by Gayl Jones
Ray? she asks.
Father Ray. I think he has all the logistics on that rebellion. You’ve got to talk to Father Ray first.
I calls up Ray’s people from the number he give me and talks to somebody. It might be one of them guerrilla lawyers, but I ain’t sure who it is, then Ray’s people sends the other Ray, the Ray name Ray Mendoza. Ain’t I described for you the other Ray? He the one looks like a Aztec god. He look like some type of Aztec god, ‘cept he’s wearing blue jeans and a sweatshirt. I introduces him to Maria.
I know Ray Mendoza, say Maria. But I’m interested in knowing more and learning more. How are you Señor Mendoza?
Jiba jiba jiba jiba jiba.
¿Cómo estás, mi hijo? say Ray to Journal. And then he and Maria they says something to each other, but that also in Spanish. Then they starts talking English. Then they put little Spanish with they English. I ain’t know what they mean, but I remembers what they says: con la esperanza de la libertad and todos por su voluntad, ninguno forzado. But years later I learned that them was code expressions that was actually from a Spanish epic, the same as when Maria started praying and talking about her Padre espiritual which is a name for Dios. Maybe that Maria a Nicodemus her ownself, and maybe that cousin weren’t her real cousin but her confabulatory cousin. Course Maria ain’t ask me to go with her nowhere else to defend nobody else’s rights and freedoms, so maybe that her real cousin. I ain’t ask Maria all that though,’ cause if she a real Nicodemus she ain’t want to tell me she a Nicodemus. I’m thinking how many other members of the new Underground Railroad she know when Ray Mendoza notice them dolls of hers and say things like fantástico and other fabulous words in Spanish and then she give him one of them dolls, and I’m thinking if even them dolls have got codes in them and messages that she sends across the border, ’cause ain’t she told me that now they is mail order peoples even in Mexico that buys them dolls? For all I knows, they is people in the rebellion that has Maria’s dolls. And y’all can’t tell me that that line, But I’m interested in knowing more and learning more, ain’t no code for something. Then I wants to ask her how she know Ray, I means the other Ray, this Ray, but I don’t. I tells him ’bout Maria’s rebellion and how I ain’t want her to take Journal to no rebellion.
I believes them peoples has they right to rebel, I says, and if Maria want to go to a rebellion I drive her down there myself, but I ain’t going to allow her to take us Journal to that rebellion.
It ain’t yours to allow, Journal, she say.
She know my true name, but she likes calling me that name she originally thought was mine, and she likes keeping Journal with the name she originally thought was mine.
And it wasn’t his to send me up North and ain’t tell me about the rebellion, she say.
Then it Ray Mendoza who reasons with her talking to her like he always know her and telling her that he knows some people that knows some people. Then he tell Maria not to go down there to the rebellion till he come back, and then when he come back he give us more information than in them newspapers, which is the fact that some people is helping her husband and lover to escape North, and that if she want to go to Mexico, she can wait for him in Mexico City and don’t have to travel to the rebellion. And there’s other things about the rebellion and them rebels now that ain’t in them newspapers, ’cept I ain’t going to tell y’all. I ain’t going to tell y’all no more about Maria’s rebellion than I’m telling y’all. But while Ray Mendoza was there, Maria says, I want to tell you more of my story, Sojourner. But then before she started telling it I thought I heard a little red bird say, I can tell, I can tell your story, Mommy, I can tell, I can tell, I can tell, I can tell, I can tell. I ain’t want to say nothing, ’cause I know that Ray and Maria ain’t heard that little red bird. But Journal start saying, Jiba Jiba Jiba Jiba Jiba. And to tell y’all the truth, I ain’t sure whether Journal say that or the little red bird.
I can’t tell you more about Maria’s rebellion, I says. I calls it Maria’s rebellion, ’cause I first learned about it from Maria, except I could call it Ray’s rebellion because I overheard Ray talking to someone about logistics, but it’s Maria’s people’s rebellion, or it’s the rebellion of them that made that rebellion. That’s the thing about them rebellions, though, you’s got to keep them confidential I don’t think modern rebels keeps their rebellions that confidential, ’cause I heard about they rebellion before I knew it was a rebellion. I do know that when they were having the rebellion some of Ray’s people interviewed the rebels. I don’t know if it was the same rebellions the Chiapas rebellion. Maybe there are some other people that call themselves the Zapatistas or maybe they are the same Zapatistas. Them newspapers pretends they’s telling you the whole rebellions but they ain’t know the whole rebellions and a lot of what they does tell you is what the governments wants them to say. They pretends they’s the free press, but ain’t none of them the true voice of the people. I knows more about the rebellion than you reads in the newspapers. Ain’t nobody know the whole rebellion but the rebels themselves. And they knows enough not to tell them newspapers what they do know. And I don’t believe they even told Ray’s people everything.
I mean are you in the Sanctuary movement? he asked. The new Underground Railroad?
How can I be in the Sanctuary movement or the new Underground Railroad in South Texas when I’m here in Tasmania with you? So anyway if I do decide to go down there to Mexico, I mean if Maria and Journal decide to go to Mexico, that be another adventure I can tell you about. I ain’t no rebel’s rebel, though, but I likes them that is.
He sop up some more of his eggs and chews his toast. He kinda remind me of Raymond and he kinda remind me of John Henry Hollywood, and even kinda remind me of the man in the storybook, and he kinda remind me of his ownself, and he looking like he be wanting me to say he his ownself. Wanting me to think of himself as himself. And making me think I’m my ownself too.
