The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

by Ernest J. Gaines

  But that wasn’t enough for Hardy either. Now he had to start messing with the young ladies at the school. Every time you looked around he had one of the young ladies staying at school helping him correct papers. One day he kept Marshall Bouie’s daughter, Francine, up there. Marshall and two of his boys came looking for Hardy. They found him and Francine sitting at the table talking. Night already. Lamp burning. Papers stacked to the side—him and Francine sitting at the table talking. When Marshall walked in, both Hardy and Francine jumped up. Marshall told Francine to go on home, he would deal with her later. Then he told Hardy to blow out the lamp and close up the school, because he wanted Hardy to come go somewhere with him and his boys. After Hardy had propped that post behind the door, Marshall marched him through the quarters back to the graveyard. The two boys tied Hardy to one of them little pecan trees, and Marshall took a stalk of jobo cane, and every time he hit Hardy you could hear Hardy from one end of the plantation to the other. Manuel Ruffin cut Hardy loose round midnight. He said he just got tired listening to Hardy moaning over there. He said he knowed he wasn’t go’n get any sleep, so he got a butcher knife out the kitchen and went over to the graveyard and chopped him loose. Soon as Hardy got loose, instead of him going on where he came from, no, he want go to Bayonne and tell the law on Marshall. Sam Guidry sleep, now—Hardy woke him up. “A man tried to beat me to death.” Guidry: “Look like he did a halfway job.” Then Guidry told Hardy he knowed all about him, and as a matter of fact he was thinking about talking to him one day himself. He told Hardy he had no intention of ’resting Marshall; on the other hand he was giving Hardy about one minute to get out his parish. He told Hardy he was going back inside and wash the sleep out his eyes; he was go’n put on his gun belt, then he was coming back with that four-batt’ry flashlight to look for him.

  Nobody down here know if Guidry found Hardy that night. Maybe he just told him that to scare him out the parish. But after that night nobody round here ever seen or heard of Hardy again.

  For a year and a half we didn’t have a school on the place at all. Going into the second year we got that LeFabre girl.

  The LeFabre Family

  Mary Agnes LeFabre comes from a long line of Creoles back there in New Orleans. Her grandmother was one drop from being white herself. Her grandmother had been one of those ladies for white men. They used to give these great balls before the war, and the white men used to go there to choose their colored women. They didn’t marry these women, but sometime they kept them the rest of their life. The one who took this girl’s grandmother was called LeFabre.

  She named all her children after him. Some of them didn’t want these children to carry their name, but old man LeFabre didn’t mind. When he died he left them money and property—even slaves. And for the rest of her life, Mary Agnes was trying to make up for this: for what her own people had done her own people. Trying to make up for the past—and that you cannot do. ’Specially somebody pretty like she was. She was medium height, but a little thin. She reminded you of some of these dagoes round here who call themself Sicilians. But she wasn’t fat like most of them get. She had long black hair, black as any hair I have ever seen, and it used to come way down her back. Sometimes at night when she got ready to comb it I used to ask her let me help. She would sit on the floor in front of me—that same Mary Agnes LeFabre.

  After the war, the family moved from New Orleans to Creole Place. What brought them to Creole Place, I don’t know; maybe they had people there already. You had always had some mulattoes there, since long before the war, and now it got to be a settlement for them.

  The people at Creole Place did everything for themself. Did their own farming, raised their own hogs, their own catties, did their own butchering. Had their own church—Catholic; built their own school and got their own teacher. The teacher had to come from there just like the priest had to come from there. Gived their own dances, their own parties, and people like them was the only ones invited. No matter how white you was if you didn’t have Creole background they didn’t want you there. Same for them who left. Some went North and passed for white; others joined the colored race. But no matter what they did, once they left they couldn’t go back.

