Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah

by Patricia Smith

  Alabama can’t be shook off and thrown out. So I pray to God

  every night for that dress money. And maybe that man. He named Otis.

  So I iron my good shirt, clean up, say “My name’s Otis,”

  and she smile behind her hand like she don’t already know. I want

  to just rush thangs and feel all my body pressed on her, but God

  still a somebody in my head, and Annie Pearl still be His child.

  So she’s saying things I should be hearing, but all I can see

  is stuff I’m not lookin’ at—that rumble in her clothes, moon up

  ’gainst her skin, all that down-South brown looking just right

  up here on the West Side. I know she a little scared of the city,

  she dressed up like a big girl, putting on airs to make me think

  she more woman than she is. But she woman enough. I say,

  “You know, you look real pretty in that dress . . . ,” though the dress

  is plain, gray, and sewed flat. Then I add her name, “. . . Annie.”

  I go a little crazy at the way he say my name. He say, “Annie”

  like it’s the first word he learned. So I feel his name, Otis,

  in my mouth before it come out. Then I pull it out slow, and I see

  his eyes get real wide like he about to outright praise his God

  because of what I said and how I said it. Ain’t gon lie, chile,

  that felt good. But I ain’t foolin’ myself—he ain’t everything I want.

  Like me, he lookin’ for some kinda job, living in his one room, and I think

  I might not be the only woman he talkin’ to. But he’ll do me right,

  and I sho need some kinda strong man stand beside me in this city,

  while I find me a church and someplace better to live, a real address

  where folks from down home can find me when they take the bus up.

  So I say, “I been watching you a long time.” That’s what I say.

  So I’m trying not to look at what I’m not looking at, and she say,

  all bold, “I been watching you a long time,” and I say “Annie,

  you sumthin’ else, you know?” but what I’m thinkin’ is, God,

  we stuck in this little talk. “You know, Miss Annie Pearl, I think

  we need to go someplace, have us some food, maybe up

  there on Madison, someplace close like that chicken joint right

  down the street from the tavern?” She smile and I swear I see

  something I hope I see again, what I think I see is some child

  in her, all worked up ’bout going someplace new in the city,

  even a hole-in-the-wall with burnt wings most folks don’t want.

  She say, stiff like white folks, “I-really-would-like-that-Otis,”

  but I see her frowning a little when she look down at her dress.

  I woulda felt real slick walking into that chicken place in a dress

  with pearl buttons and splits on both sides, but Otis grin and say

  I look good in the dress I was in. That the first time I thank God

  for him, even before I took him in my bed, tasted his mouth, I think

  it was knowing he care ’bout me enough to lie, say I’m a pretty chile

  when I’m not. I feed him with my fingers, let him eat fried bread right

  off my plate while folks who know him whispering. I let them see

  who he was gon’ be with, the woman he was gon’ be pressed up

  ’gainst from now on. Wanted to yell at them women “I’m the one he want!

  Tell everybody you know, here and in Alabama too. My name is Annie,

  and starting right now I want you to know that this is my man Otis.”

  Don’t know what made me think crazy like that. Sounding like the city.

  Done heard it before, and now I’m ’bout to believe that the big city

  ain’t no place for a woman and man. Every day, that woman got to dress

  my wounds, hear about the ways I done got beat down, she get to see

  my head bowed all the damned time. I really try not to show my Annie

  how small I feel on the factory line, try not to let on how much I want

  just for me, before I even think of me and her. Like a fool, she lift me up.

  I’m steady riding her shoulders, promising the world. It ain’t right,

  that I can’t give her what she’s dreamin’ on. I know she startin’ to think

  maybe I’m not the man who deserves her gold. I’m just a plain Otis—

  damn if that ain’t a country name—and at night I hear her ask God

  for something more. I play cards, sip my JB, run out of things to say

  to her. Cause she thinks a baby will save us. Lord, she wants a child.

  I know, a woman got to be a natural fool to want to bring a child

  into this mess of broke glass and nailed-up doors, this goddamn city.

  That’s right, country girl lose Jesus now and then, you heard me say

  it, goddamn, sometime I close my eyes and can’t feel my God.

  I sit up at night, staring at them dirty city stars and waiting for Otis

  to knock on my door. I don’t have to wait long, never do, cause I think

  that wherever he is he can feel me wanting. I hear him coming up

  my stairs, seems like slower each time, and when I open the door I see

  what I’m afraid I’ll see, that maybe he got no idea at all what I really want.

  Maybe I done gave up on them pretty pearl buttons, that shiny dress.

  I don’t touch him. He put his rough hands soft on my face, says “Annie,

  you want all of me, think I’m a marryin’ man? Then let’s make it right.”

