The Third Generation

by Chester B Himes

  She was given a couple of rooms on the ground floor of the faculty house across the street, so she could keep her children with her. The boys had a back room with low windows opening onto a narrow alley. They had but to step outside and they were free.

  She saw very little of them that winter. It was as if a dam had broken loose within her. She talked and talked, catching up on the family news. She told and retold the events of her marriage. She became quite garrulous, even a nuisance at times. But she couldn’t restrain herself. The words and phrases poured out in an endless stream.

  Even the children were astonished. She talked a great deal to them, bringing up bits and sketches of her childhood. That was the winter she told them that their great-great-grandfather, Grandma Charlotte’s sire, was General Beauregard.

  She would come into the children’s room at bedtime and, without preamble, say, “Your cousin, Martha, is just like her grandfather. She likes her coffee scalding hot,” smiling reminiscently. “My mother could never get his coffee hot enough. No matter how hot she’d have it, he’d say, ‘Lin, this coffee is stone cold.’ And she’d have to put it back in the pot and heat it. She got tired of him saying his coffee was cold and one day she put the cup in the oven and got it red hot. Then she filled it with boiling coffee and set it at his place. When he sat down and picked up his cup his mouth was all set to say it was stone cold. But when he put it to his lips we could hear the skin sizzle. My mother was afraid she’d given him an awful burn. It must have hurt him terribly. But your grandfather didn’t bat an eye. He just looked across at my mother and said, ‘Lin, for once in your life you got my coffee hot.’” The memory made her laugh with pleasure.

  The children didn’t understand her. She seemed strange. They felt that she was slipping away from them. A vague insecurity threatened them. They became closer to each other.

  Their teachers couldn’t separate them. They sat on the same bench. Should one falter in his recitation the other took it up. Their mother had taught them well. They were both brilliant in their classes. But they didn’t make friends. When one got into a fight the other would rush to aid him. Charles did most of his brother’s fighting. But William would help by grabbing his opponent’s legs while Charles pummeled him. After several of these skirmishes the bullies left them alone.

  Their studies were so easy they soon were bored and took to playing hooky. They’d slip behind the wooden buildings, skirt the playing field, and climb over the fence behind the scoreboard in the corner. There was a grocery store across the street where many of the day students bought their lunch. The proprietor wasn’t permitted to sell to the students between hours, but he did to those he trusted. They’d buy a loaf of bread, cut a wedge from the top and fill it with molasses or condensed milk or sardines, and after the juice had soaked in plug it up again. They carried their “sog ‘em” to the neighborhood known as the “Blackberry Patch,” and there in the shade of their favorite chinaberry tree on the bank of a creek they feasted.

  Although they were fed plenty in the mess hall—black-eyed peas and rice one day, boiled pork and baked sweet potatoes the next, oatmeal and skimmed milk, hominy grits and hot fat for breakfast—they were always hungry. Their mother supplemented their diet with dry cereals and fruit. Both loved the baked fish that was served on Fridays. The big steaming pan of porgies with onion gravy was set in the center of the table. The other children liked fried fish best, so this one day they had all they wanted.

  During supper, the school horse, an old gray mare named Maud, was fed a half-dozen ears of dried field corn in her trough beside the kitchen door. It was great sport with the older boys to try to steal an ear when they came from supper. But Maud was on to their game and snapped at them like a vicious dog, her big teeth clacking dangerously. Charles loved dried corn and once he tried to steal an ear and run. But Maud was too quick for him, and bit him across the cheek and nose. For days he wore a bandage and a tiny scar remained. But he learned how to snitch an ear from the other side when her attention was distracted.

  One night the children were awakened by the sound of fire engines. They dressed and slipped out through the window.

  Toward the Patch was an orange glow in the sky. All about them were running people. A fire engine turned the corner, drawn by four white horses, smoke belching from its stack. All else forgotten, his brother and mother, the night, Charles went flying in its wake.

  “Wait, Chuck,” Will called.

