Paradise

by

Toni Morrison

Patricia (Pat) Best/Billie Delia’s Mother Character Analysis

Pat Best is a teacher in Ruby and a member of the Best family. Though the Bests were among the nine founding families of Ruby, the townspeople have shunned them since Roger Best married Delia, a light-skinned outsider. Pat resents and understands this exclusion more keenly than her father, but she perpetuates it herself in her treatment of her daughter Billie Delia. Pat’s belief in Billie Delia’s reputation as promiscuous has led to a strained relationship between them. Pat documents and archives the family histories of Ruby, which grants her comprehensive insight into the workings of the town. She becomes disillusioned with Ruby’s obsession with bloodlines, and, at the end of her chapter, she burns her records.

Patricia (Pat) Best/Billie Delia’s Mother Quotes in Paradise

The Paradise quotes below are all either spoken by Patricia (Pat) Best/Billie Delia’s Mother or refer to Patricia (Pat) Best/Billie Delia’s Mother. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Gender, Race, and Power Theme Icon
).
Grace Quotes

However disgusted both were, K.D. knew they would not negotiate a solution that would endanger him or the future of Morgan money. His grandfather had named his twins Deacon and Steward for a reason. And their family had not built two towns, fought white law, Colored Creek, bandits and bad weather, to see ranches and houses and a bank with mortgages on a feed store, a drugstore and a furniture store to end up in Arnold Fleetwood’s pocket. Since the loose bones of his cousins had been buried two years ago, K.D., their hope and their despair, was the last male in [the] line […]. His behavior, as always, required scrutiny and serious correction.

Related Characters: Patricia (Pat) Best/Billie Delia’s Mother, Deacon (Deek) Morgan/Connie’s Lover, Steward Morgan, Reverend Richard Misner, Coffee (K.D.) Smith, Arnette Fleetwood, Arnold Fleetwood
Page Number: 55
Explanation and Analysis:
Patricia Quotes

Who were these women who, like her mother, had only one name? Celeste, Olive, Sorrow, Ivlin, Pansy. Who were these women with generalized last names? Brown, Smith, Rivers, Stone, Jones. Women whose identity rested on the men they married––if marriage applied: a Morgan, a Flood, a Blackhorse, a Poole, a Fleetwood.

Related Characters: Patricia (Pat) Best/Billie Delia’s Mother, Delia Best
Page Number: 187-188
Explanation and Analysis:

[Zechariah] missed witnessing the actual Disallowing; and missed hearing disbelievable words formed in the mouths of men to other men, men like them in all ways but one. Afterwards the people were no longer nine families and some more. They became a tight band of wayfarers bound by the enormity of what had happened to them. Their horror of whites was convulsive but abstract. They saved the clarity of their hatred for the men who had insulted them in ways too confounding for language: first by excluding them, then by offering them staples to exist in that very exclusion. Everything anybody wanted to know about the citizens of Haven or Ruby lay in the ramifications of that one rebuff out of many.

Related Characters: Patricia (Pat) Best/Billie Delia’s Mother, Zechariah Morgan
Page Number: 189
Explanation and Analysis:

She, the gentlest of souls, missed killing her own daughter by inches. […] Educated but self-taught also to make sure that everybody knew that the bastard-born daughter of the woman with sunlight skin and no last name was not only lovely but of great worth and inestimable value. Trying to understand how she could have picked up that pressing iron, Pat realized that ever since Billie Delia was an infant, she thought of her as a liability somehow. Vulnerable to the possibility of not being quite as much of a lady as Patricia Cato would like. […] But the question for her now in the silence of this here night was whether she had defended Billie Delia or sacrificed her.

Related Characters: Patricia (Pat) Best/Billie Delia’s Mother, Billie Delia Cato
Page Number: 203
Explanation and Analysis:

[Pat] didn’t seem to trust these Ruby hardheads with the future any more than he did, but neither did she encourage change. […]

“You know better than anybody how smart these young people are. Better than anybody…” His voice trailed off […].

“You think what I teach them isn’t good enough?”

Had she read his mind? “Of course it’s good. It’s just not enough. The world is big, and we’re part of that bigness. They want to know about Africa––“

“Oh, please, Reverend. Don’t go sentimental on me.”

