Black Boy

“Worried about me? Who’s worried about me?” I asked in feigned surprise.

  “All of us,” he said, his eyes avoiding mine.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “You’re not saved,” he said sadly.

  “I’m all right,” I said, laughing.

  “Don’t laugh, Richard. It’s serious,” he said.

  “But I tell you that I’m all right.”

  “Say, Richard, I’d like to be a good friend of yours.”

  “I thought we were friends already,” I said.

  “I mean true brothers in Christ,” he said.

  “We know each other,” I said in a soft voice tinged with irony.

  “But not in Christ,” he said.

  “Friendship is friendship with me.”

  “But don’t you want to save your soul?”

  “I simply can’t feel religion,” I told him in lieu of telling him that I did not think I had the kind of soul he thought I had.

  “Have you really tried to feel God?” he asked.

  “No. But I know I can’t feel anything like that.”

  “You simply can’t let the question rest there, Richard.”

  “Why should I let it rest?”

  “Don’t mock God,” he said.

  “I’ll never feel God, I tell you. It’s no use.”

  “Would you let the fate of your soul hang upon pride and vanity?”

  “I don’t think I have any pride in matters like this.”

  “Richard, think of Christ’s dying for you, shedding His blood, His precious blood on the cross.”

  “Other people have shed blood,” I ventured.

  “But it’s not the same. You don’t understand.”

  “I don’t think I ever will.”

  “Oh, Richard, brother, you are lost in the darkness of the world. You must let the church help you.”

  “I tell you, I’m all right.”

  “Come into the house and let me pray for you.”

  “I don’t want to hurt your feelings…”

  “You can’t. I’m talking for God.”

  “I don’t want to hurt God’s feelings either,” I said, the words slipping irreverently from my lips before I was aware of their full meaning.

  He was shocked. He wiped tears from his eyes. I was sorry.

  “Don’t say that. God may never forgive you,” he whispered.

  It would have been impossible for me to have told him how I felt about religion. I had not settled in my mind whether I believed in God or not; His existence or nonexistence never worried me. I reasoned that if there did exist an all-wise, all-powerful God who knew the beginning and the end, who meted out justice to all, who controlled the destiny of man, this God would surely know that I doubted His existence and He would laugh at my foolish denial of Him. And if there was no God at all, then why all the commotion? I could not imagine God pausing in His guidance of unimaginably vast worlds to bother with me.

  Embedded in me was a notion of the suffering in life, but none of it seemed like the consequences of original sin to me; I simply could not feel weak and lost in a cosmic manner. Before I had been made to go to church, I had given God’s existence a sort of tacit assent, but after having seen His creatures serve Him at first hand, I had had my doubts. My faith, such as it was, was welded to the common realities of life, anchored in the sensations of my body and in what my mind could grasp, and nothing could ever shake this faith, and surely not my fear of an invisible power.

  “I’m not afraid of things like that,” I told the boy.

  “Aren’t you afraid of God?” he asked.

  “No. Why should I be? I’ve done nothing to Him.”

  “He’s a jealous God,” he warned me.

  “I hope that He’s a kind God,” I told him.

  “If you are kind to Him, He is a kind God,” the boy said. “But God will not look at you if you don’t look at Him.”

  During our talk I made a hypothetical statement that summed up my attitude toward God and the suffering in the world, a statement that stemmed from my knowledge of life as I had lived, seen, felt, and suffered it in terms of dread, fear, hunger, terror, and loneliness.

  “If laying down my life could stop the suffering in the world, I’d do it. But I don’t believe anything can stop it,” I told him.

  He heard me but he did not speak. I wanted to say more to him, but I knew that it would have been useless. Though older than I, he had neither known nor felt anything of life for himself; he had been carefully reared by his mother and father and he had always been told what to feel.

  “Don’t be angry,” I told him.

  Frightened and baffled, he left me. I felt sorry for him.

