and the spirit and the bride say,come.
and let him that heareth saycome.
and let him that is athirstcome.
and whosoever will, let himtake the water of life freely.
i looked down the line,
and i wondered
everyone had always said that john would be a preacher when he grew up, just like his father. ithas been so often that john, without ever thinking about it, had come to believe it himself. notuntil the morning of his fourteenth birthday did he really begin to think about it, and by then it wasalready too late.
his earliest memories—which were in a way, his only memories—were of the hurry andbrightness of sunday mornings. they all rose together on that day; his father, who did not have togo to work, and led them in prayer before breakfast; his mother, who dressed up on that day, andlooked almost young, with her hair straightened, and on her head the close-fitting white cap thatwas the uniform of holy women; his younger brother, roy, who was silent that day because hisfather was home. sarah, who wore a red ribbon in her hair that day, and was fondled by her father.
and the baby, ruth, who was dressed in pink and white, and rode in her mother’s arms to church.
the church was not very far away, four block up lenox avenue, on a corner not far fromthe hospital. it was to this hospital that his mother had gone when roy, and sarah, and ruth wereborn. john did not remember very clearly the first time she had gone, to have roy; folks said thathe had cried and carried on the whole time his mother was away; he remembered only enough tobe afraid every time her belly began to swell, knowing that each time the swelling began it wouldnot end until she was taken from him, to come back with an stranger. each time this happened shebecame a little more of a stranger herself. she would soon be going away again, roy said—heknew much more about such things than john. john had observed his mother closely, seeing no swelling yet, but his father had prayed one morning for the ‘little voyager soon to be among them,’
and so john knew that roy spoke the truth.
every sunday morning, then, since john could remember, they had taken to the streets, thegrimes family on their way to church. sinners along the avenue watched tem—men still wearingtheir sunday-night clothes, wrinkled and dusty now, muddy-eyed and muddy-faced; and thewomen with harsh voices and tight, bright dresses, cigarettes between their finger or held tightly inthe corners of their mouths. they talked, and laughed, and fought together, and the women foughtlike the men. john and roy, passing these men and women, looked at one another briefly, johnembarrassed and roy amused. roy would be like them when he grew up, if the lord did notchange his heart. these men and women they passed on sunday mornings had spent the night inbars, or in cat houses, or on the streets, or on the rooftops, or under the stairs. they had beendrinking. they had gone from cursing to laughter, to anger, to lust. once he and roy had watcheda man and woman in the basement of a condemned house. they did it standing up. the womanhad wanted fifty cents, and the man had flashed a razor.
john had never watched again; he had been afraid. but roy had watched them many times,and he told john he had done it with some girls down the block.
and his mother and father, who went to church on sundays, they did it too, and sometimesjohn heard them in the bedroom behind him, over the sound of rat’s feet, and rat screams, and themusic and cursing from the harlot’s house downstairs.
their church was called the temple of the fire baptized. it was not the biggest church inharlem, not yet the smallest, but john had been brought up to believe it was the holiest and best.
his father was head deacon in this church—there were only two, the other a round, black mannamed deacon braithwaite—and he took up the collection, and sometimes he preached. thepastor, father james, was a genial, well-fed man with a face like a darker moon. it was he whopreached on pentecost sundays, and led revivals in the summer-time, and anointed and healed thesick.
on sunday mornings and sunday nights the church was always full; on special sundays itwas full all day. the grimes family arrived in a body, always a little late, usually in the middle ofsunday school, which began at nine o’clock. this lateness was always their mother’s fault—atleast in the eyes of their father; she could not seem to get herself and the children ready on time,ever, and sometimes she actually remained behind, not to appear until the morning service. whenthey all arrived together, they separated upon entering the doors, father and mother going to sit inthe adult class, which was taught by sister mccandless, sarah going to the infants’ class, johnand roy sitting in the intermediate, which was taught by brother elisha.
when he was young, john had paid no attention in sunday school, and always forgot thegolden text, which earned him the wrath of his father. around the time of his fourteenth birthday,with all the pressures of church and home uniting to drive him to the altar, he strove to appearmore serious and therefore less conspicuous. but he was distracted by his new teacher, elisha, whowas the pastor’s nephew and who had but lately arrived from georgia. he was not much older thanjohn, only seventeen, and he was already saved and was a preacher. john stared at elisha allduring the lesson, admiring the timbre of elisha’s voice, much deeper and manlier than his own, admiring the leanness, and grace, and strength, and darkness of elisha in his sunday suit,wondering if he would ever be holy as elisha was holy. but he did not follow the lesson, andwhen, sometimes, elisha paused to ask john a question, john was ashamed and confused, feelingthe palms of his hands become wet and his heart pound like a hammer. elisha would smile andreprimand him gently, and the lesson would go on.
roy never knew his sunday school lesson either, but it was different with roy—no onereally expected of roy what was expected of john. everyone was always praying that the lordwould change roy’s heart, but it was john who was expected to be good, to be a good example.
when sunday school service ended there was a short pause before morning service began.
in this pause, if it was good weather, the old folks might step outside a moment to talk amongthemselves. the sisters would almost always be dressed in white from crown to tow. the smallchildren, on this day, in this place, and oppressed by their elders, tried hard to play withoutseeming to be disrespectful of god’s house. but sometimes, nervous or perverse, they shouted, orthrew hymn-books, or began to cry, putting their parents, men or women of god, under thenecessity of proving—by harsh means or tender—who, in a sanctified household, ruled. the olderchildren, like john or roy, might wander down the avenue, but not too far. their father never letjohn and roy out of his sight, for roy had often disappeared between sunday school and morningservice and has not come back all day.
the sunday morning service began when brother elisha sat down at the piano and raised asong. this moment and this music had been with john, so it seemed, since he had first drawnbreath. it seemed that there had never been a time when he had not known this moment of waitingwhile the packed church paused—the sisters in white, heads raised, the brothers in blue, headsback; the white caps of the women seeming to glow in the charged air like crowns, the kinky,gleaming heads of the men seeming to be lifted up—and the rustling and the whispering ceasedand the children were quiet; perhaps someone coughed, or the sound of a car horn, or a curse fromthe streets came in; the elisha hit the keys, beginning at once to sing, and everybody joined him,clapping their hands, and rising, and beating the tambourines.
