The Autobiography Of Miss Jane Pittman Part 17

"Somewhere in the past, Jane," he said. "Way, way back, men like Robert could love women like Mary Agnes. But somewhere along the way somebody wrote a new set of rules condemning all that. I had to live by them, Robert at that house now had to live by them, and Clarence Caya had to live by them. Clarence Caya told Jimmy to live by them, and Jimmy obeyed. But Tee Bob couldn't obey. That's why we got rid of him. All us. Me, you, the girl-all us."

"Wait," I said. "Me?"

He looked back over his shoulder.

"You, Jane," he said.

"All right, lets say I'm in there," I said. "Where I fit in, I don't know, but let's say I'm in there. But the girl: you mean she was leading him on all this time, then at the end she backed down?"

"It wasn't nothing like that," he said. "She led him on for just a second. And maybe not that long. And even then she didn't have control over herself."

"Who told you this?"

"n.o.body," he said. "If she had said it, Guidry would 'a' put her in jail for the rest of her life. If Tee Bob had put it in that letter, Robert wouldn't 'a' waited for Guidry to put her in jail; he would 'a' broke her neck with his bare hands. n.o.body told me-but it happened. Sure as I'm sitting here, it happened.

"When he came to the house, he poured his soul out to her. He wanted to put her in that car, take her away from here, and never see none of us again. She was the only thing that meant a thing in this world to him. But instead of her falling in his arms, she told him the same thing Jimmy Caya had told him earlier. She was a n.i.g.g.e.r, he was white, and they couldn't have nothing together. He couldn't understand that, he thought love was much stronger than that one drop of African blood. But she knowed better. She knowed the rules. She was just a few years older than him in age, but hundreds of years wiser.

"But no matter what she said, he kept telling her love was everything. She gived up trying to talk to him; she got her suitcase and started for the door. That's when he grabbed her and swung her back. The weight of the suitcase slammed her 'gainst the wall. Now he was standing over her. To carry her to that car? To choke her? To rape her?-I don't know. But he was standing close enough to see something in her face. (No, he didn't say it, because Robert would 'a' come down here and killed her if he had. And if she had said it, Guidry would 'a' slammed her in jail for the rest of her life.) While he was standing there over her she invited him down there on the floor. Because-"

"But ain't this specalatin?" I said.

"It would be specalatin if two white people was sitting here talking," Jules Raynard said, looking round. But he couldn't look round too far; his weight didn't allow that.

"But it's us?" I said.

"And that makes it gospel truth," he said.

"Then what happened?" I said, sitting back there in the back seat.

"In the flash when her head and back hit the wall, something happened to her," he said. "The past and the present got all mixed up. That stiff proudness left. Making up for the past left. She was the past now. She was grandma now, and he was that Creole gentleman. She was Verda now, and he was Robert. It showed in her face. It showed in the way she laid down there on the floor. Helpless; waiting. She knowed how she looked to him, but she couldn't do nothing about it. But when he saw it he ran away from there. Because now he thought maybe the white man was G.o.d-like Jimmy Caya had said. Maybe the white man did have power that he, himself, didn't know before now. He ran and ran, stumbling and falling: like a hurt animal. Then he was home. Home. Home. Home. Now he tried to forget what he had seen on the floor back there. But nothing in that library was go'n let him forget. Too many books on slavery in that room; too many books on history in there. The sound of his grandfather talking to his daddy and his uncle come out every wall; the sound of all of them talking to him come from everywhere at once. Then there was Jimmy Caya's voice still fresh in his ear.

"He saw grandpa's letter opener. He picked it up. He laid it back down-but close enough to reach any time he needed it. He got paper and started writing. He wanted to run away from here. That was his first thought-get away from here. 'Mama, I don't know what to do. I must go somewhere where I can find peace. Then maybe later.'

"Then he heard Robert beating on the door and hollering at him. *When you come to me, Mama, I won't be here. Forgive me. I love you.' "

Jules Raynard pulled out his pocket handkerchief and wiped his face and neck.

"But seeing her on the floor like that just hurried it up," he said.

"He was bound to kill himself anyhow?"

"One day. He had to. For our sins."

"Poor Tee Bob."

"No. Poor us," Jules Raynard said.

I opened the car door and got out.

"Good night, Mr. Raynard," I said.

"Good night, Jane."

BOOK IV.

