J. WARREN LEWIS - KILLING SNOW CHILDREN - CHAPTER 29 OF THE NOVEL - JOHNNIE: TOO PRETTY TO BE A BOY?

J. Warren Lewis, 73 years of age and a transwoman, lives in Queens, NY, and was born and raised in and around Frankfort, Kentucky. J has worked as an educator (k-12, community, and university); as a History Consultant and pK-12 Curriculum Writer for the State of Montana Office of Public Instruction, Indian Education Division; and is a retired Butcher and member of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. Short stories of J's have been published in Bartleby Snopes and The Hamilton Stone Review.
My Best, J

KILLING SNOW CHILDREN
CHAPTER 29 OF THE NOVEL JOHNNIE: TOO PRETTY TO BE A BOY?

Evening will come early this dark and dreary snowy Saturday afternoon. Momma has been home from working overtime, and is in the kitchen icing a cake she made last night. The radio in there plays a tinny sounding country music. It’s kind of a rousing tune, and I imagine Momma dancing around a little as she works, occasionally licking icing off her fingers.
Billy Frank, my undercover boyfriend just left. He spent the night. Of course we slept together and had sex. Funny, I’m a girl on the order of Christine Jorgensen, but with Billy I’m the man. He likes me on top—well, not necessarily on top. But I fuck him in the ass, either on his back or on his knees like a dog or keeling, stooping over me, though we both love 69. This is so amazing—being with Billy like this—but nobody, even Momma, suspects a thing.
Neither one of us acts feminine—I mean, I used to, sort of. I still wear girls or women’s underthings, but now, under obvious boy clothes. I used to wear girls things—actually boy things I made to look like girls: cut off bluejeans for pedal pushers, t-shirts with the necks cut out, the bottoms cut off, and the arms cut off and sniped and stitched underneath to resemble women’s cupped sleeves—but not anymore.
Billy is a jock and plays basketball and he’s so good he starts on Fort Hill Middle School’s team. No femme boy—what most would call a faggoty boy—could ever expect to be a starting basketball player. So, Billy and me cover our tracks as we can. But we really don’t have to cover much. While Billy and I are in the same grade and classroom at school, I don’t go to school right now.
I have rheumatic fever and am on complete bedrest for six months—wow, I wonder what Dr. Ramsey would say about Billy and me fucking. That’s not exactly resting, but whatthefuck. I do it anyway. So, I am not in school right now. And, Billy and Dora Beets, a girl in my class, alternate bringing me my homework so I can pass from seventh to eighth grade this spring and not be kept back.
While Momma’s in the kitchen I sit on the couch in the livingroom reading a book Billy gave me—James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain. The main character, John, Johnny, a queer—literally—Negro boy living in Harlem up in New York, takes me. I love him. I feel so much kin to Johnny—of course because of my name, which is also Johnnie—just spelled different. But also because he says he is smart—that his white teachers say this—and reads books and writes and whatnot, beyond his school grade.
I’d say I’m smart, too, but no teacher has ever said that because in school before going on bedrest, I acted dumb. I don’t stutter anymore, either. Something magical happened the night Momma beat the shit out of me with a belt over me complaining about the effects of RF—swollen painful joints, high fever. She beat me, she said, because I was a crybaby and always complaining and I talked back to her. But after the beating, she felt bad, and decided to take me to the doctor, and that’s when I found out what’s wrong with me. That was a couple of months ago, but it seems like a year, or something. Listening to me—no, you wouldn’t listen to me because I didn’t say much of anything. If I said something it was a jumble of stutter, and normally people would not understand what I was trying to say. Momma did, my brothers Charlie and Jimmie, or Daddy did—but, then, he is not around hardly at all now. In fact, he’s pretty much out of our lives now. True he does show up—but not often now. He and Momma are divorcing—again, but this time it seems they will go through with it. Part of them “going through with it” centers on the overturn of what was called “The Day Law,” Kentucky’s “One Drop Rule.” Daddy is Negro, but passes for white, and Momma is white. Under The Day Law if you had one Negro ancestor in the past eight generations, or about two hundred years, you could not marry a white person even if you looked like one, as Daddy does. So, under that law, if you were never married, then, of course, you could not get divorced. Also, under that law, my two brothers and me were illegitimate, bastards. What a crock!
