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JAMES BALDWIN

ROY'S WOUND

Born and raised in New York, James Baldwin's academic life ended with his graduation from high school in 1942. For the next few years he worked at a variety of jobs in shipyards, factories, docks and elsewhere. One of the most promising of young Negro writers, in 1945 he won the Saxton Fellowship, and in 1948 went to France on a Rosenwald Fellowship. His reviews, articles and stories have been published in *Partisan Review*, *Commentary*, and *The Nation* and other magazines. This is an episode from his novel, *CRYING HOLY*, which will be published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1953.

(Roy's Wound: Copyright, 1952, by James Baldwin.)

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As, in the late afternoon, John approached his home again, he saw little Sarah, her coat unbuttoned, come flying out of the house, and run the length of the street away from him, into the far drugstore, Instantly, he was frightened; he stopped a moment, wondering what could justify such hysterical haste. It was true that Sarah was full of self-importance, and made any errand she was to run seem a matter of life or death; nevertheless, she had been sent on an errand, and with such speed that her mother had not had time to make her button up her coat.

Then he felt weary; if something had really happened it would be very unpleasant upstairs now, and he did not want to face it. Or perhaps it was simply that his mother had a headache and had sent Sarah to the store for aspirin. But if this were true, it meant that he would have to prepare supper, and take care of the children, and be naked under his father's eye all the evening long. And he began to walk more slowly.

There were some boys standing on the stoop. They watched him as he approached, and he tried not to look at them, and to approximate their swagger. One of them said, as John mounted the low stone steps and started into the hall, "Boy, your brother was hurt real bad today."

He looked at them in a kind of dread, not daring to ask for details; and he observed that they too might have been in a battle: something hangdog in their looks suggested they had been put to flight. Then he looked down, and saw that there was blood on the threshold, and blood spattered on the tile floor of the vestibule. He looked again at the boys, who had not ceased to watch him, and hurried up the stairs.

The door was half open -- for Sarah's return, no doubt; and he walked in, making no sound, feeling a confused impulse to flee. There was no one in the kitchen, though the light was burning -- the lights were on all through the house. On the kitchen table stood a shopping bag filled with groceries,

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and he knew that his Aunt Florence had arrived. The washtub, where his mother had been washing earlier, was open still, and filled the kitchen with a sour smell.

He had seen small, smudged coins of blood on the stairs on his way up, and there were drops of blood on the floor here too.

All this frightened him terribly. He stood in the middle of the kitchen, trying to imagine what had happened, and to prepare himself to walk into the living room, where he could hear his father's voice. Roy had been in trouble before, but this new trouble seemed the beginning of the fulfillment of a prophecy. He took off his coat, dropping it on a chair, and was about to go into the living room when he heard Sarah running up the steps.

He waited, and she burst through the door, carrying a clumsily shaped parcel.

"What happened?" he whispered.

She stared at him in astonishment, and a certain wild joy. He thought again that he really did not like his sister. Catching her breath, she said triumphantly, "Roy got stabbed with a knife!" and rushed into the living room.

Roy got stabbed with a knife. Whatever this meant, it wasn't that his father would be at his worst tonight. John walked slowly into the living room.

His father and mother, a small basin of water between them, knelt by the sofa where Roy lay, and his father was washing the blood from Roy's forehead. Apparently his mother, whose touch was so much more gentle, had been thrust aside by his father, who now could not bear to have anyone else touch his wounded son. And so she watched, one hand in the water, the other clenched in anguish at her waist, which was circled still by the improvised apron of the morning. Her face, as she watched, was tense with

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fear and pity. His father muttered sweet, delirious things to Roy, and his hands, when he dipped them again in the basin and wrung out the cloth, were trembling. Aunt Florence, still wearing her hat and carrying her handbag, stood a little removed, looking down at Roy with a troubled, twisted face.

His mother looked up as Sarah bounded into the room, reached out for the package, and saw him. She said nothing, but looked at him with a strange, quick intentness, almost as though there were a warning on her tongue which she did not at the moment dare to utter. His Aunt Florence said, "We been wondering where you was, boy. This bad brother of yours done gone out and got hisself hurt."