  Immediately following the boy’s visit, Granny began her phase of the campaign. The boy had no doubt conveyed to her my words of blasphemy, for she talked with me for hours, warning me that I would burn forever in the lake of fire. As the day of the revival grew near, the pressure upon me intensified. I would go into the dining room upon some petty errand and find Granny kneeling, her head resting on a chair, uttering my name in a tensely whispered prayer. God was suddenly everywhere in the home, even in Aunt Addie’s scowling and brooding face. It began to weigh upon me. I longed for the time when I could leave. They begged me so continuously to come to God that it was impossible for me to ignore them without wounding them. Desperately I tried to think of some way to say no without making them hate me. I was determined to leave home before I would surrender.

  Then I blundered and wounded Granny’s soul. It was not my intention to hurt or humiliate her; the irony of it was that the plan I conceived had as its purpose the salving of Granny’s frustrated feelings toward me. Instead, it brought her the greatest shame and humiliation of her entire religious life.

  One evening during a sermon I heard the elder—I took my eyes off his wife long enough to listen, even though she slumbered in my senses all the while—describe how Jacob had seen an angel. Immediately I felt that I had found a way to tell Granny that I needed proof before I could believe, that I could not commit myself to something I could not feel or see. I would tell her that if I were to see an angel I would accept that as infallible evidence that there was a God and would serve Him unhesitatingly; she would surely understand an attitude of that sort. What gave me courage to voice this argument was the conviction that I would never see an angel; if I had ever seen one, I had enough common sense to have gone to a doctor at once. With my bright idea bubbling in my mind, wishing to allay Granny’s fears for my soul, wanting to make her know that my heart was not all black and wrong, that I was actually giving serious thought to her passionate pleadings, I leaned to her and whispered:

  “You see, granny, if I ever saw an angel like Jacob did, then I’d believe.”

  Granny stiffened and stared at me in amazement; then a glad smile lit up her old wrinkled white face and she nodded and gently patted my hand. That ought to hold her for a while, I thought. During the sermon Granny looked at me several times and smiled. Yes, she knows now that I’m not dismissing her pleas from my mind…Feeling that my plan was working, I resumed my worship of the elder’s wife with a cleansed conscience, wondering what it would be like to kiss her, longing to feel some of the sensuous emotions of which my reading had made me conscious. The service ended and Granny rushed to the front of the church and began talking excitedly to the elder; I saw the elder looking at me in surprise. Oh, goddamn, she’s telling him! I thought with anger. But I had not guessed one-thousandth of it.

  The elder hurried toward me. Automatically I rose. He extended his hand and I shook it.

  “Your grandmother told me,” he said in awed tones.

  I was speechless with anger.

  “I didn’t want her to tell you that,” I said.

  “She says that you have seen an angel.” The words literally poured out of his mouth.

  I was so overwhelmed that I gritted my teeth. Finally I could speak and I grabbed his arm.

  “No…N-nooo,
sir! No, sir!” I stammered. “I didn’t say that. She misunderstood me.”

  The last thing on earth I wanted was a mess like this. The elder blinked his eyes in bewilderment.

  “What did you tell her?” he asked.

  “I told her that if I ever saw an angel, then I would believe,” I said, feeling foolish, ashamed, hating and pitying my believing granny. The elder’s face became bleak and stricken. He was stunned with disappointment.

  “You…you didn’t see an angel?” he asked.

  “No, sir!” I said emphatically, shaking my head vigorously so that there could be no possible further misunderstanding.

  “I see,” he breathed in a sigh.

  His eyes looked longingly into a corner of the church.

  “With God, you know, anything is possible,” he hinted hopefully.

  “But I didn’t see anything,” I said. “I’m sorry about this.”

  “If you pray, then God will come to you,” he said.

  The church grew suddenly hot. I wanted to bolt out of it and never see it again. But the elder took hold of my arm and would not let me move.

