The Healing

by Gayl Jones

  Where did you and Joan meet? I asked.

  Harlem. We have a mutual friend who’s a sculptor. Catherine Shuger. Joan calls her the Renegade. Do you know her work?

  Sounds familiar.

  A real nutcase, actually. A real strange woman. You’ve probably heard tales about her, From Atlanta, originally. In and out of asylums, not just asylums in America, but asylums all over the world—I remember somebody said she probably needed a good witch doctor—but she’s a fine artist, though, I think. In some ways, she reminds me of Joan. I don’t mean that Joan’s a nutcase, I mean something in the personality. Anyway, she was having a showing there in Harlem, Does that kinda scavenger-type collage sculpture and that puzzle sculpture. Sorta introduced us. She’s a bit of a matchmaker. Catherine Shuger, I mean. Has a husband who just puts up with her. Writes articles on pop science. The husband, I mean. Did a profile on me for an article on African Americans in the sciences.

  Yeah, Joan showed me that article. That photograph they got of you don’t do you justice. I take better photographs than that. You a more handsome man than that photograph.

  They refused to print it anywhere but the African American Journal, the article I mean. Writes science fiction under a pseudonym. Well, he doesn’t see himself that way, I mean, as a fool. He’s in love, you know. Name’s Ernest. Fine name. They say she’s even tried to kill him several times—not the artist Catherine, but the other self.

  Joan told me about her. I think. Or I read about her somewhere, in one of Joan’s books. You know, she’s always reading books, when she ain’t doing her music. Seems like I read about her in this book of Joan’s on sculpture.

  Now she only makes what she calls Sculpture You Can Eat. Catherine Shuger. I don’t mean to say that Joan’s anything like that, it’s just in the essential personality. You know, like sometimes when you read novels by the same writer, and it’s like they’re always inventing and reinventing the same character, the same essential character. That’s Joan and Catherine.

  People say I’m kinda like this friend of mine Nadine. We ain’t nothing alike to me, don’t even look alike, but a lot of people say we kinda alike, you know. We kinda talk alike, but we ain’t nothing alike. People say I’m a big woman, but Nadine’s sorta a giant compared to me. She’s sorta like some of them African women I met while I was in Africa. From Kenya or Tanzania. Or like some African Amazon you might read about, you know. I guess they’s got African Amazons. We’s both from Kentucky, though. I didn’t meet her in Kentucky, though, I met her in Texas. Then when my ex-husband introduced us, I discovered we’s both from Kentucky. Now she’s in New Mexico, though.

  She’s working with an allergist now that has this theory that it’s biochemical. I mean, Catherine Shuger’s aggression. It just might be. Some people believe that personality itself is merely biochemical. I’m a scientist, but I don’t believe that science explains who we are.

  Are you from Harlem yourself? I heard you say something about meeting Joan in Harlem.

  Naw, I’m from Maine.

  Maine? You mean they’s got nigs up in Maine? Excuse my French. I guess you do kinda sound like Maine. Kinda high-toned. I was thinking you got a high-toned kinda voice when Joan first introduced us. I was thinking you kinda sound Canadian, but I know if you’s Canadian Joan woulda told me you’s Canadian. I know there’s nigs up there in Canada, so they must got nip in Maine. I know some nip from Virginia that sound kinda high-toned like that, though, almost like them nigs from England, you know. You don’t exactly sound like you’s from England, though, but you’s got one of them high-toned accents. We was watching this thing on television about the Maine fishermen. It was after one of Joan’s gigs, and I kept wondering why she so interested in them Maine fishermen, and must be ’cause they kinda sound like you, and I don’t know no other reason she be interested in watching no Maine fishermen, I mean, I found it interesting them talking about the different fish they’s catching and how mens farms the ocean, but that ain’t the sorta thing that interest Joan. I mean, if it ain’t politics or the Comedy Channel or politics on the Comedy Channel, it’s romance. You kinda sound like them, though. Them Maine fishermen. Except more classy. Now that’s the true North. Up there in Maine. I mean, beside Canada itself that’s the true North. I guess the slaves that made it up there to Maine didn’t escape all the way up there to Canada.