  But Charles didn’t hear him. The urge to run heedlessly, unrestrainedly, like the mad surge of the beautiful white horses, blew out his other thoughts. Soon he was separated from his brother. He ran with a long, smooth, digging motion, down the dim streets, jostling people, through the muddy gutters on into the Patch. Black and yellow people were panicky in the streets. He followed the engine through the milling crowd, came up at the edge of the fire. Police had thrown up a loose, futile cordon. Beyond the shotgun shacks and flimsy hovels burned an immense bonfire. Black people loomed suddenly from the haze of smoke, lugging a straw mattress, a bundle of clothing, a paper sack of cold corn bread. Beds and furniture and clothing and boxes were scattered like debris down the streets of chaos. Over and above the crackling of the fire and the hissing of the water came the wailing and the moaning and the shouting of the people.

  Charles was cut loose from reality. The stark raw panic in the black faces transmitted itself to him. He started to run like a crazed horse into the midst of the flames, but was caught up in front of a dark, lonely shack by a woman standing in the door. She was a young mulatto girl, dark hair hanging to her shoulder; a vague shape in a loose nightgown. There was in her posture a strange bitter forlornness more terrible than a Gorgon’s head. He was too young to know that she was a whore watching the fire from morbid curiosity. He saw only the infinite loneliness of a strange lost woman in the one left house. He was ineffably drawn to her; he felt an affinity deeper than kin. He went toward her timidly, filled with the great flaming desire to serve her with his life.

  “Can I help you, lady?”

  She looked at him startled, then cursed. “Git der hell away from heah an’ mind yo’ own bizness.”

  He felt a sharp, brackish shock, turned and fled. For a long time aimlessly he watched the fire, absorbed into the misery of the homeless groups, and afterwards he wandered listlessly in the ruins. But deep inside he was badly hurt, first opened by the suffering of the people, then poisoned by the strange woman’s scorn. He couldn’t understand her viciousness; her rejection cut him to the heart. It was early morning when he crawled back into bed. William was asleep. For a long time Charles lay there crying until the sobbing waked his brother.

  “What’s the matter, Chuck?” William asked, alarmed.

  “Nothing,” Charles choked.

  “What you crying about?”

  “Nothing, I tell you.”

  “There is something too, you’re crying.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You are too, and I’m going to tell Mother.”

  “I’m not, I’m not! I tell you I’m not!”

  “Don’t cry, Chuck,” William consoled.

  “I was just crying a little bit,” he confessed. “I’m all right, really I am. I was just crying a little because it’s all so sad.”

  “Go to sleep, Chuck,” William said. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

  “All right, Will. Don’t tell Mama I was gone.”

  “I won’t tell.”

  As Charles grew older there were many more exciting happenings that he forgot. It was always very hard for him to recall the inside of all the many houses he lived in. But he never forgot the utter loneliness of the woman standing in the darkened doorway, watching the misery of her people, nor the utter viciousness of her rejection.

  That year William was very kind to his younger brother. He lied to the teachers when Charles played hooky and never once told on him for slipping out at night. After the first strangeness had worn off and they’d beco
me accustomed to the difference in their mother’s attitude, they liked it there. They liked their newly discovered cousins and the thrilling sound of laughter in the streets in the early evening; and they liked the long walks they took through the city with their mother on Sunday afternoons.

  The thing they liked best was an old minstrel who came around the school and fiddled for the students. He was a very old man with a deeply seamed face, the color of saddle leather, and a thatch of dirty, yellowish-white hair. His old brown eyes had the bluish tint of age, and but two brown snags hung loose from bare shrunken gums. His clothes were tattered and he stank like a goat, but his fiddle was wrapped with loving care in a square of fine old velvet. The students loved him, and whenever he appeared a crowd collected.

  “Play ‘Hole in de ground,’” they begged.

  He played a jig tune and cut a step, then he played a spiritual and mumbled out the words.

