If Beale Street Could Talk

by James Baldwin

  Daniel stays with us till midnight. He’s a little afraid to leave, afraid, in fact, to hit those streets, and Fonny realizes this and walks him to the subway. Daniel, who cannot abandon his mother, yet longs to be free to confront his life; is terrified at the same time of what that life may bring, is terrified of freedom; and is struggling in a trap. And Fonny, who is younger, struggles now to be older, in order to help his friend toward his deliverance. Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel? And why not every man?

  The song is old, the question unanswered.

  On their walk that night, and many nights thereafter, Daniel tried to tell Fonny something about what had happened to him, in prison. Sometimes he was at the house, and so I heard it, too; sometimes, he and Fonny were alone. Sometimes, when Daniel spoke, he cried—sometimes, Fonny held him. Sometimes, I did. Daniel brought it out, or forced it out, or tore it out of himself as though it were torn, twisted, chilling metal, bringing with it his flesh and his blood—he tore it out of himself like a man trying to be cured:

  “You don’t know what’s happening to you, at first. No way to know it. They come and got me off my stoop and they searched me. When I thought about it later, I realized that I didn’t really know why. I was always on that stoop, me and the other cats, and they was always passing by, and, while I wasn’t never on no shit, they knew some of the other cats has to be—you know they knew it. And they could see the dudes scratching and nodding. I think they dug that. When I thought about it later, I thought to myself, the motherfuckers really dig that shit. They go on into headquarters and report, Everything’s cool, sir. We escorted the French connection while he made his rounds and the shit’s been delivered and the niggers is out of it. But this night I was by myself, about to go on in, and they stopped the car and yelled at me and pushed me into the hallway and searched me. You know how they do it.”

  I don’t know. But Fonny nods, his face still, his eyes very dark.

  “And I had just picked up this grass, it was in my asspocket. And so they pulled it out, man, do they love to pat your ass, and one of them give it to the other and one of them handcuffed me and pushed me into the car. And I hadn’t known it was going to come to that, maybe I was a little high, maybe I hadn’t had time to think, but, baby, when that man put his handcuffs on me and pushed me down the steps and on into the car and then that car started moving, I wanted to scream for my Mama. And then I started getting scared, because she can’t hardly do nothing for herself, and she’d start to worrying about me, and wouldn’t nobody know where I was! They took me down to the precinct and they booked me on a narcotics charge and they took everything I had off of me and I started to ask, Can I make a phone call? and then I realized that I didn’t really have nobody to call, except my Mama, and who she going to call this hour of night? I just hoped she was sleeping, you know, like she had just figured that I was out late, and, by time she woke up in the morning and realized I wasn’t there that maybe I’d have figured out—something. They put me in this little cell with about four or five other cats, they was just nodding and farting, and I sat there and I tried to get my mind together. Because what the fuck am I going to do? I ain’t got nobody to call—I really don’t, except maybe that Jew I work for; he a nice enough dude, but, man, he ain’t hardly going to dig it. What I’m really trying to figure is how I can get somebody else to call my Mama, somebody who’s cool, who can cool her, somebody who can do something. But I can’t think of nobody.

  “Morning came and they put us in the wagon. There’s this old white motherfucker they picked up off the Bowery—I guess—he done vomited all over himself and he’s looking down at the floor and he’s singing. He can’t sing, but he sure is stinking. And, man, I’m sure grateful I ain’t on no shit because now one of the brothers is started to moan, he got his arms wrapped around himself, and sweat is starting to pour off that cat, like water down a scrubbing board. I ain’t much older than he is, and I sure wish I could help him but I know I can’t do nothing. And I think to myself, Now, the cops who put him in this wagon know that this dude is sick. I know they know it. He ain’t supposed to be in here—and him not hardly much more than a kid. But the mothers who put him in this wagon, man, they was coming in their pants while they did it. I don’t believe there’s a white man in this country, baby, who can even get his dick hard, without he hear some nigger moan.

