the prayer of the saintsand they cried with a loud voice,saying, how long, o lord, holy and true,dost thou not judge and avengeour blood on them that dwell on the earth1 florence’s prayerlight and life to all he brings,risen with healing in his wings!
florence raised her voice in the only song she could remember that her mother used to sing:
‘it’s me, it’s me, it’s me, oh, lord, standing in the need of prayer.’
gabriel turned to stare at her, in astonished triumph that his sister should at last behumbled. she did not look at him. her thoughts were all on god. after a moment, the congregationand the piano joined her:
‘not my father, not my motherbut it’s me, oh, lord.’
she knew that gabriel rejoiced, not that her humility might lead her to grace, but only thatsome private anguish had brought her low: her songs revealed that she was suffering, and this herbrother was glad to see. this had always been his spirit. nothing had ever changed it; nothing everwould. for a moment her pride stood up; the resolution that had brought her to this place to-nightfaltered, and she felt that if gabriel was the lord’s anointed, she would rather die and endure hellfor all eternity than bow before his altar. but she strangled her pride, rising to stand with them inthe holy space before the altar, and still singing:
‘standing in the need of prayer.’
kneeling as she had not knelt for many years, and in this company before the altar, shegained again from the song the meaning it had held for her mother, and gained a new meaning forherself. as a child, the song had made her see a woman, dressed in black, standing in infinite mistsalone, waiting for the form of the son of god to lead her through the white fire. this woman nowreturned to her, more desolate; it was herself, not knowing where to put her foot; she waitedtrembling, for the mists to be parted that she might walk in peace. that long road, her life, whichshe had followed for sixty groaning years, had led her at last to her mother’s starting-place, thealtar of the lord. for her feet stood on the edge of that river which her mother, rejoicing, hadcrossed over. and would the lord now reach out his hand to florence and heal and save? but,going down before the scarlet cloth at the foot of the golden cross, it came to her that she hadforgotten how to pray.
her mother has taught her that the way to pray was to forget everything and everyone butjesus; to pour out of the heart, like water from a bucket, all evil thoughts, all thoughts of self, allmalice for one’s enemies; to come boldly, and yet more humbly than the little child, before thegiver of all good things. yet, in florence’s heart to-night hatred and bitterness weighed likegranite, pride refused to abdicate from the throne it had held so long. neither love nor humility hadled her to the altar, but only fear. and god did not hear the prayers of the fearful, for the hearts ofthe fearful held no belief. such prayers could rise no higher that the lips that uttered them.
around her she heard the saints’ voices, a steady, charged murmur, with now and again thename of jesus rising above, sometimes like the swift rising of a bird into the air of a sunny day, sometimes like the slow rising of the mist from swamp ground. was this the way to pray? in thechurch that she had joined when she first came north one knelt before the altar once only, in thebeginning, to ask for forgiveness of sins; and this accomplished, one was baptized and became achristian, to kneel no more thereafter. even if the lord should lay some great burden on one’sback—as he has done, but never so heavy a burden as this she carried now—one prayed in silence.
it was indecent, the practice of common niggers to cry aloud at the foot of the altar, tears streamingfor all the world to see. she had never done it, not even as a girl down home in the church they hadgone to in those days. now perhaps it was too late, and the lord would suffer her to die in thedarkness in which she had lived so long.
in the olden days god had healed his children. he had caused the blind to see, the lame towalk, and he had raised dead men from the grave. but florence remembered one phrase, whichnow she muttered against the knuckles that bruised her lips: ‘lord, help my unbelief.’
for the message had come to florence that had come to hezekiah: set thine house in order,for thou shalt die and not live. many nights ago, as she turned on her bed, this message came toher. for many days and nights the message was repeated; there had been time, then, to turn to god.
but she had thought to evade him, seeking among the women she knew for remedies; and then,because the pain increased, she had sought doctors; and when the doctors did no good she hadclimbed stairs all over town to rooms where incense burned and where men or women in trafficwith the devil gave her white powders, or herbs to make tea, and cast spells upon her to take thesickness away. the burning in her bowels did not cease—that burning which, eating inward, tookthe flesh visibly from her bones and caused her to vomit up her food. then one night she founddeath standing in the room. blacker than night, and gigantic, he filled one corner of her narrowroom, watching her with eyes like the eyes of a serpent when his head is lifted to strike. then shescreamed and called on god, turning on the light. and death departed, but she knew he would beback. every night would bring him a little closer to her bed.
and after death’s first silent vigil her life came to her bedside to curse her with manyvoices. her mother, in rotting rags filling the room with the stink of the grave, stood over her tocurse the daughter who had denied her on her deathbed. gabriel came, from all his times and ages,to curse the sister who had held him to scorn and mocked his ministry. deborah, black, her body asshapeless and hard as iron, looked on with veiled, triumphant eyes, cursing the florence who hadmocked her in her pain and barrenness. frank came, even he, with that same smile, the same tilt ofhis head. of them all she would have begged forgiveness, had they come with ears to hear. butthey came like many trumpets; even if they had come to hear and not to testify it was not they whocould forgive her, but only god.
the piano had stopped. all around her now were only the voices of the saints.
‘dear father’—it was her mother praying—‘we come before you on our knees this evening to askyou to watch over us and hold back the hand of the destroying angel. lord, sprinkle the doorpostof this house with the blood of the lamb to keep all the wicked men away, lord, we praying forevery mother’s son and daughter everywhere in the world but we want you to take special care of this girl here to-night, lord, and don’t let no evil come nigh her. we know you’s able to do it,lord, in jesus’ name, amen.’
this was the first prayer florence heard, the only prayer she was ever to hear in which hermother demanded the protection of god more passionately for her daughter than she demanded itfor her son. it was night, the windows were shut tightly with the shades drawn, and the great tablewas pushed against the door. the kerosene lamps burned low and made great shadows on thenewspaper-covered wall. her mother, dressed in the long, shapeless, colorless dress that she boreevery day but sunday, when she wore white, and with her head tied up in a scarlet cloth, knelt inthe center of the room, her hands hanging loosely folded before her, her black face lifted, her eyesshut. the weak, unsteady light placed shadows under her mouth and in the sockets of her eyes,making the face impersonal with majesty, like the face of a prophetess, or like a mask. silencefilled the room after her ‘amen,’ and in the silence they heard, far up the road, the sound of ahorse’s hoofs. no one moved. gabriel, from his corner near the stove, looked up and watched hismother.
