I could have killed her. Already I heard the big girls in the orchard the next time saying, “Twyyyyyla, baby!” But I couldn't stay mad at Mary while she was smiling and hugging me and smelling of Lady Esther dusting powder. I wanted to stay buried in her fur all day.

At the beginning of the story, Twyla and Roberta’s mothers both visit the girls at St. Bonny’s, presumably on Easter Sunday. Twyla is full of conflicting emotions over this visit. Twyla feels neglected, frightened, and vulnerable at St. Bonny’s and she is understandably furious at her mother for leaving her there. Mary’s saccharine expression of affection places her in an even more vulnerable position because the gar girls are sure to mock her over the interaction. At the same time, Twyla is simply a child in need of a mother’s love and protection. Scent is a powerful tool for memory and emotion, and this is evident when Twyla’s anger fades as she inhales her mother’s scent. The scene is intended to make the reader’s heart ache for Twyla and for all those who experience so much pain at such a young and developmentally important age.

“The wrong food is always with the wrong people. Maybe that's why I got into waitress work later—to match up the right people with the right food.”

Near the beginning of the story, Twyla is hyper-focused on food and her lack of it. As a child, Twyla experiences food insecurity often because her mother is unable or incapable of properly providing for this essential need. It is natural for her to be fixated on food in this context. What Twyla means by the “wrong people” is intentionally vague. Twyla is clearly angry and jealous, but is she upset that a Black mother is better able to provide for her child than a white mother can or is she upset that a white mother brought more food than her Black mother? Are there other reasons behind Twyla’s feelings? Morrison does not provide answers. Instead, she sets up a racial dichotomy that encourages readers to question their personal assumptions and prejudices.

“I was dying to know what happened to her, how she got from Jimi Hendrix to Annandale, a neighborhood full of doctors and IBM executives. Easy, I thought. Everything is so easy for them. They think they own the world.”

More than halfway through the story, Twyla and Roberta run into each other again at an upscale grocery store. At this stage in their lives, the women are both married with young children, but they are in completely different socioeconomic brackets. Twyla is middle class while Roberta has married a wealthy IBM executive. Twyla’s pondering of Roberta’s trajectory to a life of financial comfort is layered with double meaning. Morrison once again juxtaposes the women’s lives to force the reader to challenge their prejudices and assumptions about class and race. It is unclear who Twyla is referring to when she says “they,” but what is clear is she feels resentment. She could be resentful toward gentrifiers or rich people in general. Her resentment could be racism toward Black people whom she erroneously views as acting above their station. Or her resentment could be toward the unexamined privilege of white people.

I didn’t kick her . . . but I sure did want to. We watched and never tried to help her and never called for help. Maggie was my dancing mother. Deaf, I thought, and dumb. Nobody inside. Nobody who would hear you if you cried in the night. . . . And when the gar girls pushed her down, and started roughhousing, I knew she wouldn’t scream, couldn’t—just like me—and I was glad about that.

Near the end of the story, Twyla concludes that what she did to Maggie is irrelevant because she wanted to harm her. Twyla’s reexamination of her shared history with Roberta is a metaphor for the shared history of oppressors and the oppressed in society at large. Maggie symbolizes the voiceless. Morrison’s lesson is that it is important to bear witness to pain and injustice rather than debate every single fact of history. Pain is valid while memory is fallible and subject to so many factors. 

Twyla’s introspection in this scene is full of many complicated emotions. The pain of her own powerlessness and trauma are mixed up with her desire to inflict that pain on others. She feels ashamed of not helping Maggie but is also defensive of her choices. A few paragraphs later, Roberta has similar revelations when she speaks aloud much of what Twyla thinks here. Morrison uses Twyla’s and Roberta’s emotions to represent many people’s conflicted feelings about the history of oppression. The complexity of these feelings is part of the shared human condition that Morrison urges the reader to examine.