by Gayl Jones
She turned toward the long mirror and looked into it.
He wanted me to have some kind of security, though, because I ain’t by nature no wandering woman. I wandered with that carnival, but that were the carnival’s wandering nature, not mine. And I did my share of wandering. I wandered plenty in my young days. When I was with the carnival, we wandered all through all the States and up in Canada too and in Mexico and I told you about Brazil where they renamed me after that trickster turtle. I think that Montreal the most perfect place we went to, though. But, really, I was not a wandering woman by nature and then you get to the point where you don’t want to wander. Well, so he married me, brought me to Kentucky, bought me this beauty parlor, but he wouldn’t settle down with me. ’Cause there is some mens that is just like that. Don’t make them no less ideal of a man. I usedta wonder how come Mrs. Smoot’s husband stayed with her and mine ain’t stayed with me and is just a itinerant man. But mine ain’t no less ideal of a man. Bought me this beauty parlor, so’s I could always take care of myself.
Do you know where he is now? I ask.
Might be a ghost like your daddy now.
Grandmother Jaboti like to call my daddy a ghost, but he ain’t. He fought in the Korean War and he stayed over there in that Korea with some Korean woman, Somewhere. After the war. Said there’s a lot of colored men that found themselves more freedom over there in that Korea and stayed over there after the war. Like in them other wars, them wars in Europe, a lot of them men after them other wars stayed in them countries, even the enemy countries, ’cause they thought they had more freedom there. I don’t know the whole story myself, though it seem like there would be more honor in it, in staying in that country he found more freedom in, if he were a single man.
BOOK
FOUR
CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE
Who was Aristides’ jockey? O. Lewis. Vagrant? B. Swim. Baden-Baden? W. Walker. Day Star? j. Carter. Lord Murphy? C. Shaver. Fonso? G. Lewis. Hindoo? J. McLaughlin. Apollo? B. Hurd. Then she began to skip through pages. Plaudit? W. Simms. Manuel? F. Taral. Chant? F, Goodale. Exterminator? Knapp. What, No first initial? Just Knapp. Middleground? W. Boland. Count Turf. I like that. C. McCreary. Tom Tom? I. Valenzuela. Lucky Debonair? W. Shoemaker. Northern Dancer? W. Hortuck.
She tossed the racing book at me, then lay down on the couch and kicked her feet in the air.
Seattle Stew? Seattle Stew? Oh, I mean Seattle Slew. J. Cruquet. I’ll take your word for it. I wish I had as good a memory as you, ’cept for Knapp. Tell me some more about that ex-husband of yours. Seem like you got a good memory for everything but that.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-TWO
My husband, Norvelle, like I told you, is a medical anthropologist who collects medical folklore. After we married, I traveled with him to Kenya, to the Sudan, to Tanzania, to Zanzibar, to Pemba. We talked to blacksmiths, ironworkers, warriors. He’d have talked to lions, elephants, and gazelles if he’d known their language. He’d have talked to the mninga and camphor and mahogany trees. He’d have talked to the wild figs, if they’d spoken. He’d have talked to the oil palms. And surely the baobab if it talked back. He’d have spoken to the same dragonflies that I was trying to frighten away, if they’d spoken. He’d have spoken to all those mosquitoes.
It was only that Masai medicine woman who disoriented me because he wanted to stay with her, because he wanted to keep following her from Korogwe to Morogoro, from the Rufiji River to the Great Ruaha, from the Uluguru Mountains to Meru, in the Eastern Rift Valley. And I guess I also envied her independent nomadic life, traveling about, curing folks. I guess the only way she could express her wanderlust even though the Masai traditionally nomadic people was by being a medicine woman. Of course I thought the Masai men were more beautiful than the women with their bald heads and stretched earlobes. The men had long tresses and an elegance, I could understand the men’s aesthetic of beauty, but not the women’s. When I saw the warriors, the Moran, I was fascinated. When my husband talked to them in their own language I stayed back, admiring their headdresses of lion’s manes and ostrich’s feathers. Suppose I had followed one of them about?
Why did she spit in your ear? I asked my husband when he returned where I was standing, under one of those legendary baobab trees.
A sign of goodwill and respect.
We followed her to Sonjo territory. The Sonjo used to be the Masai’s enemies, but now she’s curing them. Now she’s spitting in their ears.
We stayed in a hut that looked like it was made out of rock. A Sonjo blacksmith and his family. We sat in a circle and watched the Sonjo shape spearheads which he would sell to the tourists. Chants accompanied the shaping of the spearheads. Norvelle said that no work was done without chanting, which he called that space between speaking and song. I could tell by his expression that he was memorizing what the man sang, or rather chanted, and that he’d record it in his notebook. He said that a medical anthropologist had to have a good auditory memory. I asked him whether the Sonjo spearmaker would allow me to take his photograph. I didn’t know if he, like they say when some of the Native Americans were first photographed, or when the Europeans first tried to photograph them, if would he think that a photo might capture his spirit. Norvelle asked the Sonjo spearmaker in his own language if I might take his photograph, and he said yes, and so I took his photograph.
