I am referring to the flu now. These are my subjective impressions, you see. I consider myself a poet. I am not educated in the sense of having degrees, but in life, boy, am I educated. I have a Ph.D. in starvation and an M.D. in Cinci Flu. I know how to sing. I am a rememberer of the old songs. I remember all the old blues, the songs of black people getting along somehow in the hot sun, the backs bent beneath the weight of work and the minds flashing with music, and also the songs of the urban street world, the songs that were like knives or like molten happiness. I want to say to you, we never had a chance. We were at the bottom of the list. The thirties saw a hell of a lot of black people starve. So did the forties and the fifties. We came out of the Depression only in the sixties.
Then Martin Luther King said what was in our hearts. We knew how much we were worth, that we were sacred as all men of the earth are sacred, that we had in us the same spark of God any human being had, and we could lift up our hearts on high.
I was raised in Gulfport, Mississippi, and I remember the color line very damn well. I’m fifty-six. They pulled down the color lines in the sixties. I am stained by those memories, though, and I’ll never really believe that anybody who lived under segregation is truly free. We cooperated, black and white, in mutual humiliation. They imposed it and we endured it. Separate water fountains in the bus stations, and separate lunch counters and sitting in the back of the bus and the top of the movie theater. A thing like that stays with you. Sometimes I see lines where there aren’t any lines. Sometimes I think it’s still then. I could let it lie, but I owe this remembering to all black people who remain alive, and all human beings worth the title.
We moved to Chicago in ’63, me and Henry. Let’s see—’63 to ’73, that’s ten years. To ’83 is another ten. Eighty-four, eighty-five… we lived together in this city for twenty-eight years. Lord, I was twenty-six when I came here with that man. Lord, I was a girl!
My Henry was a fine and loyal man and he made a good living.
He was a baker. But big time, a factory baker. Sure, there was trouble. Some people didn’t like a black man in that job. Naturally—it was a good job! But Henry, he knew what he was doing, how to bake ten dozen loaves of bread in those giant ovens and never burn a one. He also knew how to hold a good job and not let it go.
As a kid he was on the migrant circuit, this and that, digging beets here and peanuts there, and picking cotton. He knew the difference between a good job and a bad job.
He got the flu, that man. He had lost forty pounds. We were living off roots and stuff. We would get some bread now and again from the city delivery. Bread and whatever else they had. Spinach one day. Collard greens another. Fried pork rind another. Then peas. You never knew. But thank the Lord for those trucks. There are good people in the world, black or white or you name it.
I spend my time working to preserve black culture. You have to hold on to things these days. The little details, they’re important. I don’t have any numbers to back me up, but I’ll bet way more than half the black people are dead and gone. Right here in Chicago, you see all these empty black neighborhoods. So many! Where are those people? They sure as hell didn’t retire to the country!
We were the poorest, we starved first and worst. Because we starved the worst, we were the weakest, so the flu hit us the hardest. Look, I lost my husband. I lost my children. But a lot of whites had the same thing happen. The difference is, I also lost everybody I knew, and everybody at work, and all but a few of the people who lived around me. So now my life is full of new faces, and not a lot of them are black. And that is certainly not the white experience.
Whites, you talk to them, and they lost a family member here, a friend there. I’m talking about loss on a different scale. The church I belonged to, for example—there are just thirty of us left, out of a congregation of a couple of hundred. Not to say they all died, but half of them did. The rest, they moved away, most of them looking for work or relatives or just a better color of sky.
Whites look sort of surprised nowadays when they see this big coal-tar black woman, which is me, coming along. I see it time after time when I go down to the Loop. A Negro. A black. One of them.
Before Warday they’d sort of close up on you. Look right through you. Like you didn’t matter, or they wished you didn’t matter. Now they just look and look. You can see that they are fascinated by your black face. I look at them, and in my heart I say, “I am looking at you with two million eyes, for my face is a million black faces, and the look I am giving you is the reproach of a million souls.”
I hear the whole world singing in my memories. You’ll never guess it, but I sing for my supper now. You’ll ask, “How can this furious woman possibly be an entertainer?” But that’s what I am.
An entertainer. You ever hear of the Cotton Club on State? Well, I am the star attraction, practically. I sing for them. I am memory for them. Blacks and whites come. They mix together more easily now, probably because the whites no longer feel so threatened.
There I stand, on that little stage in that boozy and smoky hall, and I sing out all the sorrow that is in my soul. I sing until it hangs in the air around me and I am so sad I could die because that’s the blues, but inside me where nobody can see there is God’s glory, and that’s the part of the blues they never talked about, but the part that’s most important. The blues are true music of the human heart, the truest on earth, I think. How can we give up on the people who created this, and say they have no genius? Black genius doesn’t have names attached to it. Black genius is not named Leonardo da Vinci or J. Robert Oppenheimer. Black genius flows in black blood, and has to do with pain.
I say we had a worse time than you did. Sure, why not? We were living from hand to mouth, most of us. Black meant poor. It also meant noble, and it meant good and full of joy that maybe had no business in there with the pain.
