Nuns go by as quiet as lust, and drunken men and sober
eyes sing in the lobby of the Greek hotel. Rosemary
Villanucci, our next-door friend who lives above her
father’s café, sits in a 1939 Buick eating bread and butter.
She rolls down the window to tell my sister Frieda and
me that we can’t come in. We stare at her, wanting her
bread, but more than that wanting to poke the arrogance
out of her eyes and smash the pride of ownership that
curls her chewing mouth. When she comes out of the car
we will beat her up, make red marks on her white skin,
and she will cry and ask us do we want her to pull her
pants down. We will say no. We don’t know what we
should feel or do if she does, but whenever she asks us,
we know she is offering us something precious and that
our own pride must be asserted by refusing to accept.
School has started, and Frieda and I get new brown
stockings and cod-liver oil. Grown-ups talk in tired, edgy
voices about Zick’s Coal Company and take us along in the evening to the railroad tracks where we fill burlap
sacks with the tiny pieces of coal lying about. Later we
walk home, glancing back to see the great carloads of
slag being dumped, red hot and smoking, into the ravine
that skirts the steel mill. The dying fire lights the sky with
a dull orange glow. Frieda and I lag behind, staring at the
patch of color surrounded by black. It is impossible not
to feel a shiver when our feet leave the gravel path and
sink into the dead grass in the field.
Our house is old, cold, and green. At night a kerosene
lamp lights one large room. The others are braced in
darkness, peopled by roaches and mice. Adults do not
talk to us—they give us directions. They issue orders
without providing information. When we trip and fall
down they glance at us; if we cut or bruise ourselves, they
ask us are we crazy. When we catch colds, they shake
their heads in disgust at our lack of consideration. How,
they ask us, do you expect anybody to get anything done
if you all are sick? We cannot answer them. Our illness is
treated with contempt, foul Black Draught, and castor oil
that blunts our minds.
When, on a day after a trip to collect coal, I cough
once, loudly, through bronchial tubes already packed
tight with phlegm, my mother frowns. “Great Jesus. Get
on in that bed. How many times do I have to tell you to
wear something on your head? You must be the biggest
fool in this town. Frieda? Get some rags and stuff that
window.”
Frieda restuffs the window. I trudge off to bed, full of
guilt and self-pity. I lie down in my underwear, the metal
in my black garters hurts my legs, but I do not take them
off, for it is too cold to lie stockingless. It takes a long
The Bluest Eyetime for my body to heat its place in the bed. Once I have
generated a silhouette of warmth, I dare not move, for
there is a cold place one-half inch in any direction. No
one speaks to me or asks how I feel. In an hour or two
my mother comes. Her hands are large and rough, and
when she rubs the Vicks salve on my chest, I am rigid
with pain. She takes two fingers’ full of it at a time, and
massages my chest until I am faint. Just when I think I
will tip over into a scream, she scoops out a little of the
salve on her forefinger and puts it in my mouth, telling
me to swallow. A hot flannel is wrapped about my neck
and chest. I am covered up with heavy quilts and ordered
to sweat, which I do—promptly.
Later I throw up, and my mother says, “What did you
puke on the bed clothes for? Don’t you have sense
enough to hold your head out the bed? Now, look what
you did. You think I got time for nothing but washing up
your puke?”
The puke swaddles down the pillow onto the sheet—
green-gray, with flecks of orange. It moves like the insides
of an uncooked egg. Stubbornly clinging to its own mass,
refusing to break up and be removed. How, I wonder, can
it be so neat and nasty at the same time?
My mother’s voice drones on. She is not talking to me.
She is talking to the puke, but she is calling it my name:
Claudia. She wipes it up as best she can and puts a
scratchy towel over the large wet place. I lie down again.
The rags have fallen from the window crack, and the air
is cold. I dare not call her back and am reluctant to leave
my warmth. My mother’s anger humiliates me; her words
chafe my cheeks, and I am crying. I do not know that she
is not angry at me, but at my sickness. I believe she
11despises my weakness for letting the sickness “take holt.”
By and by I will not get sick; I will refuse to. But for now
I am crying. I know I am making more snot, but I can’t
stop.
My sister comes in. Her eyes are full of sorrow. She
sings to me: “When the deep purple falls over sleepy
garden walls, someone thinks of me . . . .” I doze,
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
The Bluest EyeJones 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
13the 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.”
The Bluest Eye“It will. How much you charging?”
“Five dollars every two weeks.”
“That’ll be a big help to you.”
“I’ll say.”
Their conversation is like a gently wicked dance: sound
meets sound, curtsies, shimmies, and retires. Another
sound enters but is upstaged by still another: the two
circle each other and stop. Sometimes their words move
in lofty spirals; other times they take strident leaps, and
all of it is punctuated with warm-pulsed laughter—like
the throb of a heart made of jelly. The edge, the curl, the
thrust of their emotions is always clear to Frieda and me.
We do not, cannot, know the meanings of all their words,
for we are nine and ten years old. So we watch their
faces, their hands, their feet, and listen for truth in
timbre.
So when Mr. Henry arrived on a Saturday night, we
smelled him. He smelled wonderful. Like trees and lemon
vanishing cream, and Nu Nile Hair Oil and flecks of SenSen.
He smiled a lot, showing small even teeth with a
friendly gap in the middle. Frieda and I were not
introduced to him—merely pointed out. Like, here is the
bathroom; the clothes closet is here; and these are my
kids, Frieda and Claudia; watch out for this window; it
don’t open all the way.
We looked sideways at him, saying nothing and
expecting him to say nothing. Just to nod, as he had done
at the clothes closet, acknowledging our existence. To our
surprise, he spoke to us.
