Esther
A young woman Gabriel knew in the South, and the reason his past does not stay in it.
To be left as she is. She says it in his kitchen: she is a woman grown and not fixing to change, and he might let Esther have her little whisky and her little ways without all the time trying to make her miserable.
The book
At a glance
- A young woman working in the same white household as Gabriel, in the Southern chapters
- In town shortly after Gabriel and Deborah married
- A mother in gold earrings, and a stepfather the book calls gambling and loud-talking
- Never seen there before the night she came to hear Gabriel preach
- Nine days
- Her whisky, her ways, and her refusal to be reformed
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeEsther is a young woman in the Southern chapters of James Baldwin's first novel, in the household where Gabriel Grimes worked. She came to town shortly after he and Deborah married, and worked in the same white family's house — she in the kitchen, he in the yard and at the wood pile and driving the family to the station.
She is the only person in the novel who refuses to take Gabriel at his own valuation. He preaches at her; she calls him Reverend in a tone that makes him want to hit her, tells him she is a woman grown and is not fixing to change, and asks him to let her have her whisky and her ways without making her miserable about it. When the affair happens it lasts nine days, and she treats his terror about it as a childish way of making life more complicated than it needs to be.
When she becomes pregnant she is unsentimental and completely clear about the position. She does not ask him to marry her. She points out that she is not the holy one, that he is a married preacher, and that if it came to it people would know exactly whom to blame.
How the book draws them
- The night she came to churchA blue hat trimmed with many ribbons and a heavy wine-red dress. Her mother, massive and darker than she is, wore great gold earrings in pierced ears. They sat at the back, rigid and uncomfortable, and heads turned when they came in, because here were sinners come to hear the Word.
- Why she cameGabriel invited her, and told his wife afterwards that he did not think the Word of God could do her any harm. Esther and her mother left during the singing. They had come only to hear him preach.
- ReverendWhat she calls him, and what he cannot stand being called by her. The first time she says it during their argument in the kitchen, he wants to strike her and takes both her hands instead.
- The master's whiskyWith the family away for three days, she waits for him on the porch steps. When he has finished shuttering the windows and locking the doors he comes back into the kitchen and finds she has moved to the doorway with a glass in her hand, having helped herself to more of the whisky.
- What she thinks of his fearFanciful and childish. She wants life to be simple and does not think it is like that. When he tries to tell her the Lord will punish them she will not listen, and says he is not in the pulpit now: even a Reverend has the right to take his clothes off sometimes and act like a natural man.
- How she took the ending of itWith the same casualness and near-amusement she took the beginning. She was angry and she did not argue. Her eyes told him she thought he was a fool, and the book says a large part of her simplicity consisted in determining not to want what she could not have easily.
- How she tells himIn the yard at the beginning of spring, wearing a cotton dress of light-brown and dark-brown squares with her hair braided tightly all around her head, so that he thought she looked like a little girl and almost smiled. Then she said she was going to have a baby.
- Why she waitedShe had known for a month or six weeks and said nothing until she was sure. She saw no need, she tells him, to get him upset and scared and evil before there was anything to be upset about.
- Who would be blamedShe laughs at him. Enough people would believe her to make it hard on him, and she is not the holy one — he is a married man and a preacher, and she asks him who he thinks folks are going to blame most. The book notes that she has the victory again.
- What she will not be calledShe throws his own arithmetic back at him: not good enough to be his wife, but good enough for the night and the dark, and good enough to go and have his child somewhere in the woods. She ends the accusation with the word Reverend.
- What she does not doLie. She tells him she is not in the habit of lying to anybody, and that she has not gone with so many men that she is subject to get her mind confused.
Nobody ever knew.