“Nonsense,” father said. “We wont be long.”
Nancy had her hat on. We came to the lane. “Jesus always been good to me,” Nancy said. “Whenever he had two dollars, one of them was mine.” We walked in the lane. “If I can just get through the lane,” Nancy said, “I be all right then.”
The lane was always dark. “This is where Jason got scared on Hallowe’en,” Caddy said.
“I didn’t,” Jason said.
“Cant Aunt Rachel do anything with him?” father said. Aunt Rachel was old. She lived in a cabin beyond Nancy’s, by herself. She had white hair and she smoked a pipe in the door, all day long; she didn’t work any more. They said she was Jesus’ mother. Sometimes she said she was and sometimes she said she wasn’t any kin to Jesus.
“Yes, you did,” Caddy said. “You were scairder than Frony. You were scairder than T.P. even. Scairder than niggers.”
“Cant nobody do nothing with him,” Nancy said. “He say I done woke up the devil in him and aint but one thing going to lay it down again.”
“Well, he’s gone now,” father said. “There’s nothing for you to be afraid of now. And if you’d just let white men alone.”
“Let what white men alone?” Caddy said. “How let them alone?”
“He aint gone nowhere,” Nancy said. “I can feel him. I can feel him now, in this lane. He hearing us talk, every word, hid somewhere, waiting. I aint seen him, and I aint going to see him again but once more, with that razor in his mouth. That razor on that string down his back, inside his shirt. And then I aint going to be even surprised.”
“I wasn’t scaired,” Jason said.
“If you’d behave yourself, you’d have kept out of this,” father said. “But it’s all right now. He’s probably in St. Louis now. Probably got another wife by now and forgot all about you.”
“If he has, I better not find out about it,” Nancy said. “I’d stand there right over them, and every time he wropped her, I’d cut that arm off. I’d cut his head off and I’d slit her belly and I’d shove—”
“Hush,” father said.
“Slit whose belly, Nancy?” Caddy said.
“I wasn’t scaired,” Jason said. “I’d walk right down this lane by myself.”
“Yah,” Caddy said. “You wouldn’t dare to put your foot down in it if we were not here too.”
II
Dilsey was still sick, so we took Nancy home every night until mother said, “How much longer is this going on? I to be left alone in this big house while you take home a frightened Negro?”
We fixed a pallet in the kitchen for Nancy. One night we waked up, hearing the sound. It was not singing and it was not crying, coming up the dark stairs. There was a light in mother’s room and we heard father going down the hall, down the back stairs, and Caddy and I went into the hall. The floor was cold. Our toes curled away from it while we listened to the sound. It was like singing and it wasn’t like singing, like the sounds that Negroes make.
Then it stopped and we heard father going down the back stairs, and we went to the head of the stairs. Then the sound began again, in the stairway, not loud, and we could see Nancy’s eyes halfway up the stairs, against the wall. They looked like cat’s eyes do, like a big cat against the wall, watching us.
When we came down the steps to where she was, she quit making the sound again, and we stood there until father came back up from the kitchen, with his pistol in his hand. He went back down with Nancy and they came back with Nancy’s pallet.
We spread the pallet in our room. After the light in mother’s room went off, we could see Nancy’s eyes again. “Nancy,” Caddy whispered, “are you asleep, Nancy?”
Nancy whispered something. It was oh or no, I dont know which. Like nobody had made it, like it came from nowhere and went nowhere, until it was like Nancy was not there at all; that I had looked so hard at her eyes on the stairs that they had got printed on my eyeballs, like the sun does when you have closed your eyes and there is no sun. “Jesus,” Nancy whispered. “Jesus.”
“Was it Jesus?” Caddy said. “Did he try to come into the kitchen?”
“Jesus,” Nancy said. Like this: Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesus, until the sound went out, like a match or a candle does.
“It’s the other Jesus she means,” I said.
“Can you see us, Nancy?” Caddy whispered. “Can you see our eyes too?”
“I aint nothing but a nigger,” Nancy said. “God knows. God knows.”
“What did you see down there in the kitchen?” Caddy whispered. “What tried to get in?”
