The Healing

by Gayl Jones

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  Joan grabs my arm as I enter the recording studio. I wink at the guitar player who’s leaning against the wall. Name’s Jimmy Cuervo. I first heard him play in a cantina in South Texas and introduced him to Joan. They even started talking Spanish to each other and I heard her call him Caballero. His name ain’t Jimmy Caballero, though, it’s Jimmy Cuervo. Or maybe Cuervo the way them Mexicans pronounce Caballero, ’cause them Mexicans ain’t supposed to pronounce Spanish the same way them Spaniards from Spain pronounces Spanish. Theirs is American Spanish. And them Mexicans, they’s got they own music, it ain’t that flamenco in Mexico, it’s that mariachi music. Or maybe that mariachi music a Americanization of that flamenco. But even in Spain you’s got two kinds of flamenco. You got that flamenco they do for them tourists, and then you’s got the true flamenco, the flamenco that them Spaniards do for each other. Sometimes just the men do that true flamenco, and sometimes you’s got men and women do that true flamenco. But for the tourists you’s always got to have them women to do that flamenco, or you’s got to have the men and women to do that flamenco, and them tourists they see and hear that flamenco, and they think sexuality, but that ain’t the same as that true flamenco.

  Maybe in Spain his true name be Jimmy Caballero, though, that Jimmy Cuervo, but in American Mexico or in Mexican America his name Jimmy Cuervo. And that Jimmy ain’t his true Spanish name. Maybe his true Spanish name is Guillermo. Naw, Guillermo ain’t the Spanish for Jimmy. What the Spanish for Jimmy? Jaime? Ain’t Jaime the Spanish for Jimmy? Ain’t Jaime Mexican for Jimmy? Anyway, that Jimmy Cuervo, I call him a guitar player’s guitar player he’s so good. He’s the kind of musician Joan likes to call a “working musician” ’cause he ain’t preoccupied with stardom. One of them African-looking Mexicans from South Texas. A friend of mine from New Mexico, who first told me about Jimmy Cuervo and his music, and who I first heard perform in her cantina-type restaurant in Cuba, New Mexico, calls them kinda Mexicans “chitlins con carne Mexicans.” Anyway my ex-husband Norvelle and I were playing pool in her cantina restaurant when Jimmy Cuervo comes in. It a cantina-style restaurant but she got one of them pool tables in it, you know. He’s got his guitar and he asks whether he can play for free, and then if the people like him, he might get him a gig there. So he plays for free and the people like him, so she hires him to play there. That’s the first time I heard him play, and then when Joan hires me to be her manager I think of that Jimmy Cuervo and tell Joan that he one of the best guitar players I’ve heard since Hendrix. Ain’t Hendrix, ain’t no guitar player that’s Hendrix, but still one of the best. Joan say if he one of the best guitar players since Hendrix, he be famous and she woulda already heard of him. I tell her that’s ’cause he don’t really know how to market hisself, just plays the clubs and cantinas around South Texas. I remember when that Joan had her a gig in some town, seem like Seattle, Washington, or one of them towns, and so she takes me to this pawn shop and tells me that the pawn shop where Hendrix’s daddy bought him his first electric guitar. And there’s this big painting of Hendrix over the pawn shop and I figure it’s a true tale and ain’t none of them confabulatory tales. So anyway he sends us some of his tapes, that Jimmy Cuervo or Jaime Caballero, and Joan likes him and wants to make a record with him. Anyway, he gives me a approving look. Ferocious red bangs hang across Joan’s forehead. Every time I see her she’s got a different hairdo, different-style makeup. And she’s wearing her favorite sweatshirt, one by the African-American sculptor-designer Catherine Shuger but purchased in Amsterdam, called Monkey Puzzles. Putting her hands onto my shoulders, she hug me close. She the best of pretenders. So who’d you win this time? she ask.

  She put her foot up on a straight chair and pull up her socks. Painted figures make the socks look like they been tattooed. She’s wearing the same gaucho pants she’d worn when I’d peeked up from behind her husband’s shoulders—her ex-husband’s shoulders.

  I don’t answer.

  You were in Saratoga?

  Right.

  Who’d you win? Her eyelids are purple. So what gigs we get? she ask.

