Toni Morrison - Paradise

The candle had burned down to an inch but its flame was high. Pallas wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. The rocking chair rocked. Connie's breathing was so deep Pallas thought she was sleeping. She could see Seneca, hand on chin, elbow on knee, looking up at her, but candle flame, like moonlight in Mehita, distorted faces. Connie stirred.

"I asked who hurt you. You telling me who helped you. Want to keep that other part secret for a little longer?"

Pallas said nothing.

"How old are you?"

Eighteen, she started to answer, but then chose the truth. "Sixteen," she said. "I would have been a senior next year." She would have cried again for her lost junior year, but Connie nudged her roughly. "Get up. You breaking my lap." Then, in a softer voice, "Go on and get some sleep now. Stay as long as you like and tell me the rest when you want to."

Pallas stood and wobbled a bit from the rocking and the wine.

"Thanks. But. I better call my father. I guess."

"We'll take you," said Seneca. "I know where there's a telephone.

But you have to stop crying, hear?"

They left then, stepping carefully through the darkness, eyes trained on the low light the candle flame shed. Pallas, bred in the overlight of Los Angeles, in houses without basements, associated them with movie evil or trash or crawly things. She gripped Seneca's hand and breathed through her mouth. But the gestures were expressions of anticipated, not genuine, alarm. In fact, as they climbed the stairs, images of a grandmother rocking peacefully, of arms, a lap, a singing voice soothed her. The whole house felt permeated with a blessed malelessness, like a protected domain, free of hunters but exciting too. As though she might meet herself here-an unbridled, authentic self, but which she thought of as a "cool" self-in one of this house's many rooms.

A platter of tortilla-looking things sat on the table. Gigi, spruced up and quiet, with only a lopsided lip to mar her makeup, was fooling with her wide-band radio, trying to find the one station that played what she wanted to hear-not the agricultural news; country music or Bible stuff. Mavis, muttering cooking instructions to herself, was at the stove.

"Connie okay?" Mavis asked when she saw them enter.

"Sure. She was good for Pallas. Right, Pallas?"

"Yes. She's nice. I feel better now."

"Wow. It talks," said Gigi.

Pallas smiled.

"But is it going to puke some more? That's the question."

"Gigi. Shut the hell up." Mavis looked eagerly at Pallas. "You like crepes?"

"Um. Starved," Pallas answered.

"There's plenty. I put Connie's aside, and I can make even more if you want."

"It needs some clothes." Gigi was scanning Pallas closely. "Nothing I got will fit."

"Stop calling her 'it.' "

"All it's got worth having is a hat. Where'd you put it?"

"I've got jeans she can have," said Seneca.

Gigi snorted. "Make sure you wash them first."

"Sure."

"Sure? Why you say 'sure'? I haven't seen you wash one thing since you came here, including yourself."

"Cut it out, Gigi!" Mavis spoke from behind closed teeth.

"Well, I haven't!" Gigi leaned over the table toward Seneca. "We don't have much, but soap we do have."

"I said I'd wash them, didn't I?" Seneca wiped perspiration from under her chin.

"Why don't you roll up your sleeves? You look like a junkie," said Gigi.

"Look who's talking." Mavis chuckled.

"I'm talking junk, girl. Not a little boo."

Seneca looked at Gigi. "I don't put chemicals in my body."

"But you used to, didn't you?"

"No, I didn't used to."

"Let me see your arms, then."

"Get off!"

"Gigi!" Mavis shouted. Seneca looked hurt.

"Okay, okay," said Gigi.

"Why are you like that?" asked Seneca.

"I'm sorry. Okay?" It was a rare admission, but apparently sincere.

"I never took drugs. Never!"

"Said I was sorry. Christ, Seneca."

"She's a needler, Sen. Always sticking it in." Mavis cleaned her plate. "Don't let her get under your skin. That's where the blood is."

"Shut the fuck up!"

Mavis laughed. "There she goes again. So much for 'sorry.' "

"I apologized to Seneca, not you."

"Let's just drop it." Seneca sighed. "Is it okay to open the bottle, Mavis?"

"Not just okay; it's an order. We got to celebrate Pallas, don't we?"

"And her voice." Seneca smiled.

"And her appetite. Look at her."

Carlos had killed Pallas' appetite. While he loved her (or seemed to), food, other than that first chili dog, was a nuisance to her, an excuse to drink Cokes or a reason to go out. The pounds she had struggled with since elementary school melted away. Carlos had never commented on her weight, but the fact that from the first, when she was a butterball, he liked her anyway-chose her, made love to her- sealed her confidence in him. His betrayal when she was at her thinnest sharpened her shame. The nightmare event that forced her to hide in a lake had displaced for a while the betrayal, the hurt, that had driven her from her mother's house. She had not been able even to whisper it in the darkness of a candlelit room. Her voice had returned, but the words to say her shame clung like polyps in her throat. The melted cheese covering the crepe-tortilla thing was tangy; the pieces of chicken had real flavor, like meat; the pale, almost white butter dripping from early corn was nothing like what she was accustomed to; it had a creamy, sweetish taste. There was a warm sugary sauce poured over the bread pudding. And glass after glass of wine. The fear, the bickering, the nausea, the awful dirt fight, the tears in the dark-all of the day's unruly drama dissipated in the pleasure of chewing food. When Mavis returned from taking Connie her supper, Gigi had found her station and was dancing the radio over to the open back door for better reception. She danced back to the table then and poured herself more wine. Eyes closed, hips grinding, she circled her arms to enclose the neck of a magic dancer. The other women watched her as they finished the meal. When last year's top tune, "Killing Me Softly," came on, it was not long before they all followed suit. Even Mavis. First apart, imagining partners. Then partnered, imagining each other.

Wine-soothed, they slept deep as death that night. Gigi and Seneca in one bedroom. Mavis alone in another. So it was Pallas, asleep on the sofa in the office/game room who heard the knocking. The girl was wearing white silk shoes and a cotton sundress. She carried a piece of wedding cake on a brand-new china plate. And her smile was regal.

"I'm married now," she said. "Where is he? Or was it a she?" Later that night, Mavis said, "We should have given her one of those dolls. Something."

"She's crazy," said Gigi. "I know everything about her. K. D. told me everything about her, and she's the whole nuthouse. Boy, is his ass in trouble."

"Why'd she come here on her wedding night?" asked Pallas.

"Long story." Mavis dabbed alcohol on her arm, comparing the bloody scratches to the ones Gigi had put there earlier. "Came here years back. Connie delivered her baby for her. She didn't want it, though."

"So where is it?"

"With Merle and Pearl, I think."

"Who?"

Gigi cut her eyes at Mavis. "It died."

"Doesn't she know that?" asked Seneca. "She said you all killed it."

"I told you she's the whole house of nuts."

"She left right after," Mavis said. "I don't know what she knows.

She wouldn't even look at it."

They paused then, seeing it: the turned-away face, hands covering ears so as not to hear that fresh but mournful cry. There would be no nipple, then. Nothing to put in the little mouth. No mother shoulder to snuggle against. None of them wanted to remember or know what had taken place afterward.