If Beale Street Could Talk

by James Baldwin

  Ernestine and I had sat down in the last booth of a bar off Columbus.

  Ernestine’s way with me, and with all her children, is to drop something heavy on you and then lean back, calculating how you’ll take it. She’s got to know that, in order to calculate her own position: the net’s got to be in place.

  Now, maybe because I had spent so much of the day, and the night before, with my terrors—and my calculations—concerning the possible sale of my body, I began to see the reality of rape.

  I asked, “Do you think she really was raped?”

  “Tish. I don’t know what’s going on in that busy, ingrown mind of yours, but that question has no bearing on anything. As far as our situation is concerned, baby, she was raped. That’s it.” She paused and sipped her drink. She sounded very calm, but her forehead was tense, intelligent, with terror. “I think, in fact, that she was raped and that she has absolutely no idea who did it, would probably not even recognize him if he passed her on the street. I may sound crazy, but the mind works that way. She’d recognize him if he raped her again. But then it would no longer be rape. If you see what I mean.”

  “I see what you mean. But why does she accuse Fonny?”

  “Because Fonny was presented to her as the rapist and it was much easier to say yes than to try and relive the whole damn thing again. This way, it’s over, for her. Except for the trial. But, then, it’s really over. For her.”

  “And for us, too?”

  “No.” She looked at me very steadily. It may seem a funny thing to say, but I found myself admiring her guts. “It won’t be over for us.” She spoke very carefully, watching me all the while. “There’s a way in which it may never be over, for us. But we won’t talk about that now. Listen. We have to think about it very seriously, and in another way. That’s why I wanted to have a drink alone with you, before we went home.”

  “What are you trying to tell me?” I was suddenly very frightened.

  “Listen. I don’t think that we can get her to change her testimony. You’ve got to understand: she’s not lying.”

  “What are you trying to tell me? What the fuck do you mean, she’s not lying?”

  “Will you listen to me? Please? Of course, she’s lying. We know she’s lying. But—she’s—not—lying. As far as she’s concerned, Fonny raped her and that’s that, and now she hasn’t got to deal with it anymore. It’s over. For her. If she changes her testimony, she’ll go mad. Or become another woman. And you know how often people go mad, and how rarely they change.”

  “So—what are we to do?”

  “We have to disprove the state’s case. There’s no point in saying that we have to make them prove it, because, as far as they’re concerned, the accusation is the proof and that’s exactly the way those nuts in the jury box will take it, quiet as it’s kept. They’re liars, too—and we know they’re liars. But they don’t.”

  I remembered, for some reason, something someone had said to me, a long time ago—it might have been Fonny: A fool never says he’s a fool.

  “We can’t disprove it. Daniel’s in jail.”

  “Yes. But Hayward is seeing him tomorrow.”

  “That don’t mean nothing. Daniel is still going to change his testimony, I bet you.”

  “He may. He may not. But I have another idea.”

  There we sat, in this dirty bar, two sisters, trying to be cool.

  “Let’s say the worst comes to the worst. Mrs. Rogers will not change her testimony. Let’s say Daniel changes his. That leaves only Officer Bell, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes. And so what?”

  “Well—I have a file on him. A long file. I can prove that he murdered a twelve-year-old black boy, in Brooklyn, two years ago. That’s how come he was transferred to Manhattan. I know the mother of the murdered boy. And I know Bell’s wife, who hates him.”

  “She can’t testify against him.”

  “She hasn’t got to testify against him. She just has to sit in that courtroom, and watch him—”

  “I don’t see how this helps us—at all——”

  “I know you don’t. And you may be right. But, if worse comes to worst, and it’s always better to assume that it will—come to worst—then our tactic has to be to shatter the credibility of the state’s only witness.”

  “Ernestine,” I said, “you’re dreaming.”

  “I don’t think I am. I’m gambling. If I can get those two women, one white and one black, to sit in that courtroom, and if Hayward does his work right, we ought to be able to shatter the case, on cross-examination. Remember, Tish, that, after all, it isn’t very much of a case. If Fonny were white, it wouldn’t be a case at all.”

