Rufus’ house was on the way to school for a considerable neighborhood, and within a few minutes after his father had waved for the last time and disappeared, the walks were filled with another exciting thing to look at as the boys and girls who were old enough for school came by. At first he was content to watch them through the front window; they were creatures of an all but unimaginable world; he personally knew nobody who was big enough even for kindergarten. Later he felt more kinship with them, more curiosity, great envy, and considerable awe. It did not yet occur to him that he could ever grow up to be one of them, but he began to feel that in any case they were somehow of the same race. He wandered out into the yard, even to the sidewalk, even, at length, to the corner, where he could see them coming from three ways at once. He was fascinated by the way they looked, the boys so powerfully dressed and the girls almost as prettily as if they were going to a party. Nearly all of them walked in two’s and three’s, and members of these groups often called to others of the groups. You could see how well they all knew each other; any number of people; a whole world. And they all carried books of different colors and thicknesses, and lunches done up in packages or boxes, and pencils in still other boxes; or carried all these things together in a satchel. He loved the way they carried these things, it seemed to give them wonderful dignity and purpose, to be the mark that set them apart in their privileged world. He particularly admired and envied the way the boys who carried their books in brown canvas straps could swing them, except when they swung them at his head. Then he was at the same time frightened and very much surprised, and the boy who had pretended he meant to hit him, and anyone else who saw, would laugh to see that look of fear and surprise on his face, and he felt puzzled and unhappy because they laughed.
But that did not happen often enough to discourage him, and going to the corner at the time they went to school, and at the time they could be expected back again, became quite a habit with him, almost as happy and exciting, in its way, as watching for the first glimpse of his father, late in the afternoon. Sometimes when he caught an eye he would even say, “Hello,” as much out of embarrassment as eagerness to communicate. Of course he was very seldom answered; the boys would merely stare at him for a second or so, with the stare turning hot or more often cold, and the girls, depending on age or disposition, either giggled in a way that made him look quickly away, or pretended that they had not even seen or heard him. But since he did not, after all, expect any answer, it was wonderfully pleasant when, occasionally, a much older boy would smile and say, “Hello there”; a few times they even reached out and mussed up his hair. Once, too, when he had said hello to some much older girls, one of them cried out in the strange, sticky voice he had heard grown women use, “Ooh, just look at the darlin little boy!”
He had felt embarrassed but pleasantly flattered for a moment; then he heard several boys squealing the same words, but insincerely, in fact with a hatred and scorn which appalled him, and he had wished that he could not be seen.
He never learned the names of more than two or three of these boys, for most of them lived several blocks away; but quite a few of them, in time, knew him very well. They would come up, nearly always, with the same question: “What’s your name?” It seemed strange to him that they could not remember his name from one day to the next, for he always told it to them perfectly clearly, but he felt that if they forgot, and asked again, he ought to tell them again, and when he told them, politely, they all laughed. After a while he began to realize that they only asked him, day after day, not because they had really forgotten, but only to tease him. So he became more careful. When they asked, “What’s your name?” he would feel embarrassed and say, “Oh, you know my name, you’re only trying to tease me.”
And some of them would snicker, but invariably the boy who had asked it this time would say very seriously and politely, “No, I don’t know your name, you never told me your name,” and he would begin to wonder; had he or hadn’t he.
“Yes I did, too,” he would say, “I remember. It was only day before yesterday.”
And again there would be snickering, but the questioner looked even more serious and kind, and one or two of the boys next to him looked equally serious, and he would say, “No, honest. Honest, it couldn’t have been me. I don’t know your name.”
And one of the other boys would say, very reasonably, “Gee, he wouldn’t ast you if he knowed it already, would he?”
And Rufus would say, “Aw, you’re just trying to tease me. You all know my name.”
And one of the other boys would say, “I’ve forgot it. I knew it but I’ve plumb forgot it. I’d tell him if I could but I just can’t remember it.”
And he too would look very sincere. And the first questioner would say, almost pleading, and very kind-looking, “Come on, tell us your name. Maybe you told it to him but he don’t remember. If he could remember he’d tell me, now wouldn’t he? Wouldn’t you tell me?”
“Sure I’d tell you if I could remember it. Wisht you’d tell it to me again.”
And two or three other boys, in similar tones of kindness, respect and concern, would chime in, “Aw come on, tell us your name.”
And he was taken aback by all this kindness and concern, for they did not seem to act in that way towards him at any other time, and yet it did seem real. And after thinking a moment he would say, looking cautiously and earnestly, at the boy who had forgotten, “Do you promise you really honestly forgot?”
And looking back just as earnestly the boy said, “Cross my heart and body,” and did so.
