Three Days Before the Shooting . . .

by Ralph Ellison

  “… Not him, Alonzo; I’m talking about the baby! About the child he had by Lavatrice! He’s the one who came back. He’s the one who’s been asking all the questions. Don’t you see?”

  “You’re not making it easy,” Hickman said, “but I think I’m beginning to see the pattern. First the father arrived, ate some forbidden fruit, and disappeared. And now you’re telling me that the son has turned up with his teeth on edge—is that it? But where had the son been? And since he’d lived here with you, why wouldn’t you know him?”

  Clasping her hands and resting her forearms on her knees, Janey leaned forward.

  “Wait, Alonzo,” she said, “let me go back and start all over:

  “This mess that I’m getting at began years ago; then, after I thought it had quieted down and been long forgotten, it ups and starts stirring again. I didn’t realize what was happening until a few days ago when I came home and found Cliofus sitting on the front porch talking with a white man. I had come up the alley and through the backdoor, and when I heard them talking I eased up here and took a peek at him. At first I thought he was one of these young white professors from the university who’ve taken to coming out here wanting us old-timers to talk about the early days so they can record it. So I said to myself, ‘Not today, young man. I’ve got no time for your questions.’ Then I tiptoed on back to the kitchen and started blanching some tomatoes.

  “But a little later I could hear Cliofus talking a mile a minute like he does when he gets excited. So not wanting to have him getting sick on my hands, I eased back up here to find out what was happening. That’s when he saw me looking through the screen and said, ‘Miss Janey, are you just going to stand there? Behold this man! Take a good look at him!’ And before I know what’s happening this white man has opened the screen and he’s hugging me! Me, who’d never been hugged by a white man in all my born days!

  “Well, Alonzo, with that I turned cold. And although something inside me seemed to recognize the man my mind said NO! IT CAN’T BE! But when I pushed him away he still held on to my arms, so all I could do was stare and try to see if one of my little men was hidden in his blue eyes and white skin. I was trying so hard, so awfully hard, and while this is happening Cliofus speaks up and names him.

  “‘Miss Janey, it’s Severen,’he says. ‘It’s our little ole Severen!’

  “And I thought, Yes, it could be. But although a part of me was trying to accept him as one of mine, as one of my lost little loved ones, it had been far too long ago and I was much too unprepared….”

  “Just take your time,” Hickman said. “I didn’t mean to upset you. Why don’t you rest a spell?”

  “No, I’ll be all right, and it’s a relief to relive it in words…. So there we stood,

  and although the weather was hot I was ice-box cold! I wanted him to go away, to vanish. And while he’s standing there smiling with tears in his eyes something deep inside me was waiting to hear him cough and see smoke curling around his head and into my own eyes and lungs. But he was still holding on to me, still smiling. Yes, that’s how it was, and I thought, No, this can’t be, it’s not him—no! He wouldn’t come back all this way, not without a warning. No, it’s impossible. Because he wouldn’t have the memory, the desire, or the forgiveness to find his way back. Just as I can’t and won’t and can never receive him, or have him back … no….

  “Then Cliofus said, ‘Gee, Miss Janey, I guess it’s too much of a surprise for you. So come on, Sevie, let’s get her in the house so she can get her bearings.’ And that’s when the two of them helped me inside.

  “So then we were inside here with me fumbling into my old rocker and looking at him and trying to accept the fact that I did remember him and that all I had done years ago was falling apart right here before my very eyes. That across all that long time and distance and his change in circumstance he had kept me, kept us, in his mind. And worst of all, in his heart. That was the terrible part….”

  “… But why?”

  “Why? Did you say WHY?”

  “Why, yes, was that unreasonable?”

  “Alonzo, how can you sit there and ask me that? Haven’t you understood anything I’ve been telling you? Because he was WHITE! And had been white for years! White for so long that as I stared at him it came over me that maybe by coming back he was just being white-folks cruel, and his way of letting me know that he had risen above all those smoking smoldering coals I’d used in my attempt to destroy those family ties which by now should have been long dead and forgotten. It was like he was getting down on his knees just so he could rise above us…. Like he was bragging to Cliofus and me about his charity and forgiveness.

  So I said to myself, No, it simply cannot be!

  “But there he was, a grown white man smiling at me through his tears while my body was turning to dust and my clothes into sackcloth and ashes. And then my eyes blurred and I couldn’t see him, both from my tears and my mind rejecting what I couldn’t bear to remember….”

  “But why were you resisting what should have been a happy reunion for all of you?”

  “Because I simply couldn’t bear having that dear little boy who I had known and loved turn into this grown white man who was claiming to be both himself and that child! Because even though my eyes were blurry I could still smell his smell and hear his emotion, and sense his need as he talked to me. But for all my straining I simply couldn’t hear anything in his Northern white folks’ educated voice that sounded like the child I had known and loved. Do you understand? I couldn’t even hear him!”

  “But, Janey, he had come …”

  “… Back! Yes, he had! Yes! Against all the pain that my plan had cost us, and against everything I had done to see to it that he wouldn’t even think of it or want it, he had to come back!”

  “Janey,” Hickman said, “you’re leaving something out….”

