Just Above My Head by James Baldwin
But I’m going to have to try to remember. Service broke early, for that church, anyway, and we got to the house around three o’clock.
The churches didn’t seem like one church, then—we knew all their distinctions, and tribulations, and their quarrels—but, looking back, they blur into the same church, sometimes changing locations, sometimes changing furniture (never changing pastors). This might have been the church where Arthur would start singing, not too much later, next to the Park Avenue railroad tracks: but maybe I only remember it that way because that was where I first heard Arthur sing in public.
I can be fairly sure of some things. I was eighteen, thirty years ago. The country was between wars, and nobody had quite got his shit together, the killing shit, though everybody was heading in that direction. The pause was useful. Paul played piano in a joint uptown, in what had been Sugar Hill. Mama had a family in The Bronx, and they loved her. I had a job in the garment center, but not pushing a wagon, thank you, I was a shipping clerk. (I can hardly tie a package today, not even Christmas presents, my fingers, at last, rebelled.) I was going to night school, we were hoping to send Arthur to college.
If I was going to night school, then we were living on 135th Street, between Fifth and Lenox. I remember the subway ride. We were worried because we heard that they were going to tear down our building to make room for a housing project.
I remember that we walked from church, because Jimmy had a tantrum, wanting to pee. His mother was terribly embarrassed, but his father laughed and stood beside him while Jimmy peed between two parked cars.
“You feel more like a man now?” his father asked; and Jimmy turned away, and buttoned up. For a moment, I had the feeling that he was about to run across the street and get himself killed. But he took his father’s hand and walked beside him.
Amy and Florence were talking about some people in New Orleans. Julia walked between them, suddenly, again, very silent and old. That girl frightened me. Perhaps something in her will always frighten me.
And my father and I walked together, with Arthur between us—ambling down the Sunday afternoon.
When Arthur was with us, between us, as he was that afternoon, our father and I were, somehow, set free, to talk or not to talk: for our subject was palpable, present, both visible, and out of our hands. This unspoken commitment bound us far more certainly than any other declaration of love could have done.
For I can see now that Paul did not want to talk to me directly about the road which had led him to his present—and so precariously perched—piano. That might have frightened me concerning my road. But to be concerned about Arthur’s road did not—directly—engage my future, or—directly—my father’s past. This concern, this commitment, was the tacit recognition of our respect for each other as men, and of our loved for each other as father and son. For I loved my silent, proud old man—he wasn’t old then, he never got old.
And Arthur knew all this, in some other way, though I don’t think that he could have known that he knew it. I think he never felt safer than he did when his father and his elder brother were beside him, conferring together, above his head.
We got to the house and climbed the three flights of stairs, Arthur running ahead of us to unlock the door. Paul and Florence, smiling, together, permitted themselves to climb the stairs slowly—Arthur was already in the apartment, and I was in charge of the Millers. My parents climbed the stairs behind me, and I was behind Amy and Joel and Julia and Jimmy. The children’s mood had changed.
“You a story!” Jimmy whispered, fiercely, to his sister. This was on the landing. Their parents had started climbing the third and last flight of stairs; and I had the feeling that they, too, like my parents behind me, were resting for a moment.
“I’m in the Lord’s hands,” Julia said calmly.
But she stumbled as she started up the third flight.
Jimmy said with a venom which almost made me stumble:
“You lucky you ain’t in mine!”
And Jimmy looked at his sister with hatred, as though he wished to push her down the steps, or hurl her over the railing. We all got to the top of the steps, and entered our open door.
Arthur had opened the wrong door, that is, he had opened the door which opened on the small room which led to the kitchen and the bathroom instead of the door which opened on the living room: and the silence was a little heavy as we walked through the two dark bedrooms which led to the front of the apartment. I heard, during that passage, “Now, Jimmy, you be good, you hear me?” and his mother slapped him, hard, twice, across the face. Jimmy didn’t make a sound. He ran ahead of my parents and me, into the living room, and stood at the window, looking out. “Well. Make yourselves at home,” Paul said, smiling, and not knowing what else to say, and staring at Jimmy’s back.