  “Oh, Mistah Minstrel, please play ‘Hole in de ground.’”

  His old lined face beamed with pleasure and his eyes sparkled youthfully. He began chanting the endless ballad, sawing the accompanying sounds:

  Oh once ‘pon uh time dare wuz uh hole in de ground

  An’ de green grass growin’ all ‘round an ‘round

  De green grass growin all ‘round…

  In de li’l hole dare wuz uh li’l tree

  Tree in de hole

  Hole in de ground

  An’ de green grass growin’ all ‘round an’ ‘round

  De green grass growin’ all ‘round….

  “Oh, what was on the tree, Mistah Minstrel? What was on the tree?”

  On de li’l tree dare wuz uh li’l limb

  Limb on de tree

  Tree in de hole

  Hole in de ground

  An de green grass growin all ‘round an’ ‘round

  De green grass growin’ all ‘round…

  “Oh, what was on the lim’, Mistah Minstrel? What was on the lim’?”

  His old bluish eyes twinkled with delight. And on and on it would go:

  An’ on dat li’l tree dare wuz a li’l tail

  Tail on de bee

  Bee on de leaf

  Leaf on de branch

  Branch on de limb

  Limb on de tree

  Tree in de hole

  Hole in de ground

  An’ de green grass growin’ all ‘round an’ ‘round

  An’ de green grass growin’ all ‘round….

  The children squealed with glee. What would be on the tail?

  Sting on de tail…

  And what would be on the sting?

  Pisen on de sting…

  They loved the old minstrel. But then, the Taylor children loved most things the other children loved. They loved the same games and pastimes; sucking dill pickles stuffed with wine balls, munching peeled pomegranates, lingering over the unfamiliar delicious taste. They enjoyed the holiday celebrations, the outdoor barbecues, running with the football players in the fall, baseball in the spring, the Maypole dance, the Easter Ramble. Quite often they laughed at the same things. The time Pomp came screaming into Miss Rainy’s office, “O’ Mi Rainy! Mi Rainy! De goat done dead!” It became a classic example of the ungrammatical form. Nor did Miss Rainy show them any favoritism. William escaped; she thought he was a nice, obedient boy. But she paddled Charles several times for fighting, playing hooky, and the hardest of all for calling another boy a “monkey-devil.”

  The difference was deeper; the difference of upbringing, of perspective. Taking their napkins to the mess hall in the old worn wooden napkin rings. Saying, “Thank you.” The absence of dialect in their speech. The feeling that their teachers didn’t know everything. Their unacceptance of the common childish conviction that Negroes were the strongest people in the world. The shocked incredulity both always felt at a collection of Negro heads—in class or in chapel when the students were assembled, the black-burred craniums with bald tetter patches and the short straightened hair of the girls with grease running down behind their ears. And on Saturday night the smell of burning hair permeating the very air over the school and the Patch and the entire Negro community, as if there were a witch-burning of incredible numbers. It always gave Charles a queasy stomach, sick enough to vomit. Yet his own hair was kinky; he couldn’t imagine himself without kinky hair; he never thought of it as ugly. It was the atrocities they committed on themselves to be what they were never intended which he couldn’t reconcile. Thin, black girls with white ribbons tied to their crop of short braids always reminded him of Topsy; and the burred white thatch of the old minstrel was Uncle Tom again. But Topsy and Uncle Tom were real people like his mother and himself, and why all the shame?

  However, they learned to be with other children, and the names and rules of games. And they learned of their family on their mother’s side. There was little in the classes they hadn’t already learned. But they became accustomed to classroom procedure. And they’d gotten out of Mississippi. If for no more than that, their mother was grateful for that year.

  12

  THE FOLLOWING YEAR THE children attended school with students twice their age. Their father had missed them the year before. He kept them home that fall and enrolled them in the College. They’d completed the sixth grade at Crayne. Now they were enrolled in the freshman year in college, which was the equivalent of the eighth grade.

