I could hardly sleep that night from the excitement of the thing. I had been yearning for so many months to find out about the end of things. I had no doubts about the beginnings. They were somewhere in the five acres that was home to me. Most likely in Mama’s room. Now, I was going to see the end, and then I would be satisfied.
As soon as breakfast was over, I sneaked off to the meeting place in the scrub palmettoes, a short way from our house and waited. Carrie didn’t come right away. I was on my way to her house by a round-about way when I met her. She was coming to tell me that she couldn’t go. It looked so far that maybe we wouldn’t get back by sundown, and then we would both get a whipping. When we got big enough to wear long dresses, we could go and stay as long as we wanted to. Nobody couldn’t whip us then. No matter how hard I begged, she wouldn’t go. The thing was too bold and brazen to her thinking. We had a fight, then. I had to hit Carrie to keep my heart from stifling me. Then I was sorry I had struck my friend, and went on home and hid under the house with my heartbreak. But, I did not give up the idea of my journey. I was merely lonesome for someone brave enough to undertake it with me. I wanted it to be Carrie. She was a lot of fun, and always did what I told her. Well, most of the time, she did. This time it was too much for even her loyalty to surmount. She even tried to talk me out of my trip. I couldn’t give up. It meant too much to me. I decided to put it off until I had something to ride on, then I could go by myself.
So for weeks I saw myself sitting astride of a fine horse. My shoes had sky-blue bottoms to them, and I was riding off to look at the belly-band of the world.
It was summer time, and the mocking birds sang all night long in the orange trees. Alligators trumpeted from their stronghold in Lake Belle. So fall passed and then it was Christmas time.
Papa did something different a few days before Christmas. He sort of shoved back from the table after dinner and asked us all what we wanted Santa Claus to bring us. My big brothers wanted a baseball outfit. Ben and Joel wanted air rifles. My sister wanted patent leather pumps and a belt. Then it was my turn. Suddenly a beautiful vision came before me. Two things could work together. My Christmas present could take me to the end of the world.
“I want a fine black riding horse with white leather saddle and bridles,” I told Papa happily.
“You, what?” Papa gasped. “What was dat you said?”
“I said, I want a black saddle horse with…”
“A saddle horse!” Papa exploded. “It’s a sin and a shame! Lemme tell you something right now, my young lady; you ain’t white.* Riding horse!! Always trying to wear de big hat! I don’t know how you got in this family nohow. You ain’t like none of de rest of my young’uns.”
“If I can’t have no riding horse, I don’t want nothing at all,” I said stubbornly with my mouth, but inside I was sucking sorrow. My longed-for journey looked impossible.
“I’ll riding-horse you, Madam!” Papa shouted and jumped to his feet. But being down at the end of the table big enough for all ten members of the family together, I was near the kitchen door, and I beat Papa to it by a safe margin. He chased me as far as the side gate and turned back. So I did not get my horse to ride off to the edge of the world. I got a doll for Christmas.
Since Papa would not buy me a saddle horse, I made me one up. No one around me knew how often I rode my prancing horse, nor the things I saw in far places. Jake, my puppy, always went along and we made great admiration together over the things we saw and ate. We both agreed that it was nice to be always eating things.
I discovered that I was extra strong by playing with other girls near my age. I had no way of judging the force of my playful blows, and so I was always hurting somebody. Then they would say I meant to hurt, and go home and leave me. Everything was all right, however, when I played with boys. It was a shameful thing to admit being hurt among them. Furthermore, they could dish it out themselves, and I was acceptable to them because I was the one girl who could take a good pummeling without running home to tell. The fly in the ointment there, was that in my family, it was not lady-like for girls to play with boys. No matter how young you were, no good could come of the thing. I used to wonder what was wrong with playing with boys. Nobody told me. I just mustn’t, that was all. What was wrong with my doll-babies? Why couldn’t I sit still and make my dolls some clothes?
