t know why

There’s no sun up in the sky…

Can’t go on.

Everything I had is gone,

Stormy weather…

“Damn!” Bride slapped the table. “You’re absolutely right! Totally right! This is about me, not him. Me!”

—

“You? Get out!” Booker rose from his narrow bed and pointed at Bride, who was standing in the door of his trailer.

“Fuck you! I’m not leaving here until you—”

“I said get out! Now!” Booker’s eyes were both dead and alive with hatred. His uncast arm pointed toward the door. Bride ran nine quick steps forward and slapped Booker’s face as hard as she could. He hit her back with just enough force to knock her down. Scrambling up, she grabbed a Michelob bottle from a counter and broke it over his head. Booker fell back on his bed, motionless. Tightening her fist on the neck of the broken bottle, Bride stared at the blood seeping into his left ear. A few seconds later he regained consciousness, leaned on his elbow and, with squinty, unfocused eyes, turned to look at her.

“You walked out on me,” she screamed. “Without a word! Nothing! Now I want that word. Whatever it is I want to hear it. Now!”

Booker, wiping blood from the left side of his face with his right hand, snarled, “I don’t have to tell you shit.”

“Oh, yes you do.” She raised the broken bottle.

“You get out of my house before something bad happens.”

“Shut up and answer me!”

“Jesus, woman.”

“Why? I have to know, Booker.”

“First tell me why you bought presents for a child molester — in prison for it, for Christ’s sake. Tell me why you sucked up to a monster.”

“I lied! I lied! I lied! She was innocent. I helped convict her but she didn’t do any of that. I wanted to make amends but she beat the crap out of me and I deserved it.”

The room temperature had not risen, but Bride was sweating, her forehead, upper lip, even her armpits were soaking.

“You lied? What the hell for?”

“So my mother would hold my hand!”

“What?”

“And look at me with proud eyes, for once.”

“So, did she?”

“Yes. She even liked me.”

“So you mean to tell me—”

“Shut up and talk! Why did you walk out on me?”

“Oh, God.” Booker wiped more blood from the side of his face. “Look. Well, see. My brother, he was murdered by a freak, a predator like the one I thought you were forgiving and—”

“I don’t care! I didn’t do it! It wasn’t me who killed your brother.”

“All right! All right! I get that, but—”

“But nothing! I was trying to make up to someone I ruined. You just ran around blaming everybody. You bastard. Here, wipe your bloody hand.” Bride threw a dish towel toward him and put down what was left of the bottle. After wiping her palms on her jeans and brushing hair from her damp forehead, she looked steadily at Booker. “You don’t have to love me but you damn well have to respect me.” She sat down in a chair by the table and crossed her legs.

In a long silence cut only by the sound of their breathing, they stared not at each other but away — at the floor, their hands, through the window. Minutes passed.

At last Booker felt he had something definitive and vital to say, to explain, but when he opened his mouth his tongue froze — the words were not there. No matter. Bride was asleep in the chair, her chin pointing toward her chest, her long legs splayed.

—

Queen didn’t knock; she simply opened the door to Booker’s trailer and stepped in. When she saw Bride sprawled asleep in a chair and the bruise over Booker’s eye she said, “Good Lord. What happened?”

“Dustup,” said Booker.

“Is she okay?”

“Yeah. Knocked herself out and fell asleep.”

“Some ‘dustup.’ She came all this way to beat you up? For what? Love or misery?”

“Both, probably.”

“Well, let’s get her out of that chair and on the bed,” said Queen.

“Right.” Booker stood up. With Queen’s help and his one working arm they got her on his narrow, unmade bed. Bride moaned, but did not wake.

Queen sat down at the table. “What you gonna do about her?”

“I don’t know,” answered Booker. “It was perfect for a while, the two of us.”

“What caused the split?”

“Lies. Silence. Just not saying what was true or why.”

“About?”

“About us as kids, things that happened, why we did things, thought things, took actions that were really about what went on when we were just children.”

“Adam for you?”

“Adam for me.”

“And for her?”

“A big lie she told when she was a kid that helped put an innocent woman in prison. A long sentence for child rape the woman never did. I walked out after we quarreled about Bride’s strange affection for the woman. At least it seemed strange at the time. I didn’t want to be anywhere near her after that.”

“What’d she lie for?”

“To get some love — from her mama.”

“Lord! What a mess. And you thought about Adam — again. Always Adam.”

“Yep.”

Queen crossed her wrists and leaned on the table. “How long is he going to run you?”

“I can’t help it, Queen.”

“No? She told her truth. What’s yours?”

Booker didn’t answer. The two of them sat in silence with Bride’s light snoring the only sound until Queen said, “You need a noble reason to fail, don’t you? Or some really deep reason to feel superior.”

“Aw, no, Queen. I’m not like that! Not at all.”

“Well what? You lash Adam to your shoulders so he can work day and night to fill your brain. Don’t you think he’s tired? He must be worn out having to die and get no rest because he has to run somebody else’s life.”

“Adam’s not managing me.”

“No. You managing him. Did you ever feel free of him? Ever?”

“Well.” Booker flashed back to standing in the rain, how his music changed right after he saw Bride stepping into a limousine, how the gloom he had been living in dissipated. He thought about his arms around her waist while they danced and her smile when she turned around. “Well,” he repeated, “for a while it was good, really good being with her.” He couldn’t hide the pleasure in his eyes.

“I guess good isn’t good enough for you, so you called Adam back and made his murder turn your brain into a cadaver and your heart’s blood formaldehyde.”

Booker and Queen stared at each other for a long time until she stood up and, not taking the trouble to hide her disappointment, said, “Fool,” and left him slouched in his chair.

—

Taking her time Queen walked slowly back to her house. Amusement and sadness competed for her attention. She was amused because she hadn’t seen lovers fight in decades — not since she lived in the projects in Cleveland where young couples acted out their violent emotions as theatrical performances, aware of a visible or invisible audience. She had experienced it all with multiple husbands, all of whom were now blended into no one. Except her first, John Loveday, whom she’d divorced — or had she? Hard to remember since she hadn’t divorced the next one either. Queen smiled at the selective memory old age blessed her with. But sadness cut through the smile. The anger, the violence on display between Bride and Booker, were unmistakable and typical of the young. Yet, after they hauled the sleeping girl to the bed and laid her down, Queen saw Booker smooth the havoc of Bride’s hair away from her forehead. Glancing quickly at his face she was struck by the tenderness in his eyes.

They will blow it, she thought. Each will cling to a sad little story of hurt and sorrow — some long-ago trouble and pain life dumped on their pure and innocent selves. And each one will rewrite that story forever, knowing the plot, guessing the theme, inventing its meaning and dismissing its origin. What waste. She knew from personal experience how hard loving was, how selfish and how easily sundered. Withholding sex or relying on it, ignoring children or devouring them, rerouting true feelings or locking them out. Youth being the excuse for that fortune-cookie love — until it wasn’t, until it became pure adult stupidity.