Toni Morrison - Song of Solomon

And his father. An old man now, who acquired things and used people to acquire more things. As the son of Macon Dead the first, he paid homage to his own father’s life and death by loving what that father had loved: property, good solid property, the bountifulness of life. He loved these things to excess because he loved his father to excess. Owning, building, acquiring–that was his life, his future, his present, and all the history he knew. That he distorted life, bent it, for the sake of gain, was a measure of his loss at his father’s death.

As Milkman watched the children, he began to feel uncomfortable. Hating his parents, his sisters, seemed silly now. And the skim of shame that he had rinsed away in the bathwater after having stolen from Pilate returned. But now it was as thick and as tight as a caul. How could he have broken into that house–the only one he knew that achieved comfort without one article of comfort in it. No soft worn-down chair, not a cushion or a pillow. No light switch, no water running free and clear after a turn of a tap handle. No napkins, no tablecloth. No fluted plates or flowered cups, no circle of blue flame burning in a stove eye. But peace was there, energy, singing, and now his own remembrances.

His mind turned to Hagar and how he had treated her at the end. Why did he never sit her down and talk to her? Honestly. And what ugly thing was it he said to her the last time she tried to kill him? And God, how hollow her eyes had looked. He was never frightened of her; he never actually believed that she would succeed in killing him, or that she really wanted to. Her weapons, the complete lack of cunning or intelligence even of conviction, in her attacks were enough to drain away any fear. Oh, she could have accidentally hurt him, but he could have stopped her in any number of ways. But he hadn’t wanted to. He had used her—her love, her craziness—and most of all he had used her skulking, bitter vengeance. It made him a star, a celebrity in the Blood Bank; it told men and other women that he was one bad dude, that he had the power to drive a woman out of her mind, to destroy her, and not because she hated him, or because he had done some unforgivable thing to her, but because he had fucked her and she was driven wild by the absence of his magnificent joint. His hog’s gut, Lena had called it. Even the last time, he used her. Used her imminent arrival and feeble attempt at murder as an exercise of his will against hers—an ultimatum to the universe. “Die, Hagar, die.” Either this bitch dies or I do. And she stood there like a puppet strung up by a puppet master who had gone off to some other hobby.

O Solomon don’t leave me here.

The children were starting the round again. Milkman rubbed the back of his neck. Suddenly he was tired, although the morning was still new. He pushed himself away from the cedar and sank to his haunches.

Jay the only son of Solomon

Come booba yalle, come…

Everybody in this town is named Solomon, he thought wearily. Solomon’s General Store, Luther Solomon (no relation), Solomon’s Leap, and now the children were singing “Solomon don’t leave me” instead of “Sugarman.” Even the name of the town sounded like Solomon: Shalimar, which Mr. Solomon and everybody else pronounced Shalleemone.

Milkman’s scalp began to tingle. Jay the only son of Solomon? Was that Jake the only son of Solomon? Jake. He strained to hear the children. That was one of the people he was looking for. A man named Jake who lived in Shalimar, as did his wife, Sing.

He sat up and waited for the children to begin the verse again. “Come booba yalle, come booba tambee,” it sounded like, and didn’t make sense. But another line—“Black lady fell down on the ground”—was clear enough. There was another string of nonsense words, then “Threw her body all around.” Now the child in the center began whirling, spinning to lyrics sung in a different, faster tempo: “Solomon ’n’ Reiner Belali Shalut…”

Solomon again, and Reiner? Ryna? Why did the second name sound so familiar? Solomon and Ryna. The woods. The hunt. Solomon’s Leap and Ryna’s Gulch, places they went to or passed by that night they shot the bobcat. The gulch was where he heard that noise that sounded like a woman crying, which Calvin said came from Ryna’s Gulch, that there was an echo there that folks said was “a woman name Ryna” crying. You could hear her when the wind was right.

But what was the rest: Belali…Shalut…Yaruba? If Solomon and Ryna were names of people, the others might be also. The verse ended in another clear line. “Twenty-one children, the last one Jake!” And it was at the shout of Jake (who was also, apparently, “the only son of Solomon”) that the twirling boy stopped. Now Milkman understood that if the child’s finger pointed at nobody, missed, they started up again. But if it pointed directly to another child, that was when they fell to their knees and sang Pilate’s song.

Milkman took out his wallet and pulled from it his airplane ticket stub, but he had no pencil to write with, and his pen was in his suit. He would just have to listen and memorize it. He closed his eyes and concentrated while the children, inexhaustible in their willingness to repeat a rhythmic, rhyming action game, performed the round over and over again. And Milkman memorized all of what they sang.

Jake the only son of Solomon

Come booba yalle, come booba tambee

Whirled about and touched the sun

Come konka yalle, come konka tambee

Left that baby in a white man’s house

Come booba yalle, come booba tambee

Heddy took him to a red man’s house

Come konka yalle, come konka tambee

Black lady fell down on the ground

Come booba yalle booba tambee

Threw her body all around

Come konka yalle, come konka tambee

Solomon and Ryna Belali Shalut

Yaruba Medina Muhammet too.

