The Bluest Eye

  Junior was laughing and running around the room clutching his stomach delightedly. Pecola touched the scratched place on her face and felt tears coming. When she started toward the doorway, Junior leaped in front of her.

  “You can’t get out. You’re my prisoner,” he said. His eyes were merry but hard.

  “You let me go.”

  “No!” He pushed her down, ran out the door that separated the rooms, and held it shut with his hands. Pecola’s banging on the door increased his gasping, high-pitched laughter.

  The tears came fast, and she held her face in her hands. When something soft and furry moved around her ankles, she jumped, and saw it was the cat. He wound himself in and about her legs. Momentarily distracted from her fear, she squatted down to touch him, her hands wet from the tears. The cat rubbed up against her knee. He was black all over, deep silky black, and his eyes, pointing down toward his nose, were bluish green. The light made them shine like blue ice. Pecola rubbed the cat’s head; he whined, his tongue flicking with pleasure. The blue eyes in the black face held her.

  Junior, curious at not hearing her sobs, opened the door, and saw her squatting down rubbing the cat’s back. He saw the cat stretching its head and flattening its eyes. He had seen that expression many times as the animal responded to his mother’s touch.

  “Gimme my cat!” His voice broke. With a movement both awkward and sure he snatched the cat by one of its hind legs and began to swing it around his head in a circle.

  “Stop that!” Pecola was screaming. The cat’s free paws were stiffened, ready to grab anything to restore balance, its mouth wide, its eyes blue streaks of horror.

  Still screaming, Pecola reached for Junior’s hand. She heard her dress rip under her arm. Junior tried to push her away, but she grabbed the arm which was swinging the cat. They both fell, and in falling, Junior let go the cat, which, having been released in mid-motion, was thrown full force against the window. It slithered down and fell on the radiator behind the sofa. Except for a few shudders, it was still. There was only the slightest smell of singed fur.

  Geraldine opened the door.

  “What is this?” Her voice was mild, as though asking a perfectly reasonable question. “Who is this girl?”

  “She killed our cat,” said Junior. “Look.” He pointed to the radiator, where the cat lay, its blue eyes closed, leaving only an empty, black, and helpless face.

  Geraldine went to the radiator and picked up the cat. He was limp in her arms, but she rubbed her face in his fur. She looked at Pecola. Saw the dirty torn dress, the plaits sticking out on her head, hair matted where the plaits had come undone, the muddy shoes with the wad of gum peeping out from between the cheap soles, the soiled socks, one of which had been walked down into the heel of the shoe. She saw the safety pin holding the hem of the dress up. Up over the hump of the cat’s back she looked at her. She had seen this little girl all of her life. Hanging out of windows over saloons in Mobile, crawling over the porches of shotgun houses on the edge of town, sitting in bus stations holding paper bags and crying to mothers who kept saying “Shet up!” Hair uncombed, dresses falling apart, shoes untied and caked with dirt. They had stared at her with great uncomprehending eyes. Eyes that questioned nothing and asked everything. Unblinking and unabashed, they stared up at her. The end of the world lay in their eyes, and the beginning, and all the waste in between.

  They were everywhere. They slept six in a bed, all their pee mixing together in the night as they wet their beds each in his own candy-and-potato-chip dream. In the long, hot days, they idled away, picking plaster from the walls and digging into the earth with sticks. They sat in little rows on street curbs, crowded into pews at church, taking space from the nice, neat, colored children; they clowned on the playgrounds, broke things in dime stores, ran in front of you on the street, made ice slides on the sloped sidewalks in winter. The girls grew up knowing nothing of girdles, and the boys announced their manhood by turning the bills of their caps backward. Grass wouldn’t grow where they lived. Flowers died. Shades fell down. Tin cans and tires blossomed where they lived. They lived on cold black-eyed peas and orange pop. Like flies they hovered; like flies they settled. And this one had settled in her house. Up over the hump of the cat’s back she looked.

