by Dorothy West
He bent to her ear. “If it makes you nervous, you just tell Papa, and we’ll sneak out.”
She snuggled her hand through his arm. “Nobody’s screaming yet.”
He leaned back complacently, balancing his straw hat carefully on his knee. He would have liked to come early enough to join in the singing. However, he was glad he had missed the announcements. There might have been some stupid social to which Minnie would have dragged him. And, too, he had forgotten to stop at the corner store for peppermints to change a bill for collection.
Reverend Dill was exhorting. Zeb remembered what Essie had told him, and he was puzzled by the obvious sincerity of the man. His deep, rich voice was clear and strong. He chanted his words, striding the length of the platform, pounding the little table until the single rose trembled in the vase, one fist stuck in his pocket.
“You that are sinners had better repent. For no man knows the hour when the Son of Man cometh. And there shall be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. O brothers, O sisters, get on board. Drop your burdens at the foot of Jesus. Drink at the fountain of His love.”
A woman’s shrill wail shattered the echo of his thundering. “Oh, praise God, my Redeemer! I bin washed in the blood of the Lamb!”
There was an answering rumble from Brother Wheelwright. “Glory be to ma God!”
Zeb felt Essie’s hot grip on his arm. He looked down at her and smiled reassuringly. “It’s all right, dear.”
Her sensitive little face was anxious. She snuggled closer to him and furtively peered up into the face of the old lady sitting next to her. She hoped she wasn’t the sort that carried on. But her lips were moving. Essie’s little heart began to beat rapidly. She wished they could have sat beside an indifferent young man.
Zeb was sorry for Essie. He knew that now she had forgotten the minister and his sermon, and that her whole being was trained toward the slightest sound. She was almost impatiently waiting for someone to sob or scream. He couldn’t understand her terror. He had been brought up in the Baptist church, and he honestly thought there was no other faith that could take one to heaven as quickly. Neither his mother nor himself had ever felt the urge to give public vent to their feelings. But he didn’t see any wrong in it. He was often deeply moved. There were moments, too, when he wished the Spirit might descend upon him that he might shout his praise for God in this sympathetic congregation.
Reverend Dill’s voice was a wail now. “Listen! Do you hear Jesus knocking at your heart? Open to Him, sinner. Don’t let Him stand out there in the dark, fumbling for the latch. Lay your burdens on His breast. Come to Jesus! Oh, great Lord! See Him standing in the seat of Pilate. Come to Jesus! The King of Kings being stripped and scourged. Come to Jesus! The Lord of Heaven with a crown of thorns. Come to Jesus. See Him dragging up a weary road, bearing the heavy cross. Sinner, sinner, He died for you! Come to Jesus!
“They drove a nail in my Lord’s hand. Come to Jesus! They drove a nail in my Lord’s foot. Come to Jesus! Oh, see my Lord with blood streaming down His side, and His head bowed down with the sins of the world. Oh, hear His lonely cry, ’My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” Brothers, sisters, He gave up the ghost and died. Come, come—get ye behind them, Satan!—come to Jesus!”
They were in a religious frenzy, this shouting, stamping congregation. There was a rush of weeping converts. Brother Wheelwright paced the aisle, clapping his hands, crying his praise, the tears streaming down his cheeks. The older women had risen to their feet, and they bent and swayed to a fervent chant. The universal gesture was a flinging up of arms, and then a sudden slump down in the pew, spent. The youngsters nudged each other, pointing out the noisier Christians, giggled. For a long five minutes there was noise and dreadful disorder in this house of God.
The old lady beside Essie had gotten to her feet, and her continuously outflung arms were perilously near the tip of Essie’s nose. She twisted and turned, a little mad with her love for God in this moment. Her words were wild. “Oh, my Redeemer, I bin saved! Shout for joy! Praised be His name …” The odor of sweat was sharp.
And suddenly Zeb, in a quiet exaltation, was swept from the heights by Essie’s voice, shrill and choked in his ear. Only then was he conscious of her vise-like hold on his arm and the nearness of her shaking little body.
“Papa, Papa, I wanna go home. I’m gonna be sick,” she sobbed.
