Go Tell It on the Mountain

by James Baldwin

  So it was over. Though it left him bruised and frightened, though he had lost the respect of Esther forever (he prayed that she would never again come to hear him preach) he thanked God that it had been no worse. He prayed that God would forgive him, and never let him fall again.

  Yet what frightened him, and kept him more than ever on his knees, was the knowledge that, once having fallen, nothing would be easier than to fall again. Having possessed Esther, the carnal man awoke, seeing the possibility of conquest everywhere. He was made to remember that though he was holy he was yet young; the women who had wanted him wanted him still; he had but to stretch out his hand and take what he wanted—even sisters in the church. He struggled to wear out his visions in the marriage bed, he struggled to awaken Deborah, for whom daily his hatred grew.

  He and Esther spoke in the yard again as spring was just beginning. The ground was wet still with melting snow and ice; the sun was everywhere; the naked branches of the trees seemed to be lifting themselves upward toward the pale sun, impatient to put forth leaf and flower. He was standing at the well in his shirtsleeves, singing softly to himself—praising God for the dangers he had passed. She came down the porch steps into the yard, and though he heard the soft step, and knew that it was she, it was a moment before he turned around.

  He expected her to come up to him and ask for his help in something she was doing in the house. When she did not speak, he turned around. She was wearing a light, cotton dress of light-brown and dark-brown squares, and her hair was braided tightly all around her head. She looked like a little girl, and he almost smiled. Then: “What’s the matter?” he asked her; and felt the heart within him sicken.

  “Gabriel,” she said, “I going to have a baby.”

  He stared at her; she began to cry. He put the two pails of water carefully on the ground. She put out her hands to reach him, but he moved away.

  “Girl, stop that bellering. What you talking about?”

  But, having allowed her tears to begin, she could not stop them at once. She continued to cry, weaving a little where she stood, and with her hands to her face. He looked in panic around the yard and toward the house. “Stop that,” he cried again, not daring here and now to touch her, “and tell me what’s the matter!”

  “I told you,” she moaned, “I done told you. I going to have a baby.” She looked at him, her face broken up and the hot tears falling. “It’s the Lord’s truth. I ain’t making up no story, it’s the Lord’s truth.”

  He could not take his eyes from her, though he hated what he saw. “And when you done find this out?”

  “Not so long. I thought maybe I was mistook. But ain’t no mistake. Gabriel, what we going to do?”

  Then, as she watched his face, her tears began again.

  “Hush,” he said, with a calm that astonished him, “we going to do something, just you be quiet.”

  “What we going to do, Gabriel? Tell me—what you a-fixing in your mind to do?”

  “You go on back in the house. Ain’t no way for us to talk now.”

  “Gabriel—”

  “Go on in the house, girl. Go on!” And when she did not move, but continued to stare at him: “We going to talk about it tonight. We going to get to the bottom of this thing tonight!”

  She turned from him and started up the porch steps. “And dry your face,” he whispered. She bent over, lifting the front of her dress to dry her eyes, and stood so for a moment on the bottom step while he watched her. Then she straightened and walked into the house, not looking back.

  She was going to have his baby—his baby? While Deborah, despite their groaning, despite the humility with which she endured his body, yet failed to be quickened by any coming life. It was in the womb of Esther, who was no better than a harlot, that the seed of the prophet would be nourished.

  And he moved from the well, picking up, like a man in a trance, the heavy pails of water. He moved toward the house, which now—high, gleaming roof, and spun-gold window—seemed to watch him and to listen; the very sun above his head and the earth beneath his feet had ceased their turning; the water, like a million warning voices, lapped in the buckets he carried on each side; and his mother, beneath the startled earth on which he moved, lifted up, endlessly, her eyes.

  They talked in the kitchen as she was cleaning up.

  “How come you”—it was his first question—“to be so sure this here’s my baby?”

  She was not crying now. “Don’t you start a-talking that way,” she said. “Esther ain’t in the habit of lying to nobody, and I ain’t gone with so many men that I’m subject to get my mind confused.”

  She was very cold and deliberate, and moved about the kitchen with a furious concentration on her tasks, scarcely looking at him.

  He did not know what to say, how to reach her.

  “You tell your mother yet?” he asked, after a pause. “You been to see a doctor? How come you to be so sure?”

  She sighed sharply. “No, I ain’t told my mother, I ain’t crazy. I ain’t told nobody except you.”

  “How come you to be so sure?” he repeated. “If you ain’t seen no doctor?”

  “What doctor in this town you want me to go see? I go to see a doctor, I might as well get up and shout it from the housetops. No, I ain’t seen no doctor, and I ain’t fixing to see one in a hurry. I don’t need no doctor to tell me what’s happening in my belly.”

  “And how long you been knowing about this?”

  “I been knowing this for maybe a month—maybe six weeks now.”

  “Six weeks? Why ain’t you opened your mouth before?”

