Fear

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  I knew that there were a number of whitefolks in town that owed her favors. Bailey and I had seen the books which showed how she had lent money to Blacks and whites alike during the Depression, and most still owed her. But I couldn't aptly remember seeing Dr. Lincoln's name, nor had I ever heard of a Negro's going to him as a patient. However, Momma said we were going, and put water on the stove for our baths. I had never been to a doctor, so she told me that after the bath (which would make my mouth feel better) I had to put on freshly starched and ironed underclothes from inside out. The ache failed to respond to the bath, and I knew then that the pain was more serious than that which anyone had ever suffered. Before we left the Store, she ordered me to brush my teeth and then wash my mouth with Listerine. The idea of even opening my clamped jaws increased the pain, but upon her explanation that when you go to a doctor you have to clean yourself all over, but most especially the part that's to be examined, I screwed up my courage and unlocked my teeth. The cool air in my mouth and the jarring of my molars dislodged what little remained of my reason. I had frozen to the pain, my family nearly had to tie me down to take the toothbrush away. It was no small effort to get me started on the road to the dentist. Momma spoke to all the passersby but didn't stop to chat. She explained over her shoulder that we were going to the doctor and she'd “pass the time of day” on our way home. Until we reached the pond the pain was my world, an aura that haloed me for three feet around. Crossing the bridge into whitefolks' country, pieces of sanity pushed themselves forward. I had to stop moaning and start walking straight. The white towel, which was drawn under my chin and tied over my head, had to be arranged. If one was dying, it had to be done in style if the dying took place in whitefolks' part of town. On the other side of the bridge the ache seemed to lessen as if a whitebreeze blew off the whitefolks and cushioned everything in their neighborhood—including my jaw. The gravel road was smoother, the stones smaller and the tree branches hung down around the path and nearly covered us. If the pain didn't diminish then, the familiar yet strange sights hypnotized me into believing that it had.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  36 The world had ended, and I was the only person who knew it. People walked along the streets as if the pavements hadn't all crumbled beneath their feet. They pretended to breathe in and out while all the time I knew the air had been sucked away in a monstrous inhalation from God Himself. I alone was suffocating in the nightmare. The little pleasure I was able to take from the fact that if I could have a baby I obviously wasn't a lesbian was crowded into my mind's tiniest corner by the massive pushing in of fear, guilt and self-revulsion. For eons, it seemed, I had accepted my plight as the hapless, put-upon victim of fate and the Furies, but this time I had to face the fact that I had brought my new catastrophe upon myself. How was I to blame the innocent man whom I had lured into making love to me? In order to be profoundly dishonest, a person must have one of two qualities: either he is unscrupulously ambitious, or he is unswervingly egocentric. He must believe that for his ends to be served all things and people can justifiably be shifted about, or that he is the center not only of his own world but of the worlds which others inhabit. I had neither element in my personality, so I hefted the burden of pregnancy at sixteen onto my own shoulders where it belonged. Admittedly, I staggered under the weight. I finally sent a letter to Bailey, who was at sea with the merchant marines. He wrote back, and he cautioned me against telling Mother of my condition. We both knew her to be violently opposed to abortions, and she would very likely order me to quit school. Bailey suggested that if I quit school before getting my high school diploma I'd find it nearly impossible to return. The first three months, while I was adapting myself to the fact of pregnancy (I didn't really link pregnancy to the possibility of my having a baby until weeks before my confinement), were a hazy period in which days seemed to lie just below the water level, never emerging fully. Fortunately, Mother was tied up tighter than Dick's hatband in the weave of her own life. She noticed me, as usual, out of the corner of her existence. As long as I was healthy, clothed and smiling she felt no need to focus her attention on me. As always, her major concern was to live the life given to her, and her children were expected to do the same. And to do it without too much brouhaha. Under her loose scrutiny I grew more buxom, and my brown skin smoothed and tight-pored, like pancakes fried on an unoiled skillet. And still she didn't suspect. Some years before, I had established a code which never varied. I didn't lie.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  His confidence that my uncle and every other Black man who heard of the Klan's coming ride would scurry under their houses to hide in chicken droppings was too humiliating to hear. Without waiting for Momma's thanks, he rode out of the yard, sure that things were as they should be and that he was a gentle squire, saving those deserving serfs from the laws of the land, which he condoned. Immediately, while his horse's hoofs were still loudly thudding the ground, Momma blew out the coal-oil lamps. She had a quiet, hard talk with Uncle Willie and called Bailey and me into the Store. We were told to take the potatoes and onions out of their bins and knock out the dividing walls that kept them apart. Then with a tedious and fearful slowness Uncle Willie gave me his rubber-tipped cane and bent down to get into the now-enlarged empty bin. It took forever before he lay down flat, and then we covered him with potatoes and onions, layer upon layer, like a casserole. Grandmother knelt praying in the darkened Store. It was fortunate that the “boys” didn't ride into our yard that evening and insist that Momma open the Store. They would have surely found Uncle Willie and just as surely lynched him. He moaned the whole night through as if he had, in fact, been guilty of some heinous crime. The heavy sounds pushed their way up out of the blanket of vegetables and I pictured his mouth pulling down on the right side and his saliva flowing into the eyes of new potatoes and waiting there like dew drops for the warmth of morning.