Toni Morrison - Song of Solomon

They looked and saw the sky stretching back behind the houses and the trees. “That’s the same color,” she said, as if she had discovered something important. “Same color as my mama’s ribbons. I’d know her ribbon color anywhere, but I don’t know her name. After she died Papa wouldn’t let anybody say it. Well, before we could get the sand rubbed out of our eyes and take a good look around, we saw him sitting there on a stump. Right in the sunlight. We started to call him but he looked on off, like he was lookin at us and not lookin at us at the same time. Something in his face scared us. It was like looking at a face under water. Papa got up after a while and moved out of the sun on back into the woods. We just stood there looking at the stump. Shaking like leaves.”

Pilate scraped the eggshells together into a little heap, her fingers fanning out over and over again in a gentle sweeping. The boys watched, afraid to say anything lest they ruin the next part of her story, and afraid to remain silent lest she not go on with its telling.

“Shaking like leaves,” she murmured, “just like leaves.”

Suddenly she lifted her head and made a sound like a hoot owl. “Ooo! Here I come!”

Neither Milkman nor Guitar saw or heard anyone approaching, but Pilate jumped up and ran toward the door. Before she reached it, a foot kicked it open and Milkman saw the bent back of a girl. She was dragging a large five-bushel basket of what looked like brambles, and a woman was pushing the other side of it, saying, “Watch the doorsill, baby.”

“I got it,” the girl answered. “Push.”

“About time,” said Pilate. “The light be gone before you know it.”

“Tommy’s truck broke down,” the girl said, panting. When the two had managed to get the basket into the room, the girl stretched her back and turned around, facing them. But Milkman had no need to see her face; he had already fallen in love with her behind.

“Hagar.” Pilate looked around the room. “This here’s your brother, Milkman. And this is his friend. What’s your name again, pretty?”

“Guitar.”

“Guitar? You play any?” she asked.

“That ain’t her brother, Mama. They cousins.” The older woman spoke.

“Same thing.”

“No it ain’t. Is it, baby?”

“No,” said Hagar. “It’s different.”

“See there. It’s different.”

“Well, what is the difference, Reba? You know so much.”

Reba looked at the ceiling. “A brother is a brother if you both got the same mother or if you both—”

Pilate interrupted her. “I mean what’s the difference in the way you act toward ’em? Don’t you have to act the same way to both?”

“That’s not the point, Mama.”

“Shut up, Reba. I’m talking to Hagar.”

“Yes, Mama. You treat them both the same.”

“Then why they got two words for it ‘stead of one, if they ain’t no difference?” Reba put her hands on her hips and opened her eyes wide.

“Pull that rocker over here,” said Pilate. “You boys have to give up your seats unless you gonna help.”

The women circled the basket, which was full of blackberries still on their short, thorny branches.

“What we have to do?” Guitar asked.

“Get them little berries off them hateful branches without popping’em. Reba, get that other crock.”

Hagar looked around, all eyes and hair. “Why don’t we pull a bed out the back room? Then we can all sit down.”

“Floor’s good enough for me,” said Pilate, and she squatted down on her haunches and lifted a branch gently from the basket. “This all you got?”

“No.” Reba was side-rolling a huge crock. “Two more outside.”

“Better bring them in. Draw too many flies out there.”

Hagar started for the door and motioned to Milkman. “Come on, brother. You can help.”

Milkman jumped up, knocking his chair backward, and trotted after Hagar. She was, it seemed to him, as pretty a girl as he’d ever seen. She was much much older than he was. She must be as old as Guitar, maybe even seventeen. He seemed to be floating. More alive than he’d ever been, and floating. Together he and Hagar dragged two baskets up the porch stairs and into the house. She was as strong and muscular as he was.

“Careful, Guitar. Go slow. You keep on busting ’em.”

“Leave him alone, Reba. He got to get the feel first. I asked you did you play any. That why they call you Guitar?”

“Not cause I do play. Because I wanted to. When I was real little. So they tell me.”

“Where’d you ever see a guitar?”

“It was a contest, in a store down home in Florida. I saw it when my mother took me downtown with her. I was just a baby. It was one of those things where you guess how many beans in the big glass jar and you win a guitar. I cried for it, they said. And always asked about it.”

“You should of called Reba. She’d get it for you.”

“No, you couldn’t buy it. You had to give the number of jellybeans.”

“I heard you. Reba would of known how many. Reba wins things. She ain’t never lost nothing.”

“Really?” Guitar smiled, but he was doubtful. “She lucky?”

“Sure I’m lucky.” Reba grinned. “People come from everywhere to get me to stand in for ’em at drawings and give them numbers to play. It works pretty well for them, and it always works for me. I win everything I try to win and lots of things I don’t even try to win.”

“Got to where won’t nobody sell her a raffle ticket. They just want her to hold theirs.”

“See this?” Reba put her hand down in the top of her dress and pulled out a diamond ring attached to a string. “I won this last year. I was the … what was it, Mama?”

“Five hundred thousandth.”

“Five hundred…no it wasn’t. That ain’t what they said.”

“Half a million is what they said.”

“That’s right. The half a millionth person to walk into Sears and Roebuck.” Her laughter was gay and proud.

“They didn’t want to give it to her,” said Hagar, “cause she looked so bad.”