  Well. I understand what she means. I know where she’s coming from. It’s a long shot. But, in our position, after all, only the long shot counts. We don’t have any other: that’s it. And I realize, too, that if we thought it were feasible, we might very well be sitting here, cool, very cool, discussing ways and means of having Bell’s head blown off. And, when it was done, we’d shrug and have another drink: that’s it. People don’t know.

  “Yes. Okay. What about Puerto Rico?”

  “That’s one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you. Before we talk to Mama and Daddy. Look. You can’t go. You’ve got to be here. For one thing, without you, Fonny will panic. I don’t see how I can go. I’ve got to keep lighting firecrackers under Hayward’s ass. Obviously, a man can’t go. Daddy can’t go, and God knows Frank can’t go. That leaves—Mama.”

  “Mama—?”

  “Yes.”

  “She don’t want to go to Puerto Rico.”

  “That’s right. And she hates planes. But she wants your baby’s father out of jail. Of course she doesn’t want to go to Puerto Rico. But she’ll go.”

  “And what do you think she can do?”

  “She can do something no special investigator can do. She may be able to break through to Mrs. Rogers. Maybe not—but if she can, we’re ahead. And if not—well, we haven’t lost anything, and, at least, we’ll know we’ve tried.”

  I watch her forehead. Okay.

  “And what about Daniel?”

  “I told you. Hayward is seeing him tomorrow. He may have been able to see him today. He’s calling us tonight.”

  I lean back. “Some shit.”

  “Yeah. But we in it now.”

  Then, we are silent. I realize, for the first time, that the bar is loud. And I look around me. It’s actually a terrible place and I realize that the people here can only suppose that Ernestine and I are tired whores, or a Lesbian couple, or both. Well. We are certainly in it now, and it may get worse. It will, certainly—and now something almost as hard to catch as a whisper in a crowded place, as light and as definite as a spider’s web, strikes below my ribs, stunning and astonishing my heart—get worse. But that light tap, that kick, that signal, announces to me that what can get worse can get better. Yes. It will get worse. But the baby, turning for the first time in its incredible veil of water, announces its presence and claims me; tells me, in that instant, that what can get worse can get better; and that what can get better can get worse. In the meantime—forever—it is entirely up to me. The baby cannot get here without me. And, while I may have known this, in one way, a little while ago, now the baby knows it, and tells me that while it will certainly be worse, once it leaves the water, what gets worse can also get better. It will be in the water for a while yet: but it is preparing itself for a transformation. And so must I.

  I said, “It’s all right. I’m not afraid.”

  And Ernestine smiled, and said, “Let’s move it then.”

  Joseph and Frank, as we learn later, have also been sitting in a bar, and this is what happened between them:

  Joseph has a certain advantage over Frank—though it is only now that he begins to realize, or, rather, suspect it—in that he has no sons. He has always wanted a son; this fact cost Ernestine far more than it cost me; for, by the time I came along, he was reconciled. If he had
had sons, they might very well be dead, or in jail. And they both know, facing each other in the booth of a bar on Lenox Avenue, that it is a miracle that Joseph’s daughters are not on the block. Both of them know far more than either of them would like to know, and certainly far more than either can say, concerning the disasters which have overtaken the women in Frank’s house.

  And Frank looks down, holding his drink tightly between both hands: he has a son. And Joseph sips his beer and watches him. That son is also his son now, and that makes Frank his brother.

  They are both grown men, approaching fifty, and they are both in terrible trouble.

  Neither of them look it. Joseph is much darker than Frank, black, deep-set, hooded eyes, stern, still, a high forehead in which one vein beats, leftward, a forehead so high that it can make you think of cathedrals. His lips are always a little twisted. Only those who know him—only those who love him—know when this twist signals laughter, love, or fury. The key is to be found in the pulsing vein in the forehead. The lips change very little, the eyes change all the time: and when Joseph is happy, and when he laughs, something absolutely miraculous is happening. He then looks, I swear to you,—and his hair is beginning to turn gray,—about thirteen years old. I thought once, I’m certainly glad I didn’t meet him when he was a young man and then I thought, But you’re his daughter, and then I dropped into a paralyzed silence, thinking: Wow.