  I tell her.

  So tell me who’d you win? she asks. Maybe you should get me a gig in Saratoga. I know they got clubs in Saratoga.

  When I don’t answer, she goes into the recording booth. Jimmy Cuervo follows, strumming his guitar. Well, if Josef can be German, Jimmy can be Mexican. ’Cept ain’t the sorta Mexican you see in the movies. Look more African than Mexican, like I said. Chitlins con carne. My friend from Cuba, New Mexico, say she first seen a Mexican look like him in one of them French movies, said that surprised her ’cause she ain’t never seen no African-looking people in Mexico, not in them American movies. You know, ’cause in them American movies they’s always got white people playing the Mexicans at least in most of them early movies or they’s got them Spanish or Native Americans or Italian-looking Mexicans, but not no African-looking Mexicans. This little Mexican boy in that movie, though, look just like a little African, she say. ’Cept my friend from New Mexico telling me about how they had slavery in that Mexico before they abolished it, so I guess there’s as many Africans in Mexico as anywhere. And there’s little towns in Mexico where all the people look like they’s Africans, she say. Is that true, Nadine? I’m asking. She the one own that cantina-style restaurant, Nadine. She a African American herself, except her husband a Mexican. I think she say he from Chiapas or somewhere in southern Mexico. I think he one of them illegal aliens myself, or usedta be one of them illegals. He look more Native American than Mexican hisself, though. Nadine say he look like a Aztec prince. Sure, it’s the truth, she say, about they being whole towns of Mexicans that look African. I ain’t been to any of them little towns myself, but I’ve heard about ’em. Some of them Africans when they escaped slavery settled in them little towns. When I was in Texas City, before I come to Cuba, New Mexico, with my Aztec Prince—sometimes she don’t even say his name she just call him her Aztec Prince—and then she start telling me a lot of confabulatory stories about Texas City, Texas, and how she use to drive a truck in Texas City, Texas, then she met her Aztec Prince and they come and settled in Cuba, New Mexico. The way she tell the tale, she supposed to have smuggled her Aztec Prince across the border her ownself when he escaped from that little revolution they had down there in Chiapas. Somebody else mighta smuggled him across the border, but I don’t think Nadine smuggled him across the border her ownself.

  In the recording booth, Jimmy Cuervo’s singing with Joan one of them Mexican corridos, one of them Mexican ballads. They’re jazzing or bluesing or rocking it up, though, so that it don’t sound exactly like a pure Mexican corrido. Something about a man and all his different women, or a woman and all her different men. And then they sing some of the new songs: “Big Dick from Boston,” “Phoebe, Little Phoebe,” “Captain Hicks, Captain Jimmy Hicks of the Marines,” “Ada Ross.” Then they sang some songs she’d previously recorded: “Remora,” “Randy Dandy,” “Xingu” and “Kedgeree,” and then she sang songs whose titles I think were from literary works she’d read: “The Odyssey of a Nice Girl,” “The Map of Love,” “The Clown and His Daughter,” “The Hermit and the Wild Woman,” “Mina Purefoy in Puritan City,” “Wolfe Tone and the Wandering Scholar,” “Aldonza del Tobosa,” “Younghy-Bonghy-Bo,” “Le Roman Experimentale” and “The American Song.”

  When she come out of the recording booth, Joan stand watching me.

  Jimmy’s always excellent, he’s like caviar, she says. How’d I do? How’d I sing? Did you like the new songs? Did you like the corrido? He’s teaching me a canto hondo.

  Yes. Very much. You sounded real good. You know you always sound good. And your songs are always intelligent.

  You’re just saying that. You know I like to hear you tell me that I’m good. Jimmy’s always excellent, though. He’s like caviar. You’d think he’d be better known. Jimmy, could you return Mr. Calandrino’s keys. You’re like caviar. She hands Jimmy t
he keys to the rented recording studio. Sure, he says. He bows to me gallantly, then bows to her, then heads toward Mr. Calandrino’s office. Then Joan says, Let’s go have Chinese. You can help me pick an album title. We can go to one of Isabel Kong’s restaurants. The elusive Isabel Kong. They’ve got the best food, though. I went to school with her, you know. Isabel Kong. You know, when we were in Paris I took you to Isabel Kong’s. She has an Isabel Kong’s in Paris. She says everybody thinks she’s a gangster. A woman like her ain’t supposed to have so many fine restaurants all over the world if she ain’t into something illegal.

