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Summary from the Library of Congress cataloging-in-Publication Data: No summary available in this book.

Notes/Excerpts:

Front cover notes that this is a book in Oprah’s Book Club. Front cover also notes that Morrison won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

“Nuns go by as quiet as lust, and drunken men and sober eyes sing in the lobby…When she comes out of the car we will beat her up, make red marks on her white skin…(9).

“The puke swaddles down the pillow onto the sheet – green-gray, with flecks of orange…like the inside of an uncooked egg…clinging to its own mass…my mother’s anger humiliates me…(11).”

“He ever been married to anybody?” “No.” “How come? Somebody cut it off?” (14).

“I had only one desire: to dismember it [a doll]…did not know why I destroyed those dolls…I destroyed white baby dolls…truly horrifying thing was the transference of the same impulses to little white girls…the magic they weaved on others (20-22).”

“P. bolted straight up, her eyes wide with terror… ‘What’s the matter with you?’ F. stood up too…we both looked where P. was staring. Blood was running down her legs…brownish-red stain discolored the back of her dress…standing with her legs far apart… ‘That’s ministratin’. ‘Am I going to die?’ ‘Noooo…just means you can have a baby!’ I poured the water on the steps, sloshed it with my shoe…F. was on her knees…pulling P.’s pants off…’What am I supposed to do with these?’ ‘Bury them, moron.’ F. told P. to hold the cotton thing between her legs…took two safety pins from the hem of her skirt and began to pin the ends of the napkin to P.’s dress. I picked up the pants…a rustling noise in the bushes…saw a pair of fascinated eyes in a dough-white face. R. was watching us. I grabbed for her face and succeeded in scratching her nose. [R. shouts for C.’s mother and tells on her.] Mama grabbed F. by the shoulder…gave her three or four stinging cuts on her legs…F. was destroyed. She grabbed P. [about to whip her]…safety pin snapped… ‘What in the devil is going on here?’ F. was sobbing… ‘ She was bleeding.’ F. nodded. ‘She’s ministratin’ (27-31).”

“Should we beat up R (31)?”

“ ‘Is it true that I can have a baby now?’ It would involve, I supposed, “my man,” who, before leaving me, would love me…Maybe that’s why the women were sad: the men left before they could make a baby (32).”

“...when the building housed a pizza parlor…slow-footed teen-aged boys huddled about…young boys met there to feel their groins, smoke cigarettes, and plan mild outrages (33).”

“Pleading eyes and tightened testicles. ‘Tough shit, buddy. Your tough shit…’ (36)”

“Even from where P. lay, she could smell C.B. [her father]’s whiskey…C.B. had come home drunk…too drunk to quarrel…Mrs. B. came swiftly into the room… ‘I need some coal in this house.’ C.B. did not move… ‘Awwwwww, woman!’… ‘I said I need some coal…cold as a witch’s tit in this house. Your whiskey ass wouldn’t feel hellfire…You going to get your drunk self out of that bed and get me some coal or not?’ … ‘Don’t try me this morning, man…say one more word…I’ll split you open!’ …An escapade of drunkenness…relieved the tiresomeness of poverty…C.B. by his habitual drunkenness and orneriness…Mrs. B. was not interested in Christ the Redeemer, but rather Christ the Judge…she could be heard discoursing with Jesus about C.B., pleading with Him… ‘strike the bastard down…’ when a drunken gesture catapulted C.B. into the red-hot stove, she screamed ‘Get him, Jesus! Get him!’ …She was one of the few things abhorrent to him that he could touch…When he was still very young, C.B. had been surprised ins some bushes by two white men while he was newly but earnestly engaged in eliciting sexual pleasure from a little country girl… ‘Go on,’ they said ‘Go on and finish…nigger, make it good.’ …had not hated the white men; he hated, despised, the girl…C.B. and Mrs. B. fought each other with a darkly brutal formalism…paralleled only by their lovemaking…fought back in a purely feminine way – with frying pans and pokers, and occasionally a flatiron would sail toward his head…only the muted sound of falling things, and flesh on unsurprised flesh (40-43).”

P. and S., the Breedlove’s children act out: S. cursed for a while, or left the house, or threw himself into the fray…He was known, by the time he was fourteen, to have run away…twenty-seven times…P…struggled between an overwhelming desire that one would kill the other…a profound wish that she herself could die (43).” Kids called their mom Mrs. B and not mom.

