Tar Baby

  “I am being questioned by these people, as if, as if I could be called into question!”

  Jadine spoke. “Valerian, Ondine’s feelings were hurt. That’s all.”

  “By what, pray? By my removing a pair of thieves from my house?”

  “No, by not telling her,” said Margaret.

  “So what? All of a sudden I’m beholden to a cook for the welfare of two people she hated anyway? I don’t understand.”

  Ondine had been watching the exchanges with too bright eyes, chagrined by Margaret’s defense of her interests. Having caused all the trouble, now she was pretending that Ondine was the source of the dispute. “I may be a cook, Mr. Street, but I’m a person too.”

  “Mr. Street,” said Sydney, “my wife is as important to me as yours is to you and should have the same respect.”

  “More,” said Ondine. “I should have more respect. I am the one who cleans up her shit!”

  “Ondine!” Both Sydney and Valerian spoke at once.

  “This is impossible!” Valerian was shouting.

  “I’ll tell it,” said Ondine. “Don’t push me, I’ll tell it.”

  “Nanadine! Get hold of yourself!” Jadine pushed her chair back as though to rise.

  “I’ll tell it. She wants to meddle in my kitchen, fooling around with pies. And my help gets fired!”

  “Your kitchen? Your help?” Valerian was astonished.

  “Yes my kitchen and yes my help. If not mine, whose?”

  “You are losing your mind!” shouted Valerian.

  Ondine was fuming now. “The first time in her life she tries to boil water and I get slapped in the face. Keep that bitch out of my kitchen. She’s not fit to enter it. She’s no cook and she’s no mother.”

  Valerian stood up. “If you don’t leave this room I’ll…” It was the second time he ordered a dismissal and the second time it held no force.

  “What? You’ll what?” asked Ondine.

  “Leave!” said Valerian.

  “Make me,” said Ondine.

  “You don’t work here anymore,” he said.

  “Oh, yeah? Who’s going to feed you? Her?” She pointed up-table at Margaret. “You’ll be dead in a week! and lucky to be dead. And away from her.”

  Margaret picked up her glass and threw it. The Evian splashed on the cloth and some got on Ondine’s chiffon dress. As the others jumped up from their seats, Ondine slipped out of her zircon-studded shoes and raced around the table at the target of all her anger. The real target, who would not be riled until now when she got fed up with the name-calling and shot her water glass across the table. “Don’t you come near me!” Margaret shouted, but Ondine did and with the back of her hand slapped Margaret across the face.

  “Call the harbor!” shouted Valerian, but again there was no one to do his bidding. He had played a silly game, and everyone was out of place.

  Margaret touched her flaming cheek and then rose up from her chair like a red-topped geyser and grabbed Ondine’s braids, forced her head down to the table where she would have banged it except for the woman’s fist blows to her waist.

  It was Jadine and Son who managed to separate them. Sydney was shaking and saying, “O Lord O Lord.” Valerian was shaking and saying nothing—his evening eyes gone dawn with rage.

  Held tightly in the arms of Son, Ondine was shouting wildly, “You white freak! You baby killer! I saw you! I saw you! You think I don’t know what that apple pie shit is for?”

  Jadine had a hard time holding back Margaret, who was shouting, “Shut up! Shut up! You nigger! You nigger bitch! Shut your big mouth, I’ll kill you!”

  “You cut him up. You cut your baby up. Made him bleed for you. For fun you did it. Made him scream, you, you freak. You crazy white freak. She did,” Ondine addressed the others, still shouting. “She stuck pins in his behind. Burned him with cigarettes. Yes, she did, I saw her; I saw his little behind. She burned him!”

  Valerian held on to the table edge as though it were the edge of the earth. His face was truly white and his voice cracked a little as he asked, “Burned…who?”

  “Your son! Your precious Michael. When he was just a baby. A wee wee little bitty baby.” Ondine started to cry. “I used to hold him and pet him. He was so scared.” Her voice was hardly audible under the sobbing. “All the time scared. And he wanted her to stop. He wanted her to stop so bad. And every time she’d stop for a while, but then I’d see him curled up on his side, staring off. After a while—after a while he didn’t even cry. And she wants him home…for Christmas and apple pie. A little boy who she hurt so much he can’t even cry.”

