Go tell it on the mountain - James Baldwin [90]
‘He like you,’ said Elizabeth, finally, calmed a little by watching him.
‘You must be tired,’ said Florence, then: ‘Put him down there.’ And she dragged one large easy chair to the table so that John could watch them while they ate.
‘I got a letter from my brother the other day,’ she said, bringing the food to the table. ‘His wife, poor ailing soul. done passed on, and he thinking about coming North.’
‘You ain’t never told me,’ said Elizabeth, with a quick and rather false interest, ‘you had a brother! And he coming up here?’
‘So he say. Ain’t nothing, I reckon, to keep him down home no more—now Deborah’s gone.’ She sat down opposite Elizabeth. ‘I ain’t seen him,’ she said, musingly, ‘for more than twenty years.’
‘Then it’ll be a great day,’ Elizabeth smiled, ‘when you two meet again.’
Florence shook her head, and motioned for Elizabeth to start eating. ‘No,’ she said, ‘we ain’t never got along, and I don’t reckon he’s changed.’
‘Twenty years is a mighty long time,’ Elizabeth said, ‘he’s bound to have changed some.’
‘That man,’ said Florence, ‘would have to do a whole lot of changing before him and me hit it off. No,’—she paused, grimly, sadly—‘I’m mighty sorry he’s coming. I didn’t look to see him no more in this world—or in the next one, neither.’
This was not, Elizabeth felt, the way a sister ought to talk about her brother, especially to someone who knew him not at all, and who would, probably, eventually meet him. She asked, helplessly:
‘What do he do—your brother?’
‘He some kind of preacher,’ said Florence. ‘I ain’t never heard him. When I was home he weren’t doing nothing but chasing after women and lying in the ditches, drunk.’
‘I hope,’ laughed Elizabeth, ‘he done changed his ways at least.’
‘Folks,’ said Florence, ‘can change their ways much as they want to. But I don’t care how many times you change your ways, what’s in you is in you, and it’s got to come out.’
‘Yes,’ said Elizabeth, thoughtfully. ‘But don’t you think,’ she hesitantly asked, ‘that the Lord can change a person’s heart?’
‘I done heard it said often enough,’ said Florence, ‘but I got yet to see it. These niggers running around, talking about the Lord done changed their hearts—ain’t nothing happened to them niggers. They got the same old black hearts they was born with. I reckon the Lord done give them those hearts—and, honey, the Lord don’t give out no second helpings, I’m here to tell you.’
‘No,’ said Elizabeth heavily, after a long pause. She turned to look at John, who was grimly destroying the square, tasseled doilies that decorated Florence’s easy chair. ‘I reckon that’s the truth. Look like it go around once, and that’s that. You miss it, and you’s fixed for fair.’
‘Now you sound,’ said Florence, ‘mighty sad all of a sudden. What’s the matter with you?’
‘Nothing,’ she said. She turned back to the table. Then, helplessly, and thinking that she must not say too much: ‘I was just thinking about this boy here, what’s going to happen to him, how I’m going to raise him, in this awful city all by myself.’
‘But you ain’t fixing, is you,’ asked Florence, ‘to stay single all your days? You’s a right young girl, and a right pretty girl. I wouldn’t be in no hurry if I was you to find no new husband. I don’t believe the nigger’s been born what knows how to treat a woman right. You got time, honey, so take your time.’
‘I ain’t,’ said Elizabeth, quietly, ‘got so much time.’ She could not stop herself; though something warned her to hold her peace, the words poured out. ‘You see this wedding ring? Well, I bought this ring myself. This boy ain’t got no daddy.’
Now she had said it: the words could not be called back. And she felt, as sheb sat, trembling, at Florence’s table, a reckless, pained relief.
Florence stared at her with a pity so intense that it resembled anger. She looked at John, and then back at Elizabeth.
‘You poor thing,’ said Florence, leaning back in her chair, her face still filled with this strange, brooding fury, ‘you