So, anyway, Johnny is smart and people tell him, while I am smart, important people—well, teachers and the like—never say so. But Dora Beets, a new friend in my life says I’m smart based on the books I read—so does her mother who teaches American Literature up at UK—the University of Kentucky Lexington. Dora told her mother the authors whose books I read—Carson McCullers, Richard Wright, Flannery O’Conner, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, and, now, James Baldwin—and Mrs. Beets, well, Ann Kramer, she’s a divorcee, says I have to be smart to read and keep to the stories in these books.  
As I read James Baldwin, I listen in and out to the TV—some movie is on that I care nothing for—and to my stepsister Effie’s children, Junior and Dina, eight and seven, and my little brother Jimmie, five, out in the front yard playing in the deep snow. If I look out the panoramic open wall of windows on that end of our livingroom, I see them, and, I hear their cries of joy and laughter, muffled some by the densely falling snowing. The children are covered with the wet stuff and resemble the little snowmen they’ve built. They have built a number of what they call snowchildren. Effie’s baby Cindy lies asleep in her bassinette, just by the low-moaning burning embers of the fireplace.
Effie and Jarod, her husband, have left their children here for Momma to watch while they go to the grocery store. They do that: when they come visit, they buy lots of groceries, knowing, at least in the past, Momma hasn’t the money to afford food for all of them and all of us.
Plus, my other stepsister Leigh and her husband Anderson Paisley are coming.
They’ve all come home to help Momma with the house. Mr. Winter’s son is selling it to her. So, the two girls and their husbands will help Momma with the bank papers and all. Momma has distanced herself a bit from Jim Finlayson, and for that I am glad. He had offered to help her with the loan papers, but she, in my view, had the good sense to tell him her girls were helping. I know I would not ever want another man living with us. Daddy is one thing, since he is Daddy and is Momma’s husband, at least until the divorce papers go through. And, too, he has not been around that much. But a strange man in the house thinking he can tell me what to do not only makes me angry, it also scares me half to death. I keep remembering how rude he was to the woman clerk that night he bought the beer at the Blue Bonnet Convenience Store. That night I saw the drunk in him.
Effie and Jarod will be returning anytime, now, and Leigh and Anderson should also be coming soon as well. Last night, I told Momma to call Dora’s mother and tell her to come by another time. But Momma said, “Well, Dora and her mother can just meet your family. That’ll be fine. They’ll come for a few minutes and we can talk about them coming by some other time for a longer visit.”
I think vaguely about my stepsister Effie living in the same subdivision in Shively where Dora’s father and mother bought a house for that Negro family. But this does not stay with me.
The doorbell rings.
I get it, and before opening the door, I call out, “Momma, Dora and her mother are here!”
She calls out, “Okay, son. I’ll be right there.”
I open the door, and they are standing on the porch watching the children build their snowchildren, and as they start into the house, Dora says, “Johnnie Gibson, this is my mother, Ann Kramer—used to be Ann Beets.”
Ann puts out her hand to shake mine, and says, “Hello, Johnnie. Nice to meet you finally.”
I say, “Nice to meet you, Miss Kramer.”
She says, “Johnnie, pleased to meet you.”
We stand awkward for a few seconds, as thought after thought flashes through my mind of Dora telling her mother I wear girls’ clothes. Even though, of course, now you can’t tell I have panties and a camisole on under my boy things. I just know Ann thinks I am a freak or queer or faerie. I see how nicely they are dressed and think of their newer car and their nice house. I worry that Momma will be shy and feel bad that she is only a factory worker. That she is poor. That her husband is a drunk—not sure Ann knows this, but Dora sure does. That Dora’s mother being a college teacher—and at UK, no less—and Momma didn’t finish the eighth grade at the Kentucky Female Orphan’s Home over in Midway where she lived from a six weeks old baby till age sixteen.  And, though she now supervisees sewing machine operators at the Union Underwear garment factory, she still sees herself a worker. And, we are low class and they are high class, at least higher than us. But I push it all away, and say, “Won’t y’all come on in?”
Ann says, “Welcome to our neighborhood.”
I say, “Yes, Miss Kramer. I’m glad we’ve moved.” I look at Dora and she smiles broadly.
Momma appears behind me.
I say, “Momma, you know Dora. This is her mother, Ann Kramer. Miss Kramer, this is my mother Mrs. Rachel Gibson.”
Momma says, “Please to meet you, Miss Kramer.“
Ann says, “Please call me Ann, Mrs. Gibson.”
Momma says, “And you called me Rachel. Please do come in. Excuse the mess.”
But there is none. This is a knee-jerk thing Momma says when anybody comes visiting.
