by Gayl Jones
You can tell by the way I boogie my boogie
I’m a border patrol border patrol
You can tell by the way I boogie my boogie
I’m a border patrol border patrol
Shango!
And then one of the I-might-not-be-who-they-think-I-am persons of colored persuasion stands out from the group, singing, like that rap modification of that song, I think the one by the Fugees, one of them young men that sings with the Fugees:
Can’t stop the shining
Can’t stop romancing
Can’t stop the shining
Can’t stop romancing
When they finally released Maria’s cousin, she looked worn, even sick, her hair frowzy. She had pretty hair like Maria’s but it was all frowzy. It was kinda lighter than Maria’s, though, kinda light brown and more delicate. She was tan and real pretty, well, you could tell she was pretty, looked kinda Mexican and kinda Navajo and kinda Native Hawaiian, like them true Hawaiians, not them in the movies. She said something that sounded like kuokoa. Which made me think of Hawaiian, ’cause that word kinda sounded Hawaiian instead of Spanish. Or maybe it me thinking she said kuokoa. She was wearing some nondescript prisoner’s garb, or maybe the garb that they give people when they release them. I didn’t know Maria’s cousin, so I didn’t know how she looked before her detention. I do know that later when talking to Linda Chong, Maria would detail what seem like hundreds of ways that her cousin seem transformed from being jailed in the Middle American southern commonwealth. I know she didn’t look at any of the officers, the ones in strange clothes or the ones in plain clothes or the social worker even the persons of colored persuasions and even the man singing can’t stop the shining can’t stop romancing can’t stop the shining can’t stop romancing that was standing there. She didn’t even look like she wanted to look at us, or even her cousin Maria, even though we were the ones who’d come there to rescue her. Later Maria told me when she saw her cousin. . . . Well, she said her cousin looked like she’d been in somebody’s hell. Which made me think of something that Delgadina said when somebody come into the cantina once. She knew the person from Houston, I think. She said to him, You look like you been through a season in hell. What have you been doing, abusing your liberty?
’Cept it was these people who had abused Maria’s cousin’s liberty. Linda Chong kept talking to them in legalese, and I said a few more things to them in Mosquito language, and the man of Linda who seemed like he had his own independent country spoke to them in what sounded to me the true accents of a true American and Maria talked about herself as a woman of resources and even Journal said, Jiba jiba jiba jiba jiba, and seem like the only documents that was produced was the ones we had to sign. Maria’s cousin, though, refused to sign anything for her own release. She looked at the people asking her to sign like she didn’t trust none of them. Then she said that word again that sounded like kuokoa.
I ain’t gonna tell y’all what else Maria said, what she felt like doing to those people that had detained her cousin. What she said wasn’t in no legal language, it wasn’t in Mosquito language, it wasn’t in the true accents of a true American, not the confabulatory American that most Americans think is America, nor in her woman of resource good English, nor in Journal’s Jiba jiba jiba jiba jiba. I think the language she spoke was Quechua, but it was the Excuse my French type of Quecha, said by the kind of person who says they French without excusing it. But she did say that she thought her cousin looked like she’d been drugged or brainwashed or something. We stayed in a motel for a few days so’s Maria could coax her back to health, but all the time we was kinda paranoid. ’Cause them people mighta known that they mighta had some responsibility even for the human rights of immigrants. So we wasn’t really sure what them people might do. They mighta had some people fooled, but I’d heard they lies for my ownself. When you hear they lies for your ownself, even if they’s government and official peoples and peoples of authority, then you know who they are.
In the motel, I watched Maria try to coax her cousin to health. I didn’t know what she was doing but it seem like she was mixing poetry and music and song and dance and chanting and even long talks that reminded me of Delgadina when she was having them intellectual debates with some of them people who’d come into the cantina and seem like they wasn’t surprised that a bartender would engage them in intellectual conversation. And anytime anybody ask her has she read something she answers yes.
Have you read Trotsky in Exile? someone asked.
Yeah, sure.
And I thought they’s talking about the races.
I say something about the races. I means the horse races and that man talking to Delgadina look at me like he think I’m a fool. Delgadina she don’t say nothing, then they continues talking about Trotsky. And that man still looking at me like I’m a fool, like he don’t know why Delgadina would befriend a fool. I drinks my Budweiser and listens to them talking about Trotsky. Then I realizes he somebody that gots to do with the Russian Revolution or one of them revolutions.
Then I’m thinking about Monkey Bread. One time I’m sitting in the Galileo Club in Covington and she come in singing something about Jim Dandy. She was singing that song “Jim Dandy to the Rescue,” and then she be telling me about going out to Hollywood and want me to come with her.
Jim Dandy to the rescue, Jim Dandy to the rescue, Jim Dandy to the rescue. Then she pretend she got one of them slide trombones, and ain’t saying the words but making her voice sound exactly like it a slide trombone. I ain’t gonna sing all that song, but y’all knows the music.
Come on, Nadine, and come out to Hollywood. We can get us some good jobs out there in Hollywood, Nadine. We oughta go out to Hollywood.
