The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

by Ernest J. Gaines

  Jimmy saw this place changing, and he saw all the people moving away. He saw the young men going to war, and he saw the young women going to the city. His own mon was in that crowd. He saw the tractors come and tear down the old houses and plow up the land, and he saw us all standing there watching the tractors. He saw all that. Now he heard this: heard us on that gallery talking about slavery, talking about the high water, talking about Long. He heard me talk about Cluveau and Ned. He heard us all talk about Black Harriet and Katie; Tom Joe and Timmy. And when the young men came back to visit the old people he heard them talking about the war. The japs wasn’t like the white people said they was. They was colored just like us, and they didn’t want kill us, they just wanted to kill the white soldiers. If the colored soldiers was marching in front, the japs would shoot over the colored soldiers head just to get to the white boys. If the colored soldiers was marching in the back, the japs would drop the bombs shorter. It was this that made them integrate that Army and nothing else.

  Jimmy heard all this before he was twelve; by the time he was twelve he was definitely the One. We watched him every move he made. We made sure he made just the right ones. If he tried to go afoul—and he did at times—we told him what he had heard and what he had seen. No, no, no, we never told it to him like I’m telling it to you now; we just looked at him hard. But it was in that look. Sometimes that look can tell you more than words ever can.

  He tried first there with Strut’s gal, Eva, or she tried it with him, because they was both about that age now, and from what people had been saying she had already tried it with a few others. So now he thought it was his time to try it, or be enticed by it. It was spring, it was the year he was twelve. It was April, it had just rained. Evening—just getting dark. Lena sent him to the store to get a gallon of coal oil. We had lectwicity down here now, but the old people still kept some coal oil for the lamps just in case something happened to the ’lectric wires. And side that they used coal oil to light fire. Lena sent him to the store that evening to get coal oil. Nobody know who said what to who, but next thing—Aunt ’Phine saw it when she came out on the gallery—that coal oil can was hanging on that gate and he was on Strut’s gallery trying to throw Strut’s gal down. Yes, Aunt ’Phine said, that’s the noise she had heard in the house. She said she was sitting in the front room eating supper when she kept hearing this booming noise over there on Strut’s gallery. It kept going, boom. Then little bit later, boom. Then little bit later, boom again. She went out on the gallery to see what was making the noise. It was almost dark, but she could see somebody trying to throw somebody down. Instead of pushing her down like it was clear she wanted him to do—no, he was trying to throw her down. Picking her up and swinging her over his shoulder. But each time he swung her, her feet, her heels, hit the floor before her back did. If he had pushed her down like she wanted him to do Aunt ’Phine wouldn’t ’a’ heard the noise and he wouldn’t ’a’ got whipped, but, no, he wanted to pick her up and slam her down. And each time he tried it, she made sure her heels hit first. (Teasing him.) Aunt ’Phine said before she recognized him, she recognized that coal oil can hanging on Strut’s gate. No, she didn’t recognize the coal oil can, it was too dark: she had talked to Lena earlier that day and Lena had mentioned something about getting a gallon of coal oil from the store soon as Jimmy came home. Now since that person on Strut’s gallery was about Jimmy’s size and age, the age to be thinking about doing what this one here was trying to do, she hollered: “Get away from there, Jimmy.” Instead of him moving, he picked that gal up and slammed her back on her heels again. “Boy, you hear me?” Aunt ’Phine said. He picked her up and slammed her back down. “Wait,” Aunt ’Phine said. She sat her pan of food on the gallery and started out the yard. She said she heard boom again, then again boom. But by the time she got to Strut’s gate, the coal oil can was gone, and nothing but a black streak was headed up the quarters. Aunt ’Phine came on down to Lena. When Jimmy got back home, Lena sent him out in the yard to get her a good switch. And that was the first time.

