The Bluest Eye Read Online Free PDF

dough-white face. Rosemary was watching us. I grabbed for her face and succeeded in scratching her nose. She screamed and jumped back.
    “Mrs. MacTeer! Mrs. MacTeer!” Rosemary hollered. “Frieda and Claudia are out here playing nasty! Mrs. MacTeer!”
    Mama opened the window and looked down at us.
    “What?”
    “They’re playing nasty, Mrs. MacTeer. Look. And Claudia hit me ’cause I seen them!”
    Mama slammed the window shut and came running out the back door.
    “What you all doing? Oh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Playing nasty, huh?” She reached into the bushes and pulled off a switch. “I’d rather raise pigs than some nasty girls. Least I can slaughter
them!
”
    We began to shriek. “No, Mama. No, ma’am. We wasn’t! She’s a liar! No, ma’am, Mama! No, ma’am, Mama!”
    Mama grabbed Frieda by the shoulder, turned her around, and gave her three or four stinging cuts on her legs. “Gonna be nasty, huh? Naw you ain’t!”
    Frieda was destroyed. Whippings wounded and insulted her.
    Mama looked at Pecola. “You too!” she said. “Child of mine or not!” She grabbed Pecola and spun her around. The safety pin snapped open on one end of the napkin, and Mama saw it fall from under her dress. The switch hovered in the air while Mama blinked. “What the devil is going on here?”
    Frieda was sobbing. I, next in line, began to explain. “She was bleeding. We was just trying to stop the blood!”
    Mama looked at Frieda for verification. Frieda nodded. “She’s ministratin’. We was just helping.”
    Mama released Pecola and stood looking at her. Then she pulled both of them toward her, their heads against her stomach. Her eyes were sorry. “All right, all right. Now, stop crying. I didn’t know. Come on, now. Get on in the house. Go on home, Rosemary. The show is over.”
    We trooped in, Frieda sobbing quietly, Pecola carrying a white tail, me carrying the little-girl-gone-to-woman pants.
    Mama led us to the bathroom. She prodded Pecola inside, and taking the underwear from me, told us to stay out.
    We could hear water running into the bathtub.
    “You think she’s going to drown her?”
    “Oh, Claudia. You so dumb. She’s just going to wash her clothes and all.”
    “Should we beat up Rosemary?”
    “No. Leave her alone.”
    The water gushed, and over its gushing we could hear the music of my mother’s laughter.
             
    That night, in bed, the three of us lay still. We were full of awe and respect for Pecola. Lying next to a real person who was really ministratin’ was somehow sacred. She was different from us now—grown-up-like. She, herself, felt the distance, but refused to lord it over us.
    After a long while she spoke very softly. “Is it true that I can have a baby now?”
    “Sure,” said Frieda drowsily. “Sure you can.”
    “But…how?” Her voice was hollow with wonder.
    “Oh,” said Frieda, “somebody has to love you.”
    “Oh.”
    There was a long pause in which Pecola and I thought this over. It would involve, I supposed, “my man,” who, before leaving me, would love me. But there weren’t any babies in the songs my mother sang. Maybe that’s why the women were sad: the men left before they could make a baby.
    Then Pecola asked a question that had never entered my mind. “How do you do that? I mean, how do you get somebody to love you?” But Frieda was asleep. And I didn’t know.

         
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    There is an abandoned store on the southeast corner of Broadway and Thirty-fifth Street in Lorain, Ohio. It does not recede into its background of leaden sky, nor harmonize with the gray frame houses and black telephone poles around it. Rather, it foists itself on the eye of the passerby in a manner that is both irritating and melancholy. Visitors who drive to this tiny town wonder why it has not been torn down, while pedestrians, who are residents of the neighborhood, simply