Lawd Today! by Richard Wright
PART ONE: COMMONPLACE
characters:
Jake - has government job at Post Office
Lil - Jake's wife
the milkman
the doctor
Mrs. Thomas - neighbor
Jones - man form whom Jake could borrow money
Streamline - old friend, unemployed
Doc Higgins - barber, involved in petty graft
Duke - a communist
Bob - friend of Jake, divorced and making alimony payments, suffering from gonorrhea
Slim - friend of Jake, has tuberculosis
Al - friend of Jake, 250 lbs,, big eater, soldier
Snake man - street performer / peddlar, claims to be from Africa, is selling a universal herb cure-all
Patsy - the snake man's rattlesnake
waitress - at Walgreen drug store, plump mulatto
setting:
Chicago
Lincoln's birthday
I.
On the radio, Jack Bassett announces Professor Witherspoon to speak on the occasion of Abraham Lincoln's birthday. Jack is dreaming that he runs up stairs in response to a call when the sound of the radio wakes him, and he shouts to his wife Lil to shut the door. He tries to go back to sleep but the milkman's call and noises from the street make it impossible. He wakes up with a bad taste in his mouth and feeling sick, and hears Lil talking to someone from the bathroom. He bursts from the bathroom and the milkman departs. As Lil makes breakfast he picks a fight with her, accusing her of flirting with the milkman. She says that he only thinks she cheats because he does it himself, and says that she is in no condition to cheat anyway. This is a reference to a health problem that appears to be related to a botched abortion, for which she blames him. She has been seeing a doctor regularly for seven years and says that he needs to pay the doctor's overdue bill soon and that she will need an operation the next month for a tumor. He threatens not to pay the bill and accuses her of cheating with the doctor. He says he doesn't want her around and doesn't see why she stays, and she says that she will stay and that he will support her; if he doesn't, she will make trouble for him at work. She has done so twice already, and a third would jeapordize his governent job. He slaps and then kicks her and twists her arm, then threatens to hurt her more if she doesn't make him breakfast.
II.
Jake returns to the bathroom and thinks about all the money he owes as he prepares to shave. If he borrowed the money from a loan bank to pay Lil's doctor and pay for her surgery, he would be repaying it for sixteen years. He can't find his razor, and yells to Lil who looks in the bedroom, eventually finding it where he had left it in a shallow dish in the bedroom. He has accused her of hiding it and of having other men over, and is even more angry remembering that he has left it there himself. He combs his hair and plasters it down with pomade, then can't find his stocking cap and yells to Lil for it. She says that she only has her new stockings until he is about to use those, and then she gives him her last old pair.
III.
Jake puts care into picking out a suit and shoes, and then reads the paper at breakfast while Lil reads a copy of Unity. Jake keeps up a running commentary as he reads, approving of Roosevelt's resolve to stike at the money changers, unsurprised by Germany'd demand for arms equality and convinced that Germany should have been wiped off the map in the last war, rooting for gangsters in their evasion of the government, approving of "HITLER CALLS ON WORLD TO SMASH JEWS," self-congratulatingly skeptical about Einstein (probably a Jew) who claims that space bends, disapproving of Communists who riot in New York and responding to the kidnapping of a millionaire's son with the thought that rich people have their problems too. He tries to get Lil to engage in what he's reading and criticizes her choice of religious reading material. When she does respond to his ideas (for instance by pointing out that there are starving people in the U.S., not just in Russia) he is dissatisfied with her input. When Lil asks what he wants for dinner he refuses to respond and then says he will eat elsewhere, and then refuses to give her money to buy food even though there is none left in the apartment.
IV.
In the vestibule, Jake reads through the circulars keeping two about schemes for getting lottery numbers and one for a medicine to restore vitality for men and women (for Lil), and tearing up an ad about a potion women can use to cure their drunkard husbands. He goes to the Black Gold Policy Wheel to play numbers based on his vivid dream (Mabel sells him the tickets while an old woman named Martha looks up the ones that correspond to steps, running and boss man from his dream). When it's time to draw the numbers he volunteers because he has never done it, and by the end he's out his two dollars. He resolves in turn to be done with playing policy and to win yet, and then suspicious of Lil with the milkman goes home where he sees her alone with her head in her arms and Unity spread out in front of her.