the song might be: down at the cross where my savior died!
or: jesus, i’ll never forget how you set me free!
or: lord, hold my hand while i run this race!
they sang with all the strength that was in them, and clapped their hands for joy. there hadnever been a time when john had not sat watching the saints rejoice with terror in his heart, andwonder. their singing caused him to believe in the presence of the lord; indeed, it was no longer aquestion of belief, because they made that presence real. he did not feel it himself, the joy theyfelt, yet he could not doubt that it was, for them, the very bread of life—could not doubt it, that is,until it was too late to doubt. something happened to their faces and their voices, the rhythm oftheir bodies, and to the air they breathed; it was as though wherever they might be became theupper room, and the holy ghost were riding on the air. his father’s face, always awful, becamemore awful now; his father’s daily anger was transformed into prophetic wrath. his mother, hereyes raised to heaven, hands arked before her, moving, made real for john that patience, thatendurance, that long suffering, which he had read of in the bible and found so hard to imagine.
on sunday mornings the women all seemed patient, all the men seemed mighty. whilejohn watched, the power struck someone, a man or woman; they cried out, a long, wordlesscrying, and, arms outstretched like wings, they began the shout. someone moved a chair a little togive them room, the rhythm paused, the singing stopped, only the pounding feet and the clappinghands were heard; then another cry, another dancer; then the tambourines began again, and thevoices rose again, and the music swept on again, like fire, or flood, or judgment. then the churchseemed to swell with the power it held, and, like a planet rocking in space, the temple rocked withthe power of god. john watched, watched the faces, and the weightless bodies, and listened to thetimeless cries. one day, so everyone said, this power would possess him; he would sing and cry asthey did now, and dance before his king. he watched young ella mae washington, the seventeen-year-old granddaughter of praying mother washington, as she began to dance. and then elishadanced.
at one moment, head thrown back, eyes closed, sweat standing on his brow, he sat at thepiano, singing and playing; and then, like a great black cat in trouble in the jungle, he stiffened andtrembled, and cried out. jesus, jesus, oh lord jesus! he struck on the piano one last wild note, andthrew up his hands, palms upward, stretched wide apart. the tambourines raced to fill the vacuumleft by his silent piano, and his cry drew answering cries. then he was on his feet, turning, blind,his face congested, contorted with this rage, and the muscles leaping ands swelling in his long,dark neck. it seemed that he could not breathe, that his body could not contain this passion, that hewould be, before their eyes, dispersed into the waiting air. his hand, rigid to the very fingertips,moved outward and back against his hips, his sightless eyes looked upward, and he began to dance.
then his hands close into fists, and his head snapped downward, his sweat loosening the greasethat slicked down his hair; and the rhythm of all the others quickened to match elisha’s rhythm; histhighs moved terribly against the cloth of his suit, his heels beat on the floor, and his fists movedbeside his body as though he were beating his own drum. and so, for a while, in the centre of thedancers, head down, fists beating, on, on, unbearably, until it seemed the walls of the church wouldfall for very sound; and then, in a moment, with a cry, head up, arms high in the air, sweat pouringfrom his forehead, and all his body dancing as though it would never stop. sometimes he did notstop until he fell—until he dropped like some animal felled by a hammer—moaning, on his face.
and then a great moaning filled the church.
there was sin among them. one sunday, when regular service was over, father james haduncovered sin in the congregation of the righteous. he had uncovered elisha and ella mae. theyhad been ‘walking disorderly’; they were in danger of straying from the truth. and as father jamesspoke of the sin that he knew they had not committed yet, of the unripe fig plucked too early fromthe tree—to set the children’s teeth on edge—john felt himself grow dizzy in his seat and couldnot look at elisha where he stood, beside ella mae, before the altar. elisha hung his head as fatherjames spoke, and the congregation murmured. and ella mae was not so beautiful now as she waswhen she was singing and testifying, but looked like a sullen, ordinary girl. her full lips were looseand her eyes were black—with shame, or rage, or both. her grandmother, who had raised her, satwatching quietly, with folded hands. she of the pillars of the church, a powerful evangelistandverywidelyknown.shesaidnothi(was) ngin(one) ella mae’s defense, for she must have felt,as the congregation felt, that father james was only exercising his clear and painful duty; he wasresponsible, after all, for elisha, as praying mother washington was responsible for ella mae. it was not an easy thing, said father james, to be the pastor of a flock. it might look easy to just situp there in the pulpit night after night, year in, year out, but let them remember the awfulresponsibility placed on his shoulders by almighty god—let them remember that god would askan accounting of him one day for every soul in his flock. let them remember this when theythough he was hard, let them remember that the word was hard, that the way of holiness was ahard way. there was no room in god’s army for the coward heart, no crown awaiting him who putmother, or father, sister, or brother, sweetheart, or friend above god’s will. let the church cryamen to this! and they cried: ‘amen! amen!’
the lord had led him, said father james, looking down on the boy and girl before him, togive them a public warning before it was too late. for he knew them to be sincere young people,dedicate to the service of the lord—it was only that, since they were young, they did not know thepitfall satan laid for the unwary. he knew that sin was not in their minds—not yet; yet sin was inthe flesh; and should they continue with their walking out alone together, their secrets andlaughter, and touching of hands, they would surely sin a sin beyond all forgiveness. and johnwondered what elisha was thinking—elisha , who was tall and handsome, who played basket-ball,and who had been saved at the age of eleven in the improbable fields down south. had he sinned?
had he been tempted? and the girl beside him, whose white robes now seemed the merest,thinnest covering for the nakedness of breasts and insistent thighs—what was her face like whenshe was alone with elisha, with no singing, when they were not surrounded by the saints? he wasafraid to think of it, yet he could think of nothing else; and the fever of which they stood accusedbegan also to rage him.
after this sunday elisha and ella mae no longer met each other each day after school, nolonger spent saturday afternoons wandering through central park, or lying on the beach. all thatwas over for them. if they came together again it would be in wedlock. they would have childrenand raise them in the church.
this was what was meant by a holy life, this was what the way of the cross demanded. itwas somehow on that sunday, a sunday shortly before his birthday, that john first realized thatthis was the life awaiting him—realized it consciously, as something no longer far off, butimminent, coming closer day by day.