Florence glanced at Amy briefly, as though she were seeing the past and the future, as though there were something she wanted to tell her—or, perhaps, as though she wanted to strike her—and Amy sat down on the sofa, beside her husband. She didn’t look sexy to me now, she didn’t even look pretty. She looked like a skinny, scared young thing, not bright, not nice at all. And the dude beside her was suddenly just that, a dude, and he looked frightened, shrunk all inward, as though he were in the hands of the cops in the precinct basement and about to inform on his mother.
It was a kind of frozen moment. Florence walked out of the room. Julia ran and put her head in her father’s lap. But both these motions seemed frozen. Arthur moved toward Jimmy, slow and shy, and Paul said, “Hall, take them on down to the ice cream parlor. Dinner won’t be ready for a few minutes.”
So I was the one who grabbed Jimmy around the neck and pulled him out of the room, and Arthur followed us. We got out of the apartment and Jimmy started to cry and I sat down on the steps and I held him and Arthur stood there. An awful lot began that day, looking back; I know that a lot of what happened could not have happened, had it not been for that day; and yet, Jimmy hardly remembers it at all. He remembers, and not at all the way I do, that his father let him piss between two parked cars: and I guess that makes sense, too. Lord. Did you say something about being wonderfully and fearfully made?
I walked my two charges around the block, very much the big brother now, and digging it, and, though I knew it might spoil their appetites, bought them ice cream sodas and sat at the counter smoking a cigarette and bullshitting the girl behind the counter. I must say that I loved my brother, Arthur, very much that day because he was being very nice, not forced-and-phony nice but really nice. He was hurt that this snot-nosed kid he’d been snubbing all day had been hurt and was doing all he could to make amends—and had the grace not to seem to be making amends, not to have noticed that anything had gone wrong. He got Jimmy to laugh. I was to forget all this later, but then, later, it was all to come back to me. When I thought they’d laughed enough over secrets they would never entrust to an old man like me, I stood them up and paid the bill and walked them back around the block, to the house. I carried Jimmy piggyback up the stairs and Arthur again ran up the stairs ahead of us, like the advance patrol.
“Why,” Amy was saying, as we entered the living room, “when Julia was called—”
“How old was she?” asked Florence.
“I was seven,” Julia said. She was sitting on her father’s lap, motionless, using him the way the Sphinx uses the plains of Egypt.
Amy sat beside them; she had taken off her hat.
On the long, low table in front of the sofa there was a bottle of Coca-Cola, and one of ginger ale, a plate of cookies, glasses, and a bottle of dry sherry. Amy had been drinking ginger ale, her daughter had been drinking Coke. Paul and Joel were drinking the wine—Paul was keeping Joel company, and he sat on the piano stool with his back to the piano. Florence sat beside him, in the easy chair.
My mother was in her forties, Amy had barely reached thirty—and, yet, facing my mother, she looked dried-out, scared, and old. Above all, scared, and I had never noticed th
As we came in, my mother looked swiftly from Jimmy to Arthur, then to me. I gave her the briefest hint of a nod, and she turned back to Amy.
Arthur and Jimmy took one look, and then went down the hall to the kitchen. I stood by the door.
‘Take a seat, son,” Paul said. He looked both amused and grim. His voice contained an order. I sat down near the door.
“She came into the room and she looked—oh, I can’t tell you—she looked so clean and scrubbed, but scrubbed inside—she looked like she had seen something—and me, I got so scared, my heart turned over, I thought—I thought, my child is dying.