Mrs. B. sneezed…ran into the bedroom…a dishpan full of cold water…threw it in C.B.’s face...He sat up…naked and ashen, he leaped from the bed…grabbed his wife around the waste…C.B. picked her up and knocked her down…she fell...began to hit C.B.’s [with the dishpan] thighs and groin…He put his foot in her chest…struck her several times…S. began to hit his father about the head with both fists, shouting “You naked fuck!” over and over…Mrs. B…struck him [her husband] two blows…S. screamed “Kill him! Kill him!”…P. covered her head with the quilt…[she prays] “Please, God…make me disappear” (43-45).

“Christ. Kantcha talk?”

“Three whores lived in the apartment…[C], [P] and [MM]. P. loved visiting them…ran their errands…[P] singing…“I got blues in my mealbarrel…Blues in my bedroom Caus I’m sleepin’ by myself” …somethin’ in this house that loves brassieres…Chittlin’, I ain’t seen a boy since nineteen and twenty-seven…they ain’t been no boys since then…you’d make a haint buy a girdle [the women were talking amongst themselves]…them bandy little legs of yours…that’s the first thing they push aside…the women laughed…[P]…seldom spoke unless she was drunk…I never seen nobody with as many boyfriends as you got…How come they all love you?...They wants to put their toes in my curly hair, and get at my money…Whoa, Jesus!...You ain’t never been dry. Shut up…every Saturday we’d get a case of beer…we’d break open that cold beer…Whoa Jesus, ninety-nine! How come you always say ‘Whoa Jesus’ and a number? …mama taught me never to cuss...Did she teach you not to drop your drawers? [C] asked…My white lady gave me some old ones [underwear] of hers…thought they was some kind of stocking cap…Whoa Jesus, one-nin-five…we ran away and lived together like married…Girl, when I found out I could sell it – that somebody would pay cold cash for it [sex], you could have knocked me over…My auntie whipped me good…when I told her I didn’t get no money…I said ‘Money? … He didn’t owe me nothin’. She said, ‘The hell he didn’t!’ Three merry gargoyles…harridans…amused by a long-ago time of ignorance…did not belong to those generations of prostitutes created in novels…the horror of the circumstance…barren life of men, taking money incidentally…Nor were they from that sensitive breed of young girl, gone wrong at the hands of fate…neither were they sloppy, inadequate whores…these women hated men, all men…abused their visitors…Black men, white men, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Jews, Poles, whatever…took delight in cheating them…Neither did they have respect for women who…deceived their husbands…. “Sugar-coated whores” …they would sleep with their husbands…take their money…with a vengeance…nor were they protective and solicitous of youthful innocence…not young girls in whores’ clothing, or whores regretting their loss of innocence…They were whores in whores’ clothing, whores who had never been young…[MM] concocted stories [for P.] but the stories were breezy and rough…(50-57).”

“What did love feel like? …How do grown-ups act when they love each other?...the [mental] picture of C.B. and Mrs. B. in bed…making sounds as though he were in pain, as though something had him by the throat…not nearly as bad as the no noise at all from her mother…as though she was not even there. Maybe that was love. Choking sounds and silence (57).”

Talking about a new girl at school: “…Six-finger-dog-tooth-meringue-pie…I wanted to kick her…plotted accidental slammings of locker doors on her hand…able to hold a sensible conversation with her without visualizing her fall off a cliff…(63-64).”

“Black e mo. Black e mo. Yadaddsleepsnekked. Black e mo- black e mo ya dadd sleeps nekked. Black e mo…’ …[the boys] had extemporized a verse made of two insults…the color of her skin and speculations on the sleeping habits of an adult…they themselves were black…contempt for their own blackness…danced a macabre ballet around the victim…Black e mo Black e mo Ya daddy sleeps nekked (65).”

“…we saw Mr. H. and two women…sucking the fingers of one of the women…the other woman was buttoning her coat…we knew immediately who they were…the fancy women of the maroon nail polish that Mama and Big Mama hated…in our house…Maginot Line was the one who killed people, set them on fire, poisoned them, cooked them in lye…I had heard too many black and red words about her…[C] seemed to be genuinely enjoying Mr. H. …sight of him licking her fingers brought to mind the girlie magazines in his room (77).”

