by Gayl Jones
I loves Nefertiti Johnson. I knows us New World African womens is romantic. Gotta be romantic. Don’t let them tell you you ain’t supposed to be romanced and them romancing every other woman, including them Desdemonas.
Thanks for photocopying that book that you’s only got one copy of. I knows you don’t trust me, Nadine, but I loves that tale about Leola and the Mighty John Branurn knocking that white panama straw hat off that woman’s head. Course like you I loves that Charley Hickman and Wasetta love. This grown-up woman’s book. I am including a little romantic story about me and John Henry. What did you say that Delgadina said about the burden of being an exemplary man?
Don’t you let that Delgadina patronize you. Or treating you like you’s supposed to be her disciple. She ain’t no holy woman. Detective school sounds interesting, though. There’s a lot of private detectives here in Hollywood, between acting gigs. Having your own private detective must be in vogue.
But yes, Nadine, I likes being the housekeeper of this Hollywood star and traveling to exotic places like Scandinavia. I am more than a glorified maid but her personal assistant. We have been to every continent except Africa, and have even been to the Pacific Rim. Hong Kong is a glorious place.
Read Zora Neale Hurston’s book and the story of Big Sweet.
My star enrolled me in culinary school, although she has already got her a nutritional gourmet restaurant and gets to sit at the chef’s table. You know the elites out here sits in the kitchen of some of these fine restaurants and it’s called the chef’s table.
Nzingha, our priestess, says that we should call each other womanfriend not girlfriend. But there is a lot of bizarre, eccentric, neurotic, and scandalous women out here in Hollywood. I ain’t talking about Nzingha but pure of ass women like in that Hollywood Babylon. When you’re rich you can be as wild of ass a woman as you wanna be, and don’t nobody refer to you as no hoochie. Even the elite of the white trash variety as I heard somebody say in a movie.
I’d like to know more about that Miguelita and her Mr. Delgado. She sounds like a debutante my star says she knows whose father is a comic book artist—I mean he draws cartoons for the comic books. She says the Miguelita she knows looks like a comic book character herself. She sounds like another eccentric.
My star is playing a rocket scientist’s dumb blonde in her new movie. Bimboism is they feminism and how they displays they feminine hubris. I guess if they’s masculine hubris they can be feminine hubris. I mean for a lot of these movie stars.
I likes a good Berated movie myself, though. The only difference between a Berated movie and an A rated movie is the type of stars. Her next movie is one of them Japanese science fiction movies where she gets to play an intergalactic gaijin bimbo. Gaijin means foreigner in the Japanese language.
If your friend Delgadina do decide to become a detective, tell her to come to California. Girlfriend, you have started sounding like a regular commercial for Bud Light. I hope you ain’t become no drunk and intemperate colored girl. I advise niacin to reduce the craving for alcohol.
I don’t think my starlet is a natural blonde ’cause I seen pictures of her as a brunette, but Glamourtown is Glamourtown. And you know how these peoples is about they white aesthetic.
Anyhow, she is working on a improvised movie by a female producer and filmmaker. The film is sorta like jazz, you know, where they talk about the melody being a framework around which the jazz musicians improvise. Like what that Wynton Marsalis said talking about that jazz on television. She gets to play the hoi polloi.
Sincerely,
Monkey Bread
P.S. Girl, my star is making a movie about Australia and they wants me to play one of them aborigines. I think they still calls them aborigines, don’t they? Or is they native Australians? I told them I ain’t got no design on being no actress. Every time they gets a role like that, they wants to hire me. They also wants me to play a African pygmy. I likes them pygmies and I’m flattered to have their stature. And this is Hollywood.
Dear Monkey Bread,
Thanks for you letter. I got one of them entertainment magazines and read about that Australia movie, Love’s First Green Language. It don’t sound like no Berated movie to me. The daughter of a carnival sideshow owner who seduces a aborigine, but the aborigine is accused of seducing the daughter. I suppose Hollywood can turn it into a B-rated movie.