“I was in the kitchen. It was early in the morning, before she had to get ready for school. Joel had already gone to work. She came right up to me and she reached up and I bent down and she kissed me, and she said, ‘I can’t go to school today, Mama.’ I was afraid to ask her why, but, then, I knew I had to ask her and she gave me the most beautiful look I ever saw in all my life, it. wasn’t a smile, it was just—a look—and she said, ‘Mama, the Lord has called me to preach.’ ”
Paul and Joel sipped their sherry at the same time, neither looking at the other; and I felt mightily uneasy, as though I had no business in this room.
“Well, Lord”—and she almost touched her daughter, but she didn’t—it was like a gesture of blessing, or the way the hand retreats before flame—”you talk about a troubled soul. I did not believe that this was happening—did not believe it—but it was happening, all right, and there she was, my daughter, who didn’t belong to me no more. Then something told me it was a sin not to believe and I put my hands to my face and we went down on our knees together, Julia and me, on that kitchen floor.
“I don’t know how long we stayed there. I know I was praying for a sign. Because I love my daughter, and, you know, the devil has many ways to enter. But, at the same time, something told me it was wrong to be praying for a sign. Something kept saying, ‘Believe. Only believe.’
“So, I got up off my knees and I said, ‘Julia, I’m going to fix your breakfast now’ and so I did, and she ate it and I kept watching her, but she didn’t seem no different, and, yet, she did.”
“How?” asked Florence.
“All I can tell you—it felt like peace had entered. Everywhere.”
“Oh, yes,” said Julia.
“When I come home from work,” said Joel, with his lazy little grin, “I come through the door and it felt like my house had changed. I looked around me, I wasn’t sure I was in my house.
“Then, I heard them in the kitchen, Amy and Julia and little Jimmy, and I hollered out, I’m home! and, I don’t know why, I just started to laugh, I felt so good.”
“You sure did laugh,” said Julia.
“Yes,” said Amy, “there was joy all over his face when he come through that kitchen door, and I had never seen him like that before, and I knew that was the sign.”
“I hollered out, ‘Who’s been here since I been gone?’ And Julia looked at me for a long time and then she said, ‘The Holy Ghost,’ and I kind of shivered, I guess, and I sat down.”
“Julia preached the very next Sunday, in our church,” said Amy. “Joel had to borrow money from his boss so I could make the robe.”
“And, then,” said Joel, slowly, “a whole new day began for us.”
“I reckon so,” said Paul carefully, after a moment; and he turned and touched the piano keys lightly.
I caught my mother’s glance at Julia. I know I did not move, and, yet, I sat up in my chair.
“I probably shouldn’t ask you this now,” my mother said, “but, just the same, I’d like to know why you hit little Jimmy so hard. All he was doing, so far as I could see, was that he was acting like a little boy. I got two, so I know something about that.” She glanced at Julia again. “We lost our little girl.”
Between my birth and Arthur’s, there had been born a little sister, my little sister, Sylvia. She had been born with a kidney ailment and she only lived three years—just long enough for everyone, but, selfishly, especially, me—for she was my little sister—to have fallen in love with her. The seven years separating Arthur’s birth from mine is almost certainly due to that birth and death.
“Jimmy can get to be pretty obstreperous,” Joel said slowly, but Amy interrupted, crying, “Jealous! That’s what he is! Jealous of the Lord’s anointed! That’s a sin, now you know that’s a sin, and it scares me—why,” and she looked at Joel and Julia briefly, and then back at Florence, “it would be like me being jealous.”
“But he’s just a little boy,” said Paul slowly, looking down, strumming the piano keys. “He ain’t got to understand all that.”
“And whipping him sure ain’t going to make him understand,” said Florence. “He’s still your child, and it ain’t the Holy Ghost that’s raising him, it’s you.”
“She’s your child, too,” said Paul, turning now, and looking at Joel, “and I might be speaking out of turn—but I also might know something about the Lord’s anointed.”
“That may be why you’re not among them,” Julia said.
Amy caught her breath, and muttered, “Speak, Lord Jesus!” Florence threw back her head, and laughed. She stood up. “Well—let me go and get dinner on the table.” She looked at Amy. “You know I didn’t mean no harm.”
