The Bluest Eye: Winter

His skin takes on the pale, cheerless yellow of winter sun; for a jaw he has the edges of a snowbound field dotted with stubble; his high forehead is the frozen sweep of the Erie, hiding currents of gelid thoughts that eddy in darkness.

His skin takes on the pale, cheerless yellow of winter sun; for a jaw he has the edges of a snowbound field dotted with stubble; his high forehead is the frozen sweep of the Erie, hiding currents of gelid thoughts that eddy in darkness.

She was rich, at least by our standards, as rich as the richest of the white girls, swaddled in comfort and care.

The quality of her clothes threatened to derange Frieda and me.

There was a hint of spring in her sloe green eyes, something summery in her complexion, and a rich autumn ripeness in her walk.

Black boys didn’t trip her in the halls; white boys didn’t stone her, white girls didn’t suck their teeth when she was assigned to be their work partners; black girls stepped aside when she wanted to use the sink in the girls’ toilet, and their eyes genuflected under sliding lids.

She never had to search for anybody to eat with in the cafeteria—they flocked to the table of her choice, where she opened fastidious lunches, shaming our jelly-stained bread with egg-salad sandwiches cut into four dainty squares, pink-frosted cupcakes, stocks of celery and carrots, proud, dark apples.

She never had to search for anybody to eat with in the cafeteria—they flocked to the table of her choice, where she opened fastidious lunches, shaming our jelly-stained bread with egg-salad sandwiches cut into four dainty squares, pink-frosted cupcakes, stocks of celery and carrots, proud, dark apples.

Frieda and I were bemused, irritated, and fascinated by her.

We looked hard for flaws to restore our equilibrium, but had to be content at first with uglying up her name, changing Maureen Peal to Meringue Pie.

Later a minor epiphany was ours when we discovered that she had a dog tooth—a charming one to be sure—but a dog tooth nonetheless.

But we had to do it alone, for none of the other girls would cooperate with our hostility.

And when I thought of the unearned haughtiness in her eyes, I plotted accidental slammings of locker doors on her hand.

They had extemporized a verse made up of two insults about matters over which the victim had no control: the color of her skin and speculations on the sleeping habits of an adult, wildly fitting in its incoherence.

They seemed to have taken all of their smoothly cultivated ignorance, their exquisitely learned self-hatred, their elaborately designed hopelessness and sucked it all up into a fiery cone of scorn that had burned for ages in the hollows of their minds—cooled—and spilled over lips of outrage, consuming whatever was in its path.

They danced a macabre ballet around the victim, whom, for their own sake, they were prepared to sacrifice to the flaming pit.

Grumbling a few disinterested epithets, they moved away.

While Frieda and I clucked on about the near fight, Maureen, suddenly animated, put her velvet-sleeved arm through Pecola’s and began to behave as though they were the closest of friends.

Maureen disappeared into the store with Pecola. Frieda looked placidly down the street; I opened my mouth, but quickly closed it.

We chanted this most powerful of our arsenal of insults as long as we could see the green stems and rabbit fur.

Her pain antagonized me.

We were sinking under the wisdom, accuracy, and relevance of Maureen’s last words. If she was cute—and if anything could be believed, she was—then we were not.

Guileless and without vanity, we were still in love with ourselves then.

A cold wind blew somewhere in me, lifting little leaves of terror and obscure longing.

Such girls live in quiet black neighborhoods where everybody is gainfully employed.

They are not fretful, nervous, or shrill; they do not have lovely black necks that stretch as though against an invisible collar; their eyes do not bite.

Here they learn the rest of the lesson begun in those soft houses with porch swings and pots of bleeding heart: how to behave. The careful development of thrift, patience, high morals, and good manners.

Wherever it erupts, this Funk, they wipe it away; where it crusts, they dissolve it; wherever it drips, flowers, or clings, they find it and fight it until it dies.

The laugh that is a little too loud; the enunciation a little too round; the gesture a little too generous.

What they do not know is that this plain brown girl will build her nest stick by stick, make it her own inviolable world, and stand guard over its every plant, weed, and doily, even against him.

A cat, perhaps, who will love her order, precision, and constancy; who will be as clean and quiet as she is.

She can rub the smooth fur and feel the unresisting flesh underneath. At her gentlest touch he will preen, stretch, and open his mouth. And she will accept the strangely pleasant sensation that comes when he writhes beneath her hand and flattens his eyes with a surfeit of sensual delight.

As long as his needs were physical, she could meet them—comfort and satiety.

Junior considered the playground his own, and the schoolchildren coveted his freedom to sleep late, go home for lunch, and dominate the playground after school.

In winter his mother put Jergens Lotion on his face to keep the skin from becoming ashen.

...subtle and telltale signs threatened to erode it, and the watch had to be constant.

In the long, hot days, they idled away, picking plaster from the walls and digging into the earth with sticks.

The cat clawed her face and chest in an effort to right itself, then leaped nimbly to the floor.

She looked at Pecola. Saw the dirty torn dress, the plaits sticking out on her head, hair matted where the plaits had come undone, the muddy shoes with the wad of gum peeping out from between the cheap soles, the soiled socks, one of which had been walked down into the heel of the shoe.

Eyes that questioned nothing and asked everything. Unblinking and unabashed, they stared up at her. The end of the world lay in their eyes, and the beginning, and all the waste in between.