The Healing

by Gayl Jones

  You’re an ass, I said.

  Don’t you care who he’s with? You’re at least in junior high school when it comes to love. Maybe it’s not just some little infatuation now, maybe it’s some great infatuation, a woman who shares his ideals. A woman worthy of him. Jamey’s great love. A woman who shares his ideals. I don’t mean just the Kama Sutra, I mean she works with him at the think tank, you know. He’s admitted her into his little circle of serious thinkers. I can imagine them, his group, and her the only woman in it. Scientists from around the non-Western world and her the only woman. She’s supposed to be this great intellect, you know. In India, she couldn’t use her great intellect, so she came to America. She’s supposed to be the woman he imagined me to be when we first met. Can you imagine your Norvelle meeting the woman he imagined you to be? she asked. If I’m an ass, you’re an ass’s ass. An ass’s ass’s ass. An ass’s ass’s ass’s ass. Don’t you care who he’s with? What little infatuation. Maybe she’s just a little infatuation and he imagines she’s great. . . . I know one of the guys who works with Jamey at the think tank and asked about her. He looked at me like he thought I was some kinda subversive. You know, the think tank people aren’t supposed to tell anyone their little think tank secrets. But then when he knew that I knew about the Kama Sutra he started telling me about her. Not the sort of woman who’s a little infatuation for any man. He said all the guys at the think tank are a little in love with her, you know. Then she gave Jamey that book, I suppose it woulda been sexual harassment, you know, if he’d given a similar book to her, I mean, if he’d given her a copy of the Kama Sutra. But the Kama Sutra is a classic of Indian literature. . . . I mean, it’s not like some crude flirtation. . . . It ain’t like giving someone a copy of Penthouse. She coulda given him a collection of Kalidasa’s plays, though, or The Indian Art of Spiritual Harmony. . . . Ain’t like your crude flirtation. . . .

  No. I mean, you’re an ass.

  That’s bullshit, she said. You know, girl, I saw the way you were looking at him when I first introduced y’all. Aren’t you at least jealous that he’s met a woman who’s sensual, spiritualized sensuality, or sensualized spirituality, not the vulgar sensuality of the West, or whatever. I’m too corrupted by the Western idea myself, all sensuality is erotic, a beauty anyway, and a great intellect. Jamey’s ideal woman. I guess I can respect Jamey that his ideal woman is intelligent, but this male pursuit of beauty I’ve always been ambivalent about.

  You’re beautiful.

  Yeah, when I wanna be. But that ain’t the point. And I ain’t all that.

  Who is? All that, I mean.

  She’s supposed to be all that, you know, Jamey’s ideal.

  She probably ain’t all that. You’re beautiful.

  But why women gotta be all that? Why we gotta be flawless? It’s just control. It’s just power. You know, Jamey pointed out the first line in my forehead. He has lines in his forehead plenty, from thinking, you know, but he points out the first line in my forehead. I’m just sitting there reading, maybe listening to Miles and he points out this line in my forehead. You know, you got a line in your forehead. I remember when I had my first date, this guy says, You know, your complexion isn’t so flawless up close. So what did that have to do with anything? You know. And then Jamey. My first line in my forehead he notices. I guess he didn’t mean anything by it. It’s just the nature of a man, you know. Pointing out a woman’s flaws. Or the nature of anybody in power. Pointing out the flaws of them that ain’t. Not that some fools don’t need their flaws pointed out. You know what’s funny. I don’t mind him pointing out my flaws of character—all virtues to me. That line in my forehead, though. I’m thinking, what’s this, so he’s supposed to be pointing out every line I get in my forehead? Every wrinkle I get he’s supposed to be telling me about it. But I ain’t no fool.

  I hope that ain’t why y’all divorced, ’cause he pointed out the first line in your forehead.

  Naw, I’m just telling you about the beauty thing. You know.