  I want tell you a little story just to show how these people looked at things, and this story is true. People here at Samson right now who can back me up. Etienne, Pap, either one of them can back me up on this. Sappho Brown rode through Creole Place and saw the mulattoes hanging lanterns and crepe paper up in the trees. That was Friday. He figured they was go’n have a dance that Saturday night so he told Claudee—Claudee Ferdinand—let’s go there. Now Sappho and Claudee white as any white man in this parish, but they knowed good and God well they didn’t have no business going there messing round with them Creoles. Both Sappho and Claudee’s daddy was white, but not Creole white. Poor white—no quality. Everybody telling them not to go. “Please don’t go down there messing round with them people. You know how them Creole mulattoes act.” But telling this to Sappho and Claudee was like talking to a block of wood. “We just as white as them. Whiter than lot of them. Anyhow, they go’n have so many people there they won’t even see us.” They get on Joe Sipp horse and head out. Creole Place five, six miles from Samson, going toward Baton Rouge. Just before they come up to the dance they tie the horse under a tree and walk the rest of the way. Nothing for them to do soon as they get there but start messing round with these girls. They don’t know five words of Creole between them, but the girls speak some English, so they start messing with these girls. By and by the mulattoes get them surrounded. A tall, skinny mulatto in a white cowboy hat did all the talking. “Who you know here?” Sappho said before he could say we don’t know nobody here, we just stumbled in, we don’t mean no harm, and we don’t mind leaving—Claudee said: “Jacques. Us know Jacques.” If you’re at a Creole dance you got to have somebody there called Jacques. “Us know Jacques.” The tall mulatto in the white cowboy hat said: “Fetch me Jacques.” Jacques come up—white shirt, khaki pants. Tall mulatto in the white cowboy hat said: “Jacques, you know these common niggers?” Jacques. “Non. Can’t say I do, Raphael.” Claudee said: “I didn’t mean Jacques, I meant Jean.” Sappho said he started to tell Claudee to please shut his mouth and let’s get out of here while they was still able to, but, no, now he know Jean. Tall mulatto in the white cowboy hat said: “Jean what?” Claudee said: “Jean—oh—er—Jean LeFabre. Jean LeFabre. Yeah, that’s the Jean. Jean LeFabre. But he might not be here tonight. When he told me ’bout the fair he told me he wasn’t feeling too good. Headache.” The tall mulatto in the white cowboy hat said: “But yes. He got the headache over. Fetch me Jean.” Now Jean come up. A little bowlegged mulatto—thick glasses. Jean: “What now, Raphael?” Tall mulatto in the white cowboy hat: “Them two niggers, Jean?” Jean: “Kee?” Tall mulatto: “Know them?” Jean went up to Sappho and looked at him a while, then he went up to Claudee. He looked at Claudee longer, and everybody, even Sappho, was getting the feeling that maybe he did know Claudee. Then he backed away, shaking his head. “Non.” Claudee: “Come on, Jean, you know you know me. Stop fooling the people. You told me ’bout this dance in Bayonne.” Jean: “Bayonne? Bayonne? Alcee Bayonne. He live yet? Tell me about Alcee Bayonne and Ad-de-line.” Claudee: “Who? What? What you talking ’bout, Jean? Town. No man, Jean. Town. Town. Way up the river. Buy meat. Rice. Many people live.” Jean: “Bayonne? Town? Meat? No copron.” Tall mulatto in the white cowboy hat said: “ ’Nough of this. Langlois, fetch two plow lines off that wagon.”

  Sappho said he was running before the tall mulatto mentioned the plow lines, he just started running faster when he heard it. He said the first person he knocked down coming in the gate was a lady and a fat one at that. She was soft soft and smelled sweet sweet and powder flew up in his face when he hit her. The other person he knocked down was a man—short and hard because the man gived him a jolt right in the pit of his stomach. Claudee didn’t wait for the gate to clear up, he went over the f
ence. When he hit the other side he had left a chunk of his leg on that barb wire the size of his thumb. Now, they was on that road for Samson. Sappho said he was already passing Joe Sipp horse when Claudee hollered at him to untie the horse. He said to himself: “You untie him. You the one walking back there.”

  Behind them the mulattoes had got on their own horses, and Sappho and Claudee cold hear them hollering and shooting pistols in the air. Sappho said even before Claudee said field he was already heading that way, he just picked up more speed now because he knowed Claudee was following him. He said he heard Claudee say: “Oh, I’m losing blood. Lord, I’m losing blood.” Sappho said he thought to himself: “Just don’t lose time and expect company, brother.”

