Jazz

After tea with Alice Manfred, Violet heads to the drug store, where—still desperate to return to her youthful curviness—she gets a malted milk. As she sips, Violet reflects on the difference between herself and “that Violet,” the other Violet who sees danger and anger where the regular Violet feels lonely or protective. That Violet was the one who had found Dorcas’s funeral, fighting off the usher boys and stabbing Dorcas before the regular Violet even knew she was holding the knife.

Thought it went against all of the good manners their elders had taught them, those usher boys had fought Violet off, not knowing if she intended just one stabbing or more. As the ushers dragged Violet away, kicking and growling, she was amazed to realize that that Violet still possessed all the power and toughness she’d had back in Virginia.

In the days after the funeral, when Joe did not come home, Violet found her parrot’s repeated “I love you” unbearable. But the Violet drinking a malted wishes that Violet hadn’t let the parrot go. Maybe he had been snatched by a passer-by, Violet thinks. Or maybe the bird had gotten the message—“that she said, ‘My parrot,’ and he said, ‘Love you,’ and she had never said it back”—and just decided to fly away.

Violet orders another malted, though her stomach hurts from the last one. As she sips, Violet wonders what magazines Dorcas read, what rituals she and Joe shared. Violet begins to picture the gifts Joe bought Dorcas with his prizes from Cleopatra beauty products, including the lacy underwear Dorcas wore as they slept together or went out to jazz clubs.

The more Violet pictures Joe and Dorcas, the surer she becomes that “that Violet is me!” Violet recalls how sure she was about Joe, how proud and possessive she was of him. But she also wonders if Joe ever loved her and confided in her, or if he was always searching for Dorcas, wanting her even before he met her. In her own way, Violet has to admit that she was always searching for someone, too: the golden-haired boy True Belle used to talk about. 

 “I got quiet,” Violet realizes, “because the things I couldn’t say were coming out of my mouth anyhow.” Violet plays with her drink, which makes her think of her mother, drinking coffee after all of their belongings were taken from them. When her mother wouldn’t move from her chair, the repo men tipped the chair over and her mother fell on the floor, with Violet and all her siblings watching.

For days after that, as the family huddled in an abandoned shack, Violet’s mother Rose Dear would not say a word. It was only through a neighbor, heading north like all the others, that word of Rose Dear’s plight reached Violet’s grandmother, True Belle. True Belle returned right away, with 10 dollars sewn into her skirt, and she helped the family get back on its feet, earning Violet’s abiding adoration.

One day, four years after True Belle returned, Rose Dear threw herself into a well. Two weeks after that, Violet’s father returned home with gifts for the children and a silk embroidered pillow for his wife. When he heard that Rose Dear was dead, the only thing Violet’s father could do was say “oh, damn.” Ten days later, he was back on the road, working secretly with the Readjuster Party (which aimed to secure voting rights for Black people).

For her siblings, Violet’s father was a symbol of hope, a promise that any day could suddenly be filled with excitement. But Violet could never forget how it felt to see Rose Dear in that narrow, dark well. Violet wonders what motivated her mother to make the leap: was it the memory of that day with the coffee cup, or the news of white violence, or just the knowledge that her children were at last safe with True Belle? Whatever the reason, though, Violet’s memories of her mother make her vow to never have children.

It was memories of Rose Dear in the well that made Violet want to leave her childhood home and pick cotton in Palestine, Virginia. At first, Violet struggled with the rough work, and she thought about going home. But one night, while she was sleeping under a walnut tree, Violet was surprised by a man who rolled out of the tree’s branches, onto the ground.

Right away, Violet teases the man about sleeping in a tree and he teases her about her snarky attitude. The two talk all night, and Violet learns that the man’s name is Joe. By the time the sun comes up, Violet has decided that this is the man she wants to spend her life with (“claimed him”). And because Violet met Joe in the middle of the night, she felt that “nighttime was never the same for her,” as she could never again be haunted by thoughts of Rose Dear in the well.

In the morning, Violet and Joe vowed to meet each other near the tree again. From then on, Violet thought only of Joe’s two different color eyes, his strong jawline and chest. Violet moved in with a nearby family, doing everything she could to see Joe whenever possible. And though Joe loved the woods he was raised in, he surprised his friends when, 10 years later, he agreed to move with Violet to Baltimore, to the city True Belle had described.

But before they could move to Baltimore, Joe decided he wanted to go to New York City instead. Violet never quite knew what motivated the decision, other than that Booker T. Washington was eating chicken in the President’s house, and Joe seemed filled with a newfound confidence. Violet was nervous to go to New York, but as soon as she got there she knew she would love “the City” forever.

Joe didn’t want children either, so he wasn’t sad about Violet’s three miscarriages. But as Violet aged, she thought more and more about babies. Now, Violet sometimes gets so distracted by thoughts of cradling a child that she singes her client’s curls. And as Violet, menopausal, stares at the picture of Dorcas, she asks herself if Dorcas was “the woman who took the man, or the daughter who fled her womb?” Violet even considers what might have happened had her aborted baby survived the castor oil and soap she drank—had the imagined child “braved […] mammy’s urgent fists, she might have had the best-dressed hair in the city.”

 Today, just before she came to get her malted, Violet told Alice that she could have loved Dorcas like a daughter, had they met in a different context. At the same time, though, Violet still wonders what Joe saw in Dorcas—was it her light skin? Her wavy hair? Alice hates this line of questioning, and she insists that Violet is too old to think this way. Laughing, Violet wonders aloud if they will ever feel like grown-ups; privately, she wonders if this was the place her mother got to before giving up.

Alice, having noticed the torn lining in Violet’s coat, gets to work repairing it. As the two women talk about ironing strategies and how they learned to do chores, Alice tells Violet that she thinks Joe will continue to betray her. Even so, Alice thinks Violet should stay with her husband: “you got anything left to you at all to love,” Alice advises, “you do it.”

Violet feels that to love something is to fight for it, but Alice is not so sure. After all, should Violet be fighting a teenaged girl who lost both her parents in a fire? Alice gets so worked up as she poses this question that she burns right through the cloth she is ironing, making Violet laugh with delight. Alice joins in, laughing so hard that their shoulders shake.

Now, having finished her malted, Violet leaves the drugstore, chuckling at the image of herself with the knife at the funeral. Laughing makes Violet think of True Belle, who laughed when she arrived in the aftermath of Rose Dear’s collapse. This response might have caused Violet to hate her grandmother, but instead, it gave her strength. “Laughter is serious,” Violet realizes. “More complicated, more serious than tears.” As she buttons her coat, she notices, “at the same moment that that Violet did, that it was spring.”