Free The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison Page B

Maureen Peal was not the Enemy and not worthy of such intense hatred. The
Thing
to fear was the
Thing
that made
her
beautiful, and not us.
    The house was quiet when we opened the door. The acrid smell of simmering turnips filled our cheeks with sour saliva.
    “Mama!”
    There was no answer, but a sound of feet. Mr. Henry shuffled part of the way down the stairs. One thick, hairless leg leaned out of his bathrobe.
    “Hello there, Greta Garbo; hello, Ginger Rogers.”
    We gave him the giggle he was accustomed to. “Hello, Mr. Henry. Where’s Mama?”
    “She went to your grandmaw’s. Left word for you to cut off the turnips and eat some graham crackers till she got back. They in the kitchen.”
    We sat in silence at the kitchen table, crumbling the crackers into anthills. In a little while Mr. Henry came back down the stairs. Now he had his trousers on under his robe.
    “Say. Wouldn’t you all like some cream?”
    “Oh, yes, sir.”
    “Here. Here’s a quarter. Gone over to Isaley’s and get yourself some cream. You been good girls, ain’t you?”
    His light-green words restored color to the day. “Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Henry. Will you tell Mama for us if she comes?”
    “Sure. But she ain’t due back for a spell.”
    Coatless, we left the house and had gotten all the way to the corner when Frieda said, “I don’t want to go to Isaley’s.”
    “What?”
    “I don’t want ice cream. I want potato chips.”
    “They got potato chips at Isaley’s.”
    “I know, but why go all that long way? Miss Bertha got potato chips.”
    “But I want ice cream.”
    “No you don’t, Claudia.”
    “I do too.”
    “Well, you go on to Isaley’s. I’m going to Miss Bertha’s.”
    “But you got the quarter, and I don’t want to go all the way up there by myself.”
    “Then let’s go to Miss Bertha’s. You like her candy, don’t you?”
    “It’s always stale, and she always runs out of stuff.”
    “Today is Friday. She orders fresh on Friday.”
    “And then that crazy old Soaphead Church lives there.”
    “So what? We’re together. We’ll run if he does anything at us.”
    “He scares me.”
    “Well, I don’t want to go up by Isaley’s. Suppose Meringue Pie is hanging around. You want to run into her, Claudia?”
    “Come on, Frieda. I’ll get candy.”
    Miss Bertha had a small candy, snuff, and tobacco store. One brick room sitting in her front yard. You had to peep in the door, and if she wasn’t there, you knocked on the door of her house in back. This day she was sitting behind the counter reading a Bible in a tube of sunlight.
    Frieda bought potato chips, and we got three Powerhouse bars for ten cents, and had a dime left. We hurried back home to sit under the lilac bushes on the side of the house. We always did our Candy Dance there so Rosemary could see us and get jealous. The Candy Dance was a humming, skipping, foot-tapping, eating, smacking combination that overtook us when we had sweets. Creeping between the bushes and the side of the house, we heard voices and laughter. We looked into the living-room window, expecting to see Mama. Instead we saw Mr. Henry and two women. In a playful manner, the way grandmothers do with babies, he was sucking the fingers of one of the women, whose laughter filled a tiny place over his head. The other woman was buttoning her coat. We knew immediately who they were, and our flesh crawled. One was China, and the other was called the Maginot Line. The back of my neck itched. These were the fancy women of the maroon nail polish that Mama and Big Mama hated. And in our house.
    China was not too terrible, at least not in our imaginations. She was thin, aging, absentminded, and unaggressive. But the Maginot Line. That was the one my mother said she “wouldn’t let eat out of one of her plates.” That was the one church women never allowed their eyes to rest on. That was the one who had killed people, set them on fire, poisoned them, cooked them in lye. Although I