Just Above My Head by James Baldwin
Ah. But, then, you’ve set yourself up for something, inevitably, and this was the nature of Paul’s distress, that he saw the day coming but died before the day arrived, when Arthur would cry out, weeping briny tears, Look! what they done to my song!
For the rest, a son, or brother, is simply that—a son, or a brother—and you love him, in the shit or out of the shit, and you clean him up if you have to, and you know he’s got to go the way his blood beats because that’s your blood beating in those veins, too.
“Sure hope your father don’t tarry too long,” Florence said. “Go open the door for them, Arthur, why you standing there like that?”
Florence went into the kitchen, and Arthur went to open the door.
Presently, Julia and Crunch, laughing, huffing and puffing as though they were climbing up the steep side of the mountain, and looking as though they had just had a picnic in Central Park, came up the stairs to the open door, where Arthur stood.
“Girl,” Arthur said, grinning, “I didn’t recognize you at all. I guess you really have stopped preaching.”
They kissed each other, and Julia said, “You hush. I just might be studying a brand-new text.”
“Sure looks good on you, girl,” Arthur said, and they laughed, and Florence appeared behind Arthur, hands on hips.
“Girl! You want me to beat your behind on the landing or you want to get your behind whipped in this house?”
“Mama Montana, don’t beat me too hard, I have had some hard trials”—but Florence pulled her past Arthur and took Julia in her arms.
Arthur and Crunch were alone for a second, at the door, on the landing. Crunch suddenly pulled the door shut behind Arthur and took him in his arms and kissed him, hard. They held each other a second, pulled away. Crunch opened the door.
“Love you,” he whispered. “We’ll take a walk later. I got something to tell you.”
“Sure.” He watched Crunch, vaguely disturbed. “Is everything all right?”
Florence and Julia had gone into the living room; there was no one on the landing. Crunch put one hand on Arthur’s shoulder. He said solemnly, “No.”
“What’s the matter?”
“When I said I love you—I didn’t hear you say nothing.”
Arthur laughed. “You’re crazy, man.” Then he took Crunch’s face in his hands, and kissed him. “Yes. I love you. With all my heart.”
“Then why you standing in the door like that? Look like you don’t want me in your house.”
“Come on in the house, man. I swear, you the craziest motherfucker I know.”
“I’m going to tell your mama what you said!” Crunch yelled this at the top of his lungs and Arthur collapsed into laughter and slammed the door behind them.
“Will you two stop playing the fool?” Florence cried, “and come on in here? I don’t,” she said to Julia, “know which of them is worse.”
Crunch and Arthur came into the living room, still laughing. Florence and Julia sat on the sofa, side by side.
“What was that you was going to tell me?”
“No, Mama Montana, I don’t believe I’ll tell you now. I just leave it between Arthur and the Lord.”
He sat down in a chair near the window and Arthur sat on the piano stool, still laughing because it seemed that Crunch could not stop laughing. He had no way of knowing that Crunch’s laughter came out of both panic and relief. Here was Arthur, he had touched him, nothing had changed between them; he, Crunch, had not changed. He knew, at least for the moment, where he was. So he felt that he could handle whatever was coming. He could tell Arthur the truth: he realized, then, that he could tell Julia the truth. He laughed again, briefly, and sobered.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but it’s Arthur’s fault. He ought to be on television.”
Florence looked, briefly at both of them and then turned back to Julia. “So? What is your father doing?”
“Oh. He goes to work and he comes home. He don’t say much.” She toyed with the bandanna tied around her ponytail, looked first at Crunch, then at Florence. “It’s kind of hard to live with someone who don’t say much.”
“And you—what are you doing?”
“Oh. Trying to take care of my father.” Crunch and Florence stared at Julia, Arthur stared at Crunch. Julia looked down. “Going to school. And I got a job on Grand Concourse as a kind of scrubwoman, I guess you’d say,” and she laughed, and looked up. Florence grunted. “What I’d really like to do is go to New Orleans and get Jimmy and bring him back up here, with me—but—”
“Jimmy’s better off where he is,” Florence said. “I don’t like to say it, but you know as well as I do that Jimmy and his father ain’t never going to get along.”
“I know,” said Julia. “But I wasn’t going to bring him there. I want to find another place and take care of him myself.”
“But Julia,” said Florence, “you ain’t but fourteen, you can’t take care of yourself, how you think you going to be able to take care of Jimmy?”
“I promised my mother,” Julia said. “I promised my mother I would. She didn’t want him to go down South, and she didn’t want him nowhere near his daddy, neither.” She looked up at Florence, suddenly close to tears, and Florence nodded, not looking at Julia, nodded from a long ways off. “I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I have to do it, I promised my mother!”
“Well,” said Florence, “we’ll talk.” She put her hand on Julia’s hand. “I think I know how you feel. Why don’t you stay here tonight? The change will be good for you, give us time to put our heads together.”
“I—I can’t.” She looked at Florence, looked, quickly, to Crunch: Crunch nodded, very, very gravely. Julia looked back to Florence. “My father—my father—”
“Ain’t nothing going to happen to your father.”
“He won’t know where I am.”
