"Recitatif" by Toni Morrison, Part 1

Jä nyt meillä on linjoilla VR-espoista. Sinä onnistuit naarmuttamaan äitiisi auttaa. Siis mahuumaisin, että mun punainen kynsilahkan juuri samaa sävyä kuin mutsin auta. Mikä itse ääkää? Haika hyvät säkää. Täivän auttaa vähän hetken tarjoa if joka auttaa paljon. Sinulle, joka haluat liikunta elämyksiä, aloitan nyt harjoittelu kuntokeskus eliksijassa ja treinaa, että kolme kuukautta puoleen hintaan, katsokampana äidot, eli tosaites eliksijapistefi, kiikstartin kludit. Katsokampana äidot, että minä on tullut tehty. Katsokampana äidot, että minä on tullut tehty, että minä on tullut tehty, että minä on tullut tehty, että minä on tullut tehty. Tässä on seuraava, että minä on tullut tehty, ja minä on tullut tehty, ja minä on tullut tehty. Tässä on seuraava, tullut tehty, ja minä on tullut tehty, ja minä on tullut tehty, ja minä on tullut tehty. Tässä on seuraava tullut tehty, ja minä on tullut tehty, ja minä on tullut tehty, ja minä on tullut tehty. Tässä on tullut tehty, ja minä on tullut tehty, ja minä on tullut tehty. Tässä on tullut tehty, ja minä on tullut tehty, ja minä on tullut tehty, ja minä on tullut tehty. Ja minä on tullut tehty, ja minä on tullut tehty, ja minä on tullut tehty. It turned out to be a wonderful exercise for me in focus and concentration and I think at the end of the day I was fairly proud of it, so I'm going to share a little bit of that with you now. Her stories celebrated those living in the margins, the invisible and the oppressed. She elevated us with her prose, illuminating in the process the deep and abiding humanity of her characters. She was a voracious reader. She reveled in the written words. She wielded words like a sword and shield, slaying the dragons of racism, sexism, exclusion and discrimination with dispatch and extreme prejudice. She was a colossus, standing astride the worlds of both the black community and that of the literary cognizenti. She was fluent in the language of both constituencies yet confined by neither, rising instead to the level of master, interpreter of humanity and our condition, the depravity and dunity of both body and soul. Growing up, it was not all that common for me, a chubby, bespect-called bookworm of a kid to encounter heroes in the pages of the books I devoured who looked like me. Tony Morrison was a revelation. She wrote about people in places and situations that were familiar to me. Like my own mother, she was a daughter of the Midwest, and in her writing I could hear the rhythms and speech and familiar turns of phrase used by my aunts, uncles and cousins. She chronicle the great migration of black people up and out of the clutches of the south and our movement to somewhat safer environments in the north. Her legacy can be found in the spiritual DNA she passes on to readers and writers and thinkers and dreamers who will read her words for generations to come. In her passing, she rightfully joins the ranks of the most influential humans ever to walk this earth. My ultimate takeaway from the celestial gift that Matt Morrison was is this, that if we can sit long enough in the presence of one another and be open to the experience of hearing one another's story, we can discover the things that we share in common with those who only moments ago, we perhaps had considered the other, and somehow unworthy of our time. We have all, I believe, been made better by her presence here among us. May her wisdom, her guidance, and her incredible stories inform, inspire and sustain us going forward in what are certain to be very difficult days ahead. If you are so inclined, don't forget to check out the content advisory. There's some archaic, if you will, language that is used in parts of the story. In any case, I'm very glad to be able to share this with you. So, if you're ready, let's take a deep breath. And begin. Resetateef by Tony Morrison. My mother danced all night, and Roberta was sick. That's why we were taken to St. Bonnie's. People want to put their arms around you when you tell them you were in a shelter, but it really wasn't bad. No big long room with 100 beds, like Bellevue. There were four to a room, and when Roberta and me came, there was a shortage of state kids, so we were the only ones assigned to 406, and could go from bed to bed if we wanted to. And we wanted to, too. We changed beds every night, and for the whole four months we were there, we never picked one out as our own permanent bed. It didn't start out that way. The minute I walked in and the big bozo introduced us, I got sick to my stomach. It was one thing to be taken out of your own bed early in the morning. It was something else to be stuck in a strange place with a girl from a whole other race. And Mary, that's my mother. She was right. Every now and then she would stop dancing long enough to tell me something important, and one of the things she said was that they never washed their hair, and they smelled funny. Roberta, sure did, smelled funny, I mean. So when the big bozo, nobody ever called her Mrs. Itkin, just like nobody ever said