john’s birthday fell on a sunday in march, in 1935. he awoke on this birthday morning with thefeeling that there was menace in the air around him—that something irrevocable had occurred inhim. he stared at a yellow stain on the ceiling just above his head. roy was still smothered in thebedclothes, and his breath came and went with a small, whistling sound. there was no other soundanywhere; no one in the house was up. the neighbors’ radios were all silent, and his mother hadn’tyet risen to fix his father’s breakfast. john wondered at his panic, then wondered about the time;and then (while the yellow stain on the ceiling slowly transformed itself into a woman’snakedness) he remembered that it was his fourteenth birthday and that he had sinned.
his first thought, nevertheless, was: ‘will anyone remember?’ for it had happened, once ortwice, that his birthday had passed entirely unnoticed, and no one had said ‘happy birthday,johnny,’ or given him anything—not even his mother.
roy stirred again and john pushed him away, listening to the silence. on other mornings heawoke hearing his mother singing in the kitchen, hearing his father in the bedroom behind himgrunting and muttering prayers to himself as he put on his clothes; hearing, perhaps, the chatter ofsarah and the squalling of ruth, and the radios, the clatter of pots and pans, and the voices of allthe folk nearby. this morning not even the cry of a bedspring disturbed the silence, and johnseemed, therefore, to be listening to his own unspeaking doom. he could believe, almost, that hehad awakened late on that great getting-up morning; that all the saved had been transformed in thetwinkling of an eye, and had risen to meet jesus in the clouds, and that he was left, with his sinfulbody, to be bound in hell a thousand years.
he had sinned. in spite of the saints, his mother and his father, the warning he had heardfrom his earliest beginnings, he had sinned with his hands a sin that was hard to forgive. in theschool lavatory, alone, thinking of the boys, older, bigger, braver, who made bets with each otheras to whose urine could arch higher, he had watched in himself a transformation of which hewould never dare to speak.
and the darkness of john’s sin was like the darkness of the church on saturday evenings;like the silence of the church while he was there alone, sweeping, and running water into the greatbucket, and overturning chairs, long before the saints arrived. it was like his thoughts as he movedabout the tabernacle in which his life had been spent; the tabernacle hated, yet loved and feared. itwas like roy’s curses, like the echoes these curses raised in john: he remembered roy, on somerare saturday when he had come to help john clean the church, cursing in the house of god, andmaking obscene gestures before the eyes of jesus. it was like all this, and it was like the walls thatwitnessed and the placards on the walls which testified that the wages of sin was death. thedarkness of his sin was in the hardheartedness with which he resisted god’s power; in the scornthat was often his while he listened to the crying, breaking voices, and watched the black skinglisten while they lifted up their arms and fell on their faces before the lord. for he had made hisdecision. he would not be like his father, or his father’s fathers. he would have another life.
for john excelled in school, though not, like elisha, in mathematics or basket-ball, and itwas said that he had a great future. he might become a great leader of his people. john was notmuch interested in his people and still less in leading them anywhere, but the phrase so oftenrepeated rose in his mind like a great brass gate, opening outward for him on a world where peopledid not live in the darkness of his father’s house, did not pray to jesus in the darkness of hisfather’s church, where he would eat good food, and wear fine clothes, and go to the movies asoften as he wished. in this world john, who was, his father said, ugly, who was always the smallestboy in his class, and who had no friends, became immediately beautiful, tall, and popular. peoplefell all over themselves to meet john grimes. he was a poet, or a college president, or a moviestar; he drank expensive whisky, and he smoke lucky strike cigarettes in the green package.
it was not only colored people who praised john, since they could not, john felt, in anycase really know; but white people also said it, in fact had said it first and said it still. it was whenjohn was five years old and in the first grade that he was first noticed; and since he was noticed byan eye altogether alien and impersonal, he began to perceive, in wild uneasiness, his individualexistence.
they were learning the alphabet that day, and six children at a time were sent to theblackboard to write the letters they had memorized. six had finished and were waiting for theteacher’s judgment when the back door opened and the school principal, of whom everyone wasterrified, entered the room, no one spoke or moved. in the silence the principal’s voice said:
‘which child is that?’
she was pointing to the blackboard, at john’s letters. the possibility of being distinguishedby her notice did not enter john’s mind, and so he simply stared at her. then he realized, by theimmobility of the other children and by the way they avoided looking at him, that it was he whowas selected for punishment.
“speak up, john,’ said the teacher, gently.
on the edge of tears, he mumbled his name and waited. the principal, a woman with whitehair and an iron face, looked down at him.
‘you’re a very bright boy, john grimes,’ she said. ‘keep up the good work.’
then she walked out of the room.
that moment gave him, from that time on, if not a weapon at least a shield; he apprehendedtotally, without belief or understanding, that he had in himself a power that other people lacked;that he could use this to save himself, to raise himself; and that, perhaps, with this power he mightone day win that love which he so longed for. this was not, in john, a faith subject to death oralteration, nor yet a hope subject to destruction; it was his identity, and part, therefore, of thatwickedness for which his father beat him and to which he clung in order to withstand his father.
his father’s arm, rising and falling, might make him cry, and that voice might cause him totremble; yet his father could never be entirely the victor, for john cherished something that hisfather could not reach. it was his hatred and his intelligence that he cherished, the one feeding theother. he lived for the day when his father would be dying and he, john, would curse him on hisdeath-bed. and this was why, though he had been born in faith and had been surrounded all his lifeby the saints and by their prayers and their rejoicing, and though the tabernacle in which theyworshipped was more completely real to him that the several precarious homes in which he and hisfamily had lived, john’s heart was hardened against the lord. his father was god’s minister, theambassador of the king of heaven, and john could not bow before the throne of grace without firstkneeling to his father. on his refusal to do this had his life depended, and john’s secret heart hadflourished in its wickedness until the day his sin first overtook him.
in the midst of all his wonderings he fell asleep again, and when he woke up this time and got outof bed his father had gone to the factory, where he would work for half a day. roy was sitting inthe kitchen, quarrelling with their mother. the baby, ruth, sat in her high chair banging on the traywith an oatmeal-covered spoon. this meant that she was in a good mood; she would not spend theday howling, for reasons known only to herself, allowing no one but her mother to touch her.
