Go tell it on the mountain - James Baldwin [40]
Sometimes from the parlor where he and his visitor sat he would call her:
‘Hey, Flo!’
And she would not answer. She hated to be called ‘Flo,’ but he never remembered. He might call her again, and when she did not answer he would come into the kitchen.
‘What’s the matter with you, girl? Don’t you hear me a-calling you?’
And once when she still made no answer, but sat perfectly still, watching him with bitter eyes, he was forced to make verbal recognition that there was something wrong.
‘What’s the matter, old lady? You mad at me?’
And when in genuine bewilderment he stared at her, head to one side, the faintest of smiles on his face, something began to yield in her, something she fought, standing up and snarling at him in a lowered voice so that the visitor might not hear:
‘I wish you’d tell me just how you think we’s going to live all week on a turkey and five pounds of coffee?’
‘Honey, I ain’t bought nothing we didn’t need!’
She sighed in helpless fury, and felt tears springing to her eyes.
‘I done told you time and again to give me the money when you get paid, and let me do the shopping—’cause you ain’t got the sense that you was born with.’
‘Baby, I wasn’t doing a thing in the world but trying to help you out. I thought maybe you wanted to go somewhere to-night and you didn’t want to be bothered with no shopping.’
‘Next time you want to do me a favor, you tell me first, you hear? And how you expect me to go to a show when you done brought this bird home for me to clean?’
‘Honey, I’ll clean it. It don’t take no time at all.’
He moved to the table where the turkey lay and looked at it critically, as though he were seeing it for the first time. Then he looked at her and ginned. ‘That ain’t nothing to get mad about.’
She began to cry. ‘I declare I don’t know what gets into you. Every week the Lord sends you go out and do some foolishness. How do you expect us to get enough money to get away from here if you all the time going to be spending your money on foolishness?’
When she cried, he tried to comfort her, putting his great hand on her shoulder and kissing her where the tears fell.
‘Baby, I’m sorry. I thought it’d be a nice surprise.’
‘The only surprise I want from you is to learn some sense! That’d be a surprise! You think I want to stay around here the rest of my life with these dirty niggers you al the time bring home?’
‘Where you expect us to live, honey, where we ain’t going to be with niggers?’
Then she turned away, looking out of the kitchen window. It faced an elevated train that passed so close she always felt that she might spit in the faces of the flying, staring people.
‘I just don’t like all that ragtag … looks like you think so much of.’
Then there was silence. Although she had turned her back to him, she felt that he was no longer smiling and that his eyes, watching her, had darkened.
‘And what kind of man you think you married?’
‘I thought I married a man with some get up and go to him, who didn’t just want to stay on the bottom all his life!’
‘And what you want me to me to do, Florence? You want me to turn white?’
This question always filled her with an ecstasy of hatred. She turned and faced him, and, forgetting that there was someone sitting in the parlor, shouted:
‘You ain’t got to be white to have some self-respect! You reckon I slave in this house like I do so you and them common niggers can sit here every afternoon throwing ashes all over the floor?’
‘And who’s common now, Florence?’ he asked, quietly, in the immediate and awful silence in which she recognized her err