  She broke down then and said no more. Sydney put his arms around her. Son let her arms go and picked up a table napkin so she could wipe her streaming eyes with it instead of with the backs and the palms of her hands. Sydney led her barefoot, her diadem braids turned into horns, away from the table. Margaret was standing as still and as straight as a pillar. There were tears in her eyes but her beautiful face was serene. They could hear Ondine’s cries all the way into the first kitchen and down the stairs to the apartment of second-hand furniture. “Yes my kitchen. Yes my kitchen. I am the woman in this house. None other. As God is my witness there is none other. Not in this house.”

  Margaret serene and lovely stared ahead at nobody. “I have always loved my son,” she said. “I am not one of those women in the National Enquirer.”

  “THAT WAS AWFUL, awful,” said Jadine. She was holding Son’s hand as they walked up the stairs. There had been no point in staying or even excusing themselves. Valerian was looking at Margaret and she was looking at nobody. So the two of them left as soon as Ondine and Sydney did. Jadine would not admit to herself that she was rattled, but her fingertips were ice-cold in Son’s hand. She wanted a little human warmth, some unsullied person to be near, someone to be with, so she took his hand without thinking about it and said, “That was awful!”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “What happened? We all went crazy. Do you think it’s true? What Nanadine said? She wouldn’t make up anything like that.” They were at Jadine’s bedroom door and went in. Still holding hands. In the center of the room, Jadine stopped, released his hand and turned to face him. She pressed her fingers together in front of her lips. “Awful,” she said frowning, looking at the floor.

  “Don’t think about it. It’s over.”

  Jadine put her head on his chest. “It’s not over. They’re fired for sure. Tomorrow will be terrible. God, how can I wake up in the morning and face that? I won’t be able to sleep at all. Maybe I should go down and see about her?”

  “Ondine?”

  “Yes.”

  “Leave her alone with Sydney. You shouldn’t bother them now.”

  “I wish I could figure it out, what got into everybody.” Son put his arm around her; she was like a bird in the crook of his arm. “What does it mean?” She closed her eyes.

  “It means,” he said, talking into her hair, “that white folks and black folks should not sit down and eat together.”

  “Oh, Son.” Jadine looked up at him and smiled a tiny smile.

  “It’s true,” he said. “They should work together sometimes, but they should not eat together or live together or sleep together. Do any of those personal things in life.”

  She put her head back into his shirt front. “What’ll we do now?”

  “Sleep,” he said.

  “I can’t sleep. It was so ugly. Did you see the faces?”

  Son kissed her cheek, bending his neck down low.

  “It’s true, isn’t it? She stuck pins into Michael, and Ondine knew it and didn’t tell anybody all this time. Why didn’t she tell somebody?”

  “She’s a good servant, I guess, or maybe she didn’t want to lose her job.” He kissed the other cheek.

  “I always wondered why she hated Margaret so. Every time she could she would jab at her.”

  “Sleep,” he said, and kissed her eyelids. “You need sleep.”


  “Will you sleep with me?” she asked.

  “I will,” he said.

  “I mean really sleep. I’m not up to anything else.”

  “I’ll sleep.”

  “You sure? It was terrible, Son. Terrible. I don’t want to think about it, but I know I will and I don’t want to do it alone.”

  “I know. I’ll stay with you. You sleep and I’ll watch you.”

  Jadine stepped back from him. “Oh, the hell with it. You won’t. You’ll start something and I’m not up to it.”

  “Relax. Stop imagining things. You want somebody to be with tonight, so I’ll do it. Don’t complicate it.”

  “You start something and I’ll throw you out.”

  “All right. Take off your dress and get in the bed.”

  Jadine folded her arms behind her and unzipped the top part of her dress. He reached behind her and pulled it the rest of the way down. Jadine stepped out of it and sat down on the bed. “No foolishness, Son. I’m serious.” Her voice sounded small and tired.

