AUTUMN

CHAPTER 3

Summary

Pecola Breedlove comes to stay with Claudia's family for a few days of foster care. Claudia's mother calls her a "case." The County has placed her there until her family is reunited. She sleeps with Claudia and Frieda. They hear their mother talking about that "old Dog Breedlove," Pecola's father, who had burned up their house, beaten up his wife, and ended up "outdoors." Claudia knows that being "outdoors" was the worse thing that could happen in life. All excess was warned against with the potential result of ending up outdoors. If a mother put her son outdoors, the people always felt sorry for the son. Being put outdoors meant having no where to go.

The African American community lived "on the hem of life, struggling to consolidate our weaknesses and hang on, or to creep singly up into the major folds of the garment." They lead a "peripheral existence." The prospect of ending up outdoors bred in people a desire for property and ownership. Propertied African Americans spent all their time and money fixing up their property. Renting African Americans looked at the propertied yards and resolved to get a place of their own.

Cholly Breedlove was considered by the community to have put himself on a level with animals for putting his family outdoors. Mrs. Breedlove was temporarily staying with the woman for whom she worked. Sammy, Pecola's brother, was staying with family.

Pecola came with nothing, no clothes or even underwear. Claudia and Frieda enjoy having her to play with. She answered either indifferently or affirmatively all the girls' questions for what to do. Claudia watched her as she accepted a glass of milk and graham crackers from Frieda. Pecola admired the picture of Shirley Temple on the glass. She and Frieda discussed how cute Shirley Temple was. Claudia hated Shirley Temple and did so ever since she saw her in a movie dancing with Bojangles. For Claudia, Bojangles was her uncle, her daddy, her friend, and he should be dancing with her not the white girl.

Since Claudia is younger than Frieda and Pecola, she has not learned to like dolls. She began to hate white dolls one Christmas when she got a blue-eyed Baby Doll. She could tell the adults thought the doll was her fondest wish. She could not figure out what to do with the doll. She had no interest in acting like its mother. For her, motherhood was old age. She saw countless images in picture books of girls holding baby dolls. She was especially repulsed by raggedy Ann dolls.

She hated sleeping with the doll; its body was unyielding. She only wanted to dismember it in order to find out what was so dear about it, "the desirability that had escaped me." She saw all the adults around her agreeing that the blue-eyed, pale-skinned dolls were what every girl should want. Adults used dolls as a bribe to be good. She dismembered the doll and looked at its insides. Adults would scold her and tell her they had always wanted but never got a baby doll. She wished someone would have asked her what she wanted for Christmas. It would not have been to own something, but to feel something. She would have wanted to sit on a low stool just the size for her size in the warmth of Big Mamma's kitchen and listen to Big Papa play his violin just for her. She would have engaged all her senses, the smell of lilacs, the taste of a peach, the sound of the music.

Instead she got a tea party set made of acrid smelling tin plates and cups or she got new dresses for which she had to have a hurried bath before wearing. Aside from dismembering white baby dolls, she also wanted to do the same to white girls. She wanted to discover "what eluded her." She wanted to know what made Black women look admiringly at them but not at her. When she pinched them, though, she found out it was repulsive to see them cry out in pain. Disinterested violence "was so abhorrent to her that she found refuge in fabricated love. She realized it was a small step to Shirley Temple."

Claudia and Frieda hear their mother complaining about Pecola having drank three quarts of milk. They know she loves to use the Shirley Temple cup and drinks at every opportunity. All three girls listen painfully, fidgeting, while she complains. Claudia and Frieda hate to hear her complaints. "They were interminable, insulting." She never named anyone, but the complaints were painful to hear. She went on and on until she was finished and then she would start singing and sing for the rest of the day. During her "fussing soliloquy," she reveals that no one has checked on Pecola. Cholly has been out of jail for two days and has not come by to check on her. Neither has Mrs. Breedlove. When their mother gets to Henry Ford, the girls know it is time to sneak outside. They sit on the porch steps.

It is a lonesome Saturday. Saturdays are "lonesome, fussy, soapy days." Only Sundays are worse because they are so full of "‘don'ts' and ‘set'cha self downs.'" If her mother was in a singing mood, Claudia liked these days. Her mother would sing the blues so longingly, Claudia found herself longing for those old days when no one had "a thin di-i-me to my name." Her mother's blues left her "with the conviction that pain was not only endurable, it was sweet." However, this Saturday her mother was fussing, and it felt like someone was throwing stones at Claudia's head.

The girls on the porch try to think of something to do. Claudia suggests going up to Mr. Henry's room and looking at his pornographic magazines. Frieda does not want to. Claudia suggests threading noodles for a half-blind woman, but Frieda thinks her eyes look like snot. Pecola does not have any ideas. Claudia suggests looking in the trash cans in the alley for things. Again her idea is put down. Then she suggests going to the Greek hotel and listening to the men curse. When Frieda says she already knows all their words, Claudia gives up and examines the white spots on her fingernails; they signify the total number of boyfriends she will have.

Suddenly Pecola makes an alarmed sound. Blood is running down her legs. Frieda tells her it is "ministratin'." She assures Pecola that she will not die, that she can now have a baby. She runs upstairs and sends Claudia for water. Claudia goes into the kitchen where her mother is still fussing and asks for a glass of water. Her mother complains about it and tries to make her stand there and drink it, but Claudia manages to get outside. Outside, she finds Pecola crying. Frieda arrives and scolds Claudia for getting such a small amount of water for the task of cleaning the blood off the porch. She tells Claudia to clean it while she takes Pecola around the side of the house. Claudia does not want to miss seeing what happens so she sloshes a little water on the blood and runs around to see Frieda helping Pecola out of her underwear. She throws them at Claudia and tells her to bury them. Frieda pins a cotton pad to Pecola's dress.

When Claudia looks for something to bury the underwear with, she sees Rosemary hiding in the bushes watching. Rosemary yells for their mother, Mrs. MacTeer, telling her the girls are playing nasty. Their mother comes out yelling that she would rather raise pigs than nasty girls. She breaks off some twigs from a bush and grabs Frieda. She hits her several times. Claudia knows that Frieda is destroyed by whippings; they "wounded and insulted her." Their mother grabs for Pecola and the pin comes loose letting the pad fall. The girls manage to tell her they were helping Pecola because she had begun to bleed. She pulls the girls toward her with sorry eyes and tells them to stop crying. Mrs. MacTeer takes Pecola into the bathroom and runs a bath. Claudia asks Frieda if their mother is going to drown Pecola. Frieda calls her dumb. Claudia suggests going over and beating up Rosemary, but Frieda says they should leave her alone.

That night in bed, the girls treat Pecola with awe. Pecola asks if it is true she can have a baby now. She wants to know how and Frieda tells her somebody has to love her. Pecola is silent for a while and then asks how you get somebody to love you. Frieda had fallen asleep, and Claudia did not know.