Three Days Before the Shooting . . .

by Ralph Ellison

  “Oh, you know the one I mean,” the woman said with a teasing smile and a wave of her finger. “Yes you do, and I know you do!”

  “Now, lady, you listen to me,” Wilhite said, “you’re confusing us with someone else. You have to be, because nobody came here but the two of us….”

  “And ma’am, that’s the truth,” Hickman said, “we came here alone.”

  “If you say so, gentlemen,” the little woman said with a look of bewilderment, “but don’t be too sure, because there’s a sweet inner voice which tells me that when you started out there were three of you. So now I don’t know, I truly don’t—but all right, gentlemen, if you say so … if you say so. But why is it that I still have such a strong impression that you usually travel in threes?”

  And seeing Wilhite giving him a look of astonishment Hickman’s mind flew back to their days as traveling evangelists and asked himself, But how could she have seen us that long ago?

  “No, ma’am, only the two of us,” Wilhite said, “because it’s been years since we’ve traveled with anyone else.”

  “That’s correct,” Hickman said. “It’s been a long, long time.”

  “Are you sure about that?” the detective said. “Because I have orders that no one is to enter or leave these premises. So are you sure that no one came in behind you?”

  “No one,” Hickman said, “and that’s the truth.”

  “Forget him, gentlemen,” the little woman said with a glare at the detective, “because even with one of you missing I can still see that good sign hovering over you. Therefore I’m sure you were sent to tell us things about our situation which none of us can see by ourselves. Lonnie there gives me a pain, but about one thing he happens to be right: We do need leaders of vision who can think for themselves. So while only two of you came here tonight I’m sure you were sent to tell us what’s happening….”

  “… Dammit, Maud,” Barnes interrupted, “haven’t I already analyzed this mess? So why go bugging some strangers when there’s good leadership right here in the community? What you need to do is git yourself together and follow and pretty soon they’ll come up with some answers.”

  “Fool,” the little woman said as she wiped her glistening brow with the sleeve of her robe, “in all your dogging around haven’t heard of the change? Because if you have you’d know that a woman like me doesn’t have time for any more waiting! That’s why I’m asking these gentlemen to tell me if what’s happening here tonight is normal. And if it isn’t, I want them to tell me if that’s the reason for their being sent here in the middle of the night. And if it’s to organize I want to be told what I’m supposed to do while in the meantime! And please, gentlemen, please don’t say that we’ll overcome in some future day. Because what I need to know right now is the time, the date, and the long-needed way!”

  “Now, Maud,” a woman called down from the top of the staircase, “that’s enough of that! Because like Lonnie says, you’re just letting yourself get all heated up over nothing. Why don’t you get yourself some rest and let the law take its course….”

  Whirling with her hands in the air the little woman turned to the woman, screaming, “What do you mean for nothing? Here I’m begging these nice gentlemen for help and you’re telling me that there’s nothing the matter? That’s exactly the reason I’m calling on somebody who’s not all mixed up in this mess like we are. We’ve been in it so long and been driven so blind that it’s time for somebody to teach us to see! That’s why I’m asking them to do it while there’s still time for me! Understand? Being a woman you should. I’m calling on these gentlemen because they seem to be not only sober but sane. What’s more, whether you see it or not, there’s a hopeful light about them which promises to put my mind at ease! This building is reeling and rocking with trouble, but now with these two millionaire doctors of the spirit coming in the nick of time I believe to my soul that they came here to save us! And here you have the nerve to say that it amounts to nothing! Why, good God-a-mighty!”

  “A.Z.,” Wilhite whispered as the detective exchanged words with someone inside the room behind them, “did you hear what she called us? What’s happening to that woman?”

  “Search me,” Hickman said. “Maybe she remembers seeing us on the revival circuit—but millionaire doctors of the spirit? May the good Lord help her!”

  “So listen, gentlemen, and let me explain,” the woman said. “When I woke up this morning I had this strong feeling that something terrible would happen—that’s right! Because last night I dreamt of giving birth to three sweet little babies. And, Doctor Hickman—you did say that was your name, didn’t you, darling?”

