The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison Page B

avoiding suicide only to punish the memory of some absent father or to sustain the misery of some silent mother. Except for Marie’s fabled love for Dewey Prince, these women hated men, all men, without shame, apology, or discrimination. They abused their visitors with a scorn grown mechanical from use. Black men, white men, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Jews, Poles, whatever—all were inadequate and weak, all came under their jaundiced eyes and were the recipients of their disinterested wrath. They took delight in cheating them. On one occasion the town well knew, they lured a Jew up the stairs, pounced on him, all three, held him up by the heels, shook everything out of his pants pockets, and threw him out of the window.
    Neither did they have respect for women, who, although not their colleagues, so to speak, nevertheless deceived their husbands—regularly or irregularly, it made no difference. “Sugar-coated whores,” they called them, and did not yearn to be in their shoes. Their only respect was for what they would have described as “good Christian colored women.” The woman whose reputation was spotless, and who tended to her family, who didn’t drink or smoke or run around. These women had their undying, if covert, affection. They would sleep with their husbands, and take their money, but always with a vengeance.
    Nor were they protective and solicitous of youthful innocence. They looked back on their own youth as a period of ignorance, and regretted that they had not made more of it. They were not young girls in whores’ clothing, or whores regretting their loss of innocence. They were whores in whores’ clothing, whores who had never been young and had no word for innocence. With Pecola they were as free as they were with each other. Marie concocted stories for her because she was a child, but the stories were breezy and rough. If Pecola had announced her intention to live the life they did, they would not have tried to dissuade her or voiced any alarm.
    “You and Dewey Prince have any children, Miss Marie?”
    “Yeah. Yeah. We had some.” Marie fidgeted. She pulled a bobby pin from her hair and began to pick her teeth. That meant she didn’t want to talk anymore.
    Pecola went to the window and looked down at the empty street. A tuft of grass had forced its way up through a crack in the sidewalk, only to meet a raw October wind. She thought of Dewey Prince and how he loved Miss Marie. What did love feel like? she wondered. How do grown-ups act when they love each other? Eat fish together? Into her eyes came the picture of Cholly and Mrs. Breedlove in bed. He making sounds as though he were in pain, as though something had him by the throat and wouldn’t let go. Terrible as his noises were, they were not nearly as bad as the no noise at all from her mother. It was as though she was not even there. Maybe that was love. Choking sounds and silence.
    Turning her eyes from the window, Pecola looked at the women.
    China had changed her mind about the bangs and was arranging a small but sturdy pompadour. She was adept in creating any number of hair styles, but each one left her with a pinched and harassed look. Then she applied makeup heavily. Now she gave herself surprised eyebrows and a cupid-bow mouth. Later she would make Oriental eyebrows and an evilly slashed mouth.
    Poland, in her sweet strawberry voice, began another song:

    I know a boy who is sky-soft brown
    I know a boy who is sky-soft brown
    The dirt leaps for joy when his feet touch the ground.
    His strut is a peacock
    His eye is burning brass
    His smile is sorghum syrup drippin’ slow-sweet to the last
    I know a boy who is sky-soft brown

    Marie sat shelling peanuts and popping them into her mouth. Pecola looked and looked at the women. Were they real? Marie belched, softly, purringly, lovingly.

Winter

             
    My daddy’s face is a study. Winter moves into it and presides there. His eyes become a cliff of snow threatening to