Toni Morrison - Paradise

At the same moment, before morning light, Soane was standing in the kitchen of the biggest house in Ruby, whispering to the darkness outside the window.

"Look out, quail. Deek's gunning for you. And when he comes back he'll throw a sackful of you on my clean floor and say something like: 'This ought to take care of supper.' Proud. Like he's giving me a present. Like you were already plucked, cleaned and cooked." Because the kitchen was flooded with newly installed fluorescent light, Soane could not see into the darkness outside as she waited for the kettle to boil. She wanted to get her tonic properly steeped before her husband returned. One of Connie's preparations lay at her fingertips, a tiny cloth bag folded into a waxed paper packet. Its contents representing the second time Connie had saved her. The first time was a terrible mistake. No, not a mistake, a sin.

She thought it was midnight when Deek eased out of bed and dressed in hunting clothes. But when he crept downstairs in sock feet, she'd looked at the clock glow: 3:30. Two hours more of sleep, she thought, but it was six a.m. when she woke, and she had to hurry. Get breakfast, lay out his business clothes. Before that, however, her tonic-very much needed now, because the air was thinning again. It had started thinning out, as if from too much wear, not when Scout was killed but two weeks later-even before Scout's body had been shipped-when they were informed that Easter was dead too. Babies.

One nineteen, the other twenty-one. How proud and happy she was when they enlisted; she had actively encouraged them to do so. Their father had served in the forties. Uncles too. Jeff Fleetwood was back from Vietnam none the worse. And although he did seem a little shook up, Menus Jury got back alive. Like a fool she believed her sons would be safe. Safer than anywhere in Oklahoma outside Ruby. Safer in the army than in Chicago, where Easter wanted to go. Safer than Birmingham, than Montgomery, Selma, than Watts. Safer than Money, Mississippi, in 1955 and Jackson, Mississippi, in 1963. Safer than Newark, Detroit, Washington, D.C. She had thought war was safer than any city in the United States. Now she had four unopened letters mailed in 1968 and delivered to the Demby post office four days after she buried the last of her sons. She had never been able to open them. Both had been home on furlough that Thanksgiving, 1968. Seven months after King's murder, and Soane had sobbed like the redeemed to see both her boys alive. Her sweet colored boys unshot, unlynched, unmolested, unimprisoned. "Prayer works!" she shouted when they piled out of the car. It was the last time she had seen them whole. Connie had sold her shelled pecans enough for two Thanksgiving pies. A girl with a broke-down car was out there that day, and although Soane drove her to buy the gasoline she needed to go where she was headed, the girl had stayed on. Still, she must have gone off somewhere before the Mother died, otherwise Connie would not have needed to light a fire in the fields. Nobody would have known except for the plume of black smoke. Anna Flood saw it, drove out and got the news. Soane had to hurry then too. Speak to Roger, go to the bank to telephone strangers up north, collect food from neighbor women and cook some things herself. She, Dovey and Anna carried it out there, knowing full well there was no one to eat it but themselves. Hurry, hurry, then too, because the body had to be shipped quickly up north. In ice. Connie seemed strange, broken somehow and Soane added her to the list of people who worried her life. K.D., for example. And Arnette. And Sweetie. And now the Oven site was on her mind. A few young men had taken to congregating there with 3.2 beer, people said, and the small children who liked to play there had been told to go home. Or so their mothers said. Then a few girls (who Soane thought needed slapping) found reason to be there. The way Arnette and Billie Delia used to.

Folks said these young men needed something to do. But Soane, knowing there was so much to do, didn't believe that was it. Something was going on. Something besides the fist, jet black with red fingernails, painted on the back wall of the Oven. Nobody claimed responsibility-but more shocking than collective denial was the refusal to remove it. The loungers said no, they hadn't put it there, and no, they wouldn't take it off. Although Kate Golightly and Anna Flood, with Brillo, paint thinner and a bucket of hot soapy water, eventually got it off, five days passed, during which the town leaders in a hot rage forbade anyone but the loungers to erase it. The clenched fingers, red-tipped and thrust sideways, not up, hurt more than a blow and lasted longer. It produced a nagging, hateful pain that Kate's and Anna's scrubbing could not erase. Soane couldn't understand it. There were no whites (moral or malevolent) around to agitate or incense them, make them ugly-up the Oven and defy the adults. In fact local citizens were prospering, had been on a roll for more than a decade: good dollars for beef, for wheat, gas rights sold, oil fueling purchases and backing speculation. But during the war, while Ruby thrived, anger smallpoxed other places. Evil Times, said Reverend Pulliam from New Zion's pulpit. Last Days, said Pastor Cary at Holy Redeemer. Nothing was said at Calvary right away because that congregation was still waiting for the new preacher, who, when he did come in 1970, said Good News: "I will vanquish thine enemies before thine eyes," saith the Lord, Lord, Lord.

That was three years ago. This was 1973. Her little girl-was it? — would be nineteen years old now if Soane had not gone to the Convent for the help sin always needed. Shortly afterwards standing at the clothesline, struggling with the wind to pin sheets, Soane had looked up to see a lady in the yard smiling. She wore a brown wool gown and a white linen old-timey bonnet and carried a peck basket. When the lady waved, Soane returned the stranger's greeting as best she could with a mouthful of clothespins-a nod she hoped was polite. The lady turned and moved on. Soane noticed two things: the basket was empty but the lady carried it with two hands as though it were full, which, as she knew now, was a sign of what was to come-an emptiness that would weigh her down, an absence too heavy to carry. And she knew who sent the lady to tell her so.

Steam hiss interrupted her menu of regret and Soane poured hot water into a cup over the little muslin bag. She placed a saucer over the cup and let the medicine steep.

Maybe they ought to go back to the way they did things when her babies were new. When everybody was too busy building, stocking, harvesting to quarrel or think up devilment. The way it was before Mount Calvary was completed. When baptisms were held in sweet water. Beautiful baptisms. Baptisms to break the heart, full of major chords and weeping and the thrill of being safe at last. When the pastor held the girls in his arms, lowering them one by one into newly hallowed water, never letting go. Breathless, the others watched. Breathless, the girls rose, each in her turn. Their wet, white robes billow in sunlit water. Hair and face streaming they looked to heaven before bowing their heads for the command: "Go, now." Then the reassurance: "Daughter, thou art saved." The softest note, when it hit sanctified water, doubled, trebled itself; then other notes from other throats came and traveled along with the first. Tree birds hushed and tried to learn. Slowly, then, hand in hand, heads on supporting shoulders, the blessed and saved waded to the banks and made their way to the Oven. To dry, embrace, congratulate one another.

Now Calvary had an inside pool; New Zion and Holy Redeemer had special vessels for dribbling a little water on an upright head. Minus the baptisms the Oven had no real value. What was needed back in Haven's early days had never been needed in Ruby. The trucks they came in brought cookstoves as well. The meat they ate clucked in the yard, or fell on its knees under a hammer, or squealed through a slice in its throat. Unlike at Haven's beginning, when Ruby was founded hunting game was a game. The women nodded when the men took the Oven apart, packed, moved and reassembled it. But privately they resented the truck space given over to it-rather than a few more sacks of seed, rather than shoats or even a child's crib. Resented also the hours spent putting it back together-hours that could have been spent getting the privy door on sooner. If the plaque was so important-and judging from the part of the meeting she had witnessed, she supposed it was-why hadn't they just taken it by itself, left the bricks where they had stood for fifty years?