‘i ain’t afraid,’ said gabriel.
his mother turned, one hand raised. ‘you hush, now!’
trouble had taken place in town to-day. their neighbor deborah, who was sixteen, threeyears older than florence, had been taken away into the fields the night before by many white men,where they did things to her to make her cry and bleed. to-day, deborah’s father had gone to oneof the white men’s house, and said that he would kill him and all the other white men he couldfind. they had beaten him and left him for dead. now, everyone had shut their doors, praying andwaiting, for it was said that the white folks would come to-night and set fire to all the houses, asthey had done before.
in the night that pressed outside they heard only the horse’s hoofs, which did not stop; therewas not the laughter they would have heard had there been many coming on this road, and nocalling out of curses, and no one crying for mercy to white men, or to god. the hoofbeats came tothe door and passed, and rang, while they listened, ever more faintly away. then florence realizedhow frightened she had been. she watched her mother rise and walk to the window. she peered outthrough a corner of the blanket that covered it.
‘they’s gone,’ she said, ‘whoever they was.’ then: ‘blessed be the name of the lord,’ shesaid.
thus had her mother lived and died; and she had often been brought lo, but she had neverbeen forsaken. she had always seemed to florence the oldest woman in the world, for she oftenspoke of florence and gabriel as the children of her old age, and she had been born, innumerableyears ago, during slavery, on a plantation in another state. on this plantation she had grown up asone of the field-workers, for she was very tall and strong; and by and by she had married andraised children, all of whom had been taken from her, one by sickness and two by auction; andone, whom she had not been allowed to call her own, had been raised in the master’s house. whenshe was a woman grown, well past thirty as she reckoned it, with one husband buried—but themaster had given her another—armies, plundering and burning, had come from the north to set them free. this was in answer to the prayers of the faithful, who had never ceased, both day andnight, to cry out for deliverance.
for it had been the will of god that they should hear, and pass thereafter, one to another,the story of the hebrew children who had been held in bondage in the land of egypt; and how thelord had heard their groaning, and how his heart was moved; and how he bid them wait but alittle season till he should send deliverance. florence’s mother had known this story, so it seemed,from the day she was born. and while she lived—rising in the morning before the sun came up,standing and bending in the fields when the sun was high, crossing the fields homeward when thesun went down at the gates of heaven far away, hearing the whistle of the foreman and his eeriecry across the fields; in the whiteness of winter when hogs and turkeys and geese were slaughtered,and lights burned bright in the big house, and bathsheba, the cook, sent over in a napkin bits ofham and chicken and cakes left over by the white folks—in all that befell: in her joys, her pipe inthe evening, her man at night, the children she suckled, and guided on their first short steps; and inher tribulations, death, and parting, and the lash, she did not forget that deliverance was promisedand would surely come. she had only to endure and trust in god. she knew that the big house, thehouse of pride where the white folks lived, would come down; it was written in the word of god.
they, who walked so proudly now, had nor fashioned for themselves or their children so sure afoundation as was hers. they walked on the edge of a steep place and their eyes were sightless—god would cause them to rush down, as the herd of swine had once rushed down, into the sea. forall that they were so beautiful, and took their ease, she knew them, and she pitied them, who wouldhave no covering in the great day of his wrath.
yet, she told her children, god was just, and he struck no people without first giving manywarnings. god gave men time, but all the times were in his hand, and one day the time to forsakeevil and do good would all be finished: then only the whirlwind, death riding on the whirlwind,awaited those people who had forgotten god. in all the days that she was growing up, signs failednot, but none heeded. ‘slaves done ris,’ was whispered in the cabin and at the master’s gate: slavesin another county had fired the masters’ houses and fields and dashed their children to deathagainst the stones. ‘another slave in hell,’ bathsheba might say one morning, shooing thepickaninnies away from the great porch: a slave had killed his master, or his overseer, and hadgone down to hell to pay for it. ‘i ain’t got long to stay here,’ someone crooned beside her in thefields, someone who would be gone by morning on his journey north. all these signs, like theplagues with which the lord had afflicted egypt, only hardened the hearts of these people againstthe lord. they thought the lash would save them, and they used the lash; or the knife, or thegallows, or the auction block; they thought that kindness would save then, and the master andmistress came down, smiling, to the cabins, making much of the pickaninnies and bearing gifts.
these were great days, and they all, black and white, seemed happy together. but when the wordhas gone forth from the mouth of god nothing can turn it back.
the word was fulfilled one morning, before she was awake. many of the stories her othertold meant nothing to florence; she knew them for what they were, tales told by an old blackwoman in a cabin in the evening to distract her children from their cold and hunger. but the storyof this day she was never to forget; it was a day for which she lived. there was a great running andshouting, said her mother, everywhere outside, and, as she opened her eyes to the light of that day, so bright, she said, and cold, she was certain that the judgment trumpet had sounded. while shestill sat, amazed, and wondering what, on the judgment day, would be the best behavior, in rushedbathsheba and behind her many tumbling children and field hands and house niggers, all together,and bathsheba shouted: ‘rise up, rise up, sister rachel, and see the lord’s deliverance! he donebrought us out of egypt, just like he promised, and we’s free at last!’ bathsheba grabbed her, tearsrunning down her face; she, dressed in the clothes in which she had slept, walked to the door tolook out on the new day god had given them.
on that day she saw the proud house humbled; green silk and velvet blowing out ofwindows, and the garden trampled by many horsemen, and the big gate open. the master andmistress, and their kin, and one child she had borne were in that house—which she did not enter.
soon it occurred to her that there was no longer any reason to tarry here. she tied her things in acloth that she put on her head, and walked out through the big gate, never to see that country anymore.
and this became florence’s deep ambition: to walk out one morning through the cabindoor, never to return. her father, whom she scarcely remembered, had departed that way onemorning not many months after the birth of gabriel. and not only her father; every day she heardthat another man or woman had said farewell to this iron earth and sky, and started on the journeynorth. but her mother had no wish to go north where, she said, wickedness dwelt and death rodemighty through the streets. she was content to stay in this cabin and do washing for the whitefolks, though she was old and her back was sore. and she wanted florence, also, to be content—helping with the washing, and fixing meals and keeping gabriel quiet.
