If Beale Street Could Talk

I felt the way I’d felt all day, alone with my trouble. Nobody could help me, not even Sis. Because she was cer­tainly determined to help me, I knew that. But maybe I realized that she was frightened, too, although she was trying to sound calm and tough.

She moved away from me a little and put my glass in my hand. “Unbow your head, sister,” she said, and raised her glass and touched mine. “Save the children,” she said, very quietly, and drained her glass.

And Mrs. Hunt added, “These girls won’t be bringing me no bastards to feed, I can guarantee you that.”

“But the child that’s coming,” said Sharon, after a moment, “is your grandchild. I don’t understand you. It’s your grandchild. What difference does it make how it gets here? The child ain’t got nothing to do with that—don’t none of us have nothing to do with that!"

Will you listen to me? Please? Of course, she’s lying. We know she’s lying. But—she’s—not—lying. As far as she’s concerned, Fonny raped her and that’s that, and now she hasn’t got to deal with it anymore. It’s over. For her. If she changes her testimony, she’ll go mad. Or become another woman. And you know how often people go mad, and how rarely they change.

We are certainly in it now, and it may get worse. It will, certainly—and now something almost as hard to catch as a whisper in a crowded place, as light and as definite as a spider’s web, strikes below my ribs, stunning and astonishing my heart—get worse. But that light tap, that kick, that signal, announces to me that what can get worse can get better. Yes. It will get worse. But the baby, turning for the first time in its incredible veil of water, announces its presence and claims me; tells me, in that instant, that what can get worse can get better; and that what can get better can get worse. In the meantime—forever—it is entirely up to me. The baby cannot get here without me.

My presence, which is of no practical value whatever, which can even be considered, from a practical point of view, as a betrayal, is vastly more important than any practical thing I might be doing. Every day, when he sees my face, he knows, again, that I love him—and God knows I do, more and more, deeper and deeper, with every hour. But it isn’t only that. It means that others love him, too, love him so much that they have set me free to be there. He is not alone; we are not alone.