If Beale Street Could Talk

  FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, OCTOBER 2006

  Copyright © 1974 by James Baldwin

  Copyright renewed 2002 by Gloria Baldwin Karefa-Smart

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by The Dial Press, New York, in 1974.

  Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage International and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The lines on this page are from “My Man,” words by Albert Willemetz and Jacques Charles, music by Maurice Yvain, English lyrics by Channing Pollock. Copyright © 1920 by Francis Salabert, Paris, France. Copyright renewal 1948 Francis Salabert, Paris, France. American version copyrighted 1921 by Francis Salabert, Paris, France. Copyright renewal 1949 Francis Salabert, Paris, France—Leo Feist, Inc., New York. Used by permission.

  Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress.

  eISBN: 978-0-8041-4967-9

  www.vintagebooks.com

  Cover design by Helen Yentus

  Cover photograph © Karl Bissinger

  v3.1

  for YORAN

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  One: Troubled About My Soul

  Two: Zion

  About the Author

  Other Books by This Author

  Mary, Mary,

  What you going to name

  That pretty little baby?

  ONE

  troubled

  about

  my

  soul

  I look at myself in the mirror. I know that I was christened Clementine, and so it would make sense if people called me Clem, or even, come to think of it, Clementine, since that’s my name: but they don’t. People call me Tish. I guess that makes sense, too. I’m tired, and I’m beginning to think that maybe everything that happens makes sense. Like, if it didn’t make sense, how could it happen? But that’s really a terrible thought. It can only come out of trouble—trouble that doesn’t make sense.

  Today, I went to see Fonny. That’s not his name, either, he was christened Alonzo: and it might make sense if people called him Lonnie. But, no, we’ve always called him Fonny. Alonzo Hunt, that’s his name. I’ve known him all my life, and I hope I’ll always know him. But I only call him Alonzo whan I have to break down some real heavy shit to him.

  Today, I said, “—Alonzo—?”

  And he looked at me, that quickening look he has when I call him by his name.

  He’s in jail. So where we were, I was sitting on a bench in front of a board, and he was sitting on a bench in front of a board. And we were facing each other through a wall of glass between us. You can’t hear anything through this glass, and so you both have a little telephone. You have to talk through that. I don’t know why people always look down when they talk through a telephone, but they always do. You have to remember to look up at the person you’re talking to.

  I always remember now, because he’s in jail and I love his eyes and every time I see him I’m afraid I’ll never see him again. So I pick up the phone as soon as I get there and I just hold it and I keep looking up at him.

  So, when I said, “—Alonzo—?” he looked down and then he looked up and he smiled and he held the phone and he waited.

  I hope that nobody has ever had to look at anybody they love through glass.

  And I didn’t say it the way I meant to say it. I meant to say it in a very offhand way, so he wouldn’t be too upset, so he’d understand that I was saying it without any kind of accusation in my heart.

  You see: I know him. He’s very proud, and he worries a lot, and, when I think about it, I know—he doesn’t—that that’s the biggest reason he’s in jail. He worries too much already, I don’t want him to worry about me. In fact, I didn’t want to say what I had to say. But I knew I had to say it. He had to know.

  And I thought, too, that when he got over being worried, when he was lying by himself at night, when he was all by himself, in the very deepest part of himself, maybe, when he thought about it, he’d be glad. And that might help him.

  I said, “Alonzo, we’re going to have a baby.”

  I looked at him. I know I smiled. His face looked as though it were plunging into water. I couldn’t touch him. I wanted so to touch him. I smiled again and my hands got wet on the phone and then for a moment I couldn’t see him at all and I shook my head and my face was wet and I said, “I’m glad. I’m glad. Don’t you worry. I’m glad.”

  But he was far away from me now, all by himself. I waited for him to come back. I could see it flash across his face: my baby? I knew that he would think that. I don’t mean that he doubted me: but a man thinks that. And for those few seconds while he was out there by himself, away from me, the baby was the only real thing in the world, more real than the prison, more real than me.

  I should have said already: we’re not married. That means more to him than it does to me, but I understand how he feels. We were going to get married, but then he went to jail.

  Fonny is twenty-two. I am nineteen.

  He asked the ridiculous question: “Are you sure?”

  “No. I ain’t sure. I’m just trying to mess with your mind.”

  Then he grinned. He grinned because, then, he knew. “What we going to do?” he asked me—just like a little boy.

  “Well, we ain’t going to drown it. So, I guess we’ll have to raise it.”

  Fonny threw back his head, and laughed, he laughed till tears come down his face. So, then, I felt that the first part, that I’d been so frightened of, would be all right.

  “Did you tell Frank?” he asked me.

  Frank is his father.

  I said, “Not yet.”

  “You tell your folks?”

  “Not yet. But don’t worry about them. I just wanted to tell you first.”

  “Well,” he said, “I guess that makes sense. A baby.”

  He looked at me, then he looked down. “What you going to do, for real?”

  “I’m going to do just like I been doing. I’ll work up to just about the last month. And then, Mama and Sis will take care for me, you ain’t got to worry. And anyway we have you out of here before then.”

