Just Above My Head by James Baldwin
This made mealtime an exercise in grace and tension, sustained by a certain cheerfulness which came, in fact, out of love. But the restless and lonely Arthur needed something his parents could not give him, which no one, in fact, could give him now, not even Crunch—though Arthur did not know this, either. Arthur hid a secret and he hated having anything to hide; he had never had a secret before.
He poured it all into his song, and Paul watched him, and listened, striving to become reconciled.
Julia was the only person Arthur saw. This was partly because of his promise to Crunch. She was the closest thing to Crunch and she was, also, the only person in the world, now, who spoke his language. They knew the same things. And his jealousy had evaporated. There had, literally, not been time for it.
He had given her the key to Crunch’s room, and he sometimes met her down there. Then, more than ever, when he entered the room, he had a secret; but this was a secret he could clasp to himself with both pain and joy. Julia did not know, no one in the world knew; only he and Crunch knew what wonders had taken place in this room, this broken-down, filthy, miraculous room! He paced the room sometimes, as Julia talked, remembering: leaned out of the window, looked into the mirror, touched the bed, remembering, remembering, proud, and almost happy. Crunch’s odor was still in the bed, in the chair—in the air, and everything Arthur touched Crunch had touched, his fingerprints were still there, Crunch was present in this room! He was almost frightened sometimes, to feel this presence with such power, but he was unbelievably happy, too, and grateful to Julia. Without her need, and Crunch’s promise to her, he would never have been able to enter this room again. Perhaps he could see Julia, and nearly no one else, because she shared his secret without knowing that she did.
On a Saturday evening, near the end of summer, he climbed the familiar stairs and knocked on the unusual door.
“Arthur?”
“Yeah.”
“Come on in. The door’s open.”
Julia was wearing a shapeless smock and her hair was tied up and the trash can was full. She had been cleaning the room.
“You shouldn’t leave your door unlocked, when you down here by yourself.”
“Are you kidding? These locks can’t keep nobody out—these doors can’t keep nobody out. And I don’t know why I’m trying to clean this room. It can’t be done, I must be crazy.” She ran water in the sink and soaped her hands and grinned at him. “How you keeping?”
“All right. And you?”
“Okay. All things considered. How was your day?”
“Shitty.”
She laughed. “People don’t know. We going to the movies?”
“If you want.”
“What you want to see?”
“I don’t know. I brought a paper, thought I’d leave it up to you.”
He doesn’t say it, but the truth is that he’s already seen everything that’s playing.
“I see. You want me to do all the work.”
She dried her hands on paper towels which she must have brought with her, and dropped the towels into the trash basket. He sat down on the bed, caressing it, and looked around the room. Julia had brought a plant from uptown and put it in the window, she had washed the windows, and covered the chair with a bright red rag. There were two water glasses on the sink, and she had covered the hideous, rickety night table with another brightly colored rag. That was about the limit of what could be done with the room—the room’s only real hope was fire—but it made a difference, and Arthur was very grateful.
“These people giving you any trouble?”
“Oh, that black girl, I believe she’s a mental case”—Arthur laughed—”don’t laugh. I do!—she tried to give me some lip, and I told her again, just like you told her and just like Crunch told her, that this was our brother’s room and I was going to be responsible for it and keep it clean and all until my brother—our brother—got back here. She wanted to know if I was going to use the room. I said, Sure I was going to use the room long as I was paying the rent.” She paused, and looked at the trash can. “Now, what am I going to do with this? She ain’t never going to empty it.”
“I’ll empty it,” Arthur said. “Leave it alone.”
“Why don’t you go on and empty it now, then? And I’ll get out of this smock, and we can go.”
“Okay,” Arthur said, and picked up the trash can, and walked out of the door. He had to hunt for a garbage can not already overflowing, but he finally managed to empty the trash can. The streets were full, people stumbling or ambling by—no one paid any attention to him at all. He started back up the stairs, whistling.
Julia was combing her hair, was wearing her green slacks, and an old gray sweater.
“Thanks, Arthur.” Arthur put the trash can down. “Let’s get a hot dog around the corner, okay? I’m hungry.”
She locked the door behind them, and put the key in her pocket. As they started down the steps, they heard someone coming up. “Oh, Lord, I bet you that’s Blanche,” said Julia.
It was the black girl, and they met her on the second story landing. She was, relatively speaking, dressed, in a shapeless skirt pinned with a safety pin, and a blouse swollen by her great breasts. Her dark, narrow eyes considered them with the aimless and unanswerable hostility with which she seemed to regard everything and everybody.
“Good evening, Blanche,” said Julia.
“You coming back tonight?”
“I might be. I don’t know.”