I don’t want to be no movie star, I says.
People don’t go out to Hollywood to just be movie stars. And I’m just talking about jobs that is legit, Nadine. I ain’t talking about that documentary we seen on Hollywood. I mean, there is legit jobs in Hollywood. Hollywood ain’t just the movies, Nadine. I wants to go out to Hollywood. I told John Henry he oughta come with me to Hollywood ’cause they’s plenty of musicians out there that needs they pianos tuned, but he want to stay in Covington or go to Kansas City. I told him if he go to Kansas he might as well come to California. He must think I’m a fool. He means the musical Kansas City and I’m thinking Kansas City in Kansas.
But that Maria she looked like, well, I couldn’t tell whether she was a madwoman or a saint the way she was coaxing her cousin. I think she might have even sang a healing song to her in Quechua, ’cause it wasn’t the Spanish language, and then when her cousin started looking like the possibility of improvement, we headed back to Texas. Least Maria said something to make her laugh. And I ain’t seen her laugh at all after her detainment. I ain’t know whether it was Maria told her a joke or just being in the presence of someone who valued her.
Going back to Texas, Maria and her cousin rode up front and Journal in a baby’s seat, ‘cept Maria would sometimes ride in the back with her cousin and sometimes up front with Journal and me ’cause there wasn’t room for all of us up front and also ’cause the closer we got to the Southwest the more them highway patrol started looking at us with suspicions, but when I was just there with myself and Journal they believed Journal was my baby, though one of them thought I’d adopted a little Navajo baby and tried to find out whether there was a law against a baby riding in my truck, but I assured them that I wasn’t transporting any goods, and not being a member of the union I didn’t have to abide by they rules. They checked the back of my truck but both Maria and her cousin had their papers. They suspected the papers was forged, but they was notarized, and they had other illegals that didn’t have no papers at all heading for the borders, so we got back to Texas City.
Linda Chong didn’t come back with us to Texas City riding in my truck but had her own jeep, she said. She never introduced me to the man of Linda who seemed like he was from his own independent country, so I can’t
say for sure he was one of her associates, or whether he was one of the guerrilla lawyers, or whether he was one of Ray’s group. Or just his own person who seen the abuse of us rights.
I ain’t tell y’all what Maria’s cousin’s name is ’cause I ain’t seen it written. Maria told me her name, but even that sounded like kuokoa to me and I didn’t want to keep asking the woman’s name ’cause I didn’t want to express my ignorance. And it wasn’t really necessary for me to know her name. I was just glad with Maria and Journal and Linda Chong that she was free. I don’t know how much Maria paid Linda Chong, but I myself didn’t see any money change hands. I guess I could have learned her name from them papers that Maria had to sign on her behalf. Everybody else was examining them papers, but I just seen she kinda look like Maria, so I figured she Maria’s cousin so I ain’t need to be examining no papers. Like I told you, I signed affidavits stating that I knew Maria and that she a woman of resources and that I knows Journal and that he born in America. I ain’t understand none of what she said, though, I mean Maria’s cousin. And her and Maria talking so fast Spanish or Quechua or Quechua-accented Spanish or Spanish-accented Quechua I ain’t understand a word of that, and when they’s talking English they’s talking so fast I ain’t understand a word of that neither. Only person I did understanding going back to South Texas was Journal, and he kept saying Jiba jiba jiba jiba jiba, which I knows now is both his baby word for rebellion and his baby word for my name.
Now y’all know I ain’t one to do much talking to babies, but I talked to that baby, from Middle America of the southern commonwealth all the way back to South Texas. I didn’t do no baby talk, though. And he didn’t seem like the sorta baby to expect no grown woman to be baby-talking him.
Maria’s cousin went back to Mexico, but had to be cured of America. Least that’s the story I hears. Then Maria be telling me she ain’t know where in Mexico her cousin, or if she stayed in Mexico or went to some other country.
This is Nicodemus, he be saying.