  “I know, I know, and it’s not doing a bit of good. So now in order for you to understand you’ll have to listen to a terrible confession. And if you do you’ll have to remember some of the things which that cross on your watch chain stands for and try to understand my position … my condition. And maybe then you will remember what the spiritual says about a man like you: That he shall lead his flock like a shepherd and shelter the young lambs in his bosom…. Yes,

  and remember too that when there are orphans and no man to help her a woman has to take over and do whatever she can to be not only motherly, but also as fatherly as a woman can manage—which is what so many of our women have always had to do, and which is what I tried in my mistaken way to do.”

  “All right,” Hickman said, “I remember and I’m willing. But since I know so little, why don’t you explain why you didn’t write me about this girl … about his mother?”

  “It was because I felt that it was enough to warn you that old bones were being stirred. And I felt that when he, the father, first ran away and you had tried so hard and couldn’t find him, you’d suffered enough. So years later why tell you what he’d done out here? And especially about the child—which would have made it still worse.”

  “But since we’re friends, why didn’t you let me be the judge of that?”

  Sighing, Janey shook her head. “Oh, Alonzo, hadn’t I already caused you enough misery? It wasn’t that I didn’t think about telling you, but what good would it have done? Could you have brought the child’s mother back from the dead? Could you have made the father come back here and own up to his child?”

  “But I would have tried. I would have done something for the girl and the baby….”

  “Yes, but we weren’t seeing each other during the time it was happening. And you couldn’t catch up with the one who ruined her, even though you were trying. And since he must have known what happened, that she had killed herself, he probably would have figured that if he turned up out here again somebody would have cut his throat for him just as she cut her own….”

  Feeling suddenly numb, Hickman leaned forward, gazing in
to Janey’s tear-wet face.

  “When did all this happen?”

  “Back in the twenties; the early twenties….”

  “And you mean to tell me that for all those years you let me come in here and play with that white-looking child and wouldn’t tell me who his daddy was … I can’t believe it….”

  “No, Alonzo, I didn’t. But I would have; I was always prepared to tell you, and that’s the truth. All you had to do was ask. That’s all you had to do. Every time you came—and remember it wasn’t often in those days—I was just waiting for you to look at that child and say something about his resemblance to the other one when he was about the same age. And if you had I was prepared to tell you. But you didn’t, and therefore I decided to just let the dry bones rest while nature took its course.”

  “Well, you did, but now it’s human nature we have to deal with…. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because I didn’t want you to know what that boy had done….”

  “You were protecting me?”

  “Yes, I guess I was. But I also remembered your saying something about what ought to be done to white men who ruin colored girls, and hearing that I was tempted to tell you then—just to hear what you’d say when you found out that it was him who had done it, that he was the child’s father. I wanted to hear what you’d have to say if the man only looked white, or if it was a case in which no one knew or cared whether he was white, black, or in between. But then I asked myself why should I hurt you some more. At the time you were very upset about something that happened back in Georgia, so why add something that nothing could be done about? Besides, I felt that it might have turned you against the baby, and I didn’t want that to happen.

  “Anyway, and no matter how this thing turns out, you have to understand that I loved that baby. I loved him just as you loved his no-good father. I loved him and looked after him as I would one of my own. And as far as I knew at the time his father could have been dead, or turned into a hobo like some of these old pudding-headed white men who’re always knocking on the back door asking for something to eat. That’s right! As far as I knew he could have been like one of them who’ll beg a colored woman for something to eat and then be too white-folks proud to come in and sit down and eat it like a decent human being….”

  “I thought that kind of thing—hoboing, I mean—stopped with the war. Is it still going on?”

  “Not like back then, but it still happens.”

  “And are you still charitable?”

  “Now, don’t you go starting in on me, A.Z.! Yes, I am. My religion teaches me to help the poor and the needy, and I do. They’re always welcome to share whatever I have. But you might as well know that I won’t feed them unless they have the decency to recognize themselves as my guests. It’s simply a matter of sharing whatever the good Lord put here in this house to be shared. But as dirty and down-and-out as most of them are, some are just too prejudiced. Not all, because some have enough decency to respect me as a sharer and have been known to come back for more. That’s all I ask, but although I’m ashamed to admit it, whenever one comes knocking with his hand out and then refuses to come in and sit down like he’s been taught good manners, I think about that child’s father and it fairly ruins my day.”

  “So now you can’t accept your young friend’s son because you hate his father, is that it?”

  “No, that’s not it! It’s because he’s changed. I loved that child, and after he was taken from me there was nothing I could do but accept it. So I tried to make myself forget him. I even told myself that after what I did to him he’d never think of coming back. But after all my years of hoping that he’d found some kind of happiness by living with his own flesh and blood, he’s back here asking me about his mother and father….”

  “So I take it that you didn’t throw him out, that you talked with the man….”

  “Yes, I did. I finally calmed down enough to be polite, which Cliofus helped by being so happy to see him.”

  “And what did he want?”

  “He wanted me to tell him about his mother, and then he wanted me to tell him who his daddy was….”

  “And so?”

