The Sky Is Gray

“Auntie wanted to tell Mama, but I told her, ‘Uh-uh.’ ’Cause I knowed we didn’t have any money, and it just was go’n make her mad again.” 

Auntie wanted to notify Octavia about James’s bad tooth, worried about how much pain it caused him. James’s willingness to endure the pain to avoid his mother spending money she cannot spare is a sign of both his awareness of his family’s condition and his burgeoning sense of responsibility.

“I’m getting tired of this old syrup. Syrup, syrup, syrup. I’m go’n take with the sugar diabetes. I want me some bacon sometime.” 

Ty complains about having only syrup to eat with his bread for breakfast. Rightly, he worries about both diabetes, a persistently chronic health problem within Black American communities, and malnourishment. Daily intakes of syrup are also the likely cause of James’s bad tooth. Here, Gaines subtly reveals the ugly cycle that poverty creates: poor access to good food creates health problems that the impoverished often can’t afford to treat. 

“‘Octavia,’ Auntie say, ‘explain to him. Explain to him. Just don’t beat him. Explain to him.’” 

Auntie implores James’s mother to tell him why he must kill his pet red cardinals. Her speech is exemplary of the repetition that Gaines uses as a literary device throughout the story. Her words are like a mantra, trying to instill in Octavia the importance of leading with reason over force. For Octavia, who intends to accustom James to the harshness and cruelty of the world (arguably, no amount of words could rationalize conditions in the Jim Crow South), she chooses to hit him and doesn’t relent until he obeys.

“When I pass the little sign that say ‘White’ and ‘Colored,’ I start looking for a seat.” 

James’s sight of this sign on the bus to Bayonne is one of the story’s few explicit mentions of segregation. Gaines presents the fact of the sign as nothing more than that. The characters register no feeling about it, which reinforces for the reader the understanding that systemic racism was a daily reality that Southern Black people learned and internalized to survive.

“We pass a school and I see them white children playing in the yard. Big old red school, and them children just running and playing. Then we pass a café, and I see a bunch of people in there eating. I wish I was in there ’cause I’m cold. Mama tells me keep my eyes in front where they belong.” 

Though Gaines does not tell the reader directly, James and his mother are passing through the White section of Bayonne. James observes White children playing in the playground, which is the only direct mention of race during this scene. His mother’s admonition not to look at the people around him is both an instruction to avoid trouble and to focus on the task at hand—going to the dentist—so that he’ll not think too much about all of the advantages that elude him. James no longer has the advantage of going to school—a point that he mentions later. He also knows that he cannot enter the café, which would not serve Black people, just as the school that he passes would not allow Black children to attend. 

“‘That’s the trouble with the black people in this country today […] We don’t question is exactly our problem,’ he says. ‘ We should question and question and question—question everything.’” 

A young man reading in the dentist’s waiting room disagrees with a preacher, sitting nearby, who tells another patient that she ought not question why God would allow little John Lee to suffer so in the dentist’s chair. The interjection initiates a debate between the educated young man and the preacher on the importance of faith in the Black community. The young man represents the younger, more modern generation, which questions the validity and utility of old values to solve modern ills.

“‘You believe in God because a man told you to believe in God,’ the boy says. ‘A white man told you to believe in God. And why? To keep you ignorant so he can keep his feet on your neck.’” 

The debate between the young man and the preacher continues in the waiting room. The young man addresses the connection between Christian faith in the Black community and forced assimilation. He argues that Christianity, particularly teachings related to humility and obedience, reinforce complacency with White supremacy.

“‘You forgot the other cheek,’ he says. The preacher hauls back and hit him again on the other side […] ‘That hasn’t changed a thing,’ he says.” 

At the culmination of the argument between the young man and the preacher, the preacher hits the young man. The latter is unfazed and offers his other cheek, a Christ once taught. The young man’s act throws the preacher’s faith back into his face. As a follower of Christ, the preacher ought to be an advocate for non-violence, but he undermines this by hitting the boy. In the end, his force hasn’t changed the boy’s mind at all. The preacher has not enforced the obedience that he expected. The boy’s passive resistance is a harbinger of the methods that many civil rights activists would employ during sit-ins and other protests. 

“When I grow up, I want to be just like him. I want clothes like that and I want keep a book with me, too.”

James decides that he wants to be like the young man in the waiting room. Though his wish to become like the boy seems to be rooted in material things—access to nicer clothes and books—James’s admiration is truly due to the boy’s insistence on educating himself to improve his lot. The clothes and books are indicators of a will to improve overall. 

“Words mean nothing. Action is the only thing. Doing. That’s the only thing.” 

After the preacher leaves, the boy carries on the conversation about God with the older woman who pitied John Lee. He asserts his belief that activism is the only valid response to oppression. 

“‘Things are changing because some black men have begun to think with their brains and not their hearts,’ the boys says.” 

The boy continues the conversation with the older woman in the waiting room. He again rejects the preacher’s claim to know that God exists because he feels God’s presence in his heart. The young man rejects feeling in favor of rational thought. His singular belief in thought over faith reveals his own limitations. Also, despite being in favor of Black power, his advocacy of rationalism above all else validates a standard of Western culture, though the young man seems to eschew Western standards.

“‘Don’t feel ’jected, honey,’ the lady says to Mama. ‘I been round them a long time—they take you when they want to. If you was white, that’s something else; but we the wrong color.’” 

The older woman turns her attention to Octavia who has been told to return later in the day if James is to see the dentist. She accuses the nurse and the dentist of racism, claiming that, if Octavia and James were White, they would have made exceptions for them. The older woman alludes to White privilege, or the habit of giving White people certain advantages, some as commonplace as this one, which elude Black people. 

“When I see people eating, I get hungry, when I see a coat, I get cold.”

James is back out in the cold with his mother, observing people around Bayonne. As he grows hungrier and colder, his feelings and desires become baser. In this statement, he reveals that his desires are based largely on necessity—on the desire to survive—and not to possess what he doesn’t need.