sarah was quiet, not chattering to-day, or at any rate not yet, and stood near the stove, arms folded,staring at roy with the flat black eyes, her father’s eyes, that made her look so old.
their mother, her head tied up in an old rag, sipped black coffee and watched roy. thepale end-of-winter sunlight filled the room and yellowed all their faces; and john, drugged andmorbid and wondering how it was that he had slept again and had been allowed to sleep so long,saw them for a moment like figures on a screen, an effect that the yellow light intensified. theroom was narrow and dirty; nothing could alter its dimensions, no labor could ever make it clean.
dirt was in the walls and the floorboards, and triumphed beneath the sink where the cockroachesspawned; was in the fine ridges of the pots and pans, scoured daily, burnt black on the bottom,hanging above the stove; was in the wall against which they hung, and revealed itself where thepaint had cracked and leaned outward in stiff squares and fragments, the paper-thin undersidewebbed with black. dirt was in every corner, angle, crevice of the monstrous stove, and livedbehind it in delirious communion with the corrupted wall. dirt was in the baseboard that johnscrubbed every sunday, and roughened the cupboard shelves that held the cracked and gleamingdishes. under this dark weight the walls leaned, under it the ceiling, with a great crack likelightning in its center, sagged. the windows gleamed like beaten gold or silver, but now john saw,in the yellow light, how fine dust veiled their doubtful glory. dirt crawled in the gray mop hungout of the windows to dry. john thought with shame and horror, yet in angry hardness of heart: hewho is filthy, let him be filthy still. then he looked at his mother, seeing, as though she weresomeone else, the dark, hard lines running downward from her eyes, and the deep, perpetual scowlin her forehead, and the downturned, tightened mouth, and the strong, thin, brown, and bonyhands; and the phrase turned against him like a two-edged sword, for was it not he, in his falsepride and his evil imagination, who was filthy? through a storm of tears that did not reach hiseyes, he stared at the yellow room; and the room shifted, the light of the sun darkened, and hismother’s face changed. he face became the face that he gave her in his dreams, the face that hadbeen hers in a photograph he had seen once, long ago, a photograph taken before he was born. thisface was young and proud, uplifted, with a smile that made the wide mouth beautiful and glowedin the enormous eyes. it was the face of a girl who knew that no evikl could undo her, and whocould laugh, surely, as his mother did not laugh now. between the two faces there stretched adarkness and a mystery that john feared, and that sometimes caused him to hate her.
now she saw him and she asked, breaking off her conversation with roy: ‘you hungry,little sleepyhead?’
‘well! about time you was getting up,’ said sarah.
he moved to the table and sat down, feeling the most bewildering panic of his life, a needto touch things, the table and chairs and the walls of the room, to make certain that the roomexisted and that he was in the room. he did not look at his mother, who stood up and went to thestove to heat his breakfast. but he asked, in order to say something to her, and to hear his ownvoice:
‘what we got for breakfast?’
he realized, with some shame, that he was hoping she had prepared a special breakfast forhim on his birthday.
‘what you think we got for breakfast?’ roy asked scornfully. ‘you got a special cravingfor something?’
john looked at him. roy was not in a good mood.
‘i ain’t said nothing to you,’ he said.
‘oh, i beg your pardon,’ said roy, in the shrill, little-girl tone he knew john hated.
‘what’s the matter with you to-day?’ john asked, angry, and trying at the same time to lendhis voice as husky a pitch as possible.
‘don’t you let roy bother you,’ said their mother. ‘he cross as two sticks this morning.’
‘yeah,’ said john, ‘i reckon.’ he and roy watched each other. then his plate was putbefore him: hominy grits and a scrap of bacon. he wanted to cry, like a child: ‘but, mama, it’s mybirthday!’ he kept his eyes on his plate and began to eat.
‘you can talk about your daddy all you want to,’ said his mother, picking up her battlewith roy, ‘but one thing you can’t say—you can’t say he ain’t always done his best to be a fatherto you and to see to it that you ain’t never gone hungry.’
‘i been hungry plenty of times,’ roy said, proud to be able to score this point against hismother.
‘wasn’t his fault, then. wasn’t because he wasn’t trying to feed you. than man shoveledsnow in zero weather when he ought’ve been in bed just to put food in your belly.’
‘wasn’t just my belly,’ said roy indignantly. ‘he got a belly, too, i know—it’s a shame theway that man eats. i sure ain’t asked him to shovel no snow for me.’ but he dropped his eyes,suspecting a flaw in his argument. ‘i just don’t want him beating on me all the time,’ he said atlast. ‘i ain’t no dog.’
she sighed, and turned slightly away, looking out of the window. ‘your daddy beats you,’
she said, ‘because he loves you.’
roy laughed. ‘that ain’t the kind of love i understand, old lady. what you reckon he’d doif he didn’t love me?’
‘he’d let you go right on,’ she flashed, ‘right on down to hell where it looks like you is justdetermined to go anyhow! right on, mister man, till somebody puts a knife in you, or takes youoff to jail!’
‘mama,’ john asked suddenly, ‘is daddy a good man?’
he had not known that he was going to ask the question, and he watched in astonishment asher mouth tightened and her eyes grew dark.
‘that ain’t no kind of question,’ she said mildly. ‘you don’t know no better men, do you?’
‘looks to me like he’s a mighty good man,’ said sarah. ‘he sure is praying all the time.’
‘you children is young,’ their mother said, ignoring sarah and sitting down again at thetable, ‘and you don’t know how lucky you is to have a father what worries about you and tries tosee to it that you come up right.’
‘yeah,’ said roy, ‘we don’t know how lucky we is to have a father what don’t want you togo to movies, and don’t want you to play in the streets, and don’t want you to have no friends, and he don’t want this and he don’t want that, and he don’t want you to do nothing. we so lucky tohave a father who just wants us to go to church and read the bible and beller like a fool in front ofthe altar and stay home all nice and quiet, like a little mouse. boy, we sure is lucky, all right. don’tknow what i done to be so lucky.’
she laughed. ‘you going to find out one day,’ she said, ‘you mark my words.’
‘yeah,’ said roy.
