Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison

O Solomon don’t leave me here.

The children were starting the round again. Milkman rubbed the back of his neck. Suddenly he was tired, although the morning was still new. He pushed himself away from the cedar and sank to his haunches.

Jay the only son of Solomon

Come booba yalle, come…

Everybody in this town is named Solomon, he thought wearily. Solomon’s General Store, Luther Solomon (no relation), Solomon’s Leap, and now the children were singing “Solomon don’t leave me” instead of “Sugarman.” Even the name of the town sounded like Solomon: Shalimar, which Mr. Solomon and everybody else pronounced Shalleemone.

Milkman’s scalp began to tingle. Jay the only son of Solomon? Was that Jake the only son of Solomon? Jake. He strained to hear the children. That was one of the people he was looking for. A man named Jake who lived in Shalimar, as did his wife, Sing.

He sat up and waited for the children to begin the verse again. “Come booba yalle, come booba tambee,” it sounded like, and didn’t make sense. But another line—“Black lady fell down on the ground”—was clear enough. There was another string of nonsense words, then “Threw her body all around.” Now the child in the center began whirling, spinning to lyrics sung in a different, faster tempo: “Solomon ’n’ Reiner Belali Shalut…”

Solomon again, and Reiner? Ryna? Why did the second name sound so familiar? Solomon and Ryna. The woods. The hunt. Solomon’s Leap and Ryna’s Gulch, places they went to or passed by that night they shot the bobcat. The gulch was where he heard that noise that sounded like a woman crying, which Calvin said came from Ryna’s Gulch, that there was an echo there that folks said was “a woman name Ryna” crying. You could hear her when the wind was right.

But what was the rest: Belali…Shalut…Yaruba? If Solomon and Ryna were names of people, the others might be also. The verse ended in another clear line. “Twenty-one children, the last one Jake!” And it was at the shout of Jake (who was also, apparently, “the only son of Solomon”) that the twirling boy stopped. Now Milkman understood that if the child’s finger pointed at nobody, missed, they started up again. But if it pointed directly to another child, that was when they fell to their knees and sang Pilate’s song.

Milkman took out his wallet and pulled from it his airplane ticket stub, but he had no pencil to write with, and his pen was in his suit. He would just have to listen and memorize it. He closed his eyes and concentrated while the children, inexhaustible in their willingness to repeat a rhythmic, rhyming action game, performed the round over and over again. And Milkman memorized all of what they sang.

Jake the only son of Solomon

Come booba yalle, come booba tambee

Whirled about and touched the sun

Come konka yalle, come konka tambee

Left that baby in a white man’s house

Come booba yalle, come booba tambee

Heddy took him to a red man’s house

Come konka yalle, come konka tambee

Black lady fell down on the ground

Come booba yalle booba tambee

Threw her body all around

Come konka yalle, come konka tambee

Solomon and Ryna Belali Shalut

Yaruba Medina Muhammet too.

Nestor Kalina Saraka cake.

Twenty-one children, the last one Jake!

O Solomon don’t leave me here

Cotton balls to choke me

O Solomon don’t leave me here

Buckra’s arms to yoke me

Solomon done fly, Solomon done gone

Solomon cut across the sky, Solomon gone home.

He almost shouted when he heard “Heddy took him to a red man’s house.” Heddy was Susan Byrd’s grandmother on her father’s side, and therefore Sing’s mother too. And “red man’s house” must be a reference to the Byrds as Indians. Of course! Sing was an Indian or part Indian and her name was Sing Byrd or, more likely, Sing Bird. No—Singing Bird! That must have been her name originally—Singing Bird. And her brother, Crowell Byrd, was probably Crow Bird, or just Crow. They had mixed their Indian names with American-sounding names. Milkman had four people now that he could recognize in the song: Solomon, Jake, Ryna and Heddy, and a veiled reference to Heddy’s Indianness. All of which seemed to put Jake and Sing together in Shalimar, just as Circe had said they were. He couldn’t be mistaken. These children were singing a story about his own people! He hummed and chuckled as he did his best to put it all together.