  “So am I,” he said, and began unbuttoning his shirt. Jadine sat on the bed and watched him. Then, for the first time, she saw his huge hands. One hand alone was big enough for two. A finger spread that could reach from hither to yon. The first time she had been aware of his hands they were clasped over his head under Sydney’s gun, so she had not really seen them. The second time was at the beach when he touched the bottom of her foot with one finger. She had not looked then either, only felt that fingerprint in the arch of her sole. Now she could not help looking, seeing those hands large enough to sit down in. Large enough to hold your whole head. Large enough, maybe, to put your whole self into.

  “I hope you are serious,” she said. She left her panties on and got under the sheet. Son undressed completely and Jadine shot him a quick look to see if he had an erection.

  “Look at you,” she said. “You’re going to meddle me and all I want is rest.”

  “Be quiet,” he said. “I’m not meddling you. I can’t control that, but I can control whether I meddle you.” He walked to the bed and got in next to her.

  “Well, how am I supposed to sleep with you taking up half the sheet in that tent?”

  “Don’t think about it and it’ll go away.”

  “I’ll bet. You sound like a character in those blue comics.”

  “Hush.”

  Jadine turned round on her stomach and then her side, with her back to him. After a silence during which she listened for but could not hear his breathing, she said, “Have you slept with anybody since you jumped ship?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have?” She raised her head. “Who? I mean where?”

  “In town.”

  “Oh ho.” She put her head back on the pillow. “Who?”

  “Can’t remember her name.”

  “Men. Why can’t you remember her name? Didn’t Yardman tell you her name?”

  “Gideon.”

  “Gideon. Didn’t he introduce you?”

  “Go to sleep, Jadine.”

  “I can’t. I’m tired, but not sleepy.”

  “You’re agitated. Calm down.”

  “You won’t bother me? I don’t want to wrestle.”

  “I won’t bother you. I’ll just be here while you sleep, just like I said I would.”

  “I’m not up to any fucking.”

  “For somebody who’s not up to it, you sure bring it up a lot.”

  “I know what’s going to happen. I’ll fall asleep and then I’ll feel something cold on my thigh.”

  “Nothing cold is going to be on your thigh.”

  “I just don’t want to fuck, that’s all.”

  “I didn’t ask you to, did I? If I wanted to make love, I’d ask you.”

  “I didn’t say make love, I said—”

  “I know what you said.”

  “You don’t like me to use that word, do you? Men.”

  “Go to sleep. Nobody’s talking about fucking or making love but you.”

  “Admit it. You don’t like me to say fuck.”

  “No.”

  “Hypocrite.”

  Son thought he must have had this conversation two million times. It never varied, this dance. Except when you paid your money and there was no seduction involved. Free stuff was always a pain in the ass, and it annoyed him that this conversation should be taking place with this sponge-colored girl with mink eyes whom he was certain he could not live in the world without. He wished she would either fall asleep, throw him out or jump him. “Listen,” he said, “I’m not a hypocrite. Whatever you call it, I’m not doing it.”

  “What do you call it?” Jadine turned over and lay on her back.

  “I don’t call it anything. I don’t have the language for it.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just don’t. It’s not love-making and it’s not fucking.”

  “If it’s not making love, it’s because you don’t love me and you said at the beach that you did.”

  “I said that because I don’t know how else to say it. If I had another way, I’d have used it. Whatever I want to do to you—that’s not it.”

  “What do you want to do to me? I mean if you had the language what would you do?”

  “I’d make you close your eyes,” he said, and when he didn’t add anything Jadine raised up on her elbows.

  “Is that all?”

  “Then I’d ask you what you saw.”

  She lay back down. “I don’t see anything.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Not even the dark?”

  “Oh, yes, that.”

  “Is it all dark? Nothing else? No lights moving around? No stars? No moon?”

  “No. Nothing. Just black.”

  “Imagine something. Something that fits in the dark. Say the dark is the sky at night. Imagine something in it.”

  “A star?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t. I can’t see it.”

  “Okay. Don’t try to see it. Try to be it. Would you like to know what it’s like to be one? Be a star?”

  “A movie star?”

  “No, a star star. In the sky. Keep your eyes closed, think about what it feels like to be one.” He moved over to her and kissed her shoulder. “Imagine yourself in that dark, all alone in the sky at night. Nobody is around you. You are by yourself, just shining there. You know how a star is supposed to twinkle? We say twinkle because that is how it looks, but when a star feels itself, it’s not a twinkle, it’s more like a throb. Star throbs. Over and over and over. Like this. Stars just throb and throb and throb and sometimes, when they can’t throb anymore, when they can’t hold it anymore, they fall out of the sky.”