V.
Jake looks at lurid posters in front of a movie house. The posters portray a brown-haired hero rescuing a blonde heroine from a handsomely dark stranger in a number of different situations. The movie house isn't open yet, but Jake thinks the movie looks good and plans to see it. He thinks that being an aviator must be fun.
VI.
Jake runs into a man called Streamline who he knows from the minor league (baseball metaphor for employment?). Streamline is down on his luck and out of work and asks some money for a meal, but Jake says all he has is carfare to work and back.
VII.
Jake goes to a shop with a barber's pole called DOC HIGGINS' TONSORIAL PALACE. Doc Higgins is engaged in a heated argument with a man named Duke, and there are many spectators. Duke is a communist, and is trying to tell Doc that there are able willing men who can't get work because there isn't any and that times aren't the same as when Doc was a young man. Doc tells Duke that if there are no jobs then men should make their own jobs like he did. Jake takes Duke's side and tells a story about a frog that got stuck in the cream and churned so hard he made butter and was able to hop out. Duke and the other men leave, and Doc gives Jake a haircut. Jake tells Doc that he is worried about Lil making trouble for him at work and asks Doc to put in a good word for him with the Post Master. Doc says that it will cost him money to talk to the Post Master and reduces the price from $100 to $75 just for Jake who promises a $5 payment on his payday.
VIII.
"He wanted to go somewhere, but he could not think of a suitable place" (68). Jake passes up the billiard hall and the library (although he wonders how much it costs and plans to go in sometime), and heads to Bob's. Bob is divorced and has to pay his former wife $20/week (he agrees with Jake that he should have beat his wife during their marriage, as he says she told the judge he did so anyway). He also has gonorrhea which is making him miserable. Al shows up and then Slim, and they play bridge. Al and Slim win the first game, and Jake and Bob the second, and they laugh until Slim has a bad coughing fit.
IX.
Al is wearing a new shirt, and Jake asks where he stole it. They trade insults, involving mothers and aunts and great grandmothers until Al says, "Yeah . . . When my greatgreatgreatgreat grandmother who was a Zulu queen got through eating them missionary chitterlings, she wanted to build a sewerditch to take away her crap, so she went out and saw your poor old greatgreatgreatgreatgreati grandma sleeping under a coconut tree with her mouth wide open. She didn't need to build no sewer ditch . . . " - this is too much, and Jake is unable to think of a response and so they all laugh some more.
X.
It's a quarter to eleven, and Bob says they should go or they'll be late. Al makes fun of Bob for looking in the mirror, and makes fun of Bob's kinky eyebrows, even going so far as to bet a diamond ring that Bob's chest hair is kinky too.
XI.
A crowd is gathered around a street performer/peddlar with a rattesnake who says he can tell the secret of life and the secret of death. The man links unbreakable steel rings. He describes the fatigue of his audience members in the morning and, taking a glass of water and discoloring it with what he says is a drop of acid, tells them that their bodies are defiled like the glass of water. He then drops an herb into the water and it clears. The man is selling a "UNIVERSAL HERB CUREALL MEDICINE" that works for all ailments, and his sales pitch anticipates Jake, Al, Slim and Bob's only motive for not buying immediately when he says that if any audience member does not have money on him, they can leave their address and he will see that a bottle is delivered to their houses in the morning (100-101).
XII.
They go to Walgreen drug store for sandwiches and malts, and tease the 19 yr. old mulatto waitress. She bends over to pick something up and they leave her a tip. They discuss the attractions and drawbacks of dating light-skinned girls.
Part Two: Squirrel Cage
Bibliography
Wright, Richard. Lawd Today! Ed. Richard Yarborough. The Northeastern Library of Black Literature. Boston: Northeastern U P, 1991 (1963).
Thoughts
parallels to Native Son:
- starts with protagonist waking up
- Jake thinks it must be fun to be an aviator (54)
- need to find a space to be: "He wanted to go somewhere, but he could not think of a suitable place" (68).