  “Because I wasn’t sure. I thought I’d wait and make sure. I didn’t see no need for getting all up in the air before I knew. I didn’t want to get you all upset and scared and evil, like you is now, if it weren’t no need.” She paused, watching him. Then: “And you said this morning we was going to do something. What we going to do? That’s what we got to figure out now, Gabriel.”

  “What we going to do?” he repeated at last; and felt that the sustaining life had gone out of him. He sat down at the kitchen table and looked at the whirling pattern on the floor.

  But the life had not gone out of her; she came to where he sat, speaking softly, with bitter eyes. “You sound mighty strange to me,” she said. “Don’t look to me like you thinking of nothing but how you can get shut of this—and me, too—quick as you know how. It wasn’t like that always, was it, Reverend? Once upon a time you couldn’t think of nothing and nobody but me. What you thinking about tonight? I be damned if I think it’s me you thinking of.”

  “Girl,” he said, wearily, “don’t talk like you ain’t got good sense. You know I got a wife to think about—” and he wanted to say more, but he could not find the words, and, helplessly, he stopped.

  “I know that,” she said with less heat, but watching him still with eyes from which the old, impatient mockery was not entirely gone, “but what I mean is, if you was able to forget her once you ought to be able to forget her twice.”

  He did not understand her at once; but then he sat straight up, his eyes wide and angry. “What you mean, girl? What you trying to say?”

  She did not flinch—even in his despair and anger he recognized how far she was from being the frivolous child she had always seemed to him. Or was it that she had been, in so short a space of time, transformed? But he spoke to her at this disadvantage: that whereas he was unprepared for any change in her, she had apparently taken his measure from the first and could be surprised by no change in him.

  “You know what I mean,” she said. “You ain’t never going to have no kind of life with that skinny, black woman—and you ain’t never going to be able to make her happy—and she ain’t never going to have no children. I be blessed, anyway, if I think you was in your right mind when you married her. And it’s me that’s going to have your baby!”

  “You want me,” he asked at last, “to leave my wife—and come with you?”

  “I
thought,” she answered, “that you had done thought of that yourself, already, many and many a time.”

  “You know,” he said, with a halting anger, “I ain’t never said nothing like that. I ain’t never told you I wanted to leave my wife.”

  “I ain’t talking,” she shouted, at the end of patience, “about nothing you done said!”

  Immediately, they both looked toward the closed kitchen doors—for they were not alone in the house this time. She sighed, and smoothed her hair with her hand; and he saw then that her hand was trembling and that her calm deliberation was all a frenzied pose.

  “Girl,” he said, “does you reckon I’m going to run off and lead a life of sin with you somewhere, just because you tell me you got my baby kicking in your belly? How many kinds of a fool you think I am? I got God’s work to do—my life don’t belong to you. Nor to that baby, neither—if it is my baby.”

  “It’s your baby,” she said, coldly, “and ain’t no way in the world to get around that. And it ain’t been so very long ago, right here in this very room, when looked to me like a life of sin was all you was ready for.”

  “Yes,” he answered, rising, and turning away, “Satan tempted me and I fell. I ain’t the first man been made to fall on account of a wicked woman.”

  “You be careful,” said Esther, “how you talk to me. I ain’t the first girl’s been ruined by a holy man, neither.”

  “Ruined?” he cried. “You? How you going to be ruined? When you been walking through this town just like a harlot, and a-kicking up your heels all over the pasture? How you going to stand there and tell me you been ruined? If it hadn’t been me, it sure would have been somebody else.”

  “But it was you,” she retorted, “and what I want to know is what we’s going to do about it.”

  He looked at her. Her face was cold and hard—ugly; she had never been so ugly before.

  “I don’t know,” he said, deliberately, “what we is going to do. But I tell you what I think you better do: you better go along and get one of these boys you been running around with to marry you. Because I can’t go off with you nowhere.”

  She sat down at the table and stared at him with scorn and amazement; sat down heavily, as though she had been struck. He knew that she was gathering her forces; and now she said what he had dreaded to hear:

  “And suppose I went through town and told your wife, and the churchfolks, and everybody—suppose I did that, Reverend?”

  “And who you think,” he asked—he felt himself enveloped by an awful, falling silence—“is going to believe you?”

  She laughed. “Enough folks’d believe me to make it mighty hard on you.” And she watched him. He walked up and down the kitchen, trying to avoid her eyes. “You just think back,” she said, “to that first night, right here on this damn white folks’ floor, and you’ll see it’s too late for you to talk to Esther about how holy you is. I don’t care if you want to live a lie, but I don’t see no reason for you to make me suffer on account of it.”

  “You can go around and tell folks if you want to,” he said, boldly, “but it ain’t going to look so good for you neither.”

  She laughed again. “But I ain’t the holy one. You’s a married man, and you’s a preacher—and who you think folks is going to blame most?”

  He watched her with a hatred that was mixed with his old desire, knowing that once more she had the victory.

  “I can’t marry you, you know that,” he said. “Now, what you want me to do?”

