Toni Morrison - Paradise

"I didn't know he belonged to you."

"I know you didn't."

"And it was something I couldn't help doing. I mean it was out of my hands, so to speak."

"I know that too."

"What does he think?"

"He thinks he saved himself."

"Maybe he's right."

"Maybe he is."

"What do you think?"

"That he was lucky to have us both."

Consolata shook crumbs from the basket and folded the napkin neatly inside. They traded that basket back and forth for years. Other than with Mary Magna, "stepping in" was of no use. There was no call for it. The light Consolata could not bear to approach her own eyes, she endured for the Reverend Mother when she became ill. At first she tried it out of the weakness of devotion turned to panic-nothing seemed to relieve the sick woman-then, angered by helplessness, she assumed an attitude of command. Stepping in to find the pinpoint of light. Manipulating it, widening it, strengthening it. Reviving, even raising, her from time to time. And so intense were the steppings in, Mary Magna glowed like a lamp till her very last breath in Consolata's arms. So she had practiced, and although it was for the benefit of the woman she loved, she knew it was anathema, that Mary Magna would have recoiled in disgust and fury knowing her life was prolonged by evil. That the bliss of that final entrance was being deliberately delayed by one who ought to know better. So Consolata never told her. Yet, however repugnant, the gift did not evaporate. Troubling as it was, yoking the sin of pride to witchcraft, she came to terms with it in a way she persuaded herself would not offend Him or place her soul in peril. It was a question of language. Lone called it "stepping in." Consolata said it was "seeing in." Thus the gift was "in sight." Something God made free to anyone who wanted to develop it. It was devious but it settled the argument between herself and Lone and made it possible for her to accept Lone's remedies for all sorts of ills and to experiment with others while the "in sight" blazed away. The dimmer the visible world, the more dazzling her "in sight" became.

When Mary Magna died, Consolata, fifty-four years old, was orphaned in a way she was not as a street baby and was never as a servant. There was reason the Church cautioned against excessive human love and when Mary Magna left her, Consolata accepted the sympathy of her two friends, the help and murmurs of support from Mavis, the efforts to cheer her from Grace, but her rope to the world had slid from her fingers. She had no identification, no insurance, no family, no work. Facing extinction, waiting to be evicted, wary of God, she felt like a curl of paper-nothing written on it-lying in the corner of an empty closet. They had promised to take care of her always but did not tell her that always was not all ways nor forever. Prisoner wine helped until it didn't and she found herself, full of a drinker's malice, wishing she had the strength to beat the life out of the women freeloading in the house. "God don't make mistakes," Lone had shouted at her. Perhaps not, but He was sometimes overgenerous. Like giving satanic gifts to a drunken, ignorant, penniless woman living in darkness unable to rise from a cot to do something useful or die on it and rid the world of her stench. Gray-haired, her eyes drained of what eyes were made for, she imagined how she must appear. Her colorless eyes saw nothing clearly except what took place in the minds of others. Exactly the opposite of that blind season when she rutted in dirt with the living man and thought she was seeing for the first time because she was looking so hard. But she had been spoken to, half cursed, half blessed. He had burned the green away and replaced it with pure sight that damned her if she used it.

Footsteps, then a knock, interrupted her sad, dead-end thoughts.

The girl opened the door.

"Connie?"

"Who else?"

"It's me, Pallas. I called my father again. So. You know. He's meeting me in Tulsa. I came to say goodbye."

"I see."

"It's been great. I needed to. Well, it's been forever since I last saw him."

"That long?"

"Can you believe it?"

"Hard to. You've fattened up."

"Yeah. I know."

"What will you do about it?"

"Same as always. Diet."

"I don't mean that. I mean the baby. You're pregnant."

"I am not."

"No?"

"No!"

"Why not?"

"I'm only sixteen!"

"Oh," said Consolata, looking at the moon head floating above a spine, the four little appendages-paws or hands or hooves or feet. Hard to tell at that stage. Pallas could be carrying a lamb, a baby, a jaguar. "Pity," she said as Pallas fled from the room. And "pity" again as she imagined the child's probable life with its silly young mother. She remembered another girl, about the same age, who had come a few years ago-at a very bad time. For seventeen days Consolata had been inside, alone, keeping Mary Magna's breath coming and going, the cool blue light flickering until Mary Magna asked permission to go, bereft though she was of the last sacrament. The second girl, Grace, had arrived in time to hold off the fearful loneliness that dropped the moment the body was removed, letting Consolata sleep. Mavis had just returned with Lourdes water and illegal painkillers. Consolata welcomed the company which distracted her from selfpitying thoughts of eviction, starvation and an uncontrite death. Minus papers or patron she was as vulnerable as she had been at nine when she clung to Mary Magna's hand at the railing of the Atenas. Whatever help Lone DuPres or Soane might offer could not include shelter. Not in that town.

Then the girl from Ruby came. A cup of tears just behind her eyes. And something else. She was not anxious, as might have been expected, but revolted by the work of her womb. A revulsion so severe it cut mind from body and saw its flesh-producing flesh as foreign, rebellious, unnatural, diseased. Consolata could not fathom what brought on that repugnance, but there it was. And here it was again in the No! shout of another one: a terror without alloy. With the first one Consolata did what she knew Mary Magna would have done: quieted the girl and advised her to wait her time. Told her that she was welcome to deliver there if she wanted to. Mavis was jubilant, Grace amused. They took the field rent and drove off to shop for the expected newborn, returning with booties and diapers and dolls enough for a kindergarten. The girl, sharp in her refusal to have the midwife attend her, waited quietly sullen for a week or so. Or so Consolata thought.

What she did not know until labor began was that the young mother had been hitting her stomach relentlessly. Had Consolata's eyesight been better and had the girl's skin not been black as an ocean lover's night, she would have seen the bruises at once. As it was, she saw swellings and wide areas where the skin showed purple underneath, rather than silver. But the real damage was the mop handle inserted with a rapist's skill-mercilessly, repeatedly-between her legs. With the gusto and intention of a rabid male, she had tried to bash the life out of her life. And, in a way, was triumphantly successful. The five- or six-month baby revolted. Feisty, outraged, rigid with fright, it tried to escape the battering and battered ship that carried it. The blows to its delicate skull, the trouncing its hind parts took. The shudders in its spine. Otherwise there was no hope. Had it not tried to rescue itself, it would break into pieces or drown in its mother's food. So he was born, in a manner of speaking, too soon and fatigued by the flight. But breathing. Sort of. Mavis took over. Grace went to bed. Together Consolata and Mavis cleaned his eyes, stuck their fingers in his throat, clearing it for air, and tried to feed him. It worked for a few days, then he surrendered himself to the company of Merle and Pearl. By that time the mother was gone, having never touched, glanced at, inquired after or named him. Grace called him Che and Consolata did not know to this day where he was buried. Only that she had murmured Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: miserere nobis over the three pounds of gallant but defeated life before Mavis, smiling and cooing, carried it away.