I wonder how it can be
That Greeks, Germans, Jews,
Italians, Mexicans,
And everybody but me
Down South can ride in the trains,
Streetcars and busses
Without any fusses.
But when I come along—
Pure American—
They got a sign up
For me to ride behind:
COLORED
My folks and my folks’ folkses
And their folkses before
Have been here 300 years or more—
Yet any foreigner from Polish to Dutch
Rides anywhere he wants to
And is not subject to such
Treatments as my fellow-men give me
In this Land of the Free.
Dixie, you ought to get wise
And be civilized!
And take down that COLORED sign
For Americans to ride behind!
Signed, Jesse B. Semple. How do you like that?”
“Did you write it yourself, or did Joyce help you?”
“Every word of it I writ myself,” said Simple. “Joyce wanted me to change folkses and say peoples, but I did not have an eraser. It would have been longer, too, but Joyce made me stop and go with her to get some hot dogs.”
“It’s long enough,” I said.
“It’s not as long as Jim Crow,” said Simple.
“You didn’t write any nature poems at all?” I asked.
“What do you mean, nature poems?”
“I mean about the great out-of-doors—the flowers, the birds, the trees, the country.”
“To tell the truth, I never was much on country,” said Simple. “I had enough of it when I was down home. Besides, in the country flies bother you, bees sting you, mosquitoes bite you, and snakes hide in the grass. No, I do not like the country—except a riverbank to fish near town.”
“It’s better than staying in the city,” I said, “and spending your money around these Harlem bars.”
“At least I am welcome in these bars—run by white folks though they are,” said Simple, “but I do not know no place in the country where I am welcome. If you’re driving, every little roadhouse you stop at, they look at you like was a varmint and say, ‘We don’t serve colored,’ I tell you I do not want no parts of the country in this country.”
“You do not go to the country to drink,” I said.
“What am I gonna do, hibernate?”
“You could lie in a hammock and read a book, then go in the house and eat chicken.”
“I do not know anybody in the country around here, and you know these summer resort places up North don’t admit colored. Besides, the last time I was laying out in a hammock reading the funnies in the country down in Virginia, it were in the cool of evening and, man, a snake as long as you are tall come whipping through the grass, grabbed a frog right in front of my eyes, and started to choking it down.”
“What did you do?”
“Mighty near fell out of that hammock!” said Simple. “If that snake had not been so near, I would’ve fell out. As it were, I stepped down quick on the other side and went to find myself a stone.”
“Did you kill it?”
“My nerves were bad and my aim was off. I hit the frog instead of the snake. I knocked that frog right out of his mouth.”
“What did the snake do?”
“Runned and hid his self in the grass. I was scared to go outdoors all the rest of the time I was in the country.”
“You are that scared of a snake?” I said.
“As scared of a snake as a Russian was of a Nazi. I would go to as much trouble to kill one as Stalin did to kill Hitler. Besides, that poor little frog were not bothering that snake. Frogs eat mosquitoes and mosquitoes eat me. So I am for letting that frog live and not be et. But a snake would chaw on my leg as quick as he would a frog, so I am for letting a snake die. Anything that bites me must die—snakes, bedbugs, bees, mosquitoes, or bears. I don’t even much like for a woman to bite me, though I would not go so far as to kill her. But of all the things that bites, two is worst—a mad dog and a snake. But I would take the dog. I never could understand how in the Bible Eve got near enough to a snake to take an apple.”
“Snakes did not bite in those days,” I said. “That was the Age of Innocence.”
“It was only after Eve got hold of the apple that everything got wrong, huh? Snakes started to bite, women to fight, men to paying, and Christians to praying,” said Simple. “It were awful after Eve approached that snake and accepted that apple! It takes a woman to do a fool thing like that.”
“Adam ate it, too, didn’t he?”
“A woman can make a fool out of a man,” said Simple. “But don’t let’s start talking about women. We have talked about enough unpleasant things for one night. Will you kindly invite me into the bar to have a beer? This sidewalk is hot to my feet. And as a thank-you for a drink, the next time I write a poem, I will give you a copy. But it won’t be about the country, neither about nature.”
“As much beer as you drink, it will probably be about a bar,” I said. “When are you going to wake up, fellow, get wise to yourself, settle down, marry Joyce, and stop gallivanting all over Harlem every night? You’re old enough to know better.”
“I might be old enough to know better, but I am not old enough to do better,” said Simple. “Come on in the bar and I will say you a toast I made up the last time somebody told me just what you are saying now about doing better. . . . That’s right, bartender, two beers for two steers. . . . Thank you! . . . Pay for them, chum! . . . Now, here goes. Listen fluently:
When I get to be ninety-one
And my running days is done,
Then I will do better.
When I get to be ninety-two
And just CAN’T do,
I’ll do better.
When I get to be ninety-three
If the womens don’t love me,
Then I must do better.
When I get to be ninety-four
And can’t jive no more,
I’ll have to do better.
When I get to be ninety-five,
More dead than alive,
It’ll be necessary to do better.
When I get to be ninety-six
And don’t know no more tricks,
I reckon I’ll do better.
