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by Toni Morrison

The trick of imitating semi-coma, like playing dead facedown in a muddy battlefield, was to concentrate on a single neutral object. Something that would smother any random hint of life. Ice, he thought, a cube of it, an icicle, an ice-crusted pond, or a frosted landscape. No. Too much emotion attached to frozen hills. Fire, then? Never. Too active. He would need something that stirred no feelings, encouraged no memory—sweet or shameful. Just searching for such an item was agitating. Everything reminded him of something loaded with pain.

Maniac moonlight doing the work of absent stars matched his desperate frenzy, lighting his hunched shoulders and footprints left in the snow.

as soon as Lily shut the door behind him, in spite of the seriousness of his mission his anxiety became unmanageable. He bought a few shots to steady himself for the long trip. When he left the bar, anxiety did leave but so did sanity. Back was the free-floating rage, the self-loathing disguised as somebody else’s fault.

Listen here, you from Georgia and you been in a desegregated army and maybe you think up North is way different from down South. Don’t believe it and don’t count on it. Custom is just as real as law and can be just as dangerous.

The abused couple whispered to each other, she softly, pleadingly, he with urgency. He will beat her when they get home, thought Frank. And who wouldn’t? It’s one thing to be publicly humiliated. A man could move on from that. What was intolerable was the witness of a woman, a wife, who not only saw it, but had dared to try to rescue—rescue!—him. He couldn’t protect himself and he couldn’t protect her either, as the rock in her face proved. She would have to pay for that broken nose. Over and over again.

You don’t know what heat is until you cross the border from Texas to Louisiana in the summer. You can’t come up with words that catch it. Trees give up. Turtles cook in their shells. Describe that if you know how.

A mean grandmother is one of the worst things a girl could have. Mamas are supposed to spank and rule you so you grow up knowing right from wrong. Grandmothers, even when they’ve been hard on their own children, are forgiving and generous to the grandchildren. Ain’t that so?

In the kitchen, Sarah removed three melons from a peck basket. She caressed one slowly, then another. “Males,” she snorted. Cee lifted the third one, then stroked its lime-yellow peel, tucking her forefinger into the tiny indentation at the stem break. “Female,” she laughed. “This one’s a female.” “Well, hallelujah.” Sarah joined Cee’s laughter with a low chuckle. “Always the sweetest.” “Always the juiciest,” echoed Cee. “Can’t beat the girl for flavor.” “Can’t beat her for sugar.” Sarah slid a long, sharp knife from a drawer and, with intense anticipation of the pleasure to come, cut the girl in two.

the fathers didn’t care about Mrs. K.’s services, nor did the mothers. Teenagers had to learn somewhere and a local widow who didn’t want their husbands was more of a boon than a sin. Besides, their own daughters were safer that way. Mrs. K. did not solicit or charge. Apparently she occasionally satisfied herself (and teenage boys) when her appetite sharpened. Besides, nobody styled hair better.

She had seemed relieved at his departure. And, truth be told, so was he. He was now convinced his attachment to her was medicinal, like swallowing aspirin. Effectively, whether she knew it or not, Lily displaced his disorder, his rage and his shame. The displacements had convinced him the emotional wreckage no longer existed. In fact, it was biding its time.

It was so bright, brighter than he remembered. The sun, having sucked away the blue from the sky, loitered there in a white heaven, menacing Lotus, torturing its landscape, but failing, failing, constantly failing to silence it: children still laughed, ran, shouted their games; women sang in their backyards while pinning wet sheets on clotheslines; occasionally a soprano was joined by a neighboring alto or a tenor just passing by. “Take me to the water. Take me to the water. Take me to the water. To be baptized.”

Cee was different. Two months surrounded by country women who loved mean had changed her. The women handled sickness as though it were an affront, an illegal, invading braggart who needed whipping. They didn’t waste their time or the patient’s with sympathy and they met the tears of the suffering with resigned contempt.

“Come on, girl. Don’t cry,” whispered Frank. “Why not? I can be miserable if I want to. You don’t need to try and make it go away. It shouldn’t go away. It’s just as sad as it ought to be and I’m not going to hide from what’s true just because it hurts.”