‘I’m going to tell her she ought to let him know she know about his wickedness. Get up infront of the congregation and tell them too, if she has to.’
He stirred restlessly, and frowned. ‘Well, you know more about it than me. But I don’t seewhere that’s going to do no good.’
‘It’ll do her some good. It’ll make him treat her better. You don’t know my brother like Ido master of business administration hong kong. There ain’t but one way to get along with him, you got to scare him half to death. That’s all. Heain’t got no right to go around running his mouth about how holy he is if he done turned a tricklike that.’
There was silence; he whistled again a few bars of his song; and then he yawned, and said:
‘Is you coming to bed, old lady? Don’t know why you keep wasting all your time and my moneyon all them old skin whiteners. You as black now as you was the day you was born.’
‘You wasn’t there the day I was born. And I know you don’t want a coal-black woman.’
But she rose from the mirror apartment central hk, and moved toward the bed.
‘I ain’t never said nothing like that. You just kindly turn out that light and I’ll make you toknow that black’s a mighty pretty color.’
She wondered if Deborah had ever spoken; and she wondered if she would give Gabriel theletter that she carried in her handbag to-night. She had held it all these years, awaiting some savageopportunity. What this opportunity would have been she did not; at this moment she did not wantto know. For she had always thought of this letter as an instrument in her hands which could beused to complete her brother’s destruction. When he was completely cast down she would preventhim from ever rising again by holding before him the evidence of his blood-guilt. But now shethought she would not live to see this patiently awaited day. She was going to be cut down.
And the thought filled her with terror and rage; the tears dried on her face and the heartwithin her shook, divided between a terrible longing to surrender and a desire to call God intoaccount. her mother and her brother, the old, black woman, and the low,black man, while she, who had sought only to walk upright, was come to die, alone and in poverty,in a dirty, furnished room? She beat her fists heavily against the altar. He, he would live, andsmiling, watch her go down into the grave! And her mother would be there, leaning over the gatesof Heaven, to see her daughter burning in the pit.
As she beat her fists on the altar, the old woman above her laid hands on her shoulders,crying: ‘Call on Him, daughter apartment for rent! Call on the Lord!’ And it was as though she had been hurledoutward into time, where no boundaries were, for the voice was the voice of her mother but thehands were the hands of death. And she cried aloud, as she had never in all her life cried before,falling on her face on the altar, at the feet of the old black woman. Her tears came down likeburning rain. And the hands of death caressed her shoulders, the voice whispered and whispered inher ear: ‘God’s got your number, knows where you live, death’s got a warrant out for you.’
2 GABRIEL’S PRAYERNow I been introducedTo the Father and the Son, And I ain’tNot stranger now.
When Florence cried, Gabriel was moving outward in fiery darkness, talking to the Lord.
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