Toni Morrison: Paradise

The women who had known and tended his mother spoiled Ruby's boy. The men who enlisted with his father favored Ruby's husband's boy. The uncles took him for granted. When the decision was taken at the Oven, he was there. But two hours ago, when they'd swallowed the last piece of red meat, an uncle simply tapped him on the shoulder and said, "We got coffee in the truck. Go get your rifle." Which he did, but he took the palm cross too.

It was four in the morning when they left; going on five when they arrived because, not wanting engine hum or headlights to ruin their cover of darkness, they walked the final miles. They parked the trucks in a copse of shin oak, for light could signal uninterrupted for mile upon mile in this country. When casing heads for fifty miles were invisible, a lit birthday cake could be spotted as soon as the match was struck. Half a mile from their destination fog surrounded them to their hips. They reached the Convent just seconds before the sun did and had a moment to see and register for all time how the mansion floated, dark and malevolently disconnected from God's earth. In the schoolroom, which used to be a dining room and now has no function except storage of desks pushed to the wall, the view is clear. The men of Ruby bunch at its windows. Finding nothing but confirming evidence elsewhere in the Convent, they gather here. The New Fathers of Ruby, Oklahoma. The chill they first encountered is gone; so is the mist. They are animated-warm with perspiration and the nocturnal odor of righteousness. The view is clear. Track. That's all the nephew can think of. Four-hundred-yard dashers or even the three-mile runners. The heads of two of them are thrown back as far as their necks will allow; fists tight as their arms pump and stretch for distance. One has her nappy head down, butting air and time wide open, one hand reaching for a winner's wire nowhere in her future. Their mouths are open, pulling in breath, giving up none. The legs of all are off the ground, split wide above the clover.

Bodacious black Eves unredeemed by Mary, they are like panicked does leaping toward a sun that has finished burning off the mist and now pours its holy oil over the hides of game. God at their side, the men take aim. For Ruby.

The neighbors seemed pleased when the babies smothered. Probably because the mint green Cadillac in which they died had annoyed them for some time. They did all the right things, of course: brought food, telephoned their sorrow, got up a collection; but the shine of excitement in their eyes was clear.

When the journalist came, Mavis sat in the corner of the sofa, not sure whether to scrape the potato chip crumbs from the seams of the plastic cover or tuck them further in. But the journalist wanted the photo taken first, so the photographer ordered Mavis to the middle of the sofa, with the surviving children on either side of their distraught and grieving mother. She asked for the father too, of course. Jim? Is it Jim Albright? But Mavis said he wasn't feeling so good, couldn't come out, they'd have to go ahead without him. The journalist and the photographer exchanged looks, and Mavis thought they probably knew anyway that Frank-not Jim-was sitting on the edge of the bathtub drinking Seagram's without a glass.

Mavis moved to the center of the sofa and cleaned her fingernails of potato chip dust until the other children joined her. The "other children" is what they would always be now. Sal put her arm around her mother's waist. Frankie and Billy James were squished together on her right. Sal pinched her, hard. Mavis knew instantly that her daughter wasn't nervous before the camera and all, because the pinch grew long, pointed. Sal's fingernails were diving for blood. "This must be terrible for you." Her name, she said, was June.

"Yes, m'am. It's terrible for all of us."

"Is there something you want to say? Something you want other mothers to know?"

"M'am?"

June crossed her knees and Mavis saw that this was the first time she had worn the white high-heeled shoes. The soles were barely smudged. "You know. Something to warn them, caution them, about negligence."

"Well." Mavis took a deep breath. "I can't think of any. I guess. I." The photographer squatted, cocking his head as he examined the possibilities.

"So some good can come out of this awful tragedy?" June's smile was sad.

Mavis straightened against the success of Sal's fingernails. The camera clicked. June moved her felt-tipped pen into place. It was a fine thing. Mavis had never seen anything like it-made ink on the paper but dry, not all blotty. "I don't have nothing to say to strangers right now."

For the second time the photographer adjusted the front window shade and walked back to the sofa holding a black box to Mavis' face. "I understand," said June. Her eyes went soft, but the shine was like that of the neighbors. "And I do hate to put you through this, but maybe you could just tell me what happened? Our readers are simply appalled. Twins and all. Oh, and they want you to know you are in their prayers every single day." She let her glance sweep the boys and Sal. "And you all too. They are praying for each and every one of you." Frankie and Billy James looked down at their bare feet. Sal rested her head on her mother's shoulder while she clenched the flesh at Mavis' waist.

"So could you tell us?" June smiled a smile that meant "Do me this favor."

"Well." Mavis frowned. She wanted to get it right this time. "He didn't want the Spam. I mean the kids like it but he don't so. In this heat you can't keep much meat. I had a whole chuck steak go green on me once so I went and took the car, just some weenies, and I thought, well, Merle and Pearl. I was against it at first but he said-"

"M-e-r-l-e?"

"Yes, m'am."

"Go on."

"They wasn't crying or nothing but he said his head hurt. I understood. I did. You can't expect a man to come home from that kind of work and have to watch over babies while I go get something decent to put in front of him. I know that ain't right."

"So you took the twins. Why didn't you take the other children along?"

"It's a weasel out back," said Frankie.

"Groundhog," said Billy James.

"Shut!" Sal leaned over Mavis' stomach and pointed at her brothers.

June smiled. "Wouldn't it have been safer," she continued, "with the other children in the car? I mean, they're older." Mavis slid her thumb under her bra strap, pulling it back over her shoulder. "I wasn't expecting no danger. Higgledy Piggledy is just yonder. I could of went to the Convenience but their stuff sits too long for me."

"So you left the newborns in the car and went in to buy some chuck steak-"

"No, m'am. Weenies."

"Right. Wieners." June was writing quickly but didn't seem to be crossing out anything. "But what I want to ask is, why did it take so long? To buy one item."

"It didn't. Take long. I couldn't of been in there more than five minutes, tops."

"Your babies suffocated, Mrs. Albright. In a hot car with the windows closed. No air. It's hard to see that happening in five minutes." It could be sweat, but it hurt enough to be blood. She didn't dare swat Sal's hand away or acknowledge the pain even slightly. Instead she scratched the corner of her mouth and said, "I've punished myself over that, but that's pretty near the most it could of been. I walked in there straight to the dairy section and picked up two packs of Armours which is high you know but I didn't even look for the price. Some of them is cheaper but just as good. But I was hurrying so I didn't look."

"You were hurrying?"

"Oh, yes, m'am. He was fit to be tied. Spam ain't nothing for a working man to eat."

"And wieners are?"

"I thought about chops. I thought about chops."

"Didn't you know your husband was coming home for supper, Mrs. Albright? Doesn't he come home for supper every day?" She's a really nice person, Mavis thought. Polite. She didn't look around the room or at the boys' feet, or jump at the crashing noise from the rear of the house, followed by a toilet flush. The sound of the photographer snapping his cases was loud when the toilet stopped. "Got it," he said. "Real nice meeting you, m'am." He leaned in to shake Mavis' hand. His hair was the same color as the reporter's.