I’m at Father Raymond’s, I mean Raymond’s apartment, except he back to being Father Raymond now ’cause I gotta pretend with him that he a real priest and he introducing me to some of them Sanctuary workers. I already seen a lot of them in the basements of them farmhouses, but I ain’t been introduced to them. This time he introduce some of them by they real name, at least by they real first name, and me he introduce as Nadine. He ask me whether I want him to introduce me as Jane or Mosquito or Nadine and I says Nadine. He don’t ask me whether I wants to be introduced as Sojourner, though, or maybe he think Sojourner too unusual a name to stay secretive whereas Jane or Nadine or even Mosquito could be anybody’s name or nickname. Anyway, Raymond he got him a nice apartment with a lot of what they call that eclectic-type furniture, some of it modem, some of it antique, some of it American and English, other of it Asian and African and Mexican and probably that pre-Columbian. I heard somebody talk about that international mind, maybe he got one of them international minds. Look like the apartment of a man who either do a lot of traveling around the world or got friends who do a lot of traveling around the world. And he got one of them tall, African-looking drums in the corner near the writing desk—maybe one of them talking drums—and some tapestries and furniture that might look like that Oceania-type furniture, and a lot of it be made out of eclectic fabrics too, silk and raffia and glass and velvet furniture and tapestries and shit. But it ain’t no crowded apartment, though. It sound like it crowded with furniture when I describe it but it ain’t. He introduce me to that stain glass artist. Like I said I remembers meeting her with that Delgadina but she behave like she be meeting me for the first time. And I be introduced to some of them other ones. We ain’t introduced as Chito Chiton, we introduced by our own first names, like I said. I won’t tell you any of they names, though, even they first names, I just call them Nicodemuses. They Sanctuary workers, but ain’t none of them come out and declared theyselves. But that Nicodemus I seen that Nicodemus, ’cause he the one were a refugee. The one look like a East Indian. The one he look like he spying on everybody, but I guess he must be a spy for them Sanctuary workers; probably they mix him in with them real refugees so’s he can tell them if any of them refugees is spies. Least I guess that who he is. But like I said they’s as many different kinds of them refugees as they is them Sanctuary workers, ’cause some of them refugees is ordinary working peoples, even peons, and some of them’s members of the elite and they’s artists and intellectuals too. Father Raymond he be telling the refugee Nicodemus—I think he say he name Nicodemus—about my encounter with that Mexican woman, and turn out he ain’t East Indian at all but just look East Indian. A spliv like me but who grew up in Hawaii. And you got different personalities too. You got some of them goody-goody types and you got some of them cynical types and you got to have you a range finder for all the types of people in that Sanctuary movement, whether it the mainstream Sanctuary movement or not. Raymond he got one of them dolls on his writing desk and I’m sure that one of them Maria Barriga I mean Maria Ramirez dolls. And he also got him some of that stain glass art.
I’m kinda shy-shy with all these different peoples, all different, so I be over there near that antique writing desk looking through Father Raymond’s books. He got a modern bookshelf full of all these books in different languages and books on everything from economics to politics to religion to language itself and got a whole lot of books on Africa. Got a larger variety of books in his apartment than at the cathedral. Or maybe a smaller variety of books, but just ain’t in Latin like most of them books in the cathedral. And above that writing desk he got framed words not pictures. One a advertisement for something called the Bandung Conference and another the Preamble of the Society of African Culture.
It a real preamble, but where the preamble say just mens somebody scribble womens. Where it talk about “men of every philosophical, political and spiritual tendency in the cultural field,” somebody have add women. Then he have him a quotation from someone which say, “We can take our stand with the oppressed, or we can take our stand with organized oppression.” And then they’s another quotation from another someone that say, “Protest is speaking; resistance is acting—To protest is to say you disagree; to resist is simply to flatly say no.” I ain’t know whether I’m to tell y’all the names of them peoples so I ain’t name them, though they is named in various Sanctuary literature of the mainstream Sanctuary movement. And then they’s that quotation again from the Popol Vuh:
Let us rise up together,
Let us call to everyone!
Let no group among us be left behind the rest.
Some of them titles of them books on Africa includes Principia of Ethnology. The World and Africa. Africa in the Modern World, The African Abroad, An Introduction to African Civilization, The Vai Language, or an African System of Writing. I didn’t know they’s any African systems of writing. I opens that book but it look like some type of secret language. And then I be especially interested in the title of one of them African books: The Leopard’s Claw: A Thrilling Story of Love and Adventure from European Castle Through the West African Jungle, Disclosing a Deep Insight into the Quality and Spiritual Influence of African Social Institutions and Conditions, and Revealing a Profound Psychic Interpretation and African Inner Life, All Clustered About the Mysterious Function and Significance of the Leopard’s Claw.
I be wanting to read a book with a long title like that, and I be standing there thinking about the African jungle, but seem like every time I be thinking about the African jungle Tarzan and Jane and Jane’s daddy and some other man that I just calls Bwana in that jungle. And then there is two kinds of Africans I has a choice of being. There is the tame ones that is always on the side of Tarzan and Jane and Jane’s daddy and Bwana and the ones that leads Jane and Jane’s daddy and Bwana through the jungle; they don’t lead Tarzan through the jungle ’cause Tarzan supposed to know the jungle better than the Africans knows the jungle they ownselves and knows all the an
imals in the jungle better than the animals knows theyselves he don’t know Cheetah, though, as well as he thinks he do and them animals is always coming to Tarzan’s rescue when he ain’t rescuing hisself. Then there’s the wild Africans, the untame Africans, who always has bones in they noses or uses bones for they jewelry. Anyway I’m thinking all that while trying to read about the “profound psychic interpretation and African inner life, all clustered about the mysterious function and significance of the leopard’s claw” when somebody say, There’s Alvarado. Al.
Now I know I heard that name Al. I look around to see where Al, but they’s talking about that drum.
What kind of drum is that?
Ashanti, I think.
Ain’t Ray part Mohawk too?
No, Polynesian, I think, or Filipino. . . . These chicken wings are good.