St. Bonaventure, when she said, "Twila, this is Roberta." Roberta, this is Twila. Make each other welcome. I said, "My mother won't like you putting me in here." "Good," said Bozo. "Maybe then she'll come and take you home." How's that from mean? If Roberta had laughed, I would have killed her, but she didn't. She just walked over to the window and stood with her back to us. "Turn around," said the bozo, "don't be rude." "Twila, Roberta, when you hear a loud buzzer, that's the call for dinner. Come down to the first floor, any fights and no movie." And then, just to make sure we knew what we would be missing, the wizard of Oz. Roberta must have thought I meant that my mother would be mad about my being put in the shelter, not about roaming with her, because as soon as Bozo left, she came over to me and said, "Is your mother sick, too?" "No," I said. She just liked to dance all night. "Oh," she nodded her head, and I liked the way she understood things so fast. So for the moment, it didn't matter that we looked like salt and pepper standing there, and that's what the other kids called us sometimes. "We were eight years old, and got F's all the time, me because I couldn't remember what I read or what the teacher said, and Roberta, because she couldn't read it all and didn't even listen to the teacher." She wasn't good at anything, except Jacks, at which she was a killer. Pasku. Pasku. Pasku. We didn't like each other all that much at first, and nobody else wanted to play with this because we weren't real orphans with beautiful, dead parents in the sky. We were dumped, even the New York City Port of Ricans and the upstate Indians ignored us. All kinds of kids were in there. Black ones, white ones, even two Koreans. The food was good, though, at least I thought so. Roberta hated it, and left whole pieces of things on her plate. Spam, Salisbury's steak, even jello with fruit cocktail in it, and she didn't care if I ate what she wouldn't. Mary's idea of supper was popcorn, and a can of yuhu. Hot mashed potatoes and two weenies was like Thanksgiving for me. "It really wasn't bad," St. Bonnie's. "The big girls on the second floor pushed us around now and then. That was all." They wore lipstick and eyebrow pencil and wobbled their knees while they watched TV. Fifteen, sixteen, even some of them were. They were put out girls, scared runaways most of them. Poor little girls who fought their uncles off, but looked tough to us. And mean. God, did they look mean? The staff tried to keep them separate from the younger children, but sometimes they caught us watching them in the orchard where they played radios and danced with each other. They'd light out after us and pull our hair or twist our arms. We were scared of them, Roberta and me, but neither of us wanted the other one to know it. So we got a good list of dirty names we could shout back when we ran from them through the orchard. I used to dream a lot, and almost always the orchard was there. Two acres, four, maybe, of these little apple trees, hundreds of them, empty and crooked like beggar women when I first came to St. Bonnie's, but fat with flowers when I left. I don't know why I dreamt about that orchard so much. Nothing really happened there. Nothing all that important, I mean. Just the big girls dancing and playing the radio, Roberta and me watching. Maggie fell down there once. The kitchen woman with legs like parenthesis, and the big girls laughed at her. We should have helped her up, I know, but we were scared of those girls with lipstick and eyebrow pencil. Maggie couldn't talk. The kid said she had her tongue cut out, but I think she was just born that way, mute. She was old and sandy colored, and she worked in the kitchen. I don't know if she was nice or not. I just remember her legs like parenthesis and how she rocked when she walked. She worked from early in the morning till two o'clock, and if she was late, if she had too much cleaning and didn't get out till two-fifteen or so, she'd cut through the orchard so she wouldn't miss her bus and have to wait another hour. She wore this really stupid little hat, a kid's hat with ear flaps, and she wasn't much taller than we were, a really awful little hat. Even for a mute, it was dumb, dressing like a kid, and never saying anything at all. But what about if somebody tries to kill her? I used to wonder about that. Or what if she wants to cry? Can she cry? Sure, Roberta said. But just tears. No sounds come out. She can't scream? Nope. Nothing. "Can she hear?" I guess. "Let's call her," I said. "And we did." "Dummy! Dummy!" She never turned her head. "Bo-legs! Bo-legs!" Nothing. She just rocked on the chin straps of her baby boy hat swaying from side to side. I think we were wrong. I think she could hear and didn't let on. And it shames me even now to think there was somebody in there after all who heard us call her those names and couldn't tell on us. "We got along all right," Roberta and me. "Changed beds every night, got effs and civics and communication skills and gym." "The Bozo was disappointed," in us, she