The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

by Ernest J. Gaines

  I looked up at him in the dark. Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy, I thought. Don’t listen to that long head boy’s retrick bout the people, Jimmy. The people, Jimmy? The people?

  He kissed me good night and left. The dust followed the car down the quarters. You could feel the dust in your skin when it drifted from the road and settled on the gallery.

  “Well, there go Lena,” Strut said. “And you, too, Miss Jane, you go to Bayonne Monday.”

  “I’m going if the Lord spare me,” I said.

  “Why?” Mary said. “To die in Bayonne?”

  “I will die in Bayonne only if the Lord wills it,” I said. “If not, I’ll die in my bed. I hope.”

  “Over a hundred and eight,” Mary said. “How come they don’t pick on somebody eighteen?”

  “The girl is fifteen,” I said.

  “Oh, I see,” Mary said. “You knowed about it all the time. Y’all had it all worked out. Where I was when all this was going on?”

  “Down the quarters,” I said.

  “Well, me, I got a ditch bank to cut Monday morning,” Strut said. “And I’m sure it go’n take me all day.”

  “Reckoned lot of ditch banks’ll be cut Monday morning,” Etienne said.

  “You got one to cut?” Strut said.

  “Not yet,” Etienne said.

  Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy, I thought there in the dark. The people, Jimmy? The people?

  Brady was at Det’s house when Jimmy and that long head boy came there Saturday night. But the people there was more interested in eating gumbo and drinking beer than they was in what Jimmy had to say. After that other boy had passed out a sheet of paper with that girl’s picture on it, they left out for Chiney to visit another fair. Fa-Fa youngest boy, Henry, was at the fair. He said the people at the fair listened to what Jimmy and the other boy had to say, and some of them even promised to come to Bayonne that Monday morning, but soon as Jimmy and the boy left the house the people at the fair changed their minds, too.

  By the time he came to church Sunday the whole place had heard about it. Just Thomas was against even letting him come in the church, but Elder Banks told him nobody would ever be kept out of church long as he came there in peace. When Jimmy got up to talk some of the people went outside. Many of the ones who stayed didn’t show interest or respect. I sat there looking at Jimmy, thinking: Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy. It’s not that they don’t love you, Jimmy; it’s not that they don’t want believe in you; but they don’t know what you talking about. You talk of freedom, Jimmy. Freedom here is able to make a little living and have the white folks say you good. Black curtains hang at their windows, Jimmy: black quilts cover their body at night: a black veil cover their eyes, Jimmy; and the buzzing, buzzing, buzzing in their ears keep them from ’ciphering what you got to say. Oh, Jimmy, didn’t they ask for you? And didn’t He send you, and when they saw you, didn’t they want you? They want you, Jimmy, but now you here they don’t understand nothing you telling them. You see, Jimmy, they want you to cure the ache, but they want you to do it and don’t give them pain. And the worse pain, Jimmy, you can inflict is what you doing now—that’s trying to make them see they good as the other man. You see, Jimmy, they been told from the cradle they wasn’t—that they wasn’t much better than the mule. You keep telling them this over and over, for hundreds and hundreds of years, they start thinking that way. The curtain, Jimmy, the quilt, the veil, the buzzing, buzzing, buzzing—two days, a few hours, to clear all this away, Jimmy, is not enough time. How long will it take? How could I know? He works in mysterious ways; wonders to perform.

  But look at me acting high and mighty. Don’t the black curtain hang over my window; don’t the veil cover my face? And maybe, now, because my arms too weak to push the quilt down the bed I tell myself I’m brave enough to go to Bayonne. But do what in Bayonne when the least little breeze will blow me down?

  That night after the Ed Sullivan show I told Mary I was going to bed. Her and Albert was sitting out there on the gallery talking. I told her I was going to bed but I wasn’t going to sleep because I wanted to see Brady when he came home. I went to my side and knelt down at the bed to say my prayers. I prayed ever so long. Most of my praying was for Jimmy, for his protection. I asked the Lord to give us enough courage to follow him. Because it was us who wanted him long before he knowed anything about it.