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  It meant that he had seen or heard of something so ugly or frightening that he was paralyzed as a result. He explained when we were smaller that when things were very bad his soul just crawled behind his heart and curled up and went to sleep. When it awoke, the fearful thing had gone away. Ever since we read The Fall of the House of Usher, we had made a pact that neither of us would allow the other to be buried without making “absolutely positively sure” (his favorite phrase) that the person was dead. I also had to swear that when his soul was sleeping I would never try to wake it, for the shock might make it go to sleep forever. So I let him be, and after a while Momma had to let him alone too. I waited on customers, and walked around him or leaned over him and, as I suspected, he didn't respond. When the spell wore off he asked Uncle Willie what colored people had done to white people in the first place. Uncle Willie, who never was one for explaining things because he took after Momma, said little except that “colored people hadn't even bothered a hair on whitefolks' heads.” Momma added that some people said that whitefolks had come over to Africa (she made it sound like a hidden valley on the moon) and stole the colored people and made them slaves, but nobody really believed it was true. No way to explain what happened “blows and scores” ago, but right now they had the upper hand. Their time wasn't long, though. Didn't Moses lead the children of Israel out of the bloody hands of Pharaoh and into the Promised Land? Didn't the Lord protect the Hebrew children in the fiery furnace and didn't my Lord deliver Daniel? We only had to wait on the Lord. Bailey said he saw a man, a colored man, whom nobody had delivered. He was dead. (If the news hadn't been so important, we would have been visited with one of Momma's outbursts and prayers. Bailey was nearly blaspheming.) He said, “The man was dead and rotten. Not stinking but rotten.” Momma ordered, “Ju, watch your tongue.” Uncle Willie asked, “Who, who was it?” Bailey was just tall enough to clear his face over the cash register. He said, “When I passed the calaboose, some men had just fished him out of the pond. He was wrapped in a sheet, all rolled up like a mummy, then a white man walked over and pulled the sheet off. The man was on his back but the white man stuck his foot under the sheet and rolled him over on the stomach.” He turned to me. “My, he had no color at all. He was bloated like a ball.” (We had had a running argument for months.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  But, in the unseen world, there are the real and perfect things. When the great churchman John Henry Newman died, they erected a statue to him, and on the pedestal of it are the Latin words: Ab umbris et imaginibus ad veritatem , ‘Away from the shadows and the semblances to the truth.’ If that is so, clearly the great task of this life is to get away from the shadows and the imperfections and to reach reality. This is exactly what the writer to the Hebrews claims that Jesus Christ can enable us to do. To the Greeks, the writer to the Hebrews said: ‘All your lives, you have been trying to get from the shadows to the truth. That is just what Jesus Christ can enable you to do.’ The Jewish Background But the writer to the Hebrews also had a Jewish background. To the Jews, it was always dangerous to come too near to God. ‘No one’, said God to Moses, ‘shall see me and live’ (Exodus 33:20). It was Jacob’s astonished exclamation at Peniel: ‘I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved’ (Genesis 32:30). When Manoah realized who his visitor had been, he said in terror to his wife: ‘We shall surely die, for we have seen God’ (Judges 13:23). The great day of Jewish worship was the Day of Atonement. That was the one day of the whole year when the high priest entered the Holy of Holies where the very presence of God was held to dwell. No one ever entered in except the high priest, and he only on that day. When he did, the law laid it down that he must not linger in the Holy Place for long ‘lest he put Israel in terror’. It was dangerous to enter the presence of God; and, if anyone stayed there too long, that person might be struck dead. In view of this, the idea of a covenant entered into Jewish thought. God, in his grace and in a way that was quite unmerited, approached the nation of Israel and offered them a special relationship with himself. But this unique access to God was conditional on the observance by the people of the law that he gave to them. We can see this relationship being entered into and this law being accepted in the dramatic scene in Exodus 24:3–8. So, Israel had access to God, but only if the people kept the law. To break the law was sin, and sin put up a barrier which stopped the way to God. It was to take away that barrier that the system of the Levitical priesthood and sacrifices was constructed. The law was given; the people sinned; the barrier was up; the sacrifice was made; and the sacrifice was designed to open the way to God that had been closed. But the experience of life was that this was precisely what sacrifice could not do.