“If you cut yourself off from the roots, you’ll wither.”

“Roots that ignore the branches turn to termite dust.”

Related Characters: Patricia (Pat) Best/Billie Delia’s Mother, Reverend Richard Misner
Page Number: 209
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Paradise LitChart as a printable PDF.
Paradise PDF

Patricia (Pat) Best/Billie Delia’s Mother Quotes in Paradise

The Paradise quotes below are all either spoken by Patricia (Pat) Best/Billie Delia’s Mother or refer to Patricia (Pat) Best/Billie Delia’s Mother. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Gender, Race, and Power Theme Icon
).
Grace Quotes

However disgusted both were, K.D. knew they would not negotiate a solution that would endanger him or the future of Morgan money. His grandfather had named his twins Deacon and Steward for a reason. And their family had not built two towns, fought white law, Colored Creek, bandits and bad weather, to see ranches and houses and a bank with mortgages on a feed store, a drugstore and a furniture store to end up in Arnold Fleetwood’s pocket. Since the loose bones of his cousins had been buried two years ago, K.D., their hope and their despair, was the last male in [the] line […]. His behavior, as always, required scrutiny and serious correction.

Related Characters: Patricia (Pat) Best/Billie Delia’s Mother, Deacon (Deek) Morgan/Connie’s Lover, Steward Morgan, Reverend Richard Misner, Coffee (K.D.) Smith, Arnette Fleetwood, Arnold Fleetwood
Page Number: 55
Explanation and Analysis:
Patricia Quotes

Who were these women who, like her mother, had only one name? Celeste, Olive, Sorrow, Ivlin, Pansy. Who were these women with generalized last names? Brown, Smith, Rivers, Stone, Jones. Women whose identity rested on the men they married––if marriage applied: a Morgan, a Flood, a Blackhorse, a Poole, a Fleetwood.

Related Characters: Patricia (Pat) Best/Billie Delia’s Mother, Delia Best
Page Number: 187-188
Explanation and Analysis:

[Zechariah] missed witnessing the actual Disallowing; and missed hearing disbelievable words formed in the mouths of men to other men, men like them in all ways but one. Afterwards the people were no longer nine families and some more. They became a tight band of wayfarers bound by the enormity of what had happened to them. Their horror of whites was convulsive but abstract. They saved the clarity of their hatred for the men who had insulted them in ways too confounding for language: first by excluding them, then by offering them staples to exist in that very exclusion. Everything anybody wanted to know about the citizens of Haven or Ruby lay in the ramifications of that one rebuff out of many.

Related Characters: Patricia (Pat) Best/Billie Delia’s Mother, Zechariah Morgan
Page Number: 189
Explanation and Analysis:

She, the gentlest of souls, missed killing her own daughter by inches. […] Educated but self-taught also to make sure that everybody knew that the bastard-born daughter of the woman with sunlight skin and no last name was not only lovely but of great worth and inestimable value. Trying to understand how she could have picked up that pressing iron, Pat realized that ever since Billie Delia was an infant, she thought of her as a liability somehow. Vulnerable to the possibility of not being quite as much of a lady as Patricia Cato would like. […] But the question for her now in the silence of this here night was whether she had defended Billie Delia or sacrificed her.

Related Characters: Patricia (Pat) Best/Billie Delia’s Mother, Billie Delia Cato
Page Number: 203
Explanation and Analysis:

[Pat] didn’t seem to trust these Ruby hardheads with the future any more than he did, but neither did she encourage change. […]

“You know better than anybody how smart these young people are. Better than anybody…” His voice trailed off […].

“You think what I teach them isn’t good enough?”

Had she read his mind? “Of course it’s good. It’s just not enough. The world is big, and we’re part of that bigness. They want to know about Africa––“

“Oh, please, Reverend. Don’t go sentimental on me.”

“If you cut yourself off from the roots, you’ll wither.”

“Roots that ignore the branches turn to termite dust.”

Related Characters: Patricia (Pat) Best/Billie Delia’s Mother, Reverend Richard Misner
Page Number: 209
Explanation and Analysis: