Tar Baby

“Ondine tried, unsuccessfully, for months to get a Mary who would work inside. With no explicit refusal or general explanation each Mary took the potatoes, the pot, the paper sack and the paring knife outdoors to the part of the courtyard the kitchen opened onto. It enraged Ondine because it gave the place a nasty, common look.”

Ondine is very critical of the “Marys” who come with Gideon to the house. She tries to keep the atmosphere of L’Arbe de la Croix refined and believes that Thérèse’s refusal to work in the house makes the house look low-class. It reflects her own standards and her tendency to look down on the other staff who help her keep the household running.

“I wonder if the person he wants to marry is me or a black girl? And if it isn’t me he wants, but any black girl who looks like me, talks and acts like me, what will happen when he finds out that I hate ear hoops, that I don’t have to straighten my hair, that Mingus puts me to sleep, that sometimes I want to get out of my skin and be only the person inside—not American—not black—just me?”

Jadine confronts others’ expectations of her racial identity frequently in Tar Baby, and in this instance, she is up against her white boyfriend’s expectations. She suspects that he is only interested because she is a Black woman, but she also wonders if this singular obsession of his prevents him from seeing her as the person she actually is. His expectations of who she is are defined by her racial identity and create a disconnect between them. 

“His was taken from him when his father died and his mother and aunts all changed from hearty fun-loving big sisters to grave serioso mammas who began their duties by trying to keep him from grieving over his father’s death.”

Valerian struggles to connect with his son, Michael, and his disappointment in their inability to have a relationship is echoed in his own past. When Valerian’s father died, his relationships with the older women in his life fundamentally changed, and although they still demonstrated care for him, it was not the care he needed. He comes to expect this kind of disconnect between generations of a family. 

“Just a May and December marriage, she thought, at its crucial stage. He’s seventy; she’s knocking fifty. He is waning, shutting up, closing in. She’s blazing with the fire of a soon to be setting sun.”

There are many issues in Margaret and Valerian’s marriage, most specifically over their son, Michael. Jadine observes, however, that another unspoken conflict arises from their different places in life. Valerian is approaching the end, content to live on the island and tend to his greenhouse, wanting to know peace and relax. Margaret, being younger and not yet in the sunset of her life, is more vigorous and wants to continue living her life in the US, with friends and her son. 

“They no longer seemed merely the tiffs of long-married people who alone knew the physics of their relationship. Who like two old cats clawed each other, used each other to display a quarrelsomeness neither took seriously, quarreling because they thought it was expected of them.”

Jadine notices that the fighting between Valerian and Margaret grows worse, and understands that while, in the past, they fought as though playing roles in a marriage, their fights are now more severe. Romantic relationships can create habits between their participants, and one such habit can be fighting. However, as Margaret and Valerian’s resentments remain unresolved, their fighting escalates beyond performance and becomes deeply personal. 

“It seemed like a perfect exit line to her, since she didn’t know what he was talking about and didn’t want to pursue his thoughts if they were anything like his eyes at this moment. Without melanin, they were all reflection, like mirrors, chamber after chamber, corridor after corridor of mirrors, each one taking its shape from the other and giving it back as its own until the final effect was color where no color existed at all.”

Jadine considers the nature of Valerian’s mind and hesitates to engage with him. She describes his eyes like mirrors, constantly reflecting themselves. This effect creates an echo chamber in Valerian’s mind, with his thoughts left unchallenged and repeatedly reinforced, making it difficult for Jadine to parse his meaning. 

“[A] stunning black chiffon dress for Ondine. A little over done, but Ondine liked that. Zircons on the bodice and the waist, swirls of chiffon skirting. And (the best thing) black suede shoes with zircons studding the heels. Hooker shoes. Ondine wouldn’t be able to walk long in them, but how she could reign from a sitting position.”

Jadine exhibits a complete misunderstanding of her aunt as she wraps Ondine’s Christmas gifts. She wants to make Ondine feel like royalty and so buys her a fancy dress and high heels. Ondine, whose feet hurt from constant work, neither wants nor needs such clothes. In fact, the shoes hurt her feet just as much as her work does. Jadine places her own standards and dreams on Ondine when choosing these gifts, ignoring what Ondine might actually want or need. 