gabriel was the apple of his mother’s eye. if he had never been born, florence might havelooked forward to a day when she would be released from her unrewarding round of labor, whenshe might think of her own future and go out to make it. with the birth of gabriel, which occurredwhen she was five, her future was swallowed up. there was only one future in that house, and itwas gabriel’s—to which, since gabriel was a man-child, all else must be sacrificed. her motherdid not, indeed, think of it as sacrifice, but as logic: florence was a girl, and would by and by bemarried, and have children of her own, and all the duties of a woman; and this being so, her life inthe cabin was the best possible preparation for her future life. but gabriel was a man; he would goout one day into the world to do a man’s work, and he needed, therefore, meat, when there was anyin the house, and clothes, whenever clothes could be bought, and the strong indulgence of hiswomenfolk, so that he would know how to be with women when he had a wife. and he needed theeducation that florence desired far more than he, and that she might have got if he had not beenborn. it was gabriel who was slapped and scrubbed each morning and sent off to the one-roomschoolhouse—which he hated, and where he managed to learn, so far as florence could discover,almost nothing at all. and often he was not at school, but getting into mischief with other boys.
almost all of their neighbors, and even some of the white folks, came at one time or another tocomplain of gabriel’s wrongdoing. their mother would walk out into the yard and cut a switchfrom a tree and beat him—beat him, it seemed to florence, until any other boy would have fallendown dead; and so often that any other boy would have ceased his wickedness. nothing stoppedgabriel, though he made heaven roar with his howling, though he screamed aloud, as his motherapproached, that he would never be such a bad boy again. and, after the beating, his pants still down around his knees and his face wet with tears and mucus, gabriel was made to kneel downwhile his mother prayed. she asked florence to pray, too, but in her heart florence never prayed.
she hoped that gabriel would break his neck. she wanted the evil against which their motherprayed to overtake him one day.
in those days florence and deborah, who had come close friend after deborah’s ‘accident,’
hated all men. when men looked at deborah they saw no father that her unlovely and violatedbody. in their eyes lived perpetually a lewd, uneasy wonder concerning the night she had beentaken in the fields. that night had robbed her of the right to be considered a woman. no manwould approach her in honor because she was a living reproach, to herself and to all black womenand to all black men. if she had been beautiful, and if god had not given her a spirit so demure, shemight, with ironic gusto, have acted out that rape in the field for ever. since she could not beconsidered a woman, she could only be looked on as a harlot, a source of delight more bestial andmysteries more shaking than any a proper woman could provide. lust stirred in the eyes of menwhen they look at deborah, lust that could not be endured because it was so impersonal, limitingcommunion to the area of her shame. and florence, who was beautiful but did not look with favoron any of the black men who lusted after her, not wishing to exchange her mother’s cabin for oneof theirs and to raise their children and so go down, toil-blasted, into, as it were, a common grave,reinforced in deborah the terrible belief against which evidence had ever presented itself: that allmen were like this, their thoughts rose no higher, and they lived only to gratify on the bodies ofwomen their brutal and humiliating needs.
one sunday at a camp-meeting, when gabriel was twelve years old and was to be baptized,deborah and florence stood on the banks of a river along with all the other folks and watched him.
gabriel had not wished to be baptized. the thought had frightened and angered him, but hismother insisted that gabriel was now of an age to be responsible before god for his sins—shewould not shirk the duty, laid on her by the lord, of doing everything within he power to bringhim to the throne of grace. on the banks of a river, under the violent light of noon, confessedbelievers and children of gabriel’s age waited to be led into the water. standing out, waist-deepand robed in white, was the preacher, who would hold their heads briefly under the water, cryingout to heaven as the baptized held his breath: ‘i indeed have baptized you with water: but he shallbaptize you with the holy ghost.’ then, as they rose sputtering and blinded and were led to theshore, he cried out again: ‘go thou and sin no more.’ they came up from the water, visibly underthe power of the lord, and on the shore the saints awaited them, beating their tambourines.
standing bear the shore were the elders of the church, holding towels with which to cover thenewly baptized, who were then led into the tents, one for either sex, where they could change theirclothes.
at last, gabriel, dressed in an old white shirt and short linen pants, stood on the edge of thewater. then he was slowly led into the river, where he had so often splashed naked, until hereached the preacher. and the moment that the preacher threw him down, crying out the words ofjohn the baptist, gabriel began to kick and sputter, nearly throwing the preacher off balance; andthough at first they thought that it was the power of the lord that worked in him, they realized ashe rose, still kicking and with his eyes tightly shut, that it was only fury, and too much water in hisnose. some folks smiled, but florence and deborah did not smile. though florence had also been indignant, years before when the slimy water entered her incautiously open mouth, she had doneher best not to sputter, and she had not cried out. but now, here came gabriel, floundering andfurious up the bank, and what she looked at, with an anger more violent than any she had feltbefore, was his nakedness. he was drenched, and his thin, white clothes clung like another skin tohis black body. florence and deborah looked at one another, while the singing rose to covergabriel’s howling, and deborah looked away.
years later, deborah and florence had stood on deborah’s porch at night and watched avomit-covered gabriel stagger up the moonlight road, and florence had cried out: ‘i hate him! ihate him! big, black, prancing tomcat of a nigger!’ and deborah had said, in that heavy voice ofhers: ‘you know, honey, the word tell us to hate the sin but not the sinner.’
in nineteen hundred, when she was twenty-six, florence walked out through the cabindoor. she had thought to wait until her mother, who was so ill now that she no longer stirred out ofbed, should be buried—but suddenly she knew that she would wait no longer, the time had come.
she had been working as cook and serving-girl for a large white family in town, and it was on theday her master proposed that she become his concubine that she knew her life among thesewretched people had come to its destined end. she left her employment that same day (leavingbehind her a most vehement conjugal bitterness), and with part of the money that with cunning,cruelty, and sacrifice she had saved over a period of years, bought a railroad ticket to new york.
when she bout it, in a kind of scarlet rage, she held like a talisman at the back of her mind thethought: ‘i can give it back, i can sell it. this don’t mean i got to go.’ but she knew that nothingcould stop her.
and it was this leave-taking that came to stand, in florence’s latter days, and with othermany witness, at her bedside. gray clouds obscured the sun that day, and outside the cabin windowshe saw that mist still covered the ground. her mother lay in bed, awake; she was pleading withgabriel, who had been out drinking the night before, and who was not really sober now, to mendhis ways and come to the lord. and gabriel, full of the confusion, and pain, and guilt that were hiswhenever he thought of how he made his mother suffer, but that became nearly insupportablewhen she taxed him with it, stood before the mirror, head bowed, buttoning his shirt. florenceknew that he could not unlock his lips to speak; he could not say yes to his mother, and to thelord; and he could not say no.
