Tar Baby: Chapter 3 Summary & Analysis

Fog sweeps into the island as Margaret, Valerian, and Jadine sit down for dinner. Sydney clears the table after the first course, but Margaret hasn’t touched the food. Valerian then criticizes her for not eating at the pace of the meal. Jadine replies that the meal goes at his pace, not hers. Margaret is still sometimes self-conscious about eating near Valerian, afraid she’ll make a mistake of etiquette. She is eating salad when Valerian shouts, What’s wrong with you? Margaret looks down and sees the salad spoon and fork still on the table, which she has forgotten to use. The table goes silent for a moment before Jadine asks about Christmas. Margaret says Michael is coming. She says that to entice him to come, she invited Michael’s former teacher, the poet B. J. Bridges.

Valerian says that Michael still won’t come, and he says that Margaret is foolish to think he will. The two bicker about whether a line of poetry was written by Bridges or not. Margaret says that making the trip to the island is a hassle, and she asks Valerian why he makes the family come to him for Christmas. Jadine doesn’t know what to do, so she looks at her plate. She thinks that Valerian and Margaret’s issues are typical of a marriage with their age difference—he’s in his 70s and she’s in her 50s, and they’re at different phases in their lives. But their fights seem to have been growing increasingly hostile.

Valerian says he married an idiot, and Margaret says she married a fool. She then spills wine before leaving the room. Jadine tells Valerian that he shouldn’t talk to Margaret like that, and Valerian says they’re really fighting about Michael’s visit. Margaret’s afraid he won’t come, and Valerian is afraid he will. He says that Michael has refused to grow up—he’s a perpetual adolescent, and Margaret foolishly taught him that poetry and property are irreconcilable. Michael also constantly moves from advocacy for one social cause to another. Valerian says that Margaret was hot and cold while Michael was growing up—sometimes she would be a doting mother, and other times she would neglect her son. More than once, Valerian returned from work to find Michael hiding in the cabinet under the bathroom sink.

Now, Valerian says, Margaret is ready to be the mother she should have been to Michael when he was younger. That’s why she wants to move closer to him. But Valerian thinks as soon as Michael comes to trust Margaret again, she’ll abandon him. Valerian hasn’t seen Michael in three years. Jadine struggles not to yawn while listening to Valerian. Then Margaret comes into the dining room and screams. She yells that there’s something in her closet, hidden in her clothes. When they ask what it is, Margaret says only, “Black.” Jadine asks if she means that her closet is dark, and Margaret shakes her head. Sydney grabs a gun and runs up to Margaret’s room to see what it is. He returns to the gun with a pistol pointed at a Black man with dreadlocks.