  “About his mother I was able to tell him the truth, that I knew her from the time she was a baby. Back when her folks used to bring her along when they drove into town for visits. It wasn’t so often, because being Natives they lived on one of the reservations with their Indian kinfolks. But when he asked me how he came to live with me, I had to lie. I told him that when his mother realized that she was going to die she asked me to take him so that he could be brought up in the city where the schools were better. The truth was that she gave him to me out of shame. Shame over what had happened to her, over what that boy of yours had done to her. Can you understand why I felt that I had to lie?”

  “Yes,” Hickman said, “I think I do—but what did you tell him about his father?”

  “What could I tell him, Alonzo? I told him that I didn’t know his father, that I never met the man. Which was the truth. I never did. But then I had to lie again by telling him that at the time his mother died his daddy was away somewhere working on a job—only I didn’t tell him about the moving-picture part. And when he wanted to know why his mother hadn’t left him with his father instead of with me I had to lie again. It meant protecting that scoundrel but I told him that I guessed that it was because losing his wife had broken his father’s heart. That after hearing about his young wife dying so sudden he got so upset that he couldn’t stand to see this town again. But for all my lying it didn’t work….”

  “He already knew the truth?”

  “Maybe not for sure, but he sensed it. Because the next thing I know he’s asking me if his parents were married….”

  “And what did you tell him?”

  “With him coming at me so sincere and so sudden, what could I tell him? I told him that they weren’t but that they intended to be, and that the reason his father was away when his mother died was that he was off raising money so that they could get married and set up housekeeping. A.Z., I know how terrible it sounds, but I had to tell him something. So I lied, but for all my lying I don’t think he believed me. He just looked kind of sick and strange and didn’t say anything for a while. So I tried to lift his spirits by recalling how things were after he came to live with me. Cliofus took over at that point, talking about things he and the rest of the boys used to do. And then I told him of how after a while his father got on his feet and began sending me checks so I could take better care of him. Which was

  [SMOKING]

  THE TRUTH. I GAVE the devil his due for that, but I didn’t go into the rest because now that the boy had found his way back home I figured that he remembered….”

  [“But why?”*

  Suddenly Janey looked up as though she had forgotten his presence.

  “Why?” she said. “Did you ask me why?”

  “Yes, why,” Hickman said, seeing Janey’s eyes widen as she struck the table with her fan, shouting, “WHY? Alonzo, how can you sit there and ask me that? Haven’t you understood anything I’ve been telling you? It’s because he’s WHITE! And has been white for years!”

  “But, Janey, didn’t he always look …”

  “… No, Alonzo, NO! Not that kind of white, that’s not what I’m talking about. Back then he was white -looking, yes; but he was one of us, a Negro; now he’s white and one of them. Then he had our manners and our ways; now he has theirs—you know what I mean! I’m not talking about skin color, I’m talking about attitude, about what a person expects out of life and what he stands for … what he has come to stand for through living. Back then he was just a white colored child, but now he’s a white white man—don’t you see?”

  Poor Janey, Hickman thought with a nod, somehow she’s stumbled through the curtain of color and landed up to her eyeballs in all the old race-based confusion—Bliss again…. Take away the lips, the hair, the talk, the rhythm and high behind—and what do you have? A mammy-m
ade American Adam shaped out of this terrible American confusion…. Neither white nor black but as much a mystery as when some folks hear thick lips

  give voice to Shakespeare, Lincoln, or the Word….

  “… He had been white for so long a time that as I stared at him and tried to get myself together it came over me that maybe he was really being white-folks cute and mean. That by coming back here unannounced he was letting me know that he had risen above everything I had done to do away with his connections to us…. That all that smoke from those smoldering coals which I lit in trying to make his leaving easier hadn’t meant a thing. I did it for his own sake, thinking that any memory he had of his life here with us would have been long dead and buried, but now it was like he was getting down on his knees just so he could let us see him rise above us … Like he was bragging to me and Cliofus about his charity and his forgiveness. So I told myself, No, this simply cannot be!”

  “… But wait,” Hickman said, “you’re going too fast—what’s this business about fire and smoke?”

  “… Still, there he was, a grown white man looking at me with a smile on his face, and all of a sudden my body felt like it was turning to dust and my dress and apron become sackcloth and ashes. Then everything got blurred and I could only see him in outline—not only because of my tears, but because my eyes no longer wanted me to see what my heart couldn’t bear to accept….”

  “But I don’t understand,” Hickman said. “Why were you so upset by what should have been a happy reunion?”

  “It was because living white had changed him, that’s why…. And because I simply couldn’t accept the idea of that dear little boy who had been one of us, the little boy I had loved and cared for, turning into this grown white man who was standing there in his fine clothes claiming to be that child! It was enough to drive me crazy!

  “Still, even though he was only a blur I kept trying to get holt of myself and deal with his claim, but my nose kept smelling his white folks’ smell, and my ears kept being jarred by that Northern white folks’ talk they were hearing in his tone of voice and his accent—all of which was happening at one and the same time. But for all my straining the one thing that I couldn’t see or smell or hear was a trace of the child I had loved. Do you understand? I could neither hear him, or see, or feel him!”