And then the four of us were standing in the hut of that man who they said could detect criminals by their smell. It was not like the old days, Norvelle said. Now such men had to be licensed by the state, had to be official. Not everyone could be a criminal detector.
Then the criminal detector was looking at me. He said something to the medicine woman, and the medicine woman talked back to him. The man started staring at me more intensely, the medicine woman shook with laughter and I brushed flies. But the medicine woman let the flies sit on her face. It was their custom or religion.
Later Norvelle translated for me. He’d asked her what kind of criminal I was, and whether I was in exile from my own country.
What did she tell him?
She said to stop sniffing you, that you were already married, and that you don’t like men who raise goats.
That made me like her. We followed her to a place where she helped a newborn baby into the world. She chanted as she worked. Norvelle said she referred to the woman as someone carrying two souls—her own and the baby’s. She coaxed the new soul into the world. When the baby came, everyone gathered and spit on it for luck.
I brushed flies from my face and ate zebra meat with my fingers, a gift from the other women who had gathered to salute the new child into the world.
How long are we going to follow her? I asked Norvelle, as we lay on mats in a curtained-off corner of the hut.
She’s a treasure chest of medical folklore, he said. She’s a treasure. Why, I could write a whole book about her.
In the morning, outside, the woman was telling him something. She was shaking her broad shoulders ho-ho-ho-ho and Norvelle was laughing. Her face was painted like a zebra’s.
What did she tell you? I asked when Norvelle spotted me, came and kissed my jaw.
Good morning.
What did she tell you? Why don’t you speak English?
He looked at me, and then he said it was a joke.
What joke?
The Masai once had herds and herds of cattle, he said. The Sonjo once raided the Masai for their cattle. But the Masai proved themselves superior to the Sonjo in battle, so now the Sonjo raise goats.
I saw no joke in it. The criminal detector brought me a bowl of zebra stew, but the Masai woman took it from me. They stood fussing.
What’s going on? I asked Norvelle.
She claims that he put love magic in it. That he put some sort of love magic in it so that you’d love him more than anyone else in the world.
Did he put love magic in it?
I don’t know, he said. But don’t eat it.
N
ow what’s going on?
She’s telling him to sniff himself and stop sniffing you.
That joke I understood.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-THREE
Joan lets the snow from her fur boots drip onto the carpet. After the concert we’d trudged through the snow to the hotel. You know the scenes in the rock star movies or after the rock star concerts, the scenes where the fans are crowding around to get photographs, the rock singer surrounded by her or his entourage, the rock star’s managers and bodyguards and handlers hustling them into a waiting limousine. Maybe the rock star’ll sign a few autographs. That ain’t Joan. When we finished her concert, she just trudged through the snow back to the hotel. I think there mighta been a coupla fans standing there to get autographs, and couple to have CDs signed. Nerdy-looking types.
He’s not following us anymore, Joan said when we were upstairs. What did you say to him at the bar?
Not a thing. I ordered a Josef, so he must’ve told Josef we were on to him.
I turned the light on and she gathered into a leather armchair. I took off my rubber boots and put them on newspaper, but she let hers drip.
Or maybe Josef’s sent someone else more clever. Take your boots off.
She took them off and placed them on the newspaper.
Doesn’t it scare you? she asked. Having some man hire a detective to follow you around. Even if the man thinks he loves you. It’s still some possessive bullshit. To think you got mixed up with some joker like that. You shouldn’t pick up strange men, you know. Not in today’s world. Admit.
Yeah, a little.
Not enough to make you stop your alley ways? Control yourself, girl.
Manage myself?
Say what?
I stare at her silver stockings, her braided hair smeared with red ocher. I turn my back to her. I light a Lucky Strike and inhale it into the pit of my stomach. I don’t like people telling me who they think I am.
So what happened between you and Norvelle? she asked. I mean what really happened? I don’t just think it’s on account of that Masai woman. And I don’t even know if I believe that story. Girl, I think you’re just jiving me. I think you’re just a con artist or some shit. A con woman. I think you just conned me. When we first met, I think you just conned me. Telling me you’re a beautician. You knew I’d be intrigued. I bet you’ve just been conning my ass. Telling me all of your tales. You’re probably a pathological prevaricator or some shit. I don’t even know if there really is a Norvelle, or even a what’s-his-name. Josef Ehelich von Fremd. Sounds like some name you made up or some shit. Girl, you got a credibility problem. And all that shit you told me about some tales sounding incredible but really being true, that’s just better to con me with. Well, I saw him on TV that Josef, But he could still just be anybody. They didn’t say his name. Probably somebody you read about. You’re just a con woman. Shit. What’s it they usedta call women like you? A adventuress? A colored-girl adventuress. A, what’s that Spanish word, a pícara. They call the men pícaros and the women pícaras. Like the pícara Justina. Or the daughter of the Celestina. Pícaras. Rogues. Except true pícaros are always hungry; they’re motivated by hunger, that’s the motif in every picaresque novel, and you always seem well fed to me. Me I’m motivated by hunger. Maybe I’m the true pícara. But it’s a hunger of the spirit.
