by Gayl Jones
Yeah, and so he were there working on this exhibition, you know, ’cause you can’t have the history of horse racing, you know, without the celebration of the African-American jockey. That’s where I met him anyhow. He say some of them early races all they would have in them were them African-American jockeys, even in slavery time they had them slaves jockeying them horses, ’cause a lot of them jockeys went over to Europe, ’cause they were a lot more freedom over there and not that Jim Crow. He real ambitious, though, my ex-husband. Now he done gone back to college, you know, one of them business colleges, to study that ecological tourism, what they call that ecological tourism, you know, and in the tourist trade or some shit.
Ecological tourism?
You know, a lot of them modern tourism people call theyselves ecological tourism people ’cause a lot of them tourists, you know, destroys the ecology, you know, so the new tourism supposed to be ecotourism. The more enlightened tourism people is supposed to be ecological tourism people. Anyway, he in Tasmania.
You mean Tanzania? She says some words that I knows is Swahili, but I ain’t know what they mean. She even had her a class in Swahili at the Community Center. Telling me Swahili a simple language and that I should learn it. I remembers the Swahili word for buffalo, nyati. And I knows enough Swahili to tell this friend of mine who heard the word nyani not to name none of her childrens that ’cause it means baboon. She be telling me, Nadine, I heard the prettiest African name that I wants to name one of my childrens. What African name? I asks. I think she is going to say osani, which is the pygmy word for love. And she says nyani. I say, fool, nyani is a baboon. Nyani, that is so pretty, though ain’t it? say this fool. And that fool probably have named one of her childrens Nyani, ’cause she knows that most of us that is learning other peoples languages is learning French rather than Swahili. Are you Miss Nadine Johnson of the Covington Johnsons? Yes, and whose little girl are you? I’m little Nyani Worth Peacock, Sheila Worth Peacock’s little girl. My mama talks about you all the time. Miss Nadine, say that you is the principal one who helped her to name me. Say she didn’t have a name for me till you told her about a petty little African name. And that I’m named Nyani on account of you, Miss Nadine, and everybody that hears my name say it is the prettiest little name that they know.
Naw, Tasmania.
Tasmania! She say it loud enough so’s the lovers look toward us like we’s Tasmanians and then they continues courting.
Yeah. We amiable and all, you know. He sent me a coupla postcards about his wonderful adventures in Tasmania, but then he met some aboriginal girl, you know, got him a new wife and some kids, so he don’t send postcards like he usedta, you know, but we’s still amiable. . . . I usedta think that Tasmania were a imaginary country, on account of the Tasmanian devil in that cartoon you know, but it ain’t. Tasmania’s a real country, though I think he say it sorta like a state of Australia rather than a whole country it ownself. It a island, though. Tasmania a island. He a travel consultant—I think that what he call hisself—for people interested in that ecological tourism. . . . Supposed to be plenty of people interested in that in Tasmania and Australia too, which is close to Tasmania or Tasmania is a part of Australia, I ain’t sure which. . . . He say a lot of people think he a aborigine and surprise when they learn that he a African American and be wondering what he doing in Tasmania. . . .
She looking like she don’t know whether to believe me or not. Like I’m one of what she call them unreliable narrators. She be looking at me like I’m talking shit, you know how bartenders looks at you when they think you talking shit, though she ain’t tending the bar, but probably what they calls the unreliable narrators is the ones telling them true stories, and it the so-called reliable narrators talking shit. But she still dipping her french fries—or rather my french fries—in salsa. And she still glancing at them lovers. You know, them furtive glances. But they’s just studying each other. Noses almost touching, like I said. Them’s probably what you’d call lover’s lovers.
But you ain’t actually told me what he’s like, she say. Why’d y’all divorce?
