by Gayl Jones
This looks interesting, say Raymond, turning the pages of one of them African-American novels. That the one my favorite novel. It were given to me by the author herself.
You can borrow it if you wants to. I would give it to you, but it’s the only copy I been able to find. It’s about a little town in Kentucky, like a lot of little towns in Kentucky I know about myself. Delgadina say it kinda like a Utopia, though, ’cause ain’t no real little towns like that, and especially when this story supposed to take place, in the 1920s and 1930s.
They’s realistic-seeming people, and a lot of them people is like peoples I know myself, but it still kinda a Utopia. Actually the woman that wrote that book I usedta visit her when I would visit my cousins in central Kentucky and she were a neighbor woman of theirs. She give me that book. I don’t believe that she would trust me with the only copy of that book, but that is the only copy I knows about. That’s my favorite book.
Ray picks up the book and looks through it like he interested. I ain’t know whether he interested in the book itself or because it a book I say I been trusted with. He do look like he reading it, though, and ain’t just looking at it to be polite ’cause I’s said it my favorite.
I keeps rereading that book, and I knows them people in that book as well as I knows myself and a lot of them better than I knows myself. They’s Saturna the Indian—they called them Indians in them days—they’s Olga and Kate and Charley Hickman and Nat Perrison. I knows about a true Nat Perrison, but that’s a fictional Nat Perrison and is what she refers to as a retold story ’cause that story of Nat Perrison gets retold in other novels and stories and even in one of her plays. They’s Mag and Leola and John Branurn. They’s fictional stories in that novel but they’s like real stories about real people I knows.
I know there’s those of you that believes that my bookshelf is confabulatory, ’cause I don’t seem like no literate woman, but my little bookshelf ain’t near so confabulous as that of Delgadina’s and even Delgadina she were still surprised to see the books on my bookshelf—the book about Olga and Kate and Charley Hickman, the book about Gulliver’s Travels, the book about Alice in Wonderland, Alice Walker’s novels and poetry, The Portrait of a Lady, The Harmless People, The Communist Manifesto (I found that abandoned at one of the truck stops and the woman that owned the truck stop said it didn’t belong to nobody so’s I could have it). The Year of the People (I got that at a flea market), Edmund Spenser’s poetry. The Womans Guide to Confident Home Repair, 2,000 Years of African Poetry, Egyptian Love Poetry, The Buddha’s Favorite Disciple and Other Stories. She imagined that the only books I had in my possession were the ones she gived me and not the ones I gived myself. The books that she herself wanted to read were the one about Olga and Kate and Charley Hickman, The Womans Guide to Confident Home Repair, and The Buddha’s Favorite Disciple and Other Stories. I kinda didn’t want to lend her them books, ’cause I knows how peoples is about returning books. They asks you to lend them a book and they thinks you’s give them the book. I kinda reluctantly loaned her them books, but she returned them all to me. And said she’d liked all them books. She’d ordered her own copy of The Womans Guide to Confident Home Repair, but claimed that she were unable to find any copies of that Olga and Kate and Charley Hickman novel, or that books of short stories called The Buddha’s Favorite Disciple and Other Stories. Though that Buddha book started her to talking about the concept of the disciple and also that disciple were derived from discipline. She said she remembered when they was at Catholic school they’d put on a play about Jesus and his disciples and she’d wanted to play one of the disciples but was told she couldn’t play no disciple ’cause Jesus didn’t have no women disciples, so’s the closest she could get to Jesus was to play Mary Magdalene.
If they had allowed women to be disciples, she’da been one, I said.
That ain’t what I mean, she said.
Well, you coulda played somebody’s disciple, I said. They’s got to be other holy mens and holy womens whose disciple you coulda played.
That was Catholic school, Nadine, she said. And we were just putting on one play and that one play didn’t have but one holy man in it. And there was only two roles for women, Mary and the other Mary, the Magdalene. So you know they weren’t going to let me play Mary.