I never did. Dolls caught the devil around me. They got into fights and leaked sawdust before New Year’s. They jumped off the barn and tried to drown themselves in the lake. Perhaps, the dolls bought for me looked too different from the ones I made up myself. The dolls I made up in my mind, did everything. Those store-bought things had to be toted and helped around. Without knowing it, I wanted action.
So I was driven inward. I lived an exciting life unseen. But I had one person who pleased me always. That was the robust, grey-haired, white man who had helped me get into the world. When I was quite small, he would come by and tease me and then praise me for not crying. When I got old enough to do things, he used to come along some afternoons and ask to take me with him fishing. He said he hated to bait his own hook and dig worms. It always turned out when we got to some lake back in the woods that he had a full can of bait. He baited his own hooks. In between fishing business, he would talk to me in a way I liked—as if I were as grown as he. He would tell funny stories and swear at every other word. He was always making me tell him things about my doings, and then he would tell me what to do about things. He called me Snidlits, explaining that Zora was a hell of a name to give a child.
“Snidlits, don’t be a nigger,” he would say to me over and over.* “Niggers lie and lie! Any time you catch folks lying, they are skeered of something. Lying is dodging. People with guts don’t lie. They tell the truth and then if they have to, they fight it out. You lay yourself open by lying. The other fellow knows right off that you are skeered of him and he’s more’n apt to tackle you. If he don’t do nothing, he starts to looking down on you from then on. Truth is a letter from courage. I want you to grow guts as you go along. So don’t you let me hear of you lying. You’ll get ’long all right if you do like I tell you. Nothing can’t lick you if you never get skeered.”
My face was all scratched up from fighting one time, so he asked me if I had been letting some kid lick me. I told him how Mary Ann and I had started to fighting and I was doing fine until her older sister Janie and her brother Ed, who was about my size, had all doubleteened me.
“Now, Snidlits, this calls for talking. Don’t you try to fight three kids at one time unlessen you just can’t get around it. Do the best you can, if you have to. But learn right now, not to let your head start more than your behind can stand. Measure out the amount of fighting you can do, and then do it. When you take on too much and get licked, folks will pity you first and scorn you after awhile, and that’s bad. Use your head!”
“Do de best I can,” I assured him, proud for him to think I could.
“That’s de ticket, Snidlits. The way I want to hear you talk. And while I’m on the subject, don’t you never let nobody spit on you nor kick you. Anybody who takes a thing like that ain’t worth de powder and shot it takes to kill ’em, hear?”
“Yessir.”
“Can’t nothing wash that off, but blood. If anybody ever do one of those things to you, kill dead and go to jail. Hear me?”
I promised him I would try and he took out a peanut bar and gave it to me.
“Now, Snidlits, another thing. Don’t you never threaten nobody you don’t aim to fight. Some folks will back off of you if you put out plenty threats, but you going to meet some that don’t care how big you talk, they’ll try you. Then, if you can’t back your crap with nothing but talk, you’ll catch hell. Some folks puts dependence in bluffing, but I ain’t never seen one that didn’t get his bluff called sooner or later. Give ’em what you promise ’em and they’ll look up to you even if they hate your guts. Don’t worry over that part. Somebody is going to hate you anyhow, don’t care what you d
o. My idea is to give ’em a good cause if it’s got to be. And don’t change too many words if you aim to fight. Lam hell out of ’em with the first lick and keep on lamming. I’ve seen many a fight finished with the first lick. Most folks can’t stand to be hurt. But you must realize that getting hurt is part of fighting. Keep right on. The one that hurts the other one the worst wins the fight. Don’t try to win no fights by calling ’em low-down names. You can call ’em all the names you want to, after the fight. That’s the best time to do it, anyhow.”
I knew without being told that he was not talking about my race when he advised me not to be a nigger. He was talking about class rather than race. He frequently gave money to Negro schools.
These talks went on until I was about ten. Then the hard-riding, hard-drinking, hard-cussing, but very successful man, was thrown from his horse and died. Nobody ever expected him to die in bed, so that part was all right. Everybody said that he had been a useful citizen, just powerful hot under the collar.
