Rec·i·ta·tive – /ˌresədəˈtēv/ – a term mostly used in opera where a singer uses the tempo and flow of ordinary speech with successive words sung all on the same note
12 Disciples Published first in 1983 is Toni Morrison’s only disclosed short story: Recitatif. That makes eleven novels total and only one short story – a nod to its high impact (as short stories often are). Reissued in 2022 with an introduction by Zadie Smith, the story follows two girls turned women; Morrison marking the text by a very deliberate removal of a major societal factor – race. Roberta and Twyla are only eight years old when they meet at St. Bonaventure. Roberta is there because her mother suffers an illness and Twyla because her “mother dances all night”. The duo is sort of an anomaly as the majority of St. Bonny’s residents are orphaned. The story has the feel of Lois Gould’s X: A Fabulous Child’s Story (1972) with the projected imagery of Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929). We are simply not afforded the knowledge of which character is black and which is white (or of any other ethnicity/race for that matter) and must compute our own ideologies, stereotypes, worthiness onto the storyline without...it. Morrison is purposeful in this way; a literary scientist. And honestly, Zadie Smith provides such a complete study of and introduction to Recitatif, it can serve as a thorough review and should not be skimmed over (before or after) one’s read of this short story.
The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions. – Anthony Jay
I Want To Be In That Number The character list belonging to Recitatif is petite in number, grandiose in impact. When introduced to Mrs. Itkin, the reader is confronted with the murky waters serving as an integral part of Roberta’s and Twyla’s education. Mrs. Itkin is not just a bozo, rather ‘the Big Bozo’ – keeping the girls in check by way of nice-nasty nudges in tender places. When introduced to Maggie, the reader begins to understand how loud silence can become; giving birth to multiple renditions of a story. When introduced to ‘the gar girls’, we are made aware of a pain that can twist a face into grotesque figures spouting these murky waters from stoned throats. Remove the race from any of these characters and they still stand; sometimes with legs bowed, sometimes with legs jittery from anticipation of the…race. Morrison’s portrayals of the characters in Recitatif goes deeper than skin color. She is hinting at the following: there is likely better (and worse) things to be than (the constructs of) colored, or white. Afterall, one’s perspective of unkempt hair, poverty, taste in food, illness, local politics, etc. is just that…a perspective and thus a construct leading to imagined safety down one road, demise down the other. Lets suppose we are dropping off a loved one (for whatever reason) at a place like St. Bonny’s. You can list only three identifying factors. Is race worthy of such a crowded space? What are our inquiries of one another telling our legs?
“I tell you, that ant is very alive. Look at how he fusses at being stepped on.” -Mary Oliver
When The Saints Go Marching In Recipes cannot be copyrighted; however, the stories attached to them can be. Roberta leaves St. Bonny’s first. But we learn later on in the story that Roberta did return to St. Bonny’s. The two have various encounters in their hometown following their stay at the shelter – reintroducing themselves as waitress (Twyla) and customer (Roberta); then again as Mrs. Benson (Twyla) and Mrs. Norton (Roberta). I suppose Maggie knows all of the recipes regarding the combination of ingredients required for admission to St. Bonny’s, how one might become a ‘gar girl’, and how one leaves (or stays). Likely even knows the correct baking temperature to produce waitress, wife, mother, associate, friend, foe. But the recipe that matters most to her would probably be the recipe for picketer…protester. I appreciate how Morrison frames both the sick and the mute as the preparers of sustenance in this story. Such a vital role taken on by those already so seemingly overburdened. Though a place like St. Bonny’s has surely held close to its recipes such as: a slew of girls sans parents, a dash of hormones mixed with envy and bully, knead together with hormone and wish, allow to rise covered in silence, set the oven to ‘no one is coming to get you’ degrees, ready for consumption at ‘but you can leave.’ Finally, what happened to Maggie is lost in the sauce and we (the reader) must again lament to relying on our own calculations, perception, interpretation. Maggie can not tell us herself and Twyla’s and Roberta’s memories simply are not in congruence (for reasons also inferred).
Signs and Wonders This is a story that beckons a deep dive into one’s own thought processes. It highlights the peculiar way societies uphold certain identifying factors as key ingredients to a recipe many of us don’t care to remember or recreate. It highlights the relationship between girls, women, mothers, daughters, the help and the helpless. Can one sit back with satisfaction following a heinous act when key identifying factors of both the victim(s) and assailant(s) are missing? How did race become such an eyesore and a saving grace? Who allowed it? Who lays claim to a sandy-colored complexion turned bruised from attack? Who and what suffered the tread when the saints came marching in? Finally, Roberta and Twyla find themselves on opposite sides of integration politics – one claiming that mothers should have a deciding voice in regard to school bussing and the other stating claim to said motherhood. They picket on separate sides of the street, both holding signs with a subconscious (dash of spite) call-and-response footing. Their signs got so personal that Twyla eventually laments to stating, “actually, my sign didn’t make sense without Roberta’s”. In the end, both Twyla and Roberta are doing something Maggie could not – making noise on opposing sides of the same orchard. She was child-like in her dress and without a voice. She worked in the kitchen. Sandy-colored with bowlegs. She held no sign but created such a reckoning wonder in the way of children in waiting and old women in confirmation. She was no bozo (big or small) and she taught the following: we see as we are and this too is both privilege and pitfall.
Works Cited:
Morrison, Toni. (1983). Recitatif. In Amiri & Amina Baraka (Eds.), Confirmation: an anthology of African American women. (1st ed., pp. 243-261). William Morrow & Company.
Morrison, Toni. (2022). Recitatif: A Story (with Introduction: “Somebody In There After All” by Zadie Smith). United States: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
A thought on the title Recitatif… I imagine when Morrison sat down to write this story in the early 80’s, all around the creative scene was the emergence of rap & hip-hop – poetic speech atop musical notes. I imagine she was intrigued. I imagine she made her own sense out of it. Opera’s definition points to the modality ‘moving the story line along’. But, Morrison paused in vitality to give meaning to environment, system and even genre as if to say, “wait a minute, that one there is mine“.
If you’ve yet to read Lois Gould’s The Story of X check it out here: https://waylandbrown.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/x-story.pdf