When I get to be ninety-seven
And on my way to Heaven,
I’ll try and do better.
When I get to be ninety-eight
And see Saint Peter at the gate,
I know I’ll do better.
When I get to be ninety-nine,
Remembering it were fine,
Then I’ll do better.
But even when I’m a hundred and one,
If I’m still having fun,
I’ll start all over again
Just like I begun—
Because what could be better?”
SOURCE: Langston Hughes. Simple Speaks His Mind. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1950.
THE CONVERSION OF THE JEWS (1958)
Philip Roth
Roth, born in Newark in 1933, has been one of America’s leading authors of fiction for decades, ever since his debut collection, Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories (1959), which contained this story.
“YOU’RE A REAL one for opening your mouth in the first place,” Itzie said. “What do you open your mouth all the time for?”
“I didn’t bring it up, Itz, I didn’t,” Ozzie said.
“What do you care about Jesus Christ for anyway?”
“I didn’t bring up Jesus Christ. He did. I didn’t even know what he was talking about. Jesus is historical, he kept saying. Jesus is historical.” Ozzie mimicked the monumental voice of Rabbi Binder.
“Jesus was a person that lived like you and me,” Ozzie continued. “That’s what Binder said—”
“Yeah? . . . So what? What do I give two cents whether he
lived or not. And what do you gotta open your mouth!” Itzie Lieberman favored closed-mouthedness, especially when it came to Ozzie Freedman’s questions. Mrs. Freedman had to see Rabbi Binder twice before about Ozzie’s questions and this Wednesday at four-thirty would be the third time. Itzie preferred to keep his mother in the kitchen; he settled for behind-the-back subtleties such as gestures, faces, snarls and other less delicate barnyard noises.
“He was a real person. Jesus, but he wasn’t like God, and we don’t believe he is God.” Slowly, Ozzie was explaining Rabbi Binder’s position to Itzie, who had been absent from Hebrew School the previous afternoon.
“The Catholics,” Itzie said helpfully, “they believe in Jesus Christ, that he’s God.” Itzie Lieberman used “the Catholics” in its broadest sense—to include the Protestants.
Ozzie received Itzie’s remark with a tiny head bob, as though it were a footnote, and went on. “His mother was Mary, and his father probably was Joseph,” Ozzie said. “But the New Testament says his real father was God.”
“His real father?”
“Yeah,” Ozzie said, “that’s the big thing, his father’s supposed to be God.”
“Bull.”
“That’s what Rabbi Binder says, that it’s impossible—”
“Sure it’s impossible. That stuff’s all bull. To have a baby you gotta get laid,” Itzie theologized. “Mary hadda get laid.”
“That’s what Binder says: ‘The only way a woman can have a baby is to have intercourse with a man.’ ”
“He said that, Ozz?” For a moment it appeared that Itzie had put the theological question aside. “He said that, intercourse?” A little curled smile shaped itself in the lower half of Itzie’s face like a pink mustache. “What you guys do, Ozz, you laugh or something?”
“I raised my hand.”
“Yeah? Whatja say?”
“That’s when I asked the question.”
Itzie’s face lit up. “Whatja ask about—intercourse?”
“No, I asked the question about God, how if He could create the heaven and earth in six days, and make all the animals and the fish and the light in six days—the light especially, that’s what always gets me, that He could make the light. Making fish and animals, that’s pretty good—”
“That’s damn good.” Itzie’s appreciation was honest but unimaginative: it was as though God had just pitched a one-hitter.
“But making light . . . I mean when you think about it, it’s really something,” Ozzie said. “Anyway, I asked Binder if He could make all that in six days, and He could pick the six days he wanted right out of nowhere, why couldn’t He let a woman have a baby without having intercourse.”
“You said intercourse, Ozz, to Binder?”
“Yeah.”
“Right in class?”
“Yeah.”
Itzie smacked the side of his head.
“I mean, no kidding around,” Ozzie said, “that’d really be nothing. After all that other stuff, that’d practically be nothing.”
Itzie considered a moment. “What’d Binder say?”
“He started all over again explaining how Jesus was historical and how he lived like you and me but he wasn’t God. So I said I understood that. What I wanted to know was different.”
What Ozzie wanted to know was always different. The first time he had wanted to know how Rabbi Binder could call the Jews “The Chosen People” if the Declaration of Independence claimed all men to be created equal. Rabbi Binder tried to distinguish for him between political equality and spiritual legitimacy, but what Ozzie wanted to know, he insisted vehemently, was different. That was the first time his mother had to come.
Then there was the plane crash. Fifty-eight people had been killed in a plane crash at La Guardia. In studying a casualty list in the newspaper his mother had discovered among the list of those dead eight Jewish names (his grandmother had nine but she counted Miller as a Jewish name); because of the eight she said the plane crash was “a tragedy.” During free-discussion time on Wednesday Ozzie had brought to Rabbi Binder’s attention this matter of “some of his relations” always picking out the Jewish names. Rabbi Binder had begun to explain cultural unity and some other things when Ozzie stood up at his seat and said that what he wanted to know was different. Rabbi Binder insisted that he sit down and it was then that Ozzie shouted that he wished all fifty-eight were Jews. That was the second time his mother came.
