The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

  Jimmy left from here the same year they passed that law in Washington. Went to New Orleans to stay with his mama and go to school. They passed that law in the spring, he left here in the summer. We all went out to the road with him to catch the bus. Lena, Olivia, myself—others. It was a Sunday. A Sunday evening. We gived him a little party the night before, but we still had him loaded down with food. Cake, fried chicken, oranges. Going right there to New Orleans—he had enough food to last him a week. We stayed out there with him till he got on the bus, then we came on back down the quarters.

  Jimmy came back home every two weeks when he first left here. Then he started coming back home about once a month. After a while just on holidays—Easter and Christmas—then we wouldn’t see him again till summer. But anytime he came back the people got him to write letters. Sure, we had somebody else writing for us now, but they didn’t write like he did. They couldn’t think up things to say, and even when they did, it didn’t sound the way he made it sound. We used to give him a quarter for writing one letter, fifty cents for writing two. We didn’t have to pay him, mind you. When you make somebody the One you don’t have to pay them with money. You help them when they needs it. Books if they can’t buy their books. Give them money if they need to get somewhere. If you don’t have it yourself, you go to church, you go to the white people, but you do everything in your power to help him. That you owe him who you make the One.

  But the first thing people noticed after he had been away awhile, he no longer cared for the church. I’m not saying he didn’t go to church, I’m not saying he spoke against it. No, he never spoke against the church, and when he first started coming back he used to go up there with Lena all the time. But you could tell he didn’t have the right interest no more. If he prayed it didn’t have that fire now like it used to have. It was too dry now, too educated. Old people sitting in church didn’t feel the spirit. They never helped him on. They just sat there quiet, waiting for him to hurry up and finish so somebody else could pray. I used to try to help him, but you can feel a cold church. Quite likely he didn’t feel his prayers either, just did it because his aunt wanted him to do it. After it was over he would just sit there dreaming about something else.

  One time when he got up to tell his ’Termination he tried to say something about the new school law. But the people wasn’t interested with what he had to say. They nodded, you know, but they didn’t know what he was talking about. When he went back to his seat and sat down I saw him gazing out the window. Sitting there like he was all by himself.

  The first three or four years after he left here was the beginning of all that Civil Rights trouble. These white people had been living like this for hundreds and hundreds of years and they wasn’t about to give up without a fight. Look what they did that young lady at that Alabama school. Look what they did them little children there in Tennessee and there in Arkansas. What about that thing they had to kick out the Catholic church there in New Orleans? Suppose to be great leaders—but who was the bravest? Tell me. Dogs in a pack can fight—but who was the bravest? Answer me that. Any of them braver than Miss Lucy? What a charming young lady. What a beautiful face. What lovely eyes. And them little children? I still remember the little faces looking through the car windows at the dogs standing on two feet barking at them. Oh, my God. I’ll never forget the one with the ribbon in her hair. What a sweet little face—don’t you remember? I’ll take the memory of it to my grave just like I will take this scar on my back to my grave. Cussed them little children and still they went. Throwed rocks and bricks at them and still they stood up.

  And look how they treated Reverend King—how they bombed his house and jailed him. Suppose to be leaders of state and look at them. Leaders my foot. I will and I do call them a pack of vicious dogs. Look how they bombed Mr. Shuttleworth’s home—and on Christmas at that. I was sitting at the firehalf when I heard the news. I said a very mean thing about all white people, but then I fell on my knees and asked God to forgive me. No matter what happens, He’s not asleep. He sees what we does; it’s all written down.

  The ones at the front never thought the demonstrations could get this far. Everything that was going on was going on somewhere else. Alabama, Mi’sippi, New Orleans—but not Samson. The niggers here was contented. I heard Robert saying that with my own ears. Miss Amma Dean had gotten him to take me to the doctor in Bayonne. That bus with the Freedom Riders had just been destroyed—and Robert and one of them laws was standing side the car talking about it. I’m sitting in the car listening. “That’s what you get, what you ought to get when you poke your nose in other people business,” the law said. “Well, my niggers know better,” Robert said. “Heard that, granny?” the law said. I didn’t even look at him. “Over a hundred,” Robert said. “She know what’ll happen if they ever try it.”

