Just Above My Head by James Baldwin
On the other hand, the spiteful incoherence of New York is, at bottom, more bearable than the grotesque pieties of Philadelphia, say, or Boston, or Washington. No one in Philadelphia gives a shit about Benjamin Franklin. No one in Boston gives a shit about Crispus Attucks, or for that so celebrated and overestimated tea party—an event which, clearly, on the basis of the history of the city, was a purely mercantile, exasperated upheaval, involving nothing more noble than self-interest.
What breaks the heart, though, is that self-interest is indispensable to any human endeavor, is the universal human motor, and is noble or ignoble, depending on one’s concept of the self. I have said, for example, that I knew I could not live without my brother: can anyone? At the very least, myself would have been a very different self without him, if indeed, that self would have been able to live at all. I am tipping my hand, I am jumping ahead, but no matter. Beloved. Beloved. Now, we are the sons of God—the first song Arthur sang, after they had arrived in New York, and when he knew that Crunch was with Julia, was trying to heal her by the laying on of hands. I’m not joking, children, compassion can be as various and as devastating as the sin of pride.
My brother, turning sixteen then, was alone, and in torment, and in love. He sang, he had to sing, as though music could really accomplish the miracle of making the walls come tumbling down. He sang: as Julia abandoned her ministry, Arthur began to discover his. But the song which transformed others failed to transform him.
His principal impression of Washington, then, was that it was, itself, the most arrogant and hideous of monuments, designed—this was the general boast—by a Frenchman. Whoever designed it had failed to see the future.
Much later, Arthur returned to Washington, with me, on a civil rights tour. After we left the Lincoln Memorial, Arthur drove us through the city and we stopped for a moment before the desolate hotel in which he and Crunch had lived, under the roof—where, dripping with sweat, they had put their mattresses on the floor, beneath the open window, and, in the still, stale, humid air, made love.
Crunch and Arthur had been in New York about five or six days when Crunch ran into Julia. It was a Saturday, at dusk, on 125th Street. He had just crossed Seventh Avenue, and was heading toward Lenox and the subway. As always on Saturday evenings, the street was full of people, full of good-natured noise; it sounded good-natured, anyway, until and unless you had a reason to listen to it carefully. There were the stores on either side of him, and the bars, the music coming from everywhere. There seemed to be children on this street at almost any hour—running from, or to, a spanking, one hoped. Matrons walked with a stolid authority, rarely looking in the store windows, headed directly toward whatever they were going to buy; their demeanor indicated that they would never buy anything up here, if they could help it. Boys and girls together walked more slowly, pausing to look in the windows—nudging each other, pointing, laughing, walking on—as did the young girls, who were generally noisier, walking in twos and threes. It was warm, and the clothes the people wore made them seem colorful and friendly.
A very handsome, very dark girl, wearing a yellow sweater and bright red slacks came out of a store entrance, carrying a box; and Crunch slowed his stride a little, and turned his head, giving the girl an admiring look. Thus he bumped into someone, a girl—he was aware only of huge eyes in a gaunt face; and “Excuse me,” he said, and kept walking—and then stopped and turned around. The girl had stopped, too, and was staring at him.
It was Julia. Yet it scarcely seemed to be Julia. In the dusk, which was lighted by streetlamps and storewindows and in which people were moving, restlessly and relentlessly, all around him, Crunch almost felt that he was standing in a dream. Julia stood very straight and still—her face opened in the smile he remembered. Yet it did not seem to be Julia.
He moved, and put both hands on her shoulders.
“Sister Julia! How are you, child?”
“I can’t complain, Crunch. I’m still alive.”
But a short time ago, she would have said, I praise the Lord for His keeping power, and it would not have occurred to Crunch to put his hands on her shoulders.
He felt lost. He took his hands away, and put them in his pockets.
“I was mighty sorry,” he said, “to hear about your mother.”
“Yes,” said Julia. “She’s gone, and I miss her.”
But this isn’t Julia! Julia would have said, Yes. The Lord has taken her home, to be with Him in glory. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Crunch felt more and more frightened, he did not know why.
“And how’s little Jimmy? And—and your father?”
She was all in black; but she seemed, somehow, to be dressed differently than usual. She was wearing high heels. He wondered if she was really wearing a little makeup—he didn’t trust his eyes. Her thick, black hair was arranged differently, he could hardly have said how, but it made him aware of her forehead. Her hair seemed to give off a strange, dry, acrid odor, an odor he associated with old age and dying.
But she, suddenly, had no age. Something happened behind her eyes, something unreadable, as he watched her, and she said, “Oh, little Jimmy’s been taken out of harm’s way, he’s down in New Orleans, with his grandmother. And my father” she smiled, briefly, shrugged, and said—”he’s just the same.”
“You still at the same place?”
“Yes,” said Julia. “Just him and me.” She looked at Crunch, her eyes larger and darker than ever. “It would be nice if you could drop by and see us—you, and Arthur and Red and Peanut. How are they?”
Crunch was meeting Arthur on Fourteenth Street. He said, “They’re all fine.”