• From The Letter to the Hebrews (The New Daily Study Bible) (2002)

  Because he walked with God when others were walking away from him, day by day Enoch came nearer to God, and death was no more than the last step that took him into the very presence of that God with whom he had always walked. We cannot think of Enoch without thinking of the different attitudes to death. The sheer serenity of the Old Testament statement, so simple and yet so moving, points forward to the Christian attitude. (1) There are those who have thought of death as mysterious and inexplicable . The nineteenth-century writer and artist William Morris wrote: Death have we hated, knowing not what it meant. Francis Bacon, the philosopher, said: ‘Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark.’ To some, it has always been the terrifying unknown, giving rise to what Hamlet called ‘that dread of something after death’. (2) There are those who simply have seen in death the one inevitable thing in life . Shakespeare makes Caesar say in Julius Caesar : It seems to me most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come. And, in Cymbeline , he writes with a strange fatalistic beauty: Fear no more the heat o’ the sun, Nor the furious winter’s rages; Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone and ta’en thy wages: Golden lads and girls all must, As chimney-sweepers, come to dust. Fear no more the frown o’ the great, Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke: Care no more to clothe and eat; To thee the reed is as the oak: The sceptre, learning, physic must All follow this, and come to dust. Fear no more the lightning-flash, Nor the all-dreaded thunder-stone; Fear not slander, censure rash; Thou hast finish’d joy and moan: All lovers young, all lovers must Consign to thee, and come to dust. Death is inevitable, and there is nothing to be gained by struggling against it. (3) Some have seen in death sheer extinction . It was that loveliest of Roman poets, Catullus, who pleaded with Lesbia for her kisses because the night was coming: Lesbia mine, let’s live and love! Give no doit for tattle of Crabbed old censorious men; Suns may set and rise again, But when our short day takes flight Sleep we must one endless night.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  I put my arm back to my waist and it brought fresh blood as I pulled it away. I was cut. Before I could fully understand, or comprehend enough to respond, Dolores opened the door, screaming still, and upon seeing me, instead of slamming the door she ran like a mad woman down the stairs. I saw a hammer in her hand, and without wondering if I would be able to take it from her, I fled. Dad's car sat in a yard twice in one day offering magnificent refuge. I jumped in, rolled up the windows and locked the door. Dolores flitted around the car, screaming like a banshee, her face bedizened with fury. Daddy Bailey and the neighbors he was visiting responded to the screams and crowded around her. She shouted that I had jumped on her and tried to kill her and Bailey had better not bring me back in the house. I sat in the car, feeling the blood slip down to my buttocks as the people quieted and cooled her rage. My father motioned to me to open the window, and when I did he said he would take Dolores inside but I should stay in the car. He would be back to attend to me. The events of the day swarmed over me and made my breathing difficult. After all the decisive victories of the day my life was to end in sticky death. If Dad stayed a very long time in the house, I was too afraid to go to the door and ask for him, and besides, my feminine training would not allow me to walk two steps with blood on my dress. As I had always feared, no, known, the trials had been for nothing. (The dread of futility has been my lifelong plague.) Excitement, apprehension, release and anger had drained me of mobility. I waited for Fate, the string puller, to dictate my movements. My father came down the steps in a few minutes and angrily slammed into the car. He sat in a corner of blood and I gave no warning. He must have been pondering what to do with me when he felt the damp on his trousers. “What the hell is this?” He hunched himself up on a hip and brushed the pants. His hand showed red in the porch's cast-off light. “What is this, Marguerite?” I said with a coldness that would have done him proud, “I've been cut.” “What do you mean, cut?” It only lasted a precious minute, but I managed once to see my father perplexed. “Cut.” It was so delicious. I didn't mind draining away into the plaid seat cushions. “When? By whom?” Daddy, even in a critical moment, wouldn't say “By who?” “Dolores cut me.” The economy of words showed my contempt for them all.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  down and eat your soup. Cold night like this you need something hot in your stomach. Go on, Brother Taylor. Please.” I sat down as near Bailey as possible. “Well, something told me to open my eyes.” “What kind of something?” Momma asked, not laying down her spoon. “Yes, sir,” Uncle Willie explained, “there can be a good something and there can be a bad something.” “Well, I wasn't sure, so I figured better open 'em, 'cause it could have been, well, either one. I did, and the first thing, I saw a little baby angel. It was just as fat as a butterball, and laughing, eyes blue, blue, blue.” Uncle Willie asked, “A baby angel?” “Yes, sir, and it was laughing right in my face. Then I heard this long moan, ‘Agh-h-h-.’ Well, as you say, Sister Henderson, we been together over forty years. I know Florida's voice. I wasn't scared right then. I called ‘Florida?’ Then that angel laughed harder and the moan got louder.” I set my bowl down and got closer to Bailey. Mrs. Taylor had been a very pleasant woman, smiling all the time and patient. The only thing that jarred and bothered me when she came in the Store was her voice. Like near-deaf people, she screamed, half not hearing what she was saying and partly hoping her listeners would reply in kind. That was when she was living. The thought of that voice coming out of the grave and all the way down the hill from the cemetery and hanging over my head was enough to straighten my hair. “Yes, sir.” He was looking at the stove and the red glow fell on his face. It seemed as if he had a fire going inside his head. “First I called, ‘Florida, Florida. What do you want?’ And that devilish angel kept on laughing to beat the band.” Mr. Taylor tried to laugh and only succeeded in looking frightened. “ ‘I want some ...’ That's when she said ‘I want some.’ ” He made his voice sound like the wind, if the wind had bronchial pneumonia. He wheezed, “ ‘I want some children.’ ” Bailey and I met halfway on the drafty floor. Momma said, “Now, Brother Taylor, could be you was dreaming. You know, they say whatever you goes to bed with on your mind ...” “No, ma'am, Sister Henderson, I was as wide awake as I am right now.” “Did she let you see her?” Uncle Willie had a dreamy look on his face. “No, Willie, all I seed was that fat little white baby angel. But wasn't no mistaking that voice ... ‘I want some children.’ ” The cold wind had frozen my feet and my spine, and Mr. Taylor's impersonation had chilled my blood. Momma said, “Sister, go bring the long fork to take the potatoes out.” “Ma'am?” Surely she didn't mean the long fork that hung on the wall behind the kitchen stove—a scary million miles away.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  the belt, but Momma caught me. “Now, don't get uppity, miss, 'less you want some of the same thing. He got a lesson coming to him. You come on and get your bath.” From the kitchen I heard the belt fall down, dry and raspy on naked skin. Uncle Willie was gasping for breath, but Bailey made no sound. I was too afraid to splash water or even to cry and take a chance of drowning out Bailey's pleas for help, but the pleas never came and the whipping was finally over. I lay awake an eternity waiting for a sign, a whimper or a whisper, from the next room that he was still alive. Just before I fell exhausted into sleep, I heard Bailey: “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” My last memory of that night was the question, Why is he saying the baby prayer? We had been saying the “Our Father, which art in heaven” for years. For days the Store was a strange country, and we were all newly arrived immigrants. Bailey didn't talk, smile or apologize. His eyes were so vacant, it seemed his soul had flown away, and at meals I tried to give him the best pieces of meat and the largest portion of dessert, but he turned them down. Then one evening at the pig pen he said without warning, “I saw Mother Dear.” If he said it, it was bound to be the truth. He wouldn't lie to me. I don't think I asked him where or when. “In the movies.” He laid his head on the wooden railing. “It wasn't really her. It was a woman named Kay Francis. She's a white movie star who looks just like Mother Dear.” There was no difficulty believing that a white movie star looked like our mother and that Bailey had seen her. He told me that the movies were changed each week, but when another picture came to Stamps staring Kay Francis he would tell me and we'd go together. He even promised to sit with me. He had stayed late on the previous Saturday to see the film over again. I understood, and understood too why he couldn't tell Momma or Uncle Willie. She was our mother and belonged to us. She was never mentioned to anyone because we simply didn't have enough of her to share. We had to wait nearly two months before Kay Francis returned to Stamps. Bailey's mood had lightened considerably but he lived in a state of expectation and it made him more nervous than he was usually. When he told me that the movie would be shown, we went into our best behavior and were the exemplary children that Grandmother deserved and wished to think us.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  When she was displeased she made me sleep on the edge of the bed and that night I knew I needed to be close to her. One foot into the darkness and the sense of detachment from reality nearly made me panic. The idea came to me that I might never get out into the light again. Quickly I found the door leading back to the familiar, but as I opened it the awful story reached out and tried to grab my ears. I closed the door. Naturally, I believed in hants and ghosts and “thangs.” Having been raised by a super-religious Southern Negro grandmother, it would have been abnormal had I not been superstitious. The trip to the kitchen and back could not have taken more than two minutes, yet in that time I tramped through swampy cemeteries, climbed over dusty gravestones and eluded litters of night-black cats. Back in the family circle, I remarked to myself how like a cyclopean eye was the belly of the red-hot stove. “It reminded me of the time when my daddy died. You know we're very close.” Mr. Taylor had hypnotized himself into the eerie world of horrors. I broke into his reminiscences. “Momma, here's the fork.” Bailey had lain down on his side behind the stove and his eyes were shining. He was more fascinated with Mr. Taylor's morbid interest in his story than with the tale itself. Momma put her hand on my arm and said, “You shaking, Sister. What's the matter?” My skin still rippled from the experience of fear. Uncle Willie laughed and said, “Maybe she was scared to go in the kitchen.” His high little laugh didn't fool me. Everyone was uneasy at being beckoned into the unknown. “No sir, I ain't never seen nothing so clear as that little angel baby.” His jaws were scissoring mechanically on the already mushy sweet potatoes. “Just laughing, like a house on fire. What you reckon it mean, Sister Henderson?” Momma had reared back in her rocking chair, a half smile on her face, “If you sure you wasn't dreaming, Brother Taylor …” “I was as wide awake as I am”—he was becoming angry again—“as I am right now.” “Well, then, maybe it means—” “I ought to know when I'm asleep and when I'm awake. ” “-maybe it mean Sister Florida wants you to work with the children in the church.” “One thing I always used to tell Florida, people won't let you get your words in edgewise—” “Could be she's trying to tell you—” “I ain't crazy, you know. My mind's just as good as it was.” “-to take a Sunday school class—” “Thirty years ago. If I say I was awake when I saw that little fat angel, then people ought to—” “Sunday school need more teachers. Lord knows that's so.” “—believe me when I say so.” Their remarks and responses were like a Ping-Pong game with each volley clearing the net and flying back to the opposition.