Nestor Kalina Saraka cake.

Twenty-one children, the last one Jake!

O Solomon don’t leave me here

Cotton balls to choke me

O Solomon don’t leave me here

Buckra’s arms to yoke me

Solomon done fly, Solomon done gone

Solomon cut across the sky, Solomon gone home.

He almost shouted when he heard “Heddy took him to a red man’s house.” Heddy was Susan Byrd’s grandmother on her father’s side, and therefore Sing’s mother too. And “red man’s house” must be a reference to the Byrds as Indians. Of course! Sing was an Indian or part Indian and her name was Sing Byrd or, more likely, Sing Bird. No—Singing Bird! That must have been her name originally—Singing Bird. And her brother, Crowell Byrd, was probably Crow Bird, or just Crow. They had mixed their Indian names with American-sounding names. Milkman had four people now that he could recognize in the song: Solomon, Jake, Ryna and Heddy, and a veiled reference to Heddy’s Indianness. All of which seemed to put Jake and Sing together in Shalimar, just as Circe had said they were. He couldn’t be mistaken. These children were singing a story about his own people! He hummed and chuckled as he did his best to put it all together.

Jake’s father was Solomon. Did Jake whirl about and touch the sun? Did Jake leave a baby in a white man’s house? No. If the “Solomon don’t leave me” line was right, Solomon was the one who left, who “flew away”—meaning died or ran off—not Jake. Maybe it was the baby, or Jake himself, who was begging him to stay. But who was the “black lady” who fell down on the ground? Why did she throw her body all around? It sounded like she was having a fit. Was it because somebody took her baby first to a white man’s house, then to an Indian’s house? Ryna? Was Ryna the black lady still crying in the gulch? Was Ryna Solomon’s daughter? Maybe she had an illegitimate child, and her father—No. It’s Solomon she is crying for, not a baby. “Solomon don’t leave me.” He must have been her lover.

Milkman was getting confused, but he was as excited as a child confronted with boxes and boxes of presents under the skirt of a Christmas tree. Somewhere in the pile was a gift for him.

Yet there were many many missing pieces. Susan Byrd, he thought—she would have to know more than she had told him. Besides, he had to get his watch back.

He ran back to Solomon’s store and caught a glimpse of himself in the plate-glass window. He was grinning. His eyes were shining. He was as eager and happy as he had ever been in his life.

Chapter 13

It was a long time after he left, that warm September morning, that she was able to relax enough to drop the knife. When it clattered to the linoleum, she brought her arms down, oh, so slowly, and cradled her breasts as though they were two man-goes thumbed over in the marketplace and pushed aside. She stood that way in the little rented room with the sunshine pouring in until Guitar came home. He could not get her to speak or move, so he picked her up in his arms and carried her downstairs. He sat her on the bottom step while he went to borrow a car to drive her home.

Terrible as he thought the whole business was, and repelled as he was by mindlessness in love, he could not keep the deep wave of sorrow from engulfing him as he looked at this really rather pretty woman sitting straight as a pole, holding her breasts, and staring in front of her out of hollow eyes.

The engine of the old car he’d borrowed roared, but spoke softly to her. “You think because he doesn’t love you that you are worthless. You think because he doesn’t want you anymore that he is right–that his judgment and opinion of you are correct. If he throws you out, then you are garbage. You think he belongs to you because you want to belong to him. Hagar, don’t. It’s a bad word, ‘belong.’ Especially when you put it with somebody you love. Love shouldn’t be like that. Did you ever see the way the clouds love a mountain? They circle all around it; sometimes you can’t even see the mountain for the clouds. But you know what? You go up top and what do you see? His head. The clouds never cover the head. His head pokes through, because the clouds let him; they don’t wrap him up. They let him keep his head up high, free, with nothing to hide him or bind him. Hear me, Hagar?” He spoke to her as he would to a very young child. “You can’t own a human being. You can’t lose what you don’t own. Suppose you did own him. Could you really love somebody who was absolutely nobody without you? You really want somebody like that? Somebody who falls apart when you walk out the door? You don’t, do you? And neither does he. You’re turning over your whole life to him. Your whole life, girl. And if it means so little to you that you can just give it away, hand it to him, then why should it mean any more to him? He can’t value you more than you value yourself.” He stopped. She did not move or give any sign that she had heard him.

Pretty woman, he thought. Pretty little black-skinned woman. Who wanted to kill for love, die for love. The pride, the conceit of these doormat women amazed him. They were always women who had been spoiled children. Whose whims had been taken seriously by adults and who grew up to be the stingiest, greediest people on earth and out of their stinginess grew their stingy little love that ate everything in sight. They could not believe or accept the fact that they were unloved; they believed that the world itself was off balance when it appeared as though they were not loved. Why did they think they were so lovable? Why did they think their brand of love was better than, or even as good as, anybody else’s? But they did. And they loved their love so much they would kill anybody who got in its way.