She answered: please believe me, what has happened in my family is not what you think. I can say only this—that everything I learned about human decency I learned here. I learned nothing from you except how to be suspicious. I didn’t know what hate was until I lived among you and saw you hating every day. They even had to pass laws to keep you from hating. I despise your quick answers, your slogans in the subways, and most of all I despise your lack of good manners: you’ll never have ’em as long as you exist.
The man who could not be discourteous to a ground-squirrel had sat in the courthouse abetting the cause of grubby-minded little men. Many times she had seen him in the grocery store waiting his turn in line behind Negroes and God knows what. She had seen Mr. Fred raise his eyebrows at him, and her father shake his head in reply. He was the kind of man who instinctively waited his turn; he had manners.
Look sister, we know the facts: you spent the first twenty-one years of your life in the lynching country, in a county whose population is two-thirds agricultural Negro. So drop the act.
You will not believe me, but I will tell you: never in my life until today did I hear the word “nigger” spoken by a member of my family. Never did I learn to think in terms of The Niggers. When I grew up, and I did grow up with black people, they were Calpurnia, Zeebo the garbage collector, Tom the yard man, and whatever else their names were. There were hundreds of Negroes surrounding me, they were hands in the fields, who chopped the cotton, who worked the roads, who sawed the lumber to make our houses. They were poor, they were diseased and dirty, some were lazy and shiftless, but never in my life was I given the idea that I should despise one, should fear one, should be discourteous to one, or think that I could mistreat one and get away with it. They as a people did not enter my world, nor did I enter theirs: when I went hunting I did not trespass on a Negro’s land, not because it was a Negro’s, but because I was not supposed to trespass on anybody’s land. I was taught never to take advantage of anybody who was less fortunate than myself, whether he be less fortunate in brains, wealth, or social position; it meant anybody, not just Negroes. I was given to understand that the reverse was to be despised. That is the way I was raised, by a black woman and a white man.
You must have lived it. If a man says to you, “This is the truth,” and you believe him, and you discover what he says is not the truth, you are disappointed and you make sure you will not be caught out by him again.
But a man who has lived by truth—and you have believed in what he has lived—he does not leave you merely wary when he fails you, he leaves you with nothing. I think that is why I’m nearly out of my mind….
“New York? It’ll always be there.” Jean Louise turned to her inquisitor, a young woman with a small hat, small features, and small sharp teeth. She was Claudine McDowell.
“Fletcher and I were up there last spring and we tried to get you day and night.”
I’ll bet you did. “Did you enjoy it? No, don’t tell me, let me tell you: you had a marvelous time but you wouldn’t dream of living there.”
Claudine showed her mouse-teeth. “Absolutely! How’d you guess that?”
“I’m psychic. Did you do the town?”
“Lord yes. We went to the Latin Quarter, the Copacabana, and The Pajama Game. That was the first stage show we’d ever seen and we were right disappointed in it. Are they all like that?”
“Most of ’em. Did you go to the top of the you-know-what?”
“No, but we did go through Radio City. You know, people could live in that place. We saw a stage show at Radio City Music Hall, and Jean Louise, a horse came out on the stage.”
Jean Louise said she wasn’t surprised.
“Fletcher and I surely were glad to get back home. I don’t see how you live there. Fletcher spent more money up there in two weeks than we spend in six months down here. Fletcher said he couldn’t see why on earth people lived in that place when they could have a house and a yard for far less down here.”
I can tell you. In New York you are your own person. You may reach out and embrace all of Manhattan in sweet aloneness, or you can go to hell if you want to.
“Well,” said Jean Louise, “it takes considerable getting used to. I hated it for two years. It intimidated me daily until one morning when someone pushed me on a bus and I pushed back. After I pushed back I realized I’d become a part of it.”
“Pushing, that’s what they are. They have no manners up there,” said Claudine.
“They have manners, Claudine. They’re just different from ours. The person who pushed me on the bus expected to be pushed back. That’s what I was supposed to do; it’s just a game. You won’t find better people than in New York.”
Claudine pursed her lips. “Well, I wouldn’t want to get mixed up with all those Italians and Puerto Ricans. In a drugstore one day I looked around and there was a Negro woman eating her dinner right next to me, right next to me. Of course I knew she could, but it did give me a shock.”
“Did she hurt you in any way?”
“Reckon she didn’t. I got up real quick and left.”
“You know,” said Jean Louise gently, “they go around loose up there, all kinds of folks.”
Claudine hunched her shoulders. “I don’t see how you live up there with them.”
“You aren’t aware of them. You work with them, eat by and with them, ride the buses with them, and you aren’t aware of them unless you want to be. I don’t know that a great big fat Negro man’s been sitting beside me on a bus until I get up to leave. You just don’t notice it.”
“Well, I certainly noticed it. You must be blind or something.”
Blind, that’s what I am. I never opened my eyes. I never thought to look into people’s hearts, I looked only in their faces. Stone blind … Mr. Stone. Mr. Stone set a watchman in church yesterday. He should have provided me with one. I need a watchman to lead me around and declare what he seeth every hour on the hour. I need a watchman to tell me this is what a man says but this is what he means, to draw a line down the middle and say here is this justice and there is that justice and make me understand the difference. I need a watchman to go forth and proclaim to them all that twenty-six years is too long to play a joke on anybody, no matter how funny it is.
14
“AUNTY,” SAID JEAN Louise, when they had cleared away the rubble of the morning’s devastation, “if you don’t want the car I’m going around to Uncle Jack’s.”