Go tell it on the mountain - James Baldwin [76]
She had never seen him smile before, nor had she really, for that matter, ever heard his voice. Her heart gave a dreadful leap and then, as dreadfully, seemed to have stopped for ever. She could only stand there, staring at him. If he had asked her to repeat what she wanted she could not possibly have remembered what it was. And she found that she was looking into his eyes and where she had thought there was no light at all she found a light she had never seen before—and he was smiling still, but there was something curiously urgent in his smile. Then he said: ‘How many lemons, little girl?’
‘Six,’ she said at last, and discovered to her vast relief that nothing had happened: the sun was still shinning, the fat man still sat at the door, her heart was beating as though it had never stopped. She was not, however, fooled; she remembered the instant at which her heart had stopped, and she knew that it beat now with a difference.
He put the lemons into a bag, with a curious difference, she came closer to the counter to give him the money. She was in a terrible state, for she found that she could neither take her eyes off him nor look at him.
‘Is that your mother you come in with all the time?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she said, ‘that’s my aunt.’ She did not know why she said it, but she said: ‘My mother’s dead.’
‘Oh,’ he said. Then: ‘Mine, too.’ They both looked thoughtfully at the money on the counter. He picked it up, but did not move. ‘I didn’t think it was your mother,’ he said, finally.
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. She don’t look like you.’
He started to light a cigarette, and then looked at her and put the packet in his pocket again.
‘Don’t mind me,’ she said quickly. ‘Anyway, I got to go. She’s waiting—we going out.’
He turned and banged the cash register. She picked up her lemons. He gave her her change. She felt that she ought to say something else—it didn’t seem right, somewhat, just to walk out—but she could not think of anything. But he said:
‘Then that’s why you so dressed up to-day. Where you going to go?’
‘We going to a picnic—a church picnic,’ she said, and suddenly, unaccountably, and for the first time, smiled.
And he smiled, too, and lit his cigarette, blowing the smoke carefully away from her. ‘You like picnics?’
‘Sometimes,’ she said. She was not comfortable with him yet, and still she was beginning to feel that she would like to stand and talk to him all day. She wanted to ask him what he was reading, but she did not dare. Yet: ‘What’s your name?’ she abruptly brought out.
‘Richard,’ he said.
‘Oh,’ she said thoughtfully. Then: ‘Mine’s Elizabeth.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I heard her call you one time.’
‘Well,’ she said helplessly, after a long pause, ‘good-bye.’
‘Good-bye? You ain’t going away, is you?’
‘Oh, no,’ she said, in confusion.
‘Well,’ he said, and smiled and bowed, ‘good day.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘good day.’
And she turned and walked out into the streets; no the same streets from which she had entered a moment ago. These streets, the sky above, the sun, the drifting people, all had, in a moment, changed, and would never be the same again.
‘You remember that day,’ he asked much later, ‘when you come into the store?’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, you was mighty pretty.’
‘I didn’t think you never looked at me.’
‘Well, I didn’t think you never looked at me.’
‘You was reading a book.’
‘Yes.’
‘What book was it, Richard?’
‘Oh, I don’t remember. Just a book.’
‘You smiled.’
‘You did, too.’
‘No, I didn’t. I remember.’
‘Yes, you did.’
‘No, I didn’t. Not till you did.’
‘Well, anyway—you was mighty pretty.’
She did not like to think of what hardness of heart, what calculated weeping, what deceit, what cruelty she now went into battle with her aunt fro her freedom. And she wont it, even though on certain not-to-be-dismissed conditions. The principal condition was that she should put herself under the protection of a distant, unspeakably respectable female relative of her aunt’s, who lived in New York City—for when the summer ended, Richard said that he was going there and he wanted her to come with him. They would get married there. Richard said that he hated the South, and this was perhaps the reason it did no