Just Above My Head by James Baldwin
I dared to say, “I’d like you to be happy, too, Arthur.”
He thrust out his lips in a self-deprecating smile and looked down at his glass, which he held between both hands. Then, looking up at me, “You two going to get married?”
“That’s what I want. But she’s not sure.”
He nodded his head slowly, not looking at me, looking within. “Well. I can see that, too. She’s been through some shit.” Then he looked up at me, and smiled. “Well. Patience, brother!”
“Patience, yourself,” I said, and I wanted to persist, but I didn’t, something told me that this was not the moment.
We finally hauled it on uptown, and I think it was the Red Rooster, a joint I dug a lot in those days, and I associate it with Julia. On the other hand, the Rooster is not too far from where Jordan’s Cat used to be, and not too far from where Martha used to live, and I know I avoided that neighborhood for a long time—everything around there hurt me too much. So maybe my memory is playing tricks on me and I associate the Rooster with Julia because we were so happy for a while. Our love was the beginning of my reconciliation with my pain, and, after Julia, I was never afraid to go anywhere again. Maybe I associate Julia with this turf because I had once been happy there and then had been locked out and felt myself lost and Julia gave me back my keys. Who knows? And it doesn’t matter. We went to a very groovy Harlem restaurant and had ourselves a ball. I still remember Julia’s face, and Arthur’s face, and Jimmy’s.
One thing I will say, though, now that I think I can, now that I don’t get around much anymore: when I realized that Julia and I were not meant to make it together, for reasons inexorably hidden in the cosmos, I entered a void, and, in that void, I discovered that Julia had given me something. She had given me herself, yes, or had given me what was hers to give: but she had given me more than that. Through her, I learned that anguish was necessary, and, however crushing, could be used—that it was there to be used. I sometimes thought that Julia was as wrong as two left shoes, and, in some ways, I still do: but what she saw, she saw, and she never pretended not to have seen it—whatever, indeed, it is that she sees, this ancient child from Egypt! Sometimes I wanted to kill her, and I was very often frightened for her. But, when the chips are down, it is better to be furious with someone you love, or be frightened for someone you love, than be put through the merciless horror of being ashamed of someone you love.
That night, anyway, Jimmy was almost completely unrecognizable, mainly because he had not dressed for his sister, or for me, or for the restaurant, and had not given a thought to my credit cards. I had never seen him, as it were, “dressed,” and I very much doubt that Julia had: neither of us could have seen, anyway, what Jimmy wanted Arthur to see. God knows what Arthur saw, but even he must have suspected that Jimmy had dressed for him. There he was, then, in a dark gray suit, a beige shirt, a scarlet tie, gleaming brown pumps. His scalp must have been stinging still from the scouring, combing, brushing and greasing of his hair, and his fingernails were very nearly blinding. And, in fact, I realized, as Jimmy hoped Arthur would, realized for the first time (as Jimmy hoped Arthur would) that he was a very beautiful, tremendously moving boy, who might become, with love, with luck, a rare and valuable man. My heart turned over—he, too, after all, had been through some shit—and I hoped, with all my heart, that he would find the love he so needed to give.
He was one of those people who leap on terror as though terror were a dangerous horse, and ride; not quite knowing where they are going, but determined not to be thrown.
Arthur had asked him a question about the South, and Jimmy, riding, was instructing Arthur, and all of us, in the interesting folkways of the region:
“First of all, I thought, Shit, me and my sister been living down here. And then I had to realize that I had not been living down here. I had been living in Grandma’s house because there wasn’t no other place to send me. And the second thing I had to realize was that I had not been born in Grandma’s house, like those kids my age, hitting the waiting rooms and the lunch counters. I had not grown up with that. I didn’t see signs, saying WHITE and COLORED—and they so fucking hypocritical and cowardly, those assholes, why can’t they say white and black?—till I was past twelve years old—”
He was talking so fast, and becoming, as he talked, so indignant that he had to catch his breath. Julia said mildly, “Take it easy, baby. Eat.”