said. Out of 130 of us state cases 90 were under 12. Almost all were real orphans with beautiful dead parents in the sky. We were the only ones dumped, and the only ones with effs and three classes, including gym. So we got along what with her leaving whole pieces of things on her plate and being nice about not asking questions. We got along what with her leaving all the pieces of things on her plate and being nice about not asking questions. I don't want to go anywhere. I want to go somewhere else. That's a good idea. Now, let's get back to our story. I think it was the day before Maggie fell down that we found out our mothers were coming to visit us on the same Sunday. We had been at the shelter 28 days, Roberta, 28 and a half, and this was their first visit with us. Our mothers would come at 10 o'clock in time for chapel, then lunch with us in the teacher's lounge. I thought if my dancing mother met her sick mother, it might be good for her, and Roberta thought her sick mother would get a big bang out of a dancing one. We got excited about it and curled each other's hair. After breakfast, we sat on the bed watching the road from the window. Roberta's socks were still wet. She washed them the night before and put them on the radiator to dry. They hadn't, but she put them on anyway because their tops were so pretty, scalloped in pink. Each of us had a purple construction paper basket that we had made in craft class. Mine had a yellow crayon rabbit on it. Roberta's had eggs with wiggly lines of color. Inside, we were cellophane grass and just the jelly beans because I'd eaten the two marshmallow eggs they gave us. The big bozo came herself to get us. Smiling, she told us we looked very nice and to come downstairs. We were so surprised by the smile we'd never seen before, neither of us moved. Don't you want to see your mommies? I stood up first and spilled the jelly beans all over the floor. Mozo's smile disappeared while we scrambled to get the candy up off the floor and put it back in the grass. She escorted us downstairs to the first floor where the other girls were lining up to file into the chapel. A bunch of grown-ups stood to one side, viewers, mostly. The old bitties who wanted servants and the fags who wanted company looking for children they might want to adopt. Once in a while, a grandmother, almost never anybody young or anybody whose face wouldn't scare you in the night. Because if any of the real orphans had young relatives they wouldn't be real orphans. I saw Mary right away. She had on those green slacks I hated and hated even more now because didn't she know we were going to chapel? And that fur jacket with the pocket linings so ripped she had to pull to get her hands out of them. But her face was pretty, I always. And she smiled and waved like she was the little girl looking for her mother, not me. I walked slowly, trying not to drop the jelly beans and hoping the paper handle would hold. I had to use my last chiclet because by the time I finished cutting everything out all the elmers was gone. I am left-handed and the scissors never worked for me. It didn't matter though, I might just as well have chewed the gum. Mary dropped to her knees and grabbed me, mashing the basket, the jelly beans and the grass into her ratty fur jacket. "Twilight baby! Twilight baby!" I could have killed her. Already I heard the big girls in the orchard the next time saying, "Twilight baby!" But I couldn't stay mad at Mary while she was smiling and hugging me and smelling of lady Esther dusting powder. I wanted to stay buried in her fur all day. To tell the truth, I forgot about Roberta. Mary and I got in line for the traips into chapel and I was feeling proud because she looked so beautiful even in those ugly green slacks that made her behind stick out. A pretty mother on earth is better than a beautiful dead one in the sky, even if she did leave you all alone to co-dancing. I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned and saw Roberta smiling. I smiled back but not too much. Lest somebody think this visit was the biggest thing that ever happened in my life. Then Roberta said, "Mother, I want you to meet my roommate Twila and that's Twila's mother." I looked up, it seemed, for miles. She was big, bigger than any man and on her chest was the biggest cross I'd ever seen. I swear it was six inches long each way and in the crook of her arm was the biggest Bible ever made. Mary, simple minded as ever, grand and tried to yank her hand out of the pocket with the raggedy lining to shake hands, I guess. Roberta's mother looked down at me and then looked down at Mary too. She didn't say anything, just grabbed Roberta with her Bible-free hand and stepped out of line walking quickly to the rear of it. Mary was still grinning because she's not too swift when it comes to what's really going on. Then this light bulb goes off in her head and she says, "That bitch really loud and us almost in the chapel now." Oregon music whining, the body angels singing sweetly. Everybody in the world turned around to look. And Mary