THE QUARTERS.

People's always looking for somebody to come lead them. Go to the Old Testament; go to the New. They did it in slavery; after the war they did it; they did it in the hard times that people want call Reconstruction; they did it in the Depression-another hard times; and they doing it now. They have always done it-and the Lord has always obliged in some way or another.

Anytime a child is born, the old people look in his face and ask him if he's the One. No, they don't say it out loud like I'm saying it to you now. Maybe they don't say it at all; maybe they just feel it-but feel it they do. "You the One?" I'm sure Lena asked Jimmy that when she first held him in her arms. "You the One, Jimmy? You the One?"

He was born a little bit farther down the quarters. Shirley Aaron was his mama's name-but I don't need to tell you who his daddy was. That don't matter-and, yes, it do. Because if his daddy had been there the cross wouldn't 'a' been nearly so heavy. Oh, heavy it would 'a' been-it had to be-because we needed him to carry part our cross; but the daddy, if he had been there, would 'a' been able to give him some help. But he didn't have a daddy to help him. The daddy had done what they told him a hundred years before to do, and he had forgot it just like a hundred years ago they had told him to forget. So it don't matter who his daddy was, because you got some out there right now who will tell you his daddy was somebody else. Oh, sure, they all know who he was, but still they'll argue and say he was somebody else.

Lena Washington was his aunt, his great aunt, his mama's daddy sister; and it was Lena who sent Sappho up the quarters to get me because it wasn't time to go get Selina from Morgan. It was in the winter-grinding-and it was me, Jane Pittman, who helped him into this world. When I took him 'round the other side and handed him to Lena she was sitting at the fire crying. That's why I'm sure she asked him if he was the One. No daddy, and soon will be no mama, because mama was go'n leave for the city to work like all the other young people was doing-I'm sure Lena asked him if he was the One.

Lena was the first one to ask him if he was the One, then we all started wondering if he was the One. That was long long before he had any idea what we wanted out of him. Because, you see, we started wondering about him when he was five or six. I ought to say everybody except Lena. Lena started wondering about him soon as she saw him that first morning. I probably would 'a' done so myself, but I didn't have time then, I was too busy looking after his mon on that bed. But I did later. We all did later. When he was five or six we all did. Why did we pick him? Well, why do you pick anybody? We picked him because we needed somebody. We could 'a' picked one of Strut Hawkins's boys or one of Joe Simon's boys. We could 'a' picked one of Aunt Lou Bolin's boys-but we picked him. It was back there in the thirties. Joe had just tanned S'mellin'. We all knowed Joe was from Alabama, and we said if Alabama could give One that good, Samson, Luzana could do the same. Oh, no, no, no, we didn't say it exactly like that. We felt it more. In here, in there. People never say things like that. They feel it in the heart.

In the forties, during the war, we started watching him. I had moved down the quarters. I wanted to move out of the house soon after Tee Bob killed himself, but Robert kept me up there to be with Miss Amma Dean. I stayed five years more and I told them I wanted to get out. Robert told me I got out when he said I got out. I told him at my age I did what I wanted to do. Miss Amma Dean told me she wanted me up there because I needed looking after much more than she did, but, she said, if I wanted to go, go. I told them I wanted to go, I wanted to move down in the quarters. They said why move in the quarters when I already had a nice little house at the front. "Don't you have a hyphen?" they said. I said, "Yes ma'am." "Don't you have lectwicity?" they said. I said, "Yes, sir." "Then what you want go down there for?" they said. "There ain't no hyphen down there and no lectwicity. Not even a pump in every yard. Just that well side the road. You got anything against good light and drinking good water?" "Nothing at all," I said. "But the house I'm staying in now been the cook's house even since I been here and probably long as Samson been here. Since I'm not y'all cook no more I don't feel I have the right to be there." "Maybe you don't know it," Robert said, "but you ain't been doing too much cooking 'round here in about ten, 'leven years. But you been doing your share of eating." "I hope I have not deprived you of a meal, Mr. Robert," I said. "My hand is quicker than your eyes," he said. "That's why I want to go down the quarters and raise a garden and some chickens," I said. "I hate to see a grown man s.n.a.t.c.hing food off his own table." "Go if you want go," Miss Amma Dean said. "How you plan to get down the quarters, and where will you stay? Is the house clean? How far you go'n have to haul water? The Lord knows I see no point in you leaving." "I must leave," I said. "Mr. Robert, is it all right with you if I moved in that house side Mary?" "You asking me?" he said. "I didn't know I still running Samson. I thought you was. I thought it was up to you to tell me when you wanted to move and where. And it was my duty to go down there and clean up the place for you. To run a special pipe down there so you can have hyphen water. To run a special line of lectwicity down there so you wouldn't have to run out to the store for coal oil every day. I thought that was my duty at Samson. Is I done missed out on a duty? Oh, yes, I think I have missed one. I'm suppose to cut all them blood weeds down and run all them blue runner over in Hawk yard so they won't come upon your gallery at night and keep you company. If it ain't slipped my mind, you scared of snakes-or have you changed since about yesterday this time?" "Go if you want go," Miss Amma Dean said, "Find Bea and Mae and tell them clean up that place for you. I'll get Etienne to take them things down the quarters."