Jake’s father was Solomon. Did Jake whirl about and touch the sun? Did Jake leave a baby in a white man’s house? No. If the “Solomon don’t leave me” line was right, Solomon was the one who left, who “flew away”—meaning died or ran off—not Jake. Maybe it was the baby, or Jake himself, who was begging him to stay. But who was the “black lady” who fell down on the ground? Why did she throw her body all around? It sounded like she was having a fit. Was it because somebody took her baby first to a white man’s house, then to an Indian’s house? Ryna? Was Ryna the black lady still crying in the gulch? Was Ryna Solomon’s daughter? Maybe she had an illegitimate child, and her father—No. It’s Solomon she is crying for, not a baby. “Solomon don’t leave me.” He must have been her lover.

Milkman was getting confused, but he was as excited as a child confronted with boxes and boxes of presents under the skirt of a Christmas tree. Somewhere in the pile was a gift for him.

Yet there were many many missing pieces. Susan Byrd, he thought—she would have to know more than she had told him. Besides, he had to get his watch back.

He ran back to Solomon’s store and caught a glimpse of himself in the plate-glass window. He was grinning. His eyes were shining. He was as eager and happy as he had ever been in his life.

Chapter 13

It was a long time after he left, that warm September morning, that she was able to relax enough to drop the knife. When it clattered to the linoleum, she brought her arms down, oh, so slowly, and cradled her breasts as though they were two man-goes thumbed over in the marketplace and pushed aside. She stood that way in the little rented room with the sunshine pouring in until Guitar came home. He could not get her to speak or move, so he picked her up in his arms and carried her downstairs. He sat her on the bottom step while he went to borrow a car to drive her home.

Terrible as he thought the whole business was, and repelled as he was by mindlessness in love, he could not keep the deep wave of sorrow from engulfing him as he looked at this really rather pretty woman sitting straight as a pole, holding her breasts, and staring in front of her out of hollow eyes.

The engine of the old car he’d borrowed roared, but spoke softly to her. “You think because he doesn’t love you that you are worthless. You think because he doesn’t want you anymore that he is right–that his judgment and opinion of you are correct. If he throws you out, then you are garbage. You think he belongs to you because you want to belong to him. Hagar, don’t. It’s a bad word, ‘belong.’ Especially when you put it with somebody you love. Love shouldn’t be like that. Did you ever see the way the clouds love a mountain? They circle all around it; sometimes you can’t even see the mountain for the clouds. But you know what? You go up top and what do you see? His head. The clouds never cover the head. His head pokes through, because the clouds let him; they don’t wrap him up. They let him keep his head up high, free, with nothing to hide him or bind him. Hear me, Hagar?” He spoke to her as he would to a very young child. “You can’t own a human being. You can’t lose what you don’t own. Suppose you did own him. Could you really love somebody who was absolutely nobody without you? You really want somebody like that? Somebody who falls apart when you walk out the door? You don’t, do you? And neither does he. You’re turning over your whole life to him. Your whole life, girl. And if it means so little to you that you can just give it away, hand it to him, then why should it mean any more to him? He can’t value you more than you value yourself.” He stopped. She did not move or give any sign that she had heard him.

Pretty woman, he thought. Pretty little black-skinned woman. Who wanted to kill for love, die for love. The pride, the conceit of these doormat women amazed him. They were always women who had been spoiled children. Whose whims had been taken seriously by adults and who grew up to be the stingiest, greediest people on earth and out of their stinginess grew their stingy little love that ate everything in sight. They could not believe or accept the fact that they were unloved; they believed that the world itself was off balance when it appeared as though they were not loved. Why did they think they were so lovable? Why did they think their brand of love was better than, or even as good as, anybody else’s? But they did. And they loved their love so much they would kill anybody who got in its way.

He looked at her again. Pretty. Pretty little black girl. Pretty little black-skinned girl. What had Pilate done to her? Hadn’t anybody told her the things she ought to know? He thought of his two sisters, grown women now who could deal, and the litany of their growing up. Where’s your daddy? Your mama know you out here in the street? Put something on your head. You gonna catch your death a cold. Ain’t you hot? Ain’t you cold? Ain’t you scared you gonna get wet? Uncross your legs. Pull up your socks. I thought you was goin to the Junior Choir. Your slip is showin. Your hem is out. Come back in here and iron that collar. Hush your mouth. Comb your head. Get up from there and make that bed. Put on the meat. Take out the trash. Vaseline get rid of that ash.