            Ann says, “Not to worry about any mess. I am pleased to meet you, Rachel. “ Coming into the livingroom behind Dora and me, she says, “I just love that openness of the full glass window.” Standing on the rug by the door, she and Dora push off their galoshes.
            Momma says, “Yes, they window is nice, isn’t it—just leave your galoshes, but don’t worry about taking your shoes off. Excuse the dirty house.“
            Ann says, “Rachel, your house is not dirty.” She laughs, “You want to see a dirty house come to mine and Dora’s.”
            What Momma says is true. Our house is not dirty, but theirs isn’t either, I am sure.
            Momma says, “Son, take their coats and hang them in the closet.”
            I do.
            Again, we are all awkward for a few moments. Momma says, “Ann, why don’t y’all come on into the kitchen. I’ve just iced a cake and made some coffee for us. Johnnie can get himself and Dora a softdrink or milk.”
            Momma pours coffee, and whatnot.
I get Dora and me pop.
All smiles, Ann and Dora and I sit at the table.
Again, thoughts flash through my brain like a movie. What does Ann think of me, even though Dora has said she likes me, thinks I’m smart for reading adult books, knows that I have at least one drop of Negro blood. Knows this that and the other about my family and me. Though Dora said at first she’d tell her mother about me wearing girls’ things; that she would understand, I told I didn’t want her to tell. Though I almost know Dora didn’t tell, I can’t but think she might have. But I have to trust Dora that she has not told. Too, I have given Dora back all of her and Ann’s clothes, I either stole before I actually met Dora or she gave me. I have not stitch one of their things. And for that I am glad.
Momma stands near the table and sees that all the drinks have been made; desert plates are at each place, etc. She takes her place at the table, and says, “Thank you, Johnnie, for helping out.” She looks at Ann, and says, “He’s like that. He’s a good helper.“ She smiles, “Most of the time.” Cutting the cake and putting it on saucers, she says, setting a time limit on the meeting, “Ann, I’m sorry I have only a little time for us to talk. My daughters and their husbands are coming anytime now. I should have called you and rescheduled, but I did want to meet you. And, anyway, you can meet the rest of Johnnie’s family.”
Ann says, “O, not to worry, Rachel. I just wanted to meet you. Dora’s been coming by to drop off and get Johnnie’s homework, and I just wanted to let you know I am good with it. I want you to know its okay with me.”
Momma says, “Well, I appreciate Dora—and Billy Frank—helping. I think it is really good of them to help Johnnie by bringing his schoolwork. I don’t see how he would get it otherwise. I never liked the idea of Mrs. Jackson’s that he just repeat seventh grade. But, then, I didn’t think of how he could get his homework.“
Dora and I look at each other, and she smiles and shrugs.
I didn’t know Mrs. Jackson had said that to Momma. Then, Dora was the one who encouraged me to do the homework, even the minimum, and pass on to the eighth grade.
We’re quite again. Forks scrape on saucers. The four of us mostly look down and eat.
Ann says, “This cake is delicious.”
Then, we all hear the storm door on the front door from outside open and people coming into the hallway. Directly, they go into the front room, probably taking off their things, and come on down the hallway toward the kitchen.
            I sit at the table facing the hallway entry into the kitchen.
They come into the kitchen—Effie, first, and Jarod and Daddy right behind her. The men have open bottles of beer. Jarod carries his bottle while carrying two full sacks of groceries. Effie and Jarod stop at the door, their faces, in flashes, go from smiles and laughter to anger. Daddy stands there with his bottle and the cardboard case of beer.
My first thoughts—Dora’s mother will see Daddy drinking, drunk—and Jarod and Effie will say something trashy--
Momma, stands up to introduce everybody, saying, “Ann Kramer, Dora Beets, this is my daughter Effie and—“
Effie says, “Momma, you don’t have to introduce us. We know one another.“
Ann gets up from her chair and just stands there. Her face has turned a chalk white. Dora had been facing me, has now turned to see who’s behind her—her face flashes a flush red.
Jarod says as he comes into the kitchen and puts the grocery sacks on the table, “Yeah, Mrs. Gibson, we already know Ann Beets and her commie nigger-loving husband Carl Beets.”
Momma says, “Jarod! You stop using that talk in my house. You know—“
Effie says, “Momma, he’s just saying what they are: nigger-lovers. That’s what Ann and Carl Beets are, nothing but nigger lovers and the reddest communists you’d ever meet—on top of that they’re Jews.”
Momma says, “Effie! You stop that low trashy talk right now!”
Ann says, “We’d better go now, Rachel. Thanks for your hospitality. We’ll talk another day.”
