Tar Baby by Toni Morrison Page B

poignant but not happy. Long ago she had given up trying to be deft or profound or anything in the company of people she was not interested in, who didn’t thrill her. Gazing at her stem of crystal she knew that whatever he was saying, her response was going to miss the point entirely. Her mind was in automatic park. She played with the little bit of port, gently swirling it around the well of her glass. “Sunday,” he was saying with the bell-full voice of ownership like “in the land” or “the whole of London” or “
tout
Paris.” He had a smile like Sunday. His Sunday. She wondered what Sunday was to this tall, thin man with eyes like the gloaming. Light? Warmth? A drawing room full of flowers? He was pouring himself a fifth glass of wine, too morose, too preoccupied with Sundays to think of offering her more. The peaches and walnuts were quiet in their silver bowls. She took a cigarette from a crystal cigarette holder. Next to it lay a round matchbox patterned like an Indian carpet. Inside were tiny white matchsticks with speckled gold heads that exploded with a hiss when struck. Three months, no two, and the quiet to which the house succumbed at night still disturbed her. Sunset, three minutes of Titian blue, and deep night. And with it a solid earthbound silence. No crickets, no frogs, no mosquitoes up here. Only the sounds, heard or imagined, that humans made. The hiss of a gold-headed match; the short cascade of wine into a goblet; the faint, very faint, click and clatter of the kitchen being tidied, and now a scream so loud and full of terror it woke the maiden aunts from their sleep in the corners of the room. And when they saw those blue-if-it’s-a-boy blue eyes gone white with fear, they fled, pulling their maiden hair behind them.
    She stood in the doorway screaming, first at Valerian and then at Jadine, who rushed to her side.
    “What? What? What is it?”
    But she would not stop. She just balled her beautiful hands into fists and pummeled her own temples, screaming louder. Valerian stared through port-softened eyes at his wife as though he, not she, were in pain.
    “What is it, Margaret?” Jadine put her arm around her shoulders. Sydney and Ondine both burst through the other door.
    “What’s the matter?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “She hurt herself?”
    “I don’t
know.
”
    “Hold her hands or she will.”
    “What is it? What happened?”
    Then Ondine, fed up, shouted, “Speak, woman!” and Margaret sank to her knees gasping for the breath with which to whisper the words: “In my closet. In my closet.”
    “Her what?”
    “Her closet. Something’s in her closet.”
    “What’s in your closet?”
    “Black,” she whispered, her eyes shut tight.
    Jadine dropped to her knees and leaned close to Margaret’s face. “You mean it’s dark in your closet?”
    Margaret shook her head and put the back of her fist in her mouth.
    Then Valerian spoke for the first time since she had come screaming into the room. “Margaret, this is not the Met. It’s a simple house on a simple island. Michael’s not even here yet…”
    But she was screaming again and Jadine had to shout, “Tell me! Tell me!”
    “In my things!” said Margaret. “In all my things!”
    “What’s she saying?”
    “Go look in her closet.”
    “Take the gun, Sydney.” Ondine was the ranking officer, barking instructions.
    “Right!” he answered, and ran back through the door to the kitchen.
    “And be careful!” Ondine shouted after him.
    “Hadn’t I better call the harbor, Valerian?” asked Jadine.
    “Don’t leave me!” shrieked Margaret.
    “All right. All right. Nanadine, give her some of that wine.”
    “Maybe she’s had enough of that.”
    “No. She drank hardly anything.”
    “I heard her slam up the stairs in the middle of my dinner,” said Ondine. “Between then and now she could have killed a quart.” Ondine spoke without moving her lips hoping it was enough to keep Valerian from