Sister and brother, wife and husband, lover and sweetheart, I have sometimes helped out in the world. In a town, for instance, that was hit by a tornado, I come upon a woman in a ditch, hurting in childbirth and the child would not come because of the woman’s being so afraid and while a boy held up a coat in front of the hot blinding sun I caused with the softest softness a squalling baby to slip forth easy from the woman that had let go and opened. Doctor! the woman called out, husband, father, lover! And once when I come among men working on a railroad where one of them had fallen senseless in the heat, I kneeled over the man and put hands on his body and in this tenderness brought him to his senses. The men were drawn to me and the revived man touched my hair in softness. Mother, sister, wife, sweetheart, the man whispered. In a Sex Arcade in a city, I was the mop-man and I was clean-up man in Baths for a while and once in a brothel I was a nurse and companion to the women and I was clean with them, men and women, and I was pure to myself. You have heard how in the other days I was drunk and damned with feeling and wanting. How night and day in the dark whorehouse of Shuang Boy over the dead river that was like a dead soup, with planks and turds and condoms lying stagnant in it, how in that darkness of the China Boy I laid, you wan hear, with the hot mouths eating my body to death, my breasts was frosted with semen my eyes glued with that glue my stomach was spread with it like a mayonnaise, my hair set in a marcel of come and my face a running icing that strung down to my neck in pearl drops and there was a necklace of gold around my neck and the pieces of men and women like soggy peaches broken open sopping against me and hot tongues licked over every piece of me and there didn’t seem no way out for me I was goin under I was dyin and I was in my hot death, muerto, muerto, muriendo. And once in the mirror in the dawn light I saw my ash-white face with the bitter smile of the maldito damned-in-the-flesh on it, the demonio of the fucked dying was on it, perdido, perdido, and over the dead river seen a little moon of salt. And Jesucristo was with me in all those places, Oyente, in the Baths and in the whorehouse, too, you wan hear, and in the room of dying over the dead river, waiting for me to cry to him, softly knocking. And if you are sick of flesh and body and feeling and wanting and cannot put out of your mind pictures of the flesh, if you are haunted and in that bondage then you can remember me, you can recall my story and cry for the knocking hombre de reconciliación, or put it all aside as something that does not have nothing to do with you and perdóname, Señor, Señora, Señorita, compadre, Corazón. You wan hear?
10
Song of Tomasso
I HUNTED THEN Tomasso. When you are hunting somebody you think you see them everywhere but in this time I did not know what the object of my hunting looked like, comprendes, though I had a face of him before my eyes in my imagination.
Seen, at a place on a lake, one young man moving alone in a little boat on a gray lake on a gray day, twas up in Rhode Island, I had come up there, up that far, up to a completely lonely lake, outside Providence. Suddenly I asked myself could this rower be Tomasso my half brother? A Mescan Jew in Rhode Island? But I guess twas not my half brother Tomasso, whose mother was my mother. I went on.
Saw in a choir in the Deliverance Church in Norfork Virginia a handsome boy, paler than the others, white in his brownness, singing among the black people. Something strange about him. The pale choir singer haunted me, the movement of his body as he sang the way he joyfully clapped his hands not clapping them but holding them back from each other just a little before they come together and his hands spread wide open; he haunted me, this pale boy the way he flickered his eyes, flickering his brow with the joyful smile. Was he a Mescan boy living among the blacks, living and singing among the blacks? Something of Chupa in him. But guessed twas not my half brother Tomasso. But was this Tomasso, my half brother, whose mother was my mother? Could this be Tomasso, a Mescan Jew in a black choir?
I waited till the singing was done and when the singing was done I saw the dark eyes of the light-colored boy stare upon me drawing me and pulling me and tenía miedo I felt ascared but I could not turn away; and then I saw the light-colored boy come towards me.