Arthur grinned and touched Jimmy on the cheek. “Don’t try to tell it all at once. You got to make sure I understand what you telling me.”
Arthur’s smile, and his fleeting touch, caused Jimmy, after a moment, to subside and drop his eyes and turn his attention back to his pork chops. Arthur watched him a moment, then turned back to his spare ribs. Julia and I, very much together, looked at each other for a second, and then, for a little while, we ate—except for the jukebox—in silence.
Older brothers, younger brother—this thought had crossed my mind as I watched Arthur watching Jimmy. It is taken for granted that the younger brother needs the older brother: this need defines the older brother’s role, and older brothers remain older brothers all their lives—the proof being that they are always, helplessly, creating younger brothers. They are quite incapable of creating, for themselves, an older brother no matter how desperately they may long for one. An older brother is not among their possibilities. But younger brothers also remain younger brothers all their lives, and either seek out older brothers, or flee from them. Loneliness being what it is—and wickedness being what it is—the role of the older brother is the easier role to play: it is easier to seem to correct than to bear being corrected. The older brother’s need, whatever it is, can always be justified by what he is able to dictate as being the need of the younger brother.
But what, I had abruptly wondered, watching Arthur watching Jimmy, happens to the younger brother who needs a younger brother to love, and who considers that this need is forbidden?
Jimmy had finished one pork chop, started on his second, and caught his breath.
“What it is, you know,” he said to Arthur, “is that you don’t believe what you’re seeing. That fucks you up, right there. You don’t believe these people can be real.” He laughed. “It’s true. You think they must be part of a fucking circus, or they just escaped from a madhouse—somebody going to come and call for them in a minute, or, you know, they going to turn up the houselights, or something.”
He laughed again. I watched Julia watching him: her heart.
“Then”—he gestured with those big hands—“you wonder what am I doing here? And I made it a point to be here. I walked miles and days to be here. And I don’t want their slimy coffee and I don’t want their fucking greasy hamburger—they can’t even cook, I guess they hate food just like they hate everything else, they got no more taste than pigs, man—and then one of them say something like What you want in here? You know we don’t serve you all in here, and”—he threw back his head, and laughed—“had one motherfucker say to me, This is a free country! You don’t like it, you can go on back to Africa!”
He laughed, and we laughed with him. Tears streamed down Jimmy’s face.
“Then”—sobering—“you start to get scared. It don’t come over you all at once. It’s slow. It come over you, look like, from your ankle, from your big toe, it creep up the back of your thigh till it reach your behind and your balls get wet. And it’s funny, because you were already scared on the way here, but when you walk in, five or six or seven of you, you not scared then. Then—you don’t get scared, exactly. Just, all of a sudden, you are scared. This ain’t no vaudeville show, this ain’t no circus, ain’t nobody coming to take these people nowhere. These people coming to take you somewhere. And”—leaning forward to Arthur—“two things, man. You don’t want to die, but you waiting. These people really want to kill you. That’s hard to believe. You know it, or somebody once told you, or you thought you knew it—but now, here they are, and now, they the only people in the world! Ai
He leaned back, lips pursed, forehead wrinkled. He tapped on the table with his fork.
“But the other thing is worse.” He looked up, now, at all of us. “Maybe somebody told you once that these people wanted to kill you. Maybe you got some sense of how many of us they already killed. And that’s why you there, after all—and you try to hold this in the center of your mind—to force some kind of showdown, to bring an end to the slaughter.” He shook himself, a little like a puppy, and sighed. “But couldn’t nobody ever have told you—or you didn’t hear it—that you would want to kill. Oh”—looking at Julia—”many a time I wanted to kill our father. I even thought, one time, that I wanted to kill my sister,” and he grinned. “But—that wasn’t really true, you know. That was just—pain. But, down yonder—you look into that white face and you look around at them white faces and you want to kill somebody. You want to start killing, and never stop, until you swimming in blood. And then you get scared in another way, all over again. You scared of yourself. You scared of what will happen to your buddies, them sitting beside you, if you don’t catch hold of yourself. And then, you see that this ain’t no circus, these people are real, just like you, because, now, you damn near just like them. And that makes you feel real cold. If you ever prayed, or never prayed, you pray then. Hell is a staining place.”