‘but it’ll be too late, then,’ she said. ‘it’ll be too late when you come to be … sorry.’ hervoice had changed. for a moment her eyes met john’s eyes, and john was frightened.. he felt thather words, after the strange fashion god sometimes chose to speak to men, were dictated byheaven and were meant for him. he was fourteen—was it too lat? and thus uneasiness wasreinforced by the impression, which at that moment he realized had been his all along, that hismother was not saying everything she meant. what, he wondered, did she say to aunt florencewhen they talked together? or to his father? what were her thoughts? her face would never tell.
and yet, looking down at him in a moment that was like a secret, passing sign, her face did tellhim. her thoughts were bitter.
‘i don’t care,’ roy said, rising. ‘when i have children i ain’t going to treat them like this.’
john watched his mother; she watched roy. ‘i’m sure this ain’t no way to be. ain’t got no right tohave a houseful of children if you don’t know how to treat them.’
‘you mighty grown up this morning,’ his mother said. ‘you be careful.’
‘and tell me something else,’ roy said, suddenly leaning over his mother, ‘tell me howcome he don’t never let me talk to him like i talk to you? he’s my father, ain’t he? but he don’tnever listen to me—no, i all the time got to listen to him.’
‘your father,’ she said, watching him, ‘knows best. you listen to your father, i guaranteeyou you won’t end up in no jail.’
roy sucked his teeth in fury. ‘i ain’t looking to go to no jail. you think that’s all that’s inthe world is jails and churches? you ought to know better than that, ma.’
‘i know,’ she said, ‘there ain’t no safety except you walk humble before the lord. yougoing to find it out, too, one day. you go on, hardhead. you going to come to grief.’
and suddenly rot grinned. ‘but you be there, won’t you, ma—when i’m in trouble?’
‘you don’t know,’ she said, trying not to smile, ‘how long the lord’s going to let me staywith you.’
roy turned and did a dance step. ‘that’s all right,’ he said. ‘i know the lord ain’t as hardas daddy. is he, boy?’ he demanded of john, and struck him lightly on the forehead.
‘boy, let me eat my breakfast,’ john muttered—though his plate had long been empty, andhe was pleased that roy had turned to him.
‘that sure is a crazy boy,’ ventured sarah, soberly.
‘just listen,’ cried roy, ‘to the little saint1 daddy ain’t never going to have trouble with her—that one, she was born holy. i bet the first words she ever said was: “thank you, jesus,” ain’tthat so, ma?’
‘you stop this foolishness,’ she said, laughing, ‘and go on about your work. can’t nobodyplay the fool with you all morning.’
‘oh, is you got work for me to do this morning? well, i declare,’ said roy, ‘what you gotfor me to do?’
‘i got the woodwork in the dining-room for you to do. and you going to do it, too, beforeyou set foot out of this house.’
‘now, why you want to talk like that, ma? is i said i wouldn’t do it? you know i’m a rightgood worker when i got a mind. after i do it, can i go?’
‘you go ahead and do it, and we’ll see. you better do it right.’
‘i always do it right,’ said roy. ‘you won’t know your old woodwork when i get through.’
‘john,’ said his mother, ‘you sweep the front room for me like a good boy, and dust thefurniture. i’m going to clean up in here.’
‘yes’m,’ he said, and rose. she had forgotten about his birthday. he swore he would notmention it. he would not think about it any more.
to sweep the front room meant, principally, to sweep the heavy red and green and purpleoriental-style carpet that had once been that room’s glory, but was now so faded that it was all oneswimming color, and so frayed in places that it tangled with the broom. john hated sweeping thiscarpet, for dust rose, clogging his nose and sticking to his sweaty skin, and he felt that should besweep it for ever, the clouds of dust would not diminish, the rug would not be clean. it became inhis imagination his impossible, lifelong task, his hard trial, like that of a man he had read aboutsomewhere, whose curse it was to push a boulder up a steep hill, only to have the giant whoguarded the hill roll the boulder down again—and so on, for ever, throughout eternity; he was stillout there, that hapless man, somewhere at the other end of the earth, pushing his boulder up thehill. he had john’s entire sympathy, for the longest and hardest part of his saturday mornings washis voyage with the broom across this endless rug; and coming to the french doors that ended theliving-room and stopped the rug, he felt like an indescribably weary traveler who sees his home atlast. yet for each dustpan he so laboriously filled at the door-still demons added to the rug twentymore; he saw in the expanse behind him the dust that he had raised settling again into the carpet;and he gritted his teeth, already on edge because of the dust that filled his mouth, and nearly weptto thinl that so much labor brought so little reward.
nor was this the end of john’s labor; for, having put away the broom and the dustpan, hetook from the small bucket under the sink the dust rag and the furniture oil and a damp cloth, andreturned to the living-room to excavate, as it were, from the dust that threatened to bury them, hisfamily’s goods and gear. thinking bitterly of his birthday, he attacked the mirror with the cloth,watching his face appear as out of a cloud. with a shock he saw that his face had not changed, thatthe hand of satan was as yet invisible. his father had always said that his face was the face ofsatan—and was there not something—in the lift of the eyebrow, in the way his rough hair formed a v on his brow—that bore witness to his father’s words? in the eye there was a light that was notthe light of heaven, and the mouth trembled, lustful and lewd, to drink deep of the wines of hell.
he stared at his face as though it were, as indeed it soon appeared to be, the face of a stranger, astranger who held secrets that john could never know. and, having thought of it as the face of astranger, he tried to look at it as a stranger might, and tried to discover what other people saw. buthe saw only details: two great eyes, and a broad, low forehead, and the triangle of his nose, and hisenormous mouth, and the barely perceptible cleft in his chin, which was, his father said, the markof the devil’s little finger. these details did not help him, for the principle of their unity wasundiscoverable, and he could not tell what he most passionately desired to know: whether his facewas ugly or not.
and he dropped his eyes to the mantelpiece, lifting one by one the objects that adorned it.
the mantelpiece held, in brave confusion, photographs, greeting cards, flowered mottoes, twosilver candlesticks that held no candles, and a green metal serpent, poised to strike. to-day in hisapathy john stared at them, not seeing; he began to dust them with exaggerated care of theprofoundly preoccupied. one of the mottoes was pink and blue, and proclaimed in raised letters,which made the work of dusting harder:
come in the evening, or come in the morning,come when you’re looked for, or come without warning,a thousand welcomes you’ll find here before youand the oftener you come here, the more we’ll adore you.