“God knows,” Nancy said. We could see her eyes. “God knows.”
Dilsey got well. She cooked dinner. “You’d better stay in bed a day or two longer,” father said.
“What for?” Dilsey said. “If I had been a day later, this place would be to rack and ruin. Get on out of here now, and let me get my kitchen straight again.”
Dilsey cooked supper too. And that night, just before dark, Nancy came into the kitchen.
“How do you know he’s back?” Dilsey said. “You aint seen him.”
“Jesus is a nigger,” Jason said.
“I can feel him,” Nancy said. “I can feel him laying yonder in the ditch.”
“Tonight?” Dilsey said. “Is he there tonight?”
“Dilsey’s a nigger too,” Jason said.
“You try to eat something,” Dilsey said.
“I dont want nothing,” Nancy said.
“I aint a nigger,” Jason said.
“Drink some coffee,” Dilsey said. She poured a cup of coffee for Nancy. “Do you know he’s out there tonight? How come you know it’s tonight?”
“I know,” Nancy said. “He’s there, waiting. I know. I done lived with him too long. I know what he is fixing to do fore he know it himself.”
“Drink some coffee,” Dilsey said. Nancy held the cup to her mouth and blew into the cup. Her mouth pursed out like a spreading adder’s, like a rubber mouth, like she had blown all the color out of her lips with blowing the coffee.
“I aint a nigger,” Jason said. “Are you a nigger, Nancy?”
“I hellborn, child,” Nancy said. “I wont be nothing soon. I going back where I come from soon.”
III
She began to drink the coffee. While she was drinking, holding the cup in both hands, she began to make the sound again. She made the sound into the cup and the coffee sploshed out onto her hands and her dress. Her eyes looked at us and she sat there, her elbows on her knees, holding the cup in both hands, looking at us across the wet cup, making the sound. “Look at Nancy,” Jason said. “Nancy cant cook for us now. Dilsey’s got well now.”
“You hush up,” Dilsey said. Nancy held the cup in both hands, looking at us, making the sound, like there were two of them: one looking at us and the other making the sound. “Whyn’t you let Mr Jason telefoam the marshal?” Dilsey said. Nancy stopped then, holding the cup in her long brown hands. She tried to drink some coffee again, but it sploshed out of the cup, onto her hands and her dress, and she put the cup down. Jason watched her.
“I cant swallow it,” Nancy said. “I swallows but it wont go down me.”
“You go down to the cabin,” Dilsey said. “Frony will fix you a pallet and I’ll be there soon.”
“Wont no nigger stop him,” Nancy said.
“I aint a nigger,” Jason said. “Am I, Dilsey?”
“I reckon not,” Dilsey said. She looked at Nancy. “I dont reckon so. What you going to do, then?”
Nancy looked at us. Her eyes went fast, like she was afraid there wasn’t time to look, without hardly moving at all. She looked at us, at all three of us at one time. “You member that night I stayed in yawls’ room?” she said.
She told about how we waked up early the next morning, and played. We had to play quiet, on her pallet, until father woke up and it was time to get breakfast. “Go and ask your maw to let me stay here tonight,” Nancy said. “I wont need no pallet. We can play some more.”
Caddy asked mother. Jason went too. “I cant have Negroes sleeping in the bedrooms,” mother said. Jason cried. He cried until mother said he couldn’t have any dessert for three days if he didn’t stop. Then Jason said he would stop if Dilsey would make a chocolate cake. Father was there.
“Why dont you do something about it?” mother said. “What do we have officers for?”
“Why is Nancy afraid of Jesus?” Caddy said. “Are you afraid of father, mother?”
“What could the officers do?” father said. “If Nancy hasn’t seen him, how could the officers find him?”
“Then why is she afraid?” mother said.
“She says he is there. She says she knows he is there tonight.”
“Yet we pay taxes,” mother said. “I must wait here alone in this big house while you take a Negro woman home.”
“You know that I am not lying outside with a razor,” father said.
“I’ll stop if Dilsey will make a chocolate cake,” Jason said. Mother told us to go out and father said he didn’t know if Jason would get a chocolate cake or not, but he knew what Jason was going to get in about a