Then there was a snicker again from somebody, and Rufus realized that some of them were undoubtedly teasing; but he felt that he did not much mind, if these central boys were not. So he paid no attention to the snickering and said to every one of the kind-looking, serious boys, “You promise you honestly aren’t teasing this time?” and they promised. Then he said, “If I tell you this time will you promise to do your very best to remember, and not ask me again?” and they said that they sure would, they crossed their hearts and bodies. At the last moment, just as he was beginning to tell them, he always felt such sudden, profound doubt of their sincerity that he did not want to go ahead, but he always felt, too, Maybe they mean it. I f they do, it would be mean not to tell them. So he always told them. “Well,” he always said rather doubtfully, and brought out his name in a peculiarly muffled and shy way (he had come almost to feel that the name itself was being physically hurt, and he did not want it to be hurt again) “Well, it’s Rufus.”
And the instant it was out of his mouth he knew that he had been mistaken once again, that not a single soul of them had meant one thing that he had said, for with that instant every one of them screamed as loudly as he could with a ferocious kind of joy, and it was as if the whole knot exploded and sent its fragments tearing all over the neighborhood, screaming his name with amusement and apparently with some kind of contempt; and many of them screamed, as well, a verse which they seemed to think very funny, though Rufus could not understand why.
Uh-Rufus, Uh-Rastus, Uh-Johnson, Uh-Brown,
uh-What ya gonna do when the rent comes roun?
and others yelled, “Nigger’s name, nigger’s name,” and chanted a verse that he had often heard them yell after the backs of colored children and even grown-up colored people,
Nigger, nigger, black as tar,
Tried to ride a lectric car,
Car broke down and broke his back
Poor nigger wanted his nickel back.
Three or four, instead of running, stood screaming his name and these verses at him, and the word, “nigger,” jumping up and down and shoving their fingers at his chest and stomach and face while he stood in abashment, and followed by these, he would walk unhappily home.
It puzzled him very deeply. If they knew his name all the time, as apparently they did, then why did they keep on asking as if they had never heard it, or as if they couldn’t remember it? It was just to tease. But why did they want to tease? Why did they get such fun out of it? Why was it so much fun, to pretend to be so nice and so really interested, to pretend it so well that somebody else believed you in spite of himself, just so that he would show that he was deceived once again, because if you honestly did mean it, this time, he didn’t want to not tell you when you honestly seemed to want so much to know. Why was it that when some of them were asking him, and others were backing them up or just looking on, there was some kind of a strange, tight force in the air all around them that made them all seem very much together and that made him feel very much alone and very eager to be liked by them, together with them? Why did he keep on believing them? It happened over and over and he could not think of a single time that they had looked so interested, and friendly, and kind, but what it had turned out that they didn’t really mean one bit of it. The ones who were really nice, the ones who never deceived him or teased him, were a few of the much bigger boys, who were never so attentive or kind as this, but just said, “Hello, there,” and smiled as they went by, or maybe mussed up his hair or gave him a little punch, not to hurt or scare him, but only in play. They were very different from these, they never paid him such close attention or looked so affectionate, but they were the nice ones and these were mean to him, every time. But every time, it was the same. When they started he was always absolutely sure they were teasing, and he was always absolutely sure that this time, he would not give in to them; but every time, as they kept talking, he became less sure. At the same time that he became less sure, he became more sure, but that confused and troubled him, and the more sure he was that all this apparent kindness was merely deception and meanness, the more eagerly he studied their faces in the hope that this time they really meant it. The less he believed them, the more he was led to believe them, and the easier it was for him to believe them. The more alone he felt, the more he wanted to feel that he was not alone, but one of them. And every time he finally gave in, he became a little more sure, just before he gave in, that he would not take this chance again. And every time he finally spoke his name, he spoke it a little more shyly, a little more in shame, until he began to feel some kind of shame about the name itself. The way they all screamed it at him, and screamed that rhyme they all laughed at, the more he came to feel that there must be something wrong with the name itself, so that even at home sometimes, even when Mama said it, if he heard it without expecting it, he felt some kind of obscure, wincing shock and shame. But when he asked her if Rufus was really a nigger’s name, and why that made everybody laugh at it, she turned to him sharply and said to him in a sharp voice, as if she were accusing him of something, “Who told you that?”, and he had answered, in fear, that he did not know who, and she had said, “Don’t you just pay any attention to them. It’s a very fine old name. Some colored people take it too, but that is perfectly all right and nothing for them to be ashamed of or for white people to be ashamed of who take it. You were given that name because it was your great-grandfather Lynch’s name, and it’s a name to be proud of. And Rufus: don’t ever speak that word ‘nigger’.”
But he had felt that although maybe she was proud of the name, he was not. How could you be proud of a name that everybody laughed at? Once when they were less noisy, and one of them said to him, quietly, “That’s a nigger’s name,” he had tried to feel proud and had said, “It is not either, it’s a very fine old name and I got it from my Great-granpa Lynch,” they yelled, “Then your granpa’s a nigger too,” and ran off down the street yelling, “Rufus is a nigger, Rufus’ granpa’s a nigger, he’s a ning-ger, he’s a nin-ger,” and he had yelled after them, “He is not, either, it’s my great-granpa and he is not!”; but after that they sometimes opened a conversation by asking, “How’s your nigger grandpaw?” and he had to try to explain all over again that it was his great-grandpa and he was not colored, but they never seemed............