‘honey,’ their mother was saying, ‘don’t you let your old mother die without you look herin the eye and tell her she going to see you in glory. you hear me, boy?’
in a moment, florence thought with scorn, tears would fill his eyes, and he would promiseto ‘do better.’ he had been promising to ‘do better’ since the day he had been baptized.
she put down her bag in the center of the hateful room.
‘ma,’ she said, ‘i’m going. i’m a-going this morning.’
now that she had said it, she was angry with herself for not having said it the night before,so that they would have had time to be finished with their weeping and their arguments. she hadnot trusted herself to withstand the night before; but now there was almost no time t. the center of her mind was filled with the image of the great, white clock at the railway station, on which thehands did not cease to move.
‘you going where?’ her mother asked sharply. but she knew that her mother hadunderstood, had indeed long before this moment known that this time would come. theastonishment with which she stared at florence’s bag was not altogether astonishment, but astartled, wary attention. a danger imagined had become present and real, and her mother wasalready searching for a way to break florence’s will. all this florence knew in a moment, and itmade her stronger. she watched her mother, waiting.
but at the tone of his mother’s voice gabriel, who had scarcely heard florence’sannouncement, so grateful had he been that something had occurred to distract from him hismother’s attention, dropped his eyes and saw florence’s traveling-bag. and he repeated hismother’s question in a stunned, angry voice, understanding it only as the words hit the air:
‘yes, girl. where you think you going?’
‘i’m going, she said, ‘to new york. i got my ticket.’
and her mother watched her. for a moment no one said a word. then, gabriel, in achanged and frightened voice, asked:
‘and when you done decide that?’
she did not look at him, nor answer his question. she continued to watch her mother. ‘i gotmy ticket,’ she repeated. ‘i’m going on the morning train.’
‘girl,’ asked her mother, quietly, ‘is you sure you know what you’s doing?’
she stiffened. seeing in her mother’s eyes a mocking pity. ‘i’m a woman grown,’ she said.
‘i know what i’m doing.’
‘and you going,’ cried gabriel, ‘this morning—just like that? and you going to walk offand leave your mother—just like that?’
‘you hush,’ she said, turning to him for the first time, ‘she got you, ain’t she?’
this was indeed, she realized as he dropped his eyes, the bitter, troubling point. he couldnot endure the thought of being left alone with his mother, with nothing whatever to put betweenhimself and his guilty love. with florence gone, time would have swallowed up all his mother’schildren, except himself; and he, then, must make amends for all the pain that she had borne, andsweeten her last moments with all his proofs of love. and his mother required of him one proofonly, that he tarry no longer in sin. with florence gone, his stammering time, his playing time,contracted with a bound to the sparest interrogative second, when he must stiffen himself, andanswer to his mother, and all the host of heaven, yes or no.
florence smiled inwardly a small, malicious smile, watching his slow bafflement, andpanic, and rage: and she looked at her mother again. ‘she got you,’ she repeated. ‘she don’t needme.’
‘you going north,’ her mother said, then. ‘and when you reckon on coming back?’
‘i don’t reckon on coming back,’ she said.
‘you come crying back soon enough,’ said gabriel, with malevolence, ‘soon as they whipyour butt up there four or five times.’
she looked at him again. ‘just don’t you try to hold your breath till then, you hear?’
‘girl,’ said her mother, ‘you mean to tell me the devil’s done made your heart so hard youcan just leave your mother on her dying bed, and you don’t care if you don’t never see her in thisworld no more? honey, you can’t tell me you done got so evil as all that?’
she felt gabriel watching her to see how she would take this question—the question that,for all her determination, she had dreaded most to hear. she looked away from her mother, andstraightened, catching her breath, looking outwards through the small, cracked window. thereoutside, beyond the slowly rising mist, and farther off that her eyes could see, her life awaited her.
the woman on the bed was old, her life was fading as the mist rose. she thought of her mother asalready in the grave; and she would not let herself be strangled by the hands of the dead.
‘i’m going, ma,’ she said. ‘i got to go.’
her mother leaned back, face upward to the light and began to cry. gabriel moved toflorence’s side and grabbed her arm. she looked up into his face and saw that his eyes were full oftears.
‘you can’t go,’ he said. ‘you can’t go. you can’t go and leave your mother thisaway. sheneed a woman, florence, to help look after her. what she going to do here, all alone with me?’
she pushed him from her and moved to stand over her mother’s bed.
‘ma,’ she said, ‘don’t be like that. ain’t a thing can happen to me up north can’t happen tome here. god’s everywhere, ma. ain’t no need to worry.’
she knew that she was mouthing words; and she realized suddenly that her mother scornedto dignify these words with her attention. she had granted florence the victory—with apromptness that had the effect of making florence, however dimly and unwillingly, wonder if hervictory was real. she was not weeping for her daughter’s future, she was weeping for the past, andweeping in an anguish in which florence had no part. and all of this filled florence with terriblefear, which, which was immediately transformed into anger. ‘gabriel can take care of you,’ shesaid, her voice shaking with malice. ‘gabriel ain’t never going to leave you. is you, boy?’ and shelooked at him. he stood, stupid with bewilderment and grief, a few inches from the bed. ‘but me,’
she said, ‘i got to go.’ she walked to the center of the room again, and picked up her bag.
‘girl,’ gabriel whispered, ‘ain’t you got feelings at all?’
