The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

  “But it’s us?” I said.

  “And that makes it gospel truth,” he said.

  “Then what happened?” I said, sitting back there in the back seat.

  “In the flash when her head and back hit the wall, something happened to her,” he said. “The past and the present got all mixed up. That stiff proudness left. Making up for the past left. She was the past now. She was grandma now, and he was that Creole gentleman. She was Verda now, and he was Robert. It showed in her face. It showed in the way she laid down there on the floor. Helpless; waiting. She knowed how she looked to him, but she couldn’t do nothing about it. But when he saw it he ran away from there. Because now he thought maybe the white man was God—like Jimmy Caya had said. Maybe the white man did have power that he, himself, didn’t know before now. He ran and ran, stumbling and falling: like a hurt animal. Then he was home. Home. Home. Home. Now he tried to forget what he had seen on the floor back there. But nothing in that library was go’n let him forget. Too many books on slavery in that room; too many books on history in there. The sound of his grandfather talking to his daddy and his uncle come out every wall; the sound of all of them talking to him come from everywhere at once. Then there was Jimmy Caya’s voice still fresh in his ear.

  “He saw grandpa’s letter opener. He picked it up. He laid it back down—but close enough to reach any time he needed it. He got paper and started writing. He wanted to run away from here. That was his first thought—get away from here. ’Mama, I don’t know what to do. I must go somewhere where I can find peace. Then maybe later.’

  “Then he heard Robert beating on the door and hollering at him. ‘When you come to me, Mama, I won’t be here. Forgive me. I love you.’ ”

  Jules Raynard pulled out his pocket handkerchief and wiped his face and neck.

  “But seeing her on the floor like that just hurried it up,” he said.

  “He was bound to kill himself anyhow?”

  “One day. He had to. For our sins.”

  “Poor Tee Bob.”

  “No. Poor us,” Jules Raynard said.

  I opened the car door and got out.

  “Good night, Mr. Raynard,” I said.

  “Good night, Jane.”

  BOOK IV

  THE QUARTERS

  People’s always looking for somebody to come lead them. Go to the Old Testament; go to the New. They did it in slavery; after the war they did it; they did it in the hard times that people want call Reconstruction; they did it in the Depression—another hard times; and they doing it now. They have always done it—and the Lord has always obliged in some way or another.

  Anytime a child is born, the old people look in his face and ask him if he’s the One. No, they don’t say it out loud like I’m saying it to you now. Maybe they don’t say it at all; maybe they just feel it—but feel it they do. “You the One?” I’m sure Lena asked Jimmy that when she first held him in her arms. “You the One, Jimmy? You the One?”

  He was born a little bit farther down the quarters. Shirley Aaron was his mama’s name—but I don’t need to tell you who his daddy was. That don’t matter—and, yes, it do. Because if his daddy had been there the cross wouldn’t ’a’ been nearly so heavy. Oh, heavy it would ’a’ been—it had to be—because we needed him to carry part our cross; but the daddy, if he had been there, would ’a’ been able to give him some help. But he didn’t have a daddy to help him. The daddy had done what they told him a hundred years before to do, and he had forgot it just like a hundred years ago they had told him to forget. So it don’t matter who his daddy was, because you got some out there right now who will tell you his daddy was somebody else. Oh, sure, they all know who he was, but still they’ll argue and say he was somebody else.

  Lena Washington was his aunt, his great aunt, his mama’s daddy sister; and it was Lena who sent Sappho up the quarters to get me because it wasn’t time to go get Selina from Morgan. It was in the winter—grinding—and it was me, Jane Pittman, who helped him into this world. When I took him ’round the other side and handed him to Lena she was sitting at the fire crying. That’s why I’m sure she asked him if he was the One. No daddy, and soon will be no mama, because mama was go’n leave for the city to work like all the other young people was doing—I’m sure Lena asked him if he was the One.