It was in the war I moved down the quarters. He was five or six then. Maybe four because he wasn't in school yet. He didn't start school till that Richard girl came here and started teaching. That was after Lillian. Lillian was between Mary Agnes and Vivian Richard.

Shirley went to new Orleans soon after she weaned him, and now it was just him and Lena in the house down there. After I moved down the quarters I spent many days over there on Lena's gallery and at her firehalf. But not just me; looked like all the people met there. Lena had that willow tree in the yard and it kept shade on the gallery on the hottest days. There was always somebody down there talking to her, and Jimmy sitting right there listening to all we had to say. I think that's how we started watching him. Seeing him sitting there all the time, we started wondering if he was the One. No, we never said nothing to him about it, we never said nothing to each other about it-but we felt it. When we found out he count to a hundred by ones, twos, fives, tens, and we found out he knowed all his ABCs, we used to make him recite for us any time we went down there. "Y'all hear that?" Lena used to say, with that big grin on her face. "No more than six now, and y'all hear that?" It made her feel good and sad. Good because he could do it; sad because if he was the One he was go'n have to leave sooner or later.

We used to watch him pa.s.sing by in the road on his way to school. If it was cold and we saw that sweater not b.u.t.toned, we would say, "Get that thing b.u.t.toned there, Jimmy." If we saw him trying to break ice in that ditch with the toe of his shoe, we would tell him to cut that out before he caught a death of cold. In summer we used to tell him, "You better stay out them weeds before snake bite you, boy." If we saw him fighting we chastized him no matter who was wrong. He wasn't suppose to fight these here in the quarters, he was suppose to stand up for them. You see, we had already made him the One.

When he learned how to read we made him the reader in the quarters. And by the time he was nine he could read good as anybody down here except the schoolteacher. He used to read and write our letters for us, and he used to read the newspapers, too. Miss Amma Dean used to send me the newspapers every evening and I used to get him to read the sports to me. I didn't care for nothing in the papers side the sports and the funnies. I used to make tea cakes, and I used to give him tea cakes and clabber, and he used to sit right there and read me the funnies. And could go just like Jiggs and Maggie. Go just like Dagwood. "See what devilment they in this time," I used to say; and he used to sit right there and read it all to me. Then he used to read the sports to me and tell me what Jackie had done. Jackie and the Dodgers was for the colored people; the Yankees was for the white folks. Like in the Depression, Joe Louis was for the colored. When times get really hard, really tough, He always send you somebody. In the Depression it was tough on everybody, but twice as hard on the colored, and He sent us Joe. Joe was to lift the colored people's heart. Of course S'mellin' beat him the first time. But that was just to teach us a lesson. To show us Joe was just a man, not a superman. And to show us we could take just a little bit more hardship than we thought we could take at first. Now the second fight was different. We prayed and prayed, and He heard our prayers, and at the same time He wanted to punish them for thinking they was something super. I heard every lick of that fight on the radio, and what Joe didn't put on S'mellin' that night just couldn't go on a man. You could look a week and you could still see the n.i.g.g.e.rs grinning about that fight. Unc Gilly used to come up to my house and lay down on the floor on his back and kick his heels up in the air to show me how S'mellin' had fall. Up till Unc Gilly died he was showing people how S'mellin' fell when Joe hit him.

