Toni Morrison - Song of Solomon

“Did he?” Guitar asked.

“Did he? You know he did. You were laughing right along with the rest of us.”

Guitar glanced at him. “What you opening your nose for?”

“I know when I’m being put off.”

“Then that’s what it is, man. Nothing else. Maybe I don’t feel like discussing it.”

“You mean you don’t feel like discussing it with me. You were full of discussion in Tommy’s.”

“Look, Milk, we’ve been tight a long time, right? But that don’t mean we’re not different people. We can’t always think the same way about things. Can’t we leave it like that? There are all kinds of people in this world. Some are curious, some ain’t; some talk, some scream; some are kickers and other people are kicked. Take your daddy, now. He’s a kicker. First time I laid eyes on him, he was kicking us out of our house. That was a difference right there between you and me, but we got to be friends anyway….”

Milkman stopped and forced Guitar to stop too and turn around. “I know you’re not going to give me a bullshit lecture.”

“No lecture, man. I’m trying to tell you something.”

“Well, tell me. Don’t give me no fuckin bullshit lecture.”

“What do you call a lecture?” asked Guitar. “When you don’t talk for two seconds? When you have to listen to somebody else instead of talk? Is that a lecture?”

“A lecture is when somebody talks to a thirty-one-year-old man like he’s a ten-year-old kid.”

“You want me to talk or not?”

“Go ahead. Talk. Just don’t talk to me in that funny tone. Like you a teacher and I’m some snot-nosed kid.”

“That’s the problem, Milkman. You’re more interested in my tone than in what I’m saying. I’m trying to say that we don’t have to agree on everything; that you and me are different; that—”

“You mean you got some secret shit you don’t want me to know about.”

“I mean there are things that interest me that don’t interest you.”

“How you know they don’t interest me?”

“I know you. Been knowing you. You got your high-tone friends and your picnics on Honoré Island and you can afford to spend fifty percent of your brainpower thinking about a piece of ass. You got that red-headed bitch and you got a Southside bitch and no telling what in between.”

“I don’t believe it. After all these years you putting me down because of where I live?”

“Not where you live—where you hang out. You don’t live nowhere. Not Not Doctor Street or Southside.”

“You begrudge me—”

“I don’t begrudge you a thing.”

“You’re welcome everywhere I go. I’ve tried to get you to come to Honoré—”

“Fuck Honoré! You hear me? The only way I’ll go to that nigger heaven is with a case of dynamite and a book of matches.”

“You used to like it.”

“I never liked it! I went with you, but I never liked it. Never.”

“What’s wrong with Negroes owning beach houses? What do you want, Guitar? You mad at every Negro who ain’t scrubbing floors and picking cotton. This ain’t Montgomery, Alabama.”

Guitar looked at him, first in rage, and then he began to laugh. “You’re right, Milkman. You have never in your life said a truer word. This definitely is not Montgomery, Alabama. Tell me. What would you do if it was? If this turned out to be another Montgomery?”

“Buy a plane ticket.”

“Exactly. Now you know something about yourself you didn’t know before: who you are and what you are.”

“Yeah. A man that refuses to live in Montgomery, Alabama.”

“No. A man that can’t live there. If things ever got tough, you’d melt. You’re not a serious person, Milkman.”

“Serious is just another word for miserable. I know all about serious. My old man is serious. My sisters are serious. And nobody is more serious than my mother. She’s so serious, she wasting away. I was looking at her in the backyard the other day. It was as cold as a witch’s tit out there, but she had to get some bulbs in the ground before the fifteenth of December, she said. So there she was on her knees, digging holes in the ground.”

“So? I miss the point.”

“The point is that she wanted to put those bulbs in. She didn’t have to. She likes to plant flowers. She really likes it. But you should have seen her face. She looked like the unhappiest woman in the world. The most miserable. So where’s the fun? I’ve never in my whole life heard my mother laugh. She smiles sometimes, even makes a little sound. But I don’t believe she has ever laughed out loud.”

Without the least transition and without knowing he was going to, he began to describe to Guitar a dream he had had about his mother. He called it a dream because he didn’t want to tell him it had really happened, that he had really seen it.