Well, I’d’ve played somebody’s disciple, if it was me, I said. Even if it wasn’t in the play. I mean as long as I discipled myself to somebody who were good. I mean as long as they allows you to discipline yourself to them.
Sometimes, Nadine, you don’t make any kinda sense. Then she said, You know. Mosquito, calling me by my other name, what I mean to say is you don’t make the kinda sense I thought you’d make.
I start to tell Delgadina about the woman that wrote that other book and how I knowed her. Years later when I would tell her how as a little girl when I would visit my cousins we’d go to the home of a certain woman. She was middle-age then, but still very beautiful. People had said of her that she was chronically ill, and sometimes we didn’t know if we would find her bedridden or up and about. When she was up and about, she’d sometimes play the piano for us and sing songs or tell us stories or read us stories or poems. And she’d have a poem for everything. If you did or said something, she’d have a poem for it. If you’d ask her a question about something your childhood self didn’t understand, she’d have a story or poem for it. Sometimes I’d go to visit my cousins just so’s we could go to the home of that certain woman.
And she was the one that discovered my hidden talent, I said when I finally told Delgadina about that woman.
What talent? asked Delgadina.
My talent for remembering everything I hear. I don’t remember everything I read. But I remembers everything I hear. She would recite poems or tell stories to us and I could recite them back word for word, that is when I wanted to recite them back word for word. I’d heard about peoples they says has photographic memories, but she said I had what’s called a auditory memory.
Delgadina looked at me.
I remembers everything I hear, I said. But I don’t repeat it all. And then even after she told me about my hidden talent, she even had a story for that.
Years later, in the days when both Delgadina and I would begin to refer to her as our Spiritual Mother, we would file a complaint on her behalf with the Daughters of Nzingha. We didn’t know what the Daughters of Nzingha’s strategies would be—ain’t I told y’all about the Daughters of Nzingha?—but Delgadina and I would take our investigative selves. . . . But that’s another conversation, maybe even a mystical one. And we weren’t no Thelma and Louise neither.
But I’m talking about Ray now. He take the book and sit down on the couch and start turning pages. I ain’t know whether he reading the same book I reads and rereads, ’cause a lot of times men can read a book different from the way a woman reads it. A man might open that book and decide that just ’cause he don’t like the tale of Leola and the mighty John Branurn he don’t like the book, even though there’s plenty of good mens in that book to make up for that scene where the mighty John Branurn knock that white panama hat off Leola’s head, and then some. And certainly Mag is enough bad woman to make up for any bad man in any woman’s book. But me I likes the love of Charley and Wasetta myself, and the strength of Kate.
You ain’t one of them speed readers is you? I asks. I starts to ask if he’s read the part about the mighty John Branurn, but I don’t. And it seem like Charley Hickman enough good man to make up for any bad woman in any man’s book.
Not exactly. I’ve learned to read pretty fast, though. You have to when you’ve got to handle a lot of immigration documents and then I get so much correspondence from people, immigrants, you know, and people seeking asylum, and just my own personal correspondence.
You want some more hot chocolate?
No thanks. This is good hot chocolate, though. With the marshmallows on top.
How long la mujer supposed to stay here?
Just for t
onight. I’m working on getting someone to transport her to Canada.
I hope you ain’t signifying for me to do that. It’s okay here in Texas City and around the Galveston Bay area, ’cause I can work around transporting them refugees and my industrial detergents. I been to Canada, but I don’t want to start driving them refugees up there to Canada.
Oh, no, we’ve got other interstate workers.
Yeah, ’cause I hope you ain’t signifying for me to take that woman all the way to Canada, I says, though I’m trying not to sound like that petty demon.
I go and gets him another blanket and puts it over the back of the couch, and then I clears away them hot chocolate cups and saucers. When I comes back I thinks he be sleeping, but he still reading that novel. Just speed-reading them pages. I don’t know if none of y’all speed-reads, but I likes that book like I said ’cause it got people in it just like the peoples I knows.