  But not too long after that he called us up to the front. Hot just like it is today. Brady asked me if I wanted to ride, but I told him I would walk with all the other people. Me and Yoko, poor soul, walked up there together. I had on my sun glasses because that dust out there hurt my eyes. They call me Miss Movie Star anytime I put my sun glasses on—’specially Yoko. “Hey, there, Miss Movie Star. How you feel?” When I went by my tree up there, I said: “Well, Sis Oak, look like another one of them crazy meetings.” Yoko said: “One of these days that tree go’n answer you back and you go’n break your neck running down them quarters.” I told Yoko, I said: “I got news for you, Yoko, she talks back to me all the time.” Yoko, dead and gone now, said: “Now, I know you crazy.” And me and Yoko just killed ourself laughing.

  When we came up to the yard, Miss Amma Dean came out on the back gallery and told us Robert wasn’t there but he had something important to tell us and he wanted us to wait. She told me to come sit down in the kitchen, but I told her I would stay out there in the yard with Yoko and them. It was cool under the trees and it wasn’t so bad at first, but after we had been there a while it got tiring. The children began to fret, and some of the grown people started grumbling. But no Robert. He didn’t show up till almost sundown. We went up there at three o’clock and he didn’t show up till almost sundown. “What’s going on here?” he asked. “Everybody leaving?” Etienne said: “You sent for us, Mr. Robert.” He said: “Did I? Oh, yes, I had almost forgot.” Then he hollered for Bertha to bring him something cold to drink. He didn’t say another word to us till Bertha had brought the glass and left.

  “Now, let’s see,” he said. “Oh, yes, now I know. I just want remind every last one of y’all y’all living on this place for free. You pay me no rent, you pay me no water bill. You don’t give me a turnip out your garden, you don’t give me one egg out your hen house. You pick all the pecans you can find on the place and all I ask for is half, what I never get. I ask you for half the berries you pick, you bring me a pocketful so dirty I wouldn’t feed them to a hog I don’t like. All right, I’ll let all that go. But this I will not let go: there ain’t go’n be no demonstrating on my place. Anybody ’round here think he needs more freedom than he already got is free to pack up leave now. That go for the oldest one, that go for the youngest one. Jane to—who the last one had a baby down there?”

  Somebody said Eva. A little boy—Peter.

  “That go for Jane, that go for Eva’s boy Peter,” Robert said.

  He went inside the house, and we turned around and went back down the quarters.

  Not a month later, Batlo got mixed up in some kind of demonstrations in Baton Rouge, and some kind of way the word got back to Samson. Robert came down here and told Yoko she had to move in twenty-four hours. Yoko started crying. She said she couldn’t control Batlo, nobody could control children these days. She said she had been working here ever since his daddy, Mr. Paul, was alive, and one time Mr. Paul said himself she was one of the best workers he had on his place. Robert told her she had twenty-three hours and fifty-nine minutes and not a second more to get off his place.

  When he went back up the quarters, Yoko sen
t one of Strut’s children to tell me to see Miss Amma Dean. When I got up there Bertha told me Miss Amma Dean had a headache and was laying down ’cross the bed.

  “When she took her headache?” I asked Bertha.

  “She got it when she looked out in the road with them spy glasses and saw you headed this way,” Bertha said.

  “Think I ought to wait?” I asked Bertha.

  “No use,” Bertha said. “I’m sure it won’t pass till Yoko leave.”

  “She talked to Robert at all?” I asked Bertha.

  “She talked to him,” Bertha said. “But his mind made up. Yoko got to move off the place.”

  I started back down the quarters. Brady caught up with me in the car and drove me back to Yoko’s house. Yoko had already started packing. She already knowed what the answer was go’n be. That night everybody showed up to give a hand. When they got through packing, the people sat there talking till way up in the night.