Guitar was astonished. “I remember that contest, but I don’t remember hearing nothing ’bout no colored person winning it.” Guitar, a habitual street roamer, believed he knew every public thing going on in the city.

“Nobody did. They had picture-taking people and everything waiting for the next person to walk in the door. But they never did put my picture in the paper. Me and Mama looked, too, didn’t we?” She glanced at Pilate for confirmation and went on. “But they put the picture of the man who won second prize in. He won a war bond. He was white.”

“Second prize?” Guitar asked. “What kind of ‘second prize’? Either you the half-millionth person or you ain’t. Can’t be no next-to-the-half-millionth.”

“Can if the winner is Reba,” Hagar said. “The only reason they got a second was cause she was the first. And the only reason they gave it to her was because of them cameras.”

“Tell ’em why you was in Sears, Reba.”

“Looking for a toilet.” Reba threw her head back to let the laughter escape. Her hands were stained with blackberry juice, and when she wiped the tears from her eyes she streaked the purple from her nose to her cheekbone. Much lighter than Pilate or Hagar, Reba had the simple eyes of an infant. All of them had a guileless look about them, but complication and something more lurked behind Pilate’s and Hagar’s faces. Only Reba, with her light pimply skin and deferential manner, looked as though her simplicity might also be vacuousness.

“Ain’t but two toilets downtown they let colored in: Mayflower Restaurant and Sears. Sears was closer. Good thing nature wasn’t in a hurry. They kept me there fifteen minutes gettin my name and address to send the diamond over to me. But I wouldn’t let ’em send it to me. I kept asking them, Is this a real contest? I don’t believe you.”

“It was worth a diamond ring to get you out of there. Drawing a crowd and getting ready to draw flies,” said Hagar.

“What’re you going to do with the ring?” Milkman asked her.

“Wear it. Seldom I win something I like.”

“Everything she win, she give away,” Hagar said.

“To a man,” said Pilate.

“She don’t never keep none of it….”

“That’s what she want to win—a man….”

“Worse’n Santa Claus….”

“Funny kind of luck ain’t no luck at all….”

“ He comes just once a year….”

Hagar and Pilate pulled the conversation apart, each yanking out some thread of comment more to herself than to Milkman or Guitar—or even Reba, who had dropped her ring back inside her dress and was smiling sweetly, and deftly separating the royal-purple berries from their twigs.

Milkman was five feet seven then but it was the first time in his life that he remembered being completely happy. He was with his friend, an older boy—wise and kind and fearless. He was sitting comfortably in the notorious wine house; he was surrounded by women who seemed to enjoy him and who laughed out loud. And he was in love. No wonder his father was afraid of them.

“When will this wine be ready?” he asked.

“This batch? Few weeks,” Pilate said.

“You gonna let us have some?” Guitar smiled.

“Sure. You want some now? Plenty wine in the cellar.”

“I don’t want that. I want some of this. Some of the wine I made.”

“You think you made this?” Pilate laughed at him. “You think this all there is to it? Picking a few berries?”

“Oh.” Guitar scratched his head. “I forgot. We got to mash them in our bare feet.”

“Feet? Feet?” Pilate was outraged. “Who makes wine with they feet?”

“Might taste good, Mama,” said Hagar.

“Couldn’t taste no worse,” Reba said.

“Your wine any good, Pilate?” asked Guitar.

“Couldn’t tell you.”

“Why not?”

“Never tasted it.”

Milkman laughed. “’t even taste?”

“Folks don’t buy it for the taste. Buy it to get drunk.”

Reba nodded. “Used to anyway. Ain’t buying nothing now.”

“Don’t nobody want no cheap home brew. The Depression’s over,” Hagar said. “Everybody got work now. They can afford to buy Four Roses.”

“Plenty still buy,” Pilate told her.

“Where you get the sugar for it?” Guitar asked.

“Black market,” said Reba.

“What ‘plenty’? Tell the truth, Mama. If Reba hadn’t won that hundred pounds of groceries, we’d have starved last winter.”

“Would not.” Pilate put a fresh piece of twig in her mouth.

“We would have.”

“Hagar, don’t contradict your mama,” Reba whispered.

“Who was gonna feed us?” Hagar was insistent. “Mama can go for months without food. Like a lizard.”

“Lizard live that long without food?” asked Reba.

“Girl, ain’t nobody gonna let you starve. You ever had a hungry day?” Pilate asked her granddaughter.

“Course she ain’t,” said her mother.

Hagar tossed a branch to the heap on the floor and rubbed her fingers. The tips were colored a deep red. “Some of my days were hungry ones.”

With the quickness of birds, the heads of Pilate and Reba shot up. They peered at Hagar, then exchanged looks.

“Baby?” Reba’s voice was soft. “You been hungry, baby? Why didn’t you say so?” Reba looked hurt. “We get you anything you want, baby. Anything. You been knowing that.”

Pilate spit her twig into the palm of her hand. Her face went still. Without those moving lips her face was like a mask. It seemed to Milkman that somebody had just clicked off a light. He looked at the faces of the women. Reba’s had crumpled. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. Pilate’s face was still as death, but alert as though waiting for some signal. Hagar’s profile was hidden by her hair. She leaned forward, her elbows on her thighs, rubbing fingers that looked bloodstained in the lessening light. Her nails were very very long.