Toni Morrison: Paradise

"No, honey. I don't know a thing."

After that she was unexpectedly distracted in malls, theater ticket lines, buses. In 1968 she was certain she spotted her at a Little Richard concert, but the press of the crowd prevented a closer look. Jean was discreet about this subversive search. Jack didn't know she'd had a child before (at fourteen), and it was after marriage, when she had his child, that she began the search for the eyes. The sightings came at such odd moments and in such strange places-once she believed the girl climbing out the back of a pickup truck was her daughter-that when she finally bumped into her, in 1976, she wanted to call an ambulance. Jean and Jack were crossing the stadium parking lot under blazing klieg lights. A girl was standing in front of a car, blood running from her hands. Jean saw the blood first and then the chocolate eyes. "Seneca!" she screamed, and ran toward her. As she approached she was intercepted by another girl, who, holding a bottle of beer and a cloth, began to clean away the blood.

"Seneca?" Jean shouted over the second girl's head.

"Yes?"

"What happened? It's me!"

"Some glass," said the second girl. "She fell on some glass. I'm taking care of her."

"Jean! Come on!" Jack was several cars down. "Where the hell are you?"

"Coming. Just a minute, okay?"

The girl wiping Seneca's hands looked up from time to time to frown at Jean. "Any glass get in?" she asked Seneca. Seneca stroked her palms, first one, then the other. "No. I don't think so."

"Jean! Traffic's gonna be hell, babe."

"Don't you remember me?"

Seneca looked up, the bright lights turning her eyes black.

"Should I? From where?"

"On Woodlawn. We used to live in those apartments on Woodlawn."

Seneca shook her head. "I lived on Beacon. Next to the playground."

"But your name is Seneca, right?"

"Yes."

"Well, I'm Jean."

"Lady, your old man's calling you." The girlfriend wrung out the cloth and poured the rest of the beer over Seneca's hands. "Ow," Seneca said to her friend. "It burns." She waved her hands in the air.

"Guess I made a mistake," said Jean. "I thought you were someone I knew from Woodlawn."

Seneca smiled. "That's okay. Everybody makes mistakes."

The friend said, "It's fine now. Look."

Seneca and Jean both looked. Her hands were clean, no blood.

Just a few lines that might or might not leave marks.

"Great!"

"Let's go."

"Well, bye."

"Jean!"

"Bye."

Gunning the gas pedal while watching his rearview mirror, Jack said, "Who was that?"

"Some girl I thought I knew from before. When I lived in those apartments on Woodlawn. The housing project there."

"What housing project?"

"On Woodlawn."

"Never any projects on Woodlawn," said Jack. "That was Beacon. Torn down now, but it was never on Woodlawn. Beacon is where it was. Right next to the old playground."

"You sure about that?"

"Sure I'm sure. You losing it, woman."

In ocean hush a woman black as firewood is singing. Next to her is a younger woman whose head rests on the singing woman's lap. Ruined fingers troll the tea brown hair. All the colors of seashells-wheat, roses, pearl-fuse in the younger woman's face. Her emerald eyes adore the black face framed in cerulean blue. Around them on the beach, sea trash gleams. Discarded bottle caps sparkle near a broken sandal. A small dead radio plays the quiet surf.

There is nothing to beat this solace which is what Piedade's song is about, although the words evoke memories neither one has ever had: of reaching age in the company of the other; of speech shared and divided bread smoking from the fire; the unambivalent bliss of going home to be at home-the ease of coming back to love begun. When the ocean heaves sending rhythms of water ashore, Piedade looks to see what has come. Another ship, perhaps, but different, heading to port, crew and passengers, lost and saved, atremble, for they have been disconsolate for some time. Now they will rest before shouldering the endless work they were created to do down here in paradise.

The End