  I’m descended from free blacks actually, not slaves.

  Oh, yeah? I heard about them. You think it makes a difference?

  What?

  I mean, you think it makes a difference whether you’s descended from free blacks or slaves? I mean, they’s the same people, ain’t they? Or you think they’s got a different mentality? Somebody say a slave can have just as much respect for theyself as a free man. I don’t know if that true, though, ’cause seem like they’s always telling you that if a slave got any respect for theyself, then they try to escape, so I don’t see how no slave can have as much respect for theyself as a free man, ’cause then they be a fugitive. But then every free man ain’t no fugitive. I mean, the free men that blames the slaves for being slaves and not free men, a lot of them ain’t no fugitive.

  He lift a eyebrow but don’t say nothing.

  In the stories set in Maine, there’s never any nigs in ’em, though, fugitives or free men. I remember when I was in high school, we was assigned to read these stories set in Maine, and wasn’t a nig in them. Sorta like those dialect stories but the dialect Maine dialect, you know. I know in that television show they didn’t show any nigs fishing, ’Scuse me. Joan says I shouldn’t refer to us as nigs. But she’s got a book where they refer to theyselves as nig, I mean the narrator of the book refer to herself as a nig, not only her own nig but other people’s nig.

  Our Nig?

  Yeah, I think that the name of that book. Our Nig. Then when I say nig she tell me I ain’t supposed to say nig, and she got a book that say nig.

  So how did you and Joanie meet? he asked.

  At a party in New York. Not Harlem. Manhattan. To tell the truth, I sorta sneaked in. I saw these African-American musicians, one of them carrying a French horn, and sorta followed them, you know. I guess somebody musta thought I was one of them musicians’ girlfriend. It coulda been a party for that Catherine Shuger you’re talking about, ’cause it seem like somebody kept saying Sugar, and I know it was a party for some artist or one of those artist types and some of that food they had for you to eat looked like sculpture, like sculpture you could eat, and I thought they was just calling somebody Honey, you know, or had a sweet tooth. Seem like Joan introduced me to a woman named Sugar or I thought she was just calling her Sugar, you know, though it surprised me to hear a northern woman call somebody Sugar, even though they say a lot of northern people’s got they roots in the South on account of that Great Migration. Anyway, I met Joan and we started talking and she asked me what I did. I said I was a beautician. She laughed. I guess because I was the only beautician at the party. Not even a makeup artist. Anyway, so she asked me to make her up and I did, right there where they were all partying around us, and she liked it. After a while, some of the party stood and watched, and maybe even the woman named Sugar amongst them, and after I finished, they applauded. Seem like I heard her say, Sugar, you think you a artist, this is a true artist. Or maybe I’m just thinking I remember that ’cause you telling me there’s a real woman name Sugar. Or Shuger. So she hired me on the spot for her makeup artist, Joan I mean. She said she’d have hired me, though, even if the others hadn’t approved.

  And the managing? How did that come about? From beautician to business manager, that’s a big leap. I mean, someone who doesn’t know anything about the music business, who doesn’t have any degrees in business or anything. It’s rather incredible, to tell the truth. You’re rather incredible, to tell the truth. Joan said that I’d think you a rather incredible woman.

  It just evolved. I started doing the books, you know, making calls and stuff. She noticed it and said I migh
t as well be her business manager. She’d been handling all that herself, you know, but she was getting more known, and she wanted. . . . I don’t have no business training or background or degrees in business like you said and no I didn’t know anything about the music business, just beauty school. And she uses it too, you know.

  How do you mean? He was still standing near the microscope, but I had moved to the bed. You know. How do you call it? For pointers, for scores. She likes telling people I usedta be her makeup artist, a beautician. That the only degree I’ve got is a degree from beauty school and she ain’t even sure about that. You know how Joan is. Like when we’re at a party with some other entertainers and entertainer’s expensive-ass high-powered Hollywood-type business managers and entourage and shit, and there’s just me and Joan, and like her career’s blossomed since I started managing her. . . . at least in Europe and Japan. . . . But I’m good. You can ask anybody in the business.