  “Get out,” she said, her voice quiet. “You nasty little black bitch. Get out of my house.”

  The cat shuddered and flicked his tail.

  Pecola backed out of the room, staring at the pretty milk-brown lady in the pretty gold-and-green house who was talking to her through the cat’s fur. The pretty lady’s words made the cat fur move; the breath of each word parted the fur. Pecola turned to find the front door and saw Jesus looking down at her with sad and unsurprised eyes, his long brown hair parted in the middle, the gay paper flowers twisted around his face.

  Outside, the March wind blew into the rip in her dress. She held her head down against the cold. But she could not hold it low enough to avoid seeing the snowflakes falling and dying on the pavement.

  Spring

  The first twigs are thin, green, and supple. They bend into a complete circle, but will not break. Their delicate, showy hopefulness shooting from forsythia and lilac bushes meant only a change in whipping style. They beat us differently in the spring. Instead of the dull pain of a winter strap, there were these new green switches that lost their sting long after the whipping was over. There was a nervous meanness in these long twigs that made us long for the steady stroke of a strap or the firm but honest slap of a hairbrush. Even now spring for me is shot through with the remembered ache of switchings, and forsythia holds no cheer.

  Sunk in the grass of an empty lot on a spring Saturday, I split the stems of milkweed and thought about ants and peach pits and death and where the world went when I closed my eyes. I must have lain long in the grass, for the shadow that was in front of me when I left the house had disappeared when I went back. I entered the house, as the house was bursting with an uneasy quiet. Then I heard my mother singing something about trains and Arkansas. She came in the back door with some folded yellow curtains which she piled on the kitchen table. I sat down on the floor to listen to the song’s story, and noticed how strangely she was behaving. She still had her hat on, and her shoes were dusty, as though she had been walking in deep dirt. She put on some water to boil and then swept the porch; then she hauled out the curtain stretcher, but instead of putting the damp curtains on it, she swept the porch again. All the time singing about trains and Arkansas.

  When she finished, I went to look for Frieda. I found her upstairs lying on our bed, crying the tired, whimpering cry that follows the first wailings—mostly gasps and shudderings. I lay on the bed and looked at the tiny bunches of wild roses sprinkled over her dress. Many washings had faded their color and dimmed their outlines.

  “What happened, Frieda?”

  She lifted a swollen face from the crook of her arm. Shuddering still, she sat up, letting her thin legs dangle over the bedside. I knelt on the bed and picked up the hem of my dress to wipe her running nose. She never liked wiping noses on clothes, but this time she let me. It was the way Mama did with her apron.

  “Did you get a whipping?”

  She shook her head no.

  “Then why you crying?”

  “Because.”

  “Because what?”

  “Mr. Henry.”

  “What’d he do?”

  “Daddy beat him up.”

  “What for? The Maginot Line? Did he find out about the Maginot Line?”

  “No.”

  “Well, what, then? Come on, Frieda. How come I can’t know?”

  “He…picked at me.”

  “Picked at you? You mean like Soaphead Church?”

  “Sort of.”

  “He showed his privates at you?”

  “Noooo. He touched me.”

  “Where?”

  “Here and here.” She pointed to the tiny breasts that, like two fallen acorns, scattered a few
faded rose leaves on her dress.

  “Really? How did it feel?”

  “Oh, Claudia.” She sounded put-out. I wasn’t asking the right questions.

  “It didn’t feel like anything.”

  “But wasn’t it supposed to? Feel good, I mean?” Frieda sucked her teeth. “What’d he do? Just walk up and pinch them?”

  She sighed. “First he said how pretty I was. Then he grabbed my arm and touched me.”

  “Where was Mama and Daddy?”

  “Over at the garden weeding.”

  “What’d you say when he did it?”

  “Nothing. I just ran out the kitchen and went to the garden.”

  “Mama said we was never to cross the tracks by ourselves.”

  “Well, what would you do? Set there and let him pinch you?”