When he was close upon me I seen the dark eyes and I seen something of mi madre on him, on his brow or over his face somewhere over his facial features I don know what and I seen my lips upon him those lips was mine come upon his mouth from me through our mother you know what I mean lips handed down sounds funny to hand down lips but tis Anglo tis not Mescan we have no such Mescan espression. Tomasso! I softly called and he said Quién me llamas? who calls? Tomasso! I cried and the light-colored boy said Sí? I am your brother, I said. Sí he said, all men are brothers, that is what the Deliverance Choir sings about, my brother. Where have you come from as a birthplace I asked him; and how come you say Mescan words? From a Missoura jail, he said and I said there is no doubt you are my brother—half—adding to that that you know Mescan, too, how come you know Mescan words. I have not told you our mother is the same woman, and that is why, of course; yet you never knew our mother, how can that be? From Hondo in the Missoura jail, Tomasso told me, taught me some Mescan words because he saw the brownness in me and guessed that I had some Mescan, which he is familiar with because he was borned in Arroyo Hondo in New Mexico. My mother run away from me and left me with Mr. and Mrs. Sam Policheck, the Bohunk jailer and his wife in a Missoura town. What is the name of it? I said, and Tomasso said I do not know the name of the town. I was only in jail in it and when I excaped I slid through a hole into the night and run. Thank God and Jesucristo, I said. When I found that my mother had run away, the light-colored boy said, I run away too. Wouldn’t you? Sí, I said. Yes, very much. What is a Bohunk? I asked, and he said he did not know but that Hondo said that about Mr. Sam Policheck. And who is Hondo? I asked him and he said my wonderful friend that I will soon tell you about. But come with me, I said, for I have news of your mother. Who I never saw, said Tomasso. Nor my father neither, added Tomasso. Him I have no direct news of, I said. But your mother, yes. Except to say that your father is dead, killed by the police long ago. Tomasso cried. Perdóname for such sad noticias, I said, but this is according to our mother Chupa’s story. Chupa? Tomasso asked me. Her name, the name of your mother. Tomasso cried. How many times have I imagined my mother, cried Tomasso. She is beautiful, I told him. How old are you? Twelve, he said. Well, your mother is una loca, you cannot count on her. But she has la anima which means life; and has el amor which means love and tries to give them out to somebody but has brought her many troubles. And so she runs. I can tell this to you but I cannot too much understand it myself. It is strange how we can do this, tell somebody else what we cannot understand ourselves, verdad? Verdad, answered Tomasso. You know that word, too, I said. Si, said Tomasso, from Hondo; but what is your name, you have not told me. Arcadio, I told him. It is a beautiful name, said Tomasso; as beautiful almost as Hondo. Anyway, I said, I have been looking for our mother and for you. Now you will come with me to look for her. Together we will find her and she will be glad to find us both—for a little while, I guess.
Tomasso come away from Deliverance Church with me that night leaving Deliverance Choir one hundred por ciento black. He was so glad to have him a half blood brother, he had been very lonesome though the black people were very kind to him and his only family until I come. Arcadio! Arcadio! he cried and embraced me and laid his head on my shoulder. Arcadio! my half brother! Tomasso! Tomasso! I cried, holding him, my little half blood brother, my jailboy, choirboy I love you!
