Toni Morrison - Tar Baby

“Lot of fat in a goose.” Ondine was slicing her ham. “It should be cooked on its breast, not on its back.”

“Oh, but I like the juices.”

“That ain’t juice, Jadine, that’s grease,” Ondine answered.

Valerian lifted his fork like a toastmaster. “Margaret has a surprise for us. Made it last night.”

“What?” asked Jadine.

“You’ll see. An old family recipe. Right, Margaret? Margaret?”

“Oh. Yes. Right. It wasn’t hard.”

“Don’t be modest.”

Sydney looked at Ondine with what he hoped was a stern gaze. They say it’s a surprise, his eyes seemed to be saying, let’s agree and be surprised. Ondine kept her eyes on her ham.

“Is that the phone?” Margaret was alert.

“Would you get that, Sydney?”

“I’ll get it.” Margaret was rising from her chair.

“No, let Sydney.”

No one spoke as Sydney left the room.

“Dr. Michelin,” said Sydney when he returned, “calling to say Merry Christmas. I suggested he call back later.”

“I thought it might be the airport,” said Margaret.

“Airport, what for? You heard the final news.”

“I asked the office to call if there was going to be a break in the weather.”

“The weather is in Boston, not California.”

“How do you know that?”

“I think,” said Jadine, “that the radio said there were storms all over.”

“Downed the telephone lines too, I suppose,” said Valerian.

“Probably, yes—” Margaret’s voice was a bit shrill.

“Well, he’ll be sorry,” said Valerian. “He’s missing some very good food and some very good company. We should have thought of this before. Give Ondine a day off, and you get to show off in the kitchen, Margaret. It’s good to have some plain Pennsylvania food for a change. This is an old-fashioned Christmas.”

“Too bad Gideon couldn’t come.” Son, who seemed to be the only one genuinely enjoying the food, had been silent until then.

“Who?” asked Valerian.

“Gideon. Yardman.”

“His name is Gideon?” asked Jadine.

“What a beautiful name. Gideon.” Valerian smiled.

“Well, at least we knew Mary’s name. Mary,” said Jadine.

“Nope,” said Son.

“No?”

“Thérèse.”

“Thérèse? Wonderful,” said Valerian. “Thérèse the Thief and Gideon the Get Away Man.”

Ondine looked up. “They didn’t steal that chocolate, Mr. Street. That was this one here.” She nodded her head at Son.

“Chocolate? Who’s talking about chocolate? They stole the apples.” Valerian got up to go to the sideboard for some more mashed potatoes and gravy.

“Gideon stole apples?” asked Son.

“Yep.” Valerian’s back was to them. “I caught him red-handed, so to speak. Them, rather. She, Mary, had them stuffed in her blouse. He had some in each pocket.”

Sydney and Ondine both stopped eating. “What did he say? When you caught him?” Sydney was frowning.

“Said he was going to put them back.” Valerian rejoined them and chuckled.

“So that’s why they didn’t come back to work. Ashamed.”

“Oh, more than that,” said Valerian. “Much more than that. I fired him. Her too.”

“You what?” Ondine almost shouted.

“Ondine,” Sydney whispered.

“You didn’t tell us,” she said to Valerian.

“Beg pardon?” Valerian looked amused.

“I mean…Did you know that, Sydney?”

“No. Nobody told me anything.”

“Mr. Street, you could have mentioned it.”

“I’ll get someone else. I’ve already spoke to Michelin, I told you that.”

“But I thought that was temporary help, until they came back after Christmas, I thought.”

“Well, Ondine, it isn’t temporary help I’m asking for. It’s permanent because they are not coming back.”

“Please stop bickering,” Margaret said softly. “I’m getting a headache.”

“I never bicker, Margaret. I am discussing a domestic problem with my help.”

“Well, they are guests tonight.”

“The problem is still of interest to everybody at the table, except you.”

“Certain things I need to know,” Ondine was talking into her plate, “if I’m to get work done right. I took on all sorts of extra work because I thought they were just playing hooky. I didn’t know they was fired.”

“Ondine, what would you have done differently if you had known? You would have grumbled, and tried to make me keep them on. And since they were obviously stealing, and the whole house was upset anyway, I did what I thought was best.”

“I wouldn’t have tried any such thing, if they stole. I don’t condone that.”

“Well, they did and I let them go and that’s that.”

Son’s mouth went dry as he watched Valerian chewing a piece of ham, his head-of-a-coin profile content, approving even of the flavor in his mouth although he had been able to dismiss with a flutter of the fingers the people whose sugar and cocoa had allowed him to grow old in regal comfort; although he had taken the sugar and cocoa and paid for it as though it had no value, as though the cutting of cane and picking of beans was child’s play and had no value; but he turned it into candy, the invention of which really was child’s play, and sold it to other children and made a fortune in order to move near, but not in the midst of, the jungle where the sugar came from and build a palace with more of their labor and then hire them to do more of the work he was not capable of and pay them again according to some scale of value that would outrage Satan himself and when those people wanted a little of what he wanted, some apples for their Christmas, and took some, he dismissed them with a flutter of the fingers, because they were thieves, and nobody knew thieves and thievery better than he did and he probably thought he was a law-abiding man, they all did, and they all always did, because they had not the dignity of wild animals who did not eat where they defecated but they could defecate over a whole people and come there to live and defecate some more by tearing up the land and that is why they loved property so, because they had killed it soiled it defecated on it and they loved more than anything the places where they shit. Would fight and kill to own the cesspools they made, and although they called it architecture it was in fact elaborately built toilets, decorated toilets, toilets surrounded with and by business and enterprise in order to have something to do in between defecations since waste was the order of the day and the ordering principle of the universe. And especially the Americans who were the worst because they were new at the business of defecation spent their whole lives bathing bathing bathing washing away the stench of the cesspools as though pure soap had anything to do with purity.

That was the sole lesson of their world: how to make waste, how to make machines that made more waste, how to make wasteful products, how to talk waste, how to study waste, how to design waste, how to cure people who were sickened by waste so they could be well enough to endure it, how to mobilize waste, legalize waste and how to despise the culture that lived in cloth houses and shit on the ground far away from where they ate. And it would drown them one day, they would all sink into their own waste and the waste they had made of the world and then, finally they would know true peace and the happiness they had been looking for all along. In the meantime this one here would chew a morsel of ham and drink white wine secure in the knowledge that he had defecated on two people who had dared to want some of his apples.

And Jadine had defended him. Poured his wine, offered him a helping of this, a dab of that and smiled when she did not have to. Soothed down any disturbance that might fluster him; quieted even the mild objections her own aunt raised, and sat next to him more alive and responsive and attentive than even his own wife was, basking in the cold light that came from one of the killers of the world.