“I came for a while, and then to leave again. I don’t know where I’m going. But it would be impossible here.”
“Then it has to be there.”
“Has to?”
“If you can’t stay here.”
He looked at her thoughtfully a moment, as though he had been thinking of some other alternative. She did not like what she saw in his face. He looked away.
“Maybe it’s me.”
“In a way, it is.”
“In a way?” he said. “Not all the way?”
“No. Because there are many just like you. Aren’t there?”
“There are.”
She nodded. “I saw it in the beginning. I saw it in you then.”
“I’m not looking for a paradise, Madame Bayonne.”
“I know what you’re looking for. Dignity, truth—you want to make something out of a senseless world.”
“Is there anything wrong with that?”
She looked at him, but did not answer.
An owl suddenly left an old pecan tree about a hundred yards from where Jackson and Madame Bayonne were standing, and went flying over the field and across the road. The owl flew so low over their heads that Jackson could almost hear the beating of its wings. He watched it fly over the house and into the night. He wondered what had caused it to leave and where it would eventually stop.
“Even he must leave sometime.” Madame Bayonne had taken one quick glance at the owl, and had looked at Jackson again. “I wonder what he ever did to anyone, what was promised him, what was not fulfilled?”
Jackson turned to her. “Do you understand?”
Her eyes said it. Her mouth did not. She understood.
“Good night, Madame Bayonne,” he said.
“Good night,” she said.
She went into the yard, and the tall flower bushes and the trees in the yard seemed to envelope her, hiding her from him in the road. Or did these things hide the road, the outside from her? He walked away.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The party was over. All but three people had left the house. Mary Louise and Charlotte were in the kitchen washing dishes; Jackson and Brother sat in the swing on the porch. Jackson had taken off his coat and tie and had rolled up his shirt sleeves. Brother sat beside him drinking a beer. In a rocking chair, at the other end of the porch, sat an old man sound asleep. His snoring could be heard all over the place.
It was after midnight. A heavy dew had fallen, and there was a slight breeze from the direction of the swamps. The breeze stirred the leaves in the mulberry tree at the corner of the porch.
“Finish this beer and take him in,” Brother said.
“Can you handle him by yourself?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“I’ll give you a hand if you want me to.”
“I can handle him—I do it all the time,” Brother said. He raised the bottle up to his mouth, threw his head back, and drank about half of the beer. He looked at Jackson again. “Anyhow, you got something up here to take care of,” he said.
“Yes, a good night’s sleep,” Jackson said. “And I need it.”
“I mean Mary Louise,” Brother said. “What you think she hanging ’round here for?”
“She’s helping Aunt Charlotte with the dishes, I suppose.”
“Don’t take you ten years to wash no dishes,” Brother said, and grinned.
He got up from the swing before Jackson could say anything, and took the empty bottle inside. When he came back on the porch, Charlotte and Mary Louise were with him.
“Done cool off,” Charlotte said. “That’s a blessing. Saint Ambrose still here?”
“Just getting ready to take him in,” Brother said, going over to the chair where the old man sat snoring. “Okay, Saint Ambrose, let’s get to getting,” he said.
He pulled Saint Ambrose out of the chair, but Saint Ambrose went back down again. He pulled him back up, but again he could not keep Saint Ambrose on his feet. Jackson went over to help Brother take him out to the car.
“He must ’a’ had one too many,” Brother said.
“You ever knowed when he didn’t?” Charlotte said.
They had a hard time getting Saint Ambrose down the steps and through the gate because he was heavy and no help to them at all. After they had gotten him into the car, Jackson shut the door. Brother went around and got in on the other side. He looked at Jackson again.
“What time you getting up tomorrow?”
“I don’t know. Eight; nine.”
“Probably come by and we can go riding somewhere if you want.”
“Yes, that sounds all right.”
Brother looked toward the porch where Charlotte and Mary Louise were, and leaned closer toward Jackson.
“Don’t mean to be prying,” he said; “but y’all can have that whole house to y’all self over there tonight. Herb’s working in Baton Rouge.”
Jackson smiled and looked away. But Brother could tell by his smile that Jackson was not interested in what he had proposed.
Brother shrugged his shoulders and sat up. “Just thought I mention it,” he said, starting up the motor. “See you tomorrow.”
“Take it easy,” Jackson said, standing away from the car. Brother drove off, and Jackson came back into the yard.
“How did you like the supper?” Charlotte asked him.
Charlotte had dragged the rocking chair to the center of the porch, and now sat rocking and fanning with a piece of white cloth. There weren’t any mosquitoes tonight, but bringing the piece of cloth along whenever she sat outside had become a ritual with her.
“All right,” Jackson said.
Charlotte looked over her shoulder at Mary Louise. “Ain’t you go’n sit down and cool off?”
“No’m, I ought to be going,” Mary Louise said.
“I spec’ you want Jackson to walk you home?” Charlotte said.