Dora and her mother go toward the door to the frontroom.
Effie moves to let them by.
Jarod comes on into the kitchen.
Daddy is now standing by the refrigerator with the case of beer. He looks down with a shame face.
I wonder why in god’s name he is even here. The only reason is that he is drinking, if not drunk. I look at Daddy. He is drunk. I get up and follow Dora and Ann.
Momma comes right after me, saying, “Please, Ann, accept my apologies. I had no idea y’all knew each other.”
Dora says nothing. She is so very angry. She grabs her coat from the closet and puts it on without buttoning it and steps into her galoshes, and, without buckling them, opens the front door and goes on outside on the porch to wait for her mother.
I hurry out to Dora and say, “I am so sorry for this, Dora. I didn’t think hard enough how it would be for y’all to meet my stupid sister and her stupid husband. But I should have. When you told me—”
Dora says, “Let me get something straight, Johnnie. You have not done one thing to be sorry for. And your mother hasn’t either. Y’all should be proud of each other. I’m going to go sit in the car and wait for Mom. I’ll be by tomorrow evening about seven to get your homework.” She gives me a tight hug and a kiss on the lips.
I say, “Thanks, Dora.”
She leaves.
I go back into the vestibule by the front door and meet Ann and Momma coming out. Momma, still apologizing, puts on her coat, as does Ann.
In the front hallway, now, Ann smiles grimly and says, “I was so pleased to meet you, Johnnie. I am glad you and Dora are friends. I know you’re not supposed to go very far from home because of your rheumatic fever, but perhaps your mom would allow me to come get you in the car and drive you back and forth.”
 Momma says, “Or, I can drive him—except I work most Saturdays and Johnnie watches Jimmie. Anyway, of course, Ann, we can arrange for Johnnie to come over.”
Ann and Momma go on through the front door, across the little porch, out the walk, and to the driveway to Ann’s car.
Back in the kitchen, Jarod says in loud voice, “Damn, do I have piss.”
I look back into the kitchen.
Effie has made herself a cup of coffee and has taken a slice of cake. She sits down at the table.
The beer bottles clink as Daddy puts them in the fridge. Daddy looks pretty sick, probably from the beer, but also because of the talk. This is someplace his passing for white gets him into trouble. He puts up with hateful people like Jarod and my stepsister.
Jarod is now back into the kitchen and sitting at the table with a new bottle of beer, says, “You know they let Carl Beets—that woman’s husband—that nigger loving Jew communist sonofabitch out of prison just a few weeks ago. You hear about that, Will?”
Daddy says, “Yeah, I heard about it. He and his wife were stupid as hell for buying that house for that—that colored family.” Daddy has some trouble saying the other awful word.
I realize I have never heard him use it.
Jarod says, “Well, you know the house they bought was just down the street from us. I mean, hell, there was only two-three finished houses in the whole subdivision then. That nigger Williams himself a high-yaller, near white, but his wife and little girl—they’re pure black nigger. I wonder how he could ever think he’d get away with living in Shively, our white community. We even have ordinances.”
Effie says, “Covenants, Jarod, covenants.”
Jarod says, “Well, same thing—covenants, ordinances, who cares? We knew from the start no niggers were going to live in Shively.”
Effie says, “Yes, we said no nigger children were going to be going to school with our children. Could you imagine a black buck nigger boy sitting down beside Dina? Well, I can’t imagine and I won’t.“ She laughs, and says in a lower tone, “You know, Will, somebody—I said somebody and I’m not saying anything about who—well, the niggers got their house blown up. Somebody put a stick of dynamite under it. Thing was the only person home was a nigger loving Jew who used to work at GE before we got him fired for being a communist. He wouldn’t take the loyalty oath the union and the company got up. I am not talking about that commie UE, but our non-communist, patriotic, IUE. Well, he was staying in the house and didn’t get blown up. A lucky fool, I guess. And the niggers weren’t either. I was sorry for that.”
Jarod chuckles and says, “Me, too, Effie. Me, too.”
Daddy says nothing. Then, he comes down the hallway behind me and goes into the little bathroom off the vestibule. He does not look up from the floor.
Jarod says in a low tone, “Shit. Will has nothing to worry about. He’s a good white nigger and don’t even know it.“
In just as low a tone, Effie says, “Oh, he knows it alright. From the looks of him just now, you know he’s going to get good and drunk. You’ll be dragging his butt out to the car to take him to his nigger boyfriend’s before long. Sometimes, I forget about him being a nigger—and a faggot. O, well, I’m not changing the way I talk for anybody.“
Now, nearly in a whisper, Jarod says, “He still with that nigger homosexual?”
