Toni Morrison - Paradise

Just as well, thought Consolata. Life with that mother would have been hell for Che. Now here was another one screaming No! as if that made it so. Pity.

Reaching for a bottle, Consolata found it empty. She sighed and sat back in the chair. Without wine her thoughts, she knew, would be unbearable: resignation, self-pity, muted rage, disgust and shame glowing like cinders in a dying fire. As she rose to replenish her vice, a grand weariness took her, forcing her back to the seat, tipping her chin on her chest. She slept herself into sobriety. Headachy, sandymouthed she woke in quick need of a toilet. On the second floor, she could hear sniffles behind one door, singing behind another. Back down the stairs, she decided to catch a little air and shuffled into the kitchen and out the door. The sun had gone leaving behind a friendlier light. Consolata surveyed the winter-plagued garden. Tomato vines hung limp over fallen fruit, black and smashed in the dirt. Mustards were pale yellow with rot and inattention. A whole spill of melons caved in on themselves near heads of chrysanthemums stricken mud brown. A few chicken feathers were stuck to the low wire fencing protecting the garden from whatever it could. Without human help, gopher holes, termite castles, evidence of rabbit forays and determined crows abounded. The corn scrabble in neatly harvested fields beyond looked forlorn. And the pepper bushes, held on to by the wrinkled fingers of their yield, were rigid with cold. Despite the grains of soil blowing against her legs, Consolata sat down in the faded red chair. "Non sum dignus," she whispered. "But tell me. Where is the rest of days, the aisle of thyme, the scent of veronica you promised? The cream and honey you said I had earned? The happiness that comes of well-done chores, the serenity duty grants us, the blessings of good works? Was what I did for love of you so terrible?" Mary Magna had nothing to say. Consolata listened to the refusing silence, more wondering than annoyed by the sky, in plumage now, gold and blue-green, strutting like requited love on the horizon. She was afraid of dying alone, ungrieved in unholy ground, but knew that was precisely what lay before her. How she longed for the good death. "I'll miss You," she told Him. "I really will." The skylight wavered.

A man approached. Medium height, light step, he came right on up the drive. He wore a cowboy hat that hid his features, but Consolata couldn't have seen them anyway. Where he sat on the kitchen steps, framed by the door, a triangle of shadow obscured his face but not his clothes: a green vest over a white shirt, red suspenders hanging low on either side of his tan trousers, shiny black work shoes. "Who is that?" she asked.

"Come on, girl. You know me." He leaned forward, and she saw that he wore sunglasses-the mirror type that glitter. "No," she said. "Can't say I do."

"Well, not important. I'm traveling here." There were ten yards between them, but his words licked her cheek.

"You from the town?"

"Uh uh. I'm far country. Got a thing to drink?"

"Look you in the house." Consolata was beginning to slide toward his language like honey oozing from a comb.

"Oh, well," he said, as though that settled it and he would rather go thirsty.

"Just holler," said Consolata. "The girls can bring you something." She felt light, weightless, as though she could move, if she wanted to, without standing up.

"Don't you know me better than that?" the man asked. "I don't want see your girls. I want see you."

Consolata laughed. "You have your glasses much more me." Suddenly he was next to her without having moved-smiling like he was having (or expecting) such a good time. Consolata laughed again. It seemed so funny, comical really, the way he had flitted over to her from the steps and how he was looking at her-flirtatious, full of secret fun. Not six inches from her face, he removed his tall hat. Fresh, tea-colored hair came tumbling down, cascading over his shoulders and down his back. He took off his glasses then and winked, a slow seductive movement of a lid. His eyes, she saw, were as round and green as new apples.

In candlelight on a bitter January evening, Consolata cleans, washes and washes again two freshly killed hens. They are young, poor layers with pinfeathers difficult to extract. Their hearts, necks, giblets and livers turn slowly in boiling water. She lifts the skin to reach under it, fingering as far as she can. Under the breast, she searches for a pocket close to the wing. Then, holding the breast in her left palm, the fingers of her right tunnel the back skin, gently pushing for the spine. Into all these places-where the skin has been loosened and the membrane separated from the flesh it once protected-she slides butter. Thick.

Pale. Slippery.

Pallas wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand and then blew her nose. Now what?

This latest phone call, which she had mentioned to Connie, was not very different from the initial one. Just shorter. But it produced the same frustration as what had passed for conversation with her father last summer.

Jesus Christ where the hell are you? We thought you were dead.

Thank God. They found the car but it's bashed to hell on one side and somebody stripped it. You okay? Oh, baby. Daddy. Where is he-boy is his ass over. Tell me what happened. Your bitch mother's not making any sense as usual. Did he hurt you? Daddy, no. Well, what? Was he alone? We're suing the school, baby. Got them by the short hairs. It wasn't him. Some boys chased me. What? In their truck. They hit my car and forced me off the road. I ran and then- They rape you? Daddy!

Hold on sweetheart. Jo Anne get me that detective guy. Tell him I got Pallas. No, she's okay, just get him, will you? Go ahead, baby. I'm Where are you? Will you come and get me Daddy? Of course I will. Right away. Do you need money? Can you get to an airport, a train station? Just tell me where you'll be. Wait. Maybe you should call the police. The local ones I mean. They can get you to an airport. Tell them to call me. No. You call me from the station. Where are you? Pallas? Where you calling from? Pallas, you there? Minnesota. Minnesota? Jesus. I thought you were in New Mexico. What the hell's up there? Bloomington? No, Saint Paul. Are you near Saint Paul, sweetheart?

I'm not near anything, Daddy. It's like country. Call the police, Pallas. Make them come get you, you hear? Okay, Daddy. Then call me from the station. Okay. You got that? You're not hurt or anything? No Daddy. Good. Okay, now. I'll be right here or Jo Anne will if I go out. Boy what you put me through. But everything's going to be okay now. We'll talk about that asshole when you get back. Okay, now? Call me. We have to talk. Love you, baby.

Talk. Sure. Pallas didn't call anybody-police, Dee Dee, or him-until August. He was furious but wired her traveling money all the same.

If they had laughed behind her back before Carlos, if they had joked at her expense then, it came to her only as pale sensation: a broken gesture upon entering study hall; an eye slide as she turned away from her locker; an unstable smile as she joined a crowded lunch table. She had never been truly popular, but her address and her father's money hid the fact. Now she was an open joke (Pallas Truelove ran off with the jaaa-ni-tor don't you love it?) that no one tried to hide. She was back in that place where final wars are waged, the organized trenches of high school, where shame is the plate-shifting time it takes to walk down the hall, failure is a fumble with the combination lock and loathing is a condom wafer clogging a fountain. Where aside from the exchange of clothes and toys, there are no good intentions. Where smugness reigns, judgments instant, dismissals permanent. And the adults haven't a clue. Only prison could be as blatant and as frightening, for beneath its rules and rituals scratched a life of gnawing violence. Those who came from peaceful well-regulated homes were overtaken by a cruelty that visited them as soon as they entered the gates. Cruelty decked out in juvenile glee.