  I can’t look in her eye, seeing all that lonely, and think I got a right

  to keep being me instead of doin’ right by the bowlegged ’bama chile

  I talked into loving me. My heart ’bout blows up when she say “Otis,

  you mean it? You mean it?” And I hear myself say yes. I pick her up

  and press her whole body to me and just for that second the city

  disappears, Chicago and all its lies are gone, and I say “Annie,

  you need to be my wife,” and I know I’m sayin’ it just so I won’t see

  that longing in her no more. I can’t believe I was fool enough to think

  I could have my drink and my fast city women, then come home, say

  “Baby, it’s hard out there,” and she would hold me, wearing that dress

  that’s plain, gray, and sewed flat, and that all she’d ever want

  was just that—a cheater in her arms, steady making his promises to God.

  I don’t know how I’m gon’ handle this thick in my body, God,

  without Otis knowing it. He’s gon’ be a father, and he sho’ got a right

  to know that, to know that our lives gon’ be changed way before we say

  them vows, he got a right to know how many ways this big ol’ city

  gon’ get harder for us, the three of us. When he come home, say “Annie,

  it’s gon’ be all right,” he talking just ’bout just me and him—he adding up

  our money every week, trying to cut down on the times he see

  his other women, coming home for dinner most every night. Otis

  is probably somebody’s daddy already, somewhere, so why I think

  this gon’ hit him so hard? Maybe it’s because I think this child

  is gon’ be everything we have—I’ll feed it, rock it to sleep, dress

  it in pink or blue and pretend that it’s all we ever gon’ want.

  So it look like Annie Pearl ’bout to get just what she want.

  I done seen pregnant women before, how they walk, cry how God

  suddenly got a place in everything they say. I sit her down, say “Annie,

  I ain’t no boy. And I ain’t
no fool either. I know you carryin’ a chile,

  and I know that chile is mine. Folks have babies all the time in the city,

  just like they did down South. Sure as my given name is Otis,

  I’m gon’ be here with you, do you right, and I’m gon’ have a say

  in how this child grows.” I know she scared. I know she think

  I might be the wrong man, that I can’t hold still, and she right

  ’bout that, but a chile can make a man change. We gon’ fix up

  our lives, make a place for this baby. I’m gon’ get her that gold dress

  ’fore she get big, before her belly out there for everybody to see.

  Otis could be the wrong man. So many folks saying I need to see

  that. So I pray on it. Most times, he’s just a little of everything I want.

  When he don’t come home for two, three nights, I ask God

  to change his ways, or at least keep him alive. When this hungry city

  open its mouth and he walk in again, I got no idea what words to say

  to get him home. When I hear ’bout them other women, how they dress

  tight, wear red lips and laugh with their mouths wide open, how Otis

  spend money on that laughing, how he rock me soft, saying “Annie,

  baby, it’s hard out there,” while I get bigger and bigger with this chile,

  I just cry. And then I scream. Cause there’s this pain like a knife slice right

  where my baby supposed to be. Whether that man here or not, I think

  this ’bout to happen. Chile moving fast, not giving me time to catch up.

  Whenever I think about Otis and Annie, two stars orbiting the city,

  there’s no way I can say how they found each other. But I can see

  how the child who became Patricia Ann is equal parts of both of them.

  Otis and Annie, maybe with the help of some fool’s God, etched a road right

  up Chicago’s middle and placed a confounded child there. And that gold dress

  that Otis, my daddy, promised his Alabama girl? It never stopped being a want.

  JUNE 25, 1955

  It is a backbreaker delivery, with no knife

  slipped beneath the bed to cut the pain.

  In a deep-bleached cavern of beeping

  machines and sterilized silver, she can’t

  get loose. Her legs are strapped flat,

  and men are holding down her hands.

  She wails. Not from hurt, but from knowing.

  There will be no running from this.

  This child is a chaos she must name.

  SHOULDA BEEN JIMI SAVANNAH

  My mother scraped the name Patricia Ann from the ruins

  of her discarded Delta, thinking it would offer me shield

  and shelter, that leering men would skulk away at the slap

  of it. Her hands on the hips of Alabama, she went for flat

  and functional, then siphoned each syllable of drama,

  repeatedly crushing it with her broad, practical tongue

  until it sounded like an instruction to God, not a name.

  She wanted a child of pressed head and knocking knees,

  a trip-up in the doubledutch swing, a starched pinafore

  and peppermint-in-the-sour-pickle kinda child, stiff-laced

  and unshakably fixed on salvation. Her Patricia Ann

  would never idly throat the Lord’s name or wear one

  of those thin, sparkled skirts that flirted with her knees.

  She’d be a nurse or a third-grade teacher or a postal drone,

  jobs requiring alarm-clock discipline and sensible shoes.

  My four downbeats were music enough for a vapid life

  of butcher-shop sawdust and fatback as cuisine, for Raid

  spritzed into the writhing pockets of a Murphy bed.

  No crinkled consonants or muted hiss would summon me.

  My daddy detested borders. One look at my mother’s

  watery belly, and he insisted, as much as he could insist

  with her, on the name Jimi Savannah, seeking to bless me

  with the blues-bathed moniker of a ball breaker, the name

  of a grown gal in a snug red sheath and unlaced All-Stars.