Blanche looked at Arthur. This was a different look—unanswerable, but not aimless: contemptuous, triumphant. She knew that Arthur hated her, hated her from his heart; hated her, and feared her because she knew what Crunch and he were to each other. She had divined that Julia did not know, and that he did not want her to know. She knew that he was not Crunch’s brother, and Julia was not his sister.
“You coming back?”
“What difference does it make? the rent’s paid.”
Blanche looked at them from her intimidating distance.
“Yes,” she said. “The rent’s paid.”
She passed them, and continued up the steps.
“Somebody might be coming by, one time, to find out just how the rent gets paid. You mighty young, it seems to me, to be doing what you doing.”
“I don’t know what you think I’m doing,” Julia said, “but you look mighty young to me, too.”
Blanche kept moving up the steps, they continued down. They got into the streets.
“I might be doing anything,” Julia said. “They worried about the law. Shoot. The law don’t care. They ought to know that. Everything’s going on down here.”
Yeah, Arthur thought, but we don’t know the rules, baby, but he said nothing. He was worried about too many things. He was worried about what Blanche might tell Julia, for he knew that Crunch, in spite of his intention, had finally said nothing. Crunch might have had the courage, but certainly had not had the time; Arthur knew that he, himself, did not have the courage, at least not yet. And he was worried about Julia being alone down here at night, and Crunch had been worried, too; the room was in his name, after all, and Julia was a minor. But, he had sighed, we don’t have too much choice, man. She’s got to get away from her daddy. Arthur’s impression was that Joel Miller was drinking heavily and became uncontrollably dangerous when drunk and that Julia used the room as a haven at those times. This explanation had vaguely dissatisfied him, but it was only now that he was beginning to bring his full attention to bear on it.
“Do you stay here at night, a lot of the time?”
“No.” Just before his departure, she had spent one night down here with Crunch, and one afternoon. Arthur did not know this. She was terrified, down here, by herself; but she had been terrified of her father, too. She had sometimes used this room as a refuge, hiding in this room until she was sure that her father had fallen into a drunken sleep.
But she had never managed to sleep alone in this room, it was impossible, though s
One night, she had had to go to the bathroom, and she crept out, locking her door behind her. The bathroom was unbelievably filthy, but she was obliged to add her filth to the rest—and leave it there, because the toilet did not flush. When dawn came, she took the subway home. Joel was asleep, fully dressed, on the sofa.
She had wanted to move. She had moved, all right—into an unknown section of hell. She remembered someone saying to her once, Now, hell, child, you just remember—hell don’t have no boundaries. Then, But you got to go there to find out.
Now she and Arthur crossed a street and walked half a block to the hot-dog stand and bought two hot dogs.
“What movie we going to see?”
“”I don’t care.”
“Well—you going to go uptown after, or you going to stay down here?”
“I think I’ll go uptown. Don’t like the way Blanche looked at me.”
“Well—we can see a movie uptown then,” said Arthur, and they started toward the subway.
Yet, just the same, she had moved: she had got through those nights. Something had happened; her father knew it, and it frightened him. His fear was no more dependable than anything else about him, she couldn’t count on it; but she had seen that he was frightened when she came in on the morning after she had spent the night at our house.
He was just about to leave—she had timed it that way—and was writing her a note. He looked, with elaborate disapproval, at her halter and slacks.
“So, you got kidnapped?” With his little smile.
“Why you saying that? I didn’t think you’d mind. They’re your old friends.”
“They’re really your mother’s old friends,” he said. “Did you all have a good time? Who all was there?”
When he said “your mother’s friends,” she tensed, as though he had hit her in the belly, or caught her in a lie. Florence had been talking to her about her mother. She had felt that Florence knew much more than she would say: she had longed to break down and tell Florence the truth and beg for her help.
But she felt that it was only she, Julia, who had, somehow, brought herself to this place and only she could get herself past it.
“Just us. We ate, and talked. Mr. Montana came in later.” She hesitated. “Crunch and Arthur were there”—she watched his face, but she could see that he did not feel threatened by these boys—”but they had to go somewhere, so it was mostly me and Mama Montana. We had a good visit, she’s a nice woman.” She paused again, watching him. “They wonder why you never come to see them.”
“I didn’t hardly ever visit them, daughter. It was your mother.”
She realized that he was frightened of any of her “mother’s friends” whom she might see outside, who might, as he would have put it, turn her against him.
“That don’t stop them from wondering, Daddy.”
She could see him calculating, calculating danger.
“Well—we might go visit one evening. I’ll do anything to please you, daughter.”
He said this with the jaunty, mocking, gallant grin which she had always found so moving, and which moved her now, suddenly, in a very unpleasant way.