  I looked at my chest. “I don’t have nothing to pinch. I’m never going to have nothing.”

  “Oh, Claudia, you’re jealous of everything. You want him to?”

  “No, I just get tired of having everything last.”

  “You do not. What about scarlet fever? You had that first.”

  “Yes, but it didn’t last. Anyway, what happened at the garden?”

  “I told Mama, and she told Daddy, and we all come home, and he was gone, so we waited for him, and when Daddy saw him come up on the porch, he threw our old tricycle at his head and knocked him off the porch.”

  “Did he die?”

  “Naw. He got up and started singing ‘Nearer My God to Thee.’ Then Mama hit him with a broom and told him to keep the Lord’s name out of his mouth, but he wouldn’t stop, and Daddy was cussing, and everybody was screaming.”

  “Oh, shoot, I always miss stuff.”

  “And Mr. Buford came running out with his gun, and Mama told him to go somewhere and sit down, and Daddy said no, give him the gun, and Mr. Buford did, and Mama screamed, and Mr. Henry shut up and started running, and Daddy shot at him and Mr. Henry jumped out of his shoes and kept on running in his socks. Then Rosemary came out and said that Daddy was going to jail, and I hit her.”

  “Real hard?”

  “Real hard.”

  “Is that when Mama whipped you?”

  “She didn’t whip me, I told you.”

  “Then why you crying?”

  “Miss Dunion came in after everybody was quiet, and Mama and Daddy was fussing about who let Mr. Henry in anyway, and she said that Mama should take me to the doctor, because I might be ruined, and Mama started screaming all over again.”

  “At you?”

  “No. At Miss Dunion.”

  “But why were you crying?”

  “I don’t want to be ruined!”

  “What’s ruined?”

  “You know. Like the Maginot Line. She’s ruined. Mama said so.” The tears came back.

  An image of Frieda, big and fat, came to mind. Her thin legs swollen, her face surrounded by layers of rouged skin. I too begin to feel tears.

  “But, Frieda, you could exercise and not eat.”

  She shrugged.

  “Besides, what about China and Poland? They’re ruined too, aren’t they? And they ain’t fat.”

  “That’s because they drink whiskey. Mama says whiskey ate them up.”

  “You could drink whiskey.”

  “Where would I get whiskey?”

  We thought about this. Nobody would sell it to us; we had no money, anyway. There was never any in our house. Who would have some?

  “Pecola,” I said. “Her father’s always drunk. She can get us some.”

  “You think so?”

  “Sure. Cholly’s always drunk. Let’s go ask her. We don’t have to tell her what for.”

  “Now?”

  “Sure, now.”

  “What’ll we tell Mama?”

  “Nothing. Let’s just go out the back. One at a time. So she won’t notice.”

  “O.K. You go first, Claudia.”

  We opened the fence gate at the bottom of the backyard and ran down the alley.

  Pecola lived on the other side of Broadway. We had never been in her house, but we knew where it was. A two-story gray building that had been a store downstairs and had an apartment upstairs.

  Nobody answered our knock on the front door, so we walked around to the side door. As we approached, we heard radio music and looked to see where it came from. Above us was the second-story porch, lined with slanting, rotting rails, and sitting on the porch was the Maginot Line herself. We stared up and automatically reached for the other’s hand. A mountain of flesh, she lay rather than sat in a rocking chair. She had no shoes on, and each foot was poked between a railing: tiny baby toes at the tip of puffy feet; swollen ankles smoothed and tightened the skin; massive legs like tree stumps parted wide at the knees, over which spread two roads of soft flabby inner thigh that kissed each other deep in the shade of her dress and closed. A dark-brown root-beer bottle, like a burned limb, grew out of her dimpled hand. She looked at us down through the porch railings and emitted a low, long belch. Her eyes were as clean as rain, and again I remembered the waterfall. Neither of us could speak. Both of us imagined we were seeing what was to become of Frieda. The Maginot Line smiled at us.

  “You all looking for somebody?”