  He wanted to shoot muscle through whatever I was called,

  arm each syllable with tiny weaponry so no one would

  mistake me for anything other than a tricky whisperer

  with a switchblade in my shoe. I was bound to be all legs,

  a bladed debutante hooked on Lucky Strikes and sugar.

  When I sent up prayers, God’s boy would giggle and consider.

  Daddy didn’t want me to be anybody’s surefire factory,

  nobody’s callback or seized rhythm, so he conjured

  a name so odd and hot even a boy could claim it. And yes,

  he was prepared for the look my mother gave him when

  he first mouthed his choice, the look that said, That’s it,

  you done lost your goddamned mind. She did that thing

  she does where she grows two full inches with righteous,

  and he decided to just whisper Love you, Jimi Savannah

  whenever we were alone, re- and rechristening me the seed

  of Otis, conjuring his own religion and naming it me.

  CHICAGO

  After Carl Sandburg

  SOULButcher for the Country,

  Heartbreaker, Stacker of the Deck,

  Player with Northbound Trains, the Nation’s Black Beacon;

  Frigid, windy, sprawling,

  City of Cold Shoulders.

  They tell me you have lied and I believe them,

  for I have seen your Mississippi women stumbling

  Madison Street searching for their painted city legs.

  And they tell me you are evil and I answer: Yes, I know.

  I have seen babies cooking their hair, fingering blades,

  changing their names to symptoms of jazz.

  And they speak of souls you swallow, and my reply is:

  On the shadowed faces of men in the factory lines

  I have witnessed the beginnings of the furthest falling.

  And having answered so I turn to the people who spit at my city,

  and I spit back at them before I say:

  Come and show me another city with head thrown back wailing

  bladed blue, field hollers, so astounded to be breathing and bleeding.

  Spewing electric hymns rhythmed against the staccato pound of

  fiery steel presses, here is a defiant ass whupper

  shaking its massive fists at sweating southern “towns”;

  Feral as a junkyard mutt, taut, muscled against his enemy, shrewd

  as an explorer pitted against an untried land,

  Wily as a Louisiana boy faced with days of concrete,

  Wiry-headed,

  Digging,

  Destroying,

  Deciding,

  Swallowing, expelling, swallowing,

  Under the rubble, thrusting forth, laughing with

  perfect teeth,

  Shedding the terrible burden of skin, laughing as a white

  man laughs,

  Laughing even as a soldier laughs, addicted to the need of his next battle,

  Laughing and bragging that under that skin is the cage of his ribs

  And under his ribs beats a whole unleashed heart.

  Laughing!

  Laughing the frigid, windy, sprawling laughter of

  a Southern man, folded against the cold, sparkling, sweating,

  proud to be

  SOULButcher for the Country,

  Heartbreaker, Stacker of the Deck,

  Receiver of Northbound Trains and the Nation’s Black Beacon.

  TENZONE

  Chicago to Patricia Ann

  Can I help it that my maw is shaped

  exactly like your body, that my fists

  ache for the shake of
you? Now you’ve been scraped

  from Alabama womb, I can’t resist

  your dumb unfurling. You beg me to be

  your father, or your mother sporting breasts

  of dime-store glass. My trusting refugee,

  I really have to say, I’m unimpressed

  by you. I idly sniff the sugared fat

  around your heart, decide that I’ll combat

  what’s soft—your pulsing light, that wretched tune

  that’s building in your chest. Hey, take a look

  around. This ain’t no lush, no warm cocoon,

  no mama’s coo. You and your kind mistook

  my glitter for consent, my unsnapped trap

  for open arms. I’m only jukebox skin

  and towered brick, a shifting god who’ll slap

  you back to birth, girl, don’t you think this grin

  means anything but glee. I own you now—

  that Northern star’s no beacon anyhow.

  So don’t you worry, child, I’ll raise you right.

  I’ll skin your knees, I’ll soil your pirouette,

  and whet your nasty little appetite

  for light in alleyways. I’ll make you sweat

  it out, that fever that so glorified

  your coming here. Your parents’ naked dream,

  that laughable and misdirected pride,

  that harboring of points they can’t redeem,

  that cramming all their faith in the debut

  of something damned and weak. They named it you.

  Patricia Ann to Chicago

  Can I help the fact that I escaped,

  exactly as they’d hoped, and that I missed

  what Delta held for me? I saw you, draped

  in textures I didn’t think could coexist—

  steel and heat and blended silks. The key

  to loving you is knowing that you’ve dressed

  in lies to tempt the travelers. Oh, SweetPea,

  mama says, child, know that you been blessed.

  She sends me stumbling out into the flat

  light of your clutching moon, my habitat

  assured—the dingy parks, the alleys strewn

  with glittered garbage, every cozy nook

  shaped like astonished little girl. And soon,

  aloud, you say my name—the shiny hook

  of Northwashed noun, the awkward sound a gap

  in air. Declaring us a fractured kin,

  you vow me yours. Our heartbeats overlap

  as you instill your loving discipline.

  I learn to breathe the blue that you allow,

  to readjust my history somehow.