“And how did the summer go?”
“It went all right—it went—good, I’d say. But now—” He paused. He really hated to talk about it.
“Now what?”
They had moved to the edge of the sidewalk, to be out of the way of the people. The longer they stood there, the more Crunch saw. She was terribly thin. She was wearing a little makeup. Her lips trembled a little when she spoke, and so did her voice, and a pulse kept beating on one side of her neck. She was unbelievably unhappy. Her unhappiness was as real as an odor.
He said, “Well, Uncle Sam’s inviting us all to a party in Korea, and I expect we’ll all be leaving soon—all except Arthur. He’s too young. Thank God.”
She heard the intensity of his “thank God” and looked at him with a quickened sympathy. He was grateful for this; it eased him a little, almost as though he had made a confession.
But she did not, herself, make any reference to God. She said, “I’d love to see Arthur. He was so nice about singing at Sister Bessie’s funeral.” Then, lamely, as though catching her breath and holding back panic, “If you all have any time—I know you must be busy but”—she laughed—”you know my father’s always happy to offer folks a glass of wine!”
When she laughed, something strange happened between them, almost as though she had made a confession.
Crunch grinned, feeling very strangely moved. “Well, I’m going to try to get by to see you, Sister Julia. And you give your father my regards.”
“Thank you, Crunch,” she said. “Be seeing you.”
He had been waiting to hear her say, Praise the Lord! but she smiled and waved her hand and turned away. He watched her curiously hesitant progress through the crowd. People turned to look at her—this tall, thin, burning girl, dressed all in black, just out of the madhouse, or on her way.
Crunch watched her, and watched the people watching her, and he almost started to call her back. Call her back to what? He turned, and got to the corner, and ran down the subway steps.
He was of two minds as concerned seeing her again—seeing who again? For the girl he had just left was a stranger to him; and there was no reason, really, for him to want to know her; he had certainly never wanted to know her before. Something had happened in her life, but he did not really want to know what had happened. It had nothing to do with him; he was
He mentioned to Arthur that he had seen Julia, and that she looked strange. Arthur said that this was probably because she had stopped preaching—he knew this from his mother—and no one knew what she was doing with herself.
Florence suspected the truth, but it was only a suspicion, and a most unwilling one at that, and she mentioned it to no one, not even Paul.
But she told Arthur that the girl needed to see people her own age—that, though it was very good of her to devote herself to her widowed father (so Florence put it), it wasn’t fair: and so she hoped that Crunch and Arthur would “keep an eye out” for her.
“You and Crunch go on up there and just sort of look around and let me know—you know—what it feels like.”
Arthur felt somewhat ambivalent about being assigned the role of a spy, even though this role was being given him by his mother.
“Can’t Daddy go?”
“Your daddy’s not been able to get Joel alone since the funeral. Only times he sees Joel is when he’s drunk—and then, he won’t look nobody in the eye.”
So, late on a Sunday afternoon, Crunch and Arthur climbed the brownstone steps, and rang the Millers’ bell.
Brother Joel Miller came to the door.
Crunch had scarcely been able to recognize Julia, something like two weeks before, because she had changed. But Brother Joel Miller was a far greater shock, because he had not changed. He was absolutely recognizable, as though nothing had happened, no time had passed. His hair gleamed, freshly combed; he smelt of after-shave lotion. He had been interrupted while tucking a white shirt into his navy-blue pants. His black pumps gleamed. He had not yet put the cufflinks into the cuffs of his sleeves; the sleeves were rolled, lightly, to just below the elbow. The fingernails had not yet been buffed to their highest sheen.
He stared at them blankly, with a blank hostility.
Arthur said, “Good evening, Brother Miller. Is Julia home?”
He recognized Arthur’s voice before he recognized Arthur. When he recognized Arthur, he recognized Crunch. But he remained in the doorway, like someone with his back to the wall.
Then he moved to allow them to enter, covering his face with a smile.
“Good evening, young gentlemen,” he said. “Yes, I believe she’s home. Come in.”
They walked into the dark, still hallway, and followed Brother Miller to the living room.
“She may be sleeping,” said Brother Miller. “I’ll go wake her up. Excuse me,” and he left the room. They heard him climbing the stairs. They looked at each other, and “Damn!” Crunch said. “He didn’t even offer us no wine.”
But Arthur thought how strange it was that Julia should be at home, sleeping, on a Sunday afternoon, with all those souls outside, waiting to be saved. He remembered the last time he had seen her; he wondered what had happened to her to change her so; he wondered what he would see when she walked into the room. He realized that he did not want to see her.
They heard voices above them, and footsteps. They both sat very still, profoundly uncomfortable, and grateful that the voices were too low for them to be able to understand anything. The low voices contained a disquieting, hostile heat, were not meant to be understood by others.
“We won’t stay long,” Arthur said. “It’s just that I promised my mother.”
“Well, I promised, too, little fellow,” Crunch said.
“You not mad at me?”
“Mad at you? for what?”
“For messing up your Sunday.”
Crunch growled at him, licked his lips, and grinned. “But my Sunday ain’t messed up. Yet.”
