Paradise by Toni Morrison

activity was not meant to be reflected in a mirror that reflected in another. Most, set firmly into wall tile, had been painted. Bending to examine the mermaids holding up the tub, she noticed a handle fastened to a slab of wood surrounded by floor tile. She was able to reach and lift the handle, but not able to budge it.
    Suddenly she was fiercely hungry again and returned to the kitchen, to eat and do as the woman had asked: be a darling and watch while she slept—like an antique tripper afraid to come down alone. She was finished with the macaroni, some ham and another slice of cake when the woman on the floor stirred and sat up. She held her face in both hands for a moment, then rubbed her eyes.
    “Feel better?” asked Gigi.
    She took a pair of sunglasses from an apron pocket and put them on. “No. But rested.”
    “Well that
is
better.”
    The woman got up. “I suppose. Thank you—for staying.”
    “Sure. Hangover’s a bitch. I’m Gigi. Who died?”
    “A love,” said the woman. “I had two; she was the first and the last.”
    “Aw, I’m sorry,” Gigi said. “Where’s he taking her? The dude in the hearse.”
    “Far. To a lake named for her. Superior. That’s how she wanted it.”
    “Who else lives here? You didn’t cook all this food, did you?”
    The woman filled a saucepan with water and shook her head.
    “What you gonna do now?”
    “Gigi Gigi Gigi Gigi Gigi. That’s what frogs sing. What did your mother name you?”
    “Her? She gave me her own name.”
    “Well?”
    “Grace.”
    “Grace. What could be better?”
    Nothing. Nothing at all. If ever there came a morning when mercy and simple good fortune took to their heels and fled, grace alone might have to do. But from where would it come and how fast? In that holy hollow between sighting and following through, could grace slip through at all?
             
    It was the I-give woman serving up her breasts like two baked Alaskas on a platter that took all the kick out of looking in the boy’s eyes. Gigi watched him battle his stare and lose every time. He said his name was K.D. and tried hard to enjoy her face as much as her cleavage while he talked. It was a struggle she expected, rose to and took pleasure in—normally. But the picture she had wakened to an hour earlier spoiled it.
    Unwilling to sleep on the second floor where a person had just died, Gigi had chosen the leather sofa in the used-to-be-game-room office. Windowless, dependent on no longer available electricity for light, the room encouraged her to sleep deeply and long. She missed the morning entirely and woke in the afternoon, in a darkness hardly less than she’d fallen asleep in. Hanging on the wall in front of her was the etching she had barely glanced at when poking around the day before. Now it loomed into her line of vision in the skinny light from the hall. A woman. On her knees. A knocked-down look, cast-up begging eyes, arms outstretched holding up her present on a platter to a lord. Gigi tiptoed over and leaned close to see who was the woman with the I-give-up face. “Saint Catherine of Siena” was engraved on a small plaque in the gilt frame. Gigi laughed—brass dicks hidden in a box; pudding tits exposed on a plate—but in fact it didn’t feel funny. So when the boy she had seen in town the day before parked his car near the kitchen door and blew his horn, her interest in him had an edge of annoyance. Propped in the doorway she ate jam-covered bread while she listened to him and watched the war waged in his eyes.
    His smile was lovely and his voice attractive. “Been riding around looking all over for you. Heard you was out here. Thought you might be still.”
    “Who told you that?”
    “A friend. Well, a friend of a friend.”
    “You mean that hearse dude?”
    “Uh huh. Said you changed your mind about getting to the train station.”
    “News sure travels fast out here, even if nothing else does.”
    “We get around. Wanna go for a ride? Go as