Chapter 2: James by Percival Everett

THAT EVENING I sat down with Lizzie and six other children in our cabin and gave a language lesson. These were indispensable. Safe movement through the world depended on mastery of language, fluency. The young ones sat on the packed-dirt floor and I was on one of our two homemade stools. The hole in the roof pulled the smoke from the fire that burned in the middle of the shack.

“Papa, why do we have to learn this?”

“White folks expect us to sound a certain way and it can only help if we don’t disappoint them,” I said. “The only ones who suffer when they are made to feel inferior is us. Perhaps I should say ‘when they don’t feel superior.’ So, let’s pause to review some of the basics.”

“Don’t make eye contact,” a boy said.

“Right, Virgil.”

“Never speak first,” a girl said.

“That’s correct, February,” I said.

Lizzie looked at the other children and then back to me. “Never address any subject directly when talking to another slave,” she said.

“What do we call that?” I asked.

Together they said, “Signifying.”

“Excellent.” They were happy with themselves, and I let that feeling linger. “Let’s try some situational translations. Something extreme first. You’re walking down the street and you see that Mrs. Holiday’s kitchen is on fire. She’s standing in her yard, her back to her house, unaware. How do you tell her?”

“Fire, fire,” January said.

“Direct. And that’s almost correct,” I said.

The youngest of them, lean and tall five-year-old Rachel, said, “Lawdy, missum! Looky dere.”

“Perfect,” I said. “Why is that correct?”

Lizzie raised her hand. “Because we must let the whites be the ones who name the trouble.”

“And why is that?” I asked.

February said, “Because they need to know everything before us. Because they need to name everything.”

“Good, good. You all are really sharp today. Okay, let’s imagine now that it’s a grease fire. She’s left bacon unattended on the stove. Mrs. Holiday is about to throw water on it. What do you say? Rachel?”

Rachel paused. “Missums, that water gone make it wurs!”

“Of course, that’s true, but what’s the problem with that?”

Virgil said, “You’re telling her she’s doing the wrong thing.”

I nodded. “So, what should you say?”

Lizzie looked at the ceiling and spoke while thinking it through. “Would you like for me to get some sand?”

“Correct approach, but you didn’t translate it.”

She nodded. “Oh, Lawd, missums ma’am, you wan fo me to gets some sand?”

“Good.”

“ ‘Gets some’ is hard to say.” This from Glory, the oldest child. “The s’s.”

“That’s true,” I said. “And it’s okay to trip over it. In fact, it’s good. You wan fo me to ge-gets s-s-some s-sand, Missum Holiday?”

“What if they don’t understand?” Lizzie asked.

“That’s okay. Let them work to understand you. Mumble sometimes so they can have the satisfaction of telling you not to mumble. They enjoy the correction and thinking you’re stupid. Remember, the more they choose to not want to listen, the more we can say to one another around them.”

“Why did God set it up like this?” Rachel asked. “With them as masters and us as slaves?”

“There is no God, child. There’s religion but there’s no God of theirs. Their religion tells that we will get our reward in the end. However, it apparently doesn’t say anything about their punishment. But when we’re around them, we believe in God. Oh, Lawdy Lawd, we’s be believin’. Religion is just a controlling tool they employ and adhere to when convenient.”

“There must be something,” Virgil said.

“I’m sorry, Virgil. You might be right. There might be some higher power, children, but it’s not their white God. However, the more you talk about God and Jesus and heaven and hell, the better they feel.”

The children said together, “And the better they feel, the safer we are.”

“February, translate that.”

“Da mo’ betta dey feels, da mo’ safer we be.”

“Nice.”

HUCK CAUGHT ME as I was hauling sacks of chicken feed from the buckboard to the shed in the back of the Widow Douglas’s house. He was studying on something intently and I could tell he wanted to talk.

“What be on yo mind, Huck?”

“Prayers,” he said. “Do you pray?”

“Yessir, I prays all the time.”

“What do you pray fer?” he asked.

“I prays for all sorta things. I pray once that the lil’ girl February would get better when she be sick.”

“Did it work?”

“Well, she be better now.” I sat on the buckboard and looked at the sky. “I pray fer rain once.”

“Did it work that time?”

“It did rain, sho nuff. Not right away, but ’ventually.”

“Then how you know God done it?”

“Reckon I don’t. But don’t God do everything? Who else make it rain?”

Huck picked up a rock, studied it in his hand for a bit, then hurled it at a squirrel high on an elm branch.

“Wanna know what I thinks?”

Huck looked at me.

“I thinks praying is for the people round you what wants you to pray. Pray so Miss Watson and Widow Douglas hears you and ask Jesus for what you knows dey wants. Make yer life a sight easier.”

