The Sacred Place

by Daniel Black

  “When he took his seat, the room remained silent for several minutes. I was stunned, amazed, and angry that a colored boy was smarter than me. I understood more Shakespeare that day than the professor had taught all semester. But now I found myself in a conundrum. I couldn’t respect a colored man’s intelligence. That went against everything my Southern heritage had bestowed upon me. Yet I had no way to dismiss the sheer brilliance with which he spoke that afternoon.

  “‘Hey, you,’ I called to him as we exited the classroom. ‘Where you learn to read and analyze like that?’

  “‘From my grandfather,’ he said proudly. ‘He taught himself to read while yet a slave, and his only hope was that one of his children attend Harvard one day. I’m the lucky one, I suppose,’ he cackled.

  “‘You’re a smart boy,’ I said with intent to insult.

  “‘No, I’m an intelligent young man,’ he corrected, ‘who is still willing to help you if you want it.’

  “In my conceit, I wanted to deny his offer and refuse him the satisfaction of saying he had tutored a white man, but my poor grades forced me to accept. I had failed our first Shakespeare exam, but after studying with the colored fellow, I got a B on the second. He received an A on both. I should have been grateful, I know, but quite the opposite, I was angry beyond measure. My pride was wounded and my ego damaged, and I needed some way to repair them both. So I gathered a group of white boys from the class and we assaulted the colored fellow one night in the dark.”

  Miss Mary shook her head while others grunted their disapproval.

  “I know I was wrong!” Rosenthal cried. “Every time we hit him, my stomach churned. He kept asking what he had done wrong, and we could never provide an answer. I didn’t know any better.”

  “Yes, you did, Mr. Rosenthal. You chose not to do any better,” Pet Moore offered indignantly.

  Rosenthal’s head fell like a guillotined criminal’s. “You’re right, Pet,” he surrendered. “I could have done better. Even then. But I had no dignity, no honor, no real knowledge. I just wanted that colored fellow to believe I was better than he was.”

  “Did y’all kill him?” Jeremiah asked.

  “Not exactly. We returned to our rooms and went to bed, but my consciousness afforded me no peace. I was shaking under the sheets and tossing restlessly. Then, suddenly, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I jumped out of bed, dressed quickly, and ran to his room where I found him barely breathing. Since no one wanted to dwell with a colored fellow, he occupied his room alone. I went there to apologize. I was prepared to confess my ways and to face any repercussions which ensued because of them, but when I entered his room and found him bleeding on the floor, I swore to God that if He let him live I would never mistreat colored people ever again. Through tears I promised God a transformation in me as I carried the young fellow to the campus infirmary. To my surprise, they were as ignorant as I was and refused to help him. My protestations fell on deaf ears. I eventually dismissed them and carried the colored fellow to a nearby hospital, where he was also rejected. Then I knew what to do.” Rosenthal sighed heavily, remembering. “I carried the colored fellow three miles to the nearest colored hospital. I was afraid he had died somewhere during the transportation, but the colored doctors said he was alive, and they’d do what they could to sustain him. I collapsed in the waiting room and awakened at dawn. A doctor soon informed me that, sometime during the night, the young colored fellow began to hemorrhage, and they lost him an hour or so before dawn.”

  “Lawd have murcy!” people murmured in anguish. Most of them had never seen a white man cry, and certainly not about a Black man.

  Rosenthal dabbed his tears with a handkerchief. “I swear I’m sorry!” he kept repeating. “I tried to fix it, truly I did, but the damage had already been done.” He broke down and wept hard for a good three minutes. Upon recovery, he said, “That’s why I’m here tonight. I owe that colored fellow something and, for fifty years, I’ve not been able to figure out how to pay.”

  “We don’t need yo’ guilt, sir,” Ella Mae said. She thought of the colored fellow as one of her own boys, and she refused to forgive.