  I had to pull my tongue from the roof of my mouth to say, “Pecola—she live here?”

  “Uh-huh, but she ain’t here now. She gone to her mama’s work place to git the wash.”

  “Yes, ma’am. She coming back?”

  “Uh-huh. She got to hang up the clothes before the sun goes down.”

  “Oh.”

  “You can wait for her. Wanna come up here and wait?”

  We exchanged glances. I looked back up at the broad cinnamon roads that met in the shadow of her dress.

  Frieda said, “No, ma’am.”

  “Well,” the Maginot Line seemed interested in our problem. “You can go to her mama’s work place, but it’s way over by the lake.”

  “Where by the lake?”

  “That big white house with the wheelbarrow full of flowers.”

  It was a house that we knew, having admired the large white wheelbarrow tilted down on spoked wheels and planted with seasonal flowers.

  “Ain’t that too far for you all to go walking?”

  Frieda scratched her knee.

  “Why don’t you wait for her? You can come up here. Want some pop?” Those rain-soaked eyes lit up, and her smile was full, not like the pinched and holding-back smile of other grown-ups.

  I moved to go up the stairs, but Frieda said, “No, ma’am, we ain’t allowed.”

  I was amazed at her courage, and frightened of her sassiness. The smile of the Maginot Line slipped. “Ain’t ’llowed?”

  “No’m.”

  “Ain’t ’llowed to what?”

  “Go in your house.”

  “Is that right?” The waterfalls were still. “How come?”

  “My mama said so. My mama said you ruined.”

  The waterfalls began to run again. She put the root-beer bottle to her lips and drank it empty. With a graceful movement of the wrist, a gesture so quick and small we never really saw it, only remembered it afterward, she tossed the bottle over the rail at us. It split at our feet, and shards of brown glass dappled our legs before we could jump back. The Maginot Line put a fat hand on one of the folds of her stomach and laughed. At first just a deep humming with her mouth closed, then a larger, warmer sound. Laughter at once beautiful and frightening. She let her head tilt sideways, closed her eyes, and shook her massive trunk, letting the laughter fall like a wash of red leaves all around us. Scraps and curls of the laughter followed us as we ran. Our breath gave out at the same time our legs did. After we rested against a tree, our heads on crossed forearms, I said, “Let’s go home.”

  Frieda was still angry—fighting, she believed, for her life. “No, we got to get it now.”

  “We can’t go all the way to the lake.”

  “Yes we can. Come on.”
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  “Mama gone get us.”

  “No she ain’t. Besides, she can’t do nothing but whip us.”

  That was true. She wouldn’t kill us, or laugh a terrible laugh at us, or throw a bottle at us.

  We walked down tree-lined streets of soft gray houses leaning like tired ladies…. The streets changed; houses looked more sturdy, their paint was newer, porch posts straighter, yards deeper. Then came brick houses set well back from the street, fronted by yards edged in shrubbery clipped into smooth cones and balls of velvet green.

  The lakefront houses were the loveliest. Garden furniture, ornaments, windows like shiny eyeglasses, and no sign of life. The backyards of these houses fell away in green slopes down to a strip of sand, and then the blue Lake Erie, lapping all the way to Canada. The orange-patched sky of the steel-mill section never reached this part of town. This sky was always blue.

  We reached Lake Shore Park, a city park laid out with rosebuds, fountains, bowling greens, picnic tables. It was empty now, but sweetly expectant of clean, white, well-behaved children and parents who would play there above the lake in summer before half-running, half-stumbling down the slope to the welcoming water. Black people were not allowed in the park, and so it filled our dreams.

  Right before the entrance to the park was the large white house with the wheelbarrow full of flowers. Short crocus blades sheathed the purple-and-white hearts that so wished to be first they endured the chill and rain of early spring. The walkway was flagged in calculated disorder, hiding the cunning symmetry. Only fear of discovery and the knowledge that we did not belong kept us from loitering. We circled the proud house and went to the back.