He was standing at the kitchen sink pouring the rest of his coffee down the drain when he looked through the window and saw Ruth digging in the garden. She made little holes and tucked something that looked like a small onion in them. As he stood there, mindlessly watching her, tulips began to grow out of the holes she had dug. First a solitary thin tube of green, then two leaves opened up from the stem—one on each side. He rubbed his eyes and looked again. Now several stalks were coming out of the ground behind her. Either they were bulbs she had already planted or they had been in the sack so long they had germinated. The tubes were getting taller and taller and soon there were so many of them they were pressing up against each other and up against his mother’s dress. And still she didn’t notice them or turn around. She just kept digging. Some of the stems began to sprout heads, bloody red heads that bobbed over and touched her back. Finally she noticed them, growing and nodding and touching her. Milkman thought she would jump up in fear—at least surprise. But she didn’t. She leaned back from them, even hit out at them, but playfully, mischievously. The flowers grew and grew, until he could see only her shoulders above them and her flailing arms high above those bobbing, snapping heads. They were smothering her, taking away her breath with their soft jagged lips. And she merely smiled and fought them off as though they were harmless butterflies.

He knew they were dangerous, that they would soon suck up all the air around her and leave her limp on the ground. But she didn’t seem to guess this at all. Eventually they covered her and all he could see was a mound of tangled tulips bent low over her body, which was kicking to the last.

He described all of that to Guitar as though the dream emphasized his point about the dangers of seriousness. He tried to be as light-hearted as possible in the telling, but at the end, Guitar looked him in the eyes and said, “Why didn’t you go help her?”

“What?”

“Help her. Pull her out from underneath.”

“But she liked it. She was having fun. She liked it.”

“Are you sure?” Guitar was smiling.

“Sure I’m sure. It was my dream.”

“It was your mother too.”

“Aw, man, why you making something out of it that ain’t there? You’re making the whole thing into something superserious, just to prove your point. First I’m wrong for not living in Alabama. Then I’m wrong for not behaving right in my own dream. Now I’m wrong for dreaming it. You see what I mean? The least little thing is a matter of life and death to you. You’re getting to be just like my old man. He thinks if a paper clip is in the wrong drawer, I should apologize. What’s happening to everybody?”

“Looks like everybody’s going in the wrong direction but you, don’t it?”

Milkman swallowed. He remembered that long-ago evening after he hit his father how everybody was crammed on one side of the street, going in the direction he was coming from. Nobody was going his way. It was as though Guitar had been in that dream too.

“Maybe,” he said. “But I know where I’m going.”

“Where?”

“Wherever the party is.”

Guitar smiled. His teeth were as white as the snowflakes that were settling on his jacket. “Merry Christmas,” he said, “and Happy New Year.” He waved his hand and cut around the corner to his street. He was lost in the snowy shadows of Southside before Milkman could ask him where he was going or tell him to wait.

Now he closed the accounts book in Sonny’s Shop and gave up on the column of numbers. Something was happening to Guitar, had already happened to him. He was constantly chafing Milkman about how he lived, and that conversation was just one more example of how he’d changed. No more could Milkman run up the stairs to his room to drag him off to a party or a bar. And he didn’t want to talk about girls or getting high. Sports were about the only things he was still enthusiastic about, and music. Other than that, he was all gloom and golden eyes. And politics.

It was that atmosphere of earnestness he provoked that led Milkman to talking about his family more than he would normally do and that also led him to defend with flippant remarks the kind of life he led. Pussy and Honoré parties. Guitar knew that wasn’t all he was interested in, didn’t he? He knew Milkman had other interests. Such as? he asked himself. Well, he was very good in his father’s business, for one thing. Excellent, in fact. But he had to admit right away that real estate was of no real interest to him. If he had to spend the rest of his life thinking about rents and property, he’d lose his mind. But he was going to spend the rest of his life doing just that, wasn’t he? That’s what his father assumed and he supposed that was what he had assumed as well.

Maybe Guitar was right—partly. His life was pointless, aimless, and it was true that he didn’t concern himself an awful lot about other people. There was nothing he wanted bad enough to risk anything for, inconvenience himself for. Still, what right had Guitar to talk? He didn’t live in Montgomery either; all he did was work at that automobile factory and sneak off places—nobody knew where—and hang around Tommy’s Barbershop. He never kept a woman more than a few months—the time span that he said was average before she began to make “permanent-arrangement-type noises.”