  After I got through praying I pulled down the bar and went to bed. Summer and winter I always sleep under my bar. Summer to keep out mosquitoes; winter to help keep out draft. Laying there, I looked at all the old furnitures in the room. The light was off, so I could barely make out the shape of the furniture. I looked at my old rocking chair just setting there. “You can set there like you don’t know what’s happening, but tomorrow this time you might be headed away from here.” I thought about Yoko and that looking glass, and I looked at the glass on my washstand. “You too,” I said. “You ain’t so high class you can’t get packed on a wagon.” I looked at my old sewing machine, my armoire. Looked like they was just as live as y’all is now. After you been round things so many years you get to be like them or they get to be like you. Exactly which way it works I ain’t figured it out yet. Probably never will.

  I laid there on my side waiting for Brady to show up. Then I heard Albert saying, “Light just turned down the quarters.” He went to the gate to flag Brady down. A minute later, Brady was knocking on the door. When he came in I could smell he had been drinking. I told him to turn the light on.

  “No ma’am,” he said.

  “I like to see people when I’m talking to them,” I said.

  “Yes’m,” he said.

  “Well?”

  “No ma’am,” he said.

  “You been drinking, ain’t you, Brady?” I said.

  “Yes ma’am,” he said. “And Miss Jane, I can’t take you there tomorrow.”

  “Take me where tomorrow, Brady?” I said.

  “I know you promised him, Miss Jane,” he said.

  “That’s why you went out and got drunk, Brady?”

  He didn’t answer. I looked at him standing there in the dark.

  “Snap that light on, Brady,” I said.

  “No ma’am,” he said. And he started crying. “I can’t take you there, Miss Jane.”

  “He did many things for you, Brady,” I said. “Used to write for your mama and daddy all the time, you forget that?”

  “I’m scared, Miss Jane,” he said, crying. “They’ll kick me off this place and I know it. I see how Tee Sho and them look at my house every time they go by the gate. They ready to knock it over now—and I’m still in there. Mr. Robert just waiting for a good reason to give it to Tee Sho and them.”

  “Brady, Brady, Brady,” I said.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Jane,” he said. “You know how I like doing things for you. Anytime you want go to the doctor—things like that.”

  “Brady, Brady, Brady,” I said.

  “I know I ain’t no man, Miss Jane,” he said.

  “Brady, Brady, Brady,” I said.

  “I know I ain’t,” he said. “I know it ought to be me, not him. I know all that.”

  “Go home, Brady,” I said. “Go to your wife and children.”

  He didn’t move, just standing there in the dark, looking down at me.

  “Miss Jane?” he said. I didn’t answer him. “Miss Jane?” he said.

  “Yes, Brady?” I said.

  “I swear to God, Miss Jane, I’m go’n make it up to you one day. I swear. I swear to God.”

  “You don’t have to swear, Brady, I understand.”

  He stood there crying now, crying and calling on God.

  “Go home, Brady,” I said.

  He went out crying.

  Not long after Brady left the house, Lena came up on the gallery. I still hadn’t shut my eyes. Laying there thinking who to turn to next. The only other person on the place with a car running was Olivia Antoine. I was wondering if I ought to ask Albert to go up there and ask her to tak
e me. Then I heard Lena asking Mary about me. Mary told her I was in bed.

  “I’m not sleep,” I said.

  Lena didn’t hear me because she knocked on the door and said, “Jane, you wake in there?”

  “Come in, Lena,” I said.

  She pushed the door open and I told her to turn the light on. She was a big woman, but not well. Her health had been failing her now four, five years. I watched her pulling the rocking chair closer to the bed. I knowed she had come there to talk about Jimmy. I wondered what I could say to give her courage.

  “You talked to Brady, too?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Won’t take you either?”

  “You going?” I asked.

  “I have to go,” she said. “I don’t want go; I don’t want see them kill him in front of me, but I have to go.”

