Pages 37–38
A new header — YEAR OF THE TRIAL-SIZE DOVE BAR — another sponsored year (p. 33 explained the custom), with no telling yet where it falls among the others. The place is the Brighton Projects in Boston; the speaker is Clenette, a young narrator telling this in her own spoken vernacular, with no narrator above her, for the whole two pages — the register is deliberate. Everyone is new: her half-sister Wardine, Reginald who loves Wardine, Wardine's momma, and the momma's man Roy Tony. Said plainly, because the scene is plain about it: this is about a girl being beaten at home and sexually menaced at night.
Terms, in order of appearance
- Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar (p. 37) — the year's sponsor; Dove Bar is a real ice-cream brand, here in its smallest retail size.
- crib (p. 37) — slang: home, apartment.
- 5s (p. 37) — five-dollar bills.
- Brighton Projects (p. 38) — public housing in Brighton, a real Boston neighborhood.
- Shedd Spread (p. 38) — real margarine brand; what Reginald has on hand for Wardine's cuts.
After you read: three things
1. The cut is the loudest thing on the page. One line-break ago a man was settling into a silk-lined recliner with a dinner tray over his head (p. 37); now this. It's the hardest tonal cut the book has made, and the voice changes completely with it — short declarative sentences, chains of reported speech ("Reginald say Wardine say her momma aint treat her right"), a monologue built like testimony. Trust that both the cut and the voice are on purpose.
2. The scene is a logic problem with every exit blocked. Tell Reginald's momma, and Wardine's momma will conclude Wardine has been lying down with Reginald — which, she has promised, means being beaten to death. Wardine says she'll kill herself if Clenette or Reginald tells. Reginald's plan is to go "man to man" (p. 38) to the playground where a paroled killer does business. Clenette runs each branch to its end and finds death on all of them. Under it, quietly: Wardine has had no feeling in the skin of her back since spring. "Is she still pretty, she cry" (p. 38).
3. The narrator's own stake surfaces in the last lines. Almost in passing: Clenette's momma "be the lady Roy Tony kill Columbus Epps over, four years gone, in the Brighton Projects, for Love" (p. 38) — the killer in this story already reshaped her family once. And then the final sentence, flat, attached to nothing before it: "And I am gone have a child." (p. 38). The scene ends by handing you its narrator's situation and explaining none of it.
Written only from this scene and earlier pages. Safe to read before you start.