Now, after the war He sent us Jackie. The colored soldiers coming back from the war said we could fight together we could play ball together. Not till then would they hire Jackie. And when they got him he showed them a trick or two. Home runs, steal bases-eh, Lord. It made my day just to hear what Jackie had done. Miss Amma Dean would send me the papers when they got through with it at the front, and soon as I got it I would send for Jimmy to come read me the sports and the funnies. If the Dodgers had won, if Jackie had done good, my day was made. If they had lost or if Jackie hadn't hit, I suffered till they played again.

Then I found out Jimmy was telling me lies. He knowed how much I liked Jackie and the Dodgers and on them days I wasn't feeling too good he would tell me Jackie had stole two bases when Jackie hadn't stole a one. Would tell me Jackie had got three or four hits when Jackie hadn't got near the first base. Then on them days when Jackie got a bunch of hits and stole a bunch of bases he would take couple of them back to make up for the others he had gived him earlier. (He wasn't nothing but a child, and he didn't know we had already made him the One, bur he was already doing things the One is supposed to do.) Side reading the newspapers, he used to read the Bible for us, too; and he used to read and write our letters. Knowed how to say just what you wanted to say. All you had to do was get him started and he could write the best two-page letter you ever read. He would write about your garden, about the church, the people, the weather. And he would get it down just like you felt it inside. I used to sit there and look at him sitting on my steps writing and water would come in my eyes. You see, we had already made him the One, and I was already scared something was go'n happen to him or he would be taken from us.

One summer he stayed in New Orleans with his mama, and we got that ugly boy there of c.o.o.n to read and write for us. That boy was ugly as a monkey and had ways twice as bad. He had a little ugly brown dog that used to follow him everywhere, and the children here in the quarters used to call that dog Monkey Boy Dog. The dog's name was Dirt, but the children wouldn't call him Dirt; called him Monkey Boy Dog.

But that boy was something else. What was in that paper, that's what he read. He didn't care how bad you felt. He came to your house to read what was in the paper, he didn't come there to up lift your spirits. If Jackie stole a base, he read that. If Jackie didn't steal a base, he read that, too. The people used to tell him that old people like me needed her spirit up-lifted every now and then. "Can't you make up a little story at times?" they used to tell him. He used to say, "I ain't no preacher. Let preachers tell them lies." Oh, he was evil, that boy. Same when it came to writing your letters. Wrote what you told him and nothing else. When you stopped talking, he stopped writing. "I don't know your business if you don't know it," he used to say. "I come here to write your letter, not think myself crazy," One time I told him: "Can't you say something about my garden?" He said: "Say what about it? Say it out there? I can say that if you want me to. You want me to say, *My garden still here?' " "Can't you say, *Beans dry' or something," I said. (I always like to fill both sides of the page when I write a letter, you know.) He said: "If you want people in New Orleans to know your beans dry, I'll go on and write your beans dry. Don't make me no never mind."

It was pretty clear to everybody in the quarters that he wasn't the One.

Jimmy was born after Tee Bob killed himself, so that mean Robert had already turned the place over to sharecroppers. Tee Bob was to inherit the place, but when he died and they didn't have another son to give the place to, Robert chopped the place up in small patches and called in the people. First, he called in the Cajuns off the river and gived them what they wanted. Then he called in the colored out the quarters and gived them what was left. Some of them got a good piece of land to work, but most of them got land near the swamps, and it growed nothing but weeds, and sometimes not even that. So the colored people gived up and started moving away. That and the war took most of the young men and women from here. After they left, the old people and the children tried to work the land, but they got even less from it. The Cajuns, on the other hand, was getting more and more all the time. And the more they got, the better plows and tractors they got. And the better the plows and tractors, the more they got. After a while they wanted more land. That's when Robert started taking acre by acre from the colored and giving it to them. He took and took till there wasn't enough to support a family, so the people had to give up and leave or give up and work for the Cajuns. If they left a house that was rotten, Robert boarded up the windows and doors awhile, then he had somebody on the place tear it down, and he let the Cajuns plow up the land where the house used to be. That's why coming down here now you see cane and corn where houses was twelve, fifteen years back. But they've had a many babies born here, and many old people have died here, you hear me. Sappho and them right over there; Claudee and them little farther down. Then Grace, then Elvira and them. On this side Lettie and her brood. (Corine drowned one of Lettie's children in that well down the quarters way back there in the twenties.) On the other side of Lettie, Just Thomas and Elsie; then c.o.o.n and her drove. Hawk Brown, Gerry and their children right over here. Little farther up, Phillip, Unc Octave and Aunt Nane. Strut Hawkins and his bunch. Then go on the other side and start where I used to live. Little farther down Joe Simon and Ida. Harriet. Little farther, Oscar, Rosa, their children. Manuel, his family. Toby, his bunch. Bessie and hers. Aunt 'Phine Jackson and them. Aunt Lou Bolin and her hungry bunch. Billy Red, his mama and daddy. (He went to New Orleans and called himself Red Bille-a Frenchman.) Little farther down, Unc Gilly and Aunt Sara. Timmy and Verda. And many many more I can't think of right at the moment. But now just a few of us left. Now nothing but fields, fields, and more fields. They don't have nerve enough to kick the rest of us off, so they just wait for us to move away or die. Well, I got news for them: these old bones is tired, and that's true, but they ain't about ready to lay down for good, yet. I done seen a hundred and ten or more years, and I don't mind seeing a few more. The Master will let me know when He wants His servant Up High. Till then I will have some of them children read me the Bible, read me the papers, and I'll do all the walking I can. And I will eat vanilla ice cream which I loves and enjoys.