• From How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian (2015)

  But it is not to a persecuting Nero but to a returning Nero that Revelation points with those twin warnings of the need for wise interpretation. What, then, is the legend of returning Nero, and why is Revelation so interested in it? It often happens that populist rulers who die under uncertain circumstances with unfinished programs have supporters who generate legends claiming that they are not dead and buried, but asleep and hidden away only to return (hence “returning”) at some future catastrophic or climactic moment. (Think of the English Arthur or the German Frederick Barbarossa as once and future kings.) So it was with Nero, despised in the West but divinized in the East where, for example, he had made honorable peace with the Parthians in 63 CE and freed Greece from the requirement to pay tribute money at the Isthmian Games in 66 CE . In the East, therefore, the legend developed that Nero had not died but instead had fled beyond the Euphrates, from where he would return at the head of Parthian armies to destroy the Roman Empire. You can read that anti-Roman legend from the East in those Jewish Sibylline Oracles mentioned at the end of Chapter 8. Here, for example, is returning Nero portrayed as a transcendental and apocalyptic figure in Sibylline Oracles 5, from the end of the first century CE around the same time that Revelation was written:12 He [Nero] will destroy every land and conquer all. . . . He will destroy many men and great rulers and he will set fire to all men as no one ever did. . . . Blood will flow up to the banks of deep-eddying rivers. . . . For fire will rain on men from the floors of heaven, fire and blood . . . and destruction in war, and a mist over the slain will destroy at once all kings and noble men. (5.365–380) In that whole section, returning Nero is no longer a historical, even if legendary, anti-Roman attacker but an anticosmic eschatological destroyer before the establishment of God’s rule on earth (5.381–385). The book of Revelation is especially interested in that returning Nero legend, but again, why? First, recall Paul’s model for Christ’s “coming” as the experience of a peaceful imperial parousia during the Pax Romana. Revelation, however, never uses that now-peaceful word parousia but speaks only of Christ’s “coming” throughout the book. Think, for example, of this triple repetition as the book’s climactic conclusion: “See, I am coming soon!” . . . “See, I am coming soon” . . . “Surely I am coming soon” (22:7, 12, 20). And the climactic response “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (22:20). Second, where, under that Pax Romana, could Revelation find any viable model for Christ’s imperial “coming” as violently vengeful? Where else but in the returning Nero legend? Returning Nero is “the beast that . . .

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  During those months we saw our grandparents and the uncles (our only aunt had gone to California to build her fortune), but they usually asked the same question, “Have you been good children?” for which there was only one answer. Even Bailey wouldn't have dared to answer No. 12On a late spring Saturday, after our chores (nothing like those in Stamps) were done, Bailey and I were going out, he to play baseball and I to the library. Mr. Freeman said to me, after Bailey had gone downstairs, “Ritie, go get some milk for the house.” Mother usually brought milk when she came in, but that morning as Bailey and I straightened the living room her bedroom door had been open, and we knew that she hadn't come home the night before. He gave me the money and I rushed to the store and back to the house. After putting the milk in the icebox, I turned and had just reached the front door when I heard, “Ritie.” He was sitting in the big chair by the radio. “Ritie, come here.” I didn't think about the holding time until I got close to him. His pants were open and his “thing” was standing out of his britches by itself. “No, sir, Mr. Freeman.” I started to back away. I didn't want to touch that mushy-hard thing again, and I didn't need him to hold me anymore. He grabbed my arm and pulled me between his legs. His face was still and looked kind, but he didn't smile or blink his eyes. Nothing. He did nothing, except reach his left hand around to turn on the radio without even looking at it. Over the noise of music and static, he said, “Now, this ain't gonna hurt you much. You liked it before, didn't you?” I didn't want to admit that I had in fact liked his holding me or that I had liked his smell or the hard heart-beating, so I said nothing. And his face became like the face of one of those mean natives the Phantom was always having to beat up. His legs were squeezing my waist. “Pull down your drawers.” I hesitated for two reasons: he was holding me too tight to move, and I was sure that any minute my mother or Bailey or the Green Hornet would bust in the door and save me. “We was just playing before.” He released me enough to snatch down my bloomers, and then he dragged me closer to him. Turning the radio up loud, too loud, he said, “If you scream, I'm gonna kill you. And if you tell, I'm gonna kill Bailey.” I could tell he meant what he said. I couldn't understand why he wanted to kill my brother. Neither of us had done anything to him. And then.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  I was the first to hear the rattle on the back door. A rattle and knock, a knock and rattle. But suspecting that it might have been the mad wife in the tower, I didn't credit it. Then Uncle Willie heard it and summoned Bailey back from Huck Finn to unlatch the bolt. Through the open door the moonshine fell into the room in a cold radiance to rival our meager lamplight. We all waited—I with a dread expectancy—for no human being was there. The wind alone came in, struggling with the weak flame in the coal-oil lamp. Pushing and bunting about the family warmth of our pot-bellied stove. Uncle Willie thought it must have been the storm and told Bailey to close the door. But just before he secured the raw wooden slab a voice drifted through the crack; it wheezed, “Sister Henderson? Brother Willie?” Bailey nearly closed the door again, but Uncle Willie asked, “Who is it?” and Mr. George Taylor's pinched brown face swam out of the gray and into view. He assured himself that we hadn't gone to bed, and was welcomed in. When Momma saw him she invited him to stay for supper and told me to stick some sweet potatoes in the ashes to stretch the evening meal. Poor Brother Taylor had been taking meals all over town, ever since he buried his wife in the summer. Maybe due to the fact that I was in my romanticist period, or because children have a built-in survival apparatus, I feared he was interested in marrying Momma and moving in with us.