  Lena was the first one to ask him if he was the One, then we all started wondering if he was the One. That was long long before he had any idea what we wanted out of him. Because, you see, we started wondering about him when he was five or six. I ought to say everybody except Lena. Lena started wondering about him soon as she saw him that first morning. I probably would ’a’ done so myself, but I didn’t have time then, I was too busy looking after his mon on that bed. But I did later. We all did later. When he was five or six we all did. Why did we pick him? Well, why do you pick anybody? We picked him because we needed somebody. We could ’a’ picked one of Strut Hawkins’s boys or one of Joe Simon’s boys. We could ’a’ picked one of Aunt Lou Bolin’s boys—but we picked him. It was back there in the thirties. Joe had just tanned S’mellin’. We all knowed Joe was from Alabama, and we said if Alabama could give One that good, Samson, Luzana could do the same. Oh, no, no, no, we didn’t say it exactly like that. We felt it more. In here, in there. People never say things like that. They feel it in the heart.

  In the forties, during the war, we started watching him. I had moved down the quarters. I wanted to move out of the house soon after Tee Bob killed himself, but Robert kept me up there to be with Miss Amma Dean. I stayed five years more and I told them I wanted to get out. Robert told me I got out when he said I got out. I told him at my age I did what I wanted to do. Miss Amma Dean told me she wanted me up there because I needed looking after much more than she did, but, she said, if I wanted to go, go. I told them I wanted to go, I wanted to move down in the quarters. They said why move in the quarters when I already had a nice little house at the front. “Don’t you have a hyphen?” they said. I said, “Yes ma’am.” “Don’t you have lectwicity?” they said. I said, “Yes, sir.” “Then what you want go down there for?” they said. “There ain’t no hyphen down there and no lectwicity. Not even a pump in every yard. Just that well side the road. You got anything against good light and drinking good water?” “Nothing at all,” I said. “But the house I’m staying in now been the cook’s house even since I been here and probably long as Samson been here. Since I’m not y’all cook no more I don’t feel I have the right to be there.” “Maybe you don’t know it,” Robert said, “but you ain’t been doing too much cooking ’round here in about ten, ’leven years. But you been doing your share of eating.” “I hope I have not deprived you of a meal, Mr. Robert,” I said. “My hand is quicker than your eyes,” he said. “That’s why I want to go down the quarters and raise a garden and some chickens,” I said. “I hate to see a grown man snatching food off his own table.” “Go if you want go,” Miss Amma Dean said. “How you plan to get down the quarters, and where will you stay? Is the house clean? How far you go’n have to haul water? The Lord knows I see no point in you leaving.” “I must leave,” I said. “Mr. Robert, is it all right with you if I moved in that house side Mary?” “You asking me?” he said. “I didn’t know I still running Samson. I thought you was. I thought it was up to you to tell me when you wanted to move and where. And it was my duty to go down there and clean up the place for you. To run a special pipe down there so you can have hyphen water. To run a special line of lectwicity down there so you wouldn’t have to run out to the store for coal oil every day. I thought that was my duty at Samson. Is I done missed out on a duty? Oh, yes, I think I have missed one. I’m suppose to cut all them blood weeds down and run all them blue runner over in Hawk yard so they won’t come upon your gallery at night and keep you company. If it ain’t slipped my mind, you scared of snakes—or have you changed since about yesterday this time?” “Go if you want go,” Miss Amma Dean said, “Find Bea and Mae and tell them clean up that place for you. I?
??ll get Etienne to take them things down the quarters.”

  It was in the war I moved down the quarters. He was five or six then. Maybe four because he wasn’t in school yet. He didn’t start school till that Richard girl came here and started teaching. That was after Lillian. Lillian was between Mary Agnes and Vivian Richard.

  Shirley went to new Orleans soon after she weaned him, and now it was just him and Lena in the house down there. After I moved down the quarters I spent many days over there on Lena’s gallery and at her firehalf. But not just me; looked like all the people met there. Lena had that willow tree in the yard and it kept shade on the gallery on the hottest days. There was always somebody down there talking to her, and Jimmy sitting right there listening to all we had to say. I think that’s how we started watching him. Seeing him sitting there all the time, we started wondering if he was the One. No, we never said nothing to him about it, we never said nothing to each other about it—but we felt it. When we found out he count to a hundred by ones, twos, fives, tens, and we found out he knowed all his ABCs, we used to make him recite for us any time we went down there. “Y’all hear that?” Lena used to say, with that big grin on her face. “No more than six now, and y’all hear that?” It made her feel good and sad. Good because he could do it; sad because if he was the One he was go’n have to leave sooner or later.