I lifts both my eyebrows but don’t say nothing. Ain’t I told her what he like? I know I said he ambitious. And gotta be adventuresome to be over there in that Tasmania, whether it a part of Australia or it own whole country. I think she waiting to hear some abusive tale too. Some real son-of-a-bitch or some shit. At least seem like most of them tales you read or hear from the point of view of a woman, and not just African-American womens neither, is always some abusive son-of-a-bitch. Then I’m wondering why they don’t have some name equivalent to bitch for a man. I guess that’s bastard, but then both son-of-a-bitch and bastard ain’t call a man the thing his ownself, being independent of a woman. Ain’t no word that set aspersions on the man he own whole self. If she waiting to hear some son-of-a-bitch story, though, I ain’t telling one, and never even liked them kinda stories even when they is true. I knows I has sometimes been sitting in a nightclub drinking Budweiser and listening to jazz and some woman I don’t even know comes up to me and starts telling me a son-of-a-bitch story about some man. I don’t know her and don’t know the man, but she telling me her son-of-a-bitch story like it the only type of story they is. Even them blues singers got them a repertoire of other types of songs. I remember I went with Delgadina to hear this African-American woman novelist woman give a reading. She say that the novel that she were reading from were based on the art form of the blues and that were why the woman was telling a son-of-a-bitch story. She didn’t call it a son-of-a-bitch story. So she reads some of the story and the women in the audience they thinks it a good story. So I’m standing there with Delgadina talking to the woman.
Why the man in that story got to be such a son-of-a-bitch? My daddy ain’t like that and none of the Johnson mens is like that. Why you write a story like that? Is you a feminist?
This is a blues novel and it uses the subject matter of the blues? explains the woman. Imagining a woman singing the blues, this is what she’d sing about, wouldn’t she? Isn’t this what she’d sing about? Then she sings me one of them blues songs, singing about different wrongs, you know. She says that that is not her idea of how men are, but if you’re going to write a blues novel, sung by a woman, then that is the subject matter.
But why every man in that novel got to be a son-of-a-bitch. Delgadina gave me that novel and every man in it is a son-of-a-bitch. You should have some good mens in that novel. I knows when I watches movies, they’s got plenty of sons-of-bitches in them, but they is always a man who’s a good man who is a counter to the sons-of-bitches. I knows that the Johnson men is all good men.
This is a blues novel, Nadine, says Delgadina. Now she always calls me Mosquito, but talking with that woman novelist, she call me Nadine. And then she reiterates what that woman have said about the subject matter of the blues.
Y’all ain’t listened to no true blues singers, I says. ’Cause that ain’t the whole of the blues repertoire. I have heard people tell that lie about the blues before. You have chosen one type of blues song to sing, but if you listens to a true blues singer that ain’t the whole repertoire. The true blues singer don’t just sing one type of blues. If you listens to a true blues singer, it ain’t just about who done who wrong. They sings about work, they sings about the railroad, they sings about the whole world, they sings about sweet honey, they sings about the rooster. They is evil and mean men and women in the blues. They is the boll weevil blues. They is good men and women in the blues.
I’m just a little country girl, off the cotton farm.
If I mistreats you baby, I don’t mean you no harm.
There is people sings about working the turpentine farms and them that sings about working in Detroit in Mr. Ford’s factory. They is blues that sings about St. Louis, Mississippi and Chicago. They is blues that sings about Mr. President and the WPA. They’s blues songs about womens being glad for they sweet honey mens and mens being glad for they sweet honey womens. No, they is
not just one subject matter to the blues. There’s I’m tired of Jim Crow songs and songs about the Good Lawd’s children. There’s I am what I am songs. And some people singing the blues just ’cause they know the song blues. I think you is writing them blues novels just ’cause you knows the song.
Nadine, you don’t mean that, say Delgadina.
She’s right, say the woman. She’s absolutely right.
There’s Western Union blues and Mae West blues. There’s women is so tricky blues. There is my hair is so nappy blues. There’s gonna get me a yeller woman ’cause black women is so evil blues. There’s but I still love you the same old way blues.
You’re right, you’re right, you’re right, you’re right. What you say your name is?
Nadine. The man I love is just as sweet as he can be. That’s in the blues too. What in the world made him love me so?
Girl, I shoulda talked to you before I wrote this novel, ’cause you’s so right.
