Just Above My Head by James Baldwin

  This cannot be done by memory, but by looking toward tomorrow, and so, to undo the horror, we repeat it.

  This is, perhaps, why I so often thought of safety when I watched these so lately baptized Americans, and why I thought of them as homeless. They had to believe in safety, who on earth could blame them? But I knew that they were not safe: if I was not safe in my country, if no viable social contract had been made, or honored, with me, then no one could be safe here. I may not believe that safety exists anywhere, but it certainly cannot exist among such dishonorable people. They did not want to hear this—now that they were the Americans, I was the stranger—I couldn’t blame them, and I held my peace. Still, I had to wonder what their memory made of their ordeal: which could never have so mercilessly overtaken them, had they not believed themselves to be safe. So it was true, after all, however odd and brutal: I knew there was no hiding place down here; they were homeless, I was home.

  I looked over at Julia.

  “How does it feel to be back?”

  She pursed her lips, looking very somber. “I’m glad to be back. But—that’s the same question they asked me over there. And they weren’t wrong.”

  I watched her. Again, she seemed to be staring into the bottom of a well.

  “I mean, it wasn’t a bullshit, my-African-sister kind of thing. The ones who came on like that just despised you, and wanted to find a way to use you. No. The question was serious. There was something true in it, though I still don’t know how to put it into words. It comes out of a place, anyway, without words, somewhere where the question is the answer.”

  She looked up at me, as though she were wondering if she made any sense. I didn’t know, yet; she did, and she didn’t. She did, that is, if she did: I was all attuned to her.

  Something she saw in my face made her smile. “Well, I’m trying to get it together, brother. The diaspora didn’t happen in a day.” We both laughed. “But I mean—we’ve been raised to think that a question is one thing, and the answer is another—and we always say, the answer. But it may not be like that.” She smiled. “Just think of all the people you watch going through their whole lives looking for the answer, waiting for the answer—and never dealing with the question. So—I really just had to accept the question as saying something tremendous about—me.”

  She stopped, still smiling, and toyed with the cigarettes on the table. Our waitress came, and we ordered dessert—chocolate mousse for Julia, Russian cream for me—and coffee. It was past four o’clock. My date with Ruth was at seven thirty.

  And I suddenly wondered what I would tell Ruth about this afternoon; wondered, for the first time, what I would tell her about Julia. Julia, for the first time, was someone I would have to try to clarify to another.

  And I looked at her as though I were already trying to form the words in my mind, or as though I were about to say good-bye. But I had already said good-bye to Julia, and I realized, abruptly, and absolutely, that I was never going to say good-bye to her again, nor she to me. We had done that, and it hadn’t been any fun at all, and we’d never, thank heaven, have to go through that again. We had accepted our terms, or perhaps, we had dictated them; it made no difference now. Too much joined us for us ever to be pulled apart: our love was here to stay.

  And I hummed a bar or two of that song, in fact, while Julia looked at me, ironically, her chin resting on one fist.

  “There,” she said, “that’s a very good example—of the question being the answer, I mean.”

  I had to laugh. “Get away from me, old obeah woman.”

  “It’s the way I was raised,” she said, and we laughed together.

  Our dessert came, and we ate, for a while, in silence. Then Julia said, looking down, “He told me that I was not barren, that childbirth takes many forms, that regret is a kind of abortion, that sorrow is the only key to joy.” She looked up. “I don’t know. But he gave me something to think about— maybe he gave me a way to think about it. He made me begin to look forward, instead of looking back.”

  She looked down again. “And—I wanted to see you—because—somehow—I feel differently. I’m not happy, but—I’m not tormented, as I was. I wanted you to know. You deserve to know. And there’s no one else I could tell. Oh,” and she looked up at me again, “one day, I’ll tell you other things. It was a nightmare for me, I didn’t know who I was. But that was very important—to know I didn’t know. It was strange to be looked on, not merely as yourself, but as part of something other, older, vaster. I hated it. But now that I’m back here, among all these people, who think that everything begins, and ends, with them, it all begins to make: sense.” She shook her head, laughed, looked up. “I don’t know what that word sense means anymore, but I’m learning to trust what I don’t know.” She leaned over, surprising me, and took my hand. “Maybe that’s all I wanted to tell you. So you’d be at ease in your mind about me, and be free.”