Sincerely,
Mosquito a.k.a. Nadine
Dear Nadine,
You’s right about Hollywood. I got that novel and read it for myself, and it ain’t no B-rated novel. The blurb say that the novel is considered to be politically subversive in Australia, but no Australian film company would make it ’cause it mixes too much politics and sex. It is a very voluptuous novel, but it ain’t no B-rated novel. I wouldn’t mind playing the aborigine woman if I was the love interest of the aborigine man as he is depicted in the novel. However his love interest is the carnival daughter. It is a B-rated movie, and Hollywood have turned the film script into a jungle of clichés, but it’s my star’s first star-quality role. They got a Puerto Rican to play the aborigine, though, one of them Rico Suave types. But in the movies he looks like a true aborigine. And got they syllables and rhythms in his language. My star has started collecting aborigine art.
Sincerely,
Monkey Bread
P.S. What name are you better known as in Texas? I have always preferred Nadine, you know, but remember when you be nicknamed Big-girl? And then everybody started calling you Mosquito, which seems incongruous to me. But it’s like that little guy in that Brazilian movie that they call Big Otelo and it should be Little Otelo. But everybody still calls me Monkey Bread.
Dear Monkey Bread,
Does your star call you Monkey Bread?
Nadine
Dear Nadine,
My star used to call me Monkey Bread, but received a letter from one of them African-American organization, a member of whom overheard her on national TV referring to me as Monkey Bread and so she has started calling me by my true name, or what she believes to be my true name.
P.S. Nzingha is encouraging all us colored girls to tell our stories. How do you like my new word processor? I’m also learning exotic fruits like star apples and a Brazilian drink called cachaca, made with sugar cane. My star thinks Brazil is sexually stimulating and indulges in the aphrodisiac. I likes Brazil, but I don’t consider it as exotic as Scandinavia.
Then in her next letters she tell me more about them Nzingha’s Daughters. To tell the truth, I wants to hear more about them than I does about her star. She say they is still trying to get her to be her own woman and to leave the plantation, which they call working for that star. They calls her star the Abyssinian cat, though in her movies she look more like a Persian cat. She say she told them Daughters of Nzingha about me and they’s quite delighted about me being a truck driver and seemingly my own woman.
Dear Monkey Bread,
What you mean my own woman? I hope them Nzingha’s Daughters is in favor of love. Is they just a political type of group?
Sincerely,
Mosquito
Dear Nadine,
Sure we’s in favor of love. You can be your own woman and be in favor of love. Us priestess says that love is the essence of being human. One of the Nzingha’s Daughters basic concepts, though, is that African women should be economically independent if possible. They’s a lot of basic concepts, some to do with economics and others with culture. They promotes diversity amongst us African womens and we ain’t all got to be the same woman. We should have diversity but we should recognize common interests. We’s got working-class and intellectual-type womens and we’s even got the Afro-womanist Development Bank. We uses womanist rather than feminist ’cause that Alice Walker’s word, you know.
But you would like the Daughters of Nzingha and I would enclose some of our literature but we presently do not send out brochures and shit like them other organizations. We ain’t no secret society or cultural fantasy and
we don’t recruit in the streets or at factories and political rallies. They is worker-intellectuals among us as well as pure intellectuals. I got me some books pan-Africanism and Garveyism so I can understand some of what Nzingha is talking about. I figure the priestess must be a pan-Africanist and Garveyite or one of them Ethiopianists.
They’s a lot I could tell you about my priestess, but I’d have to write me a whole book.
Sincerely,
Monkey Bread
Dear Monkey Bread,
Thank you for your letter and the photo of you and Cooter and Nyam-Nyam of the Daughters of Nzingha. They both looks like girls and you looks younger. It must be that root tea you mentions. If they’s from the Sea Islands, they must speak Gullah, don’t they? They do look kinda like West Indians. Cooter kinda looks like this woman that works in a warehouse where I sometimes loads my truck up with industrial detergents and Nyam-Nyam looks kinda like a migrant. You’s write about diversity.