But John understood from her tone that the fuss was, possibly, a little greater than the danger. Roy was not, after all, going to die. And his heart lifted a little. Then his father turned and looked at him.

"Where you been, boy," he shouted, "all this time? Don't you know you're needed here at home?!!"

More than his words, his face made John stiffen instantly with fear and malice. His father's face was terrible in anger, but now there was more than anger, in it. John saw now what he had never seen there before, except in his own vindictive fantasies: a kind of wild, weeping terror that made the face seem younger, and yet, in another way, unutterably older, and more cruel. And John knew, in the moment his father's glance swept over him, that he hated John because John was not lying on the sofa, where Roy lay. John could scarcely meet his father's eyes, and yet, briefly, he did, saying nothing; feeling in his heart an odd sensation of triumph, and hoping in his heart that Roy, to bring his father low, would die.

His mother had unwrapped the package, and was opening a bottle of peroxide. "Here," she said, "you better wash it with this now." Her voice was calm, and dry, her expression closed, as she handed the

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bottle and the cotton to his father.

"This going to hurt," his father said in such a different voice, so sad and tender! turning again to the sofa. "But you just be a little man, and hold still it ain't going to take long."

John watched, and listened, hating him. Roy began to moan. Aunt Florence moved to the mantel piece, and put her handbag down near the metal serpent. From the room behind him, John heard the baby begin to whimper.

"John," said his mother, "go and pick her up, like a good boy." Her hands, not trembling, were still busy: she had opened the bottle of iodine, and was cutting up strips of bandage.

John walked into his parents' bedroom, and picked up the squalling baby, who was wet. The moment Ruth felt him lift her up, she stopped crying, and stared at him wide-eyed and pathetic, as though she knew there was trouble in the house. John laughed at her so-ancient seeming distress he was very fond of his baby sister and whispered in her ear, as he started back to the living room, "Now, you let your big brother tell you something, baby. Just as soon as you're able to stand on your feet, you run away from this house, run far away." He did not quite know why he said this, or where he wanted her to run, but it made him feel better instantly.

His father was saying, as John came back into the room, "I'm sure going to be having some questions to ask you in a minute, old lady. I'm going to be wanting to know just how come you let this boy go out and get half killed."

"Oh, no, you ain't," said Aunt Florence, "you ain't going to be starting none of that mess this evening. You know right doggone well that Roy don't never ask nobody if he can do nothing he just go right ahead and do like he pleases. Elizabeth sure can put no ball and chain on him. She got her hands full right here in this house, and it ain't her fault if Roy got a head just as hard as his father's."

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"You got a awful lot to say, look like for once you could keep from putting your mouth in my business." He said this without looking at her.

"It ain't my fault," she said, "that you was born a fool, and always done been a fool, and ain't never going to change. I swear to my Father you'd try the patience of Job."

"I done told you before," he said, "he had not ceased working over the moaning Roy, and was preparing now to dab the wound with iodine, "that I didn't want you coming in here and using that gutter language in front of my children."

"Don't you worry about my language, brother," she said, with spirit, "you better start worrying about your *life*. What these children hear ain't going to do them near as much harm as what they *see*."

"What they *see*," his father muttered, "is a poor man trying to serve the Lord. *That's my life.*"

"Then I guarantee *you*," she said, "that they going to do their best to keep it from being *their* life. You mark my words."

He turned and looked at her; and intercepted the look that passed between the two women. John's mother, for reasons that were not at all his father's reasons, wanted Aunt Florence to keep still. He looked away, ironically, John watched his mother's mouth tighten bitterly. His father, in silence, began bandaging Roy's forehead.

"It's just the mercy of God," he said, at last, "that this boy didn't lose his eye. Look here."

His mother leaned over and looked into Roy's face with a sad, sympathetic murmur. Yet, John felt, she had seen instantly the extent of the danger to Roy's eye, and to his life, and was beyond that worry now; now she was merely marking time, as it were, and preparing herself for the moment when her husband's anger would turn, full force, against her.