  I don’t know if I can trust you, I say.

  Trust me, she say.

  When we get to the street, she’s still holding my arm. I slide my arm out of hers as we walk down the windy street. Few people look at her, ’cause she’s dressed like a fool, but they figure she must be some sorta theatrical person. She almost slender enough to be a fashion model, though, Sometimes you see them fashion models on the runways dressed up to look like fools. They say them ain’t the sorta dresses that real women are supposed to wear. The designers just make them to give their shows a little flair and make them more entertaining. You know, something for the fashion journalists to write about. For a while them fashion models got more famous than the movie stars, on account of they had more of that glamour. Then them movie stars started getting glamorous again. ’Cause for a while you didn’t see a lot of glamorous movie stars. Even at them awards shows, you didn’t see the glamorous-type movie stars. A few of them rock stars turned movie stars would look kinda glamorous. Then they started bringing glamour back to Hollywood, which some people call Glamourtown anyway. Joan walks like she onstage, anyway, doing a little jig, then she touch my jaw. She move her hand up to my jaw, quickly, like she going to strike it, but she don’t. She touch it gently instead.

  Let’s go somewhere where we can have some champagne, Ashley, I hear a woman say as we walk down the concrete stairs into the Chinese restaurant. As always, I feel awkward navigating through the tight spaces between tables, but Joan move like she own even the tightest space. And she ain’t a small woman neither. Neither one of us is small women. She a slender woman, but she ain’t a small woman. We’re led to our table. The waiter, a tall man who look more Indonesian than Chinese, pull out her chair first, ’cause he can tell by her behavior I guess that she the VIP, or maybe because she the more attractive of the two of us, but when he turn to me I’m already seated and reaching for one of the fried noodles.

  Joan say something to him in Chinese and then order shrimp and fried rice in Chinese. I know that ni hao, that the only Chinese I know. And what’s that other Chinese I picked up from Joan? Ni shi neiguo ren? That mean, Where do you come from? Seem like people need to know that in everybody language. And to ask them what they name? Ni jiao shenmo minzi? In her gigs in different countries, she always like to sing at least one song in that different language, and to say a few words and phrases in them languages, so she know how to say a little in a lot of different languages. And she know how to order food in almost everybody language. I order sweet-and-sour pork in plain English, ’cause I ain’t learned how to order food in nobody language but my own, or the language that supposed to be my own. Joan say that’s why she like to learn different people’s language, ’cause she ain’t never felt like English her own language. She say the language that feel most like her own when she speak it is Italian, but she ain’t got no Italian in her that she knows about. I thought she would say Swahili or one of them African languages, but she don’t, she say Italian. We sit in silence until Joan kick my shin under the table.

  What do you want me to do? I ask.

  She don’t answer. She slide off her pumps and rub my hurt shin with her toe. She move her foot up under the hem of my skirt, like she think she in a X-rated movie. She punch at the hem, but don’t go no further.

  So what do you want me to do? I ask.

  Do you really think we’re birds of the same feather? she ask. You said once we were birds of the same feather, that I only imagined I was different.

  I ain’t never said that.

  I take a bit of that Chinese pork. Joan always coming out with things like that, things I’m supposed to have said. She either dreaming I’m saying a lot of that shit, or her memory playing tricks on her, or she overheard somebody else saying that shit and thought it was me, or maybe it’s some lyrics to some song she’s writing or heard, ’cause I ain’t said half the shit that Joan ascribe to me as saying. I mean, if it Joan telling you this tale, or her version of this tale, she probably be telling you all kindsa shit that I ain’t said. And I ain’t never imagined that me and Joan anything alike. I don’t even think of her as my alter ego. She ain’t even the sorta woman I imagine myself to be anything like. You can like someone and it don’t mean you want to be anything like ’em.

  You said you wanted me to help you pick an album title.

  The Floating World?

  Sucks.

  The Spear Maker?

  Sucks.

  Alter Ego.

  Too elite.

  Remora.

  No.

  Do you know what a remora is?

  No.

