In Toni Morrison’s ([1977] 2004) novel Song of Solomon, Pilate and her daughter Reba attend the funeral of Reba’s daughter Hagar. Pilate begins to shout during the service, “Mercy . . . I want Mercy!” And soon after: ‘“Mercy?’ Now she was asking a question, ‘Mercy?’” Morrison continues, “It was not enough. The word needed a bottom, a frame. She straightened up, held her head high, and transformed the plea into a note. In a clear bluebell voice she sang it out—the one word held so long it became a sentence—and before the last syllable had died in the corners of the room, she was answered in a sweet soprano: ‘I hear you’” (316–17). This call-and-response exchange is a circular framing of loss that includes the beloved at its center, an up-down-high-low that modulates between proximity and distance.
Reba and Pilate must fill the space of mourning with...