and the other, in letters of fire against a background of gold, stated:
for god so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoevershould believe in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
john iii, 16these somewhat unrelated sentiments decorated either side of the mantelpiece, obscured alittle by the silver candlesticks. between these two extremes, the greeting cards, received year afteryear, on christmas, or easter, or birthdays, trumpeted their glad tidings; while the green metalserpent, perpetually malevolent, raised its head proudly in the midst of these trophies, biding thetime to strike. against the mirror, like a procession, the photographs were arranged.
these photographs were the true antiques of the family, which seemed to feel that aphotograph should commemorate only the most distant past. the photographs of john and roy,and of the two girls, which seemed to violate this unspoken law, served only in fact to prove itmost iron-hard: they had all been taken in infancy, a time and a condition that the children couldnot remember. john in this photograph lat naked on a white counterpane, and people laughed andsaid that it was cunning. but john could never look at it without feeling shame and anger that hisnakedness should be here so unkindly revealed. none of the other children was naked; no, roy lay in the crib in a white gown and grinned toothlessly into the camera, and sarah, somber at the ageof six months, wore a white bonnet, and ruth was held in her mother’s arms. when people lookedat these photograph and laughed, their laughter differ from the laughter with which they greetedthe naked john. for this reason, when visitors tried to make advances to john he was sullen, andthey, feeling that for some reason he disliked them, retaliated by deciding that he was a ‘funny’
child.
among the other photographs there was one of aunt florence, his father’s sister, in whichher hair, in the old-fashioned way, was worn high and tied with a ribbon; she had been very youngwhen his photograph was taken, and had just come north. sometimes, when she came to visit, shecalled the photograph to witness that she had indeed been beautiful in her youth. there was aphotograph of his mother, not the john liked and had only once, but taken immediatelyafterhermarriage.andthere(one) wasaphotographofhisfat(seen) her, dressed in black,(one) sittingon a country porch with his hands folded heavily in his lap. the photograph had been taken on asunny day, and the sunlight brutally exaggerated the planes of his father’s face. he stared into thesun, head raised, unbearable, and though it had been taken when he was young, it was not the faceof a young man; only something archaic in the dress indicated that this photograph had been takenlong ago. at the time this picture was taken, aunt florence said, he was already a preacher, andhad a wife who was now in heaven. that he had been a preacher at that time was not astonishing,for it was impossible to imagine that he had ever been anything else; but that he had had a wife inthe so distant past who was now dead filled john with wonder by no means pleasant. if she hadlived, john thought, then he would never have come north and met his mother. and this shadowywoman, dead so many years, whose name he knew had been deborah, held in the fastness of hertomb, it seemed to john, the key to all those mysteries he so longed to unlock. it was she who hadknown his father in a life where john was not, and in a country john had never seen. when he wasnothing, nowhere, dust, cloud, air, and sun, and falling rain, not even thought of, said his mother,in heaven with the angels, said his aunt, she had known his father, and shared his father’s house.
she had loved his father. she had known his father when lightning flashed and thunder rolledthrough heaven, and his father said: ‘listen. god is talking.’ she had known him in the morningsof that far-off country when his father turned on his bed and opened his eyes, and she had lookedinto those eyes, seeing what they held, and she had not been afraid. she had seen him baptized,kicking like a mule and howling, and she had seen him weep when his mother died; he was a rightyoung man then, florence said. because she had looked into those eyes before they had looked onjohn, she knew that john would never know—the purity of his father’s eyes when john was notreflected in their depths. she could have told him—had he but been able form his hiding-place toask!–how to make his father love him. but now it was too late. she would not speak before thejudgment day. and among those many voices, the stammering with his own, john would care nolonger for her testimony.
when he had finished and the room was ready for sunday, john felt dusty and weary andsat down beside the window in his father’s easy chair. a glacial sun filled the streets, and a highwind filled the air with scraps of paper and frost dust, and banged the hanging signs of stores andstore-front churches. it was the end of winter, and the garbage-filled snow that had been bankedalong the edges of pavements was melting now and filling the gutters. boys were playing stickballin the damp, cold streets; dressed in heavy woolen sweaters and heavy trousers, they danced and shouted, and the ball went crack as the stick struck it and sent i speeding through the air. one ofthem wore a bright-red stocking cap with a great ball of wool hanging down behind that bouncedas he jumped, like a bright omen above his head. the cold sun made their faces like copper andbrass, and through the closed window john heard their coarse, irreverent voices. and he wanted tobe one of them, playing in the streets, unfrightened, moving with such grace and power, but heknew this could not be. yet, if he could not play their games, he could do something they could notdo; he was able, as one of his teachers said, to think. but this brought him little in the way ofconsolation, for to-day he was terrified of his thoughts. he wanted to be with these boys in thestreet, headless and thoughtless, wearing out his treacherous and bewildering body.
but now it was eleven o’clock, and in two hours his father would be home. and then theymight eat, and then his father would lead them in prayer, and then he would give them a biblelesson. by and by it would be evening and he would go to clean the church, and remained for tarryservice. suddenly, sitting at the window, and with a violence unprecedented, there arose in john aflood of fury and tears, and he bowed his head, fists clenched against the window-pane, crying,with teeth on edge: ‘what shall i do? what shall i do?’
then his mother called him; and he remembered that she was in the kitchen washingclothes and probably had something for him to do. he rose sullenly and walked into the kitchen.
she stood over the wash-tub, her arms wet and soapy to the elbows and sweat standing on herbrow. her apron, improvised from an old sheet, was wet where she had been leaning over thescrubbing-board. as he came in, she straightened, drying her hands on the edge of the apron.
‘you finish your work, john?’ she askedhe said: ‘yes’m,’ and thought how oddly she looked at him; as though she were looking atsomeone else’s child.
‘that’s a good boy,’ she said. she smiled a shy, strained smile. ‘you know you’re yourmother’s right-hand man?’
he said nothing, and he did not smile, but watched her, wandering to what task thispreamble led.
she turned away, passing one damp hand across her forehead, and went to the cupboard.
her back was to him, and he watched her while she took down a bright, figured vase, filled withflowers only on the most special occasions, and emptied the contents into her palm. he heard thechink of money, which meant that she was going to send him to the store. she put the vase backand turned to face him, her palm loosely folded before her.