‘lord!’ her mother cried; and at the sound her heart turned over; she and gabriel, arrested,stared at the bed. ‘lord, lord, lord! lord, have mercy on my sinful daughter! stretch out yourhand and hold her back from the lake that burns forever! oh, my lord, my lord!’ and her voicedropped, and broke, and tears ran down her face. ‘lord, i done my best with all the children whatyou give me. lord, have mercy on my children, and my children’s children.’
‘florence,’ said gabriel, ‘please don’t go. you ain’t really fixing to go and leave her likethis?’
tears stood suddenly in her own eyes, though she could not have said what she was cryingfor. ‘leave me be,’ she said to gabriel, and picked up her bag again. she opened the door; thecold, morning air came in. ‘good-bye.’ she said. and then to gabriel: ‘tell her i said good-bye.’
she walked through the cabin door and down the short steps into the frosty yard. gabriel watchedher, standing frozen between the door and the weeping bed. then, as her hand was on the gate, heran before her, and slammed the gate shut.
‘girl, where you going? what you doing? you reckon on finding some men up north todress you in pearls and diamonds?’
violently, she opened the gate and moved out into the road. he watched her with his jawhanging, and his lips loose and wet. ‘if you ever see me again,’ she said, ‘i won’t be wearing ragslike yours.’
all over the church there was only the sound, more awful than the deepest silence, of the prayersof the saints of god. only the yellow, moaning light shone above them, making their faces gleamlike muddy gold. their faces, and their attitudes, and their many voices rising as one voice madejohn think of the deepest valley, the longest night, of peter and paul in the dungeon cell, onepraying while the other sang; or of endless, depthless, swelling water, and no dry land in sight, thetrue believer clinging to a spar. and, thinking of to-morrow, when the church would rise up,singing, under the booming sunday light, he thought of the light for which they tarried, which, inan instant, filled the soul, causing (throughout those iron-dark, unimaginable ages before john hadcome into the world) the new-born in christ to testify: once i was blind and now i see.
and then they sang: ‘walk in the light, the beautiful light. shine all around me by day andby night, jesus, the light of the world.’ and they sang: ‘oh, lord, lord, i want to be ready, i wantto be ready. i want to be ready to walk in jerusalem just like john.’
to walk in jerusalem just like john. to-night, his mind was awash with visions: nothingremained. he was ill with doubt and searching. he longed for a light that would teach him, foreverand forever, and beyond all question, the way to go; for a power that would bind him, forever andforever, and beyond all crying, to the love of god. or else he wished to stand up now, and leavethis tabernacle and never see these people any more. fury and anguish filled him, unbearable,unanswerable; his mind was stretched to breaking. for it was time that filled his mind, time thatwas violent with the mysterious love of god. and his mind could not contain the terrible stretch oftime that united twelve men fishing by the shores of galilee, and black men weeping on theirknees to-night, and he, a witness.
my soul is a witness for my lord. there was an awful silence at the bottom of john’s mind,a dreadful weight, a dreadful speculation. and not even a speculation, but a deep, deep turning, asof something huge, black, shapeless, for ages dead on the ocean floor, that now felt its restdisturbed by a faint, far wind, which bid it: ‘arise.’ and this weight began to move at the bottomof john’s mind, in a silence like the silence of the void before creation, and he began to feel aterror he had never felt before.
and he looked around the church, at the people praying there. praying mother washingtonhad not come in until all the saints were on their knees, and now she stood, the terrible, old, black ,above his aunt florence, helping her to pray. her granddaughter, ella mae, had come in with her,wearing a mangy fur jacket over her everyday clothes. she knelt heavily in a corner near the piano,under the sign that spoke of the wage of sin, and now and again she moaned. elisha had not lookedup when she came in, and he prayed in silence: sweat stood on his brow. sister mccandless andsister price cried out every now and again: ‘yes, lord!’ or: ‘bless your name, jesus!’ and hisfather prayed, his head lifted up and his voice going on like a distant mountain stream.
but his aunt florence was silent; he wondered if she slept. he had never seen her prayingin a church before. he knew that different people prayed in different ways: has his aunt alwaysprayed in such a silence? his mother, too, was silent, but he had seen her pray before, and hersilence made him feel that she was weeping. and why did she weep? and why did they come here,night after night, calling out to a god who cared nothing for them—if, above this flaking ceiling,there was any god at all? then he remembered that the fool has said in his heart, there is no god—and he dropped his eyes, seeing that over his aunt florence’s head praying mother washingtonwas looking at him.
frank sang the blues, and he drunk too much. his skin was the color of caramel candy. perhaps forthis reason she always thought of him as having candy in his mouth, candy staining the edges ofhis straight, cruel teeth. for a while he wore a tiny mustache, but she made him shave it off, for itmade him look, she thought, like a half-breed gigolo. in details such as this he was always veryeasy—he would always put on a clean shirt, or get his hair cut, or come with her to uplift meetingswhere they heard speeches by prominent negroes about the future and duties of the negro race.
and this had given her, in the beginning of their marriage, the impression that she controlled him.
this impression had been entirely and disastrously false.
when he had left her, more than twenty years before, and after more than ten years ofmarriage, she had felt for that moment only an exhausted exasperation and a vast relief. he had notbeen home for two days and three nights, and when he did return they quarreled with more thantheir usual bitterness. all of the rage she had accumulated during their marriage was told him inthat evening as they stood in their small kitchen. he was still wearing overalls, and he had notshaved, and his face was muddy with sweat and dirt. he had said nothing for a long while, andthen he had said: ‘all right, baby. i guess you don’t never want to see me no more, not a miserable,black sinner like me.’ the door closed behind him, and she heard his feet echoing down the longhall, away. she stood alone in the kitchen, holding the empty coffee-pot that she had been about towash. she thought: ‘he’ll come back, and he’ll come back drunk.’ and then she had thought,looking about the kitchen: ‘lord, wouldn’t it be a blessing if he didn’t never come back no more.’
the lord had given her what she said she wanted, as was often, she had found, his bewilderingmethod of answering prayer. frank never did come back. he lived for a long while with anotherwoman, and when the war came he died in france.
