Chief among the preoccupations of God Bless The Child is skin shade: a slight
variation from the skin colour that is a main raw material in many of Toni
Morrison’s previous works. The lens is still aimed on the same target but the focus
has been narrowed.
Bride is a young woman in her early twenties. The fact that she is independent,
successful and in charge of a department called YOU, GIRL – a hip cosmetic range
– comes as a near miracle considering the hostility that has plagued her since
birth. Born with darker skin than either of her parents, her mother Sweetness
contemplated abandoning her or smothering her with a pillow. Her husband,
suspecting his wife of foul play, left her. An attempt at restitution with a teacher,
whom she accused of child abuse in an attempt to earn her mother’s love, results
in a severe beating. We learn that her boyfriend, Booker, has deserted her with
no explanation. When she sets out to find him, she is derailed by an accident and
found by Rain, a disturbed child with her own history of abuse.
The narration of this series of misfortunes is passed between the various
characters: Bride, her assistant Brooklyn, the accused teacher Sofia, Sweetness,
Booker, and briefly by Rain. It is a device that allows deep exploration of angles
that a first person narrative could only tease out. Not every voice entirely fits its
character, but Morrison’s prose – full of biting dialogue and charged back stories –
allows us to overlook slight inconsistencies.Morrison’s magical realism – the combination of the naturalistic and the
fantastical – has won over some readers and distanced others. After Booker
leaves, Bride begins to lose bodily features that only she notices: her pubic hair,
then her breasts. The eventual disappearance of her sexual organs is
representative of her eroding sense of self as a woman. The usefulness of these
metaphors, which neither drive the narrative forward nor retard its progress,
come down to the reader’s readiness to trust in the writer’s intentions.
One has to dig deeper for the hidden meanings in Morrison’s dialogue, which can
appear merely colloquial on first reading. “I’m not a bit surprised he left her like
a skunk leaves a smell” – Brooklyn’s comment on Bride’s relationship with Booker
– sounds, at first, throwaway. Yet meanings abound. A skunk’s scent wards off
predators and causes temporary blindness, just as Booker flees from the scent of
Bride’s past, while temporary blindness – along with the vanishing body parts –
could well be a symptom of his desertion.
The absence of prominent white characters in Morrision’s work has been a
recurring issue. She once dismissed the question on the topic in an interview: the
exception she took to it has been taken as proof that the omission is conscious.
The role of Rain and her family of white hippies in nursing Bride back to health
after a car crash in God Bless The Child may go some way in quieting her
accusers.
Yet Morrison should not feel much need to prove herself. At 84 years old and with
11 novels to her name – and showing no signs of exhaustion – she has already
established herself as the conscience of America. Her voice continues to grow inimportance knocking down bars raised before her while raising them even higher
for those to come.