“…she will give him her body sparingly and partially. He must enter her surreptitiously, lifting the hem of her nightgown only to her navel…rest his weight of his elbows when they make love…avoid hurting her breasts…to keep her from having to touch or feel too much of him…While he moves inside her, she will wonder why they didn’t put the necessary but private parts of the body in some more convenient place…one could get to easily and quickly…She stiffens when she feels…the activity of love…hopes he will not sweat…remain dry between her legs…hates the glucking sound they make when she is moist…senses some spasm about to grip him, she will make rapid movements with her hips…fingernails into his back, suck in her breath and pretend she is having an orgasm…what it would be like to have that feeling while her husband’s penis is inside her…closest thing to it was the time she was walking down the street…her napkin slipped free of her sanitary belt…moved gently between her legs as she walked…delicious sensation collected in her crotch…she had to stop in the street, hold her thighs together to contain it…it never happens while he is inside her…he withdraws, she pulls her nightgown down, slips out of the bed and into the bathroom with relief (84-85).”

“…some living thing will engage her affections…a cat…she can hold him [the cat] in her arms, letting his back paws struggle for footing on her breasts…rub the smooth fur and feel the unresisting flesh underneath…he will preen, stretch, and open his mouth…she will accept the strangely pleasant sensation that comes when he writhes beneath her hand…she stands cooking at the table [the cat] will circle about her shanks…trill of his fur spirals up her legs to her thighs, to make her fingers tremble a little in the pie dough…the cat will jump into her lap. She will fondle that soft hill of hair…let the warmth of the animal’s body seep over and into the deeply private areas of her lap…she opens her legs…the two of them will be still together, perhaps shifting a little…sleeping a little…until four…the intruder comes home from work…the cat will always know that he is first in her affections…(85-86).

G.’s son, J., lacked attention so he took it out on the cat (p.86).

“Whit kids; his mother did not like him to play with niggers…difference between colored people and niggers…easily identifiable…line between colored and nigger was not always clear…J. used to long to play with the black boys…and say “Fuck you” with that lovely casualness…wanted to share with them the laurels of being able to pee far and long…he came to agree with his mother…J. enjoyed bullying girls…easy making them scream and run…it made him feel good…nigger girls he did not pick on…they usually traveled in packs (87).” “ ‘Here is your kitten!’ he screeched…threw a big black cat right in her face…cat clawed her face and chest…J was laughing…delightedly…[P.] started toward the doorway, J. leaped in front of her. ‘You can’t get out…my prisoner,’ he said… ‘You let me go.’ ‘No!’” P. starts petting the cat (90).

J. gets jealous of P. petting the cat, he grabs the cat “and began to swing it around his head in a circle. ‘Stop that!’ P. was screaming…she grabbed [his] arm which was swinging the cat…J. let go…[the cat] was thrown full force against the window…G. opened the door ‘What’s this?’ ‘She killed our cat,’ said J. … ‘Get out,’ [J.’s mother] said … ‘You nasty little black bitch’ (92-93).”

“…I went to look for F. I found her upstairs…crying… ‘Did you get a whipping?’ [F. shakes her head no] ‘Then why you crying?’ ‘Because.’ ‘Because what?’ ‘Mr. H.’ ‘Daddy beat him up.’ ‘…Did he find out about the Maginot Line?’ [F. says] ‘He…picked at me.’ ‘He showed his privates at you?’ ‘Noooo. He touched me…here and here [her breasts].’ ‘How did it feel?...wasn’t it supposed to…feel good, I mean?’ ‘First he said how pretty I was…he grabbed my arm and touched me.’ … ‘I don’t want to be ruined?’ … [like the women P. visits with and runs errands for] ‘[C.] and [P.] (the women the little girl visits)…they’re ruined too…they ain’t fat.’ ‘That’s because they drink whiskey.’ ‘You could drink whiskey.’ ‘Where…’ ‘P. …Her father’s always drunk.’ (99-101).”

“I feel [C.B.]’s flank just graze my behind…put his hand on my waste…knead my stomach…he will lean his head down and bit my tit…I want him to put his hand between my legs…to open them for me…I be soft and wet where his fingers are strong and hard…softer than I ever been before…I hold his head…stretch my legs open and, he is on top of me…puts his thing in me. In me. In me. I wrap my feet around his back so he can’t get away…we stretches our arms outwise like Jesus on the cross…he wants me to come first…not until I feel him loving me…he would die rather than take his thing out of me…he shivers and tosses his head…put my hands on his behind…afraid I’ll come and afraid I won’t…and I do…I pat him like you do a baby…it ain’t like that anymore…he’s thrashing away inside me before I’m woke (129-131).”