now, somewhere at the other end of the earth, her husband lay buried. he slept in a landhis fathers had never seen. she wondered often if his grave was marked—if there stood over it, asin pictures she had seen, a small white cross. if the lord had ever allowed her to cross that swelling ocean she would have gone, among all the millions buried there, to seek out his grave.
wearing deep mourning, she would have laid on it, perhaps, a wreath of flowers, as other womendid; and stood for a moment, head bowed, considering the unspeaking ground. how terrible itwould be for frank to rise on the day of judgment so far from home! and he surely would notscruple, even on that day, to be angry at the lord. ‘me and the lord,’ he had often said, ‘don’talways get along so well. he running the world like he thinks i ain’t got good sense.’ how had hedied? slow or sudden? had he cried out? had death come creeping on him from behind, or facedhim like a man? she knew nothing about it, for she had not known that he was dead until longafterwards, when boys were coming home and she had begun searching for frank’s face in thestreets. it was the woman with whom he had lived who had told her, for frank had given thiswoman’s name as his next-of-kin. the woman, having told her, had not known what else to say,and she stared at florence in simple-minded pity. this made florence furious, and she barelymurmured: ‘thank you,’ before she turned away. she hated frank for making this woman officialwitness to her humiliation. and she wondered again what frank had seen in this woman, who,though she was younger than florence, had never been so pretty, and who drank all the time, andwho was seen with many men.
but it had been from the first her great mistake—to meet him, to marry him, to love him asshe so bitterly had. looking at his face, it sometimes came to her that all women had been cursedfrom the cradle; all, in one fashion or another, being given the same cruel destiny, born to sufferthe weight of men. frank claimed that she got it all wrong side up: it was men who sufferedbecause they had to put up with the ways of women—and this from the time that they were bornuntil the day they died. but it was she who was right, she knew; with frank she had always beenright; and it had not been her fault that frank was the way he was, determined to live and die acommon nigger.
but he was always swearing that he would do better; it was, perhaps, the brutality of hispenitence that had kept them together for so long. there was something in her which loved to seehim bow—when he came home, stinking with whisky, and crept with tears into her arms. then he,so ultimately master, was mastered. and holding him in her arms while, finally, he slept, shethought with the sensations of luxury and power: ‘but there’s a lots of good in frank. i just got tobe patient and he’ll come along all right.’ to ‘come along’ meant that he would change his waysand consent to be the husband she had traveled so far to find. it was he who, unforgivably, taughther that there are people in the world for whom ‘coming along’ is a perpetual process, people whoare destined never to arrive. for ten years he came along, but when he left her he was the sameman she had married. he had not changed at all.
he had never made enough money to buy the home she wanted, or anything else she reallywanted, and this had been part of the trouble between them. it was not that he could not makemoney, but that he would not save it. he would take half a week’s wages and go out and buysomething he wanted, or something he thought she wanted. he would come home on saturdayafternoons, already half drunk, with some useless objects, such a vase, which, it had occurred tohim, she would like to fill with flowers—she who never noticed flowers and who would certainlynever have bought any. or a hat, always too expensive or too vulgar, or a ring that looked asthough it had been designed for a whore. sometimes it occurred to him to do the saturday shopping on his way home, so that she would not have to do it; in which case he would buy aturkey, the biggest and most expensive he could find, and several pounds of coffee, it being hisbelief that there was never enough in the house, and enough breakfast cereal to feed an army for amonth. such foresight always filled him with such a sense of his own virtue that, as a kind ofreward, he would also buy himself a bottle of whisky; and—lest she should think that he wasdrinking too much—invite some ruffian home to share it with him. then they would sit allafternoon in her parlor, playing cards and telling indecent jokes, and making the air foul withwhisky and smoke. she would sit in the kitchen, cold with rage and staring at the turkey, which,since frank always bought them unplucked and with the head on, would cost her hours ofexasperating, bloody labor. then she would wonder what on earth had possessed her to undergosuch hard trial and travel so far from home, if all she had found was a two-room apartment in a cityshe did not like, and a man yet more childish than any she had known when she was youngsometimes from the parlor where he and his visitor sat he would call her:
‘hey, flo!’
and she would not answer. she hated to be called ‘flo,’ but he never remembered. hemight call her again, and when she did not answer he would come into the kitchen.
‘what’s the matter with you, girl? don’t you hear me a-calling you?’
and once when she still made no answer, but sat perfectly still, watching him with bittereyes, he was forced to make verbal recognition that there was something wrong.
‘what’s the matter, old lady? you mad at me?’
and when in genuine bewilderment he stared at her, head to one side, the faintest of smileson his face, something began to yield in her, something she fought, standing up and snarling at himin a lowered voice so that the visitor might not hear:
‘i wish you’d tell me just how you think we’s going to live all week on a turkey and fivepounds of coffee?’
‘honey, i ain’t bought nothing we didn’t need!’
she sighed in helpless fury, and felt tears springing to her eyes.
‘i done told you time and again to give me the money when you get paid, and let me do theshopping—’cause you ain’t got the sense that you was born with.’
‘baby, i wasn’t doing a thing in the world but trying to help you out. i thought maybe youwanted to go somewhere to-night and you didn’t want to be bothered with no shopping.’
‘next time you want to do me a favor, you tell me first, you hear? and how you expect meto go to a show when you done brought this bird home for me to clean?’
‘honey, i’ll clean it. it don’t take no time at all.’
he moved to the table where the turkey lay and looked at it critically, as though he wereseeing it for the first time. then he looked at her and ginned. ‘that ain’t nothing to get mad about.’
she began to cry. ‘i declare i don’t know what gets into you. every week the lord sendsyou go out and do some foolishness. how do you expect us to get enough money to get away fromhere if you all the time going to be spending your money on foolishness?’
when she cried, he tried to comfort her, putting his great hand on her shoulder and kissingher where the tears fell.
‘baby, i’m sorry. i thought it’d be a nice surprise.’
‘the only surprise i want from you is to learn some sense! that’d be a surprise! you thinki want to stay around here the rest of my life with these dirty niggers you al the time bring home?’
‘where you expect us to live, honey, where we ain’t going to be with niggers?’
then she turned away, looking out of the kitchen window. it faced an elevated train thatpassed so close she always felt that she might spit in the faces of the flying, staring people.
