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Summary
Part One: troubled about my soul
Section 5: From “One of the most terrible, most mysterious things about a life…” through “…And then they came knocking at the door.”
On the night they decide to rent Levy’s loft, Fonny and Tish head back to the Village, stopping at a vegetable stand on their way. While Tish picks out tomatoes, Fonny goes around the corner to buy cigarettes. A young Italian man puts his hand on Tish’s bottom and propositions her. Seeing a white cop nearby and recognizing she is Black in a white neighborhood, Tish resists her urge to smash the tomatoes in his face and instead retreats further into the store, but the man follows and again speaks to her. She tries to leave, but he blocks her path. He grabs her arm, and she slaps him and spits in his face just as Fonny returns. Fonny attacks the man and drags him into the street. Tish holds onto Fonny and screams, trying to protect him from the white cop, who runs toward them.
When the cop arrives, Tish tells him the man attacked her in the store, but no one speaks up for her. The cop begins to question Fonny, and Tish answers for him. The cop threatens to arrest Fonny for assault and battery, but the woman who runs the store speaks in their defense, saying that Tish is telling the truth. She tells the cop to try not to frighten her and to take the man to the mental hospital or jail. In the narration, Tish refers to the cop as “Bell” for the first time, noting his blue eyes and red hair. As they walk home from the store, Fonny tells Tish not to try to protect him, and he smashes the bag of tomatoes on the wall. Tish cries, and Fonny kisses her. He comforts her and takes her to the Spanish restaurant, where a waiter named Pedrocito jokes with them and serves them even though Fonny does not have the money to pay. When they get back to Bank Street, there is a patrol car parked across from Fonny’s pad, which drives off when they arrive. They have sex, and Tish is later convinced the baby was conceived that night.
In the main timeline, Sharon flies to Puerto Rico to find Victoria. She hires Jaime, a young taxi driver, to take her to her hotel, where she changes clothes to go out to the nightclub where Pietro works. Pietro tells Sharon that he and Victoria just want to be left alone. Sharon shows him the photo of Fonny and Tish, asking him to show it to Victoria and have her look closely at Fonny. Pietro refuses and leaves. The baby’s kicking is waking Tish up at night. Tish is still working because they need the money, which means she often misses visiting time with Fonny. As the baby grows, it becomes harder for Tish to do ordinary things, so Joseph offers to take care of her so she can quit her job. After she quits, she begins visiting Fonny more, which makes Fonny happy.
On her second day in Puerto Rico, Jaime drives Sharon to the shantytown where Victoria lives and walks to the house with her. When Sharon finds her, Victoria pretends to be someone else. Sharon shows her the photo of Tish and Fonny and tries to talk to her. Victoria insists the man who raped her was Fonny. When Sharon touches her and her crucifix necklace, Victoria screams, drawing others in the building there to protect her. Sharon returns to the taxi and Jaime drives them away. She is turned away from the nightclub that night.
After the incident at the vegetable stand, Tish begins seeing Bell everywhere. On one occasion, she sees him further uptown than his usual beat while she is carrying stolen goods. Bell stops her and asks if he can carry the package for her. She refuses. He tells her he is not a bad guy and that she should tell Fonny that. She says she will and leaves but never tells Fonny. The night of Fonny’s arrest, Daniel is at their apartment, talking about prison and crying. He describes seeing a group of men rape a boy and says that he was also raped in prison. Fonny is holding him when they hear knocking at the door.
Analysis
Officer Bell is a dominant character in this part of the book, and he embodies the novel’s theme of the corruption at the heart of America. Until the day he tries to arrest Fonny at the vegetable stand, Bell has never stood out to Tish, emphasizing that while he is the racist, cruel cop at the center of this story, in this time and place, all policemen are like him. Bell is not an exception. The narrative compares him to American heroes John Wayne and George Washington, further indicating that his arrogance and stupidity are aspects of white American power. His blue eyes are described as seeking out any dark figure in the white field of snow and eliminating them, an extended metaphor representing the efforts of white supremacy to keep the United States a place ruled by white men, with Black people always subject to control and violence.
In this section of the novel, Tish’s visits to Fonny give him the strength to carry on, an example of how the characters gain strength through their family connections. Tish’s pregnancy has advanced by this point in the book, and Joseph convinces her to quit her job by arguing that working so hard while she is pregnant is a risk to the baby. Fonny depends on Tish and the growing baby to give him something to hope for, which Joseph understands. After Tish leaves her job, she is able to visit more and sees the effect her increased presence has on Fonny, showing her power as his partner and the mother of his child to give him strength. To Fonny, Tish also represents the others on the outside who love him. Their love also gives him the strength to keep his spirits up and avoid despair. The narrative compares the inevitability of the baby leaving the womb to the growing faith Tish’s family has that Fonny will leave jail, a striking example of familial love creating strength.
The importance of pride to masculinity is exemplified by both Fonny and Officer Bell in this portion of the novel. Pride is an important part of both of their characters. While Fonny handles his wounded pride privately, Bell has the power to punish Fonny when his own pride is hurt. When Fonny beats the man who was menacing Tish and Bell tries to arrest him, two women try to protect Fonny, but the intervention offends Fonny’s pride. Tish speaks on his behalf, trying to shield Fonny from Bell’s direct hostility, and later at the Spanish restaurant, he tells Tish never to do that again. When she argues that he has been protecting her, he responds that it is not the same thing, an indication that his pride is tied up in his idea of masculinity. In Fonny’s view, a man should protect a woman but not require a woman’s protection in return. The female shopkeeper speaks up to protect Fonny, taking his side and telling Bell to leave, injuring Bell’s pride. Fonny correctly predicts that this injury will lead Bell to pursue Fonny as a vendetta, since his masculinity has been insulted by a white woman taking a Black man’s side over his.
The experience of living under surveillance by Officer Bell leaves Tish feeling vulnerable and alone. She realizes that they are without support in the Village, saying “whoever loved us was not there.” This line is a repetition of her description of the feeling of being at Mrs. Hunt’s church, terrified, as the congregation sings and cries out in ecstatic worship. In the church, she and Fonny cling to each other, aware that in that place they have only one another. The echo of that line in this section of the book recalls the terror and confusion of the two children, trapped amid people responding to a power larger than they can understand. Similarly, in this period of their lives as young adults, they have become trapped again, not by religious fervor but by Bell’s desire to capture and subdue them. His behavior has a manic intensity reminiscent of the worshippers, and it is just as wild and threatening.
