Tar Baby

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Foreword

He believed he was...

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

The man sat on the...

About the Author

Also by Toni Morrison

Acclaim for Toni Morrison’s

Copyright

FOR

Mrs. Caroline Smith

Mrs. Millie McTyeire

Mrs. Ardelia Willis

Mrs. Ramah Wofford

Mrs. Lois Brooks

—and each of their sisters,

all of whom knew

their true and ancient

properties

For it hath been declared

unto me of you, my brethren, by them

which are of the house of

Chloe, that there are

contentions among you.

I CORINTHIANS 1:11

FOREWORD

MY EAR is so close to the radio I have to be shouted away lest it ruin my hearing forever. Or I am cross-legged on the linoleum floor, breathing through my mouth, rapt, watching the giveaway eyes of the grown-up telling the story. All narrative begins for me as listening. When I read, I listen. When I write, I listen—for silence, inflection, rhythm, rest. Then comes the image, the picture of the thing that I have to invent: the headless bride in her wedding dress; the forest clearing. There is performance, too: “zzz went the saw,” accompanied by gesture. And cadence: “Old man Simon Gillicutty, caaatch me.” I need to use everything—sound, image, performance—to get at the full meaning of the story because I may be called upon to re-tell it for the pleasure of adults. Their judgment of my interpretation is critical.

Once upon a time there was this farmer. He planted himself a garden….

They are waiting. My mother is smiling in anticipation, but it is my grandmother I want most to please.

Yummy food, unique attention, playfulness, or loving sternness—these features are often summoned to sweeten one’s memory of a grandmother. Whether true or screened by time and loss, the relationship between grandmother and child usually surfaces as a warm and satisfying one. Mine, too, is sugared, but so much deeper than satisfaction that I don’t want to share it. Like the greedy child who can’t get close enough to the radio, I want it all to myself. She told us stories to keep us working at tedious tasks: picking through baskets of wild grapes to sort out the bruised; to take our minds off pain and chicken pox; to split open the dreary world to expose an enchanted one.

I was not my grandmother’s favorite. No matter, she was mine. I see her cutting lard into biscuit dough. I see