  I took her hand in both of mine. I know that we looked like lovers, and it was beautiful to realize that, in truth, at last, we were.

  “Thank you for that,” I said. “But what I’m mainly going to do with my freedom is watch over those I love.”

  “That’s a two-way street,” she said. She watched me for a moment. “You’ve been somewhere, too.”

  We left the place around six. I managed to find a taxi, and I put her in it, and I walked home, scarcely believing that I could be so happy, or so free. Nothing, after all, had been lost. We were going to live.

  It is very largely because of Jimmy that Arthur became: a star.

  That is a somewhat curious statement, and relates to what was to become a part of Jimmy’s agony: but I must let the statement stand.

  I do not at all agree with Jimmy’s assessment of his responsibility, and Jimmy will be forced to agree with me as his agony subsides. I watched it happen, after all, without quite knowing what I was watching, but one thing was very clear to me: Jimmy made Arthur happy. There is no other way to put it. I saw my brother happy, for the first time in our lives.

  When someone you love is happy, you have been given a great gift; you are the honored guest at a rare celebration. If you are burdened, the joy of your brother lightens your burden, if you are crawling on your belly, his joy brings you to your feet. It’s true: my soul is a witness. After days, or weeks, of despair, and inertia, you are given the force to go out and contend for the rent money, and to get your watch out of the pawnshop. The happiness of someone you love proves that life is possible. Your own horrors, whatever they may be, must simply await your return from the celebration—there can be no question of your taking them with you. And there they sit, indeed, in your room, when you return, looking baleful and neglected, and you realize that some horrors need you far more that you need them, and, mercilessly, you begin to clean house.

  But in truth, I, too, then, was very happy, not only because I had found Ruth, but because I had not lost Julia. These two truths were related: I might not have been free, for Ruth, or anyone, if Julia had been lost. And I might never have known why I wasn’t free, might never, consciously, have made the connection: it was only when the cloud lifted, when I saw Julia again, that I realized how dense the cloud had been, how long I had been wandering. Oh, I had responsibilities, commitments, a privacy of pride (or a pride of privacy) and a relatively strong will. These are not trivial attributes, but I know what they can, and cannot do. They can help you to put on your armor, and teach you how to wear it, but they cannot help you to take it off. Something itches, something burns, something, finally, fatally, begins to stink. And when you begin to be engulfed by your own odor, you dare not let anyone near you, and your life becomes a matter of ritual and evasion. It is true that I had Arthur, but Arthur was a grown-ass man—my brother, not my ward—and if I could not, so to speak, buy my own ticket to the concert, he would soon have no choice but to have me locked out of the hall: I was not his ward, either.

  So my West End Avenue apartment was a kind of joyful tabernacle t
hat winter, as my thirty-second year began to end, as my thirty-third year, incredibly, beautifully, blew trumpets in the distance.

  Julia was seldom there. She was working all the time. Her absence, somewhat to her surprise, had had the effect of increasing her value; she was in at the very beginning of a kind of high-fashion African craze. Her journey had also given her another, more haunting quality, and, according to Jimmy, Broadway, Hollywood, and television producers were on the phone, and Julia had actually read a few scripts: after which, again according to Jimmy, “Julia thinks modeling is about as low as she wants to sink.” To some extent—indeed, to a very important extent—I could guess Julia’s state from Jimmy’s, for his eye was always on that sparrow, and, more than that, Jimmy always trusted me. Just as he knew that I knew he loved my brother, he knew I loved his sister.