We went on together. I read him from the White Bible and told him the stories, I nursed and watched after him the jailboy Tomasso, my mother’s son, I was mother and father to him. God, after waiting awhile, brought the jailboy’s parents to him in me, the Biblia showed me this, says mine own will come to me, La Biblia Blanca showed me about life, La Biblia give me words and give me understanding. I run in the jailyard, Tomasso said. I played with the convicts, the trusties. What’s the trusties, I said, Tomassito? The ones you could trust, said he, m
y friends Hondo and Old John. They helped me to excape, they cried as they helped me, to see me go. I crawled under a fence through a hole they dug by a Rose a Sharon. What is a Rose a Sharon? I says. A beautiful tree of blooms, answered Tomasso. I run all night panting and ascared. As if I was a convict! And I run all day, day after day. Until I got to Deliverance Church and they took me in. Here is a curl of black hair Hondo give me to keep, tis from the head of Sweet Janine. This is what Tomasso told me, you wan hear. Said Hondo killed his sweetheart Sweet Janine of sixteen because he did not know his own strength. We do not know our own strength, I said. Sí said Tomasso, this is what Hondo the trusty taught me that we do not know our own strength. How could he know that he was choking Sweet Janine to death, Hondo said, that night when he was so full of loving for her? She was una virgen and went to Virgin’s Heaven, Tomasso related to me. Are you a virgen he asked me and I said what? and he said this is a virgin’s hair off the head of a virgin killed by a man who did not know his own strength, Hondo; he give it to me to hold for good luck until he can excape and find me. Which will be when he and Old John can make the hole larger. Every night they are adigging. Uh-huh, I says. Virgin’s Heaven, Tomasso continued to tell me, was a place of small population for you had to be sixteen to make it. I would not have made it at ten, I said to myself, and I wondered what Tomasso would have thought of my wild boyhood in the China Boy. If I had told him he’d have run away I am sure. My pure sweet brother, my saint brother, I cried to Tomasso, I will not let nothing hurt you I will be your mother and father. I loved Tomasso more than anything ever in this world, you wan hear. I sat under a tree while he climbed up in it and I heard him singing up there in his boy’s voice, clear like a sweet bird and oh will he fly away from me, I wondered, like his mother will he fly away? I bathed him in clean creeks and washed his long black hair, black, black and saw his brown body turning in the silver water and wondered would he ride on down the current of the creek and down the falls under the tunnel of the low trees and ride away from me in the dark tunnel of the trees. Once he cut his foot and I carried him all day upon my hip he rode there like a warm brown animal and at nights he folded upon my breast. When some boys came upon Tomasso in a street I moved into them like a lion, feroz, and scattered them away. I threw one up into a tree, we run on hearing the cries from the tree. I did not know my own strength, like Hondo. Nobody was going to hurt Tomasso, nobody was going to harm the hair of his head nor cause one bit of pain to him. Wonder will he die, I thought, my God will he get sick? I thought my God love is too much for me to do, the feelings that love brings me washes me over like a wave I feel like I am drownding why did I ever hunt and find my brother, is this what brother’s love is, pain and ascared to lose them? And sometimes I felt my mother’s nature in me that I wanted you wan hear to run away, I wanted to excape. This made me feel so bad that I run and grabbed him up and held him full of fear and pain against my breast until he cried agasping Arcadio Arcadio what is there trying to get us what is after us why are you afraid and shaking and tears are falling on me from your eyes, Arcadio don’t be afraid God and Jesucristo will protect us like you say like La Biblia Blanca says that you read out to me, Lo I am always with you even to the end of the world. Remember Arcadio? he says. And I says out to him with all my tears, sí recuerdo, I remember, do not be afraid, no tienes miedo. Tell me that you’ll never leave me like your mother did. You wan hear.
It was very hard for me to find one thing of my mother’s ways in him. Except maybe for his staying to himself, for his solitario part. Otherwise he was as gentle as the little white jumping dog which once I loved so much and that loved me. Yet sometimes I would catch a look across his face that was my mother’s, a look of mi madre would brush across, something misterioso; but Tomasso’s lips upon his mouth was mine. God knows what features his Jewish father showed up on him, this we would never be able to tell until we found our mother who would recognize the marks that could be left on somebody by a one day’s loving.
Together we went on, my half brother Tomasso and me, hunting for our mother. Will we soon see Chupa our mother? Tomasso would ask. I don know I says. Will Chupa mi madre maybe be in this town? Tomasso would ask. Quizás, I said. We’ll look. Is she very beautiful? asked Tomasso. Sí, I says. And every night Tomasso would say in his prayers God help me and my brother Arcadio to find our mother Chupa soon. And oh I wanted to bring this son and this mother, this boy and this woman together and that was what I prayed in my prayer to God and Jesucristo, hep me do hep me bring this boy to his mother and show this mother this boy that she carried under a green fringe dress until she broke him out of her and left him in the Missoura jail as soon as she could walk and before his eyes could see. And we hunted and we hunted asingin and aprayin as we went.