  The next day she moved. Brady wanted to borrow a truck off the river and move her, but Batlo said he wanted to use wagons. He wanted to go slow long the road and show everybody what Robert Samson had done. He had even made signs to hang on the wagons. AFTER FIFTY YEARS, ROBERT SAMSON KICKED US OFF. BLACK PEOPLE FATE. He had the signs on both sides and on the back of the wagons.

  The first wagon had most of the heavy furnitures—bed, chairs, stove, dresser—and it had that chifforobe. Yoko hadn’t covered that chifforobe glass and the glass was flashing all over the place. From the time they brought it out the house till they left the quarters it flashed all over the place. All over the empty places where houses used to be and where the Cajuns got their fields now. It flashed on all these old houses and all these old fences. It flashed on you, too, if you didn’t get out the way. The wagon stopped out there in front my gate, and that glass stayed on my gallery all that time.

  Yoko was on the back wagon. She was sitting way up high. Batlo wanted her way up there to show the people what Robert Samson had done. We was scared Yoko might fall off, but Batlo wanted her to stay up there.

  That was one more day, you hear me? Yoko up there crying; we down here on the ground crying. Yoko waving from the wagon, we waving from the gate and waving from the gallery. Waving like you wave to people already dead. When somebody die and you don’t follow the hearse to the graveyard, you stand up and wave them good-bye. Best to wave with a piece of white rag or a pocket handkerchief. A man, of course, he take off his hat and holds it in a respectful manner over his heart. Ladies, they wave. All us waving: “Good-bye, Yoko, good-bye.” Yoko, way up there: “Good-bye, Etienne; good-bye, Lena; good-bye, Jane.” We down here on the ground: “Good-bye, Yoko, good-bye.”

  Not a year later—poor Yoko was dead. Staying there with her daughter in Port Allen, and not a year she was dead. The children wanted to bury her at Sun Rise where she got people, but we knowed Yoko wanted to be here with Walter, and we forced them to change their mind. Robert said he didn’t care one way or the other long as she didn’t carry on no demonstrating in that graveyard. The children brought Yoko back here, and she’s there side Walter right now. Just go to that last oak, closest one to the fence; you’ll find both of them side by side right there.

  Not long after Yoko moved away from here, Jimmy showed up at the church. I hadn’t seen Jimmy in over two years. He had been back here to see Lena, but I hadn’t seen him. I was surprised to see how tall he had got. Tall and skinny now and eyes very very serious. He came up to me and spoke. He said he had just been down to see Lena and she wasn’t coming to church that day because she wasn’t feeling too good. I told him I knowed it because I had talked to Lena myself just yesterday. I held his hand and looked up at him and I could see how serious his eyes was. He was standing there with me, but his mind was somewhere else.

  It was ’Termination Sunday. ’Termination Sunday is when you tell the church you still carrying the cross and you want meet them ’cross the River Jordan when you die. You start out singing your song. Soon as you have sung a little bit, no more than a chorus, the church joins and sings with you. You can keep your song going long as you want, if it’s a good spirity song, and the church will follow. Yoko used to sing and sing and sing: “Father, I stretch my hand to Thee, no other help I know.” Then after you get through singing, you talk to the church little bit—tell them you still on your way—then you shake hand with everybody—you can just wave to them sitting way back there in the back if you don’t feel like walking back there—then you got sit down. Then somebody else get up and they do the same. But he sing a different song. Everybody got his own song. You better not sing somebody else’s song before he do or sing it better even after he do, because you might have trouble on your hand. Sometimes when I don’t feel well enough to go to church, or I want stay home and listen to the ball game, I can sit on my gallery and tell who is telling their ’Termination just listening to the song. And in the years I’ve been living on this place I’ve heard a many songs, I tell you.