Jimmy saw this place changing, and he saw all the people moving away. He saw the young men going to war, and he saw the young women going to the city. His own mon was in that crowd. He saw the tractors come and tear down the old houses and plow up the land, and he saw us all standing there watching the tractors. He saw all that. Now he heard this: heard us on that gallery talking about slavery, talking about the high water, talking about Long. He heard me talk about Cluveau and Ned. He heard us all talk about Black Harriet and Katie; Tom Joe and Timmy. And when the young men came back to visit the old people he heard them talking about the war. The j.a.ps wasn't like the white people said they was. They was colored just like us, and they didn't want kill us, they just wanted to kill the white soldiers. If the colored soldiers was marching in front, the j.a.ps would shoot over the colored soldiers head just to get to the white boys. If the colored soldiers was marching in the back, the j.a.ps would drop the bombs shorter. It was this that made them integrate that Army and nothing else.

Jimmy heard all this before he was twelve; by the time he was twelve he was definitely the One. We watched him every move he made. We made sure he made just the right ones. If he tried to go afoul-and he did at times-we told him what he had heard and what he had seen. No, no, no, we never told it to him like I'm telling it to you now; we just looked at him hard. But it was in that look. Sometimes that look can tell you more than words ever can.

He tried first there with Strut's gal, Eva, or she tried it with him, because they was both about that age now, and from what people had been saying she had already tried it with a few others. So now he thought it was his time to try it, or be enticed by it. It was spring, it was the year he was twelve. It was April, it had just rained. Evening-just getting dark. Lena sent him to the store to get a gallon of coal oil. We had lectwicity down here now, but the old people still kept some coal oil for the lamps just in case something happened to the 'lectric wires. And side that they used coal oil to light fire. Lena sent him to the store that evening to get coal oil. n.o.body know who said what to who, but next thing-Aunt 'Phine saw it when she came out on the gallery-that coal oil can was hanging on that gate and he was on Strut's gallery trying to throw Strut's gal down. Yes, Aunt 'Phine said, that's the noise she had heard in the house. She said she was sitting in the front room eating supper when she kept hearing this booming noise over there on Strut's gallery. It kept going, boom. Then little bit later, boom. Then little bit later, boom again. She went out on the gallery to see what was making the noise. It was almost dark, but she could see somebody trying to throw somebody down. Instead of pushing her down like it was clear she wanted him to do-no, he was trying to throw her down. Picking her up and swinging her over his shoulder. But each time he swung her, her feet, her heels, hit the floor before her back did. If he had pushed her down like she wanted him to do Aunt 'Phine wouldn't 'a' heard the noise and he wouldn't 'a' got whipped, but, no, he wanted to pick her up and slam her down. And each time he tried it, she made sure her heels. .h.i.t first. (Teasing him.) Aunt 'Phine said before she recognized him, she recognized that coal oil can hanging on Strut's gate. No, she didn't recognize the coal oil can, it was too dark: she had talked to Lena earlier that day and Lena had mentioned something about getting a gallon of coal oil from the store soon as Jimmy came home. Now since that person on Strut's gallery was about Jimmy's size and age, the age to be thinking about doing what this one here was trying to do, she hollered: "Get away from there, Jimmy." Instead of him moving, he picked that gal up and slammed her back on her heels again. "Boy, you hear me?" Aunt 'Phine said. He picked her up and slammed her back down. "Wait," Aunt 'Phine said. She sat her pan of food on the gallery and started out the yard. She said she heard boom again, then again boom. But by the time she got to Strut's gate, the coal oil can was gone, and nothing but a black streak was headed up the quarters. Aunt 'Phine came on down to Lena. When Jimmy got back home, Lena sent him out in the yard to get her a good switch. And that was the first time.