Well, goodnight, I says.
Goodnight.
When I wakes up in the middle of the night, I thinks he be sleeping, but I can hear him on the telephone, but it sounds like he’s talking to himself. Now I know you can talk to yourself, but if he’s talking to himself he’s talking on the telephone, but then I realize it must be the other Ray he’s talking to, the one called Ray Mendoza, who I ain’t met:
Yeah, Ray, so you’ll drive her as far as the farm. . . . Yeah, they’ve got a farm near the Canadian border. Somebody said it usedta be a real stop on the Underground Railroad. Someone else can take her across the border, okay? . . . No, that’s why I’m calling you on this phone, it ain’t likely that it’s bugged. She’s one of the greenlings. . . . Sure. . . . No, it’s better if she settles in Canada. There’s too many former revolutionaries who know her here. . . . The concubine. Yeah, he’s taking a rest cure up near Toronto. She might be able to stay there with him for a few days. . . . Sure. Well, it’s just that women are always judged by the company of the men they keep, you know. . . . Ray, you oughta know that. How many women are wrongly judged by keeping your company? If you keep the company of generates. . . . You know, refugees fighting among themselves. . . . Well, you know if you tell her about our deportation, everybody else’ll know. Might as well put it in the funny papers. What about the gringa? Well, she could drive them, couldn’t she? I don’t think she’d get any hassles. . . . Naw, Ray, I don’t mean to Canada, just up to the border. I’m talking about the ones from Chiapas. We’ve already got someone to drive the woman to Canada. . . . No, I am not going to introduce you to Nadine. . . . How’d you hear about her anyway? Naw, Ray, she ain’t your type . . .
Then they says something in Spanish. Or maybe that’s ’cause Raymond know I’m listening. When I gets up in the morning to fix the two of them breakfast, they’s already left. Raymond has neatly folded the blankets and put the book back on the shelf. I opens the book to reread about some of them Kentucky people. Then I open one of them other African-American books that’s got quotations in it. One of them quotations ask, Why does a black man have to do with love? It supposed to been asked by a Afro-Arabian poet in the Middle Ages, I think. Maybe even in them days they was telling black men they wasn’t supposed to write about love?
CHAPTER 12
I COMES BACK TO MY APARTMENT AFTER TRANS- porting some of them Chito Chitons. I ain’t gonna tell y’all where I transported them, ’cause the new Underground Railroad like the old Underground Railroad. The people who transported people on the old Underground Railroad didn’t tell people everything. I can’t reveal to y’all everything, even them of y’all that is worthy listeners, or tell you all the strategies of the new Underground Railroad, at least the strategies I knows about, ’cause I don’t know who might be listening to this conversation. And like I said, I don’t know which of y’all is true spies and only pretending to be worthy listeners. Like every story, I gots to decide how much to tell y’all and how much hot to tell, but added to the fact that I’m talking about a fugitive group, ’cause these undocumented immigrants is modern fugitives, I’s got to tell y’all as much as I should tell, but less of the story than I know. I know that there is a lot of y’all that thinks that this is a fabricated truth, and that even the names that I says is my own might not be my true names. I got to talk to y’all more about that, ’cause y’all keeps asking me this and that about my story. It ain’t that I don’t trust y’all—I means the ones of y’all that is worthy listeners—but you can’t trust everybody with every story. You can’t trust people with every story. You don’t tell everybody every story. Even them stories that is satires ain’t to be told to just everybody. You don’t even tell everybody everything in the same story. Even during freedom them people knew not to tell every story and knew who were worthy to hear them stories and who weren’t. There is people who says. I’s free. I can tell any story I wants to tell. But even us government knows that they is confidential stories and secret stories and top secret stories. They has the freedom of information, but that is only a ruse.