would have kept it up, kept calling names, if I hadn't squeezed her hand as hard as I could. That helped a little, but she still twitched and crossed and uncrossed her legs all through the service, even groaned a couple of times. Why did I think she would come there and act right? Slacks. No hat like the grandmothers and viewers and groaning all the while. When we stood for him she kept her mouth shut, wouldn't even look at the words on the page. She actually reached in her purse for a mirror to check her lipstick. All I could think of was that she really needed to be killed. The sermon lasted a year and I knew the real orphans were looking smug again. We were supposed to have lunch in the teacher's lounge, but Mary didn't bring anything. So we picked fur and cellophane grass off the mashed jelly beans and ate them. I could have killed her. I sneaked a look at Roberta. Her mother had brought chicken legs and ham sandwiches and oranges and a whole box of chocolate covered grams. Roberta drank milk from a thermos while her mother read the Bible to her. Things are not right. The wrong food is always with the wrong people. Maybe that's why I got into waitress work later to match up the right people with the right food. Roberta just let those chicken legs sit there. But she did bring a stack of grams up to me later when the visit was over. I think she was sorry that her mother would not shake my mother's hand. And I liked that and I liked the fact that she didn't say a word about Mary groaning all the way through the service and not bringing any lunch. Roberta left in May when the apple trees were heavy and white. On her last day we went to the orchard to watch the big girl smoke and dance by the radio. It didn't matter that they said, "Twilight baby, we sat on the ground and breathed." Lady Esther, apple blossoms, I still go soft when I smell one or the other. Roberta was going home. The big cross and the big Bible was coming to get her and she seemed sort of glad and sort of not. I thought I would die in that room of four beds without her and I knew Bozo had plans to move some other dumped kid in there with me. Roberta promised to ride every day which was really sweet of her because she couldn't read a lick so how could she ride anybody? I would have drawn pictures and sent them to her but she never gave me her address. Little by little she faded. Her wet socks with the pink scalloped tops and her big serious looking eyes. That's all I could catch when I tried to bring her to mind. I was working behind the counter at the Howard Johnson's on the throughway just before the Kingston exit, not a bad job. Kind of a long ride from Newberg but okay once I got there. Mine was the second night shift, 11 to 7. Very light until a greyhound checked in for breakfast around 6.30. At that hour the sun was all the way clear of the hills behind the restaurant. The place looked better at night. More like shelter but I loved it when the sun broke in even if it did show all the cracks in the vinyl and the speckled floor looked dirty no matter what the mop boy did. It was August and a bus crowd was just unloading. They would stand around a long while going to the John and looking at gifts and junk for sale machines reluctant to sit down so soon even to eat. I was trying to fill the coffee pots and get them all situated on the electric burners when I saw her. She was sitting in a booth smoking a cigarette with two guys smothered in head and facial hair. Her own hair was so big and wild I could hardly see her face but the eyes I would know them anywhere. She had on a powder blue halter in shorts outfit and earrings the size of bracelets. Talk about lipstick and eyebrow pencil. She made the big girls look like nuns. I couldn't get off the counter until seven o'clock but I kept watching the booth in case they got up to leave before that. My replacement was on time for a change so I counted and stacked my receipts as fast as I could and signed off. I walked over to the booze smiling and wondering if she would remember me or even if she wanted to remember me. Maybe she didn't want to be reminded of St. Bonnie's or to have anybody know she was ever there. I know I never talked about it to anybody. I put my hands in my apron pockets and leaned against the back of the booth facing them. Roberta? Roberta Fisk? She looked up. Yeah, Twyla. She squinted for a second and then said, "Wow. Remember me?" "Sure. Hey. Wow. It's been a while." I said and gave a smile to the two hairy guys. "Yeah. Wow. You work here?" "Yeah." I said. I live in Newberg. Newberg. No kidding. She laughed then a private laugh that included the guys but only the guys and they laughed with her. What could I do but laugh too and wonder why I was standing there with my knees showing out from under that uniform? Without looking, I could see the blue and white triangle on my head, my hair shapeless in a net, my ankles thick in white oxfords. Nothing could have been less sheer than my stockings. There was this silence that came down right after I laughed. A silence it was her