  Now he tried it in the loft. He knowed what had happened to him for trying it on the gallery even when he had failed—so now he tried it in the loft. All the children in the quarters playing hide-go-seek that day. Twenty, thirty of them running all over the place. Everybody got found, everybody but him and Eva. They up there in Strut’s loft. The rest of the children got tired playing hide-go-seek, they start playing something else. But him and Eva still up there in the loft. I’ll never forget, it was hot hot that day. Dead in the summer, and we was all sitting on Lena’s gallery stitching a quilt. By and by here come one of the children running in the yard to tell Lena they had found Jimmy and Eva. Where? The loft. Little bit later, here he come.

  “I hope you got what you went after,” Lena said. “Now, you got something else to get.”

  He didn’t ask what, he knowed what, he went and got the switch.

  “You go’n whip me in front of them?” he said.

  The yard was full of children now. The gallery was full of old people. Etienne was there, too, sitting with his back against the post.

  “You go’n whip me in front of them?” he asked her.

  “No,” Lena said. “Eva will get her belly full soon enough.”

  We all looked at him standing there with the switch in his hand. It was hot—sweat running down his face. We all wanted him to get the whipping. We didn’t care if Eva got it or not. What did any of us care about Eva? We all knowed what Eva was go’n turn out to be. And we knowed what we wanted out of him. We didn’t say it to him, we didn’t say it to each other; maybe we didn’t say it to ourself—but we felt it.

  “Only natural,” Etienne told Lena in Creole. Etienne was always taking up for boys—and ’specially for Jimmy.

  “I don’t care how natural it is,” Lena said, back in Creole.

  “I did it,” Etienne said. “All boys do it.”

  “Look where it got you,” Lena said in Creole. “You want him there?”

  “No,” Etienne said.

  “You think I like this?” Lena said in Creole.

  “I know you don’t,” Etienne said.

  While they was talking they was looking at him, not at each other. He knowed they was talking about him, he knowed Etienne was taking up for him, but he didn’t understand Creole and he didn’t know what they was saying.

  “You want it now or tonight before you go to bed?” Lena asked him.

  “Can you whip me in the kitchen?” he said.

  “Yes. Come on,” Lena said.

  They went in the back. We heard the licks, and her talking to him, and we could hear him crying. We wanted him to get the whipping, but after it was over I’m sure we all wanted to put our arms round him. I know for the rest of the week we got him to do things for us just so we could give him something. A nickel, a dime; tea cakes, pralines.

  We wanted him to get religion that year, too, the year he made twelve years old. The Master started when He was twelve, if you will remember. We knowed if he was to be the One—no, not if no more, he was already the One—we knowed he had to find religion. The colored has suffered in this world, and that is true, but we know still the Lord’s been good to us. Look at me: I’m more than a hundred and ten. If it’s not the Lord keeping me going, what is? I can sit in the sun, I can walk—no, not like I used to, but I can still move around a little bit. On days when I’m feeling real good, I can go all the way to the road and look at the river. But generally I just go up the quarters a piece and sit under my old tree. The people done fixed me a clean little spot there, and I can go up there and sit and talk to my tree, talk to myself, talk to my God till I get tired. Sometimes I stay there an hour thanking Him for His blessings, then I come on back home.

  We wanted him to get religion that summer he was twelve. Lena made him go to prayer meeting every night, and every night he went and sat up on the mourners bench with the rest of the children, and every night they prayed over him. Elder Banks praye
d over him more than he prayed over any the others because it was known all around now that he was the One. But all this praying didn’t do no good that year. Lena thought he still had his mind on Strut’s gal, and she thought the best medicine was a switch every now and then, but I told her no. I told her he would come around. She said when. Then she would start crying. “When?” Because, you see, the rest of the children his age was getting religion, and he wasn’t. And he was the One, and the One had to lead in everything. “When?” she would say. “The Lord knows how we feel. He won’t let us down,” I would tell her.

  But the summer he was twelve passed and he was still a sinner.

  The next year we started on him early. Prayer meeting starts in the summer, but we started on him in the spring. He was thirteen now, and we meant for him to put away his sinful ways. So every time he wrote a letter for us now, we had him say something about the church and something about all the little children who had joined the church last summer.