  The cane was high, and that was the only thing that saved them. They hid in the cane, and for two or three hours they could hear the mulattoes riding their horses up and down the rows. Mid-night, the mulattoes gived up and went back home. They untied the horse Sappho and Claudee had left and headed him toward Samson. The horse got here before Sappho and Claudee did. They took Claudee to the doctor early the next morning, and the doctor said the only thing that kept him alive was packing dirt in that cut. He would have bled to death if he hadn’t.

  Mary Agnes was going to school in New Orleans when this happened. She told me that some of her own people was in this, and she knowed they would have lynched Sappho and Claudee if they had caught them. The law wouldn’t ’a’ done a thing. Creole Place was for the mulattoes there; everybody else keep out.

  When Mary Agnes came here to teach school, the people at Creole Place told her never come back home again. But that was after they had tried to get her back and she wouldn’t go. The first time they came to get her, the old man brought his sons with him. All of them threatened to beat her, the old man even slapped her. But she wasn’t going back. One night the old man came back by himself. I could hear him round the other side begging her to come back home. They forgived her if she came back now. She told him she couldn’t go back, and he left here crying.

  A Flower in Winter

  Tee Bob saw Mary Agnes the first time when she brought the children up there to look at his uncle. In the old days all the people had to go up to the house and look at the master in the coffin. If he was a good master you went; if he was a bad master you still had to go. When Clarence Samson died, Robert said everybody on the place was coming up there and pay last respects to his brother. They had to bathe and they had to wear their best clothes. The children in the morning, the grown people in the evening. They had to march in quietly, view the body a moment, then leave. He didn’t want no whooping and hollering in the room. If they had to cry, cry after they had gone back outside.

  Tee Bob wasn’t in the house when Mary Agnes came there with the children, he was standing in the shop door with Etienne Bouie. Etienne was the yardman then. Kept all the tools cleaned and sharpened. Fixed everything that broke. Him and Mr. Isaiah Gunn fixed all the firehalfs and chimleys you see on this place. Mr. Isaiah was probably the best carpenter this state has ever seen. He fixed that house up there anytime something was wrong with it. When that gallery started sagging he rebuilt that gallery and them steps. But he’s dead now. Etienne and Tee Bob was standing in the shop door when the girl came in the yard with the children. Etienne said Tee Bob said, “I don’t like this. Them children didn’t love Uncle Clarence. They was scared of him, and they hated him.”

  I was standing on the back gallery watching them, because I had to let them in the house. They marched cross the yard like little soldiers. The smallest ones holding hands in front, the biggest ones following, with Mary Agnes following them all. Everybody had on their best clothes. It was October or November, and they had on the best coat or sweater they had at home. Mary Agnes was dressed in black. A black veil over her face—and that’s why I know Tee Bob couldn’t see her face that day. She was Catholic, like I have said, and she carried her beads in her hands. I opened the kitchen door for them and waited till they had all come inside, then I led them up to the parlor. Just the coffin and a dozen or more chairs was in the parlor, but they wasn’t there for the niggers. Put there for the white people to sit on later that night when they came to the wake. The children marched round the coffin and looked in and went back in the kitchen to wait for the teacher. Some of the bigger girls cried quietly, and I saw that girl, Mary Agnes, wiping her eyes, too. I stood at the door and watched them go back cross the yard. I saw Tee Bob and Etienne looking at the girl, but Tee Bob still didn’t see her face. They marched back down the quarters quiet as they had come up to the house. They didn’t have school that day, they wouldn’t have school till Clarence was laid in his tomb. The people wouldn’t even let the children play in the yard—fear Robert might ride by there and see them out there having fun.