turn to fill up with introductions, maybe to her boyfriend or an invitation to sit down and have a coke. Instead, she lit a cigarette off the one she just finished and said, "We're on our way to the coast. He's got an appointment with Hendrix." She gestured casually to the boy next to her. "Hindrix. Fantastic." I said, "Really? Fantastic. What's she doing now?" Roberta coughed on her cigarette and the two guys rolled their eyes up at the ceiling. "Hindrix. Jimmy. Hendrix. Asshole. He's only the biggest." Oh, wow. Forget it. I was dismissed without anyone saying goodbye so I thought I would do it for her. "How's your mother?" I asked. Her grin cracked her whole face. "She swallowed fine," she said. "How's yours?" "Pretty as a picture," I said and turned away. The backs of my knees were damp. Howard Johnson's really was a dump in the sunlight. [Music] So there we have part one of "Reset to Teef." What's clear to me in this story is that at this point we know who. At least we feel like we know who these girls are and we know the quality and the nature of their bond. They shared a brief but really important formative moment. I think she says it's four months. They were together four months at St. Bonnie's. And yet in that time there was this bond that was created by the grace that each was willing to extend to the other and that there didn't have to be any questions asked. The last thing that someone who's been left there wants to do is have to answer questions about their circumstance. That's the being different in that environment. Everybody else had pretty dead parents in the sky. If you were dumped there, you were abandoned. No matter the circumstances, the feeling was you were abandoned by your parent. And that's something that Twyla and Roberta share in common. What's interesting to me about their first encounter as adults and granted they're probably young adults, late teens early 20s at best. What's interesting to me is the apparent shift in the power dynamic between the two of them. Twyla is still in the assumption that their bond is the same as it always was and yet Roberta reveals a callousness, a willingness to be disconnected from that bond. And whether it's simply the passage of time or the company that she's keeping or the agenda that she has going to California, whatever the reasons are, there is distance. There is definitely a distance in that bond. There's been an obstacle placed there. There's something in the middle of their connection diminishing its strength in this moment. Like all relationships, the dynamics continue to change throughout the story and I'm really looking forward to getting to that part. I'm also very eager for you to think about this relationship between now and next week. And what aspects of the relationship you relate to, what aspects of these characters that you might relate to. Without giving too much of it away, there's a bunch of stuff in here that's going on that isn't readily on the surface. And as such, I think this is a good place for us to pause, take a breath, ponder, and then come back next week. Our producer on this episode of "November" reads as always is Julia Marie Smith, the best in the business, with assistance from New York's own Harry Huggins and Renee Colvert right here in the city of Angels. Renee being one of my favorite human beings on the planet. A special shout out to Kristen Torres for story suggestions, editing and sound design by Brendan Burns, who knew the kid was so talented. I want to express here my undying thanks to the estate of Tony Morrison for allowing me to read this story. Please go find more of her work, I guarantee you, you won't regret it. There's tons of fiction to explore or you could begin with goodness and the literary imagination. One of her non-fiction works which includes a lecture by and interview with Ms. Morrison. And here's an idea, if you like listening to the show, why not recommend it to a friend who you think might enjoy it? And encourage that friend to also leave a ratings or a review on Apple podcasts. You both might want to consider including a story suggestion for us, we read them, we love them, we use them. We'll be back next week with another hand-picked story, but if you don't want to wait that long, you don't have to. You can get next week's episode right now plus exclusive bonus interviews on Stitcher Premium. Each story goes up one week early and it's ad free. Just go to Stitcher Premium.com/lavar or if you're listening in Stitcher, just tap the menu button in your app and select a premium for one month free. Lavar Burton Reads is a production of Stitcher and Lavar Burton Media. Our supervising producer is Josephine Marta Rana. Our executive producers are Chris, C.B. Dan and yours truly Lavar Burton. I am Lavar Burton and you can find me on Twitter @lavar Burton and check out my newest series called This Is My Story. You find it on my Twitter feed and on YouTube. I'll see you next time, but you don't have to take my word for it. [Music] [Music] Stitcher. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]