The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
“That ain’t it,” Just said. “You got your mind on baseball. I bet you ain’t been feeling too bad to turn that radio on.”
Elder Banks waited till me and Just had shut up, then he turned to Jimmy.
“I know how you feel, Jimmy,” he said. “I was young myself once and I know how the young feel. But we old now, Jimmy. This church is old. Look at the people here. Where are the children? Where are the young people, Jimmy? Count the ones in here. We got thirty-seven people in here today—but where are the young ones? All we want to do is live our life quietly as we can and die peacefully as the Lord will allow us. We would like to die in our homes, have our funerals in our church, be buried in that graveyard where all our people and love ones are. The man up there owns that graveyard, Jimmy. He owns the house we live in, he owns the little garden where we grow our food. The church where we at right now, he owns this; he even owns the bell that calls our people to meeting. And the day he tells us to leave, we got to go, and we got to leave bell and church. Reverend King and his people owned things in Georgia and Alabama. We don’t own a thing. Some of us don’t even own the furniture in our house. The store in Bayonne own it, and they can take the bed or the stove from us tomorrow.”
Elder Banks looked at Jimmy awhile, then he went on. “I’m sure you mean good, Jimmy,” he said. “But I can’t tell my church to go with you. If they want to, that’s up to them; but I won’t tell them go and they have no place to come back to. You don’t have a place for them, Jimmy, and they don’t have money to buy nothing. What happened in Birmingham, what happened in Atlanta, can’t happen here. Maybe something else; maybe when all of us in here are gone; but I can’t see nothing happening here now, Jimmy.”
“I can’t promise you a thing,” Jimmy said. “But we must go on, and the ones already working will go on. Some of us might be killed, some of us definitely going to jail, and some of us might be crippled the rest of our life. But death and jail don’t scare us—and we feel that we crippled now, and been crippled a long time, and every day we put up with the white man insults they cripple us just a little bit more.
“You mentioned you have an old church,” Jimmy said. “Because you want me to see your way of life. Now, I mentioned what we have, because I want you to see our way of life. And that’s the kind of life the young will feel from now on. Not your way, not no more. But still we need your strength, we need your prayers, we need you to stand by us, because we have no other roots. I doubt if I expected you to understand me this time. But I’m coming back. I know we can’t do a thing in this world without you—and I’m coming back.”
He told us he was sorry he had disturbed our church, and he walked out.
“Another dead one,” Just said.
“Not if some people keep their mouth shut,” I said.
“Sis Pittman, stand up right now and apologize to this church,” Elder Banks said.
I got up and said I was sorry and sat back down. I looked at Just Thomas all the time I was at church that day, but he didn’t have the nerve to look back at me. I wasn’t thinking bout being sorry for what I had said.
That evening I was sitting on my gallery when Jimmy and another boy came in the yard. I have a bad habit not liking some people on first sight. I have begged the Lord and begged Him to wipe this from my heart, but it’s still there. This one of my worse habits, probably the worst I have, but I can’t get rid of it. Maybe the Lord is waiting till that final hour to clear it away. But I didn’t like that boy from the start. He was a little fellow with a big mouth; a long head, a raggedy beard. Steel-rim eye glasses like the old people wear. To beat all that he had on overalls and a jumper—even wearing clodhoppers. Now, what’s all that for? I ask you. It surely didn’t make him look no better than he did before he put it on. And if he was trying to dress like the people here in the quarters he was absolutely mistaking. People here don’t dress like that on Sunday, and if you do they sure go’n laugh at you. Just like them children passing out there in the road laughed at him sitting there on the steps.
Jimmy came by to tell me he ’predated what I had said at the church. I told him I could understand what he was trying to do because my boy had tried to do the same thing long long before he was born. I asked him if he wanted some lemonade. Mary had made up a big pitcher of lemonade and had gone down the quarters. Soon as I mentioned lemonade, that long head boy said, “Oh, good country lemonade.” Jimmy went back in the kitchen and poured us all up a glassful. That long head boy sat on the steps in them overalls and smacked his lips.
“Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy,” I said. He was sitting in a chair against the wall where Mary had been sitting earlier that evening. The piece of cloth that Mary used to fan at flies was still hanging on the back of the chair. “The people here ain’t ready for nothing yet, Jimmy,” I said. “Something got to get in the air first. Something got to start floating out there and they got to feel it. It got to seep all through their flesh, and all through their bones. But it’s not out there yet. Nothing out there now but white hate and nigger fear. And fear they feel is the only way to keep going. One day they must realize fear is worse than any death. When that time come they will be ready to move with you.”
“That’s our job,” that long head boy said.
“People and time bring forth leaders, Jimmy,” I said. I didn’t look at that long head boy, I wasn’t talking to him, I was talking to our Jimmy. “People and time bring forth leaders,” I said. “Leaders don’t bring forth people. The people and the time brought King; King didn’t bring the people. What Miss Rosa Parks did, everybody wanted to do. They just needed one person to do it first because they all couldn’t do it at the same time; then they needed King to show them what to do next. But King couldn’t do a thing before Miss Rosa Parks refused to give that white man her seat.”
“We have our Miss Rosa Parks,” that long head boy said; then he sipped some lemonade.
“They sleeping out there, Jimmy,” I said.
“But what can I do?” he said. “It’s burning up in here, Miss Jane,” he said, touching his chest. “I got to do something.”
“Talk, Jimmy,” I said. “Talk to them.”
“You mean go slow?” that long head boy in them overalls said.
“Jimmy,” I said. “I have a scar on my back I got when I was a slave. I’ll carry it to my grave. You got people out there with this scar on their brains, and they will carry that scar to their grave. The mark of fear, Jimmy, is not easily removed. Talk with them, Jimmy. Talk and talk and talk. But don’t be mad if they don’t listen. Some of them won’t ever listen. Many won’t even hear you.”
“We don’t have that kind of time, Miss Jane,” he told me.
“What else you got, Jimmy?” I asked him.
He didn’t know what to say.
“First, you got to wake them up, Jimmy,” I said. “They sleeping out there. Look around you, Jimmy; look at this place. Travel over this parish. Do you hear anything rumbling? No. Things must rumble before they move. The nigger, Jimmy, must one day wake up and push that black quilt off his back. Must tell himself I had it on too long. But I won’t be here when that happen, I’m afraid.”
“You can help us now, Miss Jane.”
Before I could say “how?”, that long head boy in them overalls said, “Your mere presence will bring forth multitudes.”
I was listening to that boy but I was looking at Jimmy. “Me help? How?” I said.
“Going with us.”
“Going with y’all where? When?”
“When we get ready to move,” he said.
“I’m a hundred and eight or a hundred and nine,” I said. “What can I do but get in the way?”
“You can inspire the others,” Jimmy said.
“Somebody a hundred and eight or a hundred and nine inspire people?”
“Yes ma’am,” he said.
“I never heard of nothing like this before,” I said. “But if you say so—and if I’m able to move.”
“
I was getting fed-up with that boy. “Boy, who you for?” I asked him.
“Joe and Lena Butcher,” he said.
“They teach you to talk like that?” I said.
“Ma’am?”
I just looked at him.
“That’s retrick,” he said.
“Well, I can do without your retrick here,” I said. “If you can’t say nothing sensible, don’t say nothing.”
He looked at me awhile—feeling hurt now—then he sipped from that lemonade. He looked at me again—still feeling hurt—then he looked at Jimmy. Want Jimmy to speak up for him. But Jimmy didn’t offer him any help.
Jimmy told me what they had in mind. He told me just six of them knowed right now, and I made seven. He didn’t want me to tell nobody else, not even Lena. No, she wouldn’t speak at the wrong time, but she might start worrying and try to stop him.