There’s I ain’t gonna be nobody’s slave for love blues.
Yeah, girl.
About the Peach Tree man.
Yeah, girl.
There’s the I’m too good a man blues.
Yeah, girl.
Sometimes the blues seems like jazz to me.
Yeah, girl.
There’s even people that tells the blues about itself.
What do you mean?
I don’t tell her what I mean. I just tells her that the true blues singer got a whole repertoire.
But I suppose most every woman got her a son-of-a-bitch tale like most every man got him a bitch story. A lot of them blues it seem like the woman be singing her son-of-a-bitch tale while the man be singing his bitch story. Of course that ain’t all of the blues. And they’s a aspect of the blues that’s more humorous than a lotta peoples hears. And they’s also the blues where a man sings about his good woman, and a woman sings about her good man.
How’d he propose?
I sip on my Coca-Cola. He didn’t.
He didn’t propose?
Naw.
Did you propose?
Didn’t neither one of us propose. We was drinking them mint juleps in the backside, you know, and the next thing I know we’s driving to the justice of the peace. I starts to tell her that we was sitting in the backside drinking them mint juleps and watching a couple of them jockeys shoot dice but that sound kinda like a stereotype, even though it the truth. I know a lot of y’all don’t even want me telling y’all that, ’cause then y’all be thinking it just make more peoples you’s got to explain that all us don’t shoot dice like in them old Jim Crow movies. They probably wasn’t shooting dice at all, y’all be saying, they was probably playing a game of bid whist or even poker, but because Nadine have seen so many Jim Crow movies with us playing dice she thought she seen them playing dice, which don’t mean that she is lying, but mean that she is like them witnesses that they gives the psychological tests and they has white mens shooting dice and black mens playing bid whist and asks the people which one of the group of mens was shooting dice and they always say, even the colored peoples amongst them, that it were the black mens that was shooting dice and the white mens that was playing bid whist. So I don’t say that about them jockeys shooting dice, I just says we was drinking them mint juleps ’cause nearly everybody at the Derby drinks mint juleps, them that frequents the backside, the ordinary folks in the stands as well as them VIPs. I don’t remember seeing none of them jockeys drinking them mint juleps, though, but I guess them jockeys drinks them too. Can’t be drinking them mint juleps, though, when you got to ride them horses. And maybe them jockeys all got to be teetotalers. Unless they got them nonalcoholic mint juleps for them teetotalers. I know you can buy you that mint julep syrup. She scratch her forehead and peek at me up over her designer eyeglasses. When she in the bar, though, she wear her them contact lenses.
No wonder y’all got divorced, she say. At least mine proposed, one of them real chivalric-type proposals too. Put his jacket down on the ground, got on his knee and shit, one of them old-fashioned proposals. Of course it was in his garage, but it was still a proposal. And in Spanish too, chica, which made it much more romantic. ¿Quieres casarte conmigo?
To tell the truth, I ain’t never been proposed to, except this one fool come up to me on the street and asked me if I wanted to marry him, but I thought the fool was joking, you know, or drunk. I ain’t tell Delgadina I ain’t never been proposed to, though, ’cause Delgadina she look like the kinda woman’s probably got several proposals, though maybe not all chivalric. They’s probably other womens ain’t never been proposed to, but I ain’t never sent out no questionnaires. We watches the man and woman that talking so close to each other it look like they noses is touching.
You pulling my leg, aintcha? she ask.
I won’t tell her if I am or if I ain’t. She get out her notebook ’cause she like that line about Tasmania. But in her notebook, the fellow ain’t just in Tasmania, she gotta add something about them other devils. Then she look like she trying to hear what them lovers or what them lover’s lovers is saying so’s she can put that in her notebook. I guess all women divorce for the same reason, she say.
What reason? I asks, dipping into the salsa.
We just want more say-so, she say. Maybe the best women stays in the marriage and tries to work out some compromise. I think I’m a good woman but I ain’t one of the best. She scratching her head now and then her elbow. Turn out she allergic to salsa but eat it anyway. After a moment, she be scratching her arm where you can see them little hives break out from that salsa. Just the tiniest hives she say form on the inside of her arm, near the elbows.