  “You sure about that?” With his little smile.

  “Of course I’m sure about that. I’m always sure about that.”

  I knew what he was thinking, but I can’t let myself think about it—not now, watching him. I must be sure.

  The man came up behind Fonny, and it was time to go. Fonny smiled and raised his fist, like always, and I raised mine and he stood up. I’m always kind of surprised when I see him in here, at how tall he is. Of course, he’s lost weight and that may make him seem taller.

  He turned around and went through the door and the door closed behind him.

  I felt dizzy. I hadn’t eaten much all day, and now it was getting late.

  I walked out, to cross these big, wide corridors I’ve come to hate, corridors wider than all the Sahara desert. The Sahara is never empty; these corridors are never empty. If you cross the Sahara, and you fall, by and by vultures circle around you, smelling, sensing, your death. They circle lower and lower: they wait. They know. They know exactly when the flesh is ready, when the spirit cannot fight back. The poor are always cr
ossing the Sahara. And the lawyers and bondsmen and all that crowd circle around the poor, exactly like vultures. Of course, they’re not any richer than the poor, really, that’s why they’ve turned into vultures, scavengers, indecent garbage men, and I’m talking about the black cats, too, who, in so many ways, are worse. I think that, personally, I would be ashamed. But I’ve had to think about it and now I think that maybe not. I don’t know what I wouldn’t do to get Fonny out of jail. I’ve never come across any shame down here, except shame like mine, except the shame of the hardworking black ladies, who call me Daughter, and the shame of proud Puerto Ricans, who don’t understand what’s happened—no one who speaks to them speaks Spanish, for example—and who are ashamed that they have loved ones in jail. But they are wrong to be ashamed. The people responsible for these jails should be ashamed.

  And I’m not ashamed of Fonny. If anything, I’m proud. He’s a man. You can tell by the way he’s taken all this shit that he’s a man. Sometimes, I admit, I’m scared—because nobody can take the shit they throw on us forever. But, then, you just have to somehow fix your mind to get from one day to the next. If you think too far ahead, if you even try to think too far ahead, you’ll never make it.

  Sometimes I take the subway home, sometimes I take the bus. Today, I took the bus because it takes a little longer and I had a lot on my mind.

  Being in trouble can have a funny effect on the mind. I don’t know if I can explain this. You go through some days and you seem to be hearing people and you seem to be talking to them and you seem to be doing your work, or, at least, your work gets done; but you haven’t seen or heard a soul and if someone asked you what you have done that day you’d have to think awhile before you could answer. But, at the same time, and even on the self-same day—and this is what is hard to explain—you see people like you never saw them before. They shine as bright as a razor. Maybe it’s because you see people differently than you saw them before your trouble started. Maybe you wonder about them more, but in a different way, and this makes them very strange to you. Maybe you get scared and numb, because you don’t know if you can depend on people for anything, anymore.

  And, even if they wanted to do something, what could they do? I can’t say to anybody in this bus, Look, Fonny is in trouble, he’s in jail—can you imagine what anybody on this bus would say to me if they knew, from my mouth, that I love somebody in jail?—and I know he’s never committed any crime and he’s a beautiful person, please help me get him out. Can you imagine what anybody on this bus would say? What would you say? I can’t say, I’m going to have this baby and I’m scared, too, and I don’t want anything to happen to my baby’s father, don’t let him die in prison, please, oh, please! You can’t say that. That means you can’t really say anything. Trouble means you’re alone. You sit down, and you look out the window and you wonder if you’re going to spend the rest of your life going back and forth on this bus. And if you do, what’s going to happen to your baby? What’s going to happen to Fonny?

  And if you ever did like the city, you don’t like it anymore. If I ever get out of this, if we ever get out of this, I swear I’ll never set foot in downtown New York again.

  Maybe I used to like it, a long time ago, when Daddy used to bring me and Sis here and we’d watch the people and the buildings and Daddy would point out different sights to us and we might stop in Battery Park and have ice cream and hot dogs. Those were great days and we were always very happy—but that was because of our father, not because of the city. It was because we knew our father loved us. Now, I can say, because I certainly know it now, the city didn’t. They looked at us as though we were zebras—and, you know, some people like zebras and some people don’t. But nobody ever asks the zebra.

  It’s true that I haven’t seen much of other cities, only Philadelphia and Albany, but I swear that New York must be the ugliest and the dirtiest city in the world. It must have the ugliest buildings and the nastiest people. It’s got to have the worst cops. If any place is worse, it’s got to be so close to hell that you can smell the people frying. And, come to think of it, that’s exactly the smell of New York in the summertime.

  I met Fonny in the streets of this city. I was little, he was not so little. I was around six—somewhere around there—and he was around nine. They lived across the street, him and his family, his mother and two older sisters and his father, and his father ran a tailor shop. Looking back, now, I kind of wonder who he ran the tailor shop for: we didn’t know anybody who had money to take clothes to the tailor—well, maybe once in a great while. But I don’t think we could have kept him in business. Of course, as I’ve been told, people, colored people, weren’t as poor then as they had been when my Mama and Daddy were trying to get it together. They weren’t as poor then as we had been in the South. But we were certainly poor enough, and we still are.