  I have.

  Hire a detective?

  No, just casual conversation, you know.

  Joan says you don’t care shit about her career.

  Oh, yeah? I don’t. I care about her, though.

  I said nothing. I crossed my legs and leaned back. His shirt was open at the collar. Tufts of curly hair peeked out from his broad chest. His skin was a wine-colored brown and he wore a mustache, like I told you, and had the look of a man I can only describe as being of another generation, though he’s Joan’s and my generation. Looking at him made me feel as if a old photograph from the 1930s or 1940s was staring back. Some portrait photograph by James Van DerZee or some of those African-American actors in those old Oscar Michaux movies, only darker complexioned than his leads.

  He looked at me with a intensity. They tell me you’re smart and you’re tough, and Joanie’s in good hands. I didn’t hire a detective, but I know a few music people. Mostly people in advertising, publicity people, though, not musicians.

  I said nothing. I got up and looked back into the microscope. I could feel him peering at me. I imagined him and Joan together, not making love, but maybe rubbing noses like the Inuits. “Give me an Eskimo kiss,” some woman said to her lover in a French movie, a video Joan had rented once after one of her gigs, when we were back at the hotel. She listened, so that she could keep up with her French, while I tried to read the captions. I hugged my arms and thought of one of Camille Billop’s sculptures with a woman hugging her arms. A ceramic. And then I thought of another sculpture, one of Norvelle’s. The one where one sculptured figure—of a man?—held another—of a woman?—aloft. And they both seemed as if they’d taken wing, as if they were flying. Was that a Catherine Shuger sculpture? Maybe that was where I first had heard her name. He said it was by some African-American woman sculptor, but I couldn’t remember her name. Maybe Catherine Shuger?

  You don’t like her singing, though, do you? I asked.

  No. I think it’s trash. I really think it’s trash. Everybody doesn’t need to sing. Especially us. The Houston woman, now there’s a voice. If you wanna think of pop modern music. You know, the Houston woman. I’d say she’s got the best modern voice. Bobby Brown’s wife.

  He’d love that. Bobby Brown, I mean. She treats him like he her Majestic Prince. You know, I bet on that horse. I don’t think I won anything. She’s very talented, you know. Joan, I mean modern singing is modern singing. It’s not all about the great voice, though I admire great voices. Like Joan, she hardly ever reads the great writers, the great books. I mean, she reads the Great Books, she’s got shelves of the Great Books. She reads them, but she also reads the trash, not just the trash, but she likes to read a lot of that obscure nonfiction, but she says the trash, the tabloid journalism, the tabloid novels, have more to do with the modern world, the trashy nonfiction, the trashy novels, the tabloids. Like she says those people who think the modern writers should write like the Great Novels, that that’s not modernity. That the techniques of the trashy novels and even the comic books, the new type of comic books, describe modernity better than the Great Novels. Some people say it’s supposed to be trash. Modern music. Like the new photography, you know. Like modern art. You can’t have a renaissance unless you’ve got decadence, someone says.

  He said nothing.

  She’s really better than you know. I don’t think she’s trash myself. I mean, I don’t think her music is trash. It ain’t trash trash. If anything, she kinda satirizes the modern, trashy culture.

  That’s not all of American culture. It’s American pop culture. I’ve heard that description of American culture myself, but it’s just the pop culture people are describing, the media culture. Some of the technological culture, perhaps, but mostly the media culture.

  But Joan would say that the pop culture’s the only true American culture, that the other so-called culture is just wannabe Europeans. Like in architecture, McDonald’s and Taco Bell-type pop architecture, that’s more true American culture than the cathedrals, I ain’t a culture nut myself, but I think she’s got the right idea about modernity. The Madonna culture. I like Madonna, though. Like somebody said, she’s a tramp, but I like her. I don’t think she’s a tramp, though. Maybe she satirizes the tramp ideal or the ideal tramp. I think she just, you know, satirizes pop American culture, and people think that’s her. Like maybe Joan satirizes pop African-American culture. Like a lot of people think pop African-American culture, media culture is us. But that’s sorta what you’re saying, ain’t it? And I guess we got our African wannabes like they got their European wannabes. I ain’t a culture nut myself, though. Unless it’s New Orleans culture, which is everybody’s culture. She’s really better than you know, our Joan.

