Morrison’s story is about the bond shared by two women—one white, one black—who become friends while staying at a shelter for abandoned children when they are eight. The episode at the end of the story calls into question the nature of that bond while at the same time validating it.
Roberta and Twyla are connected by the shared memory of seeing a disabled woman victimized by other girls at the shelter. As they encounter each other infrequently over the years, Roberta reveals more and more about the episode, suggesting first that the woman, Maggie, was black, and then later says that they had participated in the attack themselves. Twyla does not remember it that way, but her uncertainty over what did happen mirrors her own ambiguous relationship with Roberta, who has married a wealthy man and joined the upper class, while Twyla's socioeconomic status is more lower middle class. While...
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the story suggests that their relationship is problematized by race and economics, on another level, the lack of clarity over what happened to Maggie, and the way Roberta continues to fixate on it, suggests that this shared experience, whatever it might have been, is perhaps the event that most defines them as people. Roberta's question at the end of the story—“What the hell happened to Maggie?"—is both an expression of (white) guilt over her possible culpability in the attack and perhaps a way of asking what sort of people they have grown into.
The notion of truth is questionable in Toni Morrison's story "Recitatif." At the end of the story, Twyla and Roberta discuss Maggie and the events that occurred at St. Bonny's in what appears to be an honest way. In their discussion, Roberta reveals to Twyla that they never did kick Maggie, the disabled woman at St. Bonny's, like she'd previously told her. Roberta said that they didn't kick her, but she wanted to, and she wanted the Gar girls to hurt her. Twyla tries to tell her that they were just kids, and that's what kids did. However, this confession sheds light on the previous events in the story.
Earlier, Roberta was angry and told Twyla that Maggie was black and helpless, and that Twyla kicked her. Twyla doesn't recall either of those things but Roberta insists it is true. Therefore, at the end, when she reveals that they didn't kick Maggie, and she did believe she was black, it is difficult for the reader to know what to believe. What is clear, however, is that Robert is an unreliable character. She says different things at different times, so Twyla doesn't know which version is true.
This question about truth is a good one because the story revolves around truth and memory. Twyla tries to remember and piece together her past and her life at St. Bonny's, but Roberta's version does not always agree with her own memory of it. This disconnect between the truth and her memory causes much of the conflict in the story.