“Yes, darlin’,” the cross-eyed woman said, raising her head with a wildly radiant smile, “that’s right. But you forget, darlin’, that sometimes dreams are real….”
Then he could hear Lonnie Barnes roaring, “Oh, my God! Will you listen to that? Now she’s done gone to contradicting a contradiction! By which I mean, she’s now trying to stand a dream on its head, turn the truth wrong-side out, and talking a dam’ hole straight through our skulls! Dammit, Maud, you have flipped! You have blown your top! Scrambled your brains! No doubt about it! If that dream was real, then where the hell are the babies? That’s what I want to know, WHERE ARE THE DAM’ BABIES!”
“Fool,” Hickman heard, “they were taken away! That’s what I’m trying to tell these gentlemen. Somebody slipped into my room and took them! While I was out buying them some soft little booties for their little feet and little ribbons and bows and such things as Johnson’s Baby Oil and talcum powder and safety pins for their little didies, and some soft little brushes and some nice little combs, somebody came in and took them away. One of the brushes and combs was white, one was pink, and the other was blue, and you can go look in my room and see for yourself. They’re all up there. And when I came back and found that the babies were not in their bed I rushed out to look for them and I searched for them everywhere. Over on the Howard campus, under the statues and by the trees in Lafayette Park. Up along the Mall and around the Washington Monument and near the middle gate in the White House fence. Even in back of Mister Lincoln’s knees, and all down along the riverbank where the people fishes. I asked everybody I met if they had seen my lost little babies, but nobody had seen them. And nobody would help me. I looked and I looked. I searched until I could barely walk and until I was so tired that I broke down and cried.
“Oh, I cried and cried! I cried so hard that I had to get off the street and come home to get some rest, and when I got here I was so brokenhearted that I cried myself to sleep. So now all this is happening to Mister Jessie … and me now babyless.”
Hickman watched her wiping her eyes with the back of her hand as she shook her head and then fixed him once again in her cross-focused eyes. “So please, please, gentlemen,” she pleaded; “please tell me: Am I being punished by having my three little babies kidnapped just because I wasn’t married? And if so, is that justice?”
“OOOOOH, NO!” Barnes moaned, “now she’s done jumped on justice! They’ll do it every time! First they jump salty with the truth and then they start yelling about justice!”
“… I say is it justice,” the woman went on, “because does the good earth have to be married before it can give birth to spring? And if it doesn’t, then tell me why I have to be? Because aren’t all of us genuine, nitty-gritty black women the daughters of the earth? Of the rich, black, fruitful earth, who is the mother of us all, including that little nasty white rookie cop down there? And aren’t us black women supposed to be natural like the earth, our mama? So now tell me about this mixed-up mess! TELL ME!”
At the woman’s shout, Hickman stiffened, watching a glistening tear break from her eyes and course slowly down her cheeks, and he was stirred by a feeling mixed of compassion and painful distrust.
Falling silent as she awaited his answer, the woman’s crossed eyes were awash with tears; and as her imperious question flared and plunged through his mind on a series of swiftly repeated echoes, it was as though the taut covering of a child’s toy kite, flayed by the force of a sudden squall, was being ripped from the slender wooden cross which formed its fragile skeleton. Feeling compelled to answer, yet struggling against his sense of unreality, he was suddenly aware of the distorted surfacing of a story so intimately a part of him that for years it had existed in his consciousness less as a structure of events than as an emotion, an article of faith, a feeling, a vague yet basic and unquestioned support of his sense of life’s meaning, one which revealed itself in a special gentleness toward mothers and infants. So that now, as he struggled to bring it fully to consciousness it eluded him, it teased him cruelly. And all the more so because he knew, even as it evaded him, like the beating of his heart, or the rise and fall of his lungs in breathing, it had been with him constantly and for a long, long time. Still, for reasons which he suspected as being too painful for consciousness, it was reluctant to reveal itself, to announce its true name. And as he stood silently opening and closing his mouth, it whirled in his mind with the elusive, now-you-see-me, now-you-don’t motions of a single moth that opened suddenly and began a frantic flickering from light to shadow and back again in a parabolic flight above the cross-eyed woman’s head.
Straining forward, she addressed him again and waited, but now it was as though a wall of thick glass had descended between them, behind which, like a turbulence of smoke in a bottle, the traces of the story were reforming and becoming an even older but no less familiar one—of which, with quickening heart, he sensed it to be but a hysterically distorted shadow, a mocking mask.
His body and face were damp with sweat now, and as he stared upward across the massed heads and into the woman’s tear-stained face, this deeper story struggled gently but determinedly to assert itself. And in the turmoil of his mind he could feel its dispersed elements flying languidly together, as when a motion picture recording the bursting of a beautiful rose is reversed in slow motion, causing its scattered petals to float back with dream-like precision to resume the glorious form of its shattered design. Oblivious both to his will and to the goading of the woman’s shrill insistence, this older story was reassembling itself, roiling with silent swiftness out of the shadow of time and the decay of memory as it reassumed in his mind a transcendent and luminous wholeness. It was as though it contained a life of its own, and now having been summoned up, it was insisting upon making its presence known against all that opposed it—the times, the policeman, the pulsating crowd, even his own memory’s resistance toward recognizing its resurrection in the grotesque and incongruous details of the cross-eyed woman’s condition.
Sounding within him now with somber harmonies, it brought a strong surge of emotion, a wild beating of his heart, and as it deepened he felt himself growing into a full and lucid awareness of its long existence, its mystery and wondrous promise. Then, as his eyes welled with the poignant emotion of recognition it came to him that far from having been simply listening to the retelling of a dream or to the wild, frustrated outpouring of a deranged female fantasy, he had been listening to a confession. Yes, a confession in which the cross-eyed woman was giving voice to a confusion of despair, hope, and a forlorn prayer.
Pulling an old handkerchief of pongee silk from the breast pocket of his jacket, he mopped his face, feeling a certain relief. Over the long years he had heard many confessions, both private and public, and he recalled that frequently he had encountered in them a note of desperate, unashamed, and deeply disturbing frankness. And he thought, But even for our people, who are accustomed to saying and hearing things said in public that other folks keep strictly to themselves, this here is strong medicine. Very strong. That’s why these here in the hall are getting embarrassed; public unburdening like this can be as upsetting as news of rape or murder, because they make everybody recall their own dreams and frustrations and guilt. It makes everyone feel naked, exposed. And sometimes that goes even for me. Maybe that’s why for a second there I had the feeling that she had singled me out with those crossed eyes of hers just so that she could signify at me, had selected me, a stranger, for abuse and mockery—even though she’s never seen me before and knows nothing about what brought Deacon and me to this crazy house. But she’s touched me and touched me hard, not because she knows anything whatsoever about our mission but because of what lies in my secret heart. No, something else is going on here, something that has nothing directly to do with us. She’s desperate, man; and at her age a woman can be terribly desperate. Desperate enough to expose herself before her neighbors in order to appeal to a couple of strangers for comfort. Well, she sure made a poor c
hoice considering what we’re able to do, but, then again, she might be seeing straighter than she appears to see, because at least she senses that I’m supposed to be a minister….
“Gentlemen,” he heard, “I’m waiting. I say tell me!”
“Yeah, somebody tell her something so she’ll shut up,” Lonnie Barnes said, snapping his stocking-capped head.
Hickman looked at Barnes, then back at the woman, thinking, But what can I tell her in all this crowd, with these sophisticated Washington Negroes? And with this white detective looking like he’s watching a circus ring full of sideshow freaks? Tell her that her dream seems to be the reflection of a miracle? An old, old sacred song, played on a wheezy, out-of-tune organ? Tell her that what happened in it has occurred to others, and usually with unforeseen consequences of mixed pleasure and pain? Should I tell her that she’s in the grips of a dream that was actually experienced in all its fullness and mystery only once, by one woman and by one woman only, and that long ago?… Tell her something in this crowd when I’ve had trouble getting it across even with my own members?
“Mister,” the woman called, “I can see you’re about to tell me, so go ahead and don’t mind Lonnie. I’m the one who’s in trouble. So don’t just be standing there opening and closing your mouth, and saying nothing, because I need an answer. My brain needs it, and my soul needs it. In fact, since everything has gotten so crazy you can forget about my brain and just speak to my soul. Because I have been laughed at and I have been scorned, and this fool Lonnie Barnes is trying to put me down—and that not only makes for soul-pain, it upsets the mind. Yes, and before you answer, here’s something else I have to know: Was I wrong … I mean when my own folks scorned me and called me a bitch … was I wrong when I said to those women who I thought were my good friends and had them turn against me: ‘All right, all right now,’ I said, ‘How many little saviors have y’all thrown into the garbage can or flushed down the toilet? How many of you women who’re out here calling me a bitch have had a little savior to die because of your just wanting to live free off the Welfare? And how many of you have lost your chance to raise up a little black savior by being kicked in the belly by your evil boyfriends or no-good husbands? And how many of you have lost your little saviors because you didn’t love them enough to cherish them and keep them?’
“Because you see, gentlemen, I believe in my heart that one of their babies might have been meant for a savior or a great leader just as one of mine must surely have been meant to be—otherwise, why did I have three … been given three, when all they had was one? And then they wasted him and denied him his chance to lead the people? I told them that too, gentlemen. And I told them that I loved my babies and that I intended to keep them, no matter what they thought about it. So now you tell me, was I wrong? Tell me, gentlemen! You, the big, fine, Joe-Louisish–looking one! You don’t have to tell me anything fancy, just tell me whatever it is you have to say to a black daughter of mother earth who broke down on these hard ole Washington, D.C., streets and cried!”
Moving forward on impulse, Hickman felt the resistance of hot bodies as suddenly he was drawn toward the stairs. He could see the woman waiting with lips pressed tightly together now, and above the confusion of his emotion he heard the hoarse, restricted sound of his own voice addressing her, thinking What am I about to say? What can I—Then hearing, “No, mam, you’re not wrong! I’m not sure that I understand what you’ve been telling us, but I feel in my heart that you’re not wrong. You’ve had an experience that most folks will never understand, one that many wouldn’t want to understand—but it’s not wrong, it’s only confusing. So I take off my hat to you and I pray that you’ll be blessed with peace and understanding. Because … because I believe that in all your confusion and pain you have seen the promise and the responsibility unafraid and it seems to me that you’re reminding us of some things that we can’t afford to forget….”
“Oh, I knew it! I knew it,” the cross-eyed woman said. And as he struggled to grasp the meaning of what he was still trying to say he saw her throw out her arms in his direction, causing the others on the stairs to move aside.
“I just knew that you’d say that,” she called, “I knew that you’d understand….”
Then nearby he heard Barnes asking, “Understand what? Now we have another one on our hands. I don’t know this ole burly Negro from Adam’s off ox, but I swear that he’s as nutty as Maud! Next thing you know he’ll be telling us how many babies he’s done lost!”
And now as the hallway exploded with laughter Hickman saw Barnes turn to the white man, an expression of high indignation on his blustering face.
“Officer,” he said, “you ought to throw them both into St. Elizabeth’s—call for some straitjackets!”
Aware both of the cause for laughter and the troubling emotion beneath it, Hickman gazed sternly into Barnes’ face during a noisy interval, silently taking in the reddish tint of the popped eyes, the moist, rough, pockmarked skin, the shiny forehead topped by the black nylon stocking cap. And even as he resisted the temptation to punch the man, calmly and dispassionately in his eye he suddenly felt himself giving way to a roar of hilarious laughter. Run a chicken bone through the knot in that cap and he’d look like a cannibal king in a comic strip, he thought. Yet give him half a chance and he’ll run for public office and be telling everybody how to serve his God and grease his greens!Then, as suddenly as it had begun, his laughter subsided and he stood shaking his head.
“Never mind this man,” he said, smiling up at the cross-eyed woman. “Never mind him, Sister Maud, because he … well, I’m not allowed to call him a fool, but I think you’ll understand if I call him a clown….”
“Yes, darlin’, yes!”
“… So you just forget him and don’t worry over his or anybody else’s failure to understand what you’ve been trying to tell us. What happened to you has a deep meaning—a profound and marvelous meaning! I don’t say that I understand it fully myself, but I tell you that I feel its meaning in my heart. It speaks to me beyond speech and I accept it. It says something comforting to me and I’m a stranger and so I believe that if only other folks will listen to it with their hearts it will give them comfort too. And so you should let it be a comfort to you. Never mind the clowns and cynics, folks like us just have to have the conviction and the faith of our dreams….”
“Oh, yes, darlin’,” the woman cried, “Yes! I could hug you, for speaking those words of peace to my soul!”
And now as she started forward, attempting to descend the steps, Hickman saw her kimono swing apart, hearing a woman’s voice saying, “Watch it, girl!” as he turned his head to see the white man gazing in open mouthed fascination toward the stairs.
“Oh, but I need more, darlin’, more,” she said, and as his eyes swung away from the white man he saw her stumble, causing her robe to slip and revealing a flat, thin, pitiful little breast, then found himself fixed again by the wild intensity of her cross-focusing eyes.
“Don’t stop now, darlin’, tell me some more. Tell me it isn’t so! Tell me that I haven’t lost my three little babies! Tell me it isn’t! Tell me it ain’t—you hear me, darlin’? Tell me, tell me! Hell, gentlemen, one of you say something! Let the other one, the short one, say something. Tell me that stone is stone gone stone! Tell me, I don’t care! I can stand bad news, only tell the truth! Tell me that flesh is still flesh with the bone underneath it! Tell me, I say! Tell me that I’m not awake and standing on these stairs in the middle of the night! Tell me that I’m up there in my bed waiting for my righteous bridegroom with my three little babies beside me….”
And now Hickman saw Barnes swing toward the stairs, his eyes bulging with disbelief as he shouted, “Bridegroom! Dam’ if she ain’t took off again!”
“… Tell me, darlin’s, that pretty soon my righteous bridegroom is going to come tipping down the hall with the pretty blue carpet on the floor and that the little pink roses will still be up there on the wallpaper! Aaah, tell me
, tell me!”
* In the typescript for Book II, there are two or three lines of indecipherable text between the above two paragraphs of dialogue spoken by Deacon Wilhite.
EDITORS’ NOTE TO “BLISS’S BIRTH”
ELLISON SCRAWLED “BLISS’S BIRTH” across the top of the first page of this discrete thirty-eight-page manuscript next to a circle with the date 1965 written within, also in his hand. The opening passage dovetails with (and to some extent repeats) passages preceding and following the episode toward the end of Book II in which Hickman and his congregation visit the Lincoln Memorial. (As noted in the General Introduction, Ellison wrote a more essayistic version of this episode in the Hickman in Washington, D.C., fragment composed decades later on the computer.)
In any case, the “Bliss’s Birth” episode is prominently mentioned in several of Ellison’s notes. Once or twice he jotted marginal notes about where these pages might go. In each case his intention was to place them somewhere in Book II, an obvious choice since the episode is so central to the Hickman-Bliss relationship at the heart of Book II. The version published here contains Ellison’s last handwritten revisions and emendations, and, judging from its own state and earlier drafts, constitutes his fully realized account of the tragic circumstances of Hickman’s brother Robert’s lynching and his mother’s death shortly after her son’s murder. The mother of Bliss is a white woman known to Hickman and his family who had fingered Robert Hickman to divert suspicion from the real father of her unborn child. Intending to burn alive the pregnant woman and himself in his mother’s cabin, Hickman relents and finally, out of respect for life’s continuity and power, delivers Bliss into the world.
The manuscript (Chapter 15 in Juneteenth) sows the seeds of the mystery of Bliss’s parentage and the deep roots of Hickman’s spiritual paternal love for the boy. It also recounts his turn from a jazzman of the world and of the flesh to one called by God to preach. Finally, the manuscript presents powerfully sparely, and dramatically material that Ellison much later extended into long digressive passages. For example, in “Bliss’s Birth” Janey writes Hickman a short letter full of implications for the present threat to Bliss, now Senator Sunraider. But some two decades later Ellison turns this trenchant device of character and plot into a long rambling letter, more in his voice than Janey’s, that chooses digression over acts advancing the plot.