  “I’m not offering you my guilt,” Rosenthal said. “I’m trying to uphold a responsibility. I graduated from Harvard partially because of that young colored fellow. He’s the reason my family has had a modicum of privilege over the years. He sacrificed for me, and I destroyed him. Walking back to my dorm room, I prayed for forgiveness, but God wouldn’t grant it. He kept telling me to fix it. Me. I kept asking Him to relieve my conscience and to allow me to move on, but the more I prayed, the more intense the pain became in my heart. If the colored fellow had only returned malice when I offered the same, I could have justified my abuse of him. Yet never did he show me anything but the highest character.

  “I walked the streets of Cambridge a zombie, trying to figure out why God wouldn’t release me from my bondage. In the coming weeks, I tried to forget about him, so I graduated the following spring and moved back to Money. But I’ve had nightmares at least twice a week for fifty years now.”

  “So now you want to help a colored boy so God can give you peace?” Ella Mae asked sarcastically.

  “Ma’am, I dismissed the possibility of peace a very long time ago. I’ve just been too arrogant or racist to do what I knew was right. I want to do it now”—he paused—“just because it’s right. All these years when whites have mistreated most of you in one way or another, I remained silent because I was afraid. I didn’t want colored people to get power and treat us the way we’ve treated you.

  “Now I’m too old to care about that. Maybe that’s the price whites have to pay, I keep telling myself, for destroying every group of people we’ve ever encountered. If so, I’ll pay it. It may be my last act, but I want to help colored people, for once, because it was a colored boy—excuse me, man—who kept me afloat when I was surely about to drown.”

  Edgar Rosenthal folded his arms and waited. He knew how volatile such a moment would be, and for that courage alone, Jeremiah respected him.

  “Would you step outside for a moment, please, Mr. Rosenthal?” Jeremiah asked, standing next to him.

  “Certainly,” Rosenthal said. “I understand if you people don’t want my help. I understand perfectly.”

  Everyone held his peace until the aged white man stepped into the muggy Mississippi night.

  Tiny shook his head and declared, “I don’t trust him!”

  “Me neither,” a few others agreed.

  “This ain’t only about trust though,” Pet Moore said and stood. “Do we need him is the question.”

  “Why we need a white man if white folks de enemy?” Tiny asked.

  Pet Moore offered, “Everybody white ain’t de enemy. Most of ’em is, dat’s fu sho, but I believe God dwells in a few of ’em. Maybe Rosenthal is one.”

  “What?” Tiny screamed.

  “Age has a way of forcing a man to see the truth of himself,” Pet Moore claimed. “The older you get, you start realizin’ dat ain’t nothin’ in de world absolute.”

  “What chu talkin’ ’bout, Pet?” Tiny responded hastily.

  They were almost face-to-face. “What I’m talkin’ ’bout is human bein’s, man. You cain’t neva put all human bein’s in one category, don’t care which ones you talkin’ ’bout. Like take colored folks for instance. Everybody colored in Sumter County heard ’bout dis meetin’ tonight, but everybody colored sho ain’t here.”

  “That’s true,” the crowd confirmed.

  “But who wuz really expectin’ everybody colored to show up? Y’all know well as I do dat jes ’cause you colored don’t mean you stand fu colored people. It oughta, but it don’t.”

  No one could refute his argument, and everyone could think of at least one colored family that wasn’t represented at the meeting.

  “So all I’m sayin’ is dat when it come time to fight for right, who standin’ and who ain’t is usually a surprise, at least in a few cases. We all know h
ow white folks is. Dat ain’t no secret. But we gotta tell de truf ’bout how colored folks is, too.”

  “Amen,” people chimed.

  “Sometime de reason we don’t stick together is ’cause we so busy tryin’ to be like them and get what they got. We say we cain’t stand white folks, but we sho do love the way they live. Now dat don’t make a piece of sense, do it?”

  Most folks remained silent, so Pet answered his own question. “Naw, dat don’t make no sense. If it look like we might get some o’ what they got, we do our best not to make them mad or upset so they won’t ruin our chance of livin’ like them. That’s why other folks ain’t here tonight. They too scared we gon mess up thangs for them. They don’t want nobody to say they wuz fightin’ white folks ’cause white folks got exactly what they been tryin’ to get all they life. Ain’t that funny? The one who hate us is de one we love?”

  Again, no one responded.