“You better get on to work,” she said. “Don’t, you be late.”
“Give us a kiss.” This was morning ritual.
She realized that he was standing in the place where she and Crunch had lain the day before. She suddenly felt very sorry for her father. She wondered what had happened to him. She wondered what he wanted.
He came to her, his lips parted, and he covered her breasts with his hands. He whispered, “I missed you last night.”
She took his hands away, kissed him, lightly, on the forehead.
“Go on,” she said. “You going to be late.”
“Well—you going to have to make up for that when I come home.” He was being jaunty still, but he was at a loss; he could not find her position. He started for the door. “You all didn’t talk about me too much last night, did you?”
“Like I said, Daddy, they just wonder why you never come to see them.”
“And what did you tell them?”
“I said you’d been very upset.”
“Yeah, you sure got me upset, all right. Don’t know what I’m doing half the time.” He opened the door. “You going to be here now, when I get back?”
He stood in the doorway, with the daylight behind him, around his skull, his curly black hair. His face was in shadow, but she watched the sparkling eyes, the teeth, the anxious, boyish grin.
Soon, just the same, she would be free.
“Go on,” she said. “I reckon I’ll be here.”
He hesitated for yet another moment, then closed the door behind him.
And if I’m not here, she thought, I’ll leave you a note.
After the movie, they sat down in a coffee shop around 135th and Seventh Avenue, and drank coffee and listened to the jukebox. They had seen William Holden and Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard.
“Why did she shoot him?” Julia asked. “If he wanted to go, why didn’t she just let him go? That don’t make no sense to me at all.”
“Well,” said Arthur, “I guess she was crazy about the cat—I guess the cat drove her crazy.”
“She was crazy, all right. I don’t believe in that kind of love. People got a right to their own life.”
“It must be wonderful, though,” said Arthur, “for someone to love you that much.”
“Now you sound crazy. To have somebody love you so much you can’t even go to the bathroom without them having a fit?”
She sipped her coffee and looked over at the jukebox, where some boys and girls were standing. Some boys and girls were dancing in the streets. She looked back at Arthur, and grinned. “You think it would be wonderful. It would be wonderful, all right—you’d be wonderful—inside of a week, you’d be so wonderful you’d be carried away, screaming.” She laughed. “Black people ain’t made for that kind of nonsense.”
“Black people doing it all the time, right on this avenue, girl. Every Saturday night, some chick goes crazy and takes out her razor and starts chopping up her man.” He grinned. “You been in the pulpit, you ain’t been out here. But—you just stay out here awhile.”
She said, after a moment, “It’s strange out here, I’ll give you that.”
“It’s dangerous out here, baby.”
“Oh, come on. How come you trying to be so grown-up with me? How long you been out here?”
“Never mind, sister. Longer than you.”
“Well. I sure don’t want nobody loving me so much they going to be coming after me with guns and razors.”
Arthur grinned. “I don’t know, girl. You done lost your salvation and you out of the pulpit and you look mighty fine walking these streets. I’d be careful, if I was you.”
“You hush. Anyway, that’s way in the future.” But as she said this, she thought of Crunch, her face changed, and Arthur laughed.
“It ain’t that far in the future. I believe you almost ready.”
“I got a lot to do before all that.” She stirred her coffee, looking both young and old. She looked at the dock on the wall behind the counter. “I got to make some money and get away from here.” She looked again, wistfully, at the
“You mean—because of the pulpit?”
She shrugged. “I guess. Partly. But—I was just never—young.”
“Well—don’t you feel younger now?”
She looked at him, and Arthur said quickly, “Well, no, I guess you don’t.” The reality of her trouble returned to him; he realized that he did not want to understand it.
And he felt, suddenly, sharply, that she did not want him to understand it, either. Her swift, girlish, or even boyish manner, and everything she said, were stratagems designed to protect a distance.
Yet she had confided in Crunch. And she was not a virgin anymore; Crunch had held her in his arms. They never talked about it, he rarely thought about it—his imagination simply refused to accept it—and yet, the unspoken love, and the weight of the unknown trouble bound them together and caused them to be friends.
“I guess I better be getting home,” she said, and something in the way she said it brought him sharply to attention. It was ten thirty.
“Will your father be home?”
“I hope not. He might be.”
Now she looked old; she looked out at the children dancing in the street.
“You can stay at my house,” he said.
“Thanks, Arthur,” and she smiled. “But I can’t stay at your house.”
“You can, if you want to, you know that, why not?”
“My daddy would shoot me,” she said, and she laughed.
“Does he drink a lot—your father?”
“Yes,” she said. “Since my mother died. He always drank—a little—but now he drinks a lot.”
“That’s why you don’t want to go home?”