  Mrs. Taylor fumed and threatened. But she couldn’t leave the children. She was trapped.

  All that summer she’d talked incessantly as if she’d been wound up and couldn’t stop. Tom was home briefly before going on to Cleveland. He thought his mother queer. Then it was the little children who felt her insecurity.

  “Don’t ever forget that you are Mannings,” she constantly reminded them. Her eyes were vacant, staring off into the past. She frightened them with her ceaseless prattle. Now, with the frustrating of her hope to take them off again, she was assailed by prolonged despair. It was as if she’d returned to the scene of a long and bitter defeat. The old scars and humiliations of battle opened sharply with new hurt. Before she’d been determined to depart. Now she was obsessed with escape. At times her frustration was so heightened she felt that she’d go crazy. Her eyes were often red from crying, and deep lines of discontent began settling in her face.

  “You’ve done everything in your power to destroy me,” she charged her husband. “Now you’re trying to destroy me by making monsters of my children. But I shan’t let you.” Her eyes were wild, her hair disordered. She was becoming a little hysterical.

  “By God, they’re my children too. And I want ‘em here with me.”

  The course of battle ran the same. Only their ages were different; they had grown older. Professor Taylor had developed chronic constipation.

  “You’ll regret this, Mr. Taylor. You’ll suffer in hell for what you’re doing to your children.”

  The house was sick with fear and hate that morning they entered college. The children spilled their cereal and bolted their eggs. Their mother’s face was grim. Finally their father rose to go.

  “Now be good boys and don’t give your professors any trouble,” he admonished.

  “Professors at their age,” their mother said. “I tell you, Mr. Taylor, it’s criminal.” He went off without replying.

  “Children,” she began without preamble, “I want to tell you how babies are born.”

  They looked at her from large, startled eyes, squirming uncomfortably. She became embarrassed but went on grimly as if forcing the words from her lips:

  “The seed of the male impregnates the womb of the female and the mother becomes pregnant. The baby lies in the womb of its mother for nine months, growing and growing until it is formed, then the mother gives birth. You recall when Mrs. Sherwood was pregnant last year. She was carrying the baby in her womb; her little baby Alice.

  “The birth of a baby,” she continued, swallowing painfully, “is very sacred and should never be discussed. Only persons wh
o are married are permitted to conceive babies. But there is nothing secretive about it. It is a very natural function—it is as natural as a bowel movement, although we don’t talk about that either. I want you children to understand this, and when the older men try to tell you about it you tell them that your mother has already told you and that will shut them up.”

  She looked away from their huge staring eyes. “Do you want to ask any questions?”

  They shook their heads. “No, Mother,” William said.

  “Do you understand it?”

  “Yes, Mother,” they nodded dumbly.

  Charles thought of Mrs. Sherwood carrying the baby in her womb. He’d never seen a newborn baby. The first time he saw the baby it weighed twenty pounds. He wanted to know how it got out. But he was too ashamed to ask.

  Their mother’s raw embarrassment had affected them with a strange sense of guilt. They knew less than before, when they’d assumed that babies were born like other animals. Now they were confused. They’d formed no clear association between sexual intercourse and the conceiving of a baby. To them sexual intercourse was still something sly and dirty the grownups did.

  The school bell rang. Finally they set off to college in their knee breeches and black cotton stockings, burdened with a vague picture of giant babies in their mothers’ stomachs. But they distrusted even this knowledge and felt flooded with shame whenever they saw men and women embrace.

  The sight of them was a shock to their classmates.

  “You chillun lost, ain’tcha?”

  “Them ain’ chillun, them’s dwarfs.”

  The men students resented their presence. The women thought it funny. The professors had a problem also. The students thumped the children’s heads with their knuckles.

  “Naw, he ain’ ripe.” They guffawed.

  “Bastard nigger!” Charles cursed, charging his tormentors.

  The students held him off. “Where you learn to cuss, li’l niggah?”

  “He bad, ain’ he. He tough.”