  “Well, we get on down there. And I still ain’t thought of nobody to call. I want to shit and I want to die, but I know I can’t do neither. I figure they’ll let me shit when they get ready, in the meantime I just got to hold it best I can, and it just pure foolishness for me to think of wanting to die because they can kill me any time they want to and maybe I’ll die today. Before I shit. And then I think of my Mama again. I know she worried by now.”

  Sometimes Fonny held him, sometimes I did. Sometimes, he stood at the window, with his back to us.

  “I can’t really tell you much more about it—maybe there’s a whole lot of shit that I won’t never be able to tell nobody. They had me on the grass, and so they nailed me on the car—that car I ain’t seen yet. I guess they just happened to need a car thief that day. Sure wish I knew whose car it was. I hope it wasn’t no black dude’s car, though.”

  Then, sometimes, Daniel would grin, sometimes he would dry his eyes. We would eat and drink together. Daniel was trying very hard to get past something, something unnamable: he was trying as hard as a man can try. And sometimes I held him, sometimes Fonny: we were all he had.

  On the Tuesday after the Monday that I saw Hayward, I saw Fonny at the six o’clock visit. I had never seen him so upset before.

  “What the fuck we going to do about Mrs. Rogers? Where the fuck did she go?”

  “I don’t know. But we’ll find her.”

  “How you going to find her?”

  “We’re sending people to Puerto Rico. We think that’s where she went.”

  “And suppose she went to Argentina? or Chile? or China?”

  “Fonny. Please. How’s she going to get that far?”

  “They can give her the money, to go anywhere!”

  “Who?”

  “The D.A.’s office, that’s who!”

  “Fonny——”

  “You don’t believe me? You don’t think they can do it?”

  “I don’t think they have.”

  “How you going to get the money to find her?”

  “We’re all working, all of us.”

  “Yeah. My Daddy’s working in the garment center, you’re working in a department store, your Daddy’s working on the waterfront——!”

  “Fonny. Listen——”

  “Listen to what? What we going to do about that fucking lawyer? He don’t give a shit about me, he don’t give a shit about nobody! You want me to die in here? You know what’s going on in here? You know what’s happening to me, to me, to me, in here?”

  “Fonny. Fonny. Fonny.”

  “I’m sorry, baby. I don’t mean none of that for you. I’m sorry. I love you, Tish. I’m sorry.”

  “I love you, Fonny. I love you.”

  “How’s the baby coming?”

  “It’s growing. It’ll start showing more next month.”

  We stared at each other.

  “Get me out of here, baby. Get me out of here. Please.”

  “I promise. I promise. I promise.”

  “Don’t cry. I’m sorry I yelled. I wasn’t yelling at you, Tish.”

  “I know.”

  “Please don’t cry. Please don’t cry. It’s bad for the baby.”

  “All right.”

  “Give us a smile, Tish.”

  “Is that all right?”

  “You can do better than that.”

  “Is this better?”

  “Yeah. Give us a kiss.”

  I kissed the glass. He kissed the glass.

  “You still love me?”

  “I’ll always love you, Fonny.”

  “I love you. I miss you. I miss everything about
you, I miss everything we had together, everything we did together, walking and talking and making love—oh, baby, get me out of here.”

  “I will. Hold on.”

  “I promise.—Later.”

  “Later.”

  He followed the guard into the unimaginable inferno, and I stood up, my knees and elbows shaking, to cross the Sahara again.

  That night I dreamed, I dreamed all night, I had terrible dreams. In one of these dreams, Fonny was driving a truck, a great big truck, very fast, too fast, down the highway, and he was looking for me. But he didn’t see me. I was behind the truck, calling out his name, but the roar of the motor drowned my voice. There were two turnings off this highway, and they both looked exactly alike. The highway was on a cliff, above the sea. One of the turnings led to the driveway of our house; the other led to the cliff’s edge and a drop straight down to the sea. He was driving too fast, too fast! I called his name as loud as I could and, as he began to turn the truck, I screamed again and woke up.

  The light was on, and Sharon was standing above me. I cannot describe her face. She had brought in a cold, wet towel and she wiped my brow and my neck. She leaned down and kissed me.

