Go tell it on the mountain - James Baldwin [64]
She sat down at the table and stared at him with scorn and amazement; sat down heavily, as though she had been struck. He knew that she was gathering her forces; and now she said what he had dreaded to hear:
‘And suppose I went through town and told your wife, and the churchfolks, and everybody—suppose I did that, Reverend?’
‘And who you think,’ he asked—he felt himself enveloped by an awful, falling silence—‘is going to believe you?’
She laughed. ‘Enough folks’d believe me to make it mighty hard on you.’ And she watched him. He walked up and down the kitchen, trying to avoid her eyes. ‘You just think back,’ she said, ‘to that first night, right here on this damn white folks’ floor, and you’ll see it’s too late for you to talk to Esther about how holy you is. I don’t care if you want to live a lie, but I don’t see no reason for you to make me suffer on account of it.’
‘You can go around and tell folks if you want to,’ he said, boldly, ‘but it ain’t going to look so good for you neither.’
She laughed again. ‘But I ain’t the holy one. You’s a married man, and you’s a preacher—and who you think folks is going to blame most?’
He watched her with a hatred that was mixed with his old desire, knowing that once more she had the victory.
‘I can’t marry you, you know that,’ he said. ‘Now, what you want me to do?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘and I reckon you wouldn’t marry me even if you was free. I reckon you don’t want no whore like Esther for your wife. Esther’s just for the night, for the dark, where won’t nobody see you getting your holy self all dirtied up with Esther. Esther’s just good enough to go out and have your bastard somewhere in the goddamn woods. Ain’t that so, Reverend?’
He did not answer. He could find no words. There was only silence in him, like the grave.
She rose, and moved to the open kitchen door, where she stood, her back to him, looking out into the yard and on the silent streets where the last, dead rays of the sun still lingered.
‘But I reckon,’ she said slowly, ‘that I don’t want to be with you no more’n you want to be with me. I don’t want no man what’s ashamed and scared. Can’t do me no good, that kind of man.’ She turned in the door and faced him; this was the last time she really looked at him, and he would carry that look to his grave. ‘There’s just one thing I want you to do,’ she said. ‘You do that, and we be all right.’
‘What you want me to do?’ he asked, and felt ashamed.
‘I would go through this town,’ she said, ‘and tell everybody about the Lord’s anointed. Only reason I don’t is because I don’t want my mama and daddy to know what a fool I been. I ain’t ashamed of it—I’m ashamed of you—you done made me feel a shame I ain’t never felt before. I shamed before my God—to let somebody make me cheap, like you done done.’
He said nothing. She turned her back to him again.
‘I … just want to go somewhere,’ she said, ‘go somewhere, and have my baby, and think all this out of my mind. I want to go somewhere and get my mind straight. That’s what I want you to do—and that’s pretty cheap. I guess it takes a holy man to make a girl a real whore.’
‘Girl,’ he said, ‘I ain’t got no money.’
‘Well,’ she said, coldly, ‘you damn well better find some.’
Then she began to cry. He moved toward her, but she moved away.
‘If I go out into the field,’ he said, helplessly, ‘I ought to be able to make enough money to send you away.’
‘How long that going to take?’
‘A month maybe.’
And she shook her head. ‘I ain’t going to stay around here that long.’
They stood in silence in the open kitchen door, she struggling against her tears, he struggling against his shame. He could only think: ‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.’
‘Ain’t you got nothing saved up? she asked at last. ‘Look to me like you been married long enough to’ve saved something!’
Then he remembered that Deborah had been saving money since their wedding day. She kept it in a tin box at the top of the cupboard. He thought how sin led to sin.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘a little. I don’t know how much.’
‘You bring it to-morrow,’ she told him.
‘Yes,’ he said.
He watched her as she moved from the door and went to the closet for her hat and coat. Then she came back, d