  We didn’t allow him to play cards for fun or pecans. We didn’t want him to play marbles or ball like all the other children did. If we saw him trying to steal off and do these things we called him in and sent him to the store. Or we sent him to somebody else’s house to borrow some tobacco or some sugar. Or maybe borrow a hoe or an axe. No matter if we needed it or not—got borrow it. We didn’t want him to go to the fair on Saturday nights. They had music and dancing at these fairs, and that was sinful. We didn’t like for him to listen to the radio, either; ’less he was listening to gospel music on Sundays.

  When summer got here and the people started prayer meeting at the church, we asked him if he was praying for religion. He said yes. We told him we was all praying for him. When we went to church now and prayed for the sinners we kept him in mind. We didn’t call his name—that wasn’t right to the rest of the sinners—but we did it on the sly. We used to say things like: “Lord, go with them who don’t have a daddy and whose mama’s gone off to the city. Go with the old people who’s left to look after the children. Lord, make them obedient to the old people and let them seek thy kingdom for their salvation.” In that way both him and the Lord knowed who we was talking about, and we didn’t even have to mention his name.

  He got religion the first week of August—that was back in 1951. He came to me that day—I was sitting out there on my gallery—and he said, “I got religion, Miss Jane.”

  Me and Etienne was sitting out there on the gallery, and I said: “You sure?”

  He said: “I believe so.”

  I said: “No believing. You got to be sure.”

  He said: “I’m sure.”

  I said: “I will hear you talk tonight.”

  He went to all the old people that day and told them he had religion. That’s what you did in them time. You went to all the old people and told them you had religion. If they couldn’t show up at the church that night to hear you talk, you would tell them your travels then. You would tell it right out there on the gallery, or maybe in the room where you wouldn’t be disturbed by noise.

  (When Mack Jenkins got religion he came here and told me he had religion, and now he wanted to kneel down and kiss my foot because I had been a slave and he wanted to humble himself to me. I said, “Jenkins, if you don’t get away from here, I’m go’n haul back and kick you in the mouth. Religion raises the heart, makes you noble, it don’t make you crazy.” I said: “If I was you I would check again to see what I really got.” Lord, that Jenkins was one more, you hear me.)

  “I hope they didn’t push him too fast,” Etienne said, after Jimmy went out of the yard.

  “Thirteen ain’t too young,” I said.

  “Not if you ready,” Etienne said. “But I don’t know if he’s through with Strut’s gal yet. It’s cool under them Palm-o’-Christians this time of year, and from what they say about her that was her favorite laying down place.”

  I said, “Etienne, if you don’t quit that kind of talk round here, I’m going in that house and find that stick. Come back out here and knock the fool out you.”

  That night he told his travels. Lena sat there crying, and I wept, too. But when I got home I felt better than I had felt in a long long time.

  After he got baptized we wanted him to preach. Listening to his travels we knowed he was close to God, and now we wanted him to pick up the gospel. He told us he was not a preacher. He would work in the church, but he was not a preacher. Now the people started looking at each other. They said, “He talked that good and now he don’t want preach?” Some of them started having doubts about his religion. But I did not. I knowed, if anybody had religion, he did. I just wondered when he got it. Maybe he had it long long before he knowed he had it or any of us knowed he had it. “If he don’t want preach let him serve in some other way,” I said. I was the oldest in the church and they called me the church mother. But I liked baseball so much they had to take it from me and give it to Em-ma. But I was the church mother then, and I said, “Let him do something else.” They said, “The One ought to be in front of everything.” (They didn’t say it like that—but that’s what was in their faces.) I said, “Let’s give him some time. Let’s not push him. Not everybody is sent to preach. Some are sent to pray, some are sent to sing. Some are sent to ring bells, some are sent to build altars, and others are sent to cut the grass in church yards. Just because we made him the One, don’t let’s try to make him a preacher, too.”