“My father,” said Julia, and left his lap and stood in the center of the room, “my father”—in that really terrifying voice, one could not imagine where it came from—”I am to deliver the Word tonight, and we must not break bread in this house.” Tears rolled down her face. “You have mocked the Lord’s anointed,” she said, “and I—I am about My Father’s business,” and she walked out of the room.
No one moved. The silence, after the sound of that voice, was dreadful. I wanted to laugh, but let me tell the truth about it, too, I was afraid. Paul strummed the piano keys, he sketched Come by here, Lord, come by here.
Amy stood up, trembling, and moved into her husband’s arms. He held her, briefly, staring toward the door. His eyes met mine for a moment, and, very slowly, I stood up, too. Amy moved, and put on her hat. She looked at Florence, Florence looked at her. Paul stood up, abandoning the piano, and then there was silence indeed.
“You’re welcome to stay,” said Florence. “I can put her to bed. That child’s tired. She don’t have to work tonight.”
“She must go as the Lord leads her,” Amy said. She put her arm through her husband’s; they moved toward the door. Joel turned for a moment to nod at my father, I had never before seen so helpless a look on the face of any man, though I have seen it since, and then they walked out of the living room, down the hall. We heard them call Jimmy. We heard Arthur unlock the door. Then the door closed behind them. Arthur came running into the room, and, for no reason at all, I grabbed him and held him close to me, and Mama said, “Well, come on, children, I know you must be hungry.”
Mama had baked a ham, and biscuits, we had collard greens and yams and rice and gravy—and sweet potato pie, and there was more than enough, since the invited guests had gone. Arthur ate like a pig, and a spoiled one at that, but he meant it when he said that he was sorry Jimmy had had to go.
There were questions I wanted to ask, but not in Arthur’s presence. But he wanted to ask questions, too—my presence did not inhibit him.
“Do she have to go to school? I mean,” he added, “because she’s a preacher.”
“I don’t know,” Paul said, smiling, “but most of the preachers I knew sure had to go to work. Of course,” he added, after a moment, “they had mouths to feed.”
Florence grunted, looked at Arthur, and held her peace.
“How come she’s a preacher? what makes her a preacher?”
Paul said, “She says the Lord called her, Arthur.”
“What does it mean, Daddy, for the Lord to call you?”
“Your daddy don’t know,” Florence said. “The Lord didn’t call him.” Sh
“Many are called,” I said, “few are chosen,” and I winked—but no one at the table appeared to find this very funny, and Arthur turned back to his father.
“Could I be called?”
“You’re called,” said Florence. “You’re called to eat your dinner and go to bed.”
“But it’s early!”
“Well. Eat, anyway.”
And, as quickly as that, Arthur turned his attention from the spiritual to the temporal, hoping to be allowed out of the house for a while, as soon as he had eaten.
“I’m glad that child’s mother can’t see her,” said Florence to Paul—and I could see that this bewildered Arthur, who could not know that Florence was referring to Amy’s mother, not to Amy. He decided to stay out of the arena this time, and kept his eyes on his plate. “I never thought that she was exactly overloaded upstairs, but I did give her credit for having good sense.”
“Her head’s not her problem,” Paul said shortly.
“No—but what about the boy?”
“Which boy?”
“The little one,” said Florence, “for there ain’t no hope for the big one.”
Arthur coughed, a little boy’s cough, and stood, just like the little boy he would no longer have to be the moment he got out of that door and down those steps.
“Mama? Can I go out for a while?”
“Go ahead. But you know what time you supposed to be back.”
“Yes, ma’am—Daddy?”
“Don’t you be spoiling that child.”
But she did nothing to stop Paul from throwing Arthur a quarter, and Arthur said, “Thank you. See you later,” and split.
Into the streets he went, where he was soon to meet, or had met already, Peanut, Crunch, and Red.