  And I could gauge, yet more vividly, Arthur’s state from Jimmy’s. When I was thirty-two, Arthur was twenty-five, and Jimmy was twenty-one. Twenty-one is a cunning, carnivorous, but far from devious age. Neither Arthur nor Jimmy could ever really hide anything, nor did they ever, it must be said, when the chips were down, try: but Arthur was far more veiled, especially, of course, in his relation to Jimmy, around me. I thought Arthur was very funny—downright, as the old folks would say, “cute.” Here came Jimmy, bouncing in, in the canvas shit-kickers which had replaced the sneakers, wearing Arthur’s duffel coat, blue jeans, and a sweater, glowing like a planet, kissing Ruth, whom he called “Mother Mattie,” throwing his arms around me, and heading, of course, for the kitchen, rubbing his hands, and complaining about the cold, and yelling behind him, “Hey, old gospel warrior, you ain’t had nothing to eat all day! What you want me to fix you?”

  This to Arthur, who, very soberly, has more or less limped in behind him, doing his best to look exasperated, and dissembling the pleasure he cannot hide by throwing his smile at Ruth, or me—we always caught it—and then, frowning, under the necessity of answering Jimmy’s yell, in the utterly doomed hope of shutting him up before he reveals all the secrets of the chateau, “I didn’t hear you ask Hall for permission to go into his icebox, man!”

  Jimmy (at the door of the kitchen, bottle of Scotch in one hand, loaf of bread in the other): Would you like a ham or fried chicken or spare rib sandwich? You got to eat something, baby. Your brother don’t want you to starve. (To me) Do you?

  Me: Certainly not.

  Jimmy: I’ll fix you a drink first. You want Scotch or vodka? (To me) Where’s your vodka?

  Me: In the cabinet, under the sink—you know.

  Jimmy: Oh. Yeah. (To Arthur) Which is it?

  Ruth: You fix the drinks, Jimmy. I’ll fix the food.

  Jimmy: Okay, Mother Mattie. (To Arthur) Which is it?

  Arthur (ceasing to struggle): Scotch. Double. Rocks. (Under his breath): Motherfucker.

  Ruth goes into the kitchen, and Arthur looks at me—a very moving look, a mocking scowl, a question, an irrepressible joy. And I laugh.

  After a moment, Arthur laughs, too. “Ah. What you going to do?”

  “Eat. Drink. And, baby, be happy.”

  And he looks at me again, more than ever my baby brother, and I dare to say, “I love you. Don’t forget it. And, whatever makes you happy, that’s what you supposed to do, and whoever makes you happy, that’s where you supposed to be.”

  He looks at me again, and something seems to fall from him. Then, “Okay. I love you, too.”

  Then Jimmy comes out of the kitchen, with Arthur’s drink, and hands it to him, and there is something very moving in the way he does this. It is probably impossible to describe it. Every gesture any human being makes is loaded, is a confession, is a revelation: nothing can be hidden, but there is so much that we do not want to see, do not dare to see. The boy had poured the stiff drink Arthur ordered into what I knew he considered to be a special glass, in fact, Arthur’s glass: a square, heavy glass, with a wide silver band. He did not kneel as he handed Arthur his drink, as, for example, a Greek or an Elizabethan page might have done, but he was compelled to lean forward, and, unconsciously, he bowed. I was aware of this, perhaps, only because I was watching Jimmy’s face, and I saw how his eyes searched Arthur’s: his devotion was in his eyes, and that was why he seemed to bow. It was mocking, wry, niggerish, salty, but it was love, and Arthur, as he took the glass, looked into Jimmy’s eyes, and seemed to kiss him, on the lips, and on the brow. And both were very happy. Arthur raised his glass to Jimmy, then to his lips, and Jimmy moved away, back into the kitchen. We heard his voice, and Ruth’s, and their laughter.

