Just Above My Head by James Baldwin
Martha was very moved, I could see that, and I was pleased. It was as though my newfound friend, Sidney, had just given us a Christmas present, like that, for nothing, out of love.
I gave our coats to George, and sat Martha down. The room was bright and black, black, and bright with black people, as jagged and precise as lightning.
“What shall we drink?”
“Well,” said Martha helplessly, “I’ve been drinking punch all night—”
“Oh, well, we can make you a fine punch, ma’am,” said George. He looked at me and we both laughed.
“I bet you can,” I said. “Okay. For two.”
“My pleasure,” George said, and plodded back to the bar.
“Well,” said Martha, “this is the first time we’ve been out someplace together in—I don’t know how long.”
I took both her hands in mine. “You know why? It’s because we’re both too goddamn serious. You worry too much. I worry too much.”
“Why? What do you worry about, Hall?”
And I felt myself retreating, withdrawing, the way a snail gloops back into its shell. I didn’t want to retreat. I held on to her hands, and I held her eyes with mine.
I said, “I’ve got a lot to worry about, Martha. The point is, there’s more to life than—worry.”
She had met my parents once or twice, seen Arthur once or twice. She knew Paul was a musician—and that was almost all she knew about me.
As far, of course, as I was able; or willing, to tell.
She left her hands in mine, but she dropped her eyes.
“I’m sure there is,” she said at last, “only—”
I rubbed her hands between mine. I did not want her to retreat, to withdraw, to withdraw from me, even though I had no idea how I could deal with her vulnerability. Yet: “What do you worry about, Martha?”
It was, anyway, a real question, which I had not known I was going to ask.
She looked at me and laughed a little laugh. “Oh. My aunt. The hospital. My weight.” She laughed again, and I laughed with her. “My life. My future.” She looked down again. “My color. My sex.” She looked up again. “You,” she said, “and me.”
I wanted to let go her hand, but I didn’t. Now it was my turn to look down. “Here we go,” I said. “Look at us, worrying about how much we worry.”
She laughed again, and took one hand out of my hand and touched my face. “Don’t,” she said. “I think I understand.”
Silence, then, between us, and the lightning all around us.
“I may be being drafted soon,” I said.
“Oh, no,” she said. “My aunt bought me a shotgun for Christmas, and I’ll shoot you in the foot.”
George was bearing down on our table like a big-assed bird.
Martha looked around her and said, in a low voice, dry, distant: “Then, you’re thinking of spending next Christmas in Korea?”
George arrived with his tray, and I let go her hands. “Something like that,” I said.
George set down two of the largest, most exotic-looking glasses I had ever seen—which attracted the attention, indeed, of the people at the next table and must have caused a sensation when he had carried them through the bar.
“Sidney made these himself, special for you,” said George. “He say it’s full of vitamins. I reckon he know, and you all going to find out,” and George gave us a lewd chuckle and lumbered away again.
We raised the heavy glasses in both our hands, and gently, gravely, clinked them together. We looked each other in the eye, a little like children—why did I think of this?—discovering affection, if not love, for the very first time. We sipped the punch, we grinned, but Martha said, “I still believe I’ll shoot you in the foot. You don’t really need ten toes, you know—you can make do with nine. Hell, this city is full of folks ain’t got but one or two, I sewed a couple of them on myself.” We both laughed, but it wasn’t really funny. I didn’t want nine toes, I wanted all ten, and I fucking well had no eyes for Korea. I didn’t see what right I would have to be there, what right anybody had to send my black ass there. I don’t think anybody can really hate his country, I don’t think that’s possible; but you can certainly despise the road your country travels, and the people they elect to lead them on that road. If I had been a white man, I would have been ashamed, really, to send a black man anywhere to fight for me. But shame is individual, not collective, and, collectively speaking, white people have no shame. They have the shortest memories of any people in the world—which explains, no doubt, why they have no shame.
I said, “Maybe I’ll find a way—not to spend next Christmas in Korea—and keep my ten toes, too.”
“That,” said Martha, “would be beautiful. I would dig that, truly.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes, really. For that, I’d steal every cent of Tara’s rent money and let it be gone with the wind.”
