Twyla and Roberta bond more fully in response to the hostile behavior of
the adolescent girls, who, as I’ll discuss below, function as a rival social mind.
At the same time, Morrison shows the fragility of Twyla and Roberta’s inter-
mental unit, especially when their mothers get involved. When their moth-
ers come to visit for Easter (time of hope and change), Twyla is so happy at
receiving Mary’s initial expressions of love that she “forgot about Roberta”
(247). But after Roberta’s mother offers a racist and classist rejection of Mary
(and Twyla)—she looks them over and without saying a word grabs Roberta
and walks away—Twyla takes on Roberta’s mother’s negative view. Prior to
this interaction, Twyla minimizes the things about Mary that she doesn’t like
because she feels loved. But in the wake of Roberta’s mother’s snub, all Twyla
can focus on are Mary’s limitations; indeed, she has murderous thoughts: “I
could have killed her” (248).
Morrison’s triple sourcing here highlights the differences in rhetorical
readers’ understanding of the scene as they assign different racial identities to
the characters. If Roberta and her mother are white, then Twyla’s response pri-
marily shows how white racism influences her sense of her and her mother’s
racial inferiority. If Roberta and her mother are black, then Twyla’s response
primarily shows her sense of her and her mother’s class inferiority.
Furthermore, in noting the difference between her meager lunch of
mashed jelly beans and Roberta’s ample one, Twyla herself falls into racist
thinking: “Things are not right. The wrong food is always with the wrong
people” (248). By having Twyla imply that she should have Roberta’s lunch
and Roberta hers, Morrison not only underlines her thematic point about
the contagious nature of racist thinking but also shows how easily Twyla and
Roberta’s intermental unit can dissolve. But their bond is not so fragile that
it breaks, and after the visit, Roberta and Twyla reestablish it through their
mutual mind-reading. Roberta, aware that Mary did not bring lunch, gives
Twyla “a stack of grahams” when the visit is over, and Twyla reads the motives
behind the gift: “I think she was sorry that her mother would not shake my
mother’s hand. And I liked that and I liked the fact that she didn’t say a word
about Mary’s groaning all the way through the service and not bringing any
lunch” (248).
Morrison uses Twyla’s narration about the older girls to show a contrasting
social mind in operation, one whose hostility brings Twyla and Roberta closer
together (though they stop short of sharing their fears):
They were put-out girls, scared runaways most of them. Poor little girls who
fought their uncles off but looked tough to us, and mean. . . . [S]ometimes
they caught us watching them in the orchard where they played radios andTONI MORRISON’S DETERMINATE AMBIgUITY • 161