Just Above My Head by James Baldwin
But Florence is in the rain pouring down on the road, just beyond this country porch. She is, at first, the only person I see, and I see her because of the mother-of-pearl comb in her hair which calls the rain, flashing on the comb, like lightning flashes, or the pillar of cloud, by day. Amy is helping her to hold up Martha, and, just behind her, Sidney and Joel are trying to help each other up the blinding road.
I hold Tony on my shoulders; his hands cling to my hair. Odessa clings to my knee.
Ruth’s fingers stroke my back.
Arthur moves, to stand beside me.
“Shall we tell them? What’s up the road?”
From the torrent of the road, Florence gives a warning, exasperated look: Oho, oho.
Paul flashes the magic silver locket my brother gave to me, and is covered by the rain. Oho—oho.
I turn, and look at Arthur.
We hear the rain, just beyond us: the rain pours down.
“Brother. I’m going away, to leave you.”
Oho—oho
“Let’s go inside,” says Jimmy.
Oho—oho
Then, everyone is laughing. I have made a fire. We have fed the children, and the children are in bed. We are all drenched from the rain, even though I don’t remember that we ever left the porch. The fire begins to dry us, at the same time that it makes us know how wet we are. And Arthur repeats his question.
“Shall we tell them? What’s up the road?”
The question torments me, like a song I once heard Arthur sing, and can’t now, in my dream, for the life of me, remember.
“I wish,” says Jimmy, busy with the brilliant scissors at Arthur’s rain forest of Senegalese hair, while Arthur’s fingers are busy with whatever garment it is that he is weaving for Jimmy, “that you’d just let the rain do whatever the rain is doing.”
“Oho—oho,” says Julia.
Hurry down,
sunshine,
see what tomorrow brings.
I never heard Arthur sing this song. He turns his head, and watches me.
The sun went down,
Tomorrow brought us
rain.
Then I do remember, in my dream, the beginning of a song I used to love to hear Arthur sing, Oh, my loving brother, when the world’s on fire, don’t you want God’s bosom to be your pillow? and I say to him, in my dream, No, they’ll find out what’s up the road, ain’t nothing up the road but us, man, and then I wake up, and my pillow is wet with tears.
James Baldwin, Just Above My Head