  Then, she straightened and looked into my eyes.

  “I know I can’t help you very much right now—God knows what I wouldn’t give if I could. But I know about suffering; if that helps. I know that it ends. I ain’t going to tell you no lies, like it always ends for the better. Sometimes it ends for the worse. You can suffer so bad that you can be driven to a place where you can’t ever suffer again: and that’s worse.”

  She took both my hands and held them tightly between her own. “Try to remember that. And: the only way anything ever gets done is when you make up your mind to do it. I know a lot of our loved ones, a lot of our men, have died in prison: but not all of them. You remember that. And: you ain’t really alone in that bed, Tish. You got that child beneath your heart and we’re all counting on you, Fonny’s counting on you, to bring that child here safe and well. You the only one who can do it. But you’re strong. Lean on your strength.”

  I said, “Yes. Yes, Mama.” I knew I didn’t have any strength. But I was going to have to find some, somewhere.

  “Are you all right now? Can you sleep?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t want to sound foolish. But, just remember, love brought you here. If you trusted love this far, don’t panic now.”

  And, again, she kissed me and she turned out the light and she left me.

  I lay there—wide awake; and very frightened. Get me out of here.

  I remembered women I had known, but scarcely looked at, who had frightened me; because they knew how to use their bodies in order to get something that they wanted. I now began to realize that my judgment of these women had had very little to do with morals. (And I now began to wonder about the meaning of this word.) My judgment had been due to my sense of how little they appeared to want. I could not conceive of peddling myself for so low a price.

  But, for a higher price? for Fonny?

  And I fell asleep; for a while; and then I woke up. I had never been so tired in my life. I ached all over. I looked at the clock and I realized that it would soon be time to get up and go to work, unless I called in sick. But I could not call in sick.

  I got dressed and went out to the kitchen, to have tea with Mama. Joseph and Ernestine had already gone. Mama and I sipped our tea in almost total silence. Something was turning over and over and over, in my mind: I could not speak.

  I came down into the streets. It was a little past eight o’clock. I walked these morning streets; these streets are never empty. I passed the old blind black man on the corner. Perhaps I had seen him all my life. But I wondered about his life, for the first time, now. There were about four kids, all junkies, standing on the corner, talking. Some women were rushing to work. I tried to read their faces. Some women were finally going to get a little rest, and they headed off the avenue, to their furnished rooms. Every side street was piled high with garbage, and garbage was piled high before every stoop along the avenue. I thought, If I’m going to peddle ass, I better not try it up here. It would take just as long as scrubbing floors, and be a lot more painful. What I was really thinking was, I know I can’t do it before the baby comes, but, if Fonny’s not out by then, maybe I’ll have to try it. Maybe I better get ready. But there was something else turning over, at the bottom of my mind, which I knew I didn’t have the courage to look at yet.

  Get ready, how? I walked down the steps and pushed through the turnstile and stood on the subway platform, with the others. When the train came, I pushed in, with the others, and I leaned against a pole, while their breath and smell rolled over me. Cold sweat covered my forehead and began to trickle down my armpits and my back. I hadn’t thought of it before, because I knew I had to keep on working up to just about the last minute; but now I began to wonder just how, as I became heavier and sicker, I was going to get to work. If I should pass out, these people, getting on and getting off, would simply trample me and the baby to death. Were counting on you—Fonny’s counting on you—Fonny’s counting on you, to bring that baby here, safe and well. I held the white bar more firmly. My freezing body shook.

  I looked around the subway car. It was a little like the drawings I had seen of slave ships. Of course, they hadn’t had newspapers on the slave ships, hadn’t needed them yet; but, as concerned space (and also, perhaps, as concerned intention) the principle was exactly the same. A heavy man, smelling of hot sauce and toothpaste, breathed heavily into my face. It wasn’t his fault that he had to breathe, or that my face was there. His body pressed against me, too, very hard, but this did not mean that he was thinking of rape, or thinking of me at all. He was probably wondering only—and that, dimly—how he was going to get through another day on his job. And he certainly did not see me.