  When the people saw he didn’t want preach, they wanted to make him a deacon. But he didn’t want that either. He wanted to sit back in the congregation like the rest of us. If a lady shouted he would help the ushers hold her down. If they had to take her outside catch fresh air he would help the ushers take her to the door. Sometimes he would ring the bell if Just wasn’t there. Sometimes he would open the service by reading from the Bible.

  One time he put on a little play at the church—not a religious play, a funny play—and the people here in the quarters won’t ever forget it. He got some black shoe polish and some white shoe polish and put this on the children face and put them up there on the pulpit saying crazy things. Lord, if the people didn’t laugh. People laughed till they cried. Children up there talking like people over there on Morgan talk: “Yassuh.” “Nawsuh.” “Ps be going now, bossman, suh.” “Man, you better take yo’ hand off ma ’oman, yeah. Don’t you know that’s ma ’oman you handlin’ there?” Lord, if the people didn’t laugh.

  But the people wanted him to preach, and he didn’t want preach. Sometimes me and Jimmy would be sitting there on the gallery talking, and all of a sudden he would stop listening to what I was saying and start gazing out in the road like he was listening to something else. One day he was back there in the kitchen with me while I was cooking. I won’t even forget it—I was cooking Irish potatoes and cabbage that day. He said, “Miss Jane, I got something like a tiger in my chest, just gnawing and gnawing and want come out. I want rip my chest open and let it free. I pray to God to take it out, but look like the Lord don’t hear me. This thing gnaw and gnaw at me and I want scream. I want run in the woods and beat my head against the trees. I want go down in the bottom of that river and stay there and stay there. Something in me want come out, Miss Jane, but I don’t know how to get it out. Nobody helps me, not even the Lord.”

  Jimmy told me that exactly a year before that desegregating bill passed there in Washington. Maybe we didn’t know at first why we had made him the One, but that was the reason.

  • • •

  But the people here at Samson wasn’t the only ones wanted Jimmy to be the One. Colored all over this parish wanted him to be the One. By the time he was twelve he had traveled all over this parish with Olivia Antoine. Olivia is the lady here in the quarters who sell garden seeds and the cologne stuff. And she cash the checks and do all the shopping for the old people here on the place. When our welfare checks come in we sign them and give them to her to cash for us and do our little shopping. Jimmy used to write down on a tablet what we wanted. So
metimes Olivia had many as six, seven people to make grocery for. Her and Jimmy going from house to house. Her in front, Jimmy walking behind with that pencil and tablet.

  After they had got everybody’s list they would head out for Bayonne. But since Olivia had customers long the road, she had to stop to see if they needed anything. She had been selling garden seeds and cologne and things like that for many many years, so she knowed everybody. She knowed the mulattoes and she knowed all the Creoles. The Creole gals love that sweet stuff on them when they go out. You got lot of them up the road, ’round Bayonne, and on the Island, there. Jimmy used to listen to Olivia talk to them. Nobody on earth can talk like the old Creole people can talk. For hours and hours they can go on like that. She said even they used to look at him and say things about him. “He is very bright.” “He will make some girl happy.” “He will be a credit to his family.” “He will be a credit to his race.” “But he must be careful or the white people will kill him, sure.” She said many times she wished he was her own son. Sometimes when she went out and didn’t take him with her the people would say: “Where’s your boy there, ’Livia?” “He’ll be with me next time,” she would tell them. And she said she was always lonely when he wasn’t there.

  Olivia said she tried to show him sales talk, but he never was interested. He was more interested in the people they visited. Even when they talked in Creole and he couldn’t understand what they was saying, he was interested in the way the words sounded. Olivia said sometimes when they was by themself he would ask her: “Miss ’Livia, what do takalapala mean?” She would say: “Not for a little boy to know.” Other times, if it wasn’t too serious, she would tell him.

  And it was this, going round with Olivia, listening to people talk, listening to us talk here on the place, what was gnawing in his chest. This was the thing he wanted to let out. No, not out. To let this out he had to both blind himself and defend himself. No, what he wanted was to help. But he didn’t know how.