“Aunt Lucy said, ‘Yes, I is, too, Jess. I will whip you until you gets grown enough to know how to act like a man—not just look like one. You know you had no business snatching my hen right off her nest and giving it to that low-life hussy what had no better sense than to take it, knowing you ain’t got nowhere to get no hen except out of my henhouse. Were this not Sunday, I would whale you in a inch of your life before you could get out of that bed.’”

“Aunt Lucy was angry,” I commented.

“She was,” said Simple. “And big as I was, I was scared. But I was meaning not to let her whip me, even if I had to snatch that sapling out of her hand.”

“So what happened on Monday morning?”

“Aunt Lucy waited until I got up, dressed, and washed my face. Then she called me. ‘Jess!’ I knowed it were whipping time. Just when I was aiming to snatch that switch out of her hand, I seed that Aunt Lucy was crying when she told me to come there. I said ‘Aunt Lucy, what you crying for?’

“She said, ‘I am crying ’cause here you is a man, and don’t know how to act right yet, and I done did my best to raise you so you would grow up good. I done wore out so many switches on your back, still you tries my soul. But it ain’t my soul I’m thinking of, son, it’s yourn. Jess, I wants you to carry yourself right and ’sociate with peoples what’s decent and be a good boy. You understand me? I’s getting too old to be using my strength like this. Here!’ she hollered, ‘bend over and lemme whip you one more time!’”

“Did she whip you?”

“She whipped me—because I bent,” said Simple. “When I seen her crying, I would have let her kill me before I raised my hand. When she got through, I said, ‘Aunt Lucy, you ain’t gonna have to whip me no more. I ain’t gonna give you no cause. I do not mind to be beat. But I do not never want to see you cry no more—so I am going to do my best to do right from now on and not try your soul. And I am sorry about that hen.’

“And you know, man, from that day to this, I have tried to behave myself. Aunt Lucy is gone to glory this morning, but if she is looking down, she knows that is true. That was my last whipping. But it wasn’t the whipping that taught me what I needed to know. It was because she cried—and cried. When peoples care for you and cry for you, they can straighten out your soul. Ain’t that right, boy?”

“Yes,” I said, “that’s right.”

Seeing Double