  7

  THE BLACK GIRLS in New York City were crying and their men were looking neither to the right nor to the left. Not because they were heedless, or intent on what was before them, but they did not wish to see the crying, crying girls split into two parts by their tight jeans, screaming at the top of their high, high heels, straining against the pull of their braids and the fluorescent combs holding their hair. Oh, their mouths were heavy with plum lipstick and their eyebrows were a thin gay line, but nothing could stop their crying and nothing could persuade their men to look to the right or look to the left. They stoked their cocks into bikini underwear and opened their shirts to their tits. But they walked on tippy-toe through the streets looking straight ahead, and Son looked in vain for children. He couldn’t find them anywhere. There were short people and people under twelve years of age, but they had no child’s vulnerability, no unstuck laughter. They cracked into the M2 bus like terrified bison running for their lives, for fear the school at their backs would grab them and eat them up one more time. It wasn’t until he caught the downtown A that he saw what they had done with their childhood. They had wrapped it in dark cloth, sneaked it underground and thrown it all over the trains. Like blazing jewels, the subway cars burst from the tunnels to the platforms shining
with the recognizable artifacts of childhood: fantasy, magic, ego, energy, humor and paint. They had taken it all underground. Pax and Stay High and the Three Yard Boys. Teen, P-Komet and Popeye. He sat on a bench at the Fifty-ninth Street station watching the childhood flash by. Now all he needed to know was where were the old people. Where were the Thérèses and Gideons of New York? They were not on the subways and they were not in the street. Perhaps they were all in kennels. That must be the reason the men walked that way—on tippy-toe looking neither to the right nor to the left. The old people were in kennels and childhood was underground. But why were all the black girls crying on buses, in Red Apple lines, at traffic lights and behind the counters of Chemical Bank? Crying from a grief so stark you would have thought they’d been condemned to death by starvation in the lobby of Alice Tully Hall. Death by starvation in Mikell’s, death by starvation on the campus of C.U.N.Y. And death by starvation at the reception desks of large corporations. It depressed him, all that crying, for it was silent and veiled by plum lipstick and the thin gay lines over their eyes. Who did this to you? Who has done this thing to you? he wondered, as he walked down Columbus Avenue looking first to the right and then to the left. The street was choked with beautiful males who had found the whole business of being black and men at the same time too difficult and so they’d dumped it. They had snipped off their testicles and pasted them to their chests; they put the weighty wigs Alma Estée dreamed of on their heads and feathery eyelashes on their eyes. They flung sharp hips away to the right and away to the left and smiled sweetly at the crying girls and the men on tippy-toe. Only the Hilton whores seemed to him quiet and feeling no pain. He had tried a little television that first day, but the black people in whiteface playing black people in blackface unnerved him. Even their skin had changed through the marvel of color TV. A gray patina covered them all and they were happy. Really happy. Even without looking at their gray, no-color faces, the sound of their televised laughter was enough to tell him so. Different laughter from what he remembered it to be—without irony or defiance or genuine amusement. Now all he heard were shrieks of satisfaction. It made him shiver. How long had he been gone, anyway? If those were the black folks he was carrying around in his heart all those years, who on earth was he? The trouble he’d had the night he checked in was representative of how estranged he felt from these new people. The Hickey Freeman suit passed muster easily enough, and he wadded Jadine’s four hundred dollars in his fist as he approached the desk. The clerk was about to give him a very hard time because no, he would not be paying with a credit card, and no, no check either. Cash. Two nights. Cash. Son had chosen that line to wait in because the clerk’s little pecan-pie face looked friendly; now he realized the boy was in love with his identification badge. Son was surprised at himself. He seldom misjudged people. He thought the love thing with Jadine must have thrown his sensibilities off, derailed his judgment, so he leaned toward the clerk and whispered, “Brother, do you want to get home tonight? This ain’t your fuckin hotel.” But now he thought it was less an error in judgment than it was being confronted with a whole new race of people he was once familiar with.