Effie says, “Why sure. I can’t believe somebody I know, Momma’s husband—well, soon to be ex—is a nigger and a queer. He hid that from Momma and himself being a nigger. On the nigger part, he thought he only had to tell her when she got pregnant with Charlie—and him with a whole family living in Craw. Momma was so stupid head over heels for him, she didn’t even know. God, can you imagine Momma having nigger children.“
Jarod says, “I reckon they are niggers, all three of them. They just don’t know it.“
Effie says, “Momma found out about the homosexual part but only after the nigger part. Lord God, what a mess this family is.”
Jarod says, “It’s a good thing Will don’t flaunt his nigger-ness nor his faggotty-ness. Hahaha. And I reckon your mother was right lucky she didn’t have any tar babies.“
Daddy goes back into the kitchen and says, “Jarod, I wonder, directly, can you take me to the house? I don’t feel too good right now.”
Jarod says, “Why, yeah, Will. Sure thing. We’ll go when you get ready.”
Since I can remember, Effie and Jarod have always talked that way. I have not paid much attention to Daddy and how he might feel. He and Jarod are, or used to be anyway, drinking buddies, friends.
In a few minutes, Daddy comes into the frontroom from the kitchen and without saying anything to me leaves out the front door. Right behind him comes Jarod. He says nothing to me, either.
In a minute or so, I hear Jarod’s car start up, but at the same time, another car arrives. I hear the car doors slamming and people talking. I go to the front door, open it, and see that it has stopped snowing, and that the driveway is now clogged with Ann Beets’ and Effie and Jarod’s cars, and Leigh and Anderson’s.
Effie’s kids and Jimmie now have two groups of snow-children built. One group has faces made brown with mud they’ve dug from under the wet snow. The other group without the muddy faces have little crosses stuck in them the children have made from sticks and string.
As I watch, Jimmie runs through the snow to Momma, who pulls him to her, as she stands talking to Ann.
Dora is standing by her mother, holding on to her arm watching the children.
Now, Momma introduces Leigh and Anderson to Ann.
Jarod and Daddy sit in Jarod’s car smoking, waiting for Anderson to move their car.
I go back, grab my coat, and come right back out.
Junior yells, “Look, Granny, we’ve made these here nigger snowchildren and these white ones are white knights. The white knights are going to kill these niggers and that one nigger-loving white boy with them. Watch!”
Junior and Dina commence beating the mud-faced snowchildren with heavy sticks, and yelling, “Nigger! Nigger! The white knights are killing you!”
Ann reaches out and grabs Dora and pulls her to her, and calls out, “O, my god! Those poor children!” She and Dora step a little apart from Momma and Leigh and Anderson.
Momma yells, “Junior! Dina! What are you children doing? Stop that bad, filthy talk!”
Junior yells, “Granny, we’re just killing niggers!” And with that he smashes the one white snowchild standing with the black-faced snowchildren, and screams, “And this nigger lover!”
Dina clubs the mounds of snow that had been the mud-faced snowchildren, and yells, “You’re not coming to my school, nigger! Nigger!”
Junior keeps beating the dirty mounds of snow and yells, “You niggers are not living next door to me!” Then, smashing the little mound of cleaner snow, he screams, “Your dead! You Jew nigger-lover! You got away from bein’ blowed up before!”
Together, they beat to mush the mound of brown-faced snowchildren and the one white one.
Momma hurries into the yard and grabs both children and shakes them, and yells in their faces, “Y’all both stop this right now!”
Just then, Jarod gets out of his car and comes over to edge of the yard. He stands there drinking beer and smoking a cigarette, his whole face one big grin.
Junior jerks out of Momma’s grip, and says, “Granny, we was only killing niggers. Daddy says—“
Dina shouts, “Yes, Granny! They’re only niggers and that one white nigger—well, nigger lover.”
Momma calls to Jarod, “Jarod, come and do something with your children.”
Jarod continues to drink and smoke, and now leans back against his car, and laughs, “Why, Mrs. Gibson, Junior and Dina are only playing.“
Junior says, “That’s right, Granny. I’m telling Mommy on you. We weren't doing nothing bad.” Bawling, he runs through the snow, up the steps, across the porch, and into the house. Dina, crying, too, goes after him.
Jarod says, “Anytime you want to move your car, Anderson, I’d appreciate it. I’m taking Will home. He’s a bit sick.”
