Just Above My Head by James Baldwin
That laugh, from way above me: “Don’t you have no heart attack on my stairs, now! Take all the time you need, old man!”
“You going to pay for that, Julia, soon as I get up there.”
“If I was you, I’d stop talking. You using up the last of your oxygen. Just take it easy. I’ll have a sedative ready for you, by the time you get here, and you can fall out on the couch.”
She laughed again. I kept climbing. It was six thirty on a Friday evening; I remember that a record player was blowing Miles Davis on one of the floors I passed, there was a faint echo of marijuana on the air. I took the last few steps two at a time.
Her door was open. She stood in the center of the room—a high, long room, with two huge windows behind her. She wore her hair the way she had worn it in the ad, except that she had brushed back or combed back the bangs, and one saw that marvelous forehead. She wore no earrings. She wore a gray frock with a red belt, and stood in the center of the room, in high heels, on those long legs.
“You sound,” she said, “like a mountain climber.”
And she laughed. Without moving, and with her eyes fixed on mine, she laughed.
No one can describe this. When she laughed, I laughed, too, still standing in her door. I forgot to say, I had flowers—had bought flowers all of a sudden, because I saw them and because I was nervous and I thought she might like them. I held them toward her. I remember only that they were yellow flowers.
I see them still.
And she came toward me, with that tomboy grin, striding on those long legs.
I was so happy to see her—that’s what I can’t describe. Perhaps I had imagined that I would never see her again, never again in this life..
“Julia. I’m so happy to see you.”
She took the flowers, and put her arms around me, and we kissed each other—we kissed each other, in fact, and we both realized this with an unspoken shock as we moved away from each other—for the very first time in our lives.
“I’m happy to see you, too. How’ve you been?”
Our shock was in her voice, and it was surely in my eyes.
“I’m fine—but you’re the one! You turned glamorous on us all of a sudden. When you going to Hollywood?”
“You think I turned glamorous?” She laughed, and put the flowers on the table. “Well. I had to do something. Sit down. I’ll put these flowers in something, and I’ll fix you a drink.”
I sat down on the sofa. She disappeared. I looked around me. It was a large, high room, simply, sparsely furnished, but very comfortable. I was in the living room-dining room section of the room—a big, handsome table, the sofa, a couple of easy chairs. There was a grand piano next to a small bar, a TV set, a record player, records piled high on a stool near the record player. The two windows opened on the roof, where there were tables and chairs. The kitchen area—a stove, a sink, a small refrigerator, cupboard, kitchen table, two chairs, were next to these windows. There were two bedrooms opening off this main room, and the bathroom was in a corner, near the front door.
Julia put the flowers in water, and brought the flowers back to the table.
“This is a great place,” I said. “And you look marvelous.”
“I don’t know how,” she said, “but I’m glad you think so-I can’t get over seeing you! It’s been so long!”
“It’s been a while. How long have you been back in the city?”
“Not long, really—about ten days. We just moved in here a few days ago. I managed to sublet it through a friend of mine—”she laughed—“in the business. Hall, what can I get you to drink? I can’t get over you—Mister Young Executive! You look so smooth, brother, like you headed for the top!”
“Well, I got to look that way, honey, if I don’t I’ll be kept on the bottom, and I don’t like the bottom.”
“I hear you. What do you want to drink?”
“A little Scotch and ice, if that’s okay.”
“I believe I can do that.”
“Can I help? Here, let me help.”
I got the ice out of the refrigerator for her, and we put it in a bowl. She poured a Scotch for me, and made a gin-and-tonic for herself. And we sat down on the sofa.
“I hardly,” she said, “know where to begin.” I offered her a cigarette, and lit it for her. “I’ve seen your mother and your father and your brother—and—just about everybody—since I’ve seen you. Of course,” and she laughed again, more nervously this time, “we never did see much of each other. I was just a little girl, and you didn’t like me very much.”
What she says is true, but I don’t want it to hurt us now.
“Well,” I dare to say, “you were a pretty arrogant little girl. I didn’t think it was all your fault. But I like you now. Anyway—I don’t know—I had to see you.”
She is saying that we really don’t know each other, and she’s right. But she’s also been a part of my life for almost half my life, and she’s a part of Arthur’s life. I begin to feel uncomfortable. I don’t know if she knows how much I know about what has happened to her: I can’t, for example, talk about her father, or Crunch’s baby, not unless she brings it up.
And at the same time that I feel uncomfortable, I am very happy to see her.
So now I can only step out, as the song says, on the promise.
“I’m glad to see you, too,” she said. “And maybe I’m just as arrogant, but I’m a little more grown-up.”
“Julia—how long has it been since you stopped preaching?”
“Oh—seven years, now. A little more than seven years.” She sipped her drink, and looked at me. “Do you believe it?”
“It’s hard to believe. What did you do in New Orleans?”
“Hall—the only honest thing I can tell you is that I survived it—how I don’t know.” She stubbed out her cigarette. “Well. I had Jimmy. We got to be friends, finally. And then, he was a great help. He was beautiful—he is beautiful—”
“He’s up here, too? He’s with you? I saw his name on the mailbox.”
