James

by Percival Everett

The youngest of them, lean and tall five-year-old Rachel, said, “Lawdy, missum! Looky dere.” “Perfect,” I said. “Why is that correct?” Lizzie raised her hand. “Because we must let the whites be the ones who name the trouble.” “And why is that?” I asked. February said, “Because they need to know everything before us. Because they need to name everything.”

“Why did God set it up like this?” Rachel asked. “With them as masters and us as slaves?” “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 tool they employ and adhere to when convenient.”

The worst part was that the judge told the grand jury that it was an act of a multitude and so they couldn’t recommend any indictments. So, if enough people do it, it’s not a crime.”

How strange a world, how strange an existence, that one’s equal must argue for one’s equality, that one’s equal must hold a station that allows airing of that argument, that one cannot make that argument for oneself, that premises of said argument must be vetted by those equals who do not agree.

Then I wrote my first words. I wanted to be certain that they were mine and not some I had read from a book in the judge’s library. I wrote: I am called Jim. I have yet to choose a name. In the religious preachings of my white captors I am a victim of the Curse of Ham. The white so-called masters cannot embrace their cruelty and greed, but must look to that lying Dominican friar for religious justification. But I will not let this condition define me. I will not let myself, my mind, drown in fear and outrage. I will be outraged as a matter of course. But my interest is in how these marks that I am scratching on this page can mean anything at all. If they can have meaning, then life can have meaning, then I can have meaning.

At that moment the power of reading made itself clear and real to me. If I could see the words, then no one could control them or what I got from them. They couldn’t even know if I was merely seeing them or reading them, sounding them out or comprehending them. It was a completely private affair and completely free and, therefore, completely subversive.

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

“Yes, but them people liked it, Jim. Did you see their faces? They had to know them was lies, but they wanted to believe. What do you make of that?” “Folks be funny lak dat. Dey takes the lies dey want and throws away the truths dat scares ’em.”

“When does the war end?” I asked. “Does it end? That’s the question. Who gets to say that it’s over? A war continues until the victor says it’s over.”