  I never really noticed Fonny until once we got into a fight, after school. This fight didn’t really have anything to do with Fonny and me at all. I had a girl friend, named Geneva, a kind of loud, raunchy girl, with her hair plaited tight on her head, with big, ashy knees and long legs and big feet; and she was always into something. Naturally she was my best friend, since I was never into anything. I was skinny and scared and so I followed her and got into all her shit. Nobody else wanted me, really, and you know that nobody else wanted her. Well, she said that she couldn’t stand Fonny. Every time she looked at him, it just made her sick. She was always telling me how ugly he was, with skin just like raw, wet potato rinds and eyes like a Chinaman and all that nappy hair and them thick lips. And so bow-legged he had bunions on his ankle bones; and the way his behind stuck out, his mother must have been a gorilla. I agreed with her because I had to, but I didn’t really think he was as bad as all that. I kind of liked his eyes, and, to tell the truth, I thought that if people in China had eyes like that, I wouldn’t mind going to China. I had never seen a gorilla, so his behind looked perfectly normal to me, and wasn’t, really, when you had to think about it, as big as Geneva’s; and it wasn’t until much later that I realized that he was, yes, a little bowlegged. But Geneva was always up in Fonny’s face. I don’t think he ever noticed her at all. He was always too busy with his friends, who were the worst boys on the block. They were always coming down the street, in rags, bleeding, full of lumps, and, just before this fight, Fonny had lost a tooth.

  Fonny had a friend named Daniel, a big, black boy, and Daniel had a thing about Geneva something like the way Geneva had a thing about Fonny. And I don’t remember how it all started, but, finally, Daniel had Geneva down on the ground, the two of them rolling around, and I was trying to pull Daniel off her and Fonny was pulling on me. I turned around and hit him with the only thing I could get my hands on, I grabbed it out of the garbage can. It was only a stick; but it had a nail in it. The nail raked across his cheek and it broke the skin and the blood started dripping. I couldn’t believe my eyes, I was so scared. Fonny put his hand to his face and then looked at me and then looked at his hand and I didn’t have any better sense than to drop the stick and run. Fonny ran after me and, to make matters worse, Geneva saw the blood and she started screaming that I’d killed him, I’d killed him! Fonny caught up to me in no time and he grabbed me tight and he spit at me through the hole where his tooth used to be. He caught me right on the mouth, and—it so humiliated me, I guess—because he hadn’t hit me, or hurt me—and maybe because I sensed what he had not done—that I screamed and started to cry. It’s funny. Maybe my life changed in that very moment when Fonny’s spit hit me in the mouth. Geneva and Daniel, who had started the whole thing, and didn’t have a scratch on them, both began to scream at me. Geneva said that I’d killed him for sure, yes, I’d killed him, people caught the lockjaw and died from rusty nails. And Daniel said, Yes, he knew, he had a uncle down home who died like that. Fonny was listening to all this, while the blood kept dripping and I kept crying. Finally, he must have realized that they were talking about him, and that he was a dead man—o
r boy—because he started crying, too, and then Daniel and Geneva took him between them and walked off, leaving me there, alone.

  And I didn’t see Fonny for a couple of days. I was sure he had the lockjaw, and was dying; and Geneva said that just as soon as he was dead, which would be any minute, the police would come and put me in the electric chair. I watched the tailor shop, but everything seemed normal. Mr. Hunt was there, with his laughing, light-brown-skinned self, pressing pants, and telling jokes to whoever was in the shop—there was always someone in the shop—and every once in a while, Mrs. Hunt would come by. She was a Sanctified woman, who didn’t smile much, but, still, neither of them acted as if their son was dying.

  So, when I hadn’t seen Fonny for a couple of days, I waited until the tailor shop seemed empty, when Mr. Hunt was in there by himself, and I went over there. Mr. Hunt knew me, then, a little, like we all knew each other on the block.

  “Hey, Tish,” he said, “how you doing? How’s the family?”

  I said, “Just fine, Mr. Hunt.” I wanted to say, How’s your family? which I always did say and had planned to say, but I couldn’t.

  “How you doing in school?” he asked me, after a minute: and I thought he looked at me in a real strange way.

  “Oh, all right,” I said, and my heart started to beating like it was going to jump out of my chest.

  Mr. Hunt pressed down that sort of double ironing board they have in tailor shops—like two ironing boards facing each other—he pressed that down, and he looked at me for a minute and then he laughed and said, “Reckon that big-headed boy of mine be back here pretty soon.”

  I heard what he said, and I understood—something; but I didn’t know what it was I understood.

  I walked to the door of the shop, making like I was going out, and then I turned and I said, “What’s that, Mr. Hunt?”

  Mr. Hunt was still smiling. He pulled the presser down and turned over the pants or whatever it was he had in there, and said, “Fonny. His Mama sent him down to her folks in the country for a little while. Claim he get into too much trouble up here.”