Anderson says, “Yeah, you bet, Jarod.” He gets into their car and backs it out of the driveway.
Ann calls out, “Anderson, can I get out too?”
Anderson says, “Sure, Ann.”
Jarod follows in his car.
Ann calls out to Momma who is still in the yard, “Mrs. Gibson, it is not their fault. They’re only children. I have never in my life seen or heard such a thing.”
Leigh says, “They’re nothing but little heathens.”
Anderson leaves his car idling on the street, so Ann can back out. Now back, he laughs nervously, saying, “My god, where’d they learn that?”
Dora with a red and angry face holds on to her mother’s arm, which is wrapped around her chest, says, “Let’s go Mom before I puke.”
Leigh says, “You mean you have to ask, Anderson? Lord, that Jarod Slaybach, their daddy, that trashy low-life, taught them.”
Anderson says, “Don’t blame it all on him. Effie has a part, too.”
Momma having waded back through the snow to the driveway, stamps the snow off her shoes, and says, “I really don’t know what to say, Ann. Y’all—“
Ann says, “Rachel, thanks again for having Dora and me over. I was glad to meet you, and you too Leigh and Anderson.” She and Dora hurry to their car and leave.
We all come into the house.
Leigh and Anderson go on into the kitchen.
Effie and Junior meet Momma at the door.
I am right behind her with Jimmie.
Effie says, “Momma, what is this? Junior said you shook him hard and told him, ‘You’re a bad boy’?”
Momma says, “I didn’t say that, but what he was doing—what him and Dina were doing—was bad. I am so ashamed that my grandchildren learned that language from my own daughter. Not only the language—the violence and the hatred for people they don’t even know just because of their skin color.”
Effie said, “What on earth are you talking about, Momma? Saying ‘nigger’ and ‘nigger-lover’ is bad? Why, that’s what they are for Pete’s sake.”
Momma says, “They are not. They are not. They, and all people, are God’s children.”
Effie says, “Well, God’s children—the Bible says—Momma, I am not getting into that with you, right now. You know well enough where me and Jarod stand.“
Momma says, “Yes, I guess I do. I just did not know the extent of how far you have taken this. My own grandchildren using that nasty, filthy language, and they feel real hatred in their hearts. I am afraid for them.”
*
Now, Jimmie and Effie’s kids have gone into his room to play at something.
Momma and the others are in the kitchen sitting around the table talking, arguing.
I continue reading James Baldwin’s novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain. You can tell Johnny’s queer by the way Baldwin portrays him gazing at an older boy, Elisha. Johnny’s family is very poor and lives in Harlem. His father, Gabriel, is a deacon in their street-front church, but used to be a preacher in the South when he was a younger man. After his wife died he came North, met Johnny’s mother, and now—at the beginning of the novel—they have four children.
Johnny, the second boy-child, is, like I said, very smart in school and his white teachers and school principals tell him so. They tell him he will amount to something. His father, though, does not like him. I think its because Johnny is a sissy, but also because he is smart and white people say so. But his father also tells him he is ugly—and from his picture on the back of the book, Baldwin, himself, is certainly not very handsome. And, he has Johnny saying how ugly he is all through the book. I think he also must jackoff in bed at night when he’s alone. He’s ashamed of that, and sometimes I am, too.
Johnny’s father hates white people and for good reason it seems. But he also hates himself, maybe again for good reason. He grew up in the South and lived in terror of white people—people just like my stepsister and Jarod and their children. He eventually married a woman who had been gang-raped and brutalized, nearly killed, by a gang of drunken white men in a cotton field. All the Negro people the man knows have run-ins with whites.
Eventually, Gabriel becomes a good preacher, and marries that woman, but, then, he falls—I was going to say, falls in love, but that is not it, exactly. He decides he will fuck this very pretty, sexy Negro woman he works with. She is a maid, servant, housecleaner, and he is a butler, handyman, driver, whatnot. He does fuck her on the kitchen floor in the house of their white boss he has just driven along with the man’s family to the train station.
Gabriel and the pretty Negro woman only fuck every other day or so for a week. Then, he gets to feeling guilty and stops, but she tells him a few months afterward she is pregnant. He is ashamed of what he has done, but there appears nothing he can do about it. He is married and a preacher. He has thought other preachers were hypocrites because of the way they criticized his wife before he married her because she had been gang-raped and had become a broken, ugly woman, as though her horrible abuse by the white men was her fault; that, somehow, she wanted it; that, somehow, she put herself in harms way.
