by Gayl Jones
I was married once, I says.
Honk.
Oh, yeah?
Them’s just my union, Ray. Somebody musta radioed the others ’bout me being parked here, ’cause this ain’t even some of them jokesters normal route.
Honk.
He lift a eyebrow and chew that beef jerky. He got lashes thick as his eyebrows. I’m trying to picture him and that Bianca or that Delgadina. But I don’t see the real them, I sees the stereotype them with (lashing eyes. With them stereotypes, though, Delgadina say you can always find people that fit them stereotype, and then there be other people that be running from that stereotype. She say they don’t know who they true self is ’cause they be trying not to be that stereotype. And Delgadina’s wearing her peacock skirt, which she spread open like the tail of a peacock. And I be wondering again why they don’t have peahen skirts, and that be because only the male peacocks, only the peacocks, is beautiful. But she ain’t wearing blue jeans under that peacock skirt; she just be wearing that peacock skirt; and she ain’t be wearing any drawers under that peacock skirt either. And maybe I be thinking not of the true Latina woman but the stereotype Latina woman.
After we divorced, I set out for California, you know, but got only as far as Texas City. Well, I didn’t set out for California immediately. Monkey Bread, she had them California dreams first, then she wrote me this letter telling me all about that California and enticing me to come out to California, you know. I had me a boyfriend for a while, on the rebound Monkey Bread calls it.
Think he’s gonna ask me about my ex-husband but he don’t. Or about that boyfriend on the rebound, but he don’t ask me about that boyfriend either. He just chew that beef jerky. That Jungle Jerky. Wonder why they call it Jungle Jerky. I guess on account of that alliteration. What I oughta do is get me one of them machines where you can make your own jerky. They got machines where you can make your own beef jerky, ’cause I seen some of them at one of them trade shows, even before they put them machines on the market. I’m still thinking about that Latina woman, though, and that comparison a petty demon shit. Ain’t in love with him now if that’s what you wanna know. And ain’t on the rebound if that’s what you wanna know. And maybe he on the rebound from that rocket scientist woman. But making love don’t mean you lovers. I like Texas City, I says. I don’t dream about that California much. My friend Monkey Bread she in California and she still have California dreams.
But making love don’t mean you lovers. And that Delgadina she be saying you can even stereotype love. Well, first she be talking about them stereotypes, how stereotypes give people they picture of reality and condenses people, ’cause they’s so much more possibility to people than them stereotypes, so she say even when the person ain’t that stereotype of them, like she be talking about how this psychology class she took at the community college—she took her a psychology class at the Community Center after I told her ’bout that social psychiatrist, you know, ’cause Delgadina is that sorta person—and then she be saying how if you tell somebody that somebody is crazy then that’s what they see, and the teacher like did this experiment by telling the class a certain person crazy and then asking them to observe what they saw when this certain person came into the classroom and then like things that be like ordinary human behavior, like scratching your nose with your pen, the students they be seeing as a signal of neurosis in they evaluation, like if I be telling you I’m neurotic you like be seeing neurosis everywhere, in like even what I’m telling you now and even in the way I’m telling it. That’s how a lot of them people like stays in the psychiatric system, ’cause one psychiatrist evaluate someone as neurotic and every other psychiatrist be seeing that neurosis even when it ain’t there. Which don’t mean that there ain’t some real crazy people the same as there can be real peoples that conforms to them stereotypes. Like that Miguelita. When she first come telling me that we be thinking maybe that Miguelita ain’t really crazy. And then we both be saying it at the same time, Naw, that b. . . . is crazy. Same way she say if they tell you somebody is cruel or a liar or lecherous or a drunkard or impudent or profane and shit, that’s what you see or hear even if they ain’t them things. She be saying that that the same power of the stereotype. And she be saying you can also stereotype people as the ideal of they culture, so that even if somebody is treacherous or lecherous, you be seeing them as the cultural ideal—so you be seeing the hero or the heroine. And them people might not be the hero or the heroine at all, but she be saying a cultural ideal is sorta like a myth but ain’t the same thing. Like that nun and this padre disguised as a padre and even Delgadina I be seeing my own picture of reality, the stereotypes that I got in my head, of course she be saying you can modify the stereotypes in your head, like when the teacher be telling the students that the person ain’t crazy after all. And then the same things they be seeing as crazy they start seeing as normal and sane. But she say ain’t just people can be stereotyped, even that cantina be stereotyped, even my can of Bud Light when I’m drinking Bud Light, even this Jungle Jerky. And even conceptions people has of them abstract things, like love. ’Cause it that love set me to thinking about that stereotype anyway. And I be asking her how you stereotype love, but she ain’t answer that, then one of them vatos come in and she go over to his table and ask for his order, and then I never do ask her how you stereotype that love.
Yeah, got as far as Texas City, I repeats. Got me a housekeeper’s job, you know, till I could accumulate enough dough to go to truck driver’s school, then I leased me this truck, made all the payments, and now it’s mine.
Honk. Hey, Nadine.