“You crazy, girl, you know that, don’t you?”
“What’s so crazy about deciding to haul ass out of Georgia? Anyway, you know that I never liked Tara—mother always loved Scarlett more than she loved me.”
We laughed again, and sipped again from our exotic glasses. I thought, This must be what you feel like when you’re happy.
But we’d never get together the rent for Tara, and, by next Christmas, we might both be gone with the wind. I would almost certainly be in Korea. And what worried me most about that was not what might, then, happen to Martha, but what might happen to my brother.
I wish I could have said that to Martha, then, because I can see, now, that she would certainly have understood it; and some part of our anguish would not have been necessary. I think she understood everything, then, to tell the truth, but I didn’t, and Martha, so to speak, was not a trespasser and stayed off the grass.
“Let’s not worry too much about it now,” I said. “It’s Christmas now, we have each other now.”
Sidney came to the table with all his wavy hair, and sat down, expelling his breath in a tremendously exaggerated sigh. “It’s a damn good thing Christmas don’t come but once a year. I’m going to have varicose veins by the time the new year gets here.” From his tone one could imagine that he was looking forward, gleefully, to this new affliction. He looked, quickly, at both of us. “How you all doing?” He looked at our glasses. “Sure ain’t doing much drinking, are you?”
“We were waiting for you,” I said.
“Oh, you quick,” said Sidney. “You so quick, sometimes I tremble for you.”
“It’s been a long day for you, then,” said Martha.
“The days wouldn’t be so bad,” said Sidney, grinning, “if you could just cut down on the nights. I been here all day, and I left here early this morning—and I didn’t go home then!”
“Well then, if you get varicose veins,” I said, “you won’t have nobody but yourself to blame.”
Sidney looked at me with a tremendous mocking scorn and pity. “That’s right,” he said, “who else I’m going to blame? I can see me trying to kick my ass with my crippled foot.” He laughed. “You right, Hall, ain’t nobody to blame but yourself. I just don’t see what difference that makes. I can blame myself for a lot of things. I do blame myself for a lot of things. What do that change? It don’t change nothing. It don’t change me. If I could change me, I wouldn’t have to blame me, right? But I don’t know how I want to change. My hand might start to tremble while I start the operation, you dig? and I might fuck up everything so bad wouldn’t be nobody even left to blame. I reckon I might as well keep on blaming Sidney. He’s all I got.” And he grinned at us, a little drunk, and very winning.
Martha, impulsively, kissed him on the nose. “You’re not drinking, either?” she asked.
“Sure, I’m going to drink with you, you know that, you’re my friends.” He looked from Martha to me, his face as bright as a child’s face. “Wow! Ain’t that something, a Christmas present, and I was so lonely.”
Ceremoniously, he kissed Ma
George stood above us, smiling.
“You ain’t off yet, you know,” George said.
“I know I’m not off—but I’m off for ten minutes. Can’t I have my ten minutes?”
“And what you want with your ten minutes?”
“Give me my bourbon—”
“And bring me a beer,” I said.
For if we were going to hang out, and it seemed likely now that we might be hanging out, I was going to have to shift gears and get off that punch.
George attempted, with small success, a reprimanding scowl, and lumbered back into what was left of Christmas.
But there was, astoundingly, beautifully, a great deal left of Christmas—in Sidney’s face, in Martha’s: it was the very first time I felt like a Christmas present. This was because they, Sidney and Martha, were themselves Christmas presents for me—Martha’s old love, new, Sidney’s new love, old—both loves, together, anesthetized me against my fear of love. I threw back my head, and I laughed out loud. Sidney shook those waves, that gleaming mane of his parboiled hair, and Martha grabbed each of us by one hand. Her earrings nearly matched the lightning, there was something inexpressible in it, the fragile moment which lasts forever.
But Sidney’s ten minutes were up—oh, in, let’s say, fifteen minutes; so then Martha and I decided to move a few blocks down the road to where my father was playing piano. This was partly because of Sidney, who gave Martha the courage to suggest that she would like to see my father again. Sidney promised to meet us there before the place closed, and George promised to have Sidney’s ass in the wind, in time.