“He’ll know where you are the minute I pick up a phone and tell him.”
“What you going to tell him?”
“That we got to talking and you got tired and I put you to bed.”
“He going to wonder what we talked about—”
“Men been wondering what women talk about for ages, honey, ain’t no new thing—anyway, all we been talking about is you and little Jimmy.”
But she watched the terror and the torment in Julia’s face, a terror and torment made vivid by her attempts to hide it.
“Well—there really ain’t nothing else to talk about—I ain’t complaining about him—”
“Well, then,” said Florence. “It’s settled.”
“No,” said Julia. “He’ll be upset.” But she looked at Crunch as she said this, and dropped her eyes. Yet, “He comes in late, too late for you to phone him, you’ll be asleep.”
“It’s now or never,” Crunch said. “Mama Montana’s right, and you know it.”
“And he ain’t going to be upset,” said Florence. “At least, he won’t be no more upset than usual because, if I can’t phone him, I’ll send Arthur up there, with a note.”
“Mama Montana’s a mighty good nurse, now,” Crunch said, with a cryptic smile, a wink. “And I’ll get up here to see you, fast as I can, after work. Maybe we’ll walk through the park, or something. I might even buy you a hot dog.”
“But I can’t stay here,” said Julia.
“You the granddaughter of my oldest friend,” said Florence. “How come you can’t stay here?”
“You can’t stay up yonder, neither,” Crunch said flatly, “you told me that yourself, this afternoon.” He lifted that one eyebrow at her. “You forgot already?”
A silence abruptly weighted down the room, a silence like eternity: they heard the streets. Julia stood, abruptly, and walked to the window, her hands in her pockets. The wind briefly billowed the green rag at the back of her head, then let it fall to the nape of her neck.
She turned to Crunch. “No,” she said. “I ain’t forgot. I’ll never forget.”
“You can use my bed,?
“I was going to make up the couch,” said Florence. “Where you going to stay?”
“I’ll stay with Crunch,” said Arthur.
“That’s right,” said Crunch. “If that’s all right with you, Mama Montana.”
“Well—run up, and leave a note for Brother Miller.”
“Okay. You want me to write the note?”
“No. I’ll write it. Don’t you two be staying out all night.”
The note said,
Dear Joel,
Your daughter, Julia, is staying the night with me, so don’t worry about her. We’ll call you in the morning. Where you been keeping yourself? Both me and Paul would be GLAD TO SEE YOU. May God bless you and keep you.
Florence Montana
The Miller bell did not answer, so Arthur left the note in the mailbox, with the tip sticking out, and ran down the brownstone steps, to Crunch. Silently, they began walking toward the avenue, toward the subway. The summer day was just beginning to fade. The streets were full, vivid, with people, children, sound—it was as though they were moving through an element which held them up, sustained them, and protected them.
Crunch walked head down, his hands in his pockets, silent. This silence was not exactly uncomfortable, but it was—new: Arthur did not know what to make of this silence, or how to break it.
Finally, he said, looking up at Crunch, “You said you had something to tell me.”
“I do.”
“About Julia?”
“Partly.”
He looked at Arthur, and smiled. This smile, too, was new. It came from a new place, a new distance, and it held a new sorrow.
“When you going to tell me?”
“In a minute. Let me think.”
“Oh,” said Arthur, bewildered, stung. “I’m not trying to rush you, man.”
And he looked at the cracks in the sidewalk. They walked down the subway steps in silence, pushed through the turnstiles, waited for the train.
Arthur suddenly felt very young. He wanted to ask, Do you want to be alone, Crunch? Do you want me to go back home? But he feared the answer. He felt, as he had sometimes felt with his father, or with me, that he was just a snot-nosed kid, in the way, and the best thing for him to do was to keep quiet.
So he kept quiet as he and Crunch stepped onto the crowded train. Crunch leaned against the door; Arthur stood next to Crunch, still wondering if he should leave. Crunch didn’t seem to see him, or to know that he was there. But he knew that if he tried to leave, Crunch would call him back. Crunch would be hurt—it was a game he couldn’t play, a risk he couldn’t take. He stared at himself in the subway window as the train shook and roared through the tunnel. The people were as silent as people in a dream, numbly submitting to the roar and the movement. each person absolutely, sullenly alone. He would be alone soon, next week, next month, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow— Crunch’s silence would be gone. Then he knew that he could not possibly leave Crunch now, not unless Crunch beat him and pushed him away. But at 42nd Street, when they changed to the shuttle to the east side, Crunch put one arm around him—as though to say that he knew Arthur was there and was glad that he was there. They came out of the subway at Fourteenth Street and started walking east, toward Crunch’s room.
The El was still standing then, and so I see them, standing on the corner, waiting for the light, under that monstrous canopy. In the shadow of all that metal, beneath the unspeakable hostility of the inescapable trains—Arthur imagines that a man might climb the stairs to the platform and throw himself under a train, simply to be released from the everlasting roar to get some sleep—Crunch’s door, and all the doors on this avenue, seem furtive, doomed, sordid, choked payment for choked sins. If he were not with Crunch, he would be terrified of the people on this street. He wonders what happened to them, how they got that way—they, who must once have had a mother and father, brother and sister, uncles, aunts, cousins, friends, wives—even, children—who must once have been as young and clean as he and Crunch are now. But, now—they have entered eternity: eternal damnation must look like this.
