Go tell it on the mountain - James Baldwin [16]
‘I didn’t never ask you,’ she said, ‘what you wanted for your birthday. But you take this, son, and go out and get yourself something you think you want.’
And she opened his palm and put the money into it, warm and wet from her hand. In the moment that he felt the warm, smooth coins and her hand on his, John stared blindly at her face, so far above him. His heart broke and he wanted to put his head on her belly where the wet spot was, and cry. But he dropped his eyes and looked at his palm, at the small pile of coins.
‘It ain’t much there,’ she said.
‘That’s all right.’ Then he looked up, and she bent down and kissed him on the forehead.
‘You getting to be,’ she said, putting her hand beneath his chin and holding his face away from her, ‘a right big boy. You going to be a mighty fine man, you know what? Your mama’s counting on you.’
And he knew again that she was not saying everything she meant; in a kind of secret language she was telling him to-day something that he must remember and understand to-morrow. He watched her face, his heart swollen with love for her and with an anguish, not yet his own, but he did not understand and that frightened him.
‘Yes, Ma,’ he said, hoping that she would realize, despite his stammering tongue, the depth of his passion to please her.
‘I know,’ she said, with a smile, releasing him and rising, ‘there’s a whole lot of things you don’t understand. But don’t you fret. The Lord’ll reveal to you in His own good time everything He wants you to know. You put your faith in the Lord, Johnny, and He’ll surely bring you out. Everything works together for good for them that love the Lord.’
He had heard her say this before—it was her text, as Set thine house in order was his father’s—but he knew that to-day she was saying it to him especially; she was trying to help him because she knew he was in trouble. And this trouble was also her own, which she would never tell to John. And even though he was certain that they could not be speaking of the same things—for then, surely, she would be angry and no longer proud of him—this perception on her part and his avowal of her love for him lent to John’s bewilderment a reality that terrified and a dignity that consoled him. Dimly, he felt that he ought to console her, and he listened, astounded, at the words that now fell from his lips:
‘Yes, Mama. I’m going to try to love the Lord.’
At this there sprang into his mother’s face something startling, beautiful, unspeakably sad—as though she were looking far beyond him at a long, dark road, and seeing on that road a traveler in perpetual danger. Was it he, the traveler? or herself? or was she thinking of the cross of Jesus? She turned back to the wash-tub, still with this strange sadness on her face.
‘You better go on now,’ she said, before your daddy gets home.’
In Central Park the snow had not yet melted on his favorite hill. This hill was in the center of the park, after he had left the circ le of the reservoir, where he always found, outside the high wall of crossed wire, ladies, white, in fur coats, walking their great dogs, or old, white gentlemen with canes. At a point that he knew by instinct and by the shape of the buildings surrounding the park, he struck out on a steep path overgrown with trees, and climbed a short distance until he reached the clearing that led to the hill. Before him, then, the slope stretched upward, and above it the brilliant sky, and beyond it, cloudy, and far away, he saw the skyline of New York. He did not know why, but there arose in him an exultation and a sense of power, and he ran up the hill like an engine, or a madman, willing to throw himself headlong into the city that glowed before him.
But when he reached the summit he paused; he stood on the crest of the hill, hands clasped beneath his chin, looking down. Then he, John, felt like a giant who might crumble this city with his anger; he felt like a tyrant who might crush this city beneath his heel; he felt like a long-awaited conqueror at whose feet flowers would be strewn, and before whom multitudes