Go tell it on the mountain - James Baldwin [79]
‘He’ was her father, who never came. As the years passed, she replied only: ‘I’m going away from here.’ And it hung, this determination, like a heavy jewel between her breasts; it was written in fire on the dark sky of her mind.
But, yes—there was something she had overlooked. Pride goeth before destruction; and a haughty spirit before a fall. She had not known this: she had not imagined that she could fall. She wondered, to-night, how she could give this knowledge to her son; if she could help him to endure what could now no longer be changed; if for ever, she came into the store alone, wearing her best white summer dress and with her hair, newly straightened and curled at the ends, tied with a scarlet ribbon. She was going to a great church picnic with her aunt, and had come in to buy some lemons. She passed the owner of the store, who was a very fat man, sitting out on the pavement, fanning himself; he asked her, as she passed, if it was hot enough for her, and she said something and walked into the dark, heavy-smelling store, where flies buzzed, and where Richard sat on the counter reading a book.
She felt immediately guilty about having disturbed him, and muttered apologetically that she only wanted to buy some lemons. She expected him to get them for her in his sullen fashion and go back to his book, but he smiled, and said:
‘Is that all you want? You better think now. You sure you ain’t forgot nothing?’
She had never seen him smile before, nor had she really, for that matter, ever heard his voice. Her heart gave a dreadful leap and then, as dreadfully, seemed to have stopped for ever. She could only stand there, staring at him. If he had asked her to repeat what she wanted she could not possibly have remembered what it was. And she found that she was looking into his eyes and where she had thought there was no light at all she found a light she had never seen before—and he was smiling still, but there was something curiously urgent in his smile. Then he said: ‘How many lemons, little girl?’
‘Six,’ she said at last, and discovered to her vast relief that nothing had happened: the sun was still shinning, the fat man still sat at the door, her heart was beating as though it had never stopped. She was not, however, fooled; she remembered the instant at which her heart had stopped, and she knew that it beat now with a difference.
He put the lemons into a bag, with a curious difference, she came closer to the counter to give him the money. She was in a terrible state, for she found that she could neither take her eyes off him nor look at him.
‘Is that your mother you come in with all the time?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she said, ‘that’s my aunt.’ She did not know why she said it, but she said: ‘My mother’s dead.’
‘Oh,’ he said. Then: ‘Mine, too.’ They both looked thoughtfully at the money on the counter. He picked it up, but did not move. ‘I didn’t think it was your mother,’ he said, finally.
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. She don’t look like you.’
He started to light a cigarette, and then looked at her and put the packet in his pocket again.
‘Don’t mind me,’ she said quickly. ‘Anyway, I got to go. She’s waiting—we going out.’
He turned and banged the cash register. She picked up her lemons. He gave her her change. She felt that she ought to say something else—it didn’t seem right, somewhat, just to walk out—but she could not think of anything. But he said:
‘Then that’s why you so dressed up to-day. Where you going to go?’
‘We going to a picnic—a church picnic,’ she said, and suddenly, unaccountably, and for the first time, smiled.
And he smiled, too, and lit his cigarette, blowing the smoke carefully away from her. ‘You like picnics?’
‘Sometimes,’ she said. She was not comfortable with him yet, and still she was beginning to feel that she would like to stand and talk to him all day. She wanted to ask him what he was reading, but she did not dare. Yet: ‘What’s your name?’ she abruptly brought out.
‘Richard,’ he said.
‘Oh,’ she said thoughtfully. Then: ‘Mine’s Elizabeth.