Am I angry? No, not anymore. I am working and there is food on my table. I’m singing for my supper. Every night before I go to sleep, I remember Henry. I had a picture of him, but it got lost.
My profession is to remember my people, and spread my memories among those who remain. I do it in songs. That is what they are for.
Anger
As we crossed Indiana on our way to Cleveland, the character of the passenger complement began to change. The train was still almost empty, but there was something familiar about the people.
They pushed and shoved and muttered. They were noticeably more tattered than the passengers on the run from Kansas City to Chicago had been.
I recognized an accent, the harsh nasal twang of my old home-town. Refugees from New York have settled all through Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Jim went up and down the train and found that these people were almost exclusively former citizens of the Bronx, with a scattering of Manhattanites. Most of them were laborers, a few professionals. They were traveling for many different reasons: to visit or seek relatives; to look for work; to buy things such as clothing, car parts, or furniture, in Cleveland. None of them were making long-distance journeys. Although many expressed a desire to return to New York, those who had tried said that there was no way around the Army cordon.
Why the Army would cordon off what remained of New York was a puzzling question, one we were very eager to answer. It couldn’t be radiation, not after five years. Of course, the radlevel will be higher by far than prewar, but we live with that in other places.
On the train there was a certain amount of talk about the World Series, which was being held this year at Fenway Park between the Red Sox and the Pittsburgh Pirates. We hadn’t encountered much talk of sports on our trip. Dallas doesn’t have a baseball team and we were running too hard in California to find out about sports.
Nobody on the train was going to the Series, but a lot of people were eager to see what the Plain Dealer had to say about it when they got to Cleveland.
We met one woman who was of special interest to me, as she was triaged and sick. She was going to Clevelan
d to visit a popular alternate practitioner, a witch named Terry Burford. I had been eager to interview an alternate practitioner, especially a witch. Since Warday our concept of witchcraft has, of course, changed radically, as they have begun to make themselves public as midwives, herbalists, and healers. How effective they are I do not know, but it seemed important to meet a modern practitioner, since so many of us may eventually depend on one for medical help.
Also on the train was one individual whose dress alone marked him as unusual and therefore of definite interest to us. We first saw this tall, elegant man heading from the sleeper to the diner.
He was completely out of place on the train. Jim got out his recorder and we followed him into the dining car.
His name was Jack Harper. He was an exchange officer with the Royal Bank of Canada at Toronto. He told us: “I am working on the development of the American Automobile Industry Refinance Plan with the Barclay’s Consortium, our bank, and the New Bank of North America. We’re developing a private gold backing for a currency to be issued by the big three automakers themselves. We feel that the best way to deal with the problem of restarting the industry is to attract as many skilled workers back to the Detroit area as we can, rather than attempt to move the plants south. We are hoping that the prospect of being paid in a gold-backed currency will satisfy the concerns about nonpaid work that made them migrate in the first place, and we are guaranteeing a year’s supply of Canadian beef to every registered member of the UAW who comes back. The combination of not getting paid and then getting hit by the famine has made these men extremely suspicious of their former employers.”
The waiter came up and Mr. Harper ordered his lunch. The train had two meals available: soup and salad, or hamburger. Mr. Harper ordered one of each, only to be told that there was a consumption restriction of one to a passenger.
“I hate the bloody States! Too bad there’s no flight from Chicago to Detroit. It would have taken half an hour and I wouldn’t be facing lunch in this diner.” He smiled tightly, but there was venom in his voice.
“Why do you hate us?”
“You mean you really can’t think why? That’s not surprising. I’ll tell you, the U.S. practically caused Canada to be destroyed. We were completely cocked up by Warday. The bank—you cannot imagine the anarchy. We lost not only our main computer but all our supporting computers as well. At the moment of the electro, we had about eight million in cash just evaporate, lost in the middle of electronic transfer. Within an hour the whole banking hall was filled with people shouting and waving paper records. We didn’t know what we were doing or where we stood. It was madness, terrible madness. And it was caused by the United States and the damned missiles and the damned war. The phones were out, the lights were out, even the lockboxes were unavailable because the electronic locking mechanism was on the fritz.
“Canada had one hell of a time because of your little twenty-minute war, let me tell you. Then there was the Russian business in Alaska Territory, to add panic to the whole affair.”
“What Russian business, and what is Alaska Territory?”
“It used to be the state of Alaska until you ceded it to us last year.”
“We gave you Alaska?”
“The treaty was signed in L.A. and Ottawa in June of 1992. We interned the Soviet naval units that had docked in Anchorage, and it was decided in Ottawa that our national security depended upon our remaining in Alaska. We paid you thirty-five million gold dollars, so you needn’t quibble.”
This did not seem like a very good price to us. “What about Prudhoe Bay? What about the Alaska Pipeline?”
“It ends in Vancouver. Now, if I may, I’d like to attempt my lunch. What sort of grain do you suppose this false hamburger is made of?”
“Soy.”
“I’d say oatmeal, from the taste of the thing. The meat is indistinguishable from the bread. Oh, waiter!” The waiter came over.
