If Beale Street Could Talk

by James Baldwin

I guess it can’t be too often that two people can laugh and make love, too, make love because they are laughing, laugh because they’re making love. The love and the laughter come from the same place: but not many people go there.

This might heal me~

“Whatever Alice don’t feel like being bothered with,” Frank was to say to me, much later, “she leaves in the hands of Lord.”

It was as though we were a picture, trapped in time: this had been happening for hundreds of years, people sitting in a room, waiting for dinner, and listening to the blues.

And it was as though, out of these elements, this patience, my Daddy’s touch, the sounds of my mother in the kitchen, the way the light fell, the way the music continued beneath everything, the movement of Ernestine’s head as she lit a cigarette, the movement of her hand as she dropped the match into the ashtray, the blurred human voices rising from the street, out of this rage and a steady, somehow triumphant sorrow, my baby was slowly being formed.

It’s a miracle to realize that somebody loves you.

I didn’t know what this meant. But the waiting moment, which had spied us on the road, and which was waiting for us, knew.

We were to spend a long time in this room: our lives.

“We——” I started again, intending to make up God knows what excuse. “Want to get married,” Fonny said. “Then you’d really better have some coffee,” Sis said, and closed the door behind us.