I starts to tell him more about that friend of mines in California, how Monkey Bread working for that movie star. Instead I tells him about them beef jerky-making machines. Course I don’t know if my own jerky would taste as good as this Jungle Jerky. But this is good ’cause it ain’t have a lot of them additives and shit. And then I almost tells him about my ex and his Tasmanian aboriginal girl. Half-aboriginal anyhow. Half-aboriginal he be saying but she identify with the whole aboriginals and then he be telling me about the original Tasmanians and how they be hunting them for sport like Delgadina be saying they do some of them aliens that come across the border and be hunting them for sport. And just like them people on them safaris in Africa hunts for sport.
Come over here, he say.
I slides over next to him and we leans against the same drum. I’m trying to remember that haiku about them water birds. And I’m trying to think what that half-aboriginal girl look like and maybe even she look like Delgadina. ’Cause a lot of them mestizo races kinda look alike. Them haiku poems, though. I be asking the teacher why they call them haiku poems you can eat, maybe ’cause they bite-size poems. She be saying how them Japanese, though, they got they own aesthetics, which she say mean idea of beauty, and has that haiku like them paintings where they don’t paint everything in detail like that poetry it don’t describe everything in detail like with all that detail like you got in them European Baroque-type paintings with all that description and shit in them paintings and poetry, and then she be reading us something from this Japanese painter named Mitsuki or Misuko or Mitauoki who be advising his apprentice painters not to paint anything in full detail ’cause the best way to express the meaning of a painting, he be saying, is to put as few descriptions in it as possible. But by descriptions he don’t mean word descriptions, she say, ’cause I be asking how can you put descriptions in a painting. Not word descriptions, she say, painting descriptions, and be talking about how them good painters don’t put in all the details and describe everything and where them master painters puts in even fewer descriptions than them good painters. Them master painters is able to put in as few details as possible in they descriptions and yet they meaning in them paintings is more manifest which is probably what that Delgadina mean when she say you don’t have to understand that metaphysical to know what it mean. But Delgadina she like them luxuriant descriptions, she always like to put them luxu
riant descriptions in her stories.
You look like one of them African sculptures I seen, I say.
Oh, yeah?
Honk.
When I seen me my first African sculpture I be thinking ’bout that Japanese aesthetic of not describing everything in detail, ’cause that Portuguese African I met at the trade show be saying they’s this museum in Toronto with African sculpture and he take me to that museum and I just be looking at that sculpture and be thinking that sculpture kinda look like me and now I be thinking that sculpture kinda look like him, like Raymond. ’Cept we ain’t no sculpture. Yum. Ashanti, Dahomey, Benin, Yoruba, Fulani, Hausa, Ibo, and even pygmy sculpture from Ituri.
You talk about cubism, you talk about impressionism, you talk about your artistic audacity. . . .
Me I don’t talk about them things, but if he say I talk about them things I just let him. All the fresh ideas, all the originality, you find in this sculpture here. Original and traditional at the same time. It is ancient and modern at the same time. And it is modern without being decadent. It proves that modernity does not have to be decadent. Or dishonest.
Sculpture of wood, ivory, metal, shells and beads, leather, masks and pottery. We’s standing near that sculpture, then we’s sitting on one of them benches they’s got in the museum. We’s sitting near them sculptures, though, and he’s still talking about them.
You a sculptor? I ask. ’Cause seem to me somebody know all that about sculpture got to be a sculptor theyself.
No, Beautiful, I am a geometry teacher. I always have my students come here to study the African sculpture, you know. Those who do not understand the geometry and those who think they do. All the geometry you can find in these sculptures. Look at these eyes, Beautiful, shaped like diamonds. And look at these masks, Beautiful. You African Americans talk about jazz. Even the rhythms of the jazz are here. In my village, not just our medicine men and women but our keepers of the peace wear masks like this one. You know nothing of Africa? But you must learn. Beautiful. What are you but an African in the New World. I look at your face, Beautiful, and I see the Fon and the Kimbundu.
Say what?
He touch my face like he a sculptor. Ain’t I say he a sculptor? He call me that name that mean beautiful again.
The Fon. A tribe, or rather I must say ethnic group. For Africa is an abstraction. Beautiful. Many who think they know Africa know only an abstraction. We Africans have our ethnic groups the same as the Europeans. They have their Italians, French, and Dutch, and British, their Portuguese. We have our Ashanti, Yoruba, Fulani, Hausa, Fon. . . . I am a pan-Africanist, but we still have our Ashanti, Yoruba, Fulani, Hausa, Fon. . . .
We rise and enter another museum room. More displays of African art. I thought there’d be one small room of African art, but the whole museum is devoted to it. Well, not the whole museum.
What’s this? I ask. I start to pick up the art, but the display says, DO NOT TOUCH.
A mancala board. An African game board. I don’t know how it’s played myself. I believe it is a very ancient game. And here’s surrealism. Speak of surrealism, here it is. I come here to this cultural richness, this confident geometry, even the humor in these sculptures, when I want to feel restored to a sense of not just wholeness but normalcy. Not to feel racially superior to the Europeans or to feel inferior to them, or to learn that the Bishop of Hippo is an African or to learn about medieval African kingdoms, but just to be my normal human self. But to also have a cosmic sense of who I am. To know that we Africans are not just on the cultural border or in the cultural margins. I am a dissident and disillusioned African in exile. But speak of the modern world and you must speak of us. If you are African, every day they try to invade your self, not just the Europeans, the colonialists, I speak of now, but even sometimes your own rulers, when you have your nominal freedom, our independence. See these overlapping planes, each plane is a self—this one is the essential self, the transcendental self. Don’t let anyone invade your essential self, your transcendental self. Them or us. We’re both of us. Beautiful, exiles in the New World.
