James

by Percival Everett

“There is no God, child. There’s religion but there’s no God of theirs. Their religion tells that we will get our reward in the end. However, it apparently doesn’t say anything about their punishment. But when we’re around them, we believe in God. Oh, Lawdy Lawd, we’s be believin’. Religion is just a controlling

There was nothing that irritated white men more than a couple of slaves laughing.

“He’s going to get drunk now, not so much because he can, but because we can’t,” I said.

but where does a slave put anger?

“You’re saying we’re equal, but also inferior,” I said. “I’m detecting a disapproving tone,” he said. “Listen, my friend, I’m on your side. I’m against the institution of slavery. Slavery of any kind. You know that I am an abolitionist of the first order.” “Thank you?” “You’re welcome.”

“Dyin’ can ruin a good time.”

I am called Jim. I have yet to choose a name.

“Way I sees it is dis. If’n ya gots to hab a rule to tells ya wha’s good, if’n ya gots to hab good ’splained to ya, den ya cain’t be good. If’n ya need sum kinda God to tells ya right from wrong, den you won’t never know.”

“Good ain’t got nuttin’ to do wif da law. Law says I’m a slave.”

MY NAME IS JAMES. I wish I could tell my story with a sense of history as much as industry.

With my pencil, I wrote myself into being.

“You just have to go north and find a life. God will take care of your family.”

Killing is hard to see up close. Especially for a child. To tell the truth, I hadn’t seen much killing myself, except that I lived with it daily, the threat, the promise of it.

women right outta their corsets before I take a breath.” I could believe it, I thought, pretending, in slave fashion, not to be there.

“Nobody will believe you own a slave,” the King said. “You don’t carry yerself like you rich enough to own a human being.”

As it stood, I had no plan, but it was clear that I needed one. I had to ask myself and answer honestly, How much do I want to be free? And I couldn’t lose sight of my goal of freeing my family. What would freedom be without them?

She had yellow buckteeth and big blue eyes and never was I more frightened by a creature, human or otherwise. And I was a slave.

“We’re slaves. We’re not anywhere. Free person, he can be where he wants to be. The only place we can ever be is in slavery.”

Even though Norman looked like the poorest and worst-off white man, he still commanded fear and respect.

“They want to hang you twice.” I nodded. I realized I couldn’t be made more afraid than I was, than I had been my entire life.

How much of the desire to end the institution was fueled by a need to quell and subdue white guilt and pain? Was it just too much to watch? Did it offend Christian sensibilities to live in a society that allowed that practice?

sorry, let me translate that for you. I ain’t ’cided, Massa.” I had never seen a white man filled with such fear. The remarkable truth, however, was that it was not the pistol, but my language, the fact that I didn’t conform to his expectations, that I could read, that had so disturbed and frightened him.