  And, when a subway car is packed—unless it’s full of people who know each other, going on a picnic, say—it is almost always silent. It’s as though everybody is just holding his breath, waiting to get out of there. Each time the train comes into a station, and some of the people push you aside, in order to get out—as happened now, for example, with the man who smelled of hot sauce and toothpaste—a great sigh seems to rise; stifled immediately by the people who get on. Now, a blond girl, carrying a bandbox, was breathing her hangover into my face. My stop came, and I got off, climbed the steps and crossed the street. I went into the service entrance and punched the clock, put my street clothes away and went out to my counter. I was a little late for the floor, but I’d clocked in on time.

  The floor manager, a white boy, young, nice enough, gave me a mock scowl as I hurried to my place.

  It isn’t only old white ladies who come to that counter to smell the back of my hand. Very rarely does a black cat come anywhere near this counter, and if, or when, he does, his intentions are often more generous and always more precise. Perhaps, for a black cat, I really do, too closely, resemble a helpless baby sister. He doesn’t want to see me turn into a whore. And perhaps some black cats come closer, just to look into my eyes, just to hear my voice, to check out what’s happening. And they never smell the back of my hand: a black cat puts out his hand, and you spray it, and he carries the back of his own hand to his own nostrils. And he doesn’t bother to pretend that he’s come to buy perfume. Sometimes, he does—buy some perfume; most often he doesn’t. Sometimes the hand he has brought down from his nostrils clenches itself into a secret fist, and, with that prayer, that salutation, he moves away. But a white man will carry your hand to his nostrils, he will hold it there. I watched everybody, all day long, with something turning over and over and over, in my mind. Ernestine came to pick me up at the end of the day. She said that Mrs. Rogers had been located, in Santurce, Puerto Rico; and someone of us would have to go there.

  “With Hayward?”

  “No. Hayward’s got to deal with Bell, and the D.A. here. Anyway, you can see that, for many, many r
easons, Hayward can’t go. He’d be accused of intimidating a witness.”

  “But that’s what they’re doing—!”

  “Tish”—we were walking up Eighth Avenue, toward Columbus Circle—“it would take us until your baby is voting age to prove that.”

  “Are we going to take the subway, or the bus?”

  “We’re going to sit down somewhere until this rush hour’s over. You and me, we’ve got to talk anyway, before we talk to Mama and Daddy. They don’t know yet. I haven’t talked to them yet.”

  And I realize how much Ernestine loves me, at the same time that I remember that she is, after all, only four years older than I.

  Mrs. Victoria Rogers, née Victoria Maria San Felipe Sanchez, declares that on the evening of March 5, between the hours of eleven and twelve, in the vestibule of her home, she was criminally assaulted by a man she now knows to have been Alonzo Hunt, and was used by the aforesaid Hunt in the most extreme and abominable sexual manner, and forced to undergo the most unimaginable sexual perversions.

  I have never seen her. I know only that an Americanborn Irishman, Gary Rogers, an engineer, went to Puerto Rico about six years ago, and there met Victoria, who was then about eighteen. He married her, and brought her to the mainland. His career did not go up, but down; he seems to have become embittered. In any case, having pumped three children out of her, he left. I know nothing about the man with whom she was living on Orchard Street, with whom, presumably, she had fled to Puerto Rico. The children are, presumably, somewhere on the mainland, with her relatives. Her “home” is Orchard Street. She lived on the fourth floor. If the rape took place in the “vestibule,” then she was raped on the ground floor, under the staircase. It could have taken place on the fourth floor, but it seems unlikely; there are four apartments on that floor. Orchard Street, if you know New York, is a very long way from Bank Street. Orchard Street is damn near in the East River and Bank Street is practically in the Hudson. It is not possible to run from Orchard to Bank, particularly not with the police behind you. Yet, Bell swears that he saw Fonny “run from the scene of the crime.” This is possible only if Bell were off duty, for his “beat” is on the West Side, not the East. Yet, Bell could arrest Fonny out of the house on Bank Street. It is then up to the accused to prove, and pay for proving, the irregularity and improbability of this sequence of events.