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  After Mother took my temperature, she said she was going to bed for a while but to wake her if I felt sicker. She told Bailey to watch my face and arms for spots and when they came up he could paint them with calamine lotion. That Sunday goes and comes in my memory like a bad connection on an overseas telephone call. Once, Bailey was reading The Katzenjammer Kids to me, and then without a pause for sleeping, Mother was looking closely at my face, and soup trickled down my chin and some got into my mouth and I choked. Then there was a doctor who took my temperature and held my wrist. “Bailey!” I supposed I had screamed, for he materialized suddenly, and I asked him to help me and we'd run away to California or France or Chicago. I knew that I was dying and, in fact, I longed for death, but I didn't want to die anywhere near Mr. Freeman. I knew that even now he wouldn't have allowed death to have me unless he wished it to. Mother said I should be bathed and the linens had to be changed since I had sweat so much. But when they tried to move me I fought, and even Bailey couldn't hold me. Then she picked me up in her arms and the terror abated for a while. Bailey began to change the bed. As he pulled off the soiled sheets he dislodged the panties I had put under the mattress. They fell at Mother's feet. 13In the hospital, Bailey told me that I had to tell who did that to me, or the man would hurt another little girl. When I explained that I couldn't tell because the man would kill him, Bailey said knowingly, “He can't kill me. I won't let him.” And of course I believed him. Bailey didn't lie to me. So I told him. Bailey cried at the side of my bed until I started to cry too. Almost fifteen years passed before I saw my brother cry again. Using the old brain he was born with (those were his words later on that day) he gave his information to Grandmother Baxter, and Mr. Freeman was arrested and was spared the awful wrath of my pistol-whipping uncles. I would have liked to stay in the hospital the rest of my life. Mother brought flowers and candy. Grandmother came with fruit and my uncles clumped around and around my bed, snorting like wild horses. When they were able to sneak Bailey in, he read to me for hours. The saying that people who have nothing to do become busybodies is not the only truth. Excitement is a drug, and people whose lives are filled with violence are always wondering where the next “fix” is coming from.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  “Bailey.” It jumped out as Momma said, “Ju,” and I started to run, but her hand caught mine again and became a vise. I pulled, but she yanked me back to her side. “We'll walk, just like we been walking, young lady.” There was no chance to warn Bailey that he was dangerously late, that everybody had been worried and that he should create a good lie or, better, a great one. Momma said, “Bailey, Junior,” and he looked up without surprise. “You know it's night and you just now getting home?” “Yes, ma'am.” He was empty. Where was his alibi? “What you been doing?” “Nothing.” “That's all you got to say?” “Yes, ma'am.” “All right, young man. We'll see when you get home.” She had turned me loose, so I made a grab for Bailey's hand, but he snatched it away. I said, “Hey, Bail,” hoping to remind him that I was his sister and his only friend, but he grumbled something like “Leave me alone.” Momma didn't turn on the flashlight on the way back, nor did she answer the questioning Good evenings that floated around us as we passed the darkened houses. I was confused and frightened. He was going to get a whipping and maybe he had done something terrible. If he couldn't talk to me it must have been serious. But there was no air of spent revelry about him. He just seemed sad. I didn't know what to think. Uncle Willie said, “Getting too big for your britches, huh? You can't come home. You want to worry your grandmother to death?” Bailey was so far away he was beyond fear. Uncle Willie had a leather belt in his good hand but Bailey didn't notice or didn't care. “I'm going to whip you this time.” Our uncle had only whipped us once before and then only with a peach-tree switch, so maybe now he was going to kill my brother. I screamed and grabbed for the belt, but Momma caught me. “Now, don't get uppity, miss, 'less you want some of the same thing. He got a lesson coming to him. You come on and get your bath.” From the kitchen I heard the belt fall down, dry and raspy on naked skin. Uncle Willie was gasping for breath, but Bailey made no sound. I was too afraid to splash water or even to cry and take a chance of drowning out Bailey's pleas for help, but the pleas never came and the whipping was finally over. I lay awake an eternity waiting for a sign, a whimper or a whisper, from the next room that he was still alive. Just before I fell exhausted into sleep, I heard Bailey: “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  Mothers had called in their children from the group games, and fading sounds of “Yah ... Yah ... you didn't catch me” still hung and floated into the Store. Uncle Willie said, “Sister, better light the light.” On Saturdays we used the electric lights so that last-minute shoppers could look down the hill and see if the Store was open. Momma hadn't told me to turn them on because she didn't want to believe that night had fallen hard and Bailey was still out in the ungodly dark. Her apprehension was evident in the hurried movements around the kitchen and in her lonely fearing eyes. The Black woman in the South who raises sons, grandsons and nephews had her heartstrings tied to a hanging noose. Any break from routine may herald for them unbearable news. For this reason, Southern Blacks until the present generation could be counted among America's arch conservatives. Like most self-pitying people, I had very little pity for my relatives' anxiety. If something indeed had happened to Bailey, Uncle Willie would always have Momma, and Momma had the Store. Then, after all, we weren't their children. But I would be the major loser if Bailey turned up dead. For he was all I claimed, if not all I had. The bath water was steaming on the cooking stove, but Momma was scrubbing the kitchen table for the umpteenth time. “Momma,” Uncle Willie called and she jumped. “Momma.” I waited in the bright lights of the Store, jealous that someone had come along and told these strangers something about my brother and I would be the last to know. “Momma, why don't you and Sister walk down to meet him?” To my knowledge Bailey's name hadn't been mentioned for hours, but we all knew whom he meant. Of course. Why didn't that occur to me? I wanted to be gone. Momma said, “Wait a minute, little lady. Go get your sweater, and bring me my shawl.” It was darker in the road than I'd thought it would be. Momma swung the flashlight's arc over the path and weeds and scary tree trunks. The night suddenly became enemy territory, and I knew that if my brother was lost in this land he was forever lost. He was eleven and very smart, that I granted, but after all he was so small. The Bluebeards and tigers and Rippers could eat him up before he could scream for help. Momma told me to take the light and she reached for my hand. Her voice came from a high hill above me and in the dark my hand was enclosed in hers. I loved her with a rush. She said nothing—no “Don't worry” or “Don't get tender-hearted.” Just the gentle pressure of her rough hand conveyed her own concern and assurance to me. We passed houses which I knew well by daylight but couldn't recollect in the swarthy gloom. “Evening, Miz Jenkins.” Walking and pulling me along. “Sister Henderson?

