Toni Morrison - Tar Baby

He nodded. “Twenty minutes about, to get there and another twenty to get back.”

She agreed and settled back in the seat crossing her legs.

“You’re not coming with me?”

“No,” she said, “I’ll wait here.”

“Alone?”

“Go on, will you? I’ll be all right. There’s nobody on the island I don’t know. If somebody drives down, I’ll have them pick you up and bring you back.”

He left then and Jadine rummaged around in the basket to see if there was anything left of the awful lunch. Nothing. Nothing at all. She sat for a while under the hateful sun that had come out in full dress when they least needed her. Thank God there were no mosquitoes here, just a funny jungle-rot smell. She waited until the sun burnt a hole in her head. She didn’t have a watch on but thought twenty minutes must have passed by. Only twenty more. Then she decided to seek shelter from the sun under the trees to the left of the road, in spite of that unpleasant odor. This was the ugly part of Isle des Chevaliers—the part she averted her eyes from whenever she drove past. Its solitude was heavy and there was something sly about its silence. Her jangled nerves she attributed however to the conversation with Son, the print of his forefinger on her foot, and the silly thoughts she’d had afterward. A fair amount of composure returned quickly once they had gotten back to the jeep where all was familiar, but a tremor had not yet died in her stomach and required the resolutions of a new nun to subdue. It was nothing like the fear-slashed anger she had felt the morning he had held her from behind and pressed into her. Nothing like that. But he was bathed now, clipped and beautiful with spacious tender eyes and a woodsy voice. His smile was always a surprise like a sudden rustle of wind across the savanna of his face. Playful sometimes, sometimes not. Sometimes it made her grab the reins. She took her pad and a stick of charcoal and walked toward the trees, wishing once more that she had had genuine talent in her fingers. She loved to paint and draw so it was unfair not to be good at it. Still she was lucky to know it, to know the difference between the fine and the mediocre, so she’d put that instinct to work and studied art history—there she was never wrong.

The trees were not as close together as she’d thought. Tall bushes had made them seem so. She approached the shade and peeped in between the trees. She almost laughed at what she saw. Young trees ringed and soared above a wavy mossy floor. There was hardly any color; just greens and browns because there was hardly any light and what light there was—a sentimental shaft of sunlight to the left—bunched the brown into deeper shadow. In the center under a roof of greens was a lawn of the same dark green the Dutchmen loved to use. The circle of trees looked like a standing rib of pork. Jadine tucked her pad under her arm and clenched the charcoal stick. It was amazing; the place looked like something by Bruce White or Fazetta—an elegant comic book illustration. She stepped through some bushes that looked like rhododendron and onto the mossy floor. The lawn, the center of the place began only a couple of yards ahead. She walked toward it and sank up to her knees. She dropped the pad and charcoal and grabbed the waist of a tree which shivered in her arms and swayed as though it wished to dance with her. She struggled to lift her feet and sank an inch or two farther down into the moss-covered jelly. The pad with Son’s face badly sketched looked up at her and the women hanging in the trees looked down at her. There is an easy way to get out of this, she thought, and every Girl Scout knows what it is but I don’t. Movement was not possible. At least not sudden movement. Perhaps she was supposed to lie horizontally. She tightened her arms around the tree and it swayed as though it wished to dance with her. Count, she thought. I will count to fifty and then pull, then count again and pull again. She had only to hang on until Son returned and shout—fifteen minutes, not more. And she would spend it edging up the tree that wanted to dance. No point in looking down at the slime, it would make her think of worms or snakes or crocodiles. Count. Just count. Don’t sweat or you’ll lose your partner, the tree. Cleave together like lovers. Press together like man and wife. Cling to your partner, hang on to him and never let him go. Creep up on him a millimeter at a time, slower than the slime and cover him like the moss. Caress his bark and finger his ridges. Sway when he sways and shiver with him too. Whisper your numbers from one to fifty into the parts that have been lifted away and left tender skin behind. Love him and trust him with your life because you are up to your kneecaps in rot.

The young tree sighed and swayed. The women looked down from the rafters of the trees and stopped murmuring. They were delighted when first they saw her, thinking a runaway child had been restored to them. But upon looking closer they saw differently. This girl was fighting to get away from them. The women hanging from the trees were quiet now, but arrogant—mindful as they were of their value, their exceptional femaleness; knowing as they did that the first world of the world had been built with their sacred properties; that they alone could hold together the stones of pyramids and the rushes of Moses’s crib; knowing their steady consistency, their pace of glaciers, their permanent embrace, they wondered at the girl’s desperate struggle down below to be free, to be something other than they were.

Jadine counted to fifty eight times, pulled eight times, then her right knee grazed something hard and she managed to lift her leg and bend it enough to kneel on the hard thing that seemed to be growing out of her partner the tree. It held and she got her other leg up, but the slimy soles of her shoes could find no other footing on the bark. She had to shimmy, using the insides of her knees for leverage. When she was up far enough, she twisted with a giant effort around to the road side of the tree—the part of the trunk that leaned out of solid ground. She slid down on her stomach and when Son came sweating up the hill she was crying a little and cleaning her feet and legs with leaves. The white skirt showed a deep dark and sticky hem and hung over the door of the jeep. She was in halter and panties.

“What the hell happened to you?” He ran to her and put the bottle on the seat. She didn’t look up, just wiped her eyes and said, “I took a walk over there and fell in.”

“Over where?”

“There. Behind those trees.”

“Fell in what? That looks like oil.”

“I don’t know. Mud I guess, but it felt like jelly while I was in it. But it doesn’t come off like jelly. It’s drying and sticking.”

Son kneeled down and stroked her skin. The black stuff was shiny in places and where it was dry it was like mucilage. Nothing much was happening with her leaves. He shook some drops of the gasoline onto a clean place in her skirt and handed it to her. She took it and continued to clean herself in silence. He poured the gas into the tank and they waited for a few minutes for it to get into the line, and only when the motor finally caught did Jadine hazard a glance back at the place where she’d gone in. She could not identify the tree that had danced with her.

Son drove slowly up the hill to conserve the gas. He glanced at her from time to time, but could see she was not about to be consoled easily. He decided to tease her gently.

“That’s where the swamp women live,” he said. “You see any?”

She didn’t answer.

“They mate with the horsemen up in the hills.”

“Oh, shut up. Just shut up.”

“I just thought you might have seen one.”

“Look,” she said. “I might have died. That mess was up to my knees. Don’t try to cheer me up; it’s not funny! Just drive, will you, and get me home so I can get this shit off me!”