‘i didn’t never ask you,’ she said, ‘what you wanted for your birthday. but you take this,son, and go out and get yourself something you think you want.’
and she opened his palm and put the money into it, warm and wet from her hand. in themoment that he felt the warm, smooth coins and her hand on his, john stared blindly at her face, sofar above him. his heart broke and he wanted to put his head on her belly where the wet spot was,and cry. but he dropped his eyes and looked at his palm, at the small pile of coins.
‘it ain’t much there,’ she said.
‘that’s all right.’ then he looked up, and she bent down and kissed him on the forehead.
‘you getting to be,’ she said, putting her hand beneath his chin and holding his face awayfrom her, ‘a right big boy. you going to be a mighty fine man, you know what? your mama’scounting on you.’
and he knew again that she was not saying everything she meant; in a kind of secretlanguage she was telling him to-day something that he must remember and understand to-morrow.
he watched her face, his heart swollen with love for her and with an anguish, not yet his own, buthe did not understand and that frightened him.
‘yes, ma,’ he said, hoping that she would realize, despite his stammering tongue, the depthof his passion to please her.
‘i know,’ she said, with a smile, releasing him and rising, ‘there’s a whole lot of things youdon’t understand. but don’t you fret. the lord’ll reveal to you in his own good time everythinghe wants you to know. you put your faith in the lord, johnny, and he’ll surely bring you out.
everything works together for good for them that love the lord.’
he had heard her say this before—it was her text, as set thine house in order was hisfather’s—but he knew that to-day she was saying it to him especially; she was trying to help himbecause she knew he was in trouble. and this trouble was also her own, which she would never tellto john. and even though he was certain that they could not be speaking of the same things—forthen, surely, she would be angry and no longer proud of him—this perception on her part and hisavowal of her love for him lent to john’s bewilderment a reality that terrified and a dignity thatconsoled him. dimly, he felt that he ought to console her, and he listened, astounded, at the wordsthat now fell from his lips:
‘yes, mama. i’m going to try to love the lord.’
at this there sprang into his mother’s face something startling, beautiful, unspeakably sad—as though she were looking far beyond him at a long, dark road, and seeing on that road atraveler in perpetual danger. was it he, the traveler? or herself? or was she thinking of the cross ofjesus? she turned back to the wash-tub, still with this strange sadness on her face.
‘you better go on now,’ she said, before your daddy gets home.’
in central park the snow had not yet melted on his favorite hill. this hill was in the center of thepark, after he had left the circ le of the reservoir, where he always found, outside the high wall ofcrossed wire, ladies, white, in fur coats, walking their great dogs, or old, white gentlemen withcanes. at a point that he knew by instinct and by the shape of the buildings surrounding the park,he struck out on a steep path overgrown with trees, and climbed a short distance until he reachedthe clearing that led to the hill. before him, then, the slope stretched upward, and above it thebrilliant sky, and beyond it, cloudy, and far away, he saw the skyline of new york. he did notknow why, but there arose in him an exultation and a sense of power, and he ran up the hill like anengine, or a madman, willing to throw himself headlong into the city that glowed before him.
but when he reached the summit he paused; he stood on the crest of the hill, hands claspedbeneath his chin, looking down. then he, john, felt like a giant who might crumble this city withhis anger; he felt like a tyrant who might crush this city beneath his heel; he felt like a long-awaited conqueror at whose feet flowers would be strewn, and before whom multitudes cried,hosanna! he would be, of all, the mightiest, the most beloved, the lord’s anointed; and he wouldlive in this shining city which his ancestors had seen with longing from far away. for it was his;the inhabitants of the city had told him it was his; he had but to run down, crying, and they wouldtake him to their hearts and shoe him wonders his eyes had never seen.
and still, on the summit of that hill he paused. he remembered the people he had seen inthat city, whose eyes held no love for him. and he thought of their feet so swift and brutal, and thedark gray clothes they wore, and how when they passed they did not see him, or, if they saw him,they smirked. and how the lights, unceasing, crashed on and off above him, and how he was astranger there. then he remembered his father and his mother, and all the arms stretched out tohold him back, to save him from this city where, they said, his soul would find perdition.
and certainly perdition sucked at the feet of the people who walked there; and cried in thelights, in the gigantic towers; the marks of satan could be found in the faces of the people whowaited at the doors of movie houses; his words were printed on the great movie posters that invitedpeople to sin. it was the roar of the damned that filled broadway, where motor-cars and buses andthe hurrying people disputed every inch with death. broadway: the way that led to death wasbroad, and many could be found thereon; but narrow was the way that led to life eternal, and fewthere were who found it. but he did not long for the narrow way, where all his people walked;where the houses did not rise, piercing, as it seemed, the unchanging clouds, but huddled, flat,ignoble, close to the filthy ground, where the streets and the hallways and the rooms were dark,and where the unconquerable odor was of dust, and sweat, and urine, and home-made gin. in thenarrow way, the way of the cross, there awaited him only humiliation for ever; there awaited him,one day, a house like his father’s house, and a church like his father’s, and a job like his father’s,where he would grow old and black with hunger and toil. the way of the cross had given him abelly filled with wind and had bent his mother’s back; they had never worn fine clothes, but here,where the buildings contested god’s power and where the men and women did not fear god, herehe might eat and drink to his heart’s content and clothe his body with wondrous fabrics, rich to theeye and pleasing to the touch. and then what of his soul, which would one day come to die andstand naked before the judgment bar? what would his conquest of the city profit him on that day?
to hurl away, for a moment of ease, the glories of eternity!
these glories were unimaginable—but the city was real. he stood for a moment on themelting snow, distracted, and then began to run down the hill, feeling himself fly as the descentbecame more rapid, and thinking: ‘i can climb back up. if it’s wrong, i can always climb back up.’
at the bottom of the hill, where the ground abruptly leveled off on to a gravel path, he nearlyknocked down an old white man with a white beard, who was walking very slowly and leaning onhis cane. they both stopped, astonished, and looked at one another. john struggled to catch hisbreath and apologize, but old man smiled. john smiled back. it was as though he and the old manhad between them a great secret; and the old man moved on. the snow glittered in patches all overthe park. ice, under the pale, strong sun, melted slowly on the branches and trunks of trees.