His father now turned to John, who was standing near the French doors

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with Ruth in his arms.

"You come here, boy," ~~he said, "and see what them white folks done done to your brother."~~

John walked over to the sofa, holding himself as proudly beneath
his father's furious eyes, as a prince approaching the scaffold.

"Look here," laid his father, grasping him roughly by one arm, "look at your brother."

John looked down at Roy; who gazed up at him with almost no expression
in his dark eyes. But John knew, by the weary, impatient set of Roy's
young mouth, that his brother was asking that none of this be held against
him. It wasn't his fault, or John's, Roy's eyes said, that they had such a
crazy father.

His father, with the air of one forcing the sinner to look down into
the pit which is to be his portion, moved away slightly so that John could
see Roy's wound.

Roy had been gashed by a knife, luckily not very sharp, but very
jagged, from the center of his forehead where his hair began, downward to
the bone just above his left eye: the wound described a kind of crazy half-moon, and ended in a violent fuzzy tail, which was the ruin of Roy's eyebrow.
Time would darken the half-moon wound into Roy's dark skin, but nothing would
bring together again the so violently divided hairs of his eyebrow. This
crazy lift, this question, would remain with him forever, and emphasize forever something mocking and sinister in Roy's face. John felt a sudden impulse to smile, but his father's eyes were on him, and he fought the impulse back. Certainly the wound was now very ugly, and very red, and must, John
felt, with a quickened sympathy toward Roy, who had not cried out, have been
very painful. He could imagine the sensation caused when Roy staggered into
the house, blinded with his blood; but, just the same, he wasn't dead, he

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wasn't changed, he would be in the streets again the moment he was better.

"You see," came now from his father. "It was white folks, some of them white folks you like so much, that tried to cut your brother's throat."

John thought, with immediate anger, and with a curious contemps for his father's inexactness, that only a blind man, however white, could possibly have been aiming at Roy's throat; and his mother said, with a calm insistence:

"And he was trying to cut theirs. Him and them bad boys."

"Yes," said Aunt Florence, "I ain't heard you ask that boy nary a question about how all this happened. Look like you just determined to raise Cain anyhow — and make everybody in this house suffer because something done happened to the apply of your eye."

"I done ask you," cried his father, in exasperation, "to stop running your mouth. Don't none of this concern you — this is my family, and this is my house. You want me to slap you side of the head?"

"You slap me," said she said placidly, "and I do guarantee you, you won't do no more slapping in a hurry."

"Hush now," said his mother, rising, "ain't no need for all this. What's done is done. We ought to be on our knees, thanking the Lord it weren't no worse."

"Amen to that," said Aunt Florence, "tell that foolish nigger something."

"You can tell that foolish son of yours some thing," he said to his wife, with venom, having decided, it seemed, to ignore his sister, "him standing there with them big, buck yyes. You can tell him to take this like a warning from the Lord. This is what white folks does to niggers, I been telling you, now you see."

"He better take it like a warning?" shrieked Aunt Florence, "he better take it? Why, Gabriel, it ain't him went halfway across this city to get in a fight with white boys. This boy on the sofa went — deliberately — with a whole lot of other boys, all the way to the west side, just looking for a fight. I declare, I do wonder what goes on in your head."

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"You know right well," his mother said, looking directly at his father, "that Johnny don't travel with the same class of boys as Roy goes with. You done beat Roy too many times, here, in this very room, for going out with them bad boys. Roy got hisself hurt this afternoon because he was out doing something he didn't have no business doing, and that's the end of it. You ought to be thanking your Redeemer he ain't dead."

"And for all the care you take of him," he said, "he might as well be dead. Don't look like you much care whether he lives, or dies."

"Lord, have mercy," said Aunt Florence.

"He's my son, too," she said, with heat, "I carried him in my belly for nine months, and I know him just like I know his Daddy, and they's just exactly alike. Now you ain't got no right in the world to talk to me like that."