  We used to watch him passing by in the road on his way to school. If it was cold and we saw that sweater not buttoned, we would say, “Get that thing buttoned there, Jimmy.” If we saw him trying to break ice in that ditch with the toe of his shoe, we would tell him to cut that out before he caught a death of cold. In summer we used to tell him, “You better stay out them weeds before snake bite you, boy.” If we saw him fighting we chastized him no matter who was wrong. He wasn’t suppose to fight these here in the quarters, he was suppose to stand up for them. You see, we had already made him the One.

  When he learned how to read we made him the reader in the quarters. And by the time he was nine he could read good as anybody down here except the schoolteacher. He used to read and write our letters for us, and he used to read the newspapers, too. Miss Amma Dean used to send me the newspapers every evening and I used to get him to read the sports to me. I didn’t care for nothing in the papers side the sports and the funnies. I used to make tea cakes, and I used to give him tea cakes and clabber, and he used to sit right there and read me the funnies. And could go just like Jiggs and Maggie. Go just like Dagwood. “See what devilment they in this time,” I used to say; and he used to sit right there and read it all to me. Then he used to read the sports to me and tell me what Jackie had done. Jackie and the Dodgers was for the colored people; the Yankees was for the white folks. Like in the Depression, Joe Louis was for the colored. When times get really hard, really tough, He always send you somebody. In the Depression it was tough on everybody, but twice as hard on the colored, and He sent us Joe. Joe was to lift the colored people’s heart. Of course S’mellin’ beat him the first time. But that was just to teach us a lesson. To show us Joe was just a man, not a superman. And to show us we could take just a little bit more hardship than we thought we could take at first. Now the second fight was different. We prayed and prayed, and He heard our prayers, and at the same time He wanted to punish them for thinking they was something super. I heard every lick of that fight on the radio, and what Joe didn’t put on S’mellin’ that night just couldn’t go on a man. You could look a week and you could still see the niggers grinning about that fight. Unc Gilly used to come up to my house and lay down on the floor on his back and kick his heels up in the air to show me how S’mellin’ had fall. Up till Unc Gilly died he was showing people how S’mellin’ fell when Joe hit him.

  Now, after the war He sent us Jackie. The colored soldiers coming back from the war said we could fight together we could play ball together. Not till then would they hire Jackie. And when they got him he showed them a trick or two. Home runs, steal bases—eh, Lord. It made my day just to hear what Jackie had done. Miss Amma Dean would send me the papers when they got through with it at the front, and soon as I got it I would send for Jimmy to come read me the sports and the funnies. If the Dodgers had won, if Jackie had done good, my day was made. If they had lost or if Jackie hadn’t hit, I suffered till they played again.

  Then I found out Jimmy was telling me lies. He knowed how much I liked Jackie and the Dodgers and on them days I wasn’t feeling too good he would tell me Jackie had stole two bases when Jackie hadn’t stole a one. Would tell me Jackie had got three or four hits when Jackie hadn’t got near the first base. Then on them days when Jackie got a bunch of hits and stole a bunch of bases he would take couple of them back to make up for the others he had gived him earlier. (He wasn’t nothing but a child, and he didn’t know we had already made him the One, bur he was already doing things the One is supposed to do.) Side reading the newspapers, he used to read the Bible for us, too; and he used to read and write our letters. Knowed how to say just what you wanted to say. All you had to do was get him started and he could write the best two-page letter you ever read. He would write about your garden, about the church, the people, the weather. And he would get it down just like you felt it inside. I used to sit there and look at him sitting on my steps writing and water would come in my eyes. You see, we had already made him the One, and I was already scared something was go’n happen to him or he would be taken from us.

