{"id":79,"date":"2021-10-29T11:15:29","date_gmt":"2021-10-29T15:15:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.ryerson.ca\/theireyeswerewatchinggod\/chapter\/the-distributed-proofreaders-canada-ebook-of-their-eyes-were-watching-god-by-zora-neale-hurston-8\/"},"modified":"2022-01-28T11:21:09","modified_gmt":"2022-01-28T16:21:09","slug":"9","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/theireyeswerewatchinggod\/chapter\/9\/","title":{"raw":"Chapter 9","rendered":"Chapter 9"},"content":{"raw":"
<\/div>\r\n

Joe\u2019s<\/span> funeral was the finest thing Orange County had ever seen with Negro eyes. The motor hearse, the Cadillac and Buick carriages; Dr. Henderson there in his Lincoln; the hosts from far and wide. Then again the gold and red and purple, the gloat and glamor of the secret orders, each with its insinuations of power and glory undreamed of by the uninitiated. People on farm horses and mules; babies riding astride of brothers\u2019 and sisters\u2019 backs. The Elks band ranked at the church door and playing \u201cSafe in the Arms of Jesus\u201d with such a dominant drum rhythm that it could be stepped off smartly by the long line as it filed inside. The Little Emperor of the cross-roads was leaving Orange County as he had come\u2014with the out-stretched hand of power.<\/p>\r\n

Janie starched and ironed her face and came set in the funeral behind her veil. It was like a wall of stone and steel. The funeral was going on outside. All things concerning death and burial were said and done. Finish. End. Nevermore. Darkness. Deep hole. Dissolution. Eternity. Weeping and wailing outside. Inside the expensive black folds were resurrection and life. She did not reach outside for anything, nor did the things of death reach inside to disturb her calm. She sent her face to Joe\u2019s funeral, and herself went rollicking with the springtime across the world. After a while the people finished their celebration and Janie went on home.<\/p>\r\n

Before she slept that night she burnt up every one of her head rags and went about the house next morning with her hair in one thick braid swinging well below her waist. That was the only change people saw in her. She kept the store in the same way except of evenings she sat on the porch and listened and sent Hezekiah in to wait on late custom. She saw no reason to rush at changing things around. She would have the rest of her life to do as she pleased.<\/p>\r\n

Most of the day she was at the store, but at night she was there in the big house and sometimes it creaked and cried all night under the weight of lonesomeness. Then she\u2019d lie awake in bed asking lonesomeness some questions. She asked if she wanted to leave and go back where she had come from and try to find her mother. Maybe tend her grandmother\u2019s grave. Sort of look over the old stamping ground generally. Digging around inside of herself like that she found that she had no interest in that seldom-seen mother at all. She hated her grandmother and had hidden it from herself all these years under a cloak of pity. She had been getting ready for her great journey to the horizons in search of people<\/span>; it was important to all the world that she should find them and they find her. But she had been whipped like a cur dog, and run off down a back road after things<\/span>. It was all according to the way you see things. Some people could look at a mud-puddle and see an ocean with ships. But Nanny belonged to that other kind that loved to deal in scraps. Here Nanny had taken the biggest thing God ever made, the horizon\u2014for no matter how far a person can go the horizon is still way beyond you\u2014and pinched it in to such a little bit of a thing that she could tie it about her granddaughter\u2019s neck tight enough to choke her. She hated the old woman who had twisted her so in the name of love. Most humans didn\u2019t love one another nohow, and this mislove was so strong that even common blood couldn\u2019t overcome it all the time. She had found a jewel down inside herself and she had wanted to walk where people could see her and gleam it around. But she had been set in the market-place to sell. Been set for still-bait. When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Then after that some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. So they covered each one over with mud. And the lonesomeness in the sparks make them hunt for one another, but the mud is deaf and dumb. Like all the other tumbling mud-balls, Janie had tried to show her shine.<\/p>\r\n

Janie found out very soon that her widowhood and property was a great challenge in South Florida. Before Jody had been dead a month, she noticed how often men who had never been intimates of Joe, drove considerable distances to ask after her welfare and offer their services as advisor.<\/p>\r\n