“Oh, yes, he’s here. He might be walking through the door any minute with his haughty self.”
She rose from the sofa, and walked to the record player. She looked at me. “I guess you know how I got down there?”
“I heard a little. Arthur wrote me.”
“Your mama didn’t tell you?”
“When I came home. But she didn’t write me about any of that.”
“I guess she didn’t know how.” She came back to the sofa and sat down, picked up her drink and stared down into it. “I don’t know how, either. I thought I’d never”—she halted, still looking down into her drink—“come together again. It had just gone on so long! All that misery. And each time you think you getting up—it knocks you back down.” Then she looked up at me with a smile. “But here I am.”
“How’d you get to be a model?”
“I was waiting on tables in New Orleans, and I guess I wasn’t bad, you know?” She laughed. “Maybe my days in the pulpit helped me to know how, to handle people—at least, not to be surprised by them—and then, Jimmy and some of his friends made me some costumes for Mardi Gras, and they were something. I mean, they were really something. So, some folks from New York came down and photographed me—in these costumes—” she grinned that tomboy grin, threw back her head, and laughed—I watched her pulsing, long, thin neck—“and suddenly, I was on my way. To the Apple. I didn’t know shit. I still don’t. But I was on my way back here. With Jimmy. And I’d been trying to do that from the time I had to be carried away from here.” I watched her long, thin hands on that neck for a moment, she shook her head, as though trying to wake up—“Ah! Would you like another drink?”
“If you do. But remember, I’m taking you to dinner.”
“I’d love that. I’ll make two very short drinks. I was really hoping that Jimmy would get here before we had to leave.”
She picked up our glasses, and strode to the bar.
“What’s Jimm
“Jimmy don’t go no place where there’s no piano. He’d take his piano to the bathroom with him, if he could. Damn near drove our grandmama around the bend,” and she laughed. “That poor lady! She still don’t know what she did to deserve it all. But,” and she brought our drinks to the table and sat down again, on the sofa, “she dealt with it, I’ll give her that. Imagine she might be getting some sleep, finally, now that we out of the house.” She was silent for a moment—then, “Jimmy’s trying to be a musician, but it’s rough. Of course. He spends a lot of his time on the road, in the South, playing for Civil Rights benefits, and,” sipping her drink, “because of that, of course, he’s spent some time in jail. It’s a madhouse down there now, and it’s going to be worse up here.”
“But Jimmy’s going to stay in New York now, for a while?”
“Oh, he intends to be here, for a while. But I might come home and find a note saying he’s on his way to Birmingham.”
I said, after a moment, “He sounds like Arthur.”
“Where is Arthur?”
“He’s somewhere in Canada, singing. I don’t know when he’s coming back here!”
“I’d like to see him. Your brother—he was very nice to me.”
“I can believe it. He’s a very nice man, my brother.”
Julia giggled. “He’s so serious, sometimes—he tries to be like you.”
I laughed. “Why? Am I serious? Or funny?”
“I don’t know. But, sometimes, Arthur walks around like you, and it’s funny.”
I had never thought of that, had certainly never seen it.
“Well—shall we go and eat something? I’m starving.”
“All right. Just give me a moment.”
And she put down her drink, and disappeared into the bathroom.
I sat there, thinking of many things, including what she had said about Arthur walking around and trying to be like me. I thought that was very funny, and I laughed to myself—why would anybody want to be like me? I didn’t want to be like me. But there was something distantly chilling in the fact that Julia could so easily make a comparison which I couldn’t see at all.
I heard a key turn in the lock, and Jimmy walked through the door. I recognized him at once, of course—the taciturn face, the distant eyes: but this was the first time I recognized him, so to speak, as Julia’s brother, saw how they resembled each other—in the cheekbones, the eyes, the impudent lips. Perhaps because Jimmy was a male I looked for his resemblance to his father—but, actually, Julia resembled Joel more than he. Jimmy’s eyes were distant because they dared not focus on you? but, when they did, one saw, in the boy’s face, the astonished and vulnerable eyes of his mother.
I rose at once as he entered, afraid that he wouldn’t recognize me. But he did, at once, with a smile.
“Hey! You must be Hall—right?”
“That’s right. You must be Jimmy.”
“I guess I didn’t change much, then. Julia told me you called. I’m glad to see you. Where’s your brother—Arthur?”
“He’s in Canada.”
“Working?”
“Yeah. He’s singing up there.”
“Lucky motherfucker.”
He was wearing blue jeans and a sweater and sneakers and carrying a battered airline bag. He was fairly husky, though still very much a matter of wristbones, ankles, and kneecaps; his hair was coarser and kinkier than Julia’s. He dropped the airline bag near the record player and propelled himself toward the kitchen.
“You all right? Can I get you anything?”
“I’m all right, thanks.”
He rummaged in the refrigerator for what turned out to be a beer and came back to the living room. He sat down in one of the easy chairs and I sat back down on the sofa.