He was an accumulating man, a good provider, paid his debts and told the truth. Those were all the virtues the community expected. Any more than that would not have been appreciated. He could ride like a centaur, swim long distances, shoot straight with either pistol or guns, and allowed no man to give him the lie to his face. He was supposed to be so tough, it was said that once he was struck by lightning and was not even knocked off his feet, but that lightning went off through the woods limping. Nobody found any fault with a man like that in a country where personal strength and courage were the highest virtues. People were supposed to take care of themselves without whining.
For example, two men came before the justice of the peace over in Maitland. The defendant had hit the plaintiff three times with his fist and kicked him four times. The justice of the peace fined him seven dollars—a dollar a lick. The defendant hauled out his pocketbook and paid his fine with a smile. The justice of the peace then fined the plaintiff ten dollars.
“What for?” he wanted to know. “Why, Mr. Justice, that man knocked me down and kicked me, and I never raised my hand.”
“That is just what I’m fining you for, you yellow-bellied coudar!* Nobody with any guts would have come into court to settle a fist fight.”
The community felt that the justice had told him what was right. In a neighborhood where bears and alligators raided hog-pens, wild cats fought with dogs in people’s yards, rattle-snakes as long as a man and as thick as a man’s forearm were found around back doors, a fist fight was a small skimption. As in all frontiers, there was the feeling for direct action. Decency was plumb outraged at a man taking a beating and then swearing out a warrant about it. Most of the settlers considered a courthouse a place to “law” over property lines and things like that. That is, you went to law over it if neither party got too abusive and personal. If it came to that, most likely the heirs of one or the other could take it to court after the funeral was over.
So the old man died in high favor with everybody. He had done his cussing and fighting and drinking as became a man, taken care of his family and accumulated property. Nobody thought anything about his going to the county seat frequently, getting drunk, getting his riding-mule drunk along with him, and coming down the pike yelling and singing while his mule brayed in drunken hilarity. There went a man!
I used to take a seat on top of the gate post and watch the world go by. One way to Orlando ran past my house, so the carriages and cars would pass before me. The movement made me glad to see it. Often the white travelers would hail me, but more often I hailed them, and asked, “Don’t you want me to go a piece of the way with you?”
They always did. I know now that I must have caused a great deal of amusement among them, but my self-assurance must have carried the point, for I was always invited to come along. I’d ride up the road for perhaps a half mile, then walk back. I did not do this with the permission of my parents, nor with their foreknowledge. When they found out about it later, I usually got a whipping. My grandmother worried about my forward ways a great deal. She had known slavery and to her, my brazenness was unthinkable.
“Git down offa dat gate post! You li’l sow, you! Git down! Setting up dere looking dem white folks right in de face! They’s gowine to lynch you, yet. And don’t stand in dat doorway gazing out at ’em neither. Youse too brazen to live long.”
Nevertheless, I kept right on gazing at them, and “going a piece of the way” whenever I could make it. The village seemed dull to me most of the time. If the village was singing a chorus, I must have missed the tune.
Perhaps a year before the old man died, I came to know two other white people for myself. They were women.
It came about this way. The whites who came down from the North were often brought by their friends to visit the village school. A Negro school was something strange to them, and while they were always sympathetic and kind, curiosity must have been present, also. They came and went, came and went. Always, the room was hurriedly put in order, and we were threatened with a prompt and bloody death if we cut one caper while the visitors were present. We always sang a spiritual, led by Mr. Calhoun himself. Mrs. Calhoun always stood in the back, with a palmetto switch in her hand as a squelcher. We were all little angels for the duration, because we’d better be. She would cut her eyes and give us a glare that meant trouble, then turn her face towards the visitors and beam as much as to say it was a great privilege and pleasure to teach lovely children like us. They couldn’t see that palmetto hickory in her hand behind all those benches, but we knew where our angelic behavior was coming from.