\u201cUh woman by herself is uh pitiful thing,\u201d she was told over and again. \u201cDey needs aid and assistance. God never meant \u2019em tuh try tuh stand by theirselves. You ain\u2019t been used tuh knockin\u2019 round and doin\u2019 fuh yo\u2019self, Mis\u2019 Starks. You been well taken keer of, you needs uh man.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

Janie laughed at all these well-wishers because she knew that they knew plenty of women alone; that she was not the first one they had ever seen. But most of the others were poor. Besides she liked being lonesome for a change. This freedom feeling was fine. These men didn\u2019t represent a thing she wanted to know about. She had already experienced them through Logan and Joe. She felt like slapping some of them for sitting around grinning at her like a pack of chessy cats, trying to make out they looked like love.<\/p>\r\n

Ike Green sat on her case seriously one evening on the store porch when he was lucky enough to catch her alone.<\/p>\r\n

\u201cYou wants be keerful \u2019bout who you marry, Mis\u2019 Starks. Dese strange men runnin\u2019 heah tryin\u2019 tuh take advantage of yo\u2019 condition.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

\u201cMarry!\u201d Janie almost screamed. \u201cJoe ain\u2019t had time tuh git cold yet. Ah ain\u2019t even give marryin\u2019 de first thought.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

\u201cBut you will. You\u2019se too young uh \u2019oman tuh stay single, and you\u2019se too pretty for de mens tuh leave yuh alone. You\u2019se bound tuh marry.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

\u201cAh hope not. Ah mean, at dis present time it don\u2019t come befo\u2019 me. Joe ain\u2019t been dead two months. Ain\u2019t got settled down in his grave.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

\u201cDat\u2019s whut you say now, but two months mo\u2019 and you\u2019ll sing another tune. Den you want tuh be keerful. Womenfolks is easy taken advantage of. You know what tuh let none uh dese stray niggers dat\u2019s settin\u2019 round heah git de inside track on yuh. They\u2019s jes lak uh pack uh hawgs, when dey see uh full trough. Whut yuh needs is uh man dat yuh done lived uhround and know all about tuh sort of manage yo\u2019 things fuh yuh and ginerally do round.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

Janie jumped upon her feet. \u201cLawd, Ike Green, you\u2019se uh case! Dis subjick you bringin\u2019 up ain\u2019t fit tuh be talked about at all. Lemme go inside and help Hezekiah weigh up dat barrel uh sugar dat just come in.\u201d She rushed on inside the store and whispered to Hezekiah, \u201cAh\u2019m gone tuh de house. Lemme know when dat ole pee-de-bed is gone and Ah\u2019ll be right back.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

Six months of wearing black passed and not one suitor had ever gained the house porch. Janie talked and laughed in the store at times, but never seemed to want to go further. She was happy except for the store. She knew by her head that she was absolute owner, but it always seemed to her that she was still clerking for Joe and that soon he would come in and find something wrong that she had done. She almost apologized to the tenants the first time she collected the rents. Felt like a usurper. But she hid that feeling by sending Hezekiah who was the best imitation of Joe that his seventeen years could make. He had even taken to smoking, and smoking cigars, since Joe\u2019s death and tried to bite \u2019em tight in one side of his mouth like Joe. Every chance he got he was reared back in Joe\u2019s swivel chair trying to thrust out his lean belly into a paunch. She\u2019d laugh quietly at his no-harm posing and pretend she didn\u2019t see it. One day as she came in the back door of the store she heard him bawling at Tripp Crawford, \u201cNaw indeed, we can\u2019t do nothin\u2019 uh de kind! I god, you ain\u2019t paid for dem last rations you done et up. I god, you won\u2019t git no mo\u2019 outa dis store than you got money tuh pay for. I god, dis ain\u2019t Gimme, Florida, dis is Eatonville.\u201d Another time she overheard him using Joe\u2019s favorite expression for pointing out the differences between himself and the careless-living, mouthy town. \u201cAh\u2019m an educated man, Ah keep mah arrangements in mah hands.\u201d She laughed outright at that. His acting didn\u2019t hurt nobody and she wouldn\u2019t know what to do without him. He sensed that and came to treat her like baby-sister, as if to say \u201cYou poor little thing, give it to big brother. He\u2019ll fix it for you.\u201d His sense of ownership made him honest too, except for an occasional jaw-breaker, or a packet of sen-sen. The sen-sen was to let on to the other boys and the pullet-size girls that he had a liquor breath to cover. This business of managing stores and women store-owners was trying on a man\u2019s nerves. He needed a drink of liquor now and then to keep up.<\/p>\r\n