I’m too tired to go to the cantina, and ain’t even transported the industrial detergents I’m supposed to be transporting. I usedta park my truck at one of them warehouse-type places I rented owned by a trucking company. I didn’t work for that trucking company, so I had to pay them to park my truck there. But then they got in trouble with the union ’cause somebody told them I wasn’t union, so then I had to rent me a apartment that got its own parking lot that’s big enough for me to park my truck, but still the apartment owner makes me rent it. I mean, makes me rent my space. Anyway, I parks my truck, then comes in the hallway and checks the mail. I know it a letter from Monkey Bread ’cause it postmarked California, though now she ain’t writing in her handwriting, she type all her letters. She tells me she wants me to get e-mail so’s she can e-mail me. Be telling me I better come into the modern world. But I know it Monkey Bread.
I takes the letter out of the mailbox, some bills and invoices and goes upstairs. I takes off my sneakers, gets me a Bud Light out of the refrigerator and some of them new chocolate pretzels I done bought for myself, and sits down in the living room and opens up the letter. I know it Monkey Bread ’cause Monkey Bread the only one that call me Nadine. I mean, on a regular basis. To tell the truth, I ain’t know which one of my own names I prefers. I don’t know what I’d call myself. Sometimes I feels like I’m Nadine, other times I feels more like I’m Sojourner. Sometimes I’m Jane. When I started reading Nefertiti Johnson’s romance novels, I wanted to put Nefertiti in my name, though I don’t think I’m nobody’s Nefertiti. I likes Mosquito. I ain’t nobody’s Mosquito, and they calls me that. What? Where I say I was when I was reading that letter? Well, I gets so many letters from Monkey Bread. Some I takes with me to the cantina and reads. Sometimes I even rereads them. Contradictions don’t mean you ain’t telling the truth. I did read it in my apartment first, then I took it to Delgadina’s cantina. I mean, Mr. Delgado’s cantina where Delgadina work at.
Dear Nadine,
Thanks for telling me about Nefertiti Johnson, the Afromance novelist. I likes them comic romances. You asked me about John Henry Hollywood? Sometimes I writes to John Henry in Covington, but I don’t write to him on a continuous basis, ’cause he got himself a wife now. I think they might move to Kansas City. I know she be, Who that woman writing you from out in California? We’s childhood friends. That’s who I am.
Hey, Nadine, I think you’s the only one who likes my stories and poetry, except some of the Daughters of Nzingha. I got a author for you to read. Somebody sent our star a script based on a novel by Danny James who writes satires of African-American modernism, least that how my star describes it.
Who is the new man you won’t tell me about? I know you’s in love, Nadine, on account of your phraseology. I can’t imagine no man worthy of you. My star has got her a publicist who want to make her into a Bo Derek-type sex symbol. I don’t think she play that, ’cause she want people to think she a actress.
I hope John Henry has his ideal of a woman and I hop
e she realizes who she do got, and ain’t be a fool. I ain’t going to say nothing ’bout you and John Henry or you and that ex-husband of yours out in Tasmania.
I thinks some of us is just fools, Nadine. I know my star is a fool. Every time she gets drunk at some cocktail party she telling everybody about her and some Russian count. My star thinks I’m schizophrenic. Don’t play Nadine when you’re around me, she say. I told her all about you, Nadine, and she thinks I plays Nadine sometimes. Some of these directors is still trying to get me to play roles in they movies. This director comes up to me and tries to get me to audition for his new movie called Kingfish. I think he talking about Amos ’n’ Andy, but it some movie ’bout the former governor of Louisiana, Huey Long hisself. I’m supposed to play a maid in the governor’s mansion. I reads for the role, but they says I don’t sound like no maid.
Do you realize, Nadine, that we have never had one of them my man conversations. I’ve had plenty such conversations with my star, ’cept she won’t talk about that Russian count. Since she is becoming a bigger star, though, I has had to sign one of them I-ain’t-going-to-talk-about-you-to-them-tabloids agreements. I ain’t joking. Ain’t nobody from no tabloid interested in my star’s ass. She collects old copies of Hollywood Confidential.