  “Nothing’s go’n happen, Lena,” I said.

  “They go’n kill him,” she said. “I held him to my breast longer than his mon ever done, and I know when something go’n happen.”

  She was holding her hand and looking down at the floor like she was praying.

  “I don’t care if I ever use that toilet up there,” she said. “What I care about water? I drink before I go to Bayonne; I drink when I come back home. That’s what I been doing all my life anyhow.”

  I looked at her. I didn’t know what to say.

  “Why he got to be the one?” she said. “All the others want it, why him?”

  “He wrote the letters for us, Lena,” I said. “He read the newspapers and the Bible for us. And we never chastized nobody else like we chastized him.”

  “We didn’t do that for this,” she said.

  “Did we know what we was doing it for?” I asked her.

  “I knowed what I was doing it for,” she said. “I wanted him to be a teacher or something.”

  “He is a teacher,” I said.

  “You can’t teach from the grave,” she said.

  “Jimmy’s not dead, Lena,” I said.

  “Not dead yet, you mean,” she said. “I’m almost forced to go out there and tell Robert to stop this thing from happening.”

  “That won’t stop Jimmy,” I said.

  “It’ll stop him from getting killed tomorrow,” she said.

  “Look at them other children,” I said. “They didn’t get killed.”

  “You mean all of them didn’t get killed,” she said. “And they wasn’t in Bayonne either. The likes of Albert Cluveau has not vanished from this earth.”

  We didn’t say nothing for a long time. She just sat there holding her hand, looking down at the floor. I reckoned she had already cried all she could cry.

  “How you going?” I asked.

  “Going up and see Olivia,” she said. “If not her, reckoned I’ll catch the bus.”

  “I’ll go with you,” I said.

  “Get your rest,” Lena said. “I’ll let you know what she say.”

  Albert was getting ready to leave, too, and Lena got Albert to walk up the quarters with her. About an hour later she came back and told me Olivia said she would take us.

  “She don’t mind if they put her off the place?” I asked.

  “She done saved up a few dollars,” Lena said.

  Mary got up the next morning just after sun-up and told me if I was going to Bayonne with her I better get up and get myself ready. I asked her when did she make up her mind to go. She said she made up her mind when she saw nothing was go’n keep me from going. Who was go’n look after me when they knocked me down. I said the Lord. She said the Lord might be busy helping somebody else, and it wouldn’t look right for Him just to drop that person and come help me. I got up and said my prayers. After I had pushed back my bar and made up my bed I went in the kitchen to have my coffee.

  “You better eat something solid,” Mary said. “You might have to do some fast shuffling.”

  “You can give me a bisquit with my coffee,” I said.

  “I mean grits and eggs,” Mary said. “When you fall I want to make sure it’s a billy club, not hungriness.”

  “Don’t give me too much,” I said.

  Mary had opened the back door and cool air came in. I looked out at the sun, orange color on the grass. Usually I liked this time of day, the freshness, but today I felt something funny in the air. My heart was jumping too much. I wasn’t scared I might get hurt—when you get to be a hundred and eight or a hundred and nine you forget what scared is: I felt something funny in the air, but I didn’t know what it was. I just sat there looking out at the grass, and I could remember the times when I used to bend over and run my hands in the dew. But of course that was long long ago. Now, all I can do is walk in it sometime, and I got to be careful doing even that.

  “Air feels funny,” I said.

  “How do funny air feel?” Mary said.

  “Just feel funny,” I said.

  Mary brought the food to the table and she sat down across from me.

  “I know I cause you trouble,” I said.

  “Don’t start that,” Mary said. “You don’t cause me no trouble.”

  “You don’t have to go, Mary,” I said.

  “Staying on this place don’t mean that much to me,” she said.

  “Where you going if they put you off?” I asked her.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Probably be somewhere close ’round you.”

  “Everything I own is yours when I die,” I said.

  “Don’t try to pay me, Miss Jane,” she said. “I was brought up too good for that.”

  “I’m not trying to pay you,” I said. “But I love you much as you love me, and that’s all I have to give. I want you to have my all.”