So, she leaves their town and goes to Chicago where she has their child, a boy, and dies. Her parents take her son, named Roy, or Royal, and raise him in their and Gabriel’s town. The boy becomes a child-ruffian—almost on the order of Richard in Richard Wright’s book, Black Boy, or, American Hunger—what Wright called the book before it was published. Baldwin, himself, was never a ruffian, but a polite, nice boy, who avoided fighting and sat in dark movie houses by himself or sat in a library and read books one after the other. I can identify with bad boys because as a child I ran the streets while Momma worked. I stole pop and beer bottles out of peoples’ garages and off their back porches, and took girls’ clothes off their clotheslines and out of storage boxes in their garages. But, now, I don’t steal, and I read books one after the other—it is true that I stole a lot of my books, but, now, my friends loan me theirs.
Billy Frank and I have talked about this, and Billy said that Baldwin would have read Wright’s writing and, that they were friends. Also, Dora’s mother and father know both the writers through their friendship with Carson McCullers and her husband, Reeves. Dora’s parents knew Carson, Reeves, and Wright—but not Baldwin—because they attended Communist Party meetings at peoples’ houses in Brooklyn and Harlem when they (Dora and her parents) lived in Greenwich Village in New York.
Anyway, the boy, Roy, makes fun of the preacher, his father, Gabriel, and says to one of his little buddies, “I bet he has a big one.” Johnny’s older brother is also named Royal, Roy. In the opening of Go Tell It on the Mountain, Roy gets into a fight with white boys, and gets cut pretty bad with a knife. Their father blames Roy and Johnny’s mother, Elizabeth, for letting the boy run loose, and hits her in the face with his fist. Then, Roy calls his father a bastard, and tells him to stop hitting their mother. And, even though Roy has the bad knife cut across his face, their father beats him badly with a belt.
The story, from looking at the Introduction, is something like James Baldwin’s life. Johnny seems to become a preacher himself, which is what happened to Baldwin at age fifteen. I am at the part now, toward the end where Johnny is in the storefront church and everybody is praying and singing, and going on, and something is about to happen. I think Johnny is about to be saved.
I know about being saved. Just before it happens you get in a fever, sort of, and nervous, and trembly, all at the same time, and feel it—you feel God, or Jesus. I was saved not long ago, but that did not last very long. I don’t believe that stuff anymore. The main thing that makes me sick of the whole thing is the blood—there is blood everywhere. And, I hated God, who let the Roman soldiers torture his son Jesus and just let him die a horrible death on the cross.
In and out, I listen to the conversation in the kitchen.
Whenever Effie uses her nasty word for Negro people, Momma says, “Honey, would you not use that language?”
Then, Leigh says, “Only ignorant people talk that way.”
I perk up because, now, I know there is going to be a fight between my stepsisters.
Effie says, “Miss Goody Two Shoes, you feel the same way about the niggers taking over as we do, and you know it. You don’t want them living next door to you, no more’n Jarod and me. And if y’all had any kids, you’d feel the same way about them going to school with those monkeys. Why, you just moved out of Washington, DC, nigger-town USA, into lily-white Loudon County, Virginia, which is more segregated and more like the Old South than Louisville is or ever was. In Louisville the nasty things can ride our city buses and vote. You are not one to tell me anything about this sort of lowlife. You know it all as well as me and you know that the only niggers you ever see in your neighborhood are the ones coming to clean yours and your neighbors’ toilets, mow your ten-acre yards, and take care of your three-thousand dollar horses you ride to chase foxes—why, you bragged not long ago how you learned to ride your own horse in order to chase a fox.”
Leigh says, “For Christ sake--
Effie says, “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.”
Leigh says, “Well, you might be right, but there is a more civilized way to go about it. I mean, using the word nigger tips you, why not just use the word Negro, or even Black, as some of them say now?”
Effie, say, “’Tip’ me! What are you talking about? I call a spade a spade, a nigger a nigger.”
Leigh laughs again, but says nothing.
Effie says, “Leigh, you calling me not-civilized, when me and Jarod only speak the truth?”
Leigh laughs and says, “Hold on, now Effie. I know. I know—I mean, when we lived in the District, I kept a loaded and cocked .38 pistol by my bed nights when Anderson was away. You could not even get on a bus without one of them sitting against you. When we sold our house there on MacArthur Boulevard—good grief, and not ten blocks from Georgetown University and Key Bridge—when they got right up next to us—moved right next door—and we wanted to leave, the value on our house had plummeted. We lost tens of thousands of dollars.”