He gathered her up in his arms and flung out of the nave and raced with her down the aisle.
Later, weak and ill and tearful, she told him, her dark eyes black with bitterness, “I hate good people, Papa. I hate ev’rybody who goes to church. I hate ev’rybody who makes me nervous.”
He somehow could not find the words to rebuke her.
Young Parker dropped in after dinner. He was on his way to pay a social call in the neighborhood. And since it was the incorrect hour of seven, he had decided to look in on Zeb and congratulate him. Heretofore he had been so busy.
He looked very expensive and prosperous, and he prattled a good deal about a new Harmon he was thinking of buying, and he held the reluctant Essie on his knee and gave her a silver dollar.
They sat in the overcrowded parlor, that was cluttered with Sunday disorder. And Miss Lily and Minnie beamed at young Parker, and smoothed their stiff frocks, and murmured apologies. And Zeb kowtowed no less.
It was only Essie, slipping from his knee and going to stand sullenly by the window, who felt no pride in him. She was thinking that there were little beads of grease on his forehead, and his nostrils distended too much when he talked.
“I knew,” he was saying, “you’d make it, old-timer. The sun do move, you know. And heaven knows, if there’s one man who deserves success, that man is you. You’ve been the most faithful kind of a son and husband all your life.”
Miss Lily’s eyes filled with grateful tears. “There is a God, and He answered my prayers. I guess,” she went on with quaint pride, “these old hands will have done their las’ lick o’ work after Zeb gets really settled.”
“I sorta think,” said Zeb, “I’ll take tomorrow mornin’ off and go see ’bout that office you spoke of, Min. I’ll be getting my certificate any day now. And I’ve already talked with two or three men who got cases they want me to handle.”
“Fine!” Parker was honestly glad. “I say, that’s good! And I got quite a few minor cases I’ll be glad to switch to you. Anything for old times’ sake.” He patted Zeb’s knee.
Minnie smiled. “You’re a good man, Mr. Parker. You’re goin’ to make some nice girl happy some day.”
“I got her picked out,” said Parker, expanding. “A real Sheba.”
“A Boston young lady?” Miss Lily asked.
Parker made a disparaging gesture. “Go out of the North when you want to get married. She’s a little Washington schoolma’am.”
“I’ve heard,” said Miss Lily, her lips very tight, “’bout them Washington schoolteachers.”
“Good Lord!” said Parker. “She’s a society girl. Five years ago she wouldn’t have looked at me. Why, I’m getting into the cream of Washington society.”
“I wouldn’t marry an old teacher,” cried Essie hotly. “I wouldn’t care who she was.”
“All nice colored girls are teachers,” Parker said coldly. “They either do that or sit down on their parents. There’s nothing else for a real nice girl to do.”
“Then I won’t be a nice girl,” Essie screamed, “and I won’t be a crazy old teacher. I’m gonna be naughty all the rest of my life, so I can be a dancer.”
Minnie rose excitedly. “I’ll break ev’ry bone in your body. Idea you talkin’ back to folks. An’ talkin’ like a fool ’bout dancin’. March right on out o’ here an’ don’t come back. An’ I’ll take the switch to you later.”
Essie crossed to the door and opened it. She stood quite still for a moment, savagely surveying them.
“I wish,” she said slowly, “children needn’t be born. I wish a mother hen could hatch them. A
nd then they wouldn’t have parents and other people to boss them. And they wouldn’t be scolded, and spanked, and put to bed without any supper. When I have my little baby, I’m gonna give her to the cat.”
She slammed the door then, and they heard her run swiftly down the hall.
“Jus’ give me time,” Minnie called angrily, “to come after you.”
Miss Lily rose, too. “Seems a shame that chile’s got to break up the Sabbath. Ain’t a day goes by she don’t need a spankin’. But Minnie’s got the right idea. She’s breakin’ that gal’s spirit young. And she’ll only grow up to thank her.”
“It’s too hot,” said Parker suddenly, “to spank a child.”
“I can only hope,” answered Miss Lily, going, “Minnie don’ have one o’ her spells.”
“I hope to God,” Zeb flung at the closed door, “she does.”