Paul knew that I was with, as he would cautiously have put it, “some girl,” and expected to see me when he saw me. But he hadn’t expected to see me tonight, and I had not expected to see my mother, who sat in shadows in a far corner, facing the bar, the mother-of-pearl comb still glorifying her black hair. I saw Florence the moment, though, that Martha and I walked in, and I immediately, instinctively, looked around for Arthur, for Florence would never have left him alone tonight. Arthur was underage, of course, and had no right to be in a bar; but he was also Paul Montana’s son, and it was still Christmas.
So there he sat, at a table with his mother, aware that he was too big to be sitting at a table with his mother, and aware also that he was not yet big enough.
Paul was playing as we walked in. Martha and I inched our way through the crowd, and got to the end of the bar, where Arthur and Florence could see us.
Florence saw us at once, but Arthur didn’t. His eyes ranged from his father to everyone and everything in the bar. He would see me soon. But for the moment, almost as though I were a spy, as though I sensed this as a moment which would not come soon again, I tensed and tried to make myself little, invisible, as I watched that face, my brother’s, the face he had when he did not know I was around.
He had the eyes, the intensity, of a student, a small student on one of the first of his days in school; but it would be a very remarkable elder who would attempt to protect this student. His eyes moved with the splendid, reckless precision of a small bird, an insect with translucent wings, lighting on this, on that, a twig, a stone, a branch, you—and gone, circling, circling back again, gone again: making of air, light, space, and danger, a province, a kingdom—you, rooted to the earth, follow without moving, stare. I could not see what he was seeing. For example, there were people to the left of him, in deeper shadows, whom I could not see at all, whom he regarded from time to time, with a kind of impenetrable pity. From where he sat, he could not see the bar—or he could see only the very end of it. He was facing Paul’s piano, and he could see—dimly—the people at the tables behind Paul. He seemed to be watching the people with the intention of defining and conquering the terrain: the way an actor gauges the physical limits, and possibilities, of the space in which he must achieve his performance, or perhaps, simply the way little Julia handled a pulpit. His regard was full of wonder, but it was not naive. At the same time, it was young, and full of trouble. His eyes took in everything, ranged—but his father was the center, his mother was the anchor. Then he saw Martha, whom he recognized immediately, a recognition which troubled him, for he had not seen me. Then he saw me.
It was nice, that recognition. I will always remember it. When he saw Martha, he was afraid that she was cheating on me, that I had been betrayed—that “something” had happened to me. His eyes became electrically dark and alert, as he scanned the space where I should have been. All this took place in a second or two, perhaps less, for something in Martha’s face reassured him, and Florence had seen me—then Arthur saw me, and his unguarded child’s face opened, and let me know.
Paul sort of doodled on the piano while we made our way to the table, and somehow, got a couple of chairs.
Martha and Florence kissed each other, I held Arthur’s head against my chest for a moment—being mightily careful, just the same, with his hair—and asked Mama, in a stage whisper, how come Skeezix was out tonight, and what she was serving him to drink.
“Well, it’s not communion wine, I can tell you that,” said Mama, and she and Arthur laughed, but it was not a happy laugh. “We’ll tell you about it later,” Florence said, and touched her hair.
Arthur whispered, “Something awful’s going to happen in the house, brother. Something awful. You can feel it.”
“We just left a preacher’s house,” Florence said to Martha, “and Arthur’s just surprised at some of the changes you can see in a preacher—from when you see the preacher in the pulpit and when you see him in his house!”
Martha grinned at Arthur, openly trying to make friends with him. “I’ve got a couple of preachers in my family. So I think I know what you’re talking about.”
I didn’t feel that she needed, in order to keep on loving me, that much help from my baby brother: but I hadn’t yet needed to call for help.
“I hope the preachers in your family weren’t children,” Florence said.
She looked down as she said this, and her face was bitter; without realizing it, she put one hand, lightly, on top of Arthur’s hand.
“Chronologically speaking, no,” said Martha. “Some of them even vote.”