15“Hello there. You must be Greta Garb
Nuns go by as quiet as lust, and drunken men and sober
eyes sing in the lobby of the Greek hotel. Rosemary
Villanucci, our next-door friend who lives above her
father’s café, sits in a 1939 Buick eating bread and butter.
She rolls down the window to tell my sister Frieda and
me that we can’t come in. We stare at her, wanting her
bread, but more than that wanting to poke the arrogance
out of her eyes and smash the pride of ownership that
curls her chewing mouth. When she comes out of the car
we will beat her up, make red marks on her white skin,
and she will cry and ask us do we want her to pull her
pants down. We will say no. We don’t know what we
should feel or do if she does, but whenever she asks us,
we know she is offering us something precious and that
our own pride must be asserted by refusing to accept.
School has started, and Frieda and I get new brown
stockings and cod-liver oil. Grown-ups talk in tired, edgy
voices about Zick’s Coal Company and take us along in the evening to the railroad tracks where we fill burlap
sacks with the tiny pieces of coal lying about. Later we
walk home, glancing back to see the great carloads of
slag being dumped, red hot and smoking, into the ravine
that skirts the steel mill. The dying fire lights the sky with
a dull orange glow. Frieda and I lag behind, staring at the
patch of color surrounded by black. It is impossible not
to feel a shiver when our feet leave the gravel path and
sink into the dead grass in the field.
Our house is old, cold, and green. At night a kerosene
lamp lights one large room. The others are braced in
darkness, peopled by roaches and mice. Adults do not
talk to us—they give us directions. They issue orders
without providing information. When we trip and fall
down they glance at us; if we cut or bruise ourselves, they
ask us are we crazy. When we catch colds, they shake
their heads in disgust at our lack of consideration. How,
they ask us, do you expect anybody to get anything done
if you all are sick? We cannot answer them. Our illness is
treated with contempt, foul Black Draught, and castor oil
that blunts our minds.
When, on a day after a trip to collect coal, I cough
once, loudly, through bronchial tubes already packed
tight with phlegm, my mother frowns. “Great Jesus. Get
on in that bed. How many times do I have to tell you to
wear something on your head? You must be the biggest
fool in this town. Frieda? Get some rags and stuff that
window.”
Frieda restuffs the window. I trudge off to bed, full of
guilt and self-pity. I lie down in my underwear, the metal
in my black garters hurts my legs, but I do not take them
off, for it is too cold to lie stockingless. It takes a long
The Bluest Eyetime for my body to heat its place in the bed. Once I have
generated a silhouette of warmth, I dare not move, for
there is a cold place one-half inch in any direction. No
one speaks to me or asks how I feel. In an hour or two
my mother comes. Her hands are large and rough, and
when she rubs the Vicks salve on my chest, I am rigid
with pain. She takes two fingers’ full of it at a time, and
massages my chest until I am faint. Just when I think I
will tip over into a scream, she scoops out a little of the
salve on her forefinger and puts it in my mouth, telling
me to swallow. A hot flannel is wrapped about my neck
and chest. I am covered up with heavy quilts and ordered
to sweat, which I do—promptly.
Later I throw up, and my mother says, “What did you
puke on the bed clothes for? Don’t you have sense
enough to hold your head out the bed? Now, look what
you did. You think I got time for nothing but washing up
your puke?”
The puke swaddles down the pillow onto the sheet—
green-gray, with flecks of orange. It moves like the insides
of an uncooked egg. Stubbornly clinging to its own mass,
refusing to break up and be removed. How, I wonder, can
it be so neat and nasty at the same time?
My mother’s voice drones on. She is not talking to me.
She is talking to the puke, but she is calling it my name:
Claudia. She wipes it up as best she can and puts a
scratchy towel over the large wet place. I lie down again.
The rags have fallen from the window crack, and the air
is cold. I dare not call her back and am reluctant to leave
my warmth. My mother’s anger humiliates me; her words
chafe my cheeks, and I am crying. I do not know that she
is not angry at me, but at my sickness. I believe she
11despises my weakness for letting the sickness “take holt.”
By and by I will not get sick; I will refuse to. But for now
I am crying. I know I am making more snot, but I can’t
stop.
My sister comes in. Her eyes are full of sorrow. She
sings to me: “When the deep purple falls over sleepy
garden walls, someone thinks of me . . . .” I doze,
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
The Bluest EyeJones 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
13the 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.”
The Bluest Eye“It will. How much you charging?”
“Five dollars every two weeks.”
“That’ll be a big help to you.”
“I’ll say.”
Their conversation is like a gently wicked dance: sound
meets sound, curtsies, shimmies, and retires. Another
sound enters but is upstaged by still another: the two
circle each other and stop. Sometimes their words move
in lofty spirals; other times they take strident leaps, and
all of it is punctuated with warm-pulsed laughter—like
the throb of a heart made of jelly. The edge, the curl, the
thrust of their emotions is always clear to Frieda and me.
We do not, cannot, know the meanings of all their words,
for we are nine and ten years old. So we watch their
faces, their hands, their feet, and listen for truth in
timbre.
So when Mr. Henry arrived on a Saturday night, we
smelled him. He smelled wonderful. Like trees and lemon
vanishing cream, and Nu Nile Hair Oil and flecks of SenSen.
He smiled a lot, showing small even teeth with a
friendly gap in the middle. Frieda and I were not
introduced to him—merely pointed out. Like, here is the
bathroom; the clothes closet is here; and these are my
kids, Frieda and Claudia; watch out for this window; it
don’t open all the way.
We looked sideways at him, saying nothing and
expecting him to say nothing. Just to nod, as he had done
at the clothes closet, acknowledging our existence. To our
surprise, he spoke to us.
15“Hello there. You must be Greta Garb
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