  I think the beauty thing’s your hang-up. So some guy noticed your complexion ain’t flawless, so what? Guys always telling me about my flaws. I remember the first man that called me outa my name called me Possum, on account of I usedta didn’t say nothing to nobody about nothing, and especially men. You couldn’t get me to say a word to especially a man. In fact, Norvelle the first man I said more than a few words to. The psychologists would probably say it’s because my daddy stayed in Korea with some woman, you know, some Korean woman rather than returning to America, or if he thought Korea the promised land coulda sent for us to come to Korea with him. We couldn’t compete with that promised land or that ideal of a woman. I don’t know. But I think a man like Jamey could love a woman just the way she is. Or how it pleases herself to be. That’s what my friend Nadine says, that most men wants you to love them like they’s a tree, you know, like they are, but they ain’t supposed to love you like no tree, I love Norvelle, and even love him like a tree, but I just don’t want to stay in Africa and follow no man around, you know, not even Norvelle. ’Cause that ain’t my idea of a woman. Maybe if that was my idea of a woman, I’d still be in Africa, whether you think I ever been there or not, I know Jamey don’t like your music, but he loves you like a tree, And I don’t think there’s many women that can say that. Loving somebody like a tree don’t mean you gotta take they shit, though. What do you want for breakfast?

  Bullshit, she said.

  On toast? I asked. I phoned in an order. Ham and cheese omelet for her, Western omelet for me. I imagined eating my Western omelet on one of those riverboats with the gambler known as Naughty Jim Savage. Like Joan say, the sort of role a Clark Gable type might play, or somebody resemble the Clark Gable type. Except I couldn’t imagine me as my real self. Probably some blonde. I always wonder, though, why the ideal for a man tall dark and handsome, while the ideal for a woman always some blonde. ’Cept in them countries where everybody blond. Nadine say in them countries where everybody blond, blond ain’t the ideal. ’Cept amongst the nationalistic types and their ideal of Nordic womanhood. If people is blond seem like it okay for blond to be they ideal, but not amongst people that ain’t blond and try to imitate the blond ideal, or think they ain’t beautiful cause they ain’t blond. Joan say, though, when she put on her blond wig, it to satirize that ideal.

  Did I do good? she asked.

  You’re an ass, but you’re good, I said. You’re a good ass.

  I’d rather be a good ass than just a good piece of one, even a good piece of intelligent ass.

  CHAPTER

  NINETEEN

  When I grew older, I didn’t believe the Turtle Woman stories, not the magical ones. Not the tales of how when she was a turtle she’d had to play all kinds of tricks to keep from getting caught by humans and put into a pepper pot floating with wild onions and garlic. I believed the one about the carnival, and even the tale of the confabulatory Unicorn Woman, but not that one. Not the tale of metamorphosis, of how when human beings chased her, like every turtle, she ran so slowly that in order to avoid getting caught she had to transform. Once they chased her into grass and she became grass. Another time they chased her into a valley, and she became a running stream, but all the time afraid that one of them would stoop and cup his hands and drink, so that when she willed herself back into a turtle again she wouldn’t be whole. She’d have to look for the part that was missing. Even when I went to Africa with Norvelle and heard African transformation tales which sounded very much like that one, I still, didn’t believe it, or I thought it was just folklore.

  Once when my grandmother was telling me her turtle stories, my mother came up on the porch with a bag of groceries, stopped and listened, shaking her head at the nonsense. The celery stalks at the top of the bag shook their green heads at the nonsense too. As soon as my grandmother finished her tale, my mother explained, Maybe you was a magic turtle in th’old days and maybe you changed yourself into grass and a stream, maybe that tale is true
and not the carnival one, but you borned an ordinary human woman now. And an ordinary daughter’s daughter. The celery stalks raised their green heads and nodded.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY

  I’m going up to the mansion now, said his sister. Norvelle and I had just married and were visiting his parents’ home in Memphis, Tennessee. Their house usedta be a boardinghouse; they’d purchased it and renovated it. Norvelle’s father who do some freelance contracting, has his own freelance contracting company, had renovated it hisself, and they rented a few of the upstairs apartments. Norvelle’s father look like a older version of Norvelle, but a more rugged-type man being a contractor, while his mother a petite little woman kinda remind me of that woman played Tina Turner in one of them movie and Malcolm X’s wife in another of them movie and also played in one of them futuristic action movies, you know, them new feminist-type movies where they got the woman to play the action hero. Usually it a white woman to play the action hero, but in this movie they got the African-American woman to play the action hero. Angela Bassett. That her name. She look like a petite little woman onscreen and up beside Denzel who play Malcolm X in that movie, though I don’t know if she truly a petite little woman. She might just look petite in the movies. His sister, I mean Norvelle’s sister Cayenne, was dressed in an old man’s blue felt hat and a white organdy dress, her cheeks thickly rouged. She’d have been a beautiful girl if she weren’t “off.” No one had told me she was “off” at first, not even Norvelle. He’d just waited until I saw her and discovered for myself. It amazed me that neither Norvelle nor his parents behaved as if the girl were in any way an embarrassment to them. Ain’t like one of them stories I read by LeRoi Jones before he become Imamu Amiri Baraka—ain’t that his new name?—about people hiding crazy peoples like that in they attic. I ain’t remember the exact lines of that story, but it say something about certain middle-class African Americans or colored people keeping crazy peoples like that in they attic. And ain’t just colored people, but peoples in general ’cause seem like in one of them Brontë novels that man hide his crazy wife in the attic. Anyway, they took her as she was, I mean Cayenne, and expected others to accept her, as if her madness had its own logic. Even them that rented them apartments upstairs didn’t treat Cayenne like she a crazy woman, and it even Cayenne who would collect they rents from them, and keep them rent books.

  What mansion? I asked.

  The King’s, said Norvelle’s father.

  We were sitting on the long porch of the boardinghouse, or the renovated boardinghouse. Norvelle’s father and mother was sitting in one of the swings. Cayenne was sitting on the porch steps and I was sitting in one of them lounge chairs. Norvelle across the street talking to a man who reminded me kinda of a brown bear. The man pruning one of them trees look kinda like a monkey puzzle tree, and Norvelle standing talking to him. I think he say the man’s name Mr. Melville, the man who originally sold them the boardinghouse. Mr. Melville said the boardinghouse originally belonged to a woman named Wooley Boatman, but Wooley Boatman moved up to Alaska, at least she said she was moving up to Alaska, boarded up the boardinghouse and went North. Then he got a letter from her saying that she was in Toronto not Alaska, and sending him the ownership papers to the boardinghouse. Since he didn’t know nothing about running a boardinghouse he sold the house to Norvelle’s daddy.

  What king? I asked.

  The only king of Memphis. Elvis Presley, said Norvelle’s mother.

  Whenever his name was mentioned, Cayenne’s face lit up. She’d go to the Presley mansion and stand outside the gates with his other fans, even when there was no longer any King to get a glimpse of. After a while, one of her family would walk up there and get her. She could be trusted to go there by herself, but she couldn’t be trusted to come back. If no one went and got her, she’d stand out there all night.