“Bring me a half-bottle of Beaujolais, please.”
“We have Coca-Cola, sir.”
“Bottled?”
“Fountain, sir.”
“Sad it’s not bottled. I really don’t want to get the damned Uncle Sam Jump yet again.”
I recalled laughing to Mexican friends about the Aztec Two-Step. If they were as hurt and embarrassed as I felt, they concealed it well.
“What do Canadians think about the U.S. now?” Jim asked.
“About the U.S. as a country? Very little, because it isn’t one. We deal with half a dozen separate governments down here. Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio are one country we deal with a lot. It has four governors and on the whole is fairly disunited, but we deal with it. We also deal with the South, which has its de facto capital in Atlanta. There are other states, of course, but if you get Georgia on your side, they go along. We have a great amount of business with New England, of course. The Bostonians and the Vermonters are the two most vociferous lots. Then the states of Washington and Oregon are an independent entity. They have a joint legislature but two governors, so that can be complicated. California is the easiest. Governor Campbell is the beginning and end of power there.”
“What sort of dealing do you do?”
“Canada in general, or just us bankers?”
“You personally.”
“I do financings, mostly. We offer Commonwealth pounds, Canadian dollars, British pounds, and gold, generally in return for substantial equity ownership, which we then sell on the American Trades Exchange in London.”
“The American Trades Exchange?”
“It makes a market for persons wishing to buy and sell instruments of ownership in American plants and equipment, trademarks, patents, and proprietary secrets. For example, one can buy a complete set of plans for the Boeing 747, including all supporting documentation, wiring diagrams, and subordinate electronic equipment schematics, and the right to use them, on that exchange. The 747 plans are going for eight million dollars gold or equivalent. I know this because a Canadian company has been attempting to buy them. We are financial guarantors in part of the deal. My involvement is in establishing acceptable currency equivalencies for the gold. Excuse me.” He called the waiter. “Will you take this back and give me the soup, please? Amtrak really ought to get hold of some meat, if you want to have hamburgers on your menu.”
The waiter took back the partially eaten hamburger and returned with the soup.
“It’s not hot. I want it scalding. Boiled, do you understand?” He turned to us. “Sorry. Where were we?”
I had a question that was a little off the subject of banking, but after our experience in California, I was eager to know the answer.
“Is the Canadian border patrolled?”
He smiled. “Very, very carefully. And it isn’t because we don’t like you, mind, or don’t want you coming over, but rather for your own protection. There are Canadians, I’ll tell you frankly, who are perfectly capable of violence against you Americans. So we think the passport/visa system is really best. They’ve pretty well cleared out the refugees that came into Saskatchewan and Manitoba from the Dakotas, so that particular disturbance is over. You’ve got to understand, it was your war and our country was just incidentally thrown into chaos in the process.” He waved his soup spoon. “Let me ask you a question, and since I’ve been so frank with you, be frank with me. Before you encountered me, did you ever for even one moment think of what had happened to Canada? Of what we were going through because of you? Even that we were there? Did you?”
We had to admit the truth: we had not.
Jack Harper smiled his tight smile and went back to his soup.
INTERVIEW
Terry Burford, Midwife and Witch
I’m working toward delivering a baby a day. Right now I do about three or four a week. At the moment I’ve got fifty-eight patients in the midwifery and about two hundred in my general practice. I’ve got thirty psychiatric patients divided into four groups. Also, I have my own coven, Rosewood, and I’m elder of four
covens that have hived off from Rosewood. I keep office hours from seven to seven, and I always visit my patients in the home. I can’t really work on anybody unless I know them and what kind of energies there are in their home environment, and preferably at work also.
I’ll take a fee of a dime for an office examination or fifteen cents for a home visit, plus ten cents to a dollar for the various preparations I might prescribe. Rosewood does healing rituals for free. I offer a complete midwifery service, with counseling and support throughout the pregnancy, for three dollars, which includes the delivery. If the child is defective or born dead, the fee is refundable. I lose about a third of the babies and one mother out of ten. My losses are almost always due to complications resulting from radiation exposure. I do euthanasias on profoundly crippled or retarded newborns for free. Also, I do abortion counseling and perform abortions.
I have been a witch since I was ten years old. My mom was a witch, and her mom before her, all the way back, but I went to Ohio State and NYU, where I got an M.S. in clinical psychology. I am a Jungian analyst, with a strong Wiccan override. Prewar, my kind of practice would have been on the periphery of society, but things have changed so much that people are flocking to us witches now, primarily for healing and midwifery. I am a good herbalist, and I really can accomplish a lot with my medicants. And herbs can give you the kind of dramatic cure that an antibiotic can achieve—if you can get an antibiotic.
My practice as a witch is also my faith. I follow the old pre-Christian religion. We worship the Earth as a Goddess, and Her male manifestation, the Horned God. Our emphasis on ecstatic union with the planet has accounted for the postwar growth of the Wiccan movement. As most Wiccans tend to be antihierarchical, we also feel comfortable with the Destructuralists—more than one witch is also a Destructuralist.
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