Go tell it on the mountain - James Baldwin [44]
‘No … well, it ain’t no good news neither, but it ain’t nothing to surprise me none. She says she think my brother’s got a bastard living right there in the same town what he’s scared to call his own.’
‘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 wife found out about this kid?’
She picked up the letter and turned to face him. ‘Sound to me like she been knowing about it but she ain’t never had the nerve to say nothing.’ She paused, then added, reluctantly: ‘Of course, she ain’t really what you might call sure. But she ain’t a woman to go around thinking things. 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 a preacher. And if Deborah’s right, he ain’t got not right to be a preacher. He ain’t no better’n nobody 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’s how so.’ She paused. ‘And it sounds just like Gabriel. He ain’t never thought a minute about nobody 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 in front 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 see where 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 I do. There ain’t but one way to get along with him, you got to scare him half to death. That’s all. He ain’t got no right to go around running his mouth about how holy he is if he done turned a trick like 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 money on 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 to know that black’s a mighty pretty color.’
She wondered if Deborah had ever spoken; and she wondered if she would give Gabriel the letter that she carried in her handbag to-night. She had held it all these years, awaiting some savage opportunity. What this opportunity would have been she did not; at this moment she did not want to know. For she had always thought of this letter as an instrument in her hands which could be used to complete her brother’s destruction. When he was completely cast down she would prevent him from ever rising again by holding before him the evidence of his blood-guilt. But now she thought 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 heart within her shook, divided between a terrible longing to surrender and a desire to call God into account. 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, and smiling, watch her go down into the grave! And her mother would be there, leaning over the gates of Heaven, to see her daughter burning in the pit.
As she