  Frank is light, thinner. I don’t think that you can describe my father as handsome; but you can describe Frank that way. I don’t mean to be putting him down when I say that because that face has paid, and is paying, a dreadful price. People make you pay for the way you look, which is also the way you think you look, and what time writes in a human face is the record of that collision. Frank has survived it, barely. His forehead is lined like the palm of a hand—unreadable; his graying hair is thick and curls violently upward from the widow’s peak. His lips are not as thick as Joseph’s and do not dance that way, are pressed tightly together, as though he wished they would disappear. His cheekbones are high, and his large dark eyes slant upward, like Fonny’s—Fonny has his father’s eyes.

  Joseph certainly cannot realize this in the way that his daughter knows it. But he stares at Frank in silence, and forces Frank to raise his eyes.

  “What we going to do?” Frank asks.

  “Well, the first thing we got to do,” says Joseph, resolutely, “is to stop blaming each other, and stop blaming ourselves. If we can’t do that, man, we’ll never get the boy out because well be so fucked up. And we cannot fuck up now, baby, and I know you hear where I’m coming from.”

  “Man, what,” asks Frank—with his little smile—“we going to do about the money?”

  “You ever have any money?” Joseph asks.

  Frank looks up at him and says nothing—merely questions him with his eyes.

  Joseph asks again, “You ever have any money?”

  Frank says, finally, “No.”

  “Then, why you worried about it now?”

  Frank looks up at him again.

  “You raised them somehow, didn’t you? You fed them somehow—didn’t you? If we start to worrying about money now, man, we going to be fucked and we going to lose our children. That white man, baby, and may his balls shrivel and his ass-hole rot, he want you to be worried about the money. That’s his whole game. But if we got to where we are without money, we can get further. I ain’t worried about they money—they ain’t got no right to it anyhow, they stole it from us—they ain’t never met nobody they didn’t lie to and steal from. Well, I can steal, too. And rob. How you think I raised my daughters? Shit.”

  But Frank is not Joseph. He stares down again, into his drink.

  “What you think is going to happen?”

  “What we make happen,” says Joseph—again, with resolution.

  “That’s easy to say,” says Frank.

  “Not if you mean it,” says Joseph.

  There is a long silence into which neither man speaks. Even the jukebox is silent.

  “I guess,” Frank says, finally, “I love Fonny more than I love anybody in this world. And it makes me ashamed, man, I swear, because he was a real sweet manly little boy, wasn’t scared of nothing—except maybe his Mama. He didn’t understand his Mama.” Frank stops. “And I don’t know what I should have done. I ain’t a woman. And there’s some things only a woman can do with a child. And I thought she loved him—like I guess I thought, one time, she loved me.” Frank sips his drink, and he tries to smile. “I don’t know if I was ever any kind of father to him—any kind of real father—and now he’s in jail and it ain’t his fault and I don’t even know how I’m going to get him out. I’m sure one hell of a man.”

  “Well,” says Joseph, “he sure think you are. He loves you, and he respects you—now, you got to remember that I might know that much better than you. Tell you something else. Your baby son is the father of my baby daughter’s baby. Now, how you going to sit here and act like can’t nothing be done? We got a child on the way here, man. You want me to beat the shit out of you?” He says this with ferocity; but, after a moment, he smiles. “I know,” he says, then, carefully, “I know. But I know some hustles and you know some hustles and these are our children and we got to set them free.” Joseph finishes his beer. “So, let’s drink up, man, and go on in. We got a whole lot of shit to deal with, in a hurry.”

  Frank finishes his drink, and straightens his shoulders. “You right, old buddy. Let’s make it.”