When Janie emerged into her mourning white, she had hosts of admirers in and out of town. Everything open and frank. Men of property too among the crowd, but nobody seemed to get any further than the store. She was always too busy to take them to the house to entertain. They were all so respectful and stiff with her, that she might have been the Empress of Japan. They felt that it was not fitting to mention desire to the widow of Joseph Starks. You spoke of honor and respect. And all that they said and did was refracted by her inattention and shot off towards the rim-bones of nothing. She and Pheoby Watson visited back and forth and once in awhile sat around the lakes and fished. She was just basking in freedom for the most part without the need for thought. A Sanford undertaker was pressing his cause through Pheoby, and Janie was listening pleasantly but undisturbed. It might be nice to marry him, at that. No hurry. Such things take time to think about, or rather she pretended to Pheoby that that was what she was doing.<\/p>\r\n

\u201c\u202f\u2019Tain\u2019t dat Ah worries over Joe\u2019s death, Pheoby. Ah jus\u2019 loves dis freedom.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

\u201cSh-sh-sh! Don\u2019t let nobody hear you say dat, Janie. Folks will say you ain\u2019t sorry he\u2019s gone.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

\u201cLet \u2019em say whut dey wants tuh, Pheoby. To my thinkin\u2019 mourning oughtn\u2019t tuh last no longer\u2019n grief.\u201d<\/p>","rendered":"

<\/div>\n

Joe\u2019s<\/span> funeral was the finest thing Orange County had ever seen with Negro eyes. The motor hearse, the Cadillac and Buick carriages; Dr. Henderson there in his Lincoln; the hosts from far and wide. Then again the gold and red and purple, the gloat and glamor of the secret orders, each with its insinuations of power and glory undreamed of by the uninitiated. People on farm horses and mules; babies riding astride of brothers\u2019 and sisters\u2019 backs. The Elks band ranked at the church door and playing \u201cSafe in the Arms of Jesus\u201d with such a dominant drum rhythm that it could be stepped off smartly by the long line as it filed inside. The Little Emperor of the cross-roads was leaving Orange County as he had come\u2014with the out-stretched hand of power.<\/p>\n

Janie starched and ironed her face and came set in the funeral behind her veil. It was like a wall of stone and steel. The funeral was going on outside. All things concerning death and burial were said and done. Finish. End. Nevermore. Darkness. Deep hole. Dissolution. Eternity. Weeping and wailing outside. Inside the expensive black folds were resurrection and life. She did not reach outside for anything, nor did the things of death reach inside to disturb her calm. She sent her face to Joe\u2019s funeral, and herself went rollicking with the springtime across the world. After a while the people finished their celebration and Janie went on home.<\/p>\n

Before she slept that night she burnt up every one of her head rags and went about the house next morning with her hair in one thick braid swinging well below her waist. That was the only change people saw in her. She kept the store in the same way except of evenings she sat on the porch and listened and sent Hezekiah in to wait on late custom. She saw no reason to rush at changing things around. She would have the rest of her life to do as she pleased.<\/p>\n

