Toni Morrison - Paradise

Not much point to garden peas. May as well use canned. Not a taste bud in Steward's mouth could tell the difference. Blue Boy packed in his cheek for twenty years first narrowed his taste to a craving for spices, then reduced it altogether to a single demand for hot pepper.

When they got married, Dovey was sure she could never cook well enough to suit the twin known to be pickier than his brother, Deek. Back from the war, both men were hungry for down-home food, but dreaming of it for three years had raised their expectations, exaggerated the possibilities of lard making biscuits lighter than snow, the responsibility sharp cheese took on in hominy. When they were discharged and back home, Deek hummed with pleasure as he sucked sweet marrow from hocks or crunched chicken bones to powder. But Steward remembered everything differently. Shouldn't the clove be down in the tissue, not just sitting on top of the ham? And the chickenfried steak-Vidalia onions or Spanish?

On her wedding day, Dovey had stood facing the flowered wallpaper, her back to the window so her sister, Soane, could see better. Dovey held up the hem of her slip while Soane drew the seams. The little brush tickled the backs of her legs, but she stood perfectly still.

There were no silk stockings in Haven or the world in 1949, but to get married obviously bare-legged mocked God and the ceremony. "I don't expect he'll be satisfied at table," Dovey told her sister.

"Why not?"

"I don't know. He compliments my cooking, then suggests how to improve it next time."

"Hold still, Dovey."

"Deek doesn't do that to you, does he?"

"Not that. He's picky other ways. But I wouldn't worry about it if I was you. If he's satisfied in bed, the table won't mean a thing." They laughed then, and Soane had to do a whole seam over. Now the difficulty that loomed in 1949 had been solved by tobacco. It didn't matter whether her peas were garden fresh or canned. Convent peppers, hot as hellfire, did all the cooking for her. The trouble it took to cultivate peas was wasted. A teaspoon of sugar and a plop of butter in canned ones would do nicely, since the bits of purple-black pepper he would sprinkle over them bombed away any quiet flavor. Take late squash, for example.

Almost always, these nights, when Dovey Morgan thought about her husband it was in terms of what he had lost. His sense of taste one example of the many she counted. Contrary to his (and all of Ruby's) assessment, the more Steward acquired, the more visible his losses. The sale of his herd at 1958's top dollar accompanied his defeat in the statewide election for church Secretary because of his outspoken contempt for the schoolchildren sitting in in that drugstore in Oklahoma City. He had even written a hateful letter to the women who organized the students. His position had not surprised her, since ten years earlier he'd called Thurgood Marshall a "stir-up Negro" for handling the NAACP's segregation suit in Norman. In 1962 the natural gas drilled to ten thousand feet on the ranch filled his pockets but shrunk their land to a toy ranch, and he lost the trees that had made it so beautiful to behold. His hairline and his taste buds faltered over time. Small losses that culminated with the big one: in 1964, when he was forty, Fairy's curse came true: they learned neither could ever have children.

Now, almost ten years later, he had "cleaned up," as he put it, in a real estate deal in Muskogee, and Dovey didn't have to wonder what else he would lose now because he was already in a losing battle with Reverend Misner over words attached to the lip of the Oven. An argument fueled in part, Dovey thought, by what nobody talked about: young people in trouble or acting up behind every door. Arnette, home from college, wouldn't leave her bed. Harper Jury's boy, Menus, drunk every weekend since he got back from Vietnam. Roger's granddaughter, Billie Delia, disappeared into thin air. Jeff's wife, Sweetie, laughing, laughing at jokes no one made. K. D.'s mess with that girl living out at the Convent. Not to speak of the sass, the pout, the outright defiance of some of the others-the ones who wanted to name the Oven "such-and-such place" and who had decided that the original words on it were something that enraged Steward and Deek. Dovey had talked to her sister (and sister-in-law) about it; to Mable Fleetwood; to Anna Flood; to a couple of women in the Club. Opinions were varied, confusing, even incoherent, because feelings ran so high over the matter. Also because some young people, by snickering at Miss Esther's finger memory, had insulted entire generations preceding them. They had not suggested, politely, that Miss Esther may have been mistaken; they howled at the notion of remembering invisible words you couldn't even read by tracing letters you couldn't pronounce.

"Did she see them?" asked the sons.

"Better than that!" shouted the fathers. "She felt them, touched them, put her finger on them!"

"If she was blind, sir, we could believe her. That'd be like braille. But some five-year-old kid who couldn't read her own tombstone if she climbed out of her grave and stood in front of it?" The twins frowned. Fleet, thinking of his mother-in-law's famous generosity, leapt out of the pew and had to be held back.

The Methodists, early on, had smiled at the dissension among the Baptists. The Pentecostals laughed out loud. But not for long. Young members in their own churches began to voice opinions about the words. Each congregation had people who were among or related to the fifteen families to leave Haven and start over. The Oven didn't belong to any one denomination; it belonged to all, and all were asked to show up at Calvary. To discuss it, Reverend Misner said. The weather was cool, garden scents strong, and when they assembled at seven-thirty the atmosphere was pleasant, people simply curious. And it remained so right through Misner's opening remarks. Maybe the young folks were nervous, but when they spoke, starting with Luther Beauchamp's sons, Royal and Destry, their voices were so strident the women, embarrassed, looked down at their pocketbooks; shocked, the men forgot to blink.

It would have been better for everyone if the young people had spoken softly, acknowledged their upbringing as they presented their views. But they didn't want to discuss; they wanted to instruct. "No ex-slave would tell us to be scared all the time. To 'beware' God. To always be ducking and diving, trying to look out every minute in case He's getting ready to throw something at us, keep us down."

"You say 'sir' when you speak to men," said Sargeant Person. "Sorry, sir. But what kind of message is that? No ex-slave who had the guts to make his own way, build a town out of nothing, could think like that. No ex-slave-" Deacon Morgan cut him off. "That's my grandfather you're talking about. Quit calling him an ex-slave like that's all he was. He was also an ex-lieutenant governor, an ex-banker, an ex-deacon and a whole lot of other exes, and he wasn't making his own way; he was part of a whole group making their own way."

Having caught Reverend Misner's eyes, the boy was firm. "He was born in slavery times, sir; he was a slave, wasn't he?"

"Everybody born in slavery time wasn't a slave. Not the way you mean it."

"There's just one way to mean it, sir," said Destry.

"You don't know what you're talking about!"

"None of them do! Don't know jackshit!" shouted Harper Jury.

"Whoa, whoa!" Reverend Misner interrupted. "Brothers. Sisters. We called this meeting in God's own house to try and find-"

"One of His houses," snarled Sargeant.

"All right, one of His houses. But whichever one, He demands respect from those who are in it. Am I right or am I right?" Harper sat down. "I apologize for the language. To Him," he said, pointing upward.

"That might please Him," said Misner. "Might not. Don't limit your respect to Him, Brother Jury. He cautions every which way against it."