  “Oh? Why, yes,” Hickman said, “that’s my name, but how did you …”

  “… I thought so,” the little woman said, “Hickman, Doctor Hickman…. Uh huh…. So, like I said, Doctor Hickman, I dreamt I had these three little babies,

  and I truly wish you could’ve seen them. One was black, one was white, and one was a nice ‘riney red. And the wonderful thing was their looking so much alike that I could hardly tell one from the other! And gentlemen, it was all so real that I can’t believe that it didn’t happen. And to tell the truth, I still don’t know whether it happened or didn’t. Because from the way I feel it must have been real. It had to be….”

  “Oh, come ooon, Maud,” Barnes said with a pained expression. “Dammit, woman, you better git a holt on yourself. Especially when you know damn well that you ain’t even married!”

  “Oh, but I’m going to be,” the little woman sang on a lyrical note. “Oh, yes, indeed! My bridegroom ariseth and cometh! And besides, what’s your stupid signifying got to do with it? What does it matter if he comes before or after, as long as he comes?”

  “Before he comes!” Barnes yelled, his eyes bulging with outrage. “So was it before, or after—woman, do you hear what you’re saying? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Just what I said, Mister Loudmouth Barnes! Is that too much of a riddle for you? And whether you believe it or not I gave birth to those babies, all three of them! And gentlemen, I was so proud! And what’s more, I did it without all that labor and pain I’ve heard so much about. I did it, gentlemen, and my babies recognized me as their mother the second they saw me! They cooed and gurgled and looked at me with their sweet baby smiles, oh, yes! And I mean with little Negro baby smiles, of which there’s nothing even close to being any sweeter!

  “How do you like that, Lonnie Barnes? Yes, I birthed them and got right out of bed and I bathed them. Then I sprinkled them with talcum, and after pinning on their diapers I wrapped them real snug in their pretty blue blankets. And then I took them in my arms and hurried out on the street and showed them off to my neighbors. That’s right! And told all the people how such a wonderful thing happened! Oh, but they were so beautiful, so sweet and so charming, such dear little babies!

  “And then, gentlemen, this is what happened: At first, when folks saw me cuddling my dear little babies they couldn’t believe they were mine. Then some of the doubters started laughing and said that I’d better stop kidding and take them back to their natural-born mother! That’s what they did! And me so proud of my new motherhood! And even when I insisted that I was their mother they called me a liar!

  “I tell you, gentlemen, today there’s a heap of loose talk about us colored folks loving one another. Well, I hope that’s true, I truly do, but it still doesn’t stop us from treating one another unkindly. In fact, when it comes to being mean to our own kind we’re years ahead of the white folks! Haven’t you found that to be the case, Doctor Hickman?”

  “To … to … some extent,” Hickman stammered as he returned the fixed gaze with mounting confusion.

  “So that’s the way some of us are,” the little woman said. “Anyway, to prove that I birthed my babies I took some of the ladies into a hallway and pulled up my clothes and I showed them exactly where they floated out in their life-giving flood….”

  “Woman, what the hel
l are you saying,” Barnes shouted. “You did WHAT?”

  “Oh, yes, gentlemen, and I know it sounds shocking, but that’s what I did! I showed them my boat in the bulrushes, my … my … bird in the bushes. I let them see everything, and I wasn’t ashamed. That’s the truth! I let them see the jolly O-boat in which my sweet little babes sailed to me bubbling and babbling! Because that was the only way I could make those ole Doubting Thomas women see what they were trying to deny just so they could insult me and ruin my good name! And then I went on and showed them the raw belly buttons of my cute little babies. I showed them everything, but instead of rejoicing over such a wonderful thing happening to a woman like me, those ladies, those members of my own sex and race, they scorned me!”

  And as he watched the little woman’s doleful expression Hickman was embarrassed by the lines of a blues which rang in his mind:

  Did you ever see

  a cross-eyed woman cry?

  Well she cries so good

  out of just one weeping eye—

  And in seeing tenants turning to gauge his reaction his embarrassment became mixed with a shock of bewilderment.