He ought to get married, Milkman thought. Maybe I should too. Who? There were lots of women around and he was very much the eligible bachelor to the Honoré crowd. Maybe he’d pick one—the redhead. Get a nice house. His father would help him find one. Go into a real partnership with his father and…And what? There had to be something better to look forward to. He couldn’t get interested in money. No one had ever denied him any, so it had no exotic attraction. Politics—at least barbershop politics and Guitar’s brand—put him to sleep. He was bored. Everybody bored him. The city was boring. The racial problems that consumed Guitar were the most boring of all. He wondered what they would do if they didn’t have black and white problems to talk about. Who would they be if they couldn’t describe the insults, violence, and oppression that their lives (and the television news) were made up of? If they didn’t have Kennedy or Elijah to quarrel about? They excused themselves for everything. Every job of work undone, every bill unpaid, every illness, every death was The Man’s fault. And Guitar was becoming just like them—except he made no excuses for himself—just agreed, it seemed to Milkman, with every grievance he heard.

Milkman went into the bathroom, which served also as a pantry, and plugged in the hot plate to make himself some instant coffee. While he was there, he heard a rapid tapping on the windowpane. He stepped back into the office and saw Freddie’s eyes through the lettering. Milkman unlocked the door.

“Hey, Freddie. What’s up?”

“Looking for a warm spot. They got me runnin tonight. Christmas comin and all, all I do is run up and down the street.” Freddie’s janitor duties at the department store were supplemented by his function as a messenger and package deliverer.

“They give you a new truck yet?” Milkman asked him.

“You crazy? The engine have to fall out on the ground before they give me a decent one.”

“I put some coffee water on. Have a cup?”

“Just what I’m lookin for. Saw your lights and thought there’s got to be a hot cup a coffee in there. You wouldn’t happen to have a little taste to go in it, would ya?”

“Just so happens I do.”

“Atta boy.”

Milkman went into the bathroom, lifted the lid from the toilet tank, and took out the half-pint bottle he kept hidden from Macon, who wouldn’t have alcohol on the premises. He brought the bottle into the office, put it on the desk, and went back to make up two cups of coffee. When he reentered, Freddie was trying to look as though he hadn’t already turned the pint up to his mouth. They laced their coffee and Milkman looked around for his cigarettes.

“Hard times, boy,” Freddie said absently, after his first sip. “Hard times.” Then, as though he noticed something missing, he asked, “Where’s your buddy?”

“You mean Guitar?”

“Yeah. Guitar. Where’s he?”

“Haven’t seen him in a few days. You know Guitar. He’ll disappear on you in a minute.” Milkman noticed how white Freddie’s hair was.

“How old are you, Freddie?”

“Who knows? They made dirt in the morning and me that afternoon.” He giggled. “But I been around a long long time.”

“You born her?”

“Naw. Down south. Jacksonville, Florida. Bad country, boy. Bad, bad country. You know they ain’t even got an orphanage in Jacksonville where colored babies can go? They have to put ’em in jail. I tell people that talk about them sit-ins I was raised in jail, and it don’t scare me none.”

“I didn’t know you were an orphan.”

“Well, not a regular orphan. I had people and all, but my mama died and nobody would take me in. It was on account of the way she died that nobody would take me.”

“How’d she die?”

“Ghosts.”

“Ghosts?”

“You don’t believe in ghosts?”

“Well”—Milkman smiled—“I’m willing to, I guess.”

“You better believe, boy. They’re here.”

“Here?” Milkman didn’t glance around the office, but he wanted to. The wind howled outside in the blackness and Freddie, looking like a gnome, flashed his gold teeth. “I don’t mean in this room necessarily. Although they could be.” He cocked his head and listened. “No. I mean they in the world.”

“You’ve seen some?”

“Plenty. Plenty. Ghosts killed my mother. I didn’t see that, of course, but I seen ’em since.”

“Tell me about them.”

“No I ain’t. I don’t do no talkin ‘bout the ghosts I seen. They don’t like that.”

“Well, tell me about the one you didn’t see. The one killed your mother.”

“Oh. Well. That one. She was walking cross the yard with this neighbor friend of hers and they both looked up and saw a woman comin down the road. They stopped and waited to see who she was. When the woman got near, the neighbor called out howdy and soon’s she said the word, the woman turned into a white bull. Right before their eyes. My mama fell down on the ground in labor pain right then and there. When I was born and they showed me to her, she screamed and passed out. Never did come to. My father died two months before I was born, and they couldn’t get none of my people and nobody else to take a baby brought here by a white bull.”