Reflections of C.B.’s past: “In [C.B.]’s sleep the foul odor of an old woman’s stools turned into the healthy smell of horse shit…his hands tucked between his thighs…a dream his penis changed into a long hickory stick and the hands caressing it were the hands of M’Dear (139).”

Still in the past: “D. put her hands under his open shirt and rubbed the damp tight skin…tickled his ribs…corkscrewing her hands into his clothes…[he is] digging into the neck of her dress, and then under her dress…his hand in her bloomers…about to take his hand away, but she held his wrist…he examined her then with his fingers…she kissed his face and mouth…D. released his head…pulled down her pants…C.B. dropped his pants down to his knees…it was not as difficult as he had thought…she moaned a little…he felt an explosion…two white men [standing over tem]…C.B. jumped…one man with a spirit lamp, the other with a flashlight…men had long guns… ‘Hee hee heeee’ …other raced the flashlight all over C.B. and D. ‘Get on wid it, nigger,’ said the flashlight one… ‘make it good, nigger, make it good.’ C.B. heard the clop of metal…dropped back to his knees…began to simulate what had gone on before… ‘Come on, coon. Faster…ain’t doing nothing for her.’ C.B. moving faster…hated her…wished he could do it – hard, long and painfully, he hated her so much…[men are about to leave] ‘wait…the coon ain’t comed yet’…(147-149).”

When C.B. realized, D. might be pregnant, he ran away (157).

“Dangerously free…to be tender or violent…to sleep in doorways or between the white sheets of a singing woman…go to jail…and smile, for he had already killed three white men…to take a woman’s insults, for his body and already conquered hers…to knock her in the head…she knew what and where his maleness was…free to drink himself into a silly helplessness…done thirty days on a chain gang…free to live his fantasies (159).”

Back into the present, his daughter, P. is washing dishes (161). “…he staggered home reeling drunk and saw his daughter…saw her dimly and could not tell what he saw or what he felt…felt the discomfort dissolve into pleasure…sequence of his emotions was revulsion, guilt, pity, then love…wanted to break her neck – but tenderly…What could a burned-out black man say to the hunched back of his eleven-year-old daughter? …[she starts] scratching the back of her calf with her toe…that was what P.B. [her mother] was doing the first time he saw her…tenderness welled up in him…sank to his knees…eyes on the foot of his daughter…raised his hand and caught the foot…P. lost her balance and was about to careen to the floor…C.B. raised his other hand to her hips…put his head down and nibbled at the back of her leg…mouth trembled at the firm sweetness of the flesh…letting his fingers dig into her waste…her shocked body…better than P.B. [her mom’s] laughter…mixture of his memories of P.B. and the doing of a wild and forbidden thing excited him…desire ran down his genitals…length, and softening the lips of his anus…he wanted to fuck her…tenderness would not hold…tightness of her vagina was more than he could bear…the gigantic thrust he made into her…he was conscious of her wet, soapy hands…whether her grip was from a hopeless but stubborn struggle to be free, or from some other emotion, he could not tell. Removing himself from her was so painful…snatched his genitals out of the dry harbor of her vagina. She appeared to have fainted…[C.B.] stood up and could see only her grayish panties…limp around her ankles…hatred mixed with tenderness…forced him to cover her…when the child regained consciousness…[she was] trying to connect the pain between her legs with the face of her mother looming over her (162-163).”

Page 164 begins the story of an “old man who loved things” [he believed he was a Spiritualist and Psychic]… “celibacy was a haven…careful design [of his personality] was marred occasionally by rare but keen sexual cravings…could have been an active homosexual…bestiality did not occur to him…sodomy was quite out of the question…he did not experience sustained erections…one thing that disgusted him more than entering and caressing a woman was caressing and being caressed by a man…abhorred flesh on flesh…his attentions therefore gradually settled on those humans whose bodies were least offensive – children…too diffident to confront homosexuality…little boys were insulting…he further limited his interests to little girls…manageable and frequently seductive…patronage of little girls smacked of innocence…cleanliness…a very clean old man…164-167).”

“King…had done the civilized thing for his mulatto bastard…the bastard too was grateful…(167).”