Now he tried it in the loft. He knowed what had happened to him for trying it on the gallery even when he had failed-so now he tried it in the loft. All the children in the quarters playing hide-go-seek that day. Twenty, thirty of them running all over the place. Everybody got found, everybody but him and Eva. They up there in Strut's loft. The rest of the children got tired playing hide-go-seek, they start playing something else. But him and Eva still up there in the loft. I'll never forget, it was hot hot that day. Dead in the summer, and we was all sitting on Lena's gallery st.i.tching a quilt. By and by here come one of the children running in the yard to tell Lena they had found Jimmy and Eva. Where? The loft. Little bit later, here he come.

"I hope you got what you went after," Lena said. "Now, you got something else to get."

He didn't ask what, he knowed what, he went and got the switch.

"You go'n whip me in front of them?" he said.

The yard was full of children now. The gallery was full of old people. Etienne was there, too, sitting with his back against the post.

"You go'n whip me in front of them?" he asked her.

"No," Lena said. "Eva will get her belly full soon enough."

We all looked at him standing there with the switch in his hand. It was hot-sweat running down his face. We all wanted him to get the whipping. We didn't care if Eva got it or not. What did any of us care about Eva? We all knowed what Eva was go'n turn out to be. And we knowed what we wanted out of him. We didn't say it to him, we didn't say it to each other; maybe we didn't say it to ourself-but we felt it.

"Only natural," Etienne told Lena in Creole. Etienne was always taking up for boys-and 'specially for Jimmy.

"I don't care how natural it is," Lena said, back in Creole.

"I did it," Etienne said. "All boys do it."

"Look where it got you," Lena said in Creole. "You want him there?"

"No," Etienne said.

"You think I like this?" Lena said in Creole.

"I know you don't," Etienne said.

While they was talking they was looking at him, not at each other. He knowed they was talking about him, he knowed Etienne was taking up for him, but he didn't understand Creole and he didn't know what they was saying.

"You want it now or tonight before you go to bed?" Lena asked him.

"Can you whip me in the kitchen?" he said.

"Yes. Come on," Lena said.

They went in the back. We heard the licks, and her talking to him, and we could hear him crying. We wanted him to get the whipping, but after it was over I'm sure we all wanted to put our arms round him. I know for the rest of the week we got him to do things for us just so we could give him something. A nickel, a dime; tea cakes, pralines.

We wanted him to get religion that year, too, the year he made twelve years old. The Master started when He was twelve, if you will remember. We knowed if he was to be the One-no, not if no more, he was already the One-we knowed he had to find religion. The colored has suffered in this world, and that is true, but we know still the Lord's been good to us. Look at me: I'm more than a hundred and ten. If it's not the Lord keeping me going, what is? I can sit in the sun, I can walk-no, not like I used to, but I can still move around a little bit. On days when I'm feeling real good, I can go all the way to the road and look at the river. But generally I just go up the quarters a piece and sit under my old tree. The people done fixed me a clean little spot there, and I can go up there and sit and talk to my tree, talk to myself, talk to my G.o.d till I get tired. Sometimes I stay there an hour thanking Him for His blessings, then I come on back home.

We wanted him to get religion that summer he was twelve. Lena made him go to prayer meeting every night, and every night he went and sat up on the mourners bench with the rest of the children, and every night they prayed over him. Elder Banks prayed over him more than he prayed over any the others because it was known all around now that he was the One. But all this praying didn't do no good that year. Lena thought he still had his mind on Strut's gal, and she thought the best medicine was a switch every now and then, but I told her no. I told her he would come around. She said when. Then she would start crying. "When?" Because, you see, the rest of the children his age was getting religion, and he wasn't. And he was the One, and the One had to lead in everything. "When?" she would say. "The Lord knows how we feel. He won't let us down," I would tell her.