“And ships unloaded wilted lettuce, thin rusty beans and pithy carrots every month. A hardship for the rich and the middle class, neither of whom would consider working a kitchen garden (except, of course, the American, who made it a hobby) and were dependent on the market but it was of no consequence to the poor who ate splendidly from their gardens, from the sea and from the avocado trees that grew by the side of the road.”

Isle des Chevaliers, near Queen of France, is a community of wealthy Americans and Europeans who pay for lackluster imported food. Other residents of the islands, whose families have lived there for generations, cultivate their own food, and let the islands’ natural environment provide for them. This divide in food is drawn largely upon social-class lines, with the poor eating better and paying less through their own labor and by using the resources around them. 

“Oh, good God, I think you better throw me out of the window because as soon as you let me loose I am going to kill you. For that alone. Just for that. For pulling that black-woman-white-woman shit on me. Never mind the rest. What you said before, that was nasty and mean, but if you think you can get away with telling me what a black woman is or ought to be…”

Jadine commits from a very early age to never let a man control or define her, and she battles against Son at times to preserve this independence. In this case, he seeks to define her racial identity, suggesting that she acts like a white woman. She refutes his claims, warning him to never define her in such a way, as her identity is hers alone and not to be shaped by others’ expectations.

“His appetite for her so gargantuan it lost its focus and spread to his eyes, the oranges in his shirt, the curtains, the moonlight. Spread to everything everywhere around her, and let her be.”

Son’s infatuation with Jadine is all consuming. It becomes an obsession for him and infiltrates every part of his being. The passion he has for her is powerful and influences his decisions and interactions with her.

“The Indian problem, he told Michael, was between Indians, their conscience and their own derring-do. And all of his loving treks from ghetto to reservation to barrio to migrant farm were searches for people in whose company the Michaels could enjoy the sorrow they were embarrassed to feel for themselves.”

Valerian considers Michael to be a kind of emotional tourist. He does not see his son’s efforts to help the disadvantaged as genuine, but instead as a way for Michael to feel better about himself by seeing and trying to soothe the sorrow of others. Valerian believes that whatever sorrow Michael wants to feel, he knows that he shouldn’t display it, so he instead involves himself with others whose sorrow is severe and viewed as legitimate. 

“Yallas don’t come to being black natural-like. They have to choose it and most don’t choose it. Be careful of the stuff they put down.”

Gideon views Jadine as someone existing between racial and social-class identities. He believes that her relationship with the Streets complicates her identity and that although she is a Black woman, she doesn’t choose to be. He warns Son about her, believing that their differences will cause conflict.

“White folks play with Negroes. It entertained him, that’s all, inviting you to dinner. He don’t give a damn what it does to anybody else. You think he cares about his wife? That you scared his wife? If it entertained him, he’d hand her to you!”

Sydney tells Son that the latter’s position in the house is nothing special. He reveals the nature of Valerian’s treatment of Margaret, and asserts that Valerian does not truly care for his wife. With their relationship deteriorating, he seeks to antagonize his wife for his own entertainment, opening the door for Son to be invited into the house as a guest.

“When he thought of America, he thought of the tongue that the Mexican drew in Uncle Sam’s mouth: a map of the U.S. as an ill-shaped tongue ringed by teeth and crammed with the corpses of children.”

During his travels, Son meets many people from around the world. During one such interaction, he is introduced to a Mexican man’s view of the US. It is a view that defines the US by its greed and violence, describing Uncle Sam’s mouth as having an ill-shaped tongue, suggesting a tendency for the US to lie. 

“A white woman no matter how old, how flabby, how totally sexless, believed it and she could have shot him for choosing Margaret’s closet and giving her reason to believe it was true.”

Throughout the novel, Margaret is convinced that Son hides in her closet because he wants her and plans to rape her. Jadine sees that Son has no such intentions and never did, but recognizes that Margaret, as a white woman, can only understand Son and his actions as him wanting her. Jadine is angry at Son for giving Margaret a reason to support that belief.