  “Well, dat’s why I think we oughta think about takin’ Mr. Rosenthal up on his offer. People change sometimes. Not often, but every now and then, a person really does change. Why did Mr. Rosenthal tell us all dat if he wasn’t serious?”

  “That’s right,” Miss Mary reinforced. “I can feel when people lyin’ and I think he wuz speakin’ from his heart. I ain’t neva heard no white man say dat a colored man wuz de reason he made it. I think he’s serious.”

  “Well, I don’t!” Tiny said on behalf of the insurgents. “I think he heard we wuz meetin’ and got scared colored folks wuz ’bout to start killin’ white folks, so he came to see if he could find out what we wuz doin’.”

  “You sayin’ Mr. Rosenthal is spyin’ on us?” Enoch inquired.

  “Dat’s exactly what I’m sayin’!” Tiny yelled. “You didn’t think white folks wuz gone let colored folks meet in Money without sayin’ or doin’ somethin’, did you?” Tiny was looking at Enoch although addressing the entire crowd. “But de real question is how did he know about de meetin’ in de first place?”

  People murmured and offered guesses, but, in the end, no one knew for sure.

  “Let’s ask him,” Tiny suggested, “and if he tell de truf, I might believe he’s genuine.”

  “Fine,” Pet Moore agreed. “But the man’s not on trial, so let Jeremiah ask him and let’s be done with this.”

  They brought Rosenthal back into the barn, subjecting him to the stares and frowns of the doubtful, yet his countenance never altered.

  “Mr. Rosenthal,” Jeremiah said cautiously, “we wuz wondering how you knowed ’bout de meetin’ tonight?”

  Rosenthal smiled, and said, “I had a feeling someone would ask me that.” He paused. “Your Jerry told me.”

  Colored folk went berserk. They started declaring Rosenthal an agent of the devil, and Tiny affirmed that either Rosenthal leave or he would.

  “I can prove it,” he said calmly. “I know precisely why my answer has disturbed you so greatly.”

  “Then prove it,” Tiny challenged.

  Rosenthal began, “I often go for long walks in the evenings simply to enjoy a nice summer breeze if I can find one, and today I stumbled upon a clearing in the middle of Chapman’s land. It’s a beautiful little oasis, almost like a Garden of Eden, right in the midst of the forest.”

  Everybody knew where Rosenthal meant, but no one was willing to assist his effort to prove that Jerry had relayed the message.

  “I was thinking about Sutton, the colored boy at Harvard, wishing I could reverse time and do the right thing, when I heard someone say, ‘There is something you can do.’ I stumbled in fear and convinced myself that my old age was the reason I was hearing things, but the voice came again louder, and said, ‘Don’t miss this chance. It’ll never come again.’ I couldn’t deny it this time.

  “‘Who are you? What do you want?’ I asked in utter trepidation.

  “‘I am Jerry, the son of Jeremiah and Mary Johnson,’ he said proudly. Then he explained, ‘I know what happened at Harvard. That was a terrible thing you boys did.’

  “‘I swear I’m sorry,’ I screamed in fear of damnation.

  “His emollient voice banished my fears when he said, ‘There is something you could do right here.’

  “‘What?’ I pleaded.

  “‘The colored folks are having a meeting tonight,’ Jerry said. ‘Go and stand with them, come what may. My father could use your help. You have connections and information that will assure their success both in finding my nephew and in gaining the courage, finally, to fight for themselves.’

  “‘Will your people believe me?’ I asked with great uncertainty.

  “‘If they don’t, tell them dead don’t mean gone. Then they’ll know.’”

  “Oh my God!” Jeremiah screeched. “He’s tellin’ the truth, y’all! Jerry spoke to me earlier this morning and said those very words—dead don’t mean gone. I didn’t know who would believe me so I kept it to myself. Oh my God!” he repeated.

  Miss Mary was both elated and confused. She couldn’t understand why Jeremiah hadn’t mentioned something so important, yet she was thankful Rosenthal’s sincerity was being corroborated.

  “Ain’t no way he coulda knowed dat,” Jeremiah said confidently. “He’s tellin’ de truf. Believe him.”