  The date for Fonny’s trial keeps changing. This fact, paradoxically, forces me to realize that Hayward’s concern is genuine. I don’t think that he very much cared, in the beginning. He had never taken a case like Fonny’s before, and it was Ernestine, acting partly out of experience but mainly out of instinct, who had bludgeoned him into it. But, once into it, the odor of shit rose high; and he had no choice but to keep on stirring it. It became obvious at once, for example, that the degree of his concern for his client—or the fact that he had any genuine concern for his client at all—placed him at odds, at loggerheads, with the keepers of the keys and seals. He had not expected this, and at first it bewildered, then frightened, then angered him. He swiftly understood that he was between the carrot and the stick: he couldn’t avoid the stick but he had to make it clear, finally, that he’d be damned if he’d go for the carrot. This had the effect of isolating, indeed of branding him, and, as this increased Fonny’s danger, it also increased Hayward’s responsibility. It did not help that I distrusted him, Ernestine harangued him, Mama was laconic, and, for Joseph, he was just another white boy with a college degree.

  Although, naturally, in the beginning, I distrusted him, I am not really what you can call a distrustful person: and, anyway, as time wore on, with each of us trying to hide our terror from the other, we began to depend more and more on one another—we had no choice. And I began to see, as time wore on, that, for Hayward, the battle increasingly became a private one, involving neither gratitude nor public honor. It was a sordid, a banal case, this rape by a black boy of an ignorant Puerto Rican woman—what was he getting so excited about? And so his colleagues scorned and avoided him. This fact introduced yet other dangers, not least of them the danger of retreating into the self-pitying and quixotic. But Fonny was too real a presence, and Hayward too proud a man for that.

  But the calendars were full—it would take about a thousand years to try all the people in the American prisons, but the Americans are optimistic and still hope for time—and sympathetic or merely intelligent judges are as rare as snowstorms in the tropics. There was the obscene power and the ferocious enmity of the D.A.’s office. Thus, Hayward walked a chalk line, maneuvering very hard to bring Fonny before a judge who would really listen to the case. For this, Hayward needed charm, patience, money, and a backbone of tempered steel.

  He managed to see Daniel, who has been beaten. He cannot arrange for his release because Daniel has been booked on a narcotics charge. Without becoming Dani
el’s lawyer, he cannot visit him. He suggests this to Daniel, but Daniel is evasive and afraid. Hayward suspects that Daniel has also been drugged and he does not know if he dares bring Daniel to the witness stand, or not.

  So. There we are. Mama begins letting out my clothes, and I go to work wearing jackets and slacks. But it’s clear that I’m not going to be able to keep working much longer: I’ve got to be able to visit Fonny every instant that I can. Joseph is working overtime, double time, and so is Frank. Ernestine has to spend less time with her children because she has taken a job as part-time private secretary to a very rich and eccentric young actress, whose connections she intends to intimidate, and use. Joseph is coldly, systematically, stealing from the docks, and Frank is stealing from the garment center and they sell the hot goods in Harlem, or in Brooklyn. They don’t tell us this, but we know it. They don’t tell us because, if things go wrong, we can’t be accused of being accomplices. We cannot penetrate their silence, we must not try. Each of these men would gladly go to jail, blow away a pig, or blow up a city, to save their progeny from the jaws of this democratic hell.

  Now, Sharon must begin preparing for her Puerto Rican journey, and Hayward briefs her:

  “She is not actually in Santurce, but a little beyond it, in what might once have been called a suburb, but which is now far worse than what we would call a slum. In Puerto Rico, I believe it is called a favella. I have been to Puerto Rico once, and so I will not try to describe a favella. And I am sure, when you return, that you will not try to describe it, either.”

  Hayward looks at her, at once distant and intense, and hands her a typewritten sheet of paper. “This is the address. But I think that you will understand, almost as soon as you get where you are going, that the word ‘address’ has almost no meaning—it would be more honest to say: this is the neighborhood.”