“So! You haven’t seen my filthy old man around, have you?”
“I haven’t been around. I just came back from California.”
“I doubt he’s got the balls to go that far,” said Jimmy. He swallowed from his bottle. Then, “I’m not trying to put you uptight about it. I just got a couple of things I got to say to him, and I was wondering if you might have come across him—in your travels.”
And he smiled. The most terrifying thing about that smile was that it was a real smile, and I suddenly caught a glimpse of what Julia had certainly not foreseen as she began to recover in New Orleans. Whatever Jimmy knew, or didn’t know, he knew—knew that two women had been violated, by his father: and that made his manhood an embattled, a bloodstained thing.
It must have been strange for Julia to have so much desired to be forgiven by her brother, only to be forced to see that it was not she, as far as he was concerned, who stood in need of forgiveness. And he who stood in need of forgiveness could not be forgiven: it was no longer a human possibility, which made divine forgiveness dubious indeed, if not ignoble: this lesson for the preacher.
Julia came out of the bathroom, more burnished, subtly, than before, and stared down at her brother, one hand on one hip.
“So, you got here, I see. You say hello to Hall?”
Jimmy elaborately swallowed some beer, made a rude, farting noise with his lips, she laughed and he laughed, and he said, looking up at his sister with the most brilliant, mocking, loving eyes I had ever seen until that moment in my life, “Why, yes, sister. I said hello to Hall” He turned to me. “Didn’t I say hello—what’s your name?”
We laughed. Jimmy winked at me, cock of the walk, and Julia came and sat down beside me.
“We going to go and eat something. You want to eat with us?”
“I don’t want to interfere, and”—he looked at his sneakers—“I ain’t hardly dressed for it. No,” and he looked at me, “you all go on. I’ll be seeing you. Try to fatten up my sister just a little bit.” He turned to Julia. His tone changed. “I’m going to work a little bit, a record or two, raid the icebox, and hit the sack. And I got some people to see early in the morning.”
And he stood up, forcing me to stand up. He extended his hand. “I’m glad to see you again. I remember you real well. You was always real nice to me.” We shook hands. He pulled Julia up from the sofa, and kissed her on the forehead. “See you later, sister. Try not to stumble over nothing when you come in—because you know that makes me evil!” He walked us to the door. “You got your keys, child?”
Julia looked in her handbag. “Yes. I’ve got my keys.”
“Well, then. Good night.”
He closed the door behind us, and we started down the long, steep steps.
“He’s a nice boy,” I said.
“Oh, yes,” said Julia. “Some things turned out right.”
We got to the street. I hailed a cab; for a wonder, it stopped. “I know a nice place in the Village,” I said. “You want to try it?”
“I’d love to, sir,” she said, and we got into the cab.
I gave the driver the address, and we were off on our first date.
Though that first date was to prove to be a very important date, it resists my memory. It blurs with other dates, weaves itself in and out of my memory, blurs with other occasions. I see Julia’s face, that changing face; for a very long time, I could not take my eyes from her face. I saw the face of the child, and the face of the little girl preacher, the faces I had always seen—or never seen—and a new face, or faces, I had never before confronted. Everything she said and did that night was touched, for me, with the miraculous—it was as though she had come back from the dead.
We went to a joint with low lights, on Bleecker, near Tenth, and we had a couple of drinks before dinner. Though what Julia had to tell me was somber, and her situation precarious, she was too proud—or had been through too much—to panic.
They had left New Orleans with very little money, and Julia had only the vague promise of “interviews.” But that had had to be enough. Julia had never been happy in New Orleans, had arrived there with too vivid, too mysterious an affliction. She had had an “accident” in New York, as he
She was completely out of place in school—which she contrived not to attend for very long—too old, by far, for her peers, too knowing, too removed; and, on the other hand, too weirdly ancient and private for the elders. She exasperated them, she appeared to frighten them, because they could find no way to correct her. And the fact that she had been a child preacher, but was a child preacher no longer—had become a maid, of all work, then a short-order cook, then a waitress, and seemed not to mind the company she was obliged to keep—became a kind of final black mark against her: it was as though she had been marked by the devil.
Julia, in my memory, smiling as she tells me all this, or some of this, sometimes laughing, with those relentless shadows playing on her face.
But, “I don’t know, now, how I expected Jimmy to act. I was just a mess when I got there. I hardly remember getting there. It seems like all I wanted to do was sleep,” and Julia closed her eyes for a moment. “But every time I started to sleep, I started to dream and the dream was so terrible I tried to wake up and I couldn’t. But when I woke up, all I wanted to do was go back to sleep. I didn’t want to see—nobody. But especially not Jimmy.”
She paused, not looking at me, her arms folded, a cigarette between her long, lean fingers. She sat opposite me, but far away. The candlelight seemed to turn the gray dress silver.
I wanted to ask her—many questions—but I held my peace. At one time, I had thought I knew the answer, but I had not, then, been facing an unknown woman in a Village restaurant. The clarity of the answer diminishes as the intensity of the question rises: as the question fragments itself into many sharp edges.