“That he loved people, was not selfish, was actually self-sacrificing, committed, that he could have lived practically any kind of life he chose, could be dissolute, reckless, trivial, greedy. But he wasn’t. He had not turned out that way. He could have been president of the candy company if he had wanted, but he wanted value in his life, not money. He had turned out fine, just fine.”

Margaret believes in Michael as much as she loves him. She sees a stark difference between him and his father. While Valerian lets the candy factory dominate his life and allows money to motivate his career and life path, Michael shuns that exact life and follows a different path in which he seeks to support marginalized communities.

“[N]obody knew thieves and thievery better than he did and he probably thought he was a law-abiding man, they all did, and they all always did, because they had not the dignity of wild animals who did not eat where they defecated but they could defecate over a whole people and come there to live and defecate some more by tearing up the land.”

Son identifies the hypocrisy of Valerian firing Gideon and Thérèse for stealing apples when Valerian himself bribes officials to get the apples onto the island. Valerian does not believe that he ever does anything wrong, or acts outside of the law, but is overly critical of those he perceives as lower status when they commit less serious transgressions.

“Across from him at the bottom of the table sat Son who thought he knew them all very well too, except one and that one was escaping out of his hands, and that one was doing the bidding of her boss and ‘patron.’ Keeping the dinner going smoothly, quietly chastising everybody including her own uncle and aunt, soothing Margaret, agreeing with Valerian and calling Gideon Yardman.”

Son struggles greatly with Jadine’s commitment to Valerian. In this scene, as the table engages in a serious argument, he witnesses her defend Valerian instead of siding with her clearly hurt aunt and uncle. He doesn’t understand how she can favor Valerian over her family just because Valerian supports her in her education and career.

“He could not understand why Son wanted to return to the country too terrible for dying, but he agreed that one black face would look like another and a difference of twenty years would not be noticed in a black man’s five-year-old passport.”

When Gideon gives Son his passport, he knows the deception will work for Son. Having lived in the US for over 20 years, Gideon is aware of the racism that pervades US society. He rightly believes that no one will look too closely or take the care to examine the differences between the picture and information of Gideon and Son.

“This is home. The city had gone on to something more interesting to it than the black people who had fascinated it a decade ago, but if ever there was a black woman’s town, New York was it. No, no, not over there making land-use decisions, or deciding what was or was not information. But there, there, there and there.”

Jadine is at home in New York City. It is a city of opportunity for her, in which she can find modeling jobs and be comfortable in her community, with a network of friends and a wealth of available experiences. New York is described as a city for Black women, and it is the place Jadine favors most, and a city in which she believes she can pursue the life she wants. 

 “When it did happen, it was out of my control. I thought at first it was because he was crying or wouldn’t sleep. But then sometimes it was in order to make him cry, or to wake him from sleep.”

When Margaret begins explaining her abuse of Michael to Valerian, she reveals the level of dependence she had to the abuse. While she believed her abuse was initially a reaction to the pressures and annoyances of raising a child, it soon became a way to exert ever more control over Michael.

“He was guilty, therefore, of innocence. Was there anything so loathsome as a willfully innocent man? Hardly. An innocent man is a sin before God. Inhuman and therefore unworthy. No man should live without absorbing the sins of his kind, the foul air of his innocence, even if it did wilt rows of angel trumpets and cause them to fall from their vines.”

With the revelation of his son’s abuse at the hands of his wife, Valerian struggles with the knowledge that he was willfully innocent. He refused to pay enough attention to discover the abuse because he did not want to engage more with his family than he already did. He never cared enough for his son and therefore didn’t have a relationship that might have allowed Michael to tell him about the abuse, and that truth haunts him.

“The room had a door to the living room and one that opened to the back yard. She opened the latter and looked out into the blackest nothing she had ever seen. Blacker and bleaker than Isle des Chevaliers, and loud. Loud with the presence of plants and field life. If she was wanting air, there wasn’t any. It’s not possible, she thought, for anything to be this black.”

When Jadine confronts Eloe, she is struck by the differences from Isle des Chevaliers, the most comparable place she knows in terms of nature. She takes in the deep darkness, the plants and field life, which present a stark contrast to the light air and life of Isle des Chevaliers. Her comparison also connects to the life she believes Son leads, with a stronger connection to Black, rural communities.