Mary Louise looked at Jackson, but did not say anything. She did not move from where she was standing either.
“Talking about shame-face,” Charlotte said to Jackson. “You better take her on over there. She’ll never ask you.”
“About ready?” Jackson asked Mary Louise.
Mary Louise nodded and started toward the steps.
“I’ll be back tomorrow when I get through at the Yard,” she said to Charlotte.
“Good night,” Charlotte said, and watched them go out of the yard.
She knew she did not have anything to worry about from Mary Louise. She had watched them together tonight and she had watched them this afternoon, and she knew there was nothing between them.
CHAPTER TWENTY
When they came into the road, neither one said anything. Mary Louise wanted to talk; she had so much on her mind to talk about, but where should she begin? Where do you begin after ten years?
Actually she had not been waiting for him. She had said it many times and meant it sincerely. “No,” she had said, “not him. But the first one that love me and can respect me and who I can love and respect, that’s the one I’m go’n marry.” But none of the boys who courted her, who took her out, seemed to be the right one.
When she took Charlotte’s place at the Yard two years ago, she ceased courting altogether. All of her time was devoted to the Yard, her house, Charlotte’s house, and the church. When boys attempted to escort her from church, she told them very politely that she was with someone already. If the boy insisted, Charlotte came to the rescue. Then when they were alone again, she would tell Mary Louise, “You know, you getting ’round that marrying age now. You got to spec’ that kind o’ ’tention.”
Mary Louise would nod her head, but would not answer.
When all of her friends were getting married and asked her what was she waiting for, she told them very simply, “The right one.” When they heard that Jackson was coming back—Charlotte had told everyone in the quarters that he was—and asked her if he was the one, she told them no. But he was, and he was not. One day she could not believe
for a moment that he could possibly look at her. The next day she saw them together as husband and wife. One day she saw him getting off the bus with a girl walking behind him. The next day she saw him rushing toward her with opened arms. She was ready to expect almost anything.
“Thanks for what you’ve been doing for Aunt Charlotte,” he said.
“It wasn’t nothing,” she said. “I was glad …”
She could not say any more. But why, when all the time she was bursting over with things to talk about? It was not love she wanted to talk about. No, not love at all. But him. She wanted to know about him. What had he been doing? How had he been? What were his plans now? She did not want to tell him anything about herself. Nothing interesting had happened to her. Nothing interesting had happened to the place—but that it was going down faster and faster. No; she only wanted to talk about him.
He opened the gate for her and she went into the yard. He followed her up the walk. She was going to detain him some way or another, but it was he who suggested it first.
“Can we talk a moment?”
“Yes. Want come inside?”
“No. Out here will be good.”
“Let me get a chair.”
“No. The steps are all right.”
She used her handkerchief to wipe off a clean place for him. It was a small white handkerchief with her initials embroidered in it. A boy had given her a dozen of them for her birthday a year ago.
After sitting down, they remained silent a while. What was it he wanted to say to her? After all, he did not come back there with a wife.…
“How’ve you been?” he said.
“All right.”
“You look nice.”
“Been getting along all right.”
“I thought you’d be married by now with a house full of kids.”
“No. Still single,” she said.
He leaned forward, rubbing his hands together. She looked at him, thinking: I don’t care what it is. Anything—I’m ready to hear it. Say it so I can be free. Say it so I can know what to do tomorrow, so I can know how to feel tomorrow. ’Cause as long as you don’t, I’ll never know which way to go.…
“I have something to say to Aunt Charlotte,” he said. “I don’t know how to say it.”
Mary Louise hesitated a moment before asking him what it was that he had to say.
“She thinks I’m coming back here to stay,” he said.
Mary Louise’s heart leaped into her throat. She stared at Jackson as if he had just confessed to murdering someone. Tears rushed into her eyes, and she raised her hand to her mouth to keep from crying out.
“How can I say it to her?” he said. “From what I hear, that’s all she’s been telling everyone. It’s impossible. But how do I explain it?”
She had wanted to say these same words to Miss Charlotte. When he first left, everyone thought he would come back one day to teach there. Three or four years after he had gone, she still thought he would. Then suddenly all of the young people started leaving. Those who weren’t being drafted or volunteering for military service were all going to the cities or up North. And she had asked herself then, why should Jackson be an exception? Why should he come back, when all of the others were going the other way? No, she had thought, he won’t ever come back. I might’s well get interested in somebody else ’cause I’ll never see him again. So she had started dating. Different boys called on her two and three times a week. But the right one never did come along.
