The Sky is Gray – Original Text | shortsonline

The Sky is Gray – Ernest J. Gaines

Me and Mama get off and start walking in town. Bayonne is a little bitty town. Baton Rouge is a hundred times bigger than Bayonne. I went to Baton Rouge once—me, Ty, Mama, and Daddy. But that was ’way back yonder, ’fore Daddy went in the Army. I wonder when we go’n see him again. I wonder when. Look like he ain’t ever coming back home.… Even the pavement all cracked in Bayonne. Got grass shooting right out the sidewalk. Got weeds in the ditch, too; just like they got at home.

It’s some cold in Bayonne. Look like it’s colder than it is home. The wind blows in my face, and I feel that stuff running down my nose. I sniff. Mama says use that handkerchief. I blow my nose and put it back.

We pass a school and I see them white children playing in the yard. Big old red school, and them children just running and playing. Then we pass a café, and I see a bunch of people in there eating. I wish I was in there ’cause I’m cold. Mama tells me keep my eyes in front where they belong.

We pass stores that’s got dummies, and we pass another café, and then we pass a shoe shop, and that bald-head man in there fixing on a shoe. I look at him and I butt into that white lady, and Mama jerks me in front and tells me stay there.

We come up to the courthouse, and I see the flag waving there. This flag ain’t like the one we got at school. This one here ain’t got but a handful of stars. One at school got a big pile of stars—one for every state. We pass it and we turn and there it is—the dentist office. Me and Mama go in, and they got people sitting everywhere you look. They even got a little boy in there younger than me.

Me and Mama sit on that bench, and a white lady come in there and ask me what my name is. Mama tells her and the white lady goes on back. Then I hear somebody hollering in there. Soon’s that little boy hear him hollering, he starts hollering, too. His mama pats him and pats him, trying to make him hush up, but he ain’t thinking ’bout his mama.

The man that was hollering in there comes out holding his jaw. He is a big old man and he’s wearing overalls and a jumper.

“Got it, hanh?” another man asks him.

The man shakes his head—don’t want open his mouth.

“Man, I thought they was killing you in there,” the other man says. “Hollering like a pig under a gate.”

The man don’t say nothing. He just heads for the door, and the other man follows him.

“John Lee,” the white lady says. “John Lee Williams.”

The little boy juggs his head down in his mama’s lap and holler more now. His mama tells him go with the nurse, but he ain’t thinking ’bout his mama. His mama tells him again, but he don’t even hear her. His mama picks him up and takes him in there, and even when the white lady shuts the door I can still hear little old John Lee.

“I often wonder why the Lord let a child like that suffer,” a lady says to my mama. The lady’s sitting right in front of us on another bench. She’s got on a white dress and a black sweater. She must be a nurse or something herself, I reckon.

“Not us to question,” a man says.

“Sometimes I don’t know if we shouldn’t,” the lady says.

“I know definitely we shouldn’t,” the man says. The man looks like a preacher. He’s big and fat and he’s got on a black suit. He’s got a gold chain, too.

“Why?” the lady says.

“Why anything?” the preacher says.

“Yes,” the lady says. “Why anything?”

“Not us to question,” the preacher says.

The lady looks at the preacher a little while and looks at Mama again.

“And look like it’s the poor who suffers the most,” she says. “I don’t understand it.”

“Best not to even try,” the preacher says. “He works in mysterious ways—wonders to perform.”

Right then little John Lee bust out hollering, and everybody turn they head to listen.

“He’s not a good dentist,” the lady says. “Dr. Robillard is much better. But more expensive. That’s why most of the colored people come here. The white people go to Dr. Robillard. Y’all from Bayonne?”

“Down the river,” my mama says. And that’s all she go’n say, ’cause she don’t talk much. But the lady keeps on looking at her, and so she says, “Near Morgan.”

“I see,” the lady says.