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Was this really a funny story she could tell later or was there real danger? But there was more. She felt a curious embarrassment in the picture of herself telling on a black man to a white man and then watching those red-necked gendarmes zoom him away in a boat.

This quotation comes at the end of Chapter Four and reflects Jadine’s thoughts on whether she should complain to Valerian about Son’s behavior. Just a few minutes before, Jadine and Son were alone together for the first time, and they had a charged encounter that seemed both flirtatious and threatening. In this quotation, Jadine contemplates what to make of the encounter. She initially felt offended, so she decided to go to Valerian. But now, upon reflection, she distrusts her initial feelings. Jadine wonders if she is overreacting. Jadine realizes that telling Valerian would lead to real, embarrassing consequences. Other characters, especially Ondine and Sydney, feel similarly trapped elsewhere in the novel by Son’s antics: They want to “tell” on him, but, at the same time, doing so might signal a weakness on their part and an inability to handle Son’s behavior. The feelings expressed here also foreshadow many of the complicated cultural and racial dynamics that will run through the union of Jadine and Son later in the novel.

This quotation shows the way Jadine sits precariously between a white world and a black world. She imagines her future in the white world, a world of European sophistication, in which she could turn her experience with Son into a funny story to tell at dinner parties. But she also considers herself to be part of the black world, and thus she feels enough racial solidarity with Son, as a black woman to his black man, that she does not want to side with the “red-necked gendarmes,” or, prejudiced white island policemen, whom Valerian would call. Jadine inhabits an awkward position between two worlds for most of Tar Baby, and her tendency to turn real, lived experience into an aesthetic object like a story demonstrates this awkwardness. Just as she imagines turning her experience with Son into a story, so too, when she thinks about allying herself with Valerian and the white policemen, does she think about the alliance as a “picture.” And as either the teller of a story or the framer of a “picture,” she removes herself from actual involvement.

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