He wonders if he and Crunch are damned. Perhaps love is a sin. But he shakes his head against the thought, and the light changes. They cross the street.
On the corner there is a bar, never silent, never empty. The men in the bar look like soldiers who have barely survived, but ago, slaughter; who have seen their buddies hacked limb from limb, have seen them blinded, gutted, castrated; look like men who are carrying bloody souvenirs in their pockets: an ear, an eye, a nose, a penis, a buddy’s anklebone. Their dreadful cries seem to be their only proof that they have survived. This hard miracle lives in their fevered and yet lightless eyes, and they have no age. They are all the color of gunmetal, and their sweat causes them to shine like that, and they are all—as far as Arthur can tell—white men. Arthur is young enough to wonder how this can happen to white men; he does not know any white men yet. He does not feel at all vindictive or triumphant; he only feels a kind of falling wonder. In the morning, they will be lying on the sidewalk, drenched in their own piss.
Next to the bar, there is a candy store, still open—candy, chewing gum, newspapers, cigarettes—and the fat owner, always wearing a gray baseball cap, and glasses, sits in the open window, a toothpick between his teeth.
Next to the candy store, beneath three signs, each reading ROOMS, are three narrow doors which seem to be trying to efface themselves by sinking into the hideous walls, and Crunch and Arthur enter the last of these. They were, then, in a narrow hall, facing a steep flight of steps. They began to climb, and a door at the top of the stairs immediately opened and a young black girl in a bathrobe stood there, waiting.
Her hair was uncombed—nappy”—and the bathrobe was half open, revealing a dirty nightgown and the beginning of her breasts, breasts surprisingly heavy for a girl so thin. And she seemed very young, not much more than a child. Arthur had never seen her before.
“Oh, it’s you, Mr. Hogan,” she said.
But she had never seen Arthur before, and she stared at him—with wonder and hostility—and then looked back to Crunch.
“He’s with me,” Crunch said.
Another figure appeared behind her, a heavy-set white man, with iron-gray curly hair, a long, heavy nose, and brutally self-indulgent lips. He put his hand inside the bathrobe, and turned the girl toward him, pushing her toward the open door behind them.
“It’s all right,” he said. “It’s his kid brother. Evening, Mr. Hogan,” and they went back into the room, locking the door behind them.
In silence, Crunch and Arthur climbed to Crunch’s room, which was on the third floor.
In the split second that the girl and the man had looked at him, Arthur had felt violated, stripped naked, spat on. It was in nothing that was said. It was in the contempt and complicity in the eyes. He had never felt this before, though he had seen the man before. But this time, when the black girl had looked at him, he had immediately wondered what she was doing there: and it was immediately clear to him that she did not wonder what he was doing there. And what the white man really said, with a lewd grunt, was, He says it’s his kid brother. And, of course, they would know what was happening, from the sounds, from the sheets—though these were not changed very often. But if Crunch and Arthur could hear others, and they did, every night they spent here, others could also hear them. Then he wanted to run, not from Crunch exactly, but out of this eternity. When Crunch came back, they would find another room, a private place.
But to think of Crunch’s return was to think of Crunch’s departure, and he put both arms around Crunch’s waist and rubbed his forehead against Crunch’s back as Crunch unlocked their door.
The room was even uglier than the room in Washington, and smaller, with an old-fashioned, noisy brass bed. There was a table, a chair, a ceiling light, and a sink, and a dim mirror above the sink. The room was on the street, or, more accurately, faced the tracks. The violence of the trains accompan
He had never really disliked the room until now, had never really looked at it. Some nights he and Crunch had lain awake, smoking, the light from their cigarettes the only light, and watched the trains go by, happy to be together and caring for nothing else. Now happiness was leaving, that was all he knew; it was rolling itself up, like a scroll.
Crunch locked the door behind them, and sat down on the bed, and, now, abruptly, it was Arthur’s turn to be silent.
Crunch lit a cigarette, and looked over at Arthur, who stood by the door.
“You mad at me?”
Arthur smiled, and shook his head no.
Crunch watched him.
“You coming in, or going out?”
“That’s up to you, man.”
But Arthur moved from the door, and went to stand by the window, looking out. Now everything was quiet, except the rumble of a train approaching.
“You see something out there you like better than me?”
Arthur turned from the window, and sat down on the floor, at Crunch’s knee.
“What’s the matter, Crunch? Did I do something?”
Crunch sighed and said, “No, baby.” He leaned back and yawned, and took a drag on his cigarette. The downtown train, on the far side of the tracks, came squealing into the station.
“No, baby. I did something.”
Arthur listened to the train doors opening, the distant murmur of shifting weight. There was a pause, as though silence had made a hole in sound. The train doors thundered closed.
Arthur rested his head against Crunch’s knee. Metal squealed against metal, the train pulled out of the station. He heard the uptown train, on their side of the street, approaching.