  Jimmy was the last one to go up to the front that day. He waited so long I didn’t think he was getting up at all. But when he was sure everybody else had spoke, he got up and came to the front. No singing, he just walked up there. He spoke to Elder Banks first, then to the deacons, to us sitting over there on the side bench, then he faced the front and spoke to the rest of the people. He told us he had come there for our help. He said we knowed what was happening all over the South, and it ought to be happening here, too. We was surely no better off than the people in Alabama and Mi’sippi was. He had been to Alabama and Mi’sippi; he had even been to Georgia. He had met Reverend King, he had gone to his house, he had gone to his church, he had even gone to jail with him. Reverend King and the Freedom Riders was winning the battle in Alabama and Mi’sippi, but us here in Luzana hadn’t even started the fight.

  “And end up like Yoko?” Just Thomas said.

  “That’s why I’m here now,” Jimmy said. “Because what they did to Miss Yoko. I had been telling myself over and over it wasn’t time for us to start here yet. Over and over I had been telling myself that. But when I heard what happened to Miss Yoko I knowed it was time.”

  “Time for what?” Just said. “For the same thing to happen to us?”

  “I don’t want nothing to happen to you,” Jimmy said. “The place where you live, that’s what I want.”

  “This place go’n be here,” Just Thomas said. “Where we going after they put us off?”

  “Don’t you have children?” Jimmy said.

  “That’s the trouble with y’all now,” Just Thomas said. “Y’all come round here telling people to follow y’all, then y’all want know if they got children to take them in.”

  “Just Thomas not the only person in this church,” I said. “What you asking us for, Jimmy?”

  “I’m head deacon here,” Just said.

  “Then you better ask him what I just asked him,” I said.

  Elder Banks stood up behind the altar and told me and Just don’t argue.

  “That’s what happen when the devil walk in,” Just said. “Good Christians fight.”

  “He can’t defeat nobody but the weak,” I said.

  Elder Banks cut his eyes at me to make me shut up. He told Jimmy: “You don’t come to our church no more, Jimmy. But now you come because you want us to help you. A cause we don’t even understand.”

  “I don’t go to church no more,” Jimmy said, “because I lost faith in God. And even now I don’t feel worthy standing here before y’all. I don’t feel worthy because I’m so weak. And I’m here because you are strong. I need you because my body is not strong enough to stand out there all by myself. Some people carry flags, but we don’t have a flag. Some carry guns, but we know it would be nonsense to even think about that. Some have money, but we don’t have a cent. We have just the strength of our people, our Christian people. That’s why I’m here. I left the church, but that don’t mean I left my people. I care much for you now as I ever did—and every last one of you i
n here know me. Do you think I’ll hurt you? My aunt’s down the quarters sick right now, do you think I want to hurt her? But we have to fight. We have to fight. I’m not the only one doing this. They doing it everywhere. They told me to come here because this is my home, and they feel I can talk to you better than anybody else can. You don’t have to worry about the Samsons pushing you off. If it was just here they would do it, but it’s everywhere now. And to push everybody off would cripple this state. They’ll change things before they let that happen.”

  “That’s what you saying,” Just said. “And how you know the rest of the people go’n listen to this craziness?”

  “Because they listened to the craziness Martin Luther King was teaching in Alabama,” Jimmy said.

  “Now, he getting smart,” Just said. “Y’all hear that, don’t you? Don’t come here but once a year, but now he getting smart.”

  “Oh, shut up, Just,” I said.

  “What?” Just said. “Who said that? That’s right, that’s you.” He always kept a pocket handkerchief with him to wipe his bald head—keep it from shining all over the place. Now he started shaking that wet, dirty handkerchief at me. “That’s why they took the mother from you,” he said. “If you ain’t arguing bout something you don’t know nothing bout, you at that house listening to them sinful baseball games.”

  “I don’t need the mother to serve my Master,” I said.

  “Left to me you’ll never get it back,” he said.

  “That’s all right with me,” I said. “I don’t need to sit where Em-ma sitting to get on my bending knees.”

  “When the last time you got down on them bending knees?” Just said.

  “I ain’t been feeling too good lately,” I said.