  Even Tiny appeared convinced. He certainly didn’t celebrate the revelation, but his quandary had been resolved. There was nothing to do now except welcome him, Tiny thought.

  “I am willing to do whatever I can,” Rosenthal said again. “I just want to walk the earth as a righteous man for once in my life, and I pray you folks give me the opportunity to do so. I had it once and failed, but now I’m ready.”

  Pet Moore chuckled. “De Lawd is a funny God, ain’t He? He got angels everywhere, willin’ to talk to anybody. I’m glad His ways ain’t our ways.”

  “I’m glad, too,” Miss Mary said.

  A penitent Rosenthal offered, “Then I must be the gladdest of all.”

  “I say we welcome Mr. Rosenthal,” Miss Mary suggested heartily.

  “I second that motion,” Pet Moore said.

  “All right, all right,” Tiny murmured. Then he said, “I didn’t mean no harm, Mr. Rosenthal. This is just a sensitive issue, and—”

  “Please don’t apologize, sir. Your skepticism was well warranted.”

  “Fine. Let’s get back down to business,” Jeremiah said, offering Edgar Rosenthal a chair.

  Rosenthal was still not fully embraced by everyone, and he knew it, but their reservation was a small price to pay, he decided, to a people whom, for fifty years, he had dismissed. His white hair looked ashy against the sea of brown and black faces in the barn that night although most concluded that Rosenthal had undoubtedly been handsome in his day.

  Jeremiah was anxious to see just how and when he would prove useful. His submission was a bit unsettling, for they had never witnessed a white man relinquish privilege in hopes of helping colored folks. Miss Mary told Ella Mae that Rosenthal’s presence confirmed that “You cain’t neva tell ’bout God.”

  “We need two more committees,” Jeremiah announced. “One of those committees I’m callin’ a prayer group. The job of the prayer group is to keep us spiritually grounded. Whoever’s on dis committee should meet every evenin’ and go befo’ de Throne o’ Grace to make sho we always in de will o’ God. If you cain’t get no prayer through, don’t get on dis committee,” Jeremiah half joked.

  “Amen,” others returned seriously.

  Miss Mary made herself the chairperson of the Prayer Posse and seven or eight others included their names. “Billy Joe Henderson,” she said, chuckling, “you on dis committee, too.”

  This was the only announcement all night to be received unanimously. Whether folks loved the Lord or didn’t believe in Him at all, they went to church expressly to hear Billy Joe wail. Miss Mary always said that church would be empty were it not for Billy Joe’s song and prayer. He had a high tenor voice that drew tears from eyes too weak to hold them, and the pleas he offered to heaven so
unded more genuine than any of the other deacons’. “Guide me over, thou great Jehovah! Pilgrim through this barren land!” he chirped and the congregation repeated his lyrics with joy and gladness. Sometimes folks couldn’t tell whether he was using natural voice or falsetto, but they didn’t care. His runs delighted their souls. That’s why most of Money’s colored church populace assumed Billy Joe a little closer to heaven than the rest of them.

  “Y’all might wanna meet at de church house since it’s a central location. Y’all decide when,” Jeremiah assigned. “Now de last committee is a real special one. We need people on dis committee who work in white folks’ houses. I’m callin’ dis de spy committee.”

  Moans and grunts emitted from the skeptical, and shifting bodies illustrated people’s discomfort with the idea.

  “Now hold on,” Tiny assisted although clearly wary of the notion. “Let Mi explain befo’ y’all get all worked up. I’m sho it ain’t what you thinkin’.”

  Jeremiah was tired of tiptoeing around cowardly colored folks, but he pressed on. “I was thinkin’ that some’ o’ y’all who cook and clean and shouffer for white folks could keep yo’ ears open jes in case you hear somethin’.” Actually Jeremiah wanted something much more intensely surreptitious, but he noticed quickly that folks weren’t nearly as courageous as he had hoped.

  “I can do that,” a few women mumbled.

  Jeremiah chuckled at their struggle to remain loyal to white benefactors while trying to stand with colored folks against them. “Fine,” he offered, and relinquished the specificities of his original thought. “Mr. Rosenthal, you be on dat committee, too.”