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  I called ‘Florida?’ Then that angel laughed harder and the moan got louder.” I set my bowl down and got closer to Bailey. Mrs. Taylor had been a very pleasant woman, smiling all the time and patient. The only thing that jarred and bothered me when she came in the Store was her voice. Like near-deaf people, she screamed, half not hearing what she was saying and partly hoping her listeners would reply in kind. That was when she was living. The thought of that voice coming out of the grave and all the way down the hill from the cemetery and hanging over my head was enough to straighten my hair. “Yes, sir.” He was looking at the stove and the red glow fell on his face. It seemed as if he had a fire going inside his head. “First I called, ‘Florida, Florida. What do you want?’ And that devilish angel kept on laughing to beat the band.” Mr. Taylor tried to laugh and only succeeded in looking frightened. “ ‘I want some …’ That's when she said ‘I want some.’ ” He made his voice sound like the wind, if the wind had bronchial pneumonia. He wheezed, “ ‘I want some children.’ ” Bailey and I met halfway on the drafty floor. Momma said, “Now, Brother Taylor, could be you was dreaming. You know, they say whatever you goes to bed with on your mind …” “No, ma'am, Sister Henderson, I was as wide awake as I am right now.” “Did she let you see her?” Uncle Willie had a dreamy look on his face. “No, Willie, all I seed was that fat little white baby angel. But wasn't no mistaking that voice … ‘I want some children.’ ” The cold wind had frozen my feet and my spine, and Mr. Taylor's impersonation had chilled my blood. Momma said, “Sister, go bring the long fork to take the potatoes out. ” “Ma'am?” Surely she didn't mean the long fork that hung on the wall behind the kitchen stove—a scary million miles away. “I said, go get the fork. The potatoes are burning.” I unwound my legs from the gripping fear and almost tripped onto the stove. Momma said, “That child would stumble over the pattern in a rug. Go on, Brother Taylor, did she say any more?” I didn't want to hear it if she did, but I wasn't eager to leave the lighted room where my family sat around the friendly fire. “Well, she said ‘Aaah’ a few more times and then that angel started to walk off the ceiling. I tell you I was purt' near scared stiff.” I had reached the no man's ocean of darkness. No great decision was called for. I knew it would be tortuous to go through the thick blackness of Uncle Willie's bedroom, but it would be easier than staying around to hear the ghoulish story. Also, I couldn't afford to aggravate Momma.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  Then there was the pain. A breaking and entering when even the senses are torn apart. The act of rape on an eight-year-old body is a matter of the needle giving because the camel can't. The child gives, because the body can, and the mind of the violator cannot. I thought I had died—I woke up in a white-walled world, and it had to be heaven. But Mr. Freeman was there and he was washing me. His hands shook, but he held me upright in the tub and washed my legs. “I didn't mean to hurt you, Ritie. I didn't mean it. But don't you tell … Remember, don't you tell a soul.” I felt cool and very clean and just a little tired. “No, sir, Mr. Freeman, I won't tell.” I was somewhere above everything “It's just that I'm so tired I'll just go and lay down a while, please,” I whispered to him. I thought if I spoke out loud, he might become frightened and hurt me again. He dried me and handed me my bloomers. “Put these on and go to the library. Your momma ought to be coming home soon. You just act natural.” Walking down the street, I felt the wet on my pants, and my hips seemed to be coming out of their sockets. I couldn't sit long on the hard seats in the library (they had been constructed for children), so I walked by the empty lot where Bailey was playing ball, but he wasn't there. I stood for a while and watched the big boys tear around the dusty diamond and then headed home. After two blocks, I knew I'd never make it. Not unless I counted every step and stepped on every crack. I had started to burn between my legs more than the time I'd wasted Sloan's Liniment on myself. My legs throbbed, or rather the insides of my thighs throbbed, with the same force that Mr. Freeman's heart had beaten. Thrum … step … thrum … step … STEP ON THE CRACK… thrum … step. I went up the stairs one at a, one at a, one at a time. No one was in the living room, so I went straight to bed, after hiding my red-and-yellow-stained drawers under the mattress. When Mother came in she said, “Well, young lady, I believe this is the first time I've seen you go to bed without being told. You must be sick.” I wasn't sick, but the pit of my stomach was on fire—how could I tell her that? Bailey came in later and asked me what the matter was. There was nothing to tell him. When Mother called us to eat and I said I wasn't hungry, she laid her cool hand on my forehead and cheeks. “Maybe it's the measles. They say they're going around the neighborhood.” After she took my temperature she said, “You have a little fever. You've probably just caught them.”