Sincerely,
Mosquito
Dear Nadine,
The Daughters of Nzingha have started visiting the detention camps. Theys are all obsessed with the desire to escape, however, like they’s modern fugitives. All we does presently is bring them hygiene stuff and foodstuffs and contribute sometimes with their legal defense, especially the priestess says we have a obligation to the Haitians and African Diaspora-type people. Because in the beginning the group would just meet and watch Oprah and every time somebody come on the screen one of us be saying, I thought I was the only fool, or we be saying, At least us ain’t the only fool. Now we’s beginning to see usselves as modern emancipists—ain’t that the word?—though we ain’t exactly emancipated nobody.
My star heard of our little group and called us racist in reverse. Or maybe some type of cult. You must know that I didn’t tell her about our group, but she’s a snoop. I think she had her private detective investigate us.
The priestess is kinda eccentric, but I don’t think she crazy. I don’t have a photo of our priestess, but she got a most African nose. Nyam-Nyam is sly-eyed and Cooter is the plump one with the innocent eyes. In truth, Cooter is kinda sly and Nyam-Nyam is the innocent type. The priestess say Cooter is as plump as a tinamou, which is some kinda bird, and she call me the secretary bird though I ain’t no secretary, but I know the secretary bird a African bird, and Nyam-Nyam she just call Nyam-Nyam.
Sincerely,
Monkey Bread
Dear Monkey Bread,
You say you ain’t a cult, but you sounds like a cult. I wants to learn more about the Daughters of Nzingha, but I don’t want to join no cult. I read about some group out there that teaches women how to milk an untamed cow and new words like fescinnine. Is that the same group?
Sincerely,
Nadine
Dear Nadine,
Thank you for your letter. No, you must have been reading about some other organization. We don’t refer to usselves as a organization. The reason I likes the Daughters of Nzingha is that they makes me think I am free, Nadine, even whilst I still works for that star. What do we study? Sometimes we study about the men be having their independence movements and the womens ain’t free, but the men be trying to convince the women that their freedom ain’t important. Our priestess says that all colonialists does that. She has her plenty of boyfriends and lovers, though.
Sincerely,
Monkey Bread
P.S. I probably do not have a talent for poetry, but here they are anyway. My nom de plume is also Monkey Bread. And here are also the stories that I promised you and a brochure about the International Trade Fair in Tokyo and one on an International Machine Tool Fair, since you like to collect brochures and I know you like them trade fairs.
Monkey Bread’s Story
Do you take John Hollywood to be your lawful husband?
We was playing and so I said I took John Hollywood to be my lawful husband and promised to love and cherish him. We rented us a house because he was pretending to have himself a good factory job making business machines and I was pretending to have me a good job in one of them department stores downtown, and them was the years when they didn’t hire African-American peoples to work as clerks in them stores, at least not in that part of the country. Them that owned they own little stores could work as clerks in them. He used his real name, John Hollywood, but me I renamed myself Casablanca, like the title of that movie, and I kept thinking it was a grand name, a grander name than Monkey Bread. John Hollywood wanted to call me by my true name, but I didn’t think that my true name was a good enough name to be John Hollywood’s wife. So I became Casablanca Hollywood.
We pretended like John Hollywood was a good Christian because in that little community good men was supposed to be good Christians, and pretended that he was the best man in the world, and who could marry better? Who couldn’t be in love with such a man? I don’t know whether he pretended that I was the best woman in the world. Even with my name Casablanca.
Then, after we was married, we pretended that we had us a short weekend honeymoon to Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, where a lot of newlyweds had honeymooned and come back telling glory stories.
We pretended a little neighborhood cave was Mammoth Cave, and when we wasn’t pretending we was husbands and wives, we was pretending that we was guides in that cave, and we talked about how we’d add more passages in that cave and would discover more passages in that cave, passages that hadn’t been explored by any of them other newlyweds. We had us a good time in that little cave and just like newlyweds come back telling everybody how wonderful us honeymoon, though we was telling imaginary people, and we was telling them about how the Indians—cause we called them Indians then—made that cave, and how they had that cave before the white men come and commercialized it, ’cept we didn’t use that word commercialized.