Most of the day she was at the store, but at night she was there in the big house and sometimes it creaked and cried all night under the weight of lonesomeness. Then she\u2019d lie awake in bed asking lonesomeness some questions. She asked if she wanted to leave and go back where she had come from and try to find her mother. Maybe tend her grandmother\u2019s grave. Sort of look over the old stamping ground generally. Digging around inside of herself like that she found that she had no interest in that seldom-seen mother at all. She hated her grandmother and had hidden it from herself all these years under a cloak of pity. She had been getting ready for her great journey to the horizons in search of people<\/span>; it was important to all the world that she should find them and they find her. But she had been whipped like a cur dog, and run off down a back road after things<\/span>. It was all according to the way you see things. Some people could look at a mud-puddle and see an ocean with ships. But Nanny belonged to that other kind that loved to deal in scraps. Here Nanny had taken the biggest thing God ever made, the horizon\u2014for no matter how far a person can go the horizon is still way beyond you\u2014and pinched it in to such a little bit of a thing that she could tie it about her granddaughter\u2019s neck tight enough to choke her. She hated the old woman who had twisted her so in the name of love. Most humans didn\u2019t love one another nohow, and this mislove was so strong that even common blood couldn\u2019t overcome it all the time. She had found a jewel down inside herself and she had wanted to walk where people could see her and gleam it around. But she had been set in the market-place to sell. Been set for still-bait. When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Then after that some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. So they covered each one over with mud. And the lonesomeness in the sparks make them hunt for one another, but the mud is deaf and dumb. Like all the other tumbling mud-balls, Janie had tried to show her shine.<\/p>\n

Janie found out very soon that her widowhood and property was a great challenge in South Florida. Before Jody had been dead a month, she noticed how often men who had never been intimates of Joe, drove considerable distances to ask after her welfare and offer their services as advisor.<\/p>\n

\u201cUh woman by herself is uh pitiful thing,\u201d she was told over and again. \u201cDey needs aid and assistance. God never meant \u2019em tuh try tuh stand by theirselves. You ain\u2019t been used tuh knockin\u2019 round and doin\u2019 fuh yo\u2019self, Mis\u2019 Starks. You been well taken keer of, you needs uh man.\u201d<\/p>\n

Janie laughed at all these well-wishers because she knew that they knew plenty of women alone; that she was not the first one they had ever seen. But most of the others were poor. Besides she liked being lonesome for a change. This freedom feeling was fine. These men didn\u2019t represent a thing she wanted to know about. She had already experienced them through Logan and Joe. She felt like slapping some of them for sitting around grinning at her like a pack of chessy cats, trying to make out they looked like love.<\/p>\n

Ike Green sat on her case seriously one evening on the store porch when he was lucky enough to catch her alone.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou wants be keerful \u2019bout who you marry, Mis\u2019 Starks. Dese strange men runnin\u2019 heah tryin\u2019 tuh take advantage of yo\u2019 condition.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMarry!\u201d Janie almost screamed. \u201cJoe ain\u2019t had time tuh git cold yet. Ah ain\u2019t even give marryin\u2019 de first thought.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut you will. You\u2019se too young uh \u2019oman tuh stay single, and you\u2019se too pretty for de mens tuh leave yuh alone. You\u2019se bound tuh marry.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAh hope not. Ah mean, at dis present time it don\u2019t come befo\u2019 me. Joe ain\u2019t been dead two months. Ain\u2019t got settled down in his grave.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDat\u2019s whut you say now, but two months mo\u2019 and you\u2019ll sing another tune. Den you want tuh be keerful. Womenfolks is easy taken advantage of. You know what tuh let none uh dese stray niggers dat\u2019s settin\u2019 round heah git de inside track on yuh. They\u2019s jes lak uh pack uh hawgs, when dey see uh full trough. Whut yuh needs is uh man dat yuh done lived uhround and know all about tuh sort of manage yo\u2019 things fuh yuh and ginerally do round.\u201d<\/p>\n

