Toni Morrison: Paradise

"May I suggest those are not the important questions. Or rather those are the questions of anguish but not of intelligence. And God, being intelligence itself, generosity itself, has given us Mind to know His subtlety. To know His elegance. His purity. To know that 'what is sown is not alive until it dies.' " The wind picked up a bit but not enough to make anyone uncomfortable. Misner was losing them; they stood before the open grave closed to everything but their own musings. Funeral thoughts were mingled with plans for Thanksgiving, evaluations of their neighbors, the chitty-chat of daily life. Misner repressed a sigh before concluding his remarks with prayer. But when he bowed his head and gazed at the coffin lid he saw the window in the garden, felt it beckon toward another place-neither life nor death-but there, just yonder, shaping thoughts he did not know he had.

"Wait. Wait." He was shouting. "Do you think this was a short, pitiful life bereft of worth because it did not parallel your own? Let me tell you something. The love she received was wide and deep, and the care given her was gentle and unrelenting, and that love and care enveloped her so completely that the dreams, the visions she had, the journeys she took made her life as compelling, as rich, as valuable as any of ours and probably more blessed. It is our own misfortune if we do not know in our long life what she knew every day of her short one: that although life in life is terminal and life after life is everlasting, He is with us always, in life, after it and especially in between, lying in wait for us to know the splendor." He stopped, disturbed by what he had said and how. Then, as if to apologize to the little girl, he spoke softly, directly to her.

"Oh, Save-Marie, your name always sounded like 'Save me.'

'Save me.' Any other messages hiding in your name? I know one that shines out for all to see: there never was a time when you were not saved, Marie. Amen."

His words embarrassed him a little, but on that day, nothing had ever been clearer.

Billie Delia walked slowly away from the other mourners. She had stood with her mother and grandfather and smiled encouragingly at Arnette, but now she wanted to be alone. This was her first funeral, and she thought about it in terms of how expansive it made her grandfather to have his skills needed. More on her mind was the absence of the women she had liked. They had treated her so well, had not embarrassed her with sympathy, had just given her sunny kindness. Looking at her bruised face and swollen eyes, they sliced cucumber for her lids after making her drink a glass of wine. No one insisted on hearing what drove her there, but she could tell they would listen if she wanted them to. The one called Mavis was the nicest and the funniest was Gigi. Billie Delia was perhaps the only one in town who was not puzzled by where the women were or concerned about how they disappeared. She had another question: When will they return? When will they reappear, with blazing eyes, war paint and huge hands to rip up and stomp down this prison calling itself a town. A town that had tried to ruin her grandfather, succeeded in swallowing her mother and almost broken her own self. A backward noplace ruled by men whose power to control was out of control and who had the nerve to say who could live and who not and where; who had seen in lively, free, unarmed females the mutiny of the mares and so got rid of them. She hoped with all her heart that the women were out there, darkly burnished, biding their time, brass-metaling their nails, filing their incisors-but out there. Which is to say she hoped for a miracle. Not so unreasonable a wish since a minimiracle had already occurred: Brood and Apollo had reconciled, agreeing to wait for her to make up her mind. She knew, as they did, that she never could and that the threesome would end only when they did. The Convent women would roar at that. She could see their pointy teeth.

The reprieve took years but it came. Manley Gibson would die in a ward with others like himself rather than strapped to a chair with no kin looking on. It was a good thing. A great thing. He got to go outside and now he was part of the work crew at the lake road. The lake was so blue. The Kentucky Fried Chicken lunch so fine. Maybe he could run. Some joke. A fifty-two-year-old lifer on the run. Where to? To who? He had been in since 1961, leaving behind an elevenyear-old who didn't write anymore, and the only photograph he had of her was when she was thirteen.

Lunchtime was special. They sat near the lake in full sight of the guards but near the water anyway. Manley wiped his hands on the little paper napkins. To his left, near a couple of trees, a young woman spread two blankets on the grass, a radio in between. Manley turned to see what the crew thought of this: a civilian (and a female, too) right in their midst. Armed guards strolled the road above them. None gave sign that they saw her.

She turned on the radio and stood up, revealing a face he'd know anywhere. For the life of him he couldn't help it. "Gigi!" he hissed. The girl looked his way. Manley, restraining himself, sauntered over to the trees, hoping the guards would think he was taking a leak. "Am I right? Is it you?"

"Daddy Man?" At least she looked pleased to see him. "It is you! Goddamn, I knew it. What you doing here? You knew I was reprieved?"

"No, I didn't know nothing about it."

"Well, look here, I don't get out or nothing, but I ain't on the row no more." Manley turned to see if others had noticed them. "Keep your voice down," he whispered. "So what you doing here?" He noticed her clothes for the first time. "You in the army?" Gigi smiled. "Sort of."

"Sort of? You mean you was?"

"Oh, Daddy Man, anybody can buy this stuff." Gigi laughed.

"Gimme your address, honey. I wanna write and tell you everything. Hear from your mother? Her old man still alive?" He was rushing; the lunch whistle was due to sound any minute.

"I don't have an address yet." Gigi lifted her cap and replaced it. "No? Well, uh, you write me, okay? Care of the prison. I'll put you on the list tomorrow. I can get two a month-" The whistle blew. "Two," Manley repeated. Then, "Say, you still got that locket I give you?"

"I got it."

"Ooh, honey, oh, honey, my little girl." He reached out to touch her but stopped, saying, "I gotta go. They'll demerit me. Care of the prison, hear? Two a month." He backed away, still looking at her. "Will I hear from you?"

Gigi straightened her cap. "You will, Daddy Man. You will." Later, as Manley sat on the bus, he went over every detail of what he had seen of his daughter. Her army cap and fatigue pants-camouflage colors. Heavy army boots, black T-shirt. And now that he thought of it, he could swear she was packing. He looked toward the lake, darkening in a lower but prettier sun.

Gigi took off her clothes. The nights were chilling the lake, making it harder and harder for the sun to warm it the next day. In this part of the lake it was okay to swim nude. This was lake country: viridian water, upright trees and-in places where no boats or fishermen came-a privacy royals would envy. She picked up a towel and dried her hair.

Less than an inch had grown, but she loved how wind and water and fingers and toes rippled in it. She opened a bottle of aloe and began to rub her skin. Then, straightening the towel next to her, she looked toward the lake where her companion was just coming ashore. The fifteenth painting, like the first, needed more. Trying to remember the chin had frustrated Dee Dee in her first attempt, but when she decided to skip the jawline and just shadow the lower part of her daughter's face, she found the eyes all wrong. Canvas fifteen got it better, but still something was missing. The head was fine, but the body, bleak and uninteresting, seemed to need another shape-at the hip or elbow. Never having experienced a compulsion that was not sensual, she was puzzled by the energy she could summon at will to freshen or begin the figure anew. The eyes kept coming up accusatory; the skin tone eluded her; and the hair was invariably a hat. Dee Dee sat down on the floor, rolling the brush handle in her fingers while she examined the work she had done. With a long puff of air she got up and went into the living room. It was when she had taken the first sip of the margarita that she saw her coming across the yard, a knapsack or something tied to her chest. But she had no hair. No hair at all and a baby's head lay just under her chin. As she came closer, Dee Dee could see two fat legs, round as doughnuts, poking out of the knapsack thing on its mother's chest. She put down the margarita and pressed her face to the picture window. No mistake. It was Pallas. One hand on the knapsack bottom, the other carrying a sword. A sword?