  “I have your love and your respect, and that’s enough,” she said.

  “I want you to have my rocking chair and my sewing machine,” I said.

  “All right,” Mary said. “But they’ll have to kill me first. Then somebody else can get everything.”

  “I didn’t mean today,” I said.

  “That’s right, today we secured,” Mary said. “I wonder what we go’n do to turn them back—sing?”

  “And maybe little clapping,” I said.

  “Well, I got a feeling them things in Bayonne go’n want more than just spirituals today,” Mary said. “Lot lot more.”

  “You feel death in the air, too, Mary?” I said.

  Mary felt death just like I felt it, but she didn’t want answer. She got up and washed the dishes, then she swept out the kitchen.

  Lena called for us ’round eight thirty. Mary helped me on with my sweater and I found my walking stick and we went out on the gallery. The place was quiet the way it is on Sunday nights when you don’t have church. I leaned on Mary till I reached the ground. When we came out in the road, there was Etienne standing there in his best clothes.

  “Well, Etienne?” I said.

  “Miss Jane,” he said, tipping his hat.

  I looked at him and nodded, and I was very proud of Etienne.

  Just the four of us started up the quarters to Olivia’s. It was still cool, and the dust in the road was cool and soft. The sun hadn’t come above the trees, yet, and the shadows from the trees and the crop was on the road. I could see where drops of water had dripped from the weeds hanging over the rim of the road.

  We had been walking quietly all the while, but just before we came up to Strut’s house, Etienne looked back and said it looked like somebody else was coming that way. The person was too far for me to make out who it was; all I could see was a dark form in the white dust. We hadn’t gone too much farther when Etienne said it looked like two or three more people was coming that way. I looked back again. I still couldn’t recognize them, just dark forms in that white dust. Before we got to Joe Simon’s house I looked back, and this time I stopped and leaned on my walking stick. This time it was not one or two, it was many. They was not marching, they was not hurrying; it didn’t look like they was even talking to each other. They was
walking like every last one of them was by himself and any little noise could turn him around. But the longer I stood there looking, the more I saw coming toward me. Men, women, children. I couldn’t recognize who they was way down there, but I could tell dresses from pants, and I could tell grown people from children. No, not everybody in the quarters was headed that way—Brady’s car was still down there. Probably half of the people was still down there. But the number of people I saw coming toward me was something I never would ’a’ dreamed of. I wouldn’t ’a’ believed nobody if he had told me this could happen. I stood there watching them, thinking: Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy. Look what you’ve done. Look what you’ve done. Look what you’ve done, Jimmy.

  They came up and stood all ’round us. Most of them was scared and they wasn’t shame to show it. But they was standing there, and that’s what mattered. And I felt like telling each one of them thank you, thank you, thank you. I told myself when I got to the courthouse I was going up to Jimmy and say, “Jimmy, look at your army from Samson. Did you think they was go’n show up?” And he was go’n look at me in that sad-sweet way and say, “Sure, I knowed they wasn’t go’n let me down.”

  I looked at them all there and I was so happy I started crying. Mary and them saw me crying, but they didn’t say nothing to me because they knowed it was from joy, not sorrow.

  Olivia came out the house and saw us all there and said she was sorry, she wouldn’t be able to take nearly half that many. The people said they would catch the bus, and said tell Jimmy don’t start till they got there. Olivia asked them if they all had money. They had forgot about money. Olivia told them wait—she was going back in the house to get her pocket-book—but just as she turned to go back inside, Robert Samson drove his car down the quarters.

  I heard Lena scream, and I saw her running heavy heavy straight toward the car. Mary and Olivia and Merle Anne went after her and pulled her out the way. She screamed and screamed and tried to get away from them. Robert got out of the car and looked at all us standing there.

  “Go back home,” he said.

  “What happened to my boy?” Lena asked him. “What happened to my boy?”

  “Go back home,” Robert said.

  “What happened, Mr. Robert?” Etienne asked.