Do you know Bayonne at all? You done drank from that fountain in the courthouse, used that bathroom in there? Well, up to a year ago they didn’t have a fountain there for colored at all. They didn’t have a bathroom inside, either. White, yes; but nothing for colored. Colored had to go outside, rain or shine and go down in the basement. Half the time the bathroom was so filthy you couldn’t get inside the door. The water on the floor come almost to the top of your shoes. You could smell the toilets soon as you started downstairs. Very seldom a lady would go down there because it was so filthy. They would go back of town and use a bathroom at one of the cafés; other times they would go to Madame Orsini and ask her could they use her bathroom. Madame Orsini and her husband owned a little grocery store there in Bayonne. They was very nice people, and I think they called themself Sicilians. Everyday dagoes far as I’m concerned, but they said Sicilians, and they was very nice to colored. She would let a lady come in—never a man—and the lady could bring in her child. And that was the only place uptown you could go, side the basement at the courthouse. No gas station, and no department store uptown would let you use the bathroom. You think a store would let you use a bathroom when they wouldn’t even let you try on clothes there? You gived them the number, they gived you the clothes. If they fit—good; if they didn’t, that was too bad, you wore them anyhow. Lord, have mercy, the poor nigger done gone through plenty, you hear me there? Unc Gilly got Brady to bring him a pair of overalls from Bayonne. Brady came back here with a pair of overalls big enough for two people Unc Gilly’s size. Unc Gilly got mad at Brady, and since Brady couldn’t take them back, he want make Brady buy them now. If the people didn’t carry Unc Gilly a dog’s life in these quarters. Robert Samson teased him much as the colored did. Every time he saw Unc Gilly in them big overalls he started laughing. When Unc Gilly died, Matt Jefferson mentioned them overalls at the wake. Unc Gilly laying up there in his coffin, and the people thinking about foolish things like that. I reckoned when I’m gone they will say crazy things about me, too. The Lord knows I’ve done some strange things in my time.
The bathroom was to be just one thing they wanted to demonstrate against, the hyphen was to be the other thing. The white people had a fountain, one of them white fountains you have in most places. A shiny little thing to drink from, a shiny little knob to turn. Round the corner from the fountain, the colored had a hyphen with a cup on a nail. Everybody was suppose to drink out the same cup if you didn’t bring your own. Lot of the people used to carry round them little ’luminum cups that you can pull open and shut. If you didn’t have that or a glass, you drank out that one cup hanging on the nail.
They had a bucket under the hyphen to catch the water because the hyphen used to drip all the time. A loon called a guard had to make sure the bucket never run over. He was one of the Bush. The looney one—Edgar. They made him a guard after that desegregating bill passed there in Washington. His job, to keep the niggers out the courthouse from bothering people for rights. Time he saw a colored person he broke up there and asked you what you wanted. You better hurry up and tell him or he pushed you right straight out. He broke up there and bellowed at me once. I told him he could bellow and slobber all he wanted, he put his hand on me and I was go’n crack his skull with that stick. He looked at me like I was the looney one there, then he went and bellowed at somebody else. Now, one of his jobs was to see that that bucket never run over. Twice a day he got a nigger prisoner out the cell and made him dump the water out. You had to dump it out in the white men toilet, and that was just ’cross the hall from the hyphen. Soon as the prisoner dumped it out, the loon made him go back in his cell. He used to stand by the front door just to scare the niggers when they came up there seeking rights. Always chewing gum, always slobbering. A loon if you ever saw one. Everybody knowed he should have been in Jackson, but they kept him there to scare away the colored. Bertha went up there one day with Miss Amma Dean and that thing got behind Bertha and had her scampering all over that courthouse. In and out them people office; up and down them narrow halls. Bertha said when she got back to the car she locked all the doors and laid down on the seat. She didn’t look up till Miss Amma Dean came there and tapped on the glass.
