Reginald's planned confrontation at the playground, and Clenette's dread

texture · YTSDB (2004)

• When: YTSDB (2004), the close of the Wardine section; the confrontation itself is planned, never shown
• What: Reginald, refusing to let Wardine be beaten again, resolves to go to Roy Tony directly: to tell him "not mess with Wardine or breathe by her mattress at night," and to "take his self on down to the playground at the Brighton Projects where Roy Tony do business and he go to Roy Tony man to man and he make Roy Tony make it all right." The section ends inside Clenette's dread of what that means: "But I think Roy Tony gone kill Reginald if Reginald go" — and then Wardine's mother will beat Wardine to death, and nobody will know but Clenette, who is pregnant. Whether Reginald goes, and what Roy Tony does, is never told: the Wardine thread does not resurface in the novel. Note the load-bearing locale detail — Roy Tony "do business" at the Brighton Projects playground — which is the in-text weld to event 4.