‘i just don’t like all that ragtag … looks like you think so much of.’
then there was silence. although she had turned her back to him, she felt that he was nolonger smiling and that his eyes, watching her, had darkened.
‘and what kind of man you think you married?’
‘i thought i married a man with some get up and go to him, who didn’t just want to stay onthe bottom all his life!’
‘and what you want me to me to do, florence? you want me to turn white?’
this question always filled her with an ecstasy of hatred. she turned and faced him, and,forgetting that there was someone sitting in the parlor, shouted:
‘you ain’t got to be white to have some self-respect! you reckon i slave in this house like ido so you and them common niggers can sit here every afternoon throwing ashes all over thefloor?’
‘and who’s common now, florence?’ he asked, quietly, in the immediate and awful silencein which she recognized her error. ‘who’s acting like a common nigger now? what you reckon myfriend is sitting there a-thinking? i declare, i wouldn’t be surprise none if he wasn’t a-thinking:
“poor frank, he sure found him a common wife.” anyway, he ain’t putting his ashes on the floor—he putting them in the ashtray, just like he knew what a ashtray was.’ she knew that she had hurthim, and that he was angry, by the habit he had at such a moment of running his tongue quicklyand incessantly over his lower lip. ‘but we’s a-going now, so you can sweep up the parlor and sitthere, if you want to, till the judgment day.’
and he left the kitchen. she heard murmurs in the parlor, and then the slamming of thedoor. she remembered, too late, that he had all his money with him. when he came back, longafter nightfall, and she put him to bed and went through his pockets, she found nothing, or almostnothing, and she sank helplessly to the parlor floor and cried.
when he came back at times like this he would be petulant and penitent. she would notcreep into bed until she thought that he was sleeping. but he would not be sleeping. he would turn as she stretched her legs beneath the blankets, and his arm would reach out, and his breath wouldbe hot and sour-sweet in her face.
‘sugar-plum, what you want to be so evil with your baby for? don’t you know you donemade me go out and get drunk, and i wasn’t a-fixing to do that? i wanted to take you outsomewhere to-night.’ and, while he spoke, his hand was on her breast, and his moving lipsbrushed her neck. and this caused such a war in her as could scarcely be endured. she felt thateverything in existence between them was part of a mighty plan for her humiliation. she did notwant his touch, and yet she did: she burned with longing and froze with rage. and she felt that heknew this and inwardly smile to see how easily, on this part of the battlefield, his victory could beassured. but at the same time she felt that his tenderness, his passion, and his love were real.
‘let me alone, frank. i want to go to sleep.’
‘no you don’t. you don’t want to go to sleep so soon. you want me to talk to you a little.
you know how your baby loves to talk. listen.’ and he brushed her neck lightly with his tongue.
‘you hear that?’
he waited. she was silent.
‘ain’t you got nothing more to say than that? i better tell you something else.’ and then hecovered her face with kisses; her face, neck, arms, and breasts.
‘you stink of whisky. let me alone.’
‘ah. i ain’t the only one got a tongue. what you got to say to this? and his hand strokedthe inside of her thigh.
‘stop.’
‘i ain’t going to stop. this is sweet talk, baby.’
ten years. their battle never ended; they never bought a home. he died in france. to-night sheremembered details of those years which she thought she had forgotten, and at last she felt thestony ground of her heart break up; and tears, as difficult and slow as blood, began to tricklethrough her fingers. this the old woman above her somehow divined, and she cried: ‘yes, honey.
you just let go, honey. let him bring you low so he can raise you up.’ and was this the way sheshould have gone? had she been wrong to fight so hard? now she was an old woman, and allalone, and she was going to die. and she had nothing for all her battles. it had all come to this: shewas on her face before the altar, crying to god for mercy. behind her she heard gabriel cry: ‘blessyour name, jesus!’ and, thinking of him and the high road of holiness he had traveled, her mindswung like a needle, and she thought of deborah.
deborah had written her, not many times, but in a rhythm that seemed to remark each crisisin her life with gabriel, and once, during the time she and frank were still together, she hadreceived from deborah a letter that she had still: it was locked to-night in her handbag, which layon the altar. she had always meant to show this letter to gabriel one day, but she never had. shehad talked with frank about it late one night while he lay in bed whistling some ragtag tune and she sat before the mirror and rubbed bleaching cream into her skin. the letter lay open before herand she sighed loudly, to attract frank’s attention.
he stopped whistling in the middle of a phrase; mentally, she finished it. ‘what you gotthere, sugar?’ he asked, lazily.
‘it’s a letter from my brother’s wife.’ she stared at her face in the mirror, thinking angrilythat all these skin creams were a waste of money, they never did any good.
‘what’s them niggers doing down home? it ain’t no bad news, is it? still he hummed,irrepressibly, deep in his throat.
‘no … well, it ain’t no good news neither, but it ain’t nothing to surprise me none. she saysshe think my brother’s got a bastard living right there in the same town what he’s scared to call hisown.’
‘no? and i thought you said you brother was a preacher.’
‘being a preacher ain’t never stopped a nigger from doing his dirt.’
then he laughed. ‘you sure don’t love your brother like you should. how come his wifefound out about this kid?’
she picked up the letter and turned to face him. ‘sound to me like she been knowing aboutit but she ain’t never had the nerve to say nothing.’ she paused, then added, reluctantly: ‘ofcourse, she ain’t really what you might call sure. but she ain’t a woman to go around thinkingthings. she mighty worried.’
‘hell, what she worried about it now for? can’t nothing be done about it now.
‘she wonder if she ought to ask him about it.’
‘and do she reckon if she ask him, he going to be fool enough to say yes?’
she sighed again, more genuinely this time, and turned back to the mirror. ‘well … he’s apreacher. and if deborah’s right, he ain’t got not right to be a preacher. he ain’t no better’nnobody else. in fact, he ain’t no better than a murderer.’
he had begun to whistle again; he stopped. ‘murderer? how so?’
‘because he done let this child’s mother go off and die when the child was born. that’show so.’ she paused. ‘and it sounds just like gabriel. he ain’t never thought a minute aboutnobody in this world but himself.’
he said nothing, watching her implacable back. then: ‘you going to answer this letter?’
