The Bluest Eye Read Free

thinking of plums, walls, and “someone.”
    But was it really like that? As painful as I remember? Only mildly. Or rather, it was a productive and fructifying pain. Love, thick and dark as Alaga syrup, eased up into that cracked window. I could smell it—taste it—sweet, musty, with an edge of wintergreen in its base—everywhere in that house. It stuck, along with my tongue, to the frosted windowpanes. It coated my chest, along with the salve, and when the flannel came undone in my sleep, the clear, sharp curves of air outlined its presence on my throat. And in the night, when my coughing was dry and tough, feet padded into the room, hands repinned the flannel, readjusted the quilt, and rested a moment on my forehead. So when I think of autumn, I think of somebody with hands who does not want me to die.
             
    It was autumn too when Mr. Henry came. Our roomer. Our roomer. The words ballooned from the lips and hovered about our heads—silent, separate, and pleasantly mysterious. My mother was all ease and satisfaction in discussing his coming.
    “You know him,” she said to her friends. “Henry Washington. He’s been living over there with Miss Della Jones on Thirteenth Street. But she’s too addled now to keep up. So he’s looking for another place.”
    “Oh, yes.” Her friends do not hide their curiosity. “I been wondering how long he was going to stay up there with her. They say she’s real bad off. Don’t know who he is half the time, and nobody else.”
    “Well, that old crazy nigger she married up with didn’t help her head none.”
    “Did you hear what he told folks when he left her?”
    “Uh-uh. What?”
    “Well, he run off with that trifling Peggy—from Elyria. You know.”
    “One of Old Slack Bessie’s girls?”
    “That’s the one. Well, somebody asked him why he left a nice good church woman like Della for that heifer. You know Della always did keep a good house. And he said the honest-to-God real reason was he couldn’t take no more of that violet water Della Jones used. Said he wanted a woman to smell like a woman. Said Della was just too clean for him.”
    “Old dog. Ain’t that nasty!”
    “You telling me. What kind of reasoning is that?”
    “No kind. Some men just dogs.”
    “Is that what give her them strokes?”
    “Must have helped. But you know, none of them girls wasn’t too bright. Remember that grinning Hattie? She wasn’t never right. And their Auntie Julia is still trotting up and down Sixteenth Street talking to herself.”
    “Didn’t she get put away?”
    “Naw. County wouldn’t take her. Said she wasn’t harming anybody.”
    “Well, she’s harming me. You want something to scare the living shit out of you, you get up at five-thirty in the morning like I do and see that old hag floating by in that bonnet. Have mercy!”
    They laugh.
    Frieda and I are washing Mason jars. We do not hear their words, but with grown-ups we listen to and watch out for their voices.
    “Well, I hope don’t nobody let me roam around like that when I get senile. It’s a shame.”
    “What they going to do about Della? Don’t she have no people?”
    “A sister’s coming up from North Carolina to look after her. I expect she wants to get aholt of Della’s house.”
    “Oh, come on. That’s a evil thought, if ever I heard one.”
    “What you want to bet? Henry Washington said that sister ain’t seen Della in fifteen years.”
    “I kind of thought Henry would marry her one of these days.”
    “That old woman?”
    “Well, Henry ain’t no chicken.”
    “No, but he ain’t no buzzard, either.”
    “He ever been married to anybody?”
    “No.”
    “How come? Somebody cut it off?”
    “He’s just picky.”
    “He ain’t picky. You see anything around here you’d marry?”
    “Well…no.”
    “He’s just sensible. A steady worker with quiet ways. I hope it works out all right.”
    “It will. How much you charging?”
    “Five dollars every two