"I reckon you know," he said, choked, and breathing hard, "all about a mother's love. I sure reckon on you telling me how a woman can sit in the house all day, and let her own flesh and blood go out and get half butchered. Don't you tell me you don't know no way to stop him because I remember my mother, God rest her soul, and she'd have found a way."

"She was my mother, too," said Aunt Florence, "and I recollect, if you don't, you being brought home many a time more dead than alive. She didn't find no way to stop you. She wore herself out, beating on you, just like you been wearing yourself out, beating on this boy here."

"My, my, my," he said, "you got a lot to say."

"I ain't doing a thing," she said, "but trying to talk some sense into your big, black, hard head. You better stop trying to blame everything on Elizabeth, and look to your own wrong doings."

"Never mind, Florence," his mother said, "it's all over, and done with now."

"I'm out of this house," he shouted, "every day the Lord sends,

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working to put the food in these children's mouths. Don't you think I
got a right to ask the mother of these children to look after them, and
see that they don't break their <u>necks</u> before I get back <u>home</u>?

"You ain't got but one child," she said, "that's liable to go out
and break his neck, and that's Roy, and you know it. And I don't know how
in the world you expect me to run this house, and look after these children,
and keep running around the block after Roy. <u>No</u>, I can't stop him, I done
told you that, and you can't stop him neither. You don't know <u>what</u> to do
with this boy, and that's why you all the time trying to fix the blame
on somebody. Ain't nobody to <u>blame</u>, Gabriel. You just better pray God to
stop him before somebody puts another knife in him, and puts him in his
<u>grave</u>."

They stared at each other a moment in an awful pause, a startled,
pleading question in her eyes; then, with all his might, he reached out
and slapped her across the face. She crumpled at once, hiding her face with
one thin hand, and Aunt Florence moved to hold her up. Sarah watched all this
with greedy eyes. Then Roy sat up, and said in a shaking voice:

"Don't you slap my mother. That's my <u>mother</u>. You slap her again, you
black bastard, and I swear to God I'll kill you."

In the moment that these words filled the room, and hung in the air
like the infinitesimal moment of hanging, jagged light which precedes
an <u>explosión</u>, John and his father were staring into each other's eyes.
John thought for that moment that his father believed that those words
had come from him: his eyes were so wild, and depthlessly malevolent, and
his mouth was twisted into a snarl of pain. Then, in the absolute silence
which followed Roy's words, John saw that his father was not seeing him,
was not seeing anything, unless it were a vision. John wanted to turn

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and flee, as though he had encountered in the jungle some evil beast,
crouching and ravenous, with eyes like hell unloosed; staring what he
knew to be certain destruction, he found that he could not move. Then
his father turned away from him, and looked down at Roy.

"What did you say?" his father asked.

"I told you," said Roy, "not to touch my mother."

"You cursed me," said his father.

Roy said nothing; neither did he drop his eyes.

"Gabriel," said his mother, "Gabriel. Let us pray."

His father's hands were at his waist, and he took off his belt.
Tears were in his eyes.

"Gabriel," cried Aunt Florence, "ain't you done playing the fool for tonight?"

Then his father raised his belt, and it fell with a whistling sound
on Roy, who shivered and fell back, his face to the wall, but did not cry out.
And the belt was raised again, and again; the air rang with the whistling,
and the *crack!* against Roy's flesh. The baby, Ruth, began to scream.

"My Lord, my Lord," his father whispered, "my Lord, my Lord."

He raised the belt again, but Aunt Florence caught it from behind,
and held it. His mother reached over to the sofa, and caught Roy in her arms,
crying as John had never seen a woman, or anybody, cry before. Roy caught
his mother around the neck and held on to her as though he were drowning.

His Aunt Florence and his father faced each other.

"Yes, Lord," Aunt Florence said, "you was born wild, and you's
going to die wild. But ain't no need to try to take the whole world
with you. You can't change nothing, Gabriel. You ought to know that
by now."