There was a long pause. Parker was horribly embarrassed, and Zeb terribly ashamed. He had never wished ill to anyone before. Suddenly he decided, staring hard at a spot on the rug, that he loved his little daughter above everything in the world. He rather wished he had been a better parent.
“It’s a quarter to,” said Parker, rising and pulling out a heavy watch. “I got to be going, Zeb.”
“Sorry,” said Zeb, and got rather heavily to his feet. “Have a nice time.”
“Oh, I guess I will.” Parker’s tone was easy. “The Flakes are dicties, you know. Real quiet and refined. All of ’em have been to college, even that old grandmother.”
“You’re pretty swell,” Zeb told him, his mind still on Essie.
“No.” He was striving for honesty. Zeb was the only middle-class intimate he had. In this moment he wanted definitely to express his thoughts aloud to someone who didn’t really matter. And he was fond of Zeb.
“I’m not a swell, really. I’m not sure I want to be. But I do mean to make a good marriage—for my children’s sake. There are too few colored people who realize the importance of good blood. And it tells, Zeb. You can pick out a dicty anywhere, no matter if he’s black with woolly hair.”
“I know,” said Zeb, but he wasn’t interested. He had a vision of Essie, dry-eyed and unbending.
“And I’ll make a big name for myself some day,” Parker went on. “I mean to. I sorta feel that I’ve got to. Race pride, I guess. I wouldn’t change my color to be President. And I want to go up and up and up. I want to go just as high as a white man—and then just a little higher.
“Look here,” he said, and shook Zeb by the shoulders, “that’s your chief trouble. You dream too much. Man alive! Wake up and get going, old-timer. Way down deep in me I sorta like music, but nobody’s ever going to know it.”
But Zeb didn’t answer. He had heard a faint thump as of some one heavily falling, and had suddenly aged ten years.
“Oh, my God,” he whispered, “that’s Min again. ’Nother spell, I guess. See you later, Parker.”
He opened the door and quietly waited until his guest had passed.
Minnie lay white and rigid under the sheet, with that weight on her heart, and her eyes that were wide with terror and pain on Zeb. They clung to him because she knew so long as they held to him, they looked on life. And Minnie was afraid to die. She was afraid of God. All of her life she had visioned Him as an immense Person who could rattle your sins off like a flash. And although she knew herself to be a really good woman, she was also well aware that a white sin counted just as much as a black one. She tried to recall an encouraging sermon Reverend Dill had preached a few Sundays past. But all she could hear was her own voice whispering dire threats to Essie for being so fidgety.
Suddenly she felt that she must talk. If death were imminent, there were so many things that must be said. For Zeb was a fool about everything.
She gave a sharp sigh and felt her body relax. She stirred and carefully shifted her position until she lay on her right side, staring up at her husband.
“Zeb.”
He sat very stiffly on an old dining-room chair at the head of the bed. He looked down at her without emotion. For the last fifteen minutes, with utter calmness, he had been carefully trying to decide whether or not he wished his wife had died during her spell.
“How are you feeling now, Min?”
“A little better,” she said, brushing a tangle of hair from her eyes.
“You got to be more careful, Min. You oughtn’t to let things make you mad. Essie’s a big girl now. She’s too old to keep getting spankings.”
“That’s why I’m afraid to die,” she fretted. “God knows how you’d raise my chile. Essie’s a headstrong young one what needs guidance.”
He made a helpless gesture. “Wouldn’t love do as well? You two’d get on better if you were more gently with Essie. It’s only natural that she should have her own opinion ’bout things. I’ve talked a long time with that child.”
She flung him a vicious taunt. “I ain’t like you. I don’t think people’s perfect because they’s pretty. Upholding that chile in her dancin’. Miss Lily told me. I’ll beat it out of her if it kills me.”
His eyes were gleaming. “It very nearly did.”
“An’ I guess,” she said, “you would ‘a’ bin glad. You and Essie. You’re ’like as two peas, you two. Don’ care nothin’ ’bout eddication. Seems like ev’ry mornin’ I jus’ has to drive that young one to school.
“You’re doin’ the wrong thing, Zeb Jenkins, when you encourage that chile. Neither you all’s got common sense ’nough to fill a keyhole. What could she ever make out o’ her dancin’? Some rotten man would ruin her before she got out of the chorus.