Usually, the visitors gave warning a day ahead and we would be cautioned to put on shoes, comb our heads, and see to ears and fingernails. There was a close inspection of every one of us before we marched in that morning. Knotty heads, dirty ears and fingernails got hauled out of line, strapped and sent home to lick the calf over again.
This particular afternoon, the two young ladies just popped in. Mr. Calhoun was flustered, but he put on the best show that he could. He dismissed the class that he was teaching up at the front of the room, then called the fifth grade in reading. That was my class.
So we took our readers and went up front. We stood up in the usual line, and opened to the lesson. It was the story of Pluto and Persephone. It was new and hard to the class in general, and Mr. Calhoun was very uncomfortable as the readers stumbled along, spelling out words with their lips, and in mumbling undertones before they exposed them experimentally to the teacher’s ears.
Then it came to me. I was fifth or sixth down the line. The story was not new to me, because I had read my reader through from lid to lid, the first week that Papa had bought it for me.
That is how it was that my eyes were not in the book, working out the paragraph which I knew would be mine by counting the children ahead of me. I was observing our visitors, who held a book between them, following the lesson. They had shiny hair, mostly brownish. One had a looping gold chain around her neck. The other one was dressed all over in black and white with a pretty finger ring on her left hand. But the thing that held my eyes were their fingers. They were long and thin, and very white, except up near the tips. There they were baby pink. I had never seen such hands. It was a fascinating discovery for me. I wondered how they felt. I would have given those hands more attention, but the child before me was almost through. My turn next, so I got on my mark, bringing my eyes back to the book and made sure of my place. Some of the stories, I had reread several times, and this Greco-Roman myth was one of my favorites. I was exalted by it, and that is the way I read my paragraph.
“Yes, Jupiter had seen her (Persephone). He had seen the maiden picking flowers in the field. He had seen the chariot of the dark monarch pause by the maiden’s side. He had seen him when he seized Persephone. He had seen the black horses leap down Mount Aetna’s fiery throat. Persephone was now in Pluto’s dark realm and he had made her his wife.”
The two women looked at each other and then back to me. Mr.
Calhoun broke out with a proud smile beneath his bristly moustache, and instead of the next child taking up where I had ended, he nodded to me to go on. So I read the story to the end where flying Mercury, the messenger of the Gods, brought Persephone back to the sunlit earth and restored her to the arms of Dame Ceres, her mother, that the world might have springtime and summer flowers, autumn and harvest. But because she had bitten the pomegranate while in Pluto’s kingdom, she must return to him for three months of each year, and be his queen. Then the world had winter, until she returned to earth.
The class was dismissed and the visitors smiled us away and went into a low-voiced conversation with Mr. Calhoun for a few minutes. They glanced my way once or twice and I began to worry. Not only was I barefooted, but my feet and legs were dusty. My hair was more uncombed than usual, and my nails were not shiny clean. Oh, I’m going to catch it now. Those ladies saw me, too. Mr. Calhoun is promising to ’tend to me. So I thought.
Then Mr. Calhoun called me. I went up thinking how awful it was to get a whipping before company. Furthermore, I heard a snicker run over the room. Hennie Clark and Stell Brazzle did it out loud, so I would be sure to hear them. The smart-aleck was going to get it. I slipped one hand behind me and switched my dress tail at them, indicating scorn.
“Come here, Zora Neale,” Mr. Calhoun cooed as I reached the desk. He put his hand on my shoulder and gave me little pats. The ladies smiled and held out those flower-looking fingers towards me. I seized the opportunity for a good look.
“Shake hands with the ladies, Zora Neale,” Mr. Calhoun prompted and they took my hand one after the other and smiled. They asked me if I loved school, and I lied that I did. There was some truth in it, because I liked geography and reading, and I liked to play at recess time. Whoever it was invented writing and arithmetic got no thanks from me. Neither did I like the arrangement where the teacher could sit up there with a palmetto stem and lick me whenever he saw fit. I hated things I couldn’t do anything about. But I knew better than to bring that up right there, so I said yes, I loved school.