  “Elder, this is all a mistake. I didn’t want anything like this to happen,” I said.

  “Listen, I’m older than you are, Richard,” he said. “I think that you have in your heart the gift of God.” I must have looked dubious, for he said: “Really, I do.”

  “Elder, please don’t say anything to anybody about this,” I begged.

  Again his face lit with vague hope.

  “Perhaps you don’t want to tell me because you are bashful?” he suggested. “Look, this is serious. If you saw an angel, then tell me.”

  I could not deny it verbally any more; I could only shake my head at him. In the face of his hope, words seemed useless.

  “Promise me you’ll pray. If you pray, then God will answer,” he said.

  I turned my head away, ashamed for him, feeling that I had unwittingly committed an obscene act in rousing his hopes so wildly high, feeling sorry for his having such hopes. I wanted to get out of his presence. He finally let me go, whispering:

  “I want to talk to you sometime.”

  The church members were staring at me. My fists doubled. Granny’s wide and innocent smile was shining on me and I was filled with dismay. That she could make such a mistake meant that she lived in a daily atmosphere that urged her to expect something like this to happen. She had told the other members and everybody knew it, including the elder’s wife! There they stood, the church members, with joyous astonishment written on their faces, whispering among themselves. Perhaps at that moment I could have mounted the pulpit and led them all; perhaps that was to be my greatest moment of triumph!

  Granny rushed to me and hugged me violently, weeping tears of joy. Then I babbled, speaking with emotional reproof, censuring her for having misunderstood me; I must have spoken more loudly and harshly than was called for—the others had now gathered about me and Granny—for Granny drew away from me abruptly and went to a far corner of the church and stared at me with a cold, set face. I was crushed. I went to her and tried to tell her how it had happened.

  “You shouldn’t’ve spoken to me,” she said in a breaking voice that revealed the depths of her disillusionment.

  On our way home she would not utter a single word. I walked anxiously beside her, looking at her tired old white face, the wrinkles that lined her neck, the deep, waiting black eyes, and the frail body, and I knew more than she thought I knew about the meaning of religion, the hunger of the human heart for that which is not and can never be, the thirst of the human spirit to conquer and transcend the implacable limitations of human life.

  Later, I convinced her that I had not wanted to hurt her and she immediately seized upon my concern for her feelings as an opportunity to have one more try at bringing me to God. She wept and pleaded with me to pray, really to pray, to pray hard, to pray until tears came…

  “Granny, don’t make me promise,” I begged.

  “But you must, for the sake of your soul,” she said.

  I promised; after all, I felt that I owed her something for inadvertently making her ridiculous before the members of her church.

  Daily I went into my room upstairs, locked the door, knelt, and tried to pray, but everything I could think of saying seemed silly. Once it all seemed so absurd that I laughed out loud while on my knees. It was no use. I could not pray. I could never pray. But I kept my failure a secret. I was convinced that if I ever succeeded in praying, my words would bound noiselessly against the ceiling and rain back down upon me like feathers.

  My attempts at praying became a nuisance, spoiling my days; and I regretted the promise I had given Granny. But I stumbled on a way to pass the time in my room, a way that made the hours fly with the speed of the wind. I took the Bible, pencil, paper, and a rhyming dictionary and tried to write verses for hymns. I justified this by telling myself that, if I wrote a really good hymn, Granny might forgive me. But I failed even in that; the Holy Ghost was simply nowhere near me…

  One day while killing my hour of prayer, I remembered a series of volumes of Indian history I had read the year before. Yes, I knew what I would do; I would write a story about the Indians…But what about them? Well, an Indian girl…I wrote of an Indian maiden, beautiful and reserved, who sat alone upon the bank of a still stream, surrounded by eternal twilight and ancient trees, waiting…The girl was keeping some vow which I could not describe and, not knowing how to develop the story, I resolved that the girl had to die. She rose slowly and walked toward the dark stream, her face stately and cold; she entered the water and walked on until the water reached her shoulders, her chin; then it covered her. Not a murmur or a gasp came from her, even in dying.