  “And, gentlemen,” the woman continued, “those women weren’t strangers. Oh, no! I’ve known some of those ladies for years and thought them my friends. But now they were calling me an ole draggle-tailed bitch! That’s what my own people did to me, gentlemen, not the white folks but my very own people! And I want you to know that I was hurt to the core!

  “Because here, after years of my wanting a nice little baby, I had been blessed with no less than three—not just one, but three—and those women refused to believe it! Oh, and they were such sweet little babies!”

  And now, smiling triumphantly, the little woman began counting her long slender fingers.

  “One-little, two-little, three-little, cunning-little, cute-little babykins! But instead,” she said with a sigh, “instead of being happy and congratulating me on finally coming through on my womanhood—which was kind of late, and I admit it—they scorned me and called me a bitch.

  “A bitch! How do you like that, gentlemen? And after my showing them all the evidence that anyone could ask for! After I went so far as to show them my bruised boat in the bulrushes they still called me a bitch! You hear me? A bitch! What kind of way was that to go treating one of their own after she’d just given birth to three triplet babies?”

  “HOW ABOUT IT,” Barnes yelled with a lunge toward the stairs. “What you did was a damn disgrace! And now you’re tearing your drawers and downgrading the race! Yeah, and that’s the reason you women up there ought to quit gawking and get her butt back in her bed!”

  And seeing Barnes whirl to face Wilhite with his eye-bulging anger Hickman anticipated physical action.

  “Hell, man, this woman’s out of her cotton-picking mind,” Barnes shouted. “Here at her age raving about having some kids! Hell, I’ve been knowing the witch since the Depression, and ain’t no way in the world for a field as dry as hers to come up with that kind of crop! So how the hell’s she gonna hit the jackpot this late in life? I tell you, man, this is AWFUL!”

  “That’s how you see it,” the little woman called from the stairs, “but then, what does an old micturating bear who can’t hold his water, his mouth, or his wind know about what I’ve been through?—nothing!

  “And that’s why I want you two fine, leader-type gentlemen to answer me this: Was I wrong? Am I a bitch for giving birth without having a husband? And was it any worse than it would have been if one of you gentlemen gave a woman a baby without being married? And if you did, would that keep her from being a mother?”

  “WHAT!” Barnes roared. “Didn’t I tell you ladies to get that crazy woman up to her bed? How can anybody do what she’s claiming? Yeah, and how can a man give a woman a baby without making her a mother? That’s what I want to know. Yeah! And how can any woman have a man’s baby without his being a father? Hell! Let’s have some logic around here!”

  “Lonnie,” the little woman sighed, “you’re making me sick to my stomach. And instead of giving a woman the blues like normal men do you’re giving me a sickening case of the belly-cramping reds! Well, I have the answer so it’s for me to know and for you to find out! And in the meantime, Doctor Hickman, I’m waiting: Is it worse? Is it any worse than it would be if a woman was to give you a baby that you didn’t know she was carrying? Tell me, darlin’, because I’m truly in need of an answer!”

  And seeing the little woman’s eyes appear to flame brighter than the unshaded bulb that lighted the stairs Hickman felt a tensing of nerves and sharpening of hearing that increased the scene’s unreality. And as he stared at the little woman’s anguished expression her questions took on a vague hint of personal significance.

  “But Miss Maud, what are you saying?” a younger woman called from the shadows. “You started out by saying that the babies were all part of a dream….”

  “Yes, Thomasina darling,” Maud said with a smile, “that’s true, but you’re forgetting that some dreams are real!”

  “Oh, my God!” Barnes yelled. “Now she’s trying to contradict a contradiction, turn the truth wrong-side out and talk a hole through our heads! Dammit, Maud, you have flipped! Ain’t no doubt about it! If not, where the hell are the babies? That’s what I want to know, where the hell are those BABIES!”