he came out of the park at fifth avenue where, as always, the old-fashioned horse-carriages were lined along the kerb, their drivers sitting on the high seats with rugs around theirknees, or standing in twos and threes near the horses, stamping their feet and smoking pipes andtalking. i summer he had seen people riding in these carriages, looking like people out of books, orout of movies in which everyone wore old-fashioned clothes and rushed at nightfall over frozenroad, hotly pursued by their enemies who wanted to carry them back to death. ‘look back, lookback,’ had cried a beautiful woman with long blonde curls, ‘and see if we are pursued!—and shehad come, as john remembered, to a terrible end. now he stared at the horses, enormous andbrown and patient, stamping every now and again a polished hoof, and he thought of what it wouldbe like to have one day a horse of his own. he would call it rider, and mount it at morning whenthe grass was wet, and from the horse’s back look out over great, sun-filled fields, his own. behindhim stood his house, great and rambling and very new, and in the kitchen his wife, a beautifulwoman, made breakfast, and the smoke rose out of the chimney, melting into the morning air.
they had children, who called him papa and for whom at christmas he bought electric trains. andhe had turkeys and cows and chickens and geese, and other horses besides rider. they had a closetfull of whisky and wine; they had cars—but what church did they go to and what would he teachhis children when they gathered around him in the evening? he looked straight ahead, down fifthavenue, where graceful women in fur coats walked, looking into the windows that held silkdresses, and watches, and rings. what church did they go to? and what were their houses like inthe evening they took off these coats, and these silk dresses, and put their jewelery in a box, andleaned back in soft beds to think for a moment before they slept of the day gone by? did they reada verse from the bible every night and fall on their knees to pray? but no, for their thoughts werenot of god, and their way was not god’s way. they were in the world, and of the world, and theirfeet laid hold on hell.
yet in school some of them had been nice to him, and it was hard to think of them burningin hell for ever, they who were so gracious and beautiful now. once, one winter when he had beenvery sick with a heavy cold that would not leave him, one of his teachers had bought him a bottleof cod-liver oil, especially prepared with heavy syrup so that it did not taste so bad: this was surelya christian act. his mother had said that god would bless that woman; and he had got better. theywere kind—he was sire that they were kind—and on the day that he would bring himself to theirattention they would surely love and honor him. this was not his father’s opinion. his father saidthat all white people were wicked, and that god was going to bring them low. he said that whitepeople were never to be trusted, and that they told nothing but lies, and that no one of them hadever loved a nigger. he, john, was a nigger, and he would find out, as soon as he got a little older,how evil white people could be. john had read about the things white people did to colored people;how, in the south, where his parents came from, white people cheated them of their wages, andburned them, and shot them—and did worse things, said his father, which the tongue could notendure to utter. he had read about colored men being burned in the electric chair for things theyhad not done; how in riots they were beaten with clubs; how they were tortured in prisons; howthey were the last to be hired and the first to be fired. niggers did not live on these streets wherejohn now walked; it was forbidden; and yet he walked here, and no one raised a hand against him.
but did he dare to enter this shop out of which a woman now casually walked, carrying a greatround box? or this apartment before which a white man stood, dressed in a brilliant uniform? john knew he did not dare, not to-day, and he heard his father’s laugh: ‘no, nor to-morrow neither!’ forhim there was the back door, and the dark stairs, and the kitchen or the basement. this world wasnot for him. if he refused to believe, and wanted to break his neck trying, then he could try untilthe sun refused to shine; they would never let him enter. in john’s mind then, the people and theavenue underwent a change, and he feared them and knew that one day he could hate them if goddid not change his heart.
he left fifth avenue and walked west toward the movie houses. here on 42nd street it wasless elegant but not less strange. he loved this street, not for the people or the shops but for thestone lions that guarded the great main building of the public library, a building filled with bookand unimaginably vast, and which he had never yet dared to enter. he might, he knew, for he was amember of the branch in harlem and was entitled to take books from any library in the city. but hehad never gone in because the building was so big that it must be full of corridors and marblesteps, in the maze of which he would be lost and never find the book he wanted. and theneveryone, all the white people inside, would know that he was not used to great buildings, or tomany books, and they would look at him wit pity. he would enter on another day, when he hadread all the books uptown, an achievement that would, he felt, lend him the poise to enter anybuilding in the world. people, mostly men, leaned over the stone parapets of the raised park thatsurrounded the library, or walked up and own and bent to drink water from the public drinking-fountains. silver pigeons lighted briefly on the heads of the lions or the rims of fountains, andstrutted along the walks. john loitered in front of woolworth’s, staring at the candy display, tryingto decide what candy to buy—and buying one, for the store was crowded and he was certain thatthe salesgirl would never notice him—and before a vendor of artificial flowers, and crossed sixthavenue where the automat was, and the parked taxis, and the shops, which he would not look atto-day, that displayed in their windows dirty postcards and practical jokes. beyond sixth avenuethe movie houses began, and now he studied the stills carefully, trying to decide which of all thesetheaters he should enter. he stopped at last before a gigantic, colored poster that represented awicked woman, half undressed, leaning in a doorway, apparently quarreling with a blond man whostared wretchedly into the street. the legend above their heads was: ‘there’s a fool like him inevery family—and a woman next door to take him over!’ he decided to see this, for he feltidentified with the blond young man, the fool of his family, and he wished to know more about hisso blatantly unkind fate.
and so he stared at the price above the ticket-seller’s window and, showing her his coins,received the piece of paper that was charged with the power to open doors. having once decided toenter, he did not look back at the street again for fear that one of the saints might be passing and,seeing him, might cry out his name and lay hands on him to drag him back. he walked veryquickly across the carpeted lobby, looking at nothing, and pausing only to see his ticket torn, halfof it thrown into a silver box and half returned to him. and then the usherette opened the doors ofthis dark palace and with a flashlight held behind her took him to his seat. not even then, havingpushed past a wilderness of knees and feet to reach his designated seat, did he dare to breathe; nor,out of a last, sick hope for forgiveness, did he look at the screen. he stared at the darkness aroundhim, and at the profiles that gradually emerged from this gloom, was so like the gloom of hell. hewaited for this darkness to be shattered by the light of the second coming, for the ceiling to crackupward, revealing, for every eye to see, the chariots of fire on which descended a wrathful god and all the host of heaven. he sank far down