“Don’t tell us where,” I said, and then, “They just left Brother and Sister Miller’s house, you know—where I was—Little Sister Julia’s house—”
“Ah, yes,” said Martha, “the child prodigy. I’ve seen her preaching on street corners—I may see her on street corners again one day.” She spoke to Arthur and me, of course, since we were there, but the communication was between herself and Florence. Florence and Martha looked each other in the eye, and Florence nodded as Martha said, as though speaking of someone no one knew, “That child’s future is tough, you know, because she’s already got a past—and what a past—and she’s going to have to do something about cleaning up that past before she has any future—how old is she now?”
“Thirteen,” said Arthur, promptly—and then, “Martha, don’t you work in a hospital?”
“Sure do,” said Martha. “In Harlem Hospital. Why?”
Arthur looked at Florence. “You see? Mama, listen, that’s not far. Why couldn’t you and Martha just take a walk with Julia’s mother? Maybe tomorrow afternoon? And Martha works in the hospital, she can make an excuse to stop for a minute, and you all go in there and you can get Julia’s mother examined—”
“That’s called kidnapping,” I said. “And there’s a law against it.”
“Don’t discourage him,” said Florence. “I’m just about at my wit’s end.”
Martha asked, “What’s wrong with her mother?” She looked briefly at me—I had told her nothing of all this—and then at Florence.
Arthur watched her face, and his mother’s face.
Florence said, “She’s not young, she’s not happy, she lost a baby not long ago.”
Silence between the two women: Arthur and I are really out of it.
Florence shrugged.
“Why won’t she see a doctor?”
“Her daughter believes in the laying on of hands—the power of the Holy Ghost.”
“Her daughter!”
“—is filled with the power of the Holy Ghost,” said Florence.
Martha looked at Arthur, then at me, then she looked at Arthur. “I’m not a doctor. I’m just a registered nurse.”
“But you could—maybe—get her to stop in the hospital?”
“Arthur, we can’t tie her down and examine her if she doesn’t want to be examined.”
(Ah. The good old days. For now, in some parts of the country, a too-fertile black girl, with no husband, needn’t consent to be sterilized.)
“And what about Mr. Miller?” Martha asked Florence.
“Well, let’s just say,” said Florence, “that he’s put just about everything in the Lord’s hands and goes the way—the Lord leads him.”
The two women stared at each other. I don’t know why I felt, so suddenly, that something in what my mother had said embittered Martha and hardened her heart against me: that Joel Miller and I had, abruptly, gone under the hammer together.
“Ah,” said Martha. “I see.”
A silence fell, into which rambled the sound of Paul’s piano: “I Cover the Waterfront.” Not a Christmas tune, perhaps, but then, there aren’t enough of them to last for twenty-four hours.
“I promised to go by there tomorrow, anyway,” said Florence carefully, “and it wouldn’t do no harm, really, if you came with me—nothing beats a try but a failure,” she added dryly, and took a sip of whatever it was she was drinking.
Arthur had been drinking ginger ale—here in the bar with his mother, anyway: but there had been an interim of a couple of hours, when Paul had come to work, and Florence was still at the Millers’ when he had been hanging out with Peanut and Crunch and Red: and he had smoked a couple of joints with his running buddies, I was sure of it. I seemed to recognize in him the resulting combination of tension and ease, warmth and distance, the aura of the private joke—part of his concern for the Millers, for example, had to do with a private joke. But he was also genuinely in earnest. His earnestness could be taken as the joke, for, after all, in this as in so many other matters, there was nothing he could do. Or—since the private joke repeats itself, endlessly inward, like a series of Chinese boxes—there seemed to be nothing he could do. In the meantime, he was opening boxes—was soon to sing, for example, at Sister Bessie’s funeral. And Arthur’s private joke included me. He wondered if I knew—that he was smoking marijuana, for example—what I would say to him: if I knew. Well. I had resolved to say nothing. I couldn’t very well, not yet, light up a joint and smoke it with him. (And why not? I sometimes furiously wondered: you hypocrite—for I had been doing all the same shit at his age. And I still turned on, when I could, with the buddies I could find—there weren’t many. But, no, anyway, no: Arthur was still a kid, I didn’t think it was right.)