But the summer he was twelve pa.s.sed and he was still a sinner.

The next year we started on him early. Prayer meeting starts in the summer, but we started on him in the spring. He was thirteen now, and we meant for him to put away his sinful ways. So every time he wrote a letter for us now, we had him say something about the church and something about all the little children who had joined the church last summer.

We didn't allow him to play cards for fun or pecans. We didn't want him to play marbles or ball like all the other children did. If we saw him trying to steal off and do these things we called him in and sent him to the store. Or we sent him to somebody else's house to borrow some tobacco or some sugar. Or maybe borrow a hoe or an axe. No matter if we needed it or not-got borrow it. We didn't want him to go to the fair on Sat.u.r.day nights. They had music and dancing at these fairs, and that was sinful. We didn't like for him to listen to the radio, either; 'less he was listening to gospel music on Sundays.

When summer got here and the people started prayer meeting at the church, we asked him if he was praying for religion. He said yes. We told him we was all praying for him. When we went to church now and prayed for the sinners we kept him in mind. We didn't call his name-that wasn't right to the rest of the sinners-but we did it on the sly. We used to say things like: "Lord, go with them who don't have a daddy and whose mama's gone off to the city. Go with the old people who's left to look after the children. Lord, make them obedient to the old people and let them seek thy kingdom for their salvation." In that way both him and the Lord knowed who we was talking about, and we didn't even have to mention his name.

He got religion the first week of August-that was back in 1951. He came to me that day-I was sitting out there on my gallery-and he said, "I got religion, Miss Jane."

Me and Etienne was sitting out there on the gallery, and I said: "You sure?"

He said: "I believe so."

I said: "No believing. You got to be sure."

He said: "I'm sure."

I said: "I will hear you talk tonight."

He went to all the old people that day and told them he had religion. That's what you did in them time. You went to all the old people and told them you had religion. If they couldn't show up at the church that night to hear you talk, you would tell them your travels then. You would tell it right out there on the gallery, or maybe in the room where you wouldn't be disturbed by noise.

(When Mack Jenkins got religion he came here and told me he had religion, and now he wanted to kneel down and kiss my foot because I had been a slave and he wanted to humble himself to me. I said, "Jenkins, if you don't get away from here, I'm go'n haul back and kick you in the mouth. Religion raises the heart, makes you n.o.ble, it don't make you crazy." I said: "If I was you I would check again to see what I really got." Lord, that Jenkins was one more, you hear me.) "I hope they didn't push him too fast," Etienne said, after Jimmy went out of the yard.

"Thirteen ain't too young," I said.

"Not if you ready," Etienne said. "But I don't know if he's through with Strut's gal yet. It's cool under them Palm-o'-Christians this time of year, and from what they say about her that was her favorite laying down place."

I said, "Etienne, if you don't quit that kind of talk round here, I'm going in that house and find that stick. Come back out here and knock the fool out you."

That night he told his travels. Lena sat there crying, and I wept, too. But when I got home I felt better than I had felt in a long long time.

After he got baptized we wanted him to preach. Listening to his travels we knowed he was close to G.o.d, and now we wanted him to pick up the gospel. He told us he was not a preacher. He would work in the church, but he was not a preacher. Now the people started looking at each other. They said, "He talked that good and now he don't want preach?" Some of them started having doubts about his religion. But I did not. I knowed, if anybody had religion, he did. I just wondered when he got it. Maybe he had it long long before he knowed he had it or any of us knowed he had it. "If he don't want preach let him serve in some other way," I said. I was the oldest in the church and they called me the church mother. But I liked baseball so much they had to take it from me and give it to Em-ma. But I was the church mother then, and I said, "Let him do something else." They said, "The One ought to be in front of everything." (They didn't say it like that-but that's what was in their faces.) I said, "Let's give him some time. Let's not push him. Not everybody is sent to preach. Some are sent to pray, some are sent to sing. Some are sent to ring bells, some are sent to build altars, and others are sent to cut the gra.s.s in church yards. Just because we made him the One, don't let's try to make him a preacher, too."