“…only occasional and increasingly rare, encounters with the little girls…Evil existed because God had created it…made a sloven and unforgivable error in judgment…a pity that the Maker had not sought his counsel (172-173).”

“…he saw a little girl…unattractive…[the girl is P. and earlier in the book, the author notes that P. has always wanted blue eyes] (173-174).” “I want them [her eyes] blue (174).”

“…an ugly little girl asking for beauty…surge of love and understanding swept through him…he made the sign of the cross over her…flesh crawled… ‘I can do nothing for you, my child…I work only through the Lord…(174).” He gives her rotted meat after sprinkling it with something and tells her to feed it to the first animal she sees. She does this, the dog eats the meat: “dog gagged…mouth chomping the air…chocking, stumbling…[P.] was trying not to vomit…the dog fell again, a spasm jerking his body (175-176).”

This man goes back to his desk and writes a twisted letter to God:

Att: TO HE WHO GREATLY ENOBBLED HUMAN NATURE BY CREATING IT:
Dear God:

…the smell of your fruit and labor of your days we abhorred (177).

Let me tell you now about the breasts of little girls…the imbalance of loving them at awkward times of day, and in awkward places, and the tastelessness of loving those which belonged to members of my family. Do I have to apologize for loving strangers? But you too are amiss here, Lord…why, did you allow it to happen…I could lift my eyes from the contemplation of Your Body and fall deeply into the contemplation of theirs? The buds on some of these saplings…mean, you know, mean and tender. Mean little buds resisting the touch, springing like rubber…aggressive. Daring me to touch. Commanding me to touch. Not a bit shy…they stuck out at me. Slender-chested, finger-chested lassies. Have you ever seen them, Lord? I mean, really seen them? One could not see them and not love them. You who made them must have considered them lovely…how much more lovely is the manifestation of that idea. I couldn’t…keep my hands, my mouth off them. Saslt-sweet. Like not quite ripe strawberries covered with the light salt of sweat…hopping, skipping, jumping hours. The love of them – the touch, taste and feel…not just an easy luxurious human vice, they were…A Thing To Do Instead. Instead of Papa, instead of the Cloth…I chose not to do without them (178-179).

I told people all I knew about You. That I had received Your Powers…not a complete lie; but it was a complete lie…how could you leave a lass so long so lone that she could find her way to me? …Consider: Their hopeful eyes that were outdone only by their hoping breasts…how I needed a comfortable evil…not according to my just desserts, but according to my mercy. Do you know what she [P.] came for? Blue eyes…she must have asked you for them for a very long time, and you hadn’t replied. (A habit, I could have told her, a long-ago habit broken for Job…) …Why do I have to die? The little girls…are the only things I’ll miss…when I touched their sturdy little tits and bit them – just a little – I felt I was being friendly…didn’t want to kiss their mouths or sleep in the bed with them or take a child bride…playful, I felt, and friendly. Not like the newspapers said. Not like the people whispered…they didn’t mind at all…so many of them came back…if I’d been hurting them, would they have come back? Two of them, D. and S.B., they’d come together. I gave them mints, money and they’d eat ice cream with their legs open while I played with them. It was like a party…there wasn’t any nastiness…wasn’t any filth…wasn’t any odor…wasn’t any groaning—just the light white laughter of little girls and me…wasn’t any look – any long funny look -- …no look that makes you feel dirty…makes you want to die. With little girls it is all clean and good and friendly. You have to understand that, Lord. … Did you forget about the children? Yes. You forgot. You let them go…crying next to their dead mothers….You forgot how and when to be God…I changed the little black girl’s eyes for her, and I didn’t touch her…I gave her those blue eyes…I did what You did not, could not, would not do…I loved her. I played You…I have caused a miracle…now you are jealous…jealous of me…I am not afraid of You, of Death, not even of Life… (179-182).

She does go mad, believing that she has blue eyes. She and C. [her friend] are having a discussion and it comes about that her father raped her, or attempted to rape her, a second time (202). P. is also pregnant [by her father] and the baby dies (205). “Oh, some of us “loved” her. The Maginot Line [P.]. And C.B. loved her…he, at any rate, was the one who loved her enough to touch her, envelop her, give something of himself to her…his touch was fatal…the something he gave her filled the matrix of her agony with death. Love is never any better than the lover…the love of a free man is never safe…no gift for the beloved (206).”