I turn one hand on my hip, the other on the cigarette. I blow rings of smoke toward her.
Why don’t I fix you up like a Masai woman, shave your head, put brass hoops in your ears? I ask.
So what happened between you and Norvelle, your imaginary ex-husband? she asked.
He took up with someone better, someone better than me, I said.
You’re just conning me. Maybe we should tour West Africa? she asked. Or is it East? Maybe you could get me some gigs in Africa? We can hunt up your imaginary ex-husband and this imaginary Masai medicine woman.
I could get you some gigs in Africa, I said. Except I don’t think they truly like your kind of music.
Sure they do. All over the world it’s American music. In Africa, they love American music. American music is us. But those Africans, you can’t fool them with fake music. It’s got to be authentic American music. They know the real thing.
She went into the bathroom, and when she finally came back out, her head was shaved and she was wearing a crimson scarf around her loins. She gave an Oriental bow and showed her head a palette of colors, like photographs of aboriginal sand paintings she’d once shown me. Dreamings, they were called. This is art, she’d said. You make it and then you destroy it. Aboriginal. Dreamings. Then she sat on a stool and tissued off her head. Then she started singing one of her songs, too low for me to hear.
When she stood up, she plunged her fist into my stomach. I doubled over. I tried to straighten up, but there were spikes in the pit of my stomach. I started toward the bathroom and held on to the door.
You fucked him, she said.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FOUR
Joan has purchased a videotape player, and in the hotel rooms after her performances, instead of watching the networks, even the Comedy Channel, we put in the videotapes. They ain’t the sorta videotapes you’d expect. Not entertainments. Not video shows of her favorite rock singers. Not Tina Turner, or Rod Stewart, or Mick Jagger, Or the contemporary rappers; Queen Latifah, Public Enemy, Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. Or even the Artist Formerly Known as Prince, Or some of them other videos. I remember she once rented one of them videos on Australia told from the Australian aborigines’ point of view, I think the man’s name that narrated that video Ernie Dingo. The narrator a aborigine filmmaker. Then she bought a video by some singing group just because she like their name: Primitive Radio Gods. Or some of them old movies or old television series put on video. Instead of them types of videos, they’re documentary films of international atrocities, in Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. The titles of the videos are such as the following: General Chun, Butcher of Kwangju, Pata Island Massacre—the Philippines, The Desaparecidos—the Disappearing Ones of Argentina, Eyewitness Reports of Repression and Terror.
No one could survive after that, someone is saying on one of those films. I don’t know how I survived. It was a miracle. Those people, they only look like human beings. They’re devils. They’re devils who only resemble human beings. They show nothing, no mercy. You tell them what goes on in there and they don’t believe you. They put some kind of toxic substance on my tongue. That’s why I speak the way I do. The doctors say there’s nothing physically wrong, but it’s memory. When they brought me out I had mold growing behind my ears. It was some kind of apparatus, something that looked like an iron gate. They stood me on my head for the whole day. They put this contraption on my hands. What it does is it stretches your fingers till they pop out of their sockets. They gave me a hundred lashes. They cut off my ear. They put it in and when they pulled it out it pulled out some of the rectal tissue. All I do is make candles, no politics, I’m a candlemaker, I’m not a politician. I do not make politics. I told them, but they were still shaking those rifles at me. I had a twelve-pound iron weight on my leg for two months. They put us in the cage with lizards and dragonflies. They made me put my fingers through some holes and something began eating my fingers. I kept hearing my woman through the door. He threw the rifle against my jaw. He pushed a fork in my groin. I kept dreaming of fruit, just fruit, and sometimes chocolate. Monsters. They put a hook in my shoulder and then they dragged me. They lay you down and put the iron on your abdomen so it will crush the abdomen wall. They made me sit with my penis in her face. They are animals, they are not human beings. They are devils. It was wasn’t physical torture they were after, but forms of humiliation. They put my nose to the hole and made me smell vomit. Nothing but stench all the time. I was afraid because my wife was carrying a six-month-old fetus. At first they were going to torture her, and then they tossed her in the lunatic asylum. She says that there there wa
s another pregnant woman. She will tell you her story. I’m ashamed to speak. I’m ashamed to tell it.
First they used thick cables, then blocks of wood, then the ends of lighted cigarettes. I was raped first and then they used the end of a lighted cigarette. They didn’t do anything else to me, they just kept whipping my feet.
They just kept pulling my testicles. They made me do sit-ups all day.
They just kept asking me questions. No physical torture, Nothing but questions and questions and questions and questions.
I sat as far back as possible from the screen, but Joan pulled her armchair up to the screen, as close as she could get while the eyewitnesses spoke of their terrors.
They crowded us into a room, and then tossed a canister of some contagion. Everyone’s ears began to bleed.
This time, as she stared at the screen, I sat manicuring her fingernails. I soaked them and scraped them with the emery board. I removed the cuticles. I buffed.