Now, this what Jimmy and them had in mind. They had picked out a girl to drink from the white people’s fountain. (This was their Miss Rosa Parks.) She was one of the Hebert girls, a Catholic, up there in Bayonne. The Catholics and mulattoes don’t generally get mixed up in things like this, but this girl wanted to do it. Her own people didn’t know nothing about it till after it happened. Jimmy and them had it set for a week after they told it to me. That Friday when everybody was getting off work. He wanted it on a Friday because he wanted to use that weekend to spread the news. Wanted to use the churches, wanted to use the saloons. Two girls would be at the courthouse. When they saw the people coming toward them, one girl was go’n drink from the fountain. Somebody was go’n cuss the girl or push her out the way, and the girl was go’n fight back. She was go’n be arrested—no doubt about that—and the other girl was go’n bring the news. The reason they didn’t choose a boy, they was afraid that loon up there might beat the boy and not arrest him. They wanted somebody in jail because they wanted to march on the courthouse the next Monday. They wanted to show the world what the South would do to a nigger—not even half nigger in this girl’s case—just because she wanted a drink of water.
I was sitting out here on the gallery the day it happened. Me, Etienne, Mary—Strut was here. Look like somebody else was here, too. No, not Lena. She was home. Who? Yes. Fa-Fa. That’s right—Fa-Fa. Because she had been fishing out there in the river and she had brought me a mess of perches. Now it was getting late in the evening and she didn’t feel like walking all the way to Chiney, and she had sent one of the Strut’s children down the quarters to see when Brady was coming back. The boy had just come from down the quarters to tell her Jessie didn’t know when Brady was coming home, then somebody looked up and saw the dust coming down the quarters. Etienne said, “That’s him now.” Fa-Fa told the boy run out there and wave him down. But the car had stopped before the gate before the boy got out there. Jimmy and that boy in them overalls came in the yard. It was getting dark and I didn’t know who it was till they had come up to the steps. Jimmy spoke and I recognized his voice. First thing I thought was something had happened to that girl.
After Jimmy spoke to everybody he came up on the gallery and kissed me.
“How you feel?” he said.
“Fine,” I said. “Yourself?”
“I’m all right, Miss Jane,” he said.
I looked up at him there in the dark. This old heart was jumping in this old chest, I tell you.
Then he told us: “They throwed a girl in jail today for drinking from that fountain inside the courthouse. We will meet in front of the courthouse Monday morning at nine o’clock. We want every black man, woman, and child to be there.”
“Well, ya’ll done finally done it,” Fa-Fa said. “Let me get on to Chiney where I belong.”
“Ain’t you wa
“Brady might get back here after them Cajuns burn this place down,” Fa-Fa said. “I’m leaving right now.”
Fa-Fa had been sitting there on the end of the gallery. Had her two fishing poles and her bucket of fish there side her. Next thing you knowed she was walking out the yard, headed for Chiney.
“I just wanted to come down and tell you, Miss Jane,” Jimmy said. “I have to be moving on. We have a lot of work to do between now and Monday morning.” He looked at me there in the dark. We had had a secret, but now it was out. “You’ll be there?” he asked me.
“If the Lord say the same.”
“No, she won’t, either,” Mary said.
“Yes, I will, Mary,” I said.
“I’m here to look after you,” Mary said. “I can’t stand by and let you kill yourself.”
“I will go,” I said.
“And who go’n pick you up when they knock you down and tramp all over you?” she said.
“The Lord will help me to my feet.”
“See what you done started?” Mary said to Jimmy.
“They started it long time ago,” Jimmy said.
“With her leading us on, multitudes will follow,” that long head boy in them overalls said.
I didn’t look at that boy, I looked up at Jimmy. Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy, I thought. The people, Jimmy? You listening to that thing that boy call retrick and counting on the people?
“You hungry, Jimmy?” I asked him.
“I’m going home,” he said. “I have to tell Aunt Lena.”
“Be careful with Lena, Jimmy,” I said. “She ain’t too strong, you know.”
“I’ll be careful,” he said. “And I’ll see you Monday, Miss Jane. Nine o’clock Monday morning. How you getting there?”
“I’ll find a way, the Lord say the same.”
“Miss Det still gives her fairs on Saturday nights?” he asked me.
“Every Saturday night God send.”
“I’ll come by tomorrow night,” he said. “And I’ll be in church on Sunday.”