When the people saw he didn't want preach, they wanted to make him a deacon. But he didn't want that either. He wanted to sit back in the congregation like the rest of us. If a lady shouted he would help the ushers hold her down. If they had to take her outside catch fresh air he would help the ushers take her to the door. Sometimes he would ring the bell if Just wasn't there. Sometimes he would open the service by reading from the Bible.

One time he put on a little play at the church-not a religious play, a funny play-and the people here in the quarters won't ever forget it. He got some black shoe polish and some white shoe polish and put this on the children face and put them up there on the pulpit saying crazy things. Lord, if the people didn't laugh. People laughed till they cried. Children up there talking like people over there on Morgan talk: "Ya.s.suh." "Nawsuh." "Ps be going now, bossman, suh." "Man, you better take yo' hand off ma 'oman, yeah. Don't you know that's ma 'oman you handlin' there?" Lord, if the people didn't laugh.

But the people wanted him to preach, and he didn't want preach. Sometimes me and Jimmy would be sitting there on the gallery talking, and all of a sudden he would stop listening to what I was saying and start gazing out in the road like he was listening to something else. One day he was back there in the kitchen with me while I was cooking. I won't even forget it-I was cooking Irish potatoes and cabbage that day. He said, "Miss Jane, I got something like a tiger in my chest, just gnawing and gnawing and want come out. I want rip my chest open and let it free. I pray to G.o.d to take it out, but look like the Lord don't hear me. This thing gnaw and gnaw at me and I want scream. I want run in the woods and beat my head against the trees. I want go down in the bottom of that river and stay there and stay there. Something in me want come out, Miss Jane, but I don't know how to get it out. n.o.body helps me, not even the Lord."

Jimmy told me that exactly a year before that desegregating bill pa.s.sed there in Washington. Maybe we didn't know at first why we had made him the One, but that was the reason.

a a a But the people here at Samson wasn't the only ones wanted Jimmy to be the One. Colored all over this parish wanted him to be the One. By the time he was twelve he had traveled all over this parish with Olivia Antoine. Olivia is the lady here in the quarters who sell garden seeds and the cologne stuff. And she cash the checks and do all the shopping for the old people here on the place. When our welfare checks come in we sign them and give them to her to cash for us and do our little shopping. Jimmy used to write down on a tablet what we wanted. Sometimes Olivia had many as six, seven people to make grocery for. Her and Jimmy going from house to house. Her in front, Jimmy walking behind with that pencil and tablet.

After they had got everybody's list they would head out for Bayonne. But since Olivia had customers long the road, she had to stop to see if they needed anything. She had been selling garden seeds and cologne and things like that for many many years, so she knowed everybody. She knowed the mulattoes and she knowed all the Creoles. The Creole gals love that sweet stuff on them when they go out. You got lot of them up the road, 'round Bayonne, and on the Island, there. Jimmy used to listen to Olivia talk to them. n.o.body on earth can talk like the old Creole people can talk. For hours and hours they can go on like that. She said even they used to look at him and say things about him. "He is very bright." "He will make some girl happy." "He will be a credit to his family." "He will be a credit to his race." "But he must be careful or the white people will kill him, sure." She said many times she wished he was her own son. Sometimes when she went out and didn't take him with her the people would say: "Where's your boy there, 'Livia?" "He'll be with me next time," she would tell them. And she said she was always lonely when he wasn't there.

Olivia said she tried to show him sales talk, but he never was interested. He was more interested in the people they visited. Even when they talked in Creole and he couldn't understand what they was saying, he was interested in the way the words sounded. Olivia said sometimes when they was by themself he would ask her: "Miss 'Livia, what do takalapala mean?" She would say: "Not for a little boy to know." Other times, if it wasn't too serious, she would tell him.

And it was this, going round with Olivia, listening to people talk, listening to us talk here on the place, what was gnawing in his chest. This was the thing he wanted to let out. No, not out. To let this out he had to both blind himself and defend himself. No, what he wanted was to help. But he didn't know how.

Jimmy left from here the same year they pa.s.sed that law in Washington. Went to New Orleans to stay with his mama and go to school. They pa.s.sed that law in the spring, he left here in the summer. We all went out to the road with him to catch the bus. Lena, Olivia, myself-others. It was a Sunday. A Sunday evening. We gived him a little party the night before, but we still had him loaded down with food. Cake, fried chicken, oranges. Going right there to New Orleans-he had enough food to last him a week. We stayed out there with him till he got on the bus, then we came on back down the quarters.