Native Son - Richard Wright [10]
“Stop prophesying about me,” he said.
“I prophesy much as I please! And if you don’t like it, you can get out. We can get along without you. We can live in one room just like we living now, even with you gone,” she said.
“Aw, for Chrissakes!” he said, his voice filled with nervous irritation.
“You’ll regret how you living some day,” she went on. “If you don’t stop running with that gang of yours and do right you’ll end up where you never thought you would. You think I don’t know what you boys is doing, but I do. And the gallows is at the end of the road you traveling, boy. Just remember that.” She turned and looked at Buddy. “Throw that box outside, Buddy.”
“Yessum.”
There was silence. Buddy took the box out. The mother went behind the curtain to the gas stove. Vera sat up in bed and swung her feet to the floor.
“Lay back down, Vera,” the mother said.
“I feel all right now, Ma. I got to go to my sewing class.”
“Well, if you feel like it, set the table,” the mother said, going behind the curtain again. “Lord, I get so tired of this I don’t know what to do,” her voice floated plaintively from behind the curtain. “All I ever do is try to make a home for you children and you don’t care.”
“Aw, Ma,” Vera protested. “Don’t say that.”
“Vera, sometimes I just want to lay down and quit.”
“Ma, please don’t say that.”
“I can’t last many more years, living like this.”
“I’ll be old enough to work soon, Ma.”
“I reckon I’ll be dead then. I reckon God’ll call me home.”
Vera went behind the curtain and Bigger heard her trying to comfort his mother. He shut their voices out of his mind. He hated his family because he knew that they were suffering and that he was powerless to help them. He knew that the moment he allowed himself to feel to its fulness how they lived, the shame and misery of their lives, he would be swept out of himself with fear and despair. So he held toward them an attitude of iron reserve; he lived with them, but behind a wall, a curtain. And toward himself he was even more exacting. He knew that the moment he allowed what his life meant to enter fully into his consciousness, he would either kill himself or someone else. So he denied himself and acted tough.
He got up and crushed his cigarette upon the window sill. Vera came into the room and placed knives and forks upon the table.
“Get ready to eat, you-all,” the mother called.
He sat at the table. The odor of frying bacon and boiling coffee drifted to him from behind the curtain. His mother’s voice floated to him in song.
Life is like a mountain railroad
With an engineer that’s brave
We must make the run successful
From the cradle to the grave….
The song irked him and he was glad when she stopped and came into the room with a pot of coffee and a plate of crinkled bacon. Vera brought the bread in and they sat down. His mother closed her eyes and lowered her head and mumbled, “Lord, we thank Thee for the food You done placed before us for the nourishment of our bodies. Amen.” She lifted her eyes and without changing her tone of voice, said, “You going to have to learn to get up earlier than this, Bigger, to hold a job.”
He did not answer or look up.
“You want me to pour you some coffee?” Vera asked.
“Yeah.”
“You going to take the job, ain’t you, Bigger?” his mother asked.
He laid down his fork and stared at her.
“I told you last night I was going to take it. How many times you want to ask me?”
“Well, don’t bite her head off,” Vera said. “She only asked you a question.”
“Pass the bread and stop being smart.”
“You know you have to see Mr. Dalton at five-thirty,” his mother said.
“You done said that ten times.”
“I don’t want you to forget, son.”
“And you know how you can forget,” Vera said.
“Aw, lay off Bigger,” Buddy said. “He told you he was going to take the job.”
“Don’t tell ’em nothing,” Bigger said.
“You shut your mouth, Buddy, or get up from this table,” the mother said. “I’m not going to take any stinking sass from you. One fool in the family’s enough.”
“Lay off, Ma,” Buddy said.
“Bigger’s setting here like he ain