  “Fool, that’s what I’m about to explain: Gentlemen, my babies were stolen! I was out buying them some soft little booties and such things as baby oil and talcum, and little safety pins for their didies. Yes, and some soft little brushes. And while I was gone some hardhearted kidnapper slipped in and took my babies away. The brushes are white with pink bunnies on them, and you can come up to my room and see for yourself. They’re still right there on the top of my dresser. And gentlemen, when I came back and found my babies gone from their bed I rushed out and tried to find them by searching everywhere I could think of.

  “Oh, I searched everywhere! All over the campus of Howard University, under the statues and trees in Lafayette Park. Up along the Mall, and around George Washington’s monument and even the White House grounds. Then I hurried to Abraham Lincoln’s memorial and I searched everywhere, including under the backs of his long bony knees. And then I searched all along the riverbank where people were fishing. But although I asked each and every one I met if they’d seen my little lost babies, not a single soul could help me. I looked and I looked, I searched and I searched, and then it started to pouring down rain, and even with my feet soaking wet I kept searching until I got so worn and weary that I barely could make it. And that’s when I simply had to stop in the street pouring with rain and break down and cry!

  “I tell you, gentlemen, I cried and cried! I cried so hard that I had to get off the street and come home for some rest. But by the time I got here I was so broken in spirit that all I could do was cry ‘til I dropped off to sleep. And then, after all of that weeping and wailing, I’m bounced out of bed late in the night to find this house rocking and reeling with some kind of trouble. All that, gentlemen, and me now a babyless, downhearted mother….”

  Struggling to impose some structure of rational order on what he was hearing, Hickman caught a fleeting glimpse of the incredulous expressions of Barnes and the detective as now the little woman pinned him again with her cross-focusing eyes.

  “Doctor,” she called, “it’s been terrible, truly terrible. So would you please, please, answer me this: Am I being punished this way because I wasn’t married when my babies arrived? Is that the reason they were taken from me? And if so, do you call that justice?”

  And as he groped for an answer he saw Barnes throw his hand in the air and yell, “Justice? What the hell’s happening to this woman? First she waves her funky drawers in the air and insults our intelligence with a bare-assed lie about her birthing three bastard babies—three of them! And now she’s got the unmitigated gall to be asking some down-home preacher about justice!”

  “Yes, Mister Big-mouth, I am,”
the little woman screamed, “because I truly believe that he and his friend were sent here to shed some light on all this darkness—Speaking of which, let me ask you a simple question….”

  “To hell with it,” Barnes said, “stick with your down-home messiahs!”

  “All right, I will,” the little woman said, “but you might regret it.

  “Gentlemen,” she called, “did either of you ever have the pleasure of meeting Lonnie Barnes’ mother?”

  “His mother? Why, no, ma’am,” Hickman said, “I don’t think so—why do you ask?”

  “Because if he interrupts me one more time I’ll tell you something about her that you probably didn’t know….”

  “Woman, you never met my mother,” Barnes yelled, “so what you gonna tell him?”

  “Which is true, gentlemen,” the little woman said with a mischievous smile, “I never met her personally, but I’ve been told that she has some cast-iron plumbing and a bar-rass washbowl!”

  “Washbowl,” Barnes shouted, “Now all of y’all can see that this woman is out of her cockeyed mind! First she’s raving about babies and diapers, and now it’s washbowls!”

  “Yeah, Barnes, my man,” a male voice called, “but this time she threw you one hell of a slow-breaking curve!”

  “Curve,” Barnes yelled as the man wheezed with laughter, “what the hell does that mean? Has she driven you nuts with her raving?”

  “Don’t tell him, Jerome,” the little woman called to the man who had spoken, “and while it’s traveling through that fat head of his maybe he’ll be quiet and let Doctor Hickman answer my question. And please, sir, do it now! Because while I’ve been accepting what happened to me as no more than natural, I’m sure a man like you can give me a better understanding of how it all hangs together. I say that because if our good Mother Earth can give birth to all the blossoms and birds that come in the spring without being married, why do I have to be? Am I not a genuine, nitty-gritty daughter of black Mother Earth, who’s the mother of us all—including that white detective who’s standing there grinning?