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  His twang jogged in the brittle air. From the side of the Store, Bailey and I heard him say to Momma, “Annie, tell Willie he better lay low tonight. A crazy nigger messed with a white lady today. Some of the boys'll be coming over here later.” Even after the slow drag of years, I remember the sense of fear which filled my mouth with hot, dry air, and made my body light. The “boys”? Those cement faces and eyes of hate that burned the clothes off you if they happened to see you lounging on the main street downtown on Saturday. Boys? It seemed that youth had never happened to them. Boys? No, rather men who were covered with graves' dust and age without beauty or learning. The ugliness and rottenness of old abominations. If on Judgment Day I were summoned by St. Peter to give testimony to the used-to-be sheriff's act of kindness, I would be unable to say anything in his behalf. His confidence that my uncle and every other Black man who heard of the Klan's coming ride would scurry under their houses to hide in chicken droppings was too humiliating to hear. Without waiting for Momma's thanks, he rode out of the yard, sure that things were as they should be and that he was a gentle squire, saving those deserving serfs from the laws of the land, which he condoned. Immediately, while his horse's hoofs were still loudly thudding the ground, Momma blew out the coal-oil lamps. She had a quiet, hard talk with Uncle Willie and called Bailey and me into the Store. We were told to take the potatoes and onions out of their bins and knock out the dividing walls that kept them apart. Then with a tedious and fearful slowness Uncle Willie gave me his rubber-tipped cane and bent down to get into the now-enlarged empty bin. It took forever before he lay down flat, and then we covered him with potatoes and onions, layer upon layer, like a casserole. Grandmother knelt praying in the darkened Store. It was fortunate that the “boys” didn't ride into our yard that evening and insist that Momma open the Store. They would have surely found Uncle Willie and just as surely lynched him. He moaned the whole night through as if he had, in fact, been guilty of some heinous crime. The heavy sounds pushed their way up out of the blanket of vegetables and I pictured his mouth pulling down on the right side and his saliva flowing into the eyes of new potatoes and waiting there like dew drops for the warmth of morning.

• From I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)

  “Well, I wasn't sure, so I figured better open 'em, 'cause it could have been, well, either one. I did, and the first thing, I saw a little baby angel. It was just as fat as a butterball, and laughing, eyes blue, blue, blue.” Uncle Willie asked, “A baby angel?” “Yes, sir, and it was laughing right in my face. Then I heard this long moan, ‘Agh-h-h-.’ Well, as you say, Sister Henderson, we been together over forty years. I know Florida's voice. I wasn't scared right then. I called ‘Florida?’ Then that angel laughed harder and the moan got louder.” I set my bowl down and got closer to Bailey. Mrs. Taylor had been a very pleasant woman, smiling all the time and patient. The only thing that jarred and bothered me when she came in the Store was her voice. Like near-deaf people, she screamed, half not hearing what she was saying and partly hoping her listeners would reply in kind. That was when she was living. The thought of that voice coming out of the grave and all the way down the hill from the cemetery and hanging over my head was enough to straighten my hair. “Yes, sir.” He was looking at the stove and the red glow fell on his face. It seemed as if he had a fire going inside his head. “First I called, ‘Florida, Florida. What do you want?’ And that devilish angel kept on laughing to beat the band.” Mr. Taylor tried to laugh and only succeeded in looking frightened. “ ‘I want some …’ That's when she said ‘I want some.’ ” He made his voice sound like the wind, if the wind had bronchial pneumonia. He wheezed, “ ‘I want some children.’ ” Bailey and I met halfway on the drafty floor. Momma said, “Now, Brother Taylor, could be you was dreaming. You know, they say whatever you goes to bed with on your mind …” “No, ma'am, Sister Henderson, I was as wide awake as I am right now.” “Did she let you see her?” Uncle Willie had a dreamy look on his face. “No, Willie, all I seed was that fat little white baby angel. But wasn't no mistaking that voice … ‘I want some children.’ ” The cold wind had frozen my feet and my spine, and Mr. Taylor's impersonation had chilled my blood. Momma said, “Sister, go bring the long fork to take the potatoes out.” “Ma'am?” Surely she didn't mean the long fork that hung on the wall behind the kitchen stove—a scary million miles away. “I said, go get the fork. The potatoes are burning.” I unwound my legs from the gripping fear and almost tripped onto the stove. Momma said, “That child would stumble over the pattern in a rug. Go on, Brother Taylor, did she say any more?”