  One summer he stayed in New Orleans with his mama, and we got that ugly boy there of Coon to read and write for us. That boy was ugly as a monkey and had ways twice as bad. He had a little ugly brown dog that used to follow him everywhere, and the children here in the quarters used to call that dog Monkey Boy Dog. The dog’s name was Dirt, but the children wouldn’t call him Dirt; called him Monkey Boy Dog.

  But that boy was something else. What was in that paper, that’s what he read. He didn’t care how bad you felt. He came to your house to read what was in the paper, he didn’t come there to up lift your spirits. If Jackie stole a base, he read that. If Jackie didn’t steal a base, he read that, too. The people used to tell him that old people like me needed her spirit up-lifted every now and then. “Can’t you make up a little story at times?” they used to tell him. He used to say, “I ain’t no preacher. Let preachers tell them lies.” Oh, he was evil, that boy. Same when it came to writing your letters. Wrote what you told him and nothing else. When you stopped talking, he stopped writing. “I don’t know your business if you don’t know it,” he used to say. “I come here to write your letter, not think myself crazy,” One time I told him: “Can’t you say something about my garden?” He said: “Say what about it? Say it out there? I can say that if you want me to. You want me to say, ‘My garden still here?’ ” “Can’t you say, ‘Beans dry’ or something,” I said. (I always like to fill both sides of the page when I write a letter, you know.) He said: “If you want people in New Orleans to know your beans dry, I’ll go on and write your beans dry. Don’t make me no never mind.”

  It was pretty clear to everybody in the quarters that he wasn’t the One.

  Jimmy was born after Tee Bob killed himself, so that mean Robert had already turned the place over to sharecroppers. Tee Bob was to inherit the place, but when he died and they didn’t have another son to give the place to, Robert chopped the place up in small patches and called in the people. First, he called in the Cajuns off the river and gived them what they wanted. Then he called in the colored out the quarters and gived them what was left. Some of them got a good piece of land to work, but most of them got land near the swamps, and it growed nothing but weeds, and sometimes not even that. So the colored people gived up and started moving away. That and the war took most of the young men and women from here. After they left, the old people and the children tried to work the land, but they got even less from it. The Cajuns, on the other hand, was getting more and more all the time. And the more they got, the better plows and tractors they got. And the better the plows and tractor
s, the more they got. After a while they wanted more land. That’s when Robert started taking acre by acre from the colored and giving it to them. He took and took till there wasn’t enough to support a family, so the people had to give up and leave or give up and work for the Cajuns. If they left a house that was rotten, Robert boarded up the windows and doors awhile, then he had somebody on the place tear it down, and he let the Cajuns plow up the land where the house used to be. That’s why coming down here now you see cane and corn where houses was twelve, fifteen years back. But they’ve had a many babies born here, and many old people have died here, you hear me. Sappho and them right over there; Claudee and them little farther down. Then Grace, then Elvira and them. On this side Lettie and her brood. (Corine drowned one of Lettie’s children in that well down the quarters way back there in the twenties.) On the other side of Lettie, Just Thomas and Elsie; then Coon and her drove. Hawk Brown, Gerry and their children right over here. Little farther up, Phillip, Unc Octave and Aunt Nane. Strut Hawkins and his bunch. Then go on the other side and start where I used to live. Little farther down Joe Simon and Ida. Harriet. Little farther, Oscar, Rosa, their children. Manuel, his family. Toby, his bunch. Bessie and hers. Aunt ’Phine Jackson and them. Aunt Lou Bolin and her hungry bunch. Billy Red, his mama and daddy. (He went to New Orleans and called himself Red Billé—a Frenchman.) Little farther down, Unc Gilly and Aunt Sara. Timmy and Verda. And many many more I can’t think of right at the moment. But now just a few of us left. Now nothing but fields, fields, and more fields. They don’t have nerve enough to kick the rest of us off, so they just wait for us to move away or die. Well, I got news for them: these old bones is tired, and that’s true, but they ain’t about ready to lay down for good, yet. I done seen a hundred and ten or more years, and I don’t mind seeing a few more. The Master will let me know when He wants His servant Up High. Till then I will have some of them children read me the Bible, read me the papers, and I’ll do all the walking I can. And I will eat vanilla ice cream which I loves and enjoys.