Toni Morrison - Tar Baby

Can’t do it anymore, she thought. Have to chase around too much. She didn’t like asking Yardman to do it for her, but her feet were too tender and her ankles too swollen to manage, so when he brought four or five young hens tied in a crate, she told him she needed only one at a time—let the others pick around behind the washhouse and to “wring one of them for me while you’re at it.”

“Yes, madame,” he said as he always said.

“Are they young? Tender?” she had asked him.

“Yes, madame.”

“Don’t look it. Look like brooders.”

“No, madame. Pullet every one.”

“We’ll see,” she answered him. “Mind how you go. I don’t want to be scrubbing up blood all afternoon.” But he was bloody anyway so she said, “Leave it,” to let him know that he had killed it wrong and also to remind him that she did not want him in her kitchen. And there it was on the newspaper and wouldn’t you know he had not plucked one single feather, heavenly Father? That’ll take me forever.

She lifted her head to call him back, come right back here, she was going to say, but suddenly she was too tired. Too tired to fuss, too tired to even have to confront him with his sloppiness. She sighed, picked up the chicken and brought it into the kitchen.

She hoisted a large pot of water onto the burning eye and wondered what he did with the head and feet. When the water was hot enough she dropped the chicken in and held it down with a wooden ladle long enough to loosen the pins. Then she removed it from the hot water and with newspaper spread out, started to pluck. She was still nimble at it but slower than she would have been if she wasn’t being careful about where the feathers went. A big nuisance to have to do it herself; it was going to make Sydney’s lunch late, but she didn’t feel up to seeing Yardman again, or giving him an order angrily, firmly or even sweetly. Yesterday everything was all right. The best it could be and exactly the way she had hoped it would be: a good man whom she trusted; a good and permanent job doing what she was good at for a boss who appreciated it; beautiful surroundings which included her own territory where she alone governed; and now with Jadine back, a “child” whom she could enjoy, indulge, protect and, since this “child” was a niece it was without the stress of a mother-daughter relationship. She was uneasy about the temporary nature of their stay on the island and Margaret’s visits always annoyed her—but it was being there that made Jade want to stay with them for a longish spell. Otherwise their niece would light anywhere except back in Philadelphia. She hoped Mr. Street would stay on in spite of his addled wife. Now here come this man upstairs in the guest room. Maybe Jadine was right, she thought, he would be gone today or, certainly, the next and they were making too much of it. Ondine stopped plucking and lifted her eyes slowly to the place where the window shutters did not quite close. A bit of the sky was unhidden by foliage. She thought she heard a small, smooth sound, like a well-oiled gear shifting. Not a sound really—more of an imagined impression, as though she were a dust mote watching an eye blink. There would be the hurricane wind of eyelashes falling through the air and the weighty crash of lid on lid.

Slowly she returned to the white hen in her hands. She was down to the pinfeathers when Sydney walked in with a small basket of mail.

“Already?” she asked him.

“No. I just thought I’d finish it up in here.”

“It’ll be at least an hour. Maybe two.”

“What are you doing that for?” He pointed at the pile of feathers on the floor.

“That’s the way I got it.”

“Call him. You want me to call him back here?”

“No. I’m just about finished now.”

“He knows better than that. Where is he?” Sydney moved toward the door.

“Sit down, Sydney. Don’t bother yourself.”

“I’m already bothered. I can’t run a house like this with everybody doing whatever comes to mind.”

“Sit down, I say. Hen’s done.”

He sat at the table and began sorting letters, circulars, magazines, and putting them into piles.

“Maybe we should look for somebody else. I’ll speak to Mr. Street.”

“It’s not worth the trouble, Sydney. Unless you can guarantee the next one won’t be worse. On balance, he’s still reliable and he does keep the place up, you got to give him his due.”

“You don’t sound like yourself, Ondine.” He looked at her heavy white braids sitting on her head like a royal diadem.

“Oh, I’m fine, I guess,” but her voice was flat, like a wide river without any undertow at all.

“I never heard you stand up for Yardman when he does something contrary to what you tell him.”

“I’m not standing up for him. I just think he’s a whole lot better than nobody and a little bit better than most.”

“You the one doing the plucking. I’m trying to make it easier for you—not me.”

“He is easier for me. I was just thinking how I used to be able to get my own yard hens. Not no more. If they tear loose from me, they free. I can’t chase em anymore. I don’t even know if I got the strength to wring their necks.”

“Well, what you don’t have the strength for, Yardman is supposed to do. I don’t want you running all over the yard after chickens. Killing them neither. We long past that, Ondine. Long past that.” He rested his hands on a letter for a minute as he recollected the bloody, long-legged girl in the back of Televettie Poultry sitting with three grown women, ankle deep in feathers among the squawks of crated fowl. At their feet two troughs of dead birds, one for the feathered ones, one for the newly plucked.

“I know, and we’re going to stay past it, too.”

“Not if you start changing up on me, we won’t. Not if you start letting people run over you. Start changing the rules in the middle of the stream.” He pushed the stack of magazines to one side.

Ondine laughed lightly. “You mean horse.”

“What?”

“Horse. Horse in midstream. Never mind. You know as well as anybody that I can handle Yardman and you also know that I’m not changing up on you. That’s not what you’re going on about. You’re edgy and I understand. That makes two of us. Three, I guess, since the Principal Beauty locked herself in. She call you for anything yet?”

“No. Not a thing.”

“Me neither.”

“Why three? Jadine ain’t bothered?”

“Not as far as I can see. She’s laughing and swinging around in that coat.”

“Damn.”

“She says we’re overdoing it. That Mr. Street’ll have him out of here today.”

“But what’d he do it for? She say anything about that? I been knowing him for fifty-one years and I never would have guessed—not in a million years—he do something like this. Where does he think he is? Main Line? Ain’t no police out here. Ain’t nobody hardly. He think that nigger came here and hid in his own wife’s bedroom just to get a meal? He could have knocked on the back door and got something to eat. Nobody comes in a house and hides in it for days, weeks…”

Ondine looked at her husband. Talk about changing up, she hadn’t seen him this riled since before they were married. “I know,” she said, “I know that, but Jadine says it was a joke; he had too much liquor and him and her had an argument and…” she stopped.

“…and what? Can’t finish, can you? No, ’cause it don’t make a bit of sense. Not one bit.”

“There’s no point in gnawing it, Sydney, like a dog with a bone. Swallow it or drop it.”

“Can’t do either one.”

“You have to. It ain’t your bone.”

“You have taken leave of your senses, woman. It is my bone and right now it’s stuck in my craw. I live here too. So do you and so does Jadine. My family lives here—not just his. If that nigger wants to steal something or kill somebody you think he’s going to skip us, just ’cause we don’t own it? Hell, no. I sat up in that chair all night, didn’t I? Mr. Street slept like a log. He was snoring like a hound when I went in there this morning.”