  I want her to be better than she knows. You know, she was a chemistry major when I met her. Our sculptor friend was sort of a prodigy, you know. Having her first shows when she was still an undergraduate. I was in New York for the first time. When I met Joan, when Shuger introduced us, she just started talking to me like she’d always known me and not talking the typical woman talk, and I asked myself, Who’s this brilliant young woman? She was the first truly brilliant woman I’d met. I don’t wanna qualify it and say African-American woman, because I think her intelligence is world class, or could be. Our mutual sculptor friend’s a prodigy, but that’s art. Intelligence in art ain’t the same. Who are the lights of our century? I mean, in the areas of science and art. At least that the world knows about. Picasso and Einstein. But Picasso’s not Einstein. That’s not the same sort of brilliance, you know. People don’t think of intelligence as synonymous with Picasso, but Einstein, yes.

  I left the microscope and returned to the bed.

  When we were in New York, Joan took me to a play about Picasso meeting Einstein. Joan thought it was good, but it wasn’t as good as Cats. But I guess you gotta know more about Picasso and Einstein to appreciate a play about ’em, but everybody knows about cats. I played with the geometries of their crazy quilt.

  Though when you look at those Einstein formulas, the formulas in his notebooks, someone said that kind of looks like art. And when you look at some of those Picasso’s most abstract paintings it’s kind of like science. Like a scientist’s journals. Anyway, Joan and I, we went back to our mutual colleges, her in Connecticut and I at Fisk, but we kept corresponding and even made plans to do research projects together. We went to the same graduate school in Rhode Island, though. She was pursuing her intellectual theories, then she needed money to help pay her way through school, you know. She was a scholarship student, but it was just enough to pay tuition. She could’ve gotten in the Work-Study Program as a research assistant, any of the professors would’ve hired her, but she didn’t want that. I think someone harassed her, you know, but I’m not sure, because in those days, you know, it wasn’t a big notion, sexual harassment, though I remember there was a big ballyhoo about an article one of the professors wrote. “Up the Down Coed,” I think. Someone from the English Department. I spent most of my time in the chem and biology labs, though. Only a few
African-American professors in the sciences. Our advisor was one of them, but he was a physicist not a chemist. I remember Joan used to spend a lot of time talking with him about some of her theories. He indulged her, but his own interests weren’t in chemistry, And there was another professor, a German, a chemist. Joan was doing something with spectroscopy, and he was one of the leading experts in that field. I think he was an old Nazi myself. I had only one course with him. Or rather I started to take a course with him, but the first day he wouldn’t even acknowledge my presence in his class, my African presence, so I walked out. Joan stayed in that class and took courses with him, though. I guess she sort of forced him to acknowledge her African presence, or maybe just the fact that she’s a female. Even our writers don’t write tales of invisible women, at least none I’ve read. Anyway, Joan started singing at a local nightclub rather than be anyone’s work-study assistant. I don’t think it was harassment, though. If anyone harassed, it was probably Joan. I remember she used to develop these intense relationships with people. Not lovers, you know what I mean. And she’s not like the other girls in the sciences, most other women who take up the sciences. Most people who take up sciences, for that matter. Not just the idea people have of them in the popular imagination. The nerds. Of course, we scientists have a range of personality types like anyone else. But Joan’s more spontaneous and witty than most of the so-called rational types. Maybe it’s just her ego. Or I guess she prefers the limelight. There’s not much limelight in being a research chemist. Unless you’re one of the celebrity-type scientists. A pop scientist. When Ernie Shuger wrote that article on me and I got a couple of fan letters, Joan kidded me about becoming a pop scientist, a celebrity scientist. I think not.

  She’s brilliant onstage, I said. Don’t you think? She’s spontaneous and witty there.

  I’ve never watched her perform. I don’t like her singing.