Janie jumped upon her feet. \u201cLawd, Ike Green, you\u2019se uh case! Dis subjick you bringin\u2019 up ain\u2019t fit tuh be talked about at all. Lemme go inside and help Hezekiah weigh up dat barrel uh sugar dat just come in.\u201d She rushed on inside the store and whispered to Hezekiah, \u201cAh\u2019m gone tuh de house. Lemme know when dat ole pee-de-bed is gone and Ah\u2019ll be right back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Six months of wearing black passed and not one suitor had ever gained the house porch. Janie talked and laughed in the store at times, but never seemed to want to go further. She was happy except for the store. She knew by her head that she was absolute owner, but it always seemed to her that she was still clerking for Joe and that soon he would come in and find something wrong that she had done. She almost apologized to the tenants the first time she collected the rents. Felt like a usurper. But she hid that feeling by sending Hezekiah who was the best imitation of Joe that his seventeen years could make. He had even taken to smoking, and smoking cigars, since Joe\u2019s death and tried to bite \u2019em tight in one side of his mouth like Joe. Every chance he got he was reared back in Joe\u2019s swivel chair trying to thrust out his lean belly into a paunch. She\u2019d laugh quietly at his no-harm posing and pretend she didn\u2019t see it. One day as she came in the back door of the store she heard him bawling at Tripp Crawford, \u201cNaw indeed, we can\u2019t do nothin\u2019 uh de kind! I god, you ain\u2019t paid for dem last rations you done et up. I god, you won\u2019t git no mo\u2019 outa dis store than you got money tuh pay for. I god, dis ain\u2019t Gimme, Florida, dis is Eatonville.\u201d Another time she overheard him using Joe\u2019s favorite expression for pointing out the differences between himself and the careless-living, mouthy town. \u201cAh\u2019m an educated man, Ah keep mah arrangements in mah hands.\u201d She laughed outright at that. His acting didn\u2019t hurt nobody and she wouldn\u2019t know what to do without him. He sensed that and came to treat her like baby-sister, as if to say \u201cYou poor little thing, give it to big brother. He\u2019ll fix it for you.\u201d His sense of ownership made him honest too, except for an occasional jaw-breaker, or a packet of sen-sen. The sen-sen was to let on to the other boys and the pullet-size girls that he had a liquor breath to cover. This business of managing stores and women store-owners was trying on a man\u2019s nerves. He needed a drink of liquor now and then to keep up.<\/p>\n

When Janie emerged into her mourning white, she had hosts of admirers in and out of town. Everything open and frank. Men of property too among the crowd, but nobody seemed to get any further than the store. She was always too busy to take them to the house to entertain. They were all so respectful and stiff with her, that she might have been the Empress of Japan. They felt that it was not fitting to mention desire to the widow of Joseph Starks. You spoke of honor and respect. And all that they said and did was refracted by her inattention and shot off towards the rim-bones of nothing. She and Pheoby Watson visited back and forth and once in awhile sat around the lakes and fished. She was just basking in freedom for the most part without the need for thought. A Sanford undertaker was pressing his cause through Pheoby, and Janie was listening pleasantly but undisturbed. It might be nice to marry him, at that. No hurry. Such things take time to think about, or rather she pretended to Pheoby that that was what she was doing.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u202f\u2019Tain\u2019t dat Ah worries over Joe\u2019s death, Pheoby. Ah jus\u2019 loves dis freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSh-sh-sh! Don\u2019t let nobody hear you say dat, Janie. Folks will say you ain\u2019t sorry he\u2019s gone.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLet \u2019em say whut dey wants tuh, Pheoby. To my thinkin\u2019 mourning oughtn\u2019t tuh last no longer\u2019n grief.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":299,"menu_order":9,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[49],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-79","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry","chapter-type-numberless"],"part":3,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/theireyeswerewatchinggod\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/79","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/theireyeswerewatchinggod\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/theireyeswerewatchinggod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/theireyeswerewatchinggod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/299"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/theireyeswerewatchinggod\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/79\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":138,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/theireyeswerewatchinggod\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/79\/revisions\/138"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/theireyeswerewatchinggod\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/3"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/theireyeswerewatchinggod\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/79\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/theireyeswerewatchinggod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/theireyeswerewatchinggod\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=79"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/theireyeswerewatchinggod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=79"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/theireyeswerewatchinggod\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=79"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}