  “And at last the darkness of the night descended and softly-kissed the surface of the watery grave and the only sound was the lonely rustle of the ancient trees,” I wrote as I penned the final line.

  I was excited; I read it over and saw that there was a yawning void in it. There was no plot, no action, nothing save atmosphere and longing and death. But I had never in my life done anything like it; I had made something, no matter how bad it was; and it was mine…Now, to whom could I show it? Not my relatives; they would think I had gone crazy. I decided to read it to a young woman who lived next door. I interrupted her as she was washing dishes and, swearing her to secrecy, I read the composition aloud. When I finished she smiled at me oddly, her eyes baffled and astonished.

  “What’s that for?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “But why did you write it?”

  “I just wanted to.”

  “Where did you get the idea?”

  I wagged my head, pulled down the corners of my mouth, stuffed my manuscript into my pocket and looked at her in a cocky manner that said: Oh, it’s nothing at all. I write stuff like this all the time. It’s easy, if you know how. But I merely said in an humble, quiet voice:

  “Oh, I don’t know. I just thought it up.”

  “What’re you going to do with it?”

  “Nothing.”

  God only knows what she thought. My environment contained nothing more alien than writing or the desire to express one’s self in writing. But I never forgot the look of astonishment and bewilderment on the young woman’s face when I had finished reading and glanced at her. Her inability to grasp what I had done or was trying to do somehow gratified me. Afterwards whenever I thought of her reaction I smiled happily for some unaccountable reason.

  5

  No longer set apart for being sinful, I felt that I could breathe again, live again, that I had been released from a prison. The cosmic images of dread were now gone and the external world became a reality, quivering daily before me. Instead of brooding and trying foolishly to pray, I could run and roam, mingle with boys and girls, feel at home with people, share a little of life in common with others, satisfy my hunger to be and live.

  Granny and Aunt Addie changed toward
me, giving me up for lost; they told me that they were dead to the world, and those of their blood who lived in that world were therefore dead to them. From urgent solicitude they dropped to coldness and hostility. Only my mother, who had in the meantime recovered somewhat, maintained her interest in me, urging me to study hard and make up for squandered time.

  Freedom brought problems; I needed textbooks and had to wait for months to obtain them. Granny said that she would not buy worldly books for me. My clothes were a despair. So hostile did Granny and Aunt Addie become that they ordered me to wash and iron my own clothes. Eating was still skimpy, but I had now adjusted myself to the starch, lard, and greens diet. I went to school, feeling that my life depended not so much upon learning as upon getting into another world of people.

  Until I entered Jim Hill public school, I had had but one year of unbroken study; with the exception of one year at the church school, each time I had begun a school term something happened to disrupt it. Already my personality was lopsided; my knowledge of feeling was far greater than my knowledge of fact. Though I was not aware of it, the next four years were to be the only opportunity for formal study in my life.

  The first school day presented the usual problem and I was emotionally prepared to meet it. Upon what terms would I be allowed to remain upon the school grounds? With pencil and tablet, I walked nonchalantly into the schoolyard, wearing a cheap, brand-new straw hat. I mingled with the boys, hoping to pass unnoticed, but knowing that sooner or later I would be spotted for a newcomer. And trouble came quickly. A black boy bounded past me, thumping my straw hat to the ground, and yelling:

  “Straw katy!”

  I picked up my hat and another boy ran past, slapping my hat even harder.

  “Straw katy!”

  Again I picked up my hat and waited. The cry spread. Boys gathered around, pointing, chanting:

  “Straw katy! Straw katy!”

  I did not feel that I had been really challenged so far; no particular boy had stood his ground and taunted me. I was hoping that the teasing would cease, and tomorrow I would leave my straw hat at home. But the boy who had begun the game came close.