Neither Pilate nor Reba knew that Hagar was not like them. Not strong enough, like Pilate, nor simple enough, like Reba, to make up her life as they had. She needed what most colored girls needed: a chorus of mamas, grandmamas, aunts, cousins, sisters, neighbors, Sunday school teachers, best girl friends, and what all to give her the strength life demanded of her—and the humor with which to live it.

Still, he thought, to have the object of your love, worthy or not, despise you, or leave you…

“You know what, Hagar? Everything I ever loved in my life left me. My father died when I was four. That was the first leaving I knew and the hardest. Then my mother. There were four of us and she just couldn’t cut it when my father died. She ran away. Just ran away. My aunt took care of us until my grandmother could get there. Then my grandmother took care of us. Then Uncle Billy came. They’re both close to dead now. So it was hard for me to latch on to a woman. Because I thought if I loved anything it would die. But I did latch on. Once. But I guess once is all you can manage.” Guitar thought about it and said, “But I never wanted to kill her. Him, yeah. But not her.” He smiled, but Hagar wasn’t looking, wasn’t even listening, and when he led her out of the car into Reba’s arms her eyes were still empty.

All they knew to do was love her and since she would not speak, they brought things to please her. For the first time in life Reba tried to win things. And, also for the first time, couldn’t. Except for a portable television set, which they couldn’t connect because they had no electricity, Reba won nothing. No raffle ticket, no Bingo, no policy slip, no clearing-house number, no magazine sweepstakes, no, nor any unpierced carnival balloon succumbed to her magic. It wore her down. Puzzled and luckless, she dragged herself home clutching stalks of anything that blossomed along the edges of lots and other people’s gardens. These she presented to her daughter, who sat in a chair by the window or lay in bed fingering, fingering her hair.

They cooked special things for her; searched for gifts that they hoped would break the spell. Nothing helped. Pilate’s lips were still and Reba’s eyes full of panic. They brought her lipstick and chocolate milk, a pink nylon sweater and a fuchsia bed jacket. Reba even investigated the mysteries of making jello, both red and green. Hagar didn’t even look at it.

One day Pilate sat down on Hagar’s bed and held a compact before her granddaughter’s face. It was trimmed in a goldlike metal and had a pink plastic lid.

“Look, baby. See here?” Pilate turned it all around to show it off and pressed in the catch. The lid sprang open and Hagar saw a tiny part of her face reflected in the mirror. She took the compact then and stared into the mirror for a long while.

“No wonder,” she said at last. “Look at that. No wonder. No wonder.”

Pilate was thrilled at the sound of Hagar’s voice. “It’s yours, baby,” she said. “Ain’t it pretty?”

“No wonder,” said Hagar. “No wonder.”

“No wonder what?” asked Pilate.

“Look at how I look. I look awful. No wonder he didn’t want me. I look terrible.” Her voice was calm and reasonable, as though the last few days hadn’t been lived through at all. “I need to get up from here and fix myself up. No wonder!” Hagar threw back the bedcover and stood up. “Ohhh. I smell too. Mama, heat me some water. I need a bath. A long one. We got any bath salts left? Oh, Lord, my head. Look at that.” She peered into the compact mirror again. “I look like a ground hog. Where’s the comb?”

Pilate called Reba and together they flew through the house to find the comb, but when they found it Hagar couldn’t get the teeth through her roped and matted hair.

“Wash it,” said Reba. “Wash it and we’ll comb it while it’s wet.”

“I need shampoo, then. Real shampoo. I can’t use Mama’s soap.”

“I’ll go get some.” Reba was trembling a little. “What kind?”

“Oh, any kind. And get some hair oil, Reba. Posner’s, and some…Oh, never mind. Just that. Mama? Have you seen my…Oh, my God. No wonder. No wonder.”

Pilate pulled a piece of string from Hagar’s bedspread and put it in her mouth. “I’ll heat up the water,” she said.

When Reba got back she washed Hagar’s hair, brushed it, and combed it gently.

“Just make me two braids, Reba. I’m going to have to go to the beauty shop. Today. Oh, and I need something to wear.” Hagar stood at the door of the little cardboard closet, running her hands over the shoulders of dresses. “Everything’s a mess in here. A mess. All wrinkled…”

“Water’s hot. Where you want the tub?”

“Bring it in here.”

“You think you should be taking a bath so soon?” Reba asked. “You just got up.”