Effie says, “Well, we lived on the West End for a while near to Jarod’s and my work, but the same thing happened. Niggers moved in, and started taking over—walking their baby carriages on the street, their little dirty pickaninnies running around like jungle bunnies, picnicking in the parks, drinking beer, kissing each other—enough to make you sick. And, the sickest thing was all the whites going right along with it—saying they had a right. It got so there was nearly as many whites saying they had rights, as there were niggers saying so. That’s when we moved. Well, they’ve got no rights as far as us and our friends are concerned.”
Leigh says, “We’re glad we can now have children and know they will be going to school with there own kind. I mean—they’ll go to school with kids of their own social sphere as well as their own color. Near us—well, in town—there are some Nigerians and Koreans and Filipinos—and I know some who work with me at the World Bank and there’s others who work at the International Monetary Fund—but they’re not like our colored, they’re civilized and at least try to learn to speak English properly. And they have their own school—a church school for themselves.”
Anderson says, “Yes, that is true. I feel better about the whole thing. I think they do too. I mean, I think our American Negros and other colored—I think they do want to be to themselves as much as we do.”
They are all quiet for several moments. I hear more forks on plates.
Effie says, “Momma, this is the best cake—this is my second piece. I just love this egg-white icing. You’re going to write me down the recipe.”
Momma says, “Effie, when Jarod gets back I want y’all to leave, and you, too, Leigh and Anderson. It is shocking to me to hear y’all talk like this. I have been living in a cocoon. I married a man, a Negro man who looks white. I have three boys with him. If this was known, I am not sure where we’d be right now. I certainly would not have my supervisor job at the Union Underwear where a Negro is not even allowed to operate a sewing machine. My husband’s twin sister is a Janitor in the same factory because she is a Negro. I am not sure what my relations with y’all will be from now on. I appreciate y’all coming to help me with the bank papers to buy this house, but I reckon I have sense enough to go to the bank and listen to what they have to say. If I don’t understand it, I’ll hire a lawyer. But please, Effie, pack up the things you bought—the food—and take your and your children’s things out of my house. You and Jarod are nothing but criminals, and you are raising my grandchildren to be just like you. Ann Kramer told me about y’all probably being in on the bombing of that Negro family’s house. You, too, Leigh, and I mean right now—all of y’all cannot leave fast enough. Do not say one more word, not one of you. Get out of my house. You’re my blood, but I am ashamed of you all. Most of all, though, I am ashamed of myself because the Negro part of my family is the fairest, the kindest, the most generous, and loving toward me and my boys.”
Leigh says, “But, Momma—“
Momma says, “Leigh, I said not another word. All of y’all get out now.”
Nobody says anything more. Chairs scrape on the floor.
Leigh—crying—and Anderson come into the livingroom, get their things, and put them on as they leave.
Effie, right behind them, goes down the hallway to Jimmie’s room, and calls out, “Junior! Dina! Get your things together! We’re going to Grannie Slaybach’s!” Back in the kitchen, she slams things around as she packs up the groceries her and Jarod brought and puts the refilled grocery sacks by the front door. Then, she comes in the livingroom and grabs their overnight bags and sets them by the door. By the time she has her coat and things on, and the kids’ things on them, Jarod arrives from taking Daddy. With their baby in her arms, she says to him, “Don’t ask me nothing—get Cindy’s bassinet and put it and these other things in the car. We’re going to your mother’s.”
He says, “I’m taking the beer.” He brushes past her and goes into the kitchen.
Effie tells her children to come on, and she starts carrying their things out to the car.
I hear the harsh clink of the beer bottles as Jarod takes them out of the refrigerator and puts them back in the box.
Momma must be at the sink. I hear the water running and then hear her putting dishes into the water. Directly, she comes into the livingroom, goes on through and back toward her room. Her door opens and closes quietly.
Jimmie comes in and pulls the puzzle board from under the coffeetable, slides it on the top, picks ups a piece, and looks for its place.
Jarod comes to the front door with this box of beer, opens the door and goes out, just as Effie takes the last of their things and closes the door.
The house is quiet except for the low moan of the nearly burned logs in the fireplace. I put on some newspaper, a few sticks of kindling, a couple of logs, and take the billows and pump air into the coals. The fire catches well. Shortly, it burns bright, putting off good heat. Outside the snow is again coming down heavily. The expanse of our front yard where my stepsister’s kids massacred the Negro snowchildren and their white friend, even as I watch, becomes pure, silky white, making it look as though nothing of the sort ever happened there.