He looked down, looked up—at Arthur. “You still want to go?”
Arthur looked at him for a moment, unreadably. He did not, at that moment, know what to say, nor did Julia, nor did I. Arthur and Jimmy sat facing each other, Julia and I sat facing each other: Arthur could not avoid looking into Jimmy’s incredibly trusting eyes. I saw this from an angle. Julia looked down at her plate.
“I might,” said Arthur carefully, “consider taking you along as my guide. If you wasn’t so fucking undernourished.” He tapped Jimmy’s plate. “Eat.”
“But there’s a whole lot more than what I just said—there’s something very beautiful, too—some beautiful people, man, the most beautiful people I ever saw—!”
Arthur continued to watch him; then he grumbled to Julia, “This child ain’t got no respect for his elders. Think my brother got money to throw away on children who pick at their food.” Then, to Jimmy, “Eat, baby. We got time to talk.”
Jimmy dropped his eyes, and obediently began to eat.
“We going to have a drink,” said Arthur, “and when you finished eating, raise your hand.”
Jimmy smiled as best he could, with his mouth full of pork chop and his eyes full of Arthur, and nodded. Arthur grinned, and tapped him on the cheek again, and winked at Julia. Julia winked back, and I could see, from that split-second exchange, that she was very grateful to Arthur, for Jimmy had told Arthur more, in an evening, than he had ever told her—or anyone: younger brothers, younger brothers.
The younger brothers put us in a cab, having elected, themselves, to ride the subway. Since they were together, it was almost the first time that Julia and I had said Good night! to the younger brother without a small, private, repudiated tremor of anxiety. Habit, we called it, silently: but habit is produced by experience.
Our cab rushed past them as they walked slowly down the crowded avenue, Arthur a little taller than Jimmy. They waved, and we waved, and Julia put her head on my shoulder. I pulled her into my arms, held her head against my chest for a moment, and, then, in the speeding, flashing light and darkness, we kissed and kissed each other until I said, “Thank God, Julia, we ain’t got to climb no stairs tonight. I’d never make it.”
She put her hand on me, and grinned. She said, “Well, if you can manage to get out of the cab, you can lean on me in the elevator. I like it when you lean on me.”
Well. But she always seemed surprised, surprised that she filled me so, that there was nothing she had to do, to please me. I knew that she would never, consciously or deliberately, do anything to hurt me—or anyone: her dread of inflicting pain was so deep that it could nearly be called an affliction. Nearly, but not quite. I never knew her to hurt anyone but herself, and that is how she broke my heart. But she faced it, and surmounted it, and she gave me the strength to do that, too: and one really cannot ask love to do more than that.