  They’ll tell you the lie that he said that the only thing black people can do for him is shine his shoes, but that’s just a lie, said Cayenne. That’s just a true lie. Even Mr. Melville knows that that’s a lie, and he usedta work up there at the mansion before he bought hisself this boardinghouse, or claims he usedta work up there, if that’s the truth, but he knows things about Elvis that ain’t in none of the fan magazines so he musta worked up there and say he even knew Elvis before that when he were a little poor boy like any other poor boy here in Memphis. I seen all Mr. Presley’s movies, every one of them, and he’s a better actor than a lot of these actors that they says is actors even if he ain’t got no colored people in his movies. I ain’t read nobody to say what a good actor he is, and that they shoulda put him in better movies, why if they’da put him in better movies, or movies with colored people in them, but you know they wouldn’t want him to be the king of acting and singing because that would be too much king, but he can sing any type of music, though, and not just colored people’s music. I got all his music. They tells me I ain’t supposed to like Elvis, not really like him, but I likes him anyway. They tells me I ain’t supposed to like Elvis, not really like him, ’cause he ain’t originate that style of music that his claim to fame, ’cause his claim to fame ain’t nobody else’s music, ’cause that country music ain’t his claim to fame, but I likes him anyway. And I don’t believe that lie that they say about him saying ain’t nothing colored people can do for him but shine his shoes, ’cause the colored people’s liked his music before even the Grand Ole Opry people, ’cause I seen that in a movie. Course even in that movie they just marginalized the colored people, like Norvelle says, and you’d think he invented the colored people’s music hisself.

  I’d heard the same tale myself, but a different version of it. Somebody said it was some African-American women in his audience, who were behaving just like the white women were behaving about him. The King, you know. So the King stops singing whatever song he’s singing, looks at them colored women acting just like the white women in his audiences, and says, Ain’t no use of y’all colored women behaving like that about me, ’cause cain’t none of y’all do a thing for me but shine my shoes. But then in some of them documentaries you got the King saying that his style of singing was influenced by listening to black people’s music. Of course they don’t mention the colored people every time they mention Elvis.

  That evening Norvelle and I walked up to get her. He couldn’t understand why she was such a big fan of Elvis, cause Elvis ain’t even her generation. She collected all of Elvis’ albums, though, and Elvis posters and other Elvis novelty items and collectibles. Norvelle ain’t say whether or not he hisself like Elvis. I know he likes the pure African music, the pure music of Africa itself, and even have that music from. South Africa even before Paul Simon introduced it to the world. My favorite Paul Simon, though, is when he singing his own music, that song about meeting his woman again after all those years and still being crazy. Not Paul Simon himself, but the man singing in the song. When I first heard that song I think he mean crazy, then when I hear it again I think he mean crazy in love. ’Cept it a better song to say just still crazy. That’s a first-rate songwriter when you just say still crazy. Another songwriter think he supposed to say everything he mean. If he mean crazy in love he think he supposed to say crazy in love. Or maybe he mean both kinds of crazy, maybe he mean crazy crazy and crazy in love crazy and them other type of crazy like when people say that crazy man or you crazy man.

  I don’t know what she thinks about when she stands out there, he said as we neared the mansion, and could see her peeking through the gate with a crowd of others. She’s in her own world.

  We came to her and Norvelle pulled her away from the crowd of tourists mostly and draped a sweater on her slender shoulders.

  Did you hear him? He was singing, she said.

  That was probably some tape being played, said Norvelle. Maybe one of his other fans was playing a tape of Elvis’ music.

  During my stay with them I was afraid to be left in a room alone with her. I didn’t know what to expect. Once, though, I’d c
ome into the kitchen to get a glass of water and she’d surprised me there. I’d put the glass in the sink and turned. Standing in the doorway, she looked at me like she was the normal woman and I was the one a bit “off.”

  Is you going to travel with him when he goes collecting his folklores in Africa?

  Yes, I said. We plan to honeymoon there. In Kenya, then Tanzania, Norvelle has to go to Houston first, though. He’s supposed to give a lecture at the university—there’s a medical anthropology conference—and then there’s some people there who run this refugee center, I think, who want him to do some interpreting. He’s the only one who knows a certain African language. . . . Some sorta refugees, I think. I think there’s some sorta refugee center there. Maybe they’re some illegal refugees or some shit, the way Norvelle explains it.

  I hope you’s a nice girl, I hope you’s a nicer girl than you looks like you is.

  It depends on what you mean by a nice girl, I said.