“Zeb,” her voice was sharp with pain, “you think I don’ love my baby? Why, she’s mine! How can you judge a mother’s heart? I’d cut off my hand in a moment if I thought it would do her any good.”
She was sobbing weakly. Tears welled out of her eyes and ran obliquely into the damp tendrils of her hair. She seemed pitifully helpless.
“You bin to high school, Zeb. You got a lot of book learnin’. I went as far as the third grade and then had to stop to take care of my mother’s baby. Nobody but them what knows can realize what it means to be so ignorant. You bring them books and magazines here, and all I can understand is the pictures. When we go to plays, I don’t know nothin’ people is saying. I jus’ like to sit and sleep in the movies. And when I hear those big bands playin’ real high-tone music, it don’ sound like nothin’ to me but a whole lot of noise.”
She was whiter than the sheet in this moment of terrible honesty. Zeb was more moved than he had ever been before. For the second time that day he felt absolutely unworthy before these two who were so utterly unlike—his wife and his child.
Her voice was thin and high. “I’d rather my chile died right now than grow up an ignorant woman like me. Listen, Zeb, dancin’ ain’t bad. Nothin’ is bad. Sin is what you make it. If you was makin’ a big lot o’ money, I wouldn’t min’ Essie takin’ up dancin’. I’d know no matter what came of it, her future would be secure.
“But, Zeb, we got to be honest. You ain’t a young man. And, Zeb, you ain’t a smart man. The only thing really ’bout your bein’ a lawyer is it takes you out o’ a white man’s kitchen. I don’t expect you to mak’ hardly more than it takes to eddicate Essie.
“Zeb,” she raised herself on her elbow, her eyes burned into his, “you got to promise that whether I live or die, you’ll sen’ my chile to college.”
But in that instant, very clearly, he heard Essie’s voice, shrill and sharp in his ear: “I don’t want to go to college and learn things. It hurts my head, Papa. It does.”
“Min,” he said miserably, “I can’t. Honest to God, I can’t.”
She fell back on the bed, and her hand fluttered to her heart.
“You might as well kill me, Zeb, as tell me that.”
He got to his feet and crossed to the window. He stared up at a cheerfully winking star. He wanted to cry.
“Zeb,” Minnie’s weak voice bea
t upon him, “you didn’t mean that, Zeb. Oh no, Zeb.”
“Essie’s got a right to decide her own future,” he cried jealously. “I’d bin a better man today if my mother had let me live my own life.”
“You might ‘a’ bin slavin’ in a cotton field. You might ‘a’ bin swingin’ from a tree. And then, God knows, you would ‘a’ blamed your mother.”
He did not answer. He had no words to combat her truth. He stood quite still in this silent room, torn between his evident duty to his wife and his given promise to his child.
And standing there, sick in spirit, he remembered the years of his childhood, and his boyish, unshakable faith in God. So it was then, haltingly, he repeated an almost forgotten prayer.
“Oh, dear God, if it’s right for Essie to go to college, by tomorrow please give me a sign. I humbly ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.”
He turned and came back to Minnie, and knelt by the bed.
“I sorta want to think it over, Min. I trust God to help me decide what’s right. Sometime tomorrow I’ll tell you sure. You go on to sleep now. You already sorta brought me ’round to your way o’ thinking.”
She smiled, a tired, valiant smile that, oddly, lit her whole face, that transfigured her, for a glowing moment, with the hope of unselfish triumph.
“I trust God, too. I can rest easy, Zeb. I ain’t worryin’.”
For the first time in a great many years he kissed her on her mouth.
A few minutes later he fell asleep with a half-smile on his lips.
He started awake at the postman’s familiar ring. He had slept a good deal longer than he had meant to. But it was nice of Minnie not to have waked him. He guessed that she had long been up, pressing his one good business suit, baking hot biscuits for his breakfast.
He stretched luxuriously. He had slept soundly throughout the night, waking only once to listen contentedly to Minnie’s regular breathing. But his dream had been a queer jumble. And on recalling it, he felt a vague alarm, a confused dread of the inexplicable.