One time in a town we followed a woman and watched her all day where she went, twas a dark flashing woman that could be Chupa, all day we watched and followed her, oh she went here and she went there and we followed her and finally when she was on a phone aphoning we stood close to her but what she was aphoning was la policía upon us and when they come and tried to apprehend us, all we told them was that we thought this woman was our mother and that we had long lost her and not to please apprehend us and those policía said you two sons of a lost mother that you are hunting are not going to be taken in and apprehended into a jail but are going to be given an outstanding award of twenty-two dollars and fifty centavos because this woman is Lou Jones a crooked woman that we have long hunted for in three counties of this state, thank you very much. What is a crooked woman, Tomasso asked me and I said I don know we have no such espression. And we rejoiced me and Tomasso and you may ask Oyente what we done with the twenty-two dollars and fifty cents reward, give a tithe of it like the White Bible told me to, give two dollars of it to a mission of the town for the pore, then bought two warm blankets in a J. C. Penney’s with some more of the twenty-two fifty and then bought us a whole bunch of tamales and ate some and kept some for the days ahead. But the woman, you wan hear, was not Chupa.
Since his singing was so beautiful he sung in railroad stations or we would stand on corners in some cities or by fountains in the nighttime and sing our songs; and sometimes in a park, alone, singing and playing at twilight to the air and to ourselves; twas so peaceful, twas so beautiful; and I taught Tomasso many songs, some of them very beautiful that I had heard the Mescans sing, in my boyhood, one called “Lágrimas,” tears. Lágrimas de dolor, lágrimas dolorosas, negro es el color de nuestras tristezas, and some gay ones that the women sung in the China Boy, I don’t care, I don’t care; and some songs from the Show that the Dwarft Eddy sung, were little soft songs, not like the tough Dwarft that he was to us, songs about that the old gray goose is dead and of the wind of the western sea—blow, blow, come and go, wind of the western sea—nothing you would expect from a pessimistic Dwarft; but no songs from Old Shanks he never sung a fucking word, please excuse the language but I still get mad when his old name is mentioned, even if it’s me amentioning it; and many songs from Tomasso’s days of the Deliverance Choir, such as “Lullaby of Jesus, Baby,” “Sweeten the Bitter Waters,” and oh the sad one
I’ll see you again one day, baby,
O’er the crystal strand. Baby.
When we will meet again. Baby.
Do not cry for me.
What is a crystal strand, I says to Tomasso. I do not know, says Tomasso. It’s what we sung. And of course my special number as a solo was “The Waltz of the Spotted Dog,” my old Show tune and the only one I knew, goes like this:
don you like it. But oh when Tomasso sung it with some words that he made up, my heart cried for the sweetness of his song not to mention my eyes that would drop salted tears into my rusty frenchharp as I played for him—cain’t remember the words you’d have to ask him but you cain’t he’s gone. Tomasso’s song! Asinging! People loved his singing and they give us money for it, his voice was sweet to hear, wish you could’ve heard it wish that I could hear it now, asin
ging here, wish could sing it for you but I cain’t. We was cold and we was hungry. But the child sung. Poor and ascared sometimes and hungry and without a home, but the child sung. How can I explain to you why the child sings? I says. How can I myself understand why a child such as this would sing? Without a home and hungry and huntin for his mother? What is singing, anyway, what is a song? You wan hear. I loved so much my half blood brother Tomasso and I was happy with him. What if this wasn’t the real Tomasso you would say to me and I would answer that since I had never known him anyway and did not know what to espect, this one, Tomasso or not, would do. Tomasso or not. You wan hear. Probably just as good as Tomasso if not better because how did I know what Tomasso’s faults would have been if this was not the real Tomasso you wan hear. I might have hated him. And this way I could find many Tomassos of my own, many brothers. And anyway La Biblia Blanca says that we are all brothers. You wan hear? And there would be many a man wandering hunting for a brother. So Tomasso and I was happy. And would be so happy the day we would come across our mother Chupa. And whether Chupa would be happy would be another story (which may never be told, I do not know). What a day twould be, you wan hear, compadre. And so until then there was Tomasso singing, out of nothing, but singing his song out of the life, la vida, joyfully singing at my side, out of the hungriness, el hambre, why was he so glad? out of no home, out of no mother nor father, singing joyful at the side of an old half brother; Tomasso sang. If I could sing his song for you! If I could put back breath in his dead song! But it is gone now, singing only in my memory. And you will never hear it, you wan hear.
Arcadio Page 6