Ah. It is a story I will tell another day. I know I cannot tell it now. Even today, with Ruth, with my children, with time, like thunder, gathering behind us, dark before us, Julia will make a gesture, or throw back her head, and giggle, or lean forward, with a moaning laugh, and I feel a tingling in my thigh, as though some ineffable wound were there, and I see Julia, as we were, so long ago: Julia, stepping naked out of the shower, or Julia’s head foaming with shampoo; Julia, not quite certain that she approved of the fact that she shaved her armpits, “But,” dryly, “it is a competitive business”; wrapping Julia in my bathrobe which immediately became, on her, a tent; creeping under this tent to be with her, like The Sheik of Araby! and we would laugh. She would hold my head against her while I nibbled on her breasts, tasted her nipples (someone said that all love is incest), licked her throat, drank at her lips, found her mouth, a swimmer, deep inside me, holding his breath, letting it out, going under, coming up, aware of her astonished, astonishing surrender, aware that I had known her when she had no breasts, trying to lick the secrets out of her pussy, my tongue between her thighs, down those long legs, up again, up, until I covered her entirely, her long fingers on my back, stroking me from the nape of my neck to my ass, my mouth in hers, my mouth in hers, her breath becoming mine, mine hers, her hands on me, her hands on me, her mouth against my chest, my nipples, all the hairs of my body itching, tingling, one by one, her mouth against my navel, against the hairs of my groin, on the tip of my prick, on my balls, her mouth on my prick again, my prick in her mouth, my tongue in her pussy, then, up, up, until I covered her again, my mouth in hers, her mouth in mine, moaning, moaning, those long legs spreading, those thighs holding, that belly rising to meet mine, those fingers on my back, the slow, slow, slow discovery of the wet and seeking warmth inside her, that entry which took so long, there was always more of her, always more of me, I stretched and stretched and stretched and thickened, I was always astounded that there could be so much, and she opened, then closed around me, opened and closed, opened and closed, never had anyone held me so, I had never been welcomed with such rejoicing, never, nearly strangling, heard such a laugh come up from me, throbbing and pounding, throbbing and pounding, hearing her cry, hearing her cry my name until that cry was the only sound in the universe, feeling her give and give and give, gasping and grasping, and then, from the soles of my feet, along my thighs, as though dark bells had begun rejoicing, through the crack of my ass and up my spine, electrifying my shoulder blades and the nape of my neck and the top of my head, threatening to close my throat, my breath in hers, my breath in hers, down my chest, tormenting my nipples, my belly, swelling my balls, everything, now, all of me, thundering into that great organ, and, at this moment, not wanting it to end, I always paused, and she would say, please oh please but she would also lie still, knowing we couldn’t be still long, and we would kiss as though we never expected to kiss again, and, then, without even knowing it, we would be moving, moving, moving, and, always, at the moment I began to come, it always seemed that there was, suddenly, more of Julia and more of me, and more, hard hard hard, and sometimes I was almost frightened, it seemed that the outpouring would never ever end.
Then we would simply lie in each other’s arms, in each other’s element, each other’s time and space, for a long time: and I had never, in my life before, felt such a tremendous safety, or such power to protect. Never before had I felt about another you are my life my heart my soul. We sometimes made love on the living room floor, and woke up, in our tent, with the light shining down on us through my big West End Avenue window.
But that night at the Rooster was the last time the four of us were to be together for a while. Arthur did not go south then, his manager had already booked him west—to Seattle, San Francisco, L
Jimmy went to Birmingham. This was shortly before our countrymen began hearing of Birmingham, and about eighteen months before Peanut and Arthur and I went down: and all of this, for what it’s worth, is before the March on Washington.
Shortly before that trip south, Julia had left me to go to Africa—finding herself, for a long time, in, of all weird places, Abidjan—and I wasn’t functioning well. The agency had put me, in effect, on sick leave without pay: but I had asked them to do this. And, worried as I was about Arthur, I might not have gone south with him, at least not then, if Julia had not left me. Perhaps he saw me, bumping into walls, cursing out mirrors, drowning in alcohol, picking myself up off my floor in the midnight, crying myself to sleep, yes, crying like a baby, and I don’t know if you can call it sleep. I don’t know what you can call it. There was nothing I wanted, nor nobody, and nothing I wanted to do. I was aware, the way you hear voices from a long ways off, that my mother, my father, my brother, were worried about me: it was cold to be forced to realize that I knew a lot of people, but I didn’t really have any friends, not one, and I was only thirty-two! And, if I didn’t have any friends, it was because of something I had chosen, it was something I had done, there was no one to blame: and there you go, round and round in the prison of yourself, day in, day out, nightfall, sunrise, day again. Those voices I heard from a long ways off, my father, my mother, my brother—I couldn’t really speak, but I didn’t want them to be too ashamed of me: those voices forced me to stagger and sometimes damn near crawl across my floor and get to the bathroom and pee, and sit there and force myself to shit and get up and not quite face the mirror, but anyway, shave, and then brush my teeth, and, holding my breath, get into the shower—I always saw Julia there! And, sometimes, using all the strength I had, I would sometimes actually shampoo my hair and stand under all that water and cry and cry and cry.