  Tee Bob didn’t see Mary Agnes’s face till she came up to the house a few days later. She wanted to ask Robert for a load of wood for the school, but Robert wasn’t there. Tee Bob was in the kitchen with me drinking coffee. He asked me who I was talking to at the door, and I told him that the teacher from down the quarters had come to ask for a load of firewood. Tee Bob said tell her she could get the wood, but before he had finished talking he was already at the door. He had come there with his coffee cup, but he never raised it again. When he saw the girl he almost dropped the cup on the floor. His face got so red I thought he was go’n faint right there in the kitchen. After he had been standing there a while, doing nothing but looking at the girl, she nodded her head and went back down the steps. He stood at the door watching her till she had gone cross the yard.

  Tee Bob stayed in the kitchen the rest of the day. Sometimes I had to tell him move out of my way so I could do my work. That evening when I got ready to go home he said, “That girl almost white, ain’t she?”

  “What girl you’re talking about, Tee Bob?” I said.

  “The teacher,” he said.

  “Almost, but not quite,” I said.

  “How long she been here?” he asked me.

  “Going on two years,” I said. “How come you asking me all these questions?”

  Tee Bob was going to school at LSU there in Baton Rouge. He went back that Sunday evening, but couple days later he was back home again. Robert and Miss Amma Dean didn’t know why, but I knowed all the time. I just didn’t know how far it would go. And even if I did know, who was Jane Pittman to tell Robert Samson Junior what he ought to do or what he ought to not do when anytime he wanted to he could tell me to shut up my black mouth? Tell Robert? Say what? Hadn’t Robert done the same thing? Go to Miss Amma Dean? Say what there? “Miss Amma Dean, Tee Bob want mess with that teacher”? And suppose she told me to mind my own business? I know Robert would have said exactly that.

  Tee Bob hung around the kitchen all day. He wouldn’t ask me nothing till late that evening. Then he wanted to know if Mary Agnes stayed on the place or left each day. I told him she stayed at the house with me, round the other side. He left again. That weekend he was back. Everybody was glad to see him, but they wondered what brought him back here so much now. Sometimes he stayed away from the house two and three weeks. A boy that rich had friends everywhere who was always inviting him to their place.

  He went through the quarters looking for Mary Agnes. That was Friday. Saturday again, Sunday again he went by looking for her. Then he asked me where she was. I told him she stayed here during the week but she left every Friday evening. She had friends in New Orleans where she stayed till Monday morning, then she came back here again. I said: “How come you asking me all these questions, Tee Bob? You never did tell me.”

  He went back to Baton Rouge that Sunday night, but Tuesday he was home again. Now he pretended he was sick. Sick for about an hour, then he got on that horse and went riding through the quarters. He didn’t stop by the church this time, he went all the way back in the field where the people was cutting cane. Stayed back there a while, then came back up to the derrick where he stayed there a few minutes talking to Bi
lly Red. When he came back in the quarters the children was outside playing.

  Strut Hawkins’s gal, Ethel, said Miss LeFabre had kept her inside to put some ’rithmetic problems on the board, and both of them was standing at the blackboard when Tee Bob came in. She said at first it scared her to see him in there because she had never seen a white man at the school before. So she asked Miss LeFabre could she be excused. She had said it very low and Miss LeFabre didn’t hear her. Or if Miss LeFabre did, she didn’t understand what she had said. And maybe she did and just didn’t want to be in there by herself with Tee Bob.

  Miss LeFabre said, “Can I help you, Mr. Samson?” But Miss LeFabre had said “Mister” the way white people say “Mister” when a nigger was there. Not like she felt she ought to call somebody like Tee Bob Mister, but you always said Mister or Miss in front of somebody like her.

  Tee Bob told her he had been riding through the quarters and he had just stopped by to see if she had got the load of firewood. Ethel said he picked up one of the books and went through it till he came to a place where a page was missing. He asked Miss Agnes if many of the books was like that. She told him yes, but she always made the children read out somebody else’s book. Ethel said after Tee Bob had put the book down he looked at the hats and coats hanging on the spools against the wall.

  “Nice and warm in here,” he said.

  “The heater gives off good heat,” Mary Agnes said.

  She asked Tee Bob if he would like to hear the children recite. They was already practicing for their little Christmas play, and some of the children had already learned their parts. He told her no, not today, but maybe some other time.