  “No,” she said, “and I reckon you wouldn’t marry me even if you was free. I reckon you don’t want no whore like Esther for your wife. Esther’s just for the night, for the dark, where won’t nobody see you getting your holy self all dirtied up with Esther. Esther’s just good enough to go out and have your bastard somewhere in the goddamn woods. Ain’t that so, Reverend?”

  He did not answer her. He could find no words. There was only silence in him, like the grave.

  She rose, and moved to the open kitchen door, where she stood, her back to him, looking out into the yard and on the silent streets where the last, dead rays of the sun still lingered.

  “But I reckon,” she said slowly, “that I don’t want to be with you no more’n you want to be with me. I don’t want no man what’s ashamed and scared. Can’t do me no good, that kind of man.” She turned in the door and faced him; this was the last time she really looked at him, and he would carry that look to his grave. “There’s just one thing I want you to do,” she said. “You do that, and we be all right.”

  “What you want me to do?” he asked, and felt ashamed.

  “I would go through this town,” she said, “and tell everybody about the Lord’s anointed. Only reason I don’t is because I don’t want my mama and daddy to know what a fool I been. I ain’t ashamed of it—I’m ashamed of you—you done made me feel a shame I ain’t never felt before. I shamed before my God— to let somebody make me cheap, like you done done.”

  He said nothing. She turned her back to him again.

  “I … just want to go somewhere,” she said, “go somewhere, and have my baby, and think all this out of my mind. I want to go somewhere and get my mind straight. That’s what I want you to do—and that’s pretty cheap. I guess it takes a holy man to make a girl a real whore.”

  “Girl,” he said, “I ain’t got no money.”

  “Well,” she said, coldly, “you damn well better find some.”

  Then she began to cry. He moved toward her, but she moved away.

  “If I go out into the field,” he said, helplessly, “I ought to be able to make enough money to send you away.”

  “How long that going to take?”

  “A month maybe.”

  And she shook her head. “I ain’t going to stay around here that long.”

  They stood in silence in the open kitchen door, she struggling against her tears, he struggling against his shame. He could only think: “Jesus Jesus Jesus. Jesus Jesus.”

  “Ain’t you got nothing saved up?” she asked at last. “Look to me like you been married long enough to’ve saved something!”

  Then he remembered that Deborah had been saving money since their wedding day. She kept it in a tin box at the top of the cupboard. He thought of how sin led to sin.

  “Yes,” he said, “a little. I don’t know how much.”

  “You bring it tomorrow,” she told him.

  “Yes,” he said.

  He watched her as she moved from the door and went to the closet for her hat and coat. Then she came back, dressed for the street and, without a word, passed him, walking down the short steps into the yard. She opened the low gate and turned down the long, silent, flaming street. She walked slowly, head bowed, as though she were cold. He stood watching her, thinking of the many times he had watched her before, when her walk had been so different and her laughter had come ringing back to mock him.

  He stole the money while Deborah slept. And he gave it to Esther in the morning. She gave notice that same day, and a week later she was gone—to Chicago, said her parents, to find a better job and to have a better life.

  Deborah became more silent than ever in the weeks that followed. Sometimes he was certain she had discovered that the money was missing and knew that he had taken it—sometimes he was certain that she knew nothing. Sometimes he was certain that she knew everything: the theft, and the reason for the theft. But she did not speak. In the middle of the spring he went out into the field to preach, and was gone three months. When he came back he brought the money with him and put it in the box again. No money had been added in the meanwhile, so he still could not be certain whether Deborah knew or not.

  He decided to let it all be forgotten, and begin his life again.

  But the summer brought him a letter, with no return name or address, but postmarked from Chicago. Deborah gave it to him at breakfast, not seeming to have remarked the hand or the postmark, along with the bundle of tracts from a Bible house which they both di
stributed each week through the town. She had a letter, too, from Florence, and it was perhaps this novelty that distracted her attention.

  Esther’s letter ended:

  What I think is, I made a mistake, that’s true, and I’m paying for it now. But don’t you think you ain’t going to pay for it—I don’t know when and I don’t know how, but I know you going to be brought low one of these fine days. I ain’t holy like you are, but I know right from wrong.

  I’m going to have my baby and I’m going to bring him up to be a man. And I ain’t going to read to him out of no Bibles and I ain’t going to take him to hear no preaching. If he don’t drink nothing but moonshine all his natural days he be a better man than his daddy.

  “What Florence got to say?” he asked dully, crumpling this letter in his fist.

  Deborah looked up with a faint smile. “Nothing much, honey. But she sound like she going to get married.”

  Near the end of that summer he went out again into the field. He could not stand his home, his job, the town itself—he could not endure, day in, day out, facing the scenes and the people he had known all his life. They seemed suddenly to mock him, to stand in judgment on him; he saw his guilt in everybody’s eyes. When he stood in the pulpit to preach they looked at him, he felt, as though he had no right to be there, as though they condemned him as he had once condemned the twenty-three elders. When souls came weeping to the altar he scarce dared to rejoice, remembering that soul who had not bowed, whose blood, it might be, would be required of him at judgment.