“Maybe.”

“Ever’ now and den toss in something like a new fishin’ pole or like dat so they can scold you.”

Huck nodded. “That makes sense. Jim, you believe in God?”

“Why, sho nuff I does. If dere ain’t no God, den how we get this here wonderful life? Naw, you run on and play.”

I watched as Huck ran on down the street and turned out of sight around the corner in front of Judge Thatcher’s big house. Old Luke came up behind me as I was about to hoist the last sack up on my shoulder.

“You startled me,” I said.

“Sorry about that.” He hopped up and sat his short body on the wagon bed. “What did that little peckerhead want?”

“That boy’s all right,” I said. “He’s just trying to figure things out. Like the rest of us, I guess.”

“Have you heard about that McIntosh brother down in St. Louis?”

I shook my head.

“Free man. Light like you. He got himself into a scuffle at the docks and the police came and got him. He asked what they were going to do to him for fighting. One of the police said they were probably going to hang him. The brother believed him. Why wouldn’t he? He pulled out his knife and cut them both.”

A white man walked up and for some reason studied the horse hitched to the wagon. Luke stopped talking. We tried to not make eye contact with the man. We had been talking, so we had to keep talking.

“Go on,” I said to Luke.

“Okee. So, blue gum monkey on up da alley jes lak Lucifer done bit on da broomstick. And dem charlies be down on him like white on rice. I means dey be on ’em lak dem bubbles on soap.”

I nodded.

“Hey,” the white man shouted.

“Suh?” I said.

“This here horse belong to Miss Watson?”

“Naw, suh. The buckboard be belonging to Miss Watson. Da horse be dat of Wida Douglas.”

“You think she wanna sell him?”

“I wouldn’t know dat, suh.”

“You ask her when you see her,” he said.

“Yessuh, I sho will.”

The man looked at the horse one more time, spread the animal’s lips with his fingers and then walked away.

“What do you suppose a fool like that wants with a horse? He doesn’t know anything about horses,” Luke said.

“This creature is hundred years old and can barely pull this wagon when it’s dry and empty.”

“White people love to buy stuff,” Luke said.

“So, what happened to McIntosh?” I asked.

“They caught up to him and chained him to an oak tree, piled sticks under him and burned him alive. I heard he screamed for somebody to shoot him. Men yelled they’d shoot the first person who tried to save him from his misery.”

I felt sick to my stomach, but it wasn’t so different from many stories I’d heard. Still the day felt hotter and I realized how sticky with sweat I was. “A terrible way to die,” I said.

“I suppose there’s no good way,” Luke said.

“I don’t know about that.”

“What do you mean?” Luke asked.

“I mean, we are going to die. Maybe all ways to die aren’t bad. Maybe there’s a way to die that will satisfy me.”

“You’re talking crazy.”

I laughed.

Luke shook his head. “That wasn’t the worst part. Colored people die every day; you know that. The worst part was that the judge told the grand jury that it was an act of a multitude and so they couldn’t recommend any indictments. So, if enough people do it, it’s not a crime.”

“Good Lord,” I said. “Slavery.”

“Got that right,” Luke said. “If enough of them kill you, they’re innocent. Guess what the judge’s name was.”

I waited.

“ ‘Lawless.’ ”

“Do you think we’ll ever get to go to someplace like St. Louis or New Orleans?” I asked him.

“When we’s gets to heaben,” he said and winked.

We started to laugh and then we spotted a white man up the road. There was nothing that irritated white men more than a couple of slaves laughing. I suspected they were afraid we were laughing at them or else they simply hated the idea of us having a good time. Whatever the case, we were slow to hush and so captured his attention. He’d heard us and walked our way.

“What you boys gigglin’ like little girls ’bout?” he asked.

I’d seen the man before, but I didn’t know him. He tried to strike a pose like a dangerous man. That made me more and less afraid of him.

“We was wonderin’ if’n it be true?” Luke said.

“What be true?” the man asked.

“We be’s wonderin’ if’n dem streets in New Orleans really is made a gol, lak dey say,” Luke said and looked at me.

“And if’n it be true dat when it flood, it flood da streets with whisky. I ain’t never tasted no whisky, nosuh, but it sho nuff look good.” I turned to Luke. “Don’t it look good ta you, Luke?”

It was at this point that I imagined, for a second, that he saw we were making fun of him, but he laughed big and said, “It looks good ’cause it is good, boys.” He walked away howling.

“He’s going to get drunk now, not so much because he can, but because we can’t,” I said.

Luke chuckled. “So, when we see him staggering around later acting the fool, will that be an example of proleptic irony or dramatic irony?”

“Could be both.”

“Now that would be ironic.”