Charlotte might have been partially responsible for this. Not that she did not want her to get married. She definitely did want her to get married. But whenever they were together, she was continually bringing up Jackson’s name and his returning. She, Mary Louise, had wanted to caution her. Several times she had wanted to say, “Miss Charlotte, you know, many o’ the young people leaving and going—” but each time she thought about saying this, Charlotte would seem more confident than ever of his returning. If she showed any doubt at all, Charlotte would show her a letter from him. No, Charlotte would not let her read the letter, and whether or not Charlotte was showing her the same letter over and over, she did not know, because Charlotte would keep the letter at safe enough distance so she could not identify the date. But, nevertheless, she began to feel that maybe Charlotte was right and maybe he was an exception after all. And about two weeks ago, Charlotte did get a letter from him, for it was she, Mary Louise, who brought the letter from the store. The letter had said that he would be here next week. It did not say whether or not he was coming to stay.
“How would you do it?” he asked.
She was still crying, and did not answer him. Jackson sat up and turned to her.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I don’t know how to do it. Not that.”
“She really thinks so?”
Mary Louise nodded her head. “Yes.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
They were silent a long time. He sat forward on the steps, looking at the little beads of dew sparkling in the grass along the fence. Something pleasant stirred in him. He felt like going out there and rubbing his hand over the grass. He wanted to feel the wetness of it, he wanted to feel the soft prickling touches against the palm of his hand.
“Well, I think I ought to be going,” he said.
But he did not move, and he turned to Mary Louise sitting beside him.
“Why were you crying?” he asked her.
She shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t know.”
“Did you expect me to come back?”
“I don’t know. I reckon’d I did.”
He started to tell her why he could not come back, but he was tired, and, too, could she possibly understand what he was saying? Could she understand all, not part of, but all of what he was saying about North and South? She probably would not—how could she?—when the North had been pictured for her as it had been pictured for him before he went there. But he had found out that it had its faults as well as the South. Only the faults there did not strike you as directly and as quickly, so by the time you discovered them, you were so much against the other place that it was impossible ever to return to it.
But it had taken him a long time to discover these faults, because he was too involved with his books to stand back and look for them. Hearing his mother complain about the shabby neighborhood they had to live in only because they were Negroes, or hearing his stepfather complain about his job, did not make him aware of these things either. They lived in a slum neighborhood because they did not have enough money to live in a better place, and his stepfather had to work as a laborer because he did not have the education to hold a better position. But he would not have to live under these conditions; his instructors had already told him so.
When did he begin to notice the faults? When? It was hard for him to see them when he sat in a classroom, surrounded by white students, while in the South the problem of integrating the school was causing so much trouble. It was hard to notice them when he went out for the school track team, running side by side with anyone, and then leaving most of them behind. It was hard to notice them also when he went swimming in the same pool with all the others. So when did he begin to notice them? When?
It had happened suddenly. It had sneaked up on him. No, no, it had not. It had only come less directly than it had in the South. He was not told that he could not come into the restaurant to eat. But when he did come inside, he was not served as promptly and with the same courtesy as were the others. When he went into a store to buy a pair of pants or a pair of socks, he was treated in the same manner as he had been in the restaurant. And when he and his parents were looking in the papers for another place to rent, he remembered how his mother’s finger made an imprint under each place that said “colored,” when all the time there were other places which she would have preferred living in and which were much cheaper. The imprint under that one word, because it was made in San Francisco, would be imprinted on his mind the rest
of his life.
These incidents were not big. They were extremely small when you thought of them individually. But there were so many of them that they soon began to mount into something big, something black, something awful.
When he first went to California, it was understood by his mother and his aunt that he would go there to be educated, and then return to the South to work. But before he had finished the high school, he had become so discouraged by what he had seen and by what had happened to him that, if home were any place other than the South, he would have returned then. But there was no returning home. The North with all of her faults made it clear to you whether you were a Negro from the South, an Indian from New Mexico, or a Chinese from Hong Kong, that in spite of her shortcomings, conditions here were better than the ones you had left, or you would not have left in the beginning.
So the struggle for survival—or better yet, the struggle to keep his sanity—had begun for him. He found no help at home from parents who were continually complaining about the conditions in which they lived, and neither did he find solace in the church as he had done when he lived in the South. He was in college now, and he soon realized that he was not alone in this struggle. Not only was the red boy from New Mexico and the yellow boy from Hong Kong in it, but the white boy, born and raised in Dayton, Ohio, was in it, too.
“What is your problem?” he asked the white boy from Dayton. “You have everything.”
The boy grinned and looked at him as though he were a fool.
“Look around you,” the white boy said. “Look up, look down; look to your left, look to your right. Do I have anything? Do I have anything, really?”
“Then, why don’t you tell them to stop? Not only what they’re doing to me, but what they’re doing to you, to themselves.”
“Don’t you think I have?” the boy from Dayton said. “Don’t you think I have? I tell them with every breath I take. Your struggle is no worse than mine. I’m sure your cross is even lighter to carry.”
So the struggle went on. The little incidents, the little indirect incidents, like slivers from a stick. But they continued to mount until they had formed a wall. Not a wall of slivers that could be blown down with the least wind. But a wall of bricks, of stones. A wall that had gotten so high by now that he had to stand on tiptoe to look over it.
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