What do your ex do? I asks.
He’s a steel sculptor, she say, scratching. He sculptures with steel. Well, I guess he can sculpture with all kindsa shit, but he prefers to sculpture with steel. He got this garage full of steel sculptures, you know, the same garage he proposed to me in, amid all his steel sculptures and shit. Really romantic and shit. He a real good sculptor. That’s what he does for desire. For a living, he makes these steel trellises you see on buildings. Steel trellises and gratings and shit. He’s got this sculpture that I think he should be famous for, it’s sorta the sculptural equivalent of the Klein bottle, I guess. You know that confabulatory bottle which that glass that seem like it curves inside itself but you can’t really find out where them curves originates. They always includes that Klein bottle in them books that tests people’s IQ and that shows the different inventions of peoples that is supposed to have a high IQ like them Mensa books and them books that’s got mazes and puzzles in them and you’s supposed to have to solve the Klein bottle. He says it’s not, but I think so anyway. He sculptures more for desire, though.
No wonder she be liking them art and craft people, I be thinking. Wonder if he one of them crafty artists or one of them artsy artists. I be thinking about that metalwork on them buildings in New Orleans. ’Cause my girlfriend work for the Hollywood star went down to New Orleans with her when she made one of them movies set in New Orleans and be saying somebody be telling her how it African artists made them metalwork on them buildings ’cause them African artists they supposed to be metalworkers. But they them slave artisans, but she be saying how them Daughters of Nzingha be telling her not to call them slaves anymore but just Africans, and them Daughters of Nzingha they don’t want her to keep working for that Hollywood star and be her own woman, her own African woman, but she be keep working for her anyhow. I guess all them places she get to travel and maybe she wouldn’t get to travel all them places if she her own woman, even her own African woman. But me I tell her not to tell me anymore about what them Daughters of Nzingha be saying, ’cause I be thinking they just a cult, just like her star said, or maybe it because I be starting to believe some of that cult talk and wants to join up with them Daughters of Nzingha. Anyway, that probably what she mean by them steel trellises, though, like in that New Orleans. Delgadina, I mean. She scratch inside her elbo
w that got the hives, and then she scratch inside the one that ain’t got the hives. She still watching them lovers like a fool, like a romantic fool, and then I starts thinking not about my ex-husband but about that John Henry Hollywood. Thinking about sitting on the bank of the Kentucky River fishing with John Henry Hollywood when I shows him one of them letters from Monkey Bread, one enticing me to come to California. Like I said, they been boyfriend and girlfriend they ownself, Monkey Bread and John Henry, but that was before she went out there to California, anyway he telling me even when they was going together he consider Monkey Bread only his sometimes girlfriend.
That girl always had her mind on Hollywood, he be saying.
His own name Hollywood, like I said, but he don’t mean hisself, of course he mean that other Hollywood. Glamourtown. We both of us barefoot sitting on the riverbank, like I said, and got our dungarees rolled up and sitting on a log we pulled up close to the riverbank. He done caught more fish than me. In fact, he the best fisherman I met. I been thinking about going out to that California myself, I says. Even before Monkey Bread ask me. I don’t say just Hollywood, ’cause that California more than Hollywood.
It don’t surprise me, he say. ’Cause both of y’all is wild womens, I mean wild as in freedom-seeking womens. ’Cept I think you more freedom-seeking even than Monkey Bread.
Why don’t you come out to California with me? I asks.
He don’t say nothing. He take his fishing rod out of the water and lean it against one of them horsetail plants that grow along the riverbank. You just seeing California from the woman’s point of view, he saying.
I don’t know what he talking about and he don’t explain it to me. They probably got a lot of pianos need tuning out in California, I says. And you know they probably more open-minded in California than they is around here. You be saying they let you move they pianos but don’t want you to tune they pianos. All them African-American musicians, I bet they needs good piano tuners, anyhow.