‘i reckon.’
‘and what you going to say?’
‘i’m going to tell her she ought to let him know she know about his wickedness. get up infront of the congregation and tell them too, if she has to.’
he stirred restlessly, and frowned. ‘well, you know more about it than me. but i don’t seewhere that’s going to do no good.’
‘it’ll do her some good. it’ll make him treat her better. you don’t know my brother like ido. there ain’t but one way to get along with him, you got to scare him half to death. that’s all. heain’t got no right to go around running his mouth about how holy he is if he done turned a tricklike that.’
there was silence; he whistled again a few bars of his song; and then he yawned, and said:
‘is you coming to bed, old lady? don’t know why you keep wasting all your time and my moneyon all them old skin whiteners. you as black now as you was the day you was born.’
‘you wasn’t there the day i was born. and i know you don’t want a coal-black woman.’
but she rose from the mirror, and moved toward the bed.
‘i ain’t never said nothing like that. you just kindly turn out that light and i’ll make you toknow that black’s a mighty pretty color.’
she wondered if deborah had ever spoken; and she wondered if she would give gabriel theletter that she carried in her handbag to-night. she had held it all these years, awaiting some savageopportunity. what this opportunity would have been she did not; at this moment she did not wantto know. for she had always thought of this letter as an instrument in her hands which could beused to complete her brother’s destruction. when he was completely cast down she would preventhim from ever rising again by holding before him the evidence of his blood-guilt. but now shethought she would not live to see this patiently awaited day. she was going to be cut down.
and the thought filled her with terror and rage; the tears dried on her face and the heartwithin her shook, divided between a terrible longing to surrender and a desire to call god intoaccount. why had he preferred her mother and her brother, the old, black woman, and the low,black man, while she, who had sought only to walk upright, was come to die, alone and in poverty,in a dirty, furnished room? she beat her fists heavily against the altar. he, he would live, andsmiling, watch her go down into the grave! and her mother would be there, leaning over the gatesof heaven, to see her daughter burning in the pit.
as she beat her fists on the altar, the old woman above her laid hands on her shoulders,crying: ‘call on him, daughter! call on the lord!’ and it was as though she had been hurledoutward into time, where no boundaries were, for the voice was the voice of her mother but thehands were the hands of death. and she cried aloud, as she had never in all her life cried before,falling on her face on the altar, at the feet of the old black woman. her tears came down likeburning rain. and the hands of death caressed her shoulders, the voice whispered and whispered inher ear: ‘god’s got your number, knows where you live, death’s got a warrant out for you.’
2 gabriel’s prayernow i been introducedto the father and the son, and i ain’tnot stranger now.
when florence cried, gabriel was moving outward in fiery darkness, talking to the lord.
her cry came to him from afar, as from unimaginable depths; and it was not his sister’s cry heheard, but the cry of the sinner when he is taken in his sin. this was the cry he had heard so manydays and nights, before so many altars, and he cried to-night, as he had cried before: ‘have yourway, lord! have your way!’
then there was only silence in the church. even praying mother washington had ceased tomoan. soon someone would cry again, and the voices would begin again; there would be music byand by, and shouting, and the sound of the tambourines. but now in this waiting, burdened silenceit seemed that all flesh waited—paused, transfixed by something in the middle of the air—for thequickening power.
this silence, continuing like a corridor, carried gabriel back to the silence that hadpreceded his birth in christ. like a birth indeed, all that had come before this moment waswrapped in darkness, lay at the bottom of the sea of forgetfulness, and was not now countedagainst him, but was related only to that blind, and doomed, and stinking corruption he had beenbefore he was redeemed.
the silence was the silence of the early morning, and he was returning from the harlot’shouse. yet all around him were the sounds of the morning: of birds, invisible, praising god; ofcrickets in the vine, frogs in the swamp, of dogs miles away and closed at hand, roosters on theporch. the sun was not yet half awake; only the utmost tops of trees had begun to tremble at histurning; and the mist moved sullenly before gabriel and all around him, falling back before thelight that rules by day. later, he said of that morning that his sin was on him; then he knew onlythat he carried a burden and that he longed to lay it down. this burden was heavier than theheaviest mountain and he carried it in his heart. with each step that he took his burden grewheavier, and his breath became slow and harsh, and, of a sudden, cold sweat stood out on his browand drenched his back.
all alone in the cabin his mother lay waiting; not only for his return this morning, but forhis surrender to the lord. she lingered only for this, and he knew it, even though she no longerexhorted him as she had in days but shortly gone by. she had placed him in the hands of the lord,and she waited with patience to see how he would work the matter.
for she would live to see the promise of the lord fulfilled. she would not go to her restuntil her son, the last of her children, he who would place her in the winding-sheet, should haveentered the communion of the saints. now she, who had been impatient once, and violent, who hadcursed and shouted and contended like a man, moved into silence, contending only, and with thelast measure of her strength, with god. and this, too, she did like a man: knowing that she hadkept the faith, she waited for him to keep his promise. gabriel knew that when he entered shewould not ask him where he had been; she would not reproach him; and her eyes, even when sheclosed her lids to sleep, would follows him everywhere.
later, since it was sunday, some of the brothers and sisters would come to her, to sing andpray around her bed. and she would pray for him, sitting up in bed unaided, her head lifted, hervoice steady; while he, kneeling in a corner of the room, trembled and almost wished that shewould die; and trembled again at this testimony to the desperate wickedness of his heart; andprayed without words to be forgiven. for he had no words when he knelt before the throne. and hefeared to make a vow before heaven until he had the strength to keep it. and yet he knew that untilhe made the vow he would never find the strength.
for he desired in his soul, with fear and trembling, all the glories that his mother prayed heshould find. yes, he wanted power—he wanted to know himself to be the lord’s anointed, hiswell-beloved, and worthy, nearly, of that snow-white dove which had been sent down fromheaven to testify that jesus was the son of god. he wanted to be the master, to speak with thatauthority which could only come from god. it was later to become his proud testimony that hehated his sins—even as he ran toward sin, even as he sinned. he hated the evil that lived in hisbody, and he feared it, as he feared and heated the