  Jimmy and Arthur spent all their time together, really, either at 18th Street—“Man, we finally made it up all them stairs!” Jimmy once irrepressibly crowed to Ruth and me while Arthur scowled, and blushed—or at the Dey Street loft, where they also worked, practiced, rehearsed, around the clock. It was beautiful to watch them; freedom is an extraordinary spectacle. It was a tremendous moment in all our lives, I remember it, until this hour, as the turning point: and Tony was conceived then. And when I say that it was largely because of Jimmy that Arthur became: a star: I do not mean that this possibility had entered either of their minds. Each learned, working, enormous things from the other, but they were far from calculating a public conquest: at that moment, indeed, it was not only the farthest thing from their minds, but would have been, had they thought of it, a trap to be avoided. People who think that they wish to become famous have no idea how the process works fame cannot be summoned; it strikes, like a hammer, and the trick, thereafter, is to stand up under what has seemed to be a mortal blow. No, they were happy, they were working, they were learning to trust the unanswerable truth that each was indispensable to the other—should they lose each other, each would have to learn to live all over again—and, if I say that it was largely due to Jimmy that Arthur became The Soul Emperor! Mr. Arthur Montana! I mean that Jimmy’s presence in Arthur’s life, Jimmy’s love, altered Arthur’s estimate of himself, gave him a joy and a freedom he had never known before, invested him with a kind of incandescent wonder, and he carried this light on stage with him, he moved his body differently since he knew that he was loved, loved, and, therefore, knew himself to be both bound and free, and this miracle, the unending wonder of this unending new day, filled his voice with multitudes, summoned, from catacombs unnameable, whosoever will.

  Arthur’s first hit record, for example, was more than a year in the future, but here is, partly, how it came about: In the Florida church, on that far-off afternoon, when Jimmy had first played for Arthur, Arthur, after two, or three, improvisations, had thought that they would stop and that we would all go back down to the church basement, where we would wash our faces and change our shirts, if we had shirts to change into. We might have just enough time to drive somewhere, for a quick drink.

  So he stopped, and turned toward Jimmy to indicate a break; but Jimmy, very deliberately, with great impertinence, and looking Arthur straight in the eye, banged out the opening of “Just a Closer Walk with Thee.”

  Arthur caught his breath, and nearly cracked up, but had no choice but to follow Jimmy’s lead:

  Grant it, Jesus,

  if You please.

  Daily, walking, close to Thee,

  let it be,

  dear Lord,

  let it be.

  I had no idea, then, of course, how direct, and, as it were, sacrilegious, Jimmy was being—considering the uses to which we put the temple of the Holy Ghost, sacrilegious is a very strange word—but, however that may be, his call was very direct and moving, and brought from Arthur a response which seemed to ring out over those apocalyptic streets, and caused me, and the two men standing at the church door with me, to look back and see where that sound was coming from.

  This song became for them, then, theirs, a sacrament, a stone marking a moment on their road: the point of no return, when they confessed to each other, astounded, terrified, but having no choice, in the hearing of men, and in the sight of God.

  Arthur wa
s never to have another accompanist like Jimmy, and Jimmy was never to have another singer like Arthur. This is a mystery to which one must, simply, say Amen: it will never be deciphered. One has seen dancers, for example, quite extraordinary alone, or with whatever partner—and then one sees the two dancers together, who seem to have been created to be together, from the moment the earth was formed. Together, they accomplish mysteries which neither could dream of confronting alone, and their defiance of space and death lifts us, also, shivering and shining, up into the middle of the air.

  Arthur and Jimmy were like that. I have rarely heard, or seen, a freedom like that, when they played and sang together. It had something to do with their youth, of course, it had something to do with the way they looked, it had something to do with their vows, with their relation to each other: but it was more, much more than that. It was a wonder, a marvel—a mystery: I call it holy. It caused me to see, in any case, that we are all limited, and, mostly, misshapen instruments, and yet, if we can, simultaneously, confront and surrender, extraordinary fingers can string from us the response to our mortality.

  They worked their behinds off, for example, on this old number, but, by the time they hit the last note, it was true for everyone who could hear, and, even, I swear, for those who could only feel vibrations: