Three Days Before the Shooting . . .

by Ralph Ellison

  “Oh, sure they did, Bliss. But she had covered her tracks like an Indian. She was supposed to be up in Saratoga, that’s in New York, you see, but instead she went up to Washington, D.C., with the baby dressed up in a Turkish turban and little gold shoes that turned up at the toe and they spent two days up there riding up and down the Washington Monument and after that they doubled back. That’s how that was. You see?”

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “They probably had them a good time.”

  “I don’t know, Bliss. They just might have got awfully dizzy.”

  “So what happened then, Revern’?” one of the women said.

  “Well, things went along for a while. She wasn’t doing much business but things were quiet and nobody bothered them and they ate a lot of buttered carrots and shoofly pie, but mostly carrots … and—”

  “Why they eat all those carrots?”

  “Because she thought they would improve the baby’s vision, Bliss.”

  “He means she was trying to straighten out his eyes, Revern’ Bliss,” Deacon Wilhite said and suppressed a laugh.

  “I hear that carrots make you beautiful,” Sister Lucy said.

  “And did they ever find the baby?”

  “That’s right, after a while they did, Bliss. And it happened like this. They was down there waiting for the Mardi Gras to come. One day an old Yankee veteran from the Civil War walked in there to get some shirts washed and ironed and when he looked in that basket and saw Old Glory pinned around that Chinee baby he like to bust a gut. Excuse me, ladies. He saw that, Bliss, and he wanted to start the war all over again. He called the police and the fire department and wired the President up in Washington and raised so much Cain that they ran him out of town for a carpetbagger—while she was treated like she’d done the most normal thing in the world. The poor Chinee lady had a world of trouble getting her little boy back again, because folks tend to take what rich women like that say as the truth. And, on top of that, the child had come to like her, didn’t think he was a Chinese at all….”

  “What’d he think he was?”

  “A confederate named Wong E. Lee.”

  “So what happened to them then?”

  “Well, Bliss, the news got around and her folks heard about it and came and took her home and they gave the Chinee lady some money for all her trouble and grief and they turned over the laundry to them and they stayed there and made a fortune and now the little boy is glad he’s a Chinese.”

  “Wong E. Lee,” Bliss said.

  “They should’ve put that woman under lock and key right then and there,” Sister Wilhite said. “If they had we would’ve been saved all this trouble.”

  “That’s right, Bliss,” Daddy Hickman said. “That’s one of the points. Down here a woman like that can get away with anything because not only is her family rich, it’s old and has standing position. They’re quality—of some kind. But no sooner did she get out of that mess than she ups and grabs a little Mexican boy. This was down in Houston, wasn’t it, Deacon?”

  “Dallas,” Deacon Wilhite said, his head back, his eyes gazing at the ceiling. “Dallas is where it happened.”

  “That’s right, Bliss; Dallas, Texas. She kidnaps this little boy and names him Pancho Villa Van Buren Starr and rushes him up to the Kentucky Derby—which was being held at the time. That was Louisville. Sports and hustlers from all over were there making bets and drinking mint juleps, having a little sport—innocent and un-innocent. Well, up there after she had lost five thousand dollars, a piebald gelding, and all the jewelry she had taken along, she tried to use the baby to place a bet with, like he was cash on the line.”

  “Now Revern’,” Sister Lucy said, “she didn’t do a thing like that!”

  “Oh yes, she did. And it was logical from her point of view. To her way of thinking property like that is negotiable and she swore that little Mexican boy was a family heirloom that had been in the family for years…. So, knowing who she was and how solid her background was and all, they took Pancho for the bet and called the president of the Jockey Club about it, but the horse she picked came in last.”

  “And did they get the baby?”

  “They did, Bliss, but it was a long time afterwards. The boy took off and got lost. He had a hard time, Bliss, because she hadn’t let him eat anything but chop suey, and although he found a Chinese restaurant he couldn’t eat because he only spoke Mexican and the restaurant folks couldn’t understand him. So I guess you were lucky because she only tried to steal you. The sisters took care of that. So I want you to forget that woman, you hear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You forget all about her, Bliss; I’m talking to you seriously now. Forget her and the foolishness she was saying because she’d never seen you before and I hope she never sees you again. All right now, I better rest so I can help you preach next week. Meantime, I want you to do like I say and forget the woman and if you do I’ll take you—Here, come close so I can whisper….”

  He bent close, smelling the medicine and then Daddy Hickman was whispering, “I’ll take you to see one of those moving pictures you’ve been hearing about. Now that’s a secret. You’ll keep it, won’t you?”

  “Yes, sir. The secret.”

  He looked but suddenly the eye was gone—as though someone had turned down the wick on a lamp.

  “Daddy Hickman—” he began, but now Sister Lucy had him by the arm.

  “Shhh,” she said, “he’s sleeping now,” and he was being led quietly away.

  It’s like trying to reconstruct your own birth as cherchez la femme and find the man. Sin, Hickman’d call it, but all men are of larceny to the fourth power of the newborn heart, then it’s run not walk to avoid escape, ignore the recognition. Hairs bursting isolated and red out of the white temple and her strange voice screaming Cudworth, Cudworth, and I followed I went I fled up and out of the darkness and she lived behind a wall so strong it had no need for altitude. No foot transgressed no alien bird’s song aggrieved her privacy. Was this my home, my rightful place?—Cudworth, she called—I heard dragonflies, I saw the great house resting in the gentle shade of her cotton-wood mimosa wisteria, the tulip trees. No Mister Movie-man, she said, locking her legs before the rise of magnolias, smiling, no peach blossoms no not that…. She’s my mother she said and I answered she is my mother she Get out the vote Senator, vote. Senator promise them anything but wheel and deal. She said, Baby, baby, always insisting upon appellation the fruit Eve conned Adam with I’ll call you by your true name, Baby she—said after the snake Cudworth from the cow’s belly a round ball of hair regurgitated. Call me Hank, no Bone. Important not to get lost—I followed Cudworth, Cudworth he’s my—Yes sir by following the line of Body’s mother and Mrs. Proctor discussing my aborted emancipation from the dark down labyrinthine ways of gossip being hung on lines in the sun the hot air. Body’s mother was there before me, broadbacked and turning great curved hips with intent face and mouth spiked with wooden clothespins we used for soldiers in our games, her hair hidden beneath a purple cloth. I yearned for her love of Body as my own. Mrs. Proctor, short and fat rocking from side to side, gently as she slow-dragged from left to right, her man’s shoes shuffling over the earth leaving ridges of dust in the soil—her hips tossing languidly, a gentle, mysterious tide of gingham beneath the line hanging the underskirts, slips, bloomers, as they talked up under her wet clothes. Red-white-blue democracy for you bleached and clean making transparent shadows upon the red clay ground the sun filtering pastel through the cloth and the air clean to the smell with me crouching underneath, the first well-hung line, my finger tracing upon the hard earth, wondering how did I get out and get lost, did I come down from under these thin petticoats out of these in order to ascend—clank-clank-clank your mother.

  She’s got to be a fool, from Body’s mother. Coming into our meeting like that. Either that or she was drunk or something, her voice rising in invitation to a re-creation of my soul’s agony. And Mrs. Proctor accepting,

>   Ain’t it the truth? And there we was just wanting to be left alone in peace to serve God for a few days and to praise Him—but can we do it? Oh no. She so high and mighty she gon take that chile without the hardship and pain, without even gitting struck good and hard on the maidenhead—and not only take him from us but from the Lord as well…. Looking around Then, seeing me, Shhhhh….

  What is it, girl?—Oh, Revern’ Bliss, Body’s mother said. She looked down at me, her hands on ample hips.

  Mam? I, Bliss, said, my face feeling tight, wan.

  Honey, will you go send Body to me, please?

  I looked for judgment in her broad face. She held the clothespins fanned out between her fingers like a marksman holding shotgun shells during a trap shoot.

  Yes, mam.

  Thank you, Revern’ Bliss.

  And I arose and moved down the line of clothes and then under a line of stockings and pink and blue underthings and back three lines ‘til I was behind drying sheets, hearing her softly saying. These children, I swear they all alike, even Revern’ Bliss. They never stop trying to listen to grown folks talking, and they always rambling in trunks and drawers. Lord knows what they ‘spect to find. Him and Revern’ Bliss was playing with some toy autos one day and I looked out and Body has done found one of my old breast pumps somewhere and is making out it’s a auto horn!

  I went past bloomers billowing gently in the breeze Clank-clank-clank, that’s your ma’s with a fleet of them big Mack trucks and nineteen elephants. A whole team of mules could walk through there. I went toward the back door where the washtubs glinted dully on the low bench, trailing my finger and thumb as I went past and around to the front of the house, calling, Body! Hey Body! Your mother wants you, Body. Knowing all the while that he had gone to dig crawdads. He was my right hand but I had been told not to go there. Calling: Body? Hey! Body! lying in word and deed while my mind hung back upon their voices like a feather upon a gentle breeze. Behind me, over the top of the house I could hear their voices rising clear with soft hoarseness, like alto horns in mellow duet across the morning air. I looked down the street. Except for a cat rubbing itself against a hedge down near the corner nothing was moving. I was alone and lonely, the porch was high and I crawled beneath and lay still in the cool shadows thinking about the crawdad hole over where the cotton press had burned down across from the railroad tracks, the tall weeds and muddy water. Body could swim, I wasn’t allowed. Along the slippery bank the crawdads raised up their pale brown castles of mudballs. We fried their tails in cornmeal and bacon grease, ate them with half-fried Irish potatoes. In the gloom I lay, beside the discarded wheel of a baby buggy. Body’s mother saved his baby shoes. They hung by a blue ribbon from the mirror of the washstand. Where were mine? Near my arm a line of frantic ants crawled down the piling, carrying specks of white, sugar or crumbs. Piss ants, sugar ants, all in a row, coming and a-going like my breath their feelers touch and go. Patty cake. Then I could hear their sighful voices approaching full of heat and sounds of rest, and through the cracks between the steps I could see their broad bottoms coming down upon the giving boards and saw their washday dresses collapsing stretching taut between their knees as they rested back, their elbows upon the floor of the porch as slowly they fanned themselves with blue bandannas.

  So she keeps on asking me what I do to get her washing so white, Mrs. Proctor said, and I keep telling her I didn’t do nothing but soak ‘em and boil ‘em and rub ‘em and blue ‘em and rinse ‘em and starch ‘em and iron ‘em, but she never believed me. Said, Julia, nobody does clothes like you do. The others don’t get them so clean and white, so you have got to have some secret. Oh, yes, Julia, you have a trick, I just know you have. So finally, girl, I gets tired and the next time she asked me I said, Well, Miz Simmons, you keep on asking me so I guess I have to tell you, but first you have ta promise me that you won’t tell nobody. And she said, Oh I promise, you just tell me what you do. Ho Ho! So I said, well, Miz Simmons, it’s like this, after I done washed the clothes and everything I adds a few drops of coal oil in the last rinse water.

  Girl, she slapped her hands and almost turned a flip. Talking about, I knew it! And she said, Is that all? And I said, Yessum, that’s it and please don’t forget that you promised you wouldn’t tell anybody. Oh no, I won’t tell, she said. But I just knew that you had a secret, because no one could do the clothes the way you do with just plain soap and water. So girl, I thought maybe now she’d let me alone and be satisfied, because you see, I knew that if I didn’t tell her something pretty soon she was going to fire me.

  So how’d it work out? Body’s mother said.

  Wait, Mrs. Proctor said. The next week I picked up her laundry and she was still talking about it. Said: Julia, you sure are a sly one. But you didn’t fool me, because I knew you had some special secret for getting my clothes so clean. And I said yessum, I don’t do it for everybody but I know how particular you all are and all like that. And she said, Yes, that’s right, and it just proves that if you insist on getting the best you’ll get it. And I said, Yessum, that sure is the truth.

  Body’s mother laughed. Girl, you oughtn’t to told that woman that stuff.

  Don’t I know it? Mrs. Proctor said. It was wrong. Because as I was luggin’ those clothes of hers home something way back in the rear of my mind hunched me. It said: Girl, maybe you wasn’t so smart in telling that woman that lie ‘cause you know she’s a fool—but I forgot about it. Well suh, I did her laundry just like I always done it and when I went to deliver it there she was, waiting for me—and I could tell from the way her face was all screwed up like she was taking a dose of Black Draught that I was in trouble. Said, Julia, I want you to be a little more careful when you do the wash this time. And I said, What’s wrong, Miz Simmons, wasn’t the clothes clean? She said, Oh yes, they was clean all right. But you didn’t rinse them enough and you put in a bit too much of that coal oil. Last night when he got home Mr. Simmons complained that he could smell it in his shirts.

  Oh, oh, Body’s mother said.

  Mrs. Proctor said: Well, girl, I liked to bust. I said, I knew it, I knew it! You been snooping around for something to criticize about my work. Well, now you have gone and done it and I’m here to tell you that you just been telling a big ole coal-oil lie because I never put a thing in those clothes but plenty soap and water and elbow grease. Just like that.

  And what’d she say then?

  Say? What could she say? She stomped out of there and slammed the door. Stayed awhile and then, girl, she come back with her eyes all red and fired me! The ole sour fool!

  Their voices ripped out and rose high above me as they laughed and I closed my eyes, seeing the purple shadows dancing behind my lids as I held my mouth to keep my laughter in. I could hear it wheezing and burbling in my stomach. It was hard to hold and then it stopped, their voices were low and confidential….

  … You’d think that with all her money and everything a woman like that wouldn’t even know we was in the world, wouldn’t you, girl, Body’s mother said.

  Sho would, Mrs. Proctor said, but that ain’t the way it seems to work. Seems like they can’t be happy unless they know we’re having a hard time. Some folks just wants it all, the prizes of this world and God’s own anointed. It’s outrageous when you think about it. Imagine, coming into the meeting and trying to snatch Revern’ Bliss out of the Lord’s own design. She’s going to interrupt the Resurrection of the spirit from the flesh! Next thing you know she be out there in her petticoat telling the Mississippi River to stand still. I tell you that woman is what they call arragant, girl. She so proud she’s like a person who done drunk so much he’s got the blind staggers….

  You telling me! But she’s always cutting up in some fashion so I guess that sooner or later she had to get around to us. But to interfere with the Lord’s…

  Girl, Mrs. Proctor said, I saw her one morning just last week. She was riding one of those fine horses they have out there and she’s acting like she was a Kentuck
y woman, or maybe a Virginian. One of those F.F.V.’s as they call them. Up on that hoss’s back wearing black clothes with a long skirt and one of those fancy sidesaddles but riding a-straddle that hoss like a man in full, and with a derby hat with a white feather in it on her head. Early in the morning too, Lord. I was on my way to deliver some clothes and here she come galloping past me so fast I swear it liked to sucked all the air from ‘round me. Had me suspended there like a yolk in the middle of an egg. It went SWOSH just like a freight train passing a tramp and that hoss was steaming and lathering like he been racing five miles at top speed. And in this weather too. You should a seen it, girl. I whirled around to look and there she went with that red hair streaming back from under that derby. Done almost knocked me down now but when she went past with that wild look on her face it’s like she ain’t seen me.

  It’s a sin and a shame, Body’s mother said. You’d think that she’d at least respect how much labor and pain goes into keeping her garments clean. Washerwomen have rheumatism like a horse has galls.

  Yes, and this is one who knows it, Mrs. Proctor said. But, girl, that woman’s a fool, that’s the most Christian thing you can say about her. It ain’t as if she was the mean kind who’d run a person down just for fun or to see you jump and get scaird, she just naturally don’t see nobody.

  That might be true, Body’s mother said, but she saw Revern’ Bliss, all right. Now just why would she decide to come out there and break up our meeting?

  Crazy, girl! That’s all there is to it, the woman’s crazy, and while we sitting here talking between ourselfs we might as well go ahead and admit it. You and me don’t have to deny the truth when we talking between ourselfs. Rich and white though she be, the po’ thing’s nuts.

  No, No, No, she’s my mother my mind said, and I lay rigid, listening.

  I don’t know, Body’s mother said. Maybe she is and maybe she ain’t. Maybe she just knew she could get away with it and went on and did it.

  You mean she started to do it but she didn’t count on us women…. Neither on the outrage of the Lord.