“And he kept explaining about Jesus being historical, and so I kept asking him. No kidding, Itz, he was trying to make me look stupid.”
“So what he finally do?”
“Finally he starts screaming that I was deliberately simpleminded and a wise guy, and that my mother had to come, and this was the last time. And that I’d never get bar-mitzvahed if he could help it. Then, Itz, then he starts talking in that voice like a statue, real slow and deep, and he says that I better think over what I said about the Lord. He told me to go to his office and think it over.” Ozzie leaned his body towards Itzie. “Itz. I thought it over for a solid hour, and now I’m convinced God could do it.”
Ozzie had planned to confess his latest transgression to his mother as soon as she came home from work. But it was a Friday night in November and already dark, and when Mrs. Freedman came through the door she tossed off her coat, kissed Ozzie quickly on the face and went to the kitchen table to light the three yellow candles, two for the Sabbath and one for Ozzie’s father.
When his mother lit the candles she would move her two arms slowly towards her, dragging them through the air, as though persuading people whose minds were half made up. And her eyes would get glassy with tears. Even when his father was alive Ozzie remembered that her eyes had gotten glassy, so it didn’t have anything to do with his dying. It had something to do with lighting the candles.
As she touched the flaming match to the unlit wick of a Sabbath candle, the phone rang, and Ozzie, standing only a foot from it, plucked it off the receiver and held it muffled to his chest. When his mother lit candles Ozzie felt there should be no noise; even breathing, if you could manage it, should be softened. Ozzie pressed the phone to his breast and watched his mother dragging whatever she was dragging, and he felt his own eyes get glassy. His mother was a round, tired, gray-haired penguin of a woman whose frail skin had begun to feel the tug of gravity and the weight of her own history. Even when she was dressed up she didn’t look like a chosen person. But when she lit candles she looked like something better; like a woman who knew momentarily that God could do anything.
After a few mysterious minutes she was finished. Ozzie hung up the phone and walked to the kitchen table where she was beginning to lay the two places for the four-course Sabbath meal. He told her that she would have to see Rabbi Binder next Wednesday at four-thirty, and then he told her why. For the first time in their life together she hit Ozzie across the face with her hand.
All through the chopped liver and chicken soup part of the dinner Ozzie cried; he didn’t have an appetite for the rest.
On Wednesday, in the largest of the three basement classrooms of the synagogue, Rabbi Marvin Binder, a tall, handsome, broad-shouldered man of thirty with thick strong-fibered black hair, removed his watch from his pocket and saw that it was four o’clock. At the rear of the room Yakov Blotnik, the seventy-one-year-old custodian, slowly polished the large window, mumbling to himself: unaware that it was four o’clock or six o’clock, Monday or Wednesday. To most of the students Yakov Blotnik’s mumbling, along with his brown curly beard, scythe nose, and two heel-trailing black cats, made of him an object of wonder, a foreigner, a relic, towards whom they were alternately fearful and disrespectful. To Ozzie the mumbling had always seemed a monotonous, curious prayer; what made it curious was that old Blotnik had been mumbling so steadily for so many years, Ozzie suspected he had memorized the prayers and forgotten all about God.
“It is now free-discussion time,” Rabbi Binder said. “Feel free to talk about any Jewish matter at all—rel
igion, family, politics, sports—”
There was silence. It was a gusty, clouded November afternoon and it did not seem as though there ever was or could be a thing called baseball. So nobody this week said a word about that hero from the past, Hank Greenberg—which limited free discussion considerably.
And the soul-battering Ozzie Freedman had just received from Rabbi Binder had imposed its limitation. When it was Ozzie’s turn to read aloud from the Hebrew book the rabbi had asked him petulantly why he didn’t read more rapidly. He was showing no progress. Ozzie said he could read faster but that if he did he was sure not to understand what he was reading. Nevertheless, at the rabbi’s repeated suggestion Ozzie tried, and showed a great talent, but in the midst of a long passage he stopped short and said he didn’t understand a word he was reading, and started in again at a drag-footed pace. Then came the soul-battering.
Consequently when free-discussion time rolled around none of the students felt too free. The rabbi’s invitation was answered only by the mumbling of feeble old Blotnik.
“Isn’t there anything at all you would like to discuss?” Rabbi Binder asked again, looking at his watch. “No questions or comments?”
There was a small grumble from the third row. The rabbi requested that Ozzie rise and give the rest of the class the advantage of his thought.
Ozzie rose. “I forget it now,” he said, and sat down in his place.
Rabbi Binder advanced a seat towards Ozzie and poised himself on the edge of the desk. It was Itzie’s desk and the rabbi’s frame only a dagger’s-length away from his face snapped him to sitting attention.
“Stand up again, Oscar,” Rabbi Binder said calmly, “and try to assemble your thoughts.”
Ozzie stood up. All his classmates turned in their seats and watched as he gave an unconvincing scratch to his forehead.
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