Then, ’cause I’d never met John Hollywood’s folks, we traveled to his house to meet his folks, and pretended that they lived in North Dakota rather than on the other street and pretended that they hadn’t been able to come to the wedding ’cause they lived in North Dakota and there we was in Kentucky, you know. So we saved up money, or pretending we was saving up money, so’s we could go to North Dakota.
I don’t know how long we pretended. I called him the good husband, and he’d sit on the porch with me at night and watch the moon light up my face. We pretended it was the moon. I liked to comb his hair with my fingers and kiss the top of his head, and I liked to tell our imaginary people how wonderful a husband, and we’d pretend we was drinking beer though it weren’t nothing but root beer, Nadine. (I decided I’d put you in my story, although I don’t think you even knew John Hollywood in them days.) We’d drink beer which was root beer and talk about Mammoth Cave. I don’t know if they Jim Crowed Mammoth Cave in them days, but that’s where we pretended we’d honeymooned. We also pretended that we went up to Cincinnati to the zoo and to Louisville to the state fair. We even talked about having us some children, although they’s imaginary children. I know what you’s thinking, Nadine. Naw, we didn’t do that in that cave.
Then we pretended that we traveled by bus to North Dakota, though we took us a bus ride all around the city. John Hollywood held my hand and I slept on his shoulder. We’d saved us a lot of money so’s we could take that trip to North Dakota. We rode on the back of the bus, ’cause they Jim Crowed them buses in them days.
I asked John Hollywood, What your father do?
In the winter he work on the railroad, in the summer he a lumberman.
We held hands, and then we got off the bus and walked out into the country, though it was still the city, but we was pretending it was the country, you know, Nadine, and I pretended that I seen my first deer, you know, like they might have in the country of North Dakota. Then we walked on one of them little dirt roads, the dust sticking to our shoes. We walked across stones and seen a crab on its back in the sun. Then we come into the clearing, and they was three little girls with bowl haircuts playing on the porch. John Hollywood’s si
sters Lira, Lolly, and Lola. I couldn’t tell them apart. John Hollywood introduced me to his parents as his new bride. They knew we was just play-acting so they shook hands with me and hugged me and called me pretty, ’cause you always calls new brides pretty.
We rested and ate there. We had us corn and venison stew and apple pie. Naw, Nadine, it wasn’t no real venison stew, we was just playacting that it was venison stew. I fell in love with John Hollywood’s family and his little sisters and we all played us a game of catch in the yard. Then his daddy went to work and the little girls went off to school and John Hollywood went into town and I stayed with his mama who I thought was a quiet, beautiful woman, and she kinda reminded me of one of them Indian womens ’cause she had that long hair that she wore in braids, just like them Indian women, and she kept play-acting with us ’cause she said she wished that she could have traveled down from North Dakota to come to our wedding, and then she told me that John Hollywood gave her a picture of me and that she was pleased with his choice in a woman. I didn’t know that grownups could pretend so good as that.
Is he taking care of you? she asked.
Yes, ma’am.
And you take care of him? Yes, I see you do.
Then we washed the dishes together and went out to the garden for tomatoes and set them on the windowsill, and she had all kinds of plants in her garden and knew the names of them, just like you say about Delgadina. And we took a walk together and she told me that they had only one movie house in that little town, and figured that my name being Casablanca that I must like movies. Do you swim? There’s a wonderful creek.
Course there wasn’t no creek at all around there. When I told her I didn’t swim—which was a lie—she told me that maybe John would teach me. Then she asked me how long we’d be able to stay, just like I was a real newlywed, and wished I could stay and visit them longer, and then we come back and sit on the porch, and John Hollywood returned from town. And his mama went back in the house to do her housecleaning.