The voices ceased, they heard Brother Miller descending the stairs, he entered the room.
“She’ll be with you in a few minutes,” he said. He said this as he had always said it: like a privileged person conferring a favor.
Yet, as though some explanation would not compromise either his daughter’s dignity, or his own, he added, “Julia took her mother’s passing very hard. She wants to get up and go on about her duties, but I have to hold her back and make her rest. I done lost a wife, I don’t want to lose a daughter—she’s all I got, now.” He walked to the kitchen door. “You boys like a little refreshment while you waiting? All I got is a little wine.” He grinned at Arthur. “Your mama let you drink wine yet?”
“A little bit, sometimes,” Arthur said—which was true enough.
“I reckon you big enough,” said Joel, and disappeared into the kitchen. They heard water running in the kitchen, and then Joel reappeared with three glasses and a half bottle of white wine. He poured their glasses, left the bottle on the table in front of the sofa. “To your health,” he said, and they sipped the wine, which was thick and sweet. “Julia sure ain’t the housekeeper her mother was,” said Joel. “Of course, she ain’t really much more than a girl yet, we all tend to forget that, she always been so grown-up.” He sat down on the chair facing the sofa. “Julia tells me you all was on the road this summer, singing down South. How’d you all do?”
“Pretty well,” Crunch said. He looked at Arthur. “Good, I’d say.”
“Yeah,” said Arthur. “We did very well.”
“Which cities was the best?”
“Nashville, Atlanta—” Crunch said.
“Birmingham, too,” said Arthur.
“What about New Orleans?”
“New Orleans was good,” said Crunch.
“Reason I asked—little Jimmy’s down there with his grandmother, and Julia wants to see him real bad. That might be just the thing to start her off again—do a string of Southern churches, starting in New Orleans.” He sipped his wine, pursed his lips, thinking. “We might do it together—you boys singing, Julia preaching—what do you think? I think we could clean up.”
Crunch sighed. “It might be a good idea—but we ain’t going to be able to do it.”
“Why not?”
“I’m about to be drafted—I’m just waiting for the date—when I have to, you know, say good-bye to you all.”
Joel sucked his teeth. “Yeah. The others, too—of course.”
“Everybody. Except Arthur.”
Joel turned to Arthur. “That’s right. Well, what about you and Julia—” but, at this moment, Julia entered the room.
Her head was covered with a green bandanna, and she wore a chocolate-colored, tight-fitting dress. She carried a small green pocketbook, and wore high-heeled beige shoes. For both Arthur and Crunch, though for different reasons, a total stranger had entered the room. Julia was so thin that the tight-fitting dress could accentuate nothing more than a certain perverse and reckless gallantry: but that was striking and attractive enough. She barely escaped looking like a little girl dressed up in her older sister’s clothes. She es-caped this by wearing no makeup: her face was ruthlessly, defiantly scrubbed, and she turned it first to her father.
“My Sunday best,” she said mockingly, then turned her enormous eyes on Crunch, then Arthur. She went to Arthur and hugged him: involuntarily, he stiffened. “I’m so glad to see you,” she said—but he felt that she was speaking to Crunch.
“How are you?” Arthur asked, finally managing to smile. “I’m glad to see you, too.”
“I’m fine,” she said. “I’m trying.” She sat down on the edge of the sofa. “But I’m not allowed to drink yet.”
Crunch and Arthur sat down, too, Arthur somewhat more abruptly than Crunch, and Joel said, in a tone that almost made Arthur like him, it held such genuine sorrow, “Girl gets like that sometimes, don’t mind her. She’s just trying to drive her daddy crazy.”
“I am not,” said Julia, laughing. “I’m just trying not to drive myself crazy.” She looked at Arthur again. “How’ve you been? Tell me something—” and he still felt that she was speaking to Crunch
She reminded him, abruptly, of Sister Dorothy Green, and he could scarcely catch his breath to answer. Sister, he started to say, but the word simply weighed down the edge of his tongue, like a heavy pellet, Sister Julia. He said lightly, “You tell me something, I ain’t got nothing to tell. Crunch already told you—we worked all summer. It was good for us.” He was aware of Brother Joel Miller’s eyes. “But now, everybody’s going to be kind of scattered—so—” He looked down. Pain hit him a terrible blow. He dared touch Crunch’s knee with one fist, and the touch made him dizzy. “I’ll be all alone,” he said. “I guess that’s all the something I got to tell you.”
“But you and Julia,” Joel said. “You make a mighty good team. You ought to think about it, you ain’t got to be all alone.”
Julia and Arthur looked at each other for the very first time. Neither of them knew anything about the other—for the very first time, they wondered; and Arthur realized that if Julia had changed, so had he changed. He wondered if his change was visible. And then he wondered what had changed Julia. He was in love, in love with the man who sat beside him. He knew that this could not be said: but this was what had changed him. What had changed Julia? The death of her mother? But he knew that it could not have been only the death of her mother, it was something yet heavier than that: and he felt Crunch beside him, sniffing down the same path.