ing memories about Maggie during their time at the orphanage limit their
bond. In the fourth, set later in the 1970s, primarily outside a school at the
center of a bussing controversy, they are thirty-somethings on opposite sides
in the controversy. And in the fifth, set primarily in a coffee shop, they are in
their forties and move back toward each other.
Morrison begins to develop the global instability in the story’s first two
paragraphs.
My mother danced all night and Roberta’s was sick. That’s why we were taken
to St. Bonny’s. . . . 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.
Smell funny, I mean. So when the Big Bozo (nobody ever called her Mrs.
Itkin, just like nobody ever said St. Bonaventure)—when she said, “Twyla,
this is Roberta. Roberta, this is Twyla. Make each other welcome.” I said,
“My mother won’t like you putting me in here.” (243)The first two sentences introduce the instability of the girls having absent
mothers, and the second paragraph ties that instability to the relationship
between the girls: Twyla’s response to Roberta’s racial difference stems from
her having assimilated her mother’s racist attitude. But since Twyla does not
directly voice her racist judgment, Roberta does not take serious offense.
Indeed, as the first paragraph indicates, the two girls do bond sufficiently to
become a “we” and to function as a social mind: they act together (going from
bed to bed) and they desire together (“we wanted to”). By juxtaposing the two
paragraphs, Morrison shows that what threatens the ongoing functioning of
their social mind is less the basic instincts of the two girls than the ways those
instincts get distorted by other forces.
discussion of the temporal problems in the opening pages of Beloved in Experiencing Fiction
[59]. Whether I’m a good close reader or just a pedant is a judgment I leave to my audience.)
160 • CHAPTER 8