  It’s a little sucker fish that attaches itself to a bigger fish. Fable has it that—

  Sucks.

  Our Nig Joan?

  Stupid.

  Queen Joan’s Songbook?

  No. What about Queen Kong?

  Isabel’s name is Kong, I can’t use Kong. But that’s good, I like that. I’d like to do an album and do something with Kong in it. But I know Isabel Kong, and she’d think I meant her.

  Stupid.

  La Femme Pensante? “Je ne suis qu’une femme, mais je suis une femme pensante.”

  Say what? Sucks anyway. Why don’t you go with one of the song titles. I kinda like “The American Song.”

  Sucks. Anyway, I think there’s already an album named The American Song Or The American Songbook. What about the name of some of those horses you bet on? What about Creole Beauty? When I played that gig in New Orleans, somebody thought I was Creole.

  Doesn’t sound rich enough for an album, you want something that sounds rich, you know. I don’t mean rich rich, not elite, but rich. A marketable title. Not something obscure. Not something you’ll have to explain in liner notes. A rich title, but not rich rich.

  When you first met me did you think I was rich? she asks. I mean rich rich.

  I don’t know.

  When you first met me did you think I was rich? she repeats. Did you think I was rich rich?

  I don’t know. I musta thought you musta had some kinda money. You look well taken care of, so I figured you must have some kinda money. Plus, you never like to talk about the amount of money that you getting for this gig or that contract, and somebody said it’s only rich people that think money talk is crude. . . . Poor people talk about money all the time.

  You know, you have never even asked me where I’m from. You have never even asked me anything about myself.

  I never ask people about themselves. I figure people tell you as much about themselves as they want you to know. You want me to ask you where you from? So where you from? Detroit? Kansas City? St. Louis? Atlanta? I know you got a farm in Minnesota. Are you from Minneapolis? Your bio says that you’re from New York, but I know a lotta jokers in the business say they’re from New York when they ain’t. They’re from some little tank town, but they tell people they’re from New York. I know your passport says New York. Maybe you’re from some ghetto in Kansas City? Maybe you’re from East St. Louis? West Virginia?

  She get up abruptly. I see her talking to the Chinese woman at the desk and then she walks outside. I pay the bill and follow her out. The woman I pay the bill to is a short, round woman that remind me kinda of Thaka, that Masai woman, except she ain’t Masai, she Chinese, say something to me in Chinese, ’cause maybe I speak Chinese too, but I tell her I don’t speak Chinese, it’s just the other one speaks Chinese. The
n I ask her if she’s the famous Isabel Kong. Isabel Kong? she ask. No, no I’m not Isabel Kong. Isabel Kong in Hong Kong. She’s starting one of our new restaurants in Hong Kong. I just manage restaurant for Isabel Kong. I not Isabel Kong herself. You think I’m Isabel Kong? Everyone thinks I’m Isabel Kong. No, no I’m not Isabel Kong. Don’t believe the stories you hear about her. She is a good woman. She is for the Chinese people. She is all the time helping the Chinese people. A good woman. I a good woman, but I not Isabel Kong herself. When I get outside, Joan’s walking with her hands in her pockets. I catch up with her.

  Look, I don’t see him anymore. It was just that one time, I say. Look, it was stupid of me, but you were divorced. It was you making the big deal about how you was divorced, and how you didn’t mind if he saw other women. Bragging about how y’all’s divorced and how you don’t mind if he sees other women, as if it’s your business to mind.

  What do you mean bragging?

  I mean, I didn’t even ask you. Did I ask you? Maybe I did ask you, but then you started bragging. You said that you and he were divorced, that was the first thing you told me. Certainly I didn’t ask you about him and other women, about his other infatuations. The way I figured, the way you were sounding was, if I was interested, then it was okay, ’cause y’all was divorced. And if he was interested in me, then that was okay. And you said said y’all didn’t have no claims on each other, and you were talking about some of his other women that you’d heard about, some of his other infatuations, but. . . . But you were divorced. You both said you had no claims on each other. You seemed like . . . You for really seemed like. . . . You seemed like you wanted us to like each other. And the way he was acting, he was acting like he wanted me to like him. You know how men act when they want a woman to like them, that’s the way he was acting.