I am not sure which them he means or which us.
I be thinking he a strange man. He take me around to that museum, he tell me about his Africa, he call me the beautiful one but he don’t try to court me or nothing. And I didn’t try to court him either. Exiles in the New World.
I didn’t expect I’d be no contrabandista though, I says. That ain’t contraband you carrying, is it, mi general? You know, like that old Mae West line? Is that contraband?
It must be, he says, as I lean toward him for another kiss. Yum. Smell of coconut and lavender.
Honk. Hey, Nadine, you want to give me a ride to Albuquerque. Ah, I forgot, you got to belong to the union.
I gots to tell you about them union peoples, I say. Yum. I gots to tell you about them union peoples. I mean, they ain’t all jokesters, some just likes to harass me ’cause of the union. I gots to tell you about the union. A lot of them thinks I changed my route because I ain’t in the union. Although a lot of that is a pure fabrication, Ray, the truth is . . . What motivates them is . . . What I’m saying is they just has a total disrespect for my independence. . . .
But Ray say he just thinking about us own union now.
On us way back to Texas City, I see some of them fools lined up at the truck stop and I honks at them. Ray don’t look in they direction. Few of the fools is sitting in the picnic area eating they lunch and waves at me. I gots to pee, but I don’t want to stop my truck in the same area of them fools, so Ray and I stops at the next truck stop, then we drives back into Texas City. I lets Ray off at the cathedral, then I goes to the Community Center, ’cause Delgadina putting on one of them Chicano plays. I asks Ray if he wanted to come to the Chicano play.
Where?
Community Center. Delgadina directed the play. It a play by a Chicano playwright. She always does what she can do to promote Chicano literature, even if it just promoting it to me. She been advertising the play around the cantina, though, and even got some of the cantina patrons, I know the one she call Cheech, to perform in that play. She wanted me to play one of them roles, ’cause although it a Chicano play, they’s got roles in it for representatives of every race. I read the play and I likes it but I told her I’d rather be in the audience. She tried to persuade me, you know, ’cause Delgadina can be real persuasive, you know, ’cause she took a course in the art of being persuasive, but I used a line on her that I learned from Cayenne Goodling from Memphis who belongs to the Church of Elvis. In fact she is the only colored woman I know to belong to that church. She also belongs to the Perfectability Baptist Church, which is where I met her, but she don’t believe there is any contradiction in belonging to the Perfectability Baptist Church and the Church of Elvis. But anyway I told Delgadina, quoting Cayenne Goodling, quoting Elvis and says. The show is in the audience, not on the stage. So that persuaded her not to persuade me to be in that play. And she is making better use of the audience than she would have made of us when she thought the show was just on the stage.
Of course, y’all know I’m saying all that to try to persuade Ray to come to that play, but he say that they’s work he’s got to do for the new Underground Railroad so he don’t come with me to the play but goes into the cathedral. I parks around the back where he told me to park before so I ain’t conspicuous. I wants to ask him to give me a tour of his cathedral, but I ain’t asked that. I watches him go into the cathedral. I ain’t know if he fully believe me about them mens and the union. Seem like fools is always doing that to a woman. Them fools don’t wave and call my name and honk at me when I’m alone in my truck, but wait till I gets me a man I’m trying to impress, and they pretends I knows and associates with every man in South Texas. And to tell y’all the truth, I ain’t even the same Nadine most of them thinks I am. I don’t want to explain to Ray too much about them, though, ’cause then it be sounding like I’m protesting too much.
I goes and parks in front of the Co
mmunity Center. I knows where they theater is, so I goes straight there. Lotta peoples I’ve seen in the cantina is there. Miguelita she there. I be thinking she there with Mr. Delgado, but she just there herself. Them that ain’t in the audience is on the stage. Delgadina she on the stage. When she first give me the play to read, I thought she would not only be the director but play one of the roles, but she said she didn’t want to play none of the roles but just be the director. I know why she onstage, ’cause I knows Delgadina. As the director of the play, she feels that it isn’t enough just to have the people come and watch the play. Although she herself feels that the play is understandable, she don’t trust the audience to understand the play, or maybe she trust us to understand the play but believe, nevertheless, that a play such as that one deserve a lecture about itself.
So before the play begins she is standing onstage in front of the curtain and is talking about the play. I starts to go sit next to Miguelita, but to tell y’all the truth, although I talks to Miguelita in the cantina and have even traveled with her and Delgadina into the desert to eat roasted cactus, been to Marineland with her and Delgadina (she refused to go see the marine animals but stayed in the Land-Rover), have been with her to various parts of Texas, New Mexico, and Nevada, I decides to sit next to some Chicano I don’t even know. I think it Cheech.