Song of Solomon

by Toni Morrison

he was all gloom and golden eyes.

He had begun listening to his mother with the dulled ear of someone who was about to be conned and knew it.

She moved around the house, onto the porch, down the streets, to the fruit stalls and the butchershop, like a restless ghost, finding peace nowhere and in nothing.

Ruth heard the supplication in her words and it seemed to her that she was not looking at a person but at an impulse, a cell, a red corpuscle that neither knows nor understands why it is driven to spend its whole life in one pursuit: swimming up a dark tunnel toward the muscle of a heart or an eye’s nerve end that it both nourished and fed from.

while everything about her delighted him, nothing about her surprised him.

And her smile—an opening of flesh like celluloid dissolving under a drop of acid—was

Jay the only son of Solomon Come booba yalle, come booba tambee Whirl about and touch the sun Come booba yalle, come booba tambee…

Come booba yalle, come booba tambee Whirled about and touched the sun Come konka yalle, come konka tambee Left that baby in a white man’s house Come booba yalle, come booba tambee Heddy took him to a red man’s house Come konka yalle, come konka tambee Black lady fell down on the ground Come booba yalle booba tambee Threw her body all around