They’s plenty thinks I am. But the border patrol usedta search my truck as much before I smuggled ’em as they do now. Course I didn’t know I was smuggling ’em. But they got laws, you know, even against unknowingly smuggling aliens. And I think I know this girl, this woman, I mean, that’s in the Sanctuary movement. I think she like a scout for the Sanctuary movement you know, not the mainstream Sanctuary movement but they still Sanctuary workers, ’cause Sanctuary is Sanctuary. My intellect tell me she just a ordinary working girl like me, a ordinary working woman, but my instinct tell me that she also a scout for the Sanctuary movement you know. Her name Delgadina. I believe it were Delgadina that recruited me for the new Underground Railroad and I ain’t even know it. ’Cause if she come asking me to be in the new Underground Railroad, she know I ain’t going to, hut if she put that Maria in the back of my truck or tell that Maria how to get into the back of my truck and I finds her in there, then I am going to be in that new Underground Railroad, ’cause she knows me almost like I knows myself. Naw, I ain’t told her what I knows. I just plays her game as she plays it. And it Maria told her to come to that play, and pretend she ain’t know her. And I think I even know her signals, and she wear this ring just like this priest that in the movement. Maybe it just a coincidence, but I think she even done recruited this crazy gringa for the movement, ’cause the border patrols don’t give her any hassles, you know, and I overheard this priest be talking about some Mexican woman look like a gringa, though she a real gringa and I’m sure that Miguelita. I guess if you look like her all the borders is free. At least that’s the story I think I know, I mean from bits and pieces of conversations I’ve overheard; I’ve overheard her, not the crazy gringa, I mean this friend this Delgadina I thinks a scout talking to people I thinks in the Sanctuary Movement. And a lot of them scouts, they never do reveal who they is. ’Cause that’s the only way that they agrees to work for the new Underground Railroad they ownselves. Of course I ain’t so ignorant to let her know that I know that she a Nicodemus, or at least I think I know that she a Nicodemus.
> He don’t ask me what a Nicodemus, he just sop up some more of his eggs, sip some of that coffee, then pour syrup on his pancakes. Then he look up and ask, Nick who?
I want to ask him if he still married to that Tasmanian woman, hut I see he still wearing a ring and it ain’t mine, so it must he hers. And Miguelita she standing there with another hot pot of coffee and looking romance—the other romance—but me I don’t play that.
I’m in the cantina, drunk on Bud Light, when I almost ask Delgadina whether she a Nicodemus. I might even said the name Nicodemus, but she were reading one of them books of hers, and rather than continue that Nicodemus conversation she start telling me about the book she reading. That book called The Confessions of Othello. Then when she holding that book up I notices that the name of the author ain’t just any author. ’Cause Monkey Bread mentioned him in one of her letters and say her star making a movie from that same book. That he supposed to be a famous neo-African satirist. I talks about him like I really knows him, though I just knows him from Monkey Bread’s letters. I forgets to ask her about that Nicodemus and starts talking about Othello.
Othello? That’s Shakespeare, I says. How come him use that name?
’Cause this is a satire and a parody, she say. He sorta write in a style that’s a combination of Clarence Major and Ishmael Reed.
Oh, yeah? I heard them names, but I can’t say that I knows them personally. My friend Monkey Bread has started reading all of his novels. They is satires on neo-Africanism, and any neo-African can appear in his novels, even Diana Ross and the Supremes or Pearl Bailey. He is not a professional noblifier but a satirist. So what’s that book about? How do he parody Shakespeare?
But Delgadina don’t tell me what the book’s about, she gives me the book so’s I can read it for myself. Least that’s what she says. But then when I’m sitting there holding the book she starts telling me about it anyway.
The Confessions of Othello, Nadine, is a parody of the classical Renaissance play but written using twentieth-century values, I guess that’s how you’d describe it, because Shakespeare even though he was a great playwright and all and depicted Othello as noble he was still an individual and he was still the myth of the black man and the kinds of imagery and associations he used were like animal imagery and hell and evil, you know, all those kinds of images which are part of the popular consciousness, I mean the popular European consciousness. So the title actually combines The Confessions of Nat Turner, you know, Styron’s book. . . .
I heard about that William Styron’s book, I says, although I couldn’t remember what it was I’d heard about it. I knew it wasn’t considered to be the true confessions of the true Nat Turner. I even remember reading an article by an African-American writer who confessed that he hadn’t read the book, then he proceeded to tell why it wasn’t a true confessions of the true Nat Turner. So it’s a parody of that whole thing, the black-beast-beset-by-uncontrollable-passion-white-woman-crazy-religious-fanatic myth, you know, Nadine, like Faulkner and even Eudora Welty, I mean Flannery O’Connor, with her artificial nigger make an appearance in the book you know where there this huge black woman in the doorway and she can only be a symbol for sensuality and then there’s Joseph Conrad there with his white superiority complex, you know the author of Lord Jim, I know you saw the movie, yeah, so he’s writing a colonial novel within the anticolonial parody of Othello, except in certain parts of the novel he reverses all the imagery so that people are always talking to Othello about the prestige of his race, the African race, you know, and then some parts of it you can’t tell whether it’s a historical book or a futuristic book, and then in that Lord Jim . . .
Lord Jim, I says, and then I remember ain’t I heard Monkey Bread say that. Lord Jim and talking about that other Jim himself.
. . . chapter it ain’t the Malays but the whites that are described as the sensitive people that got to be treated with patience and kindness and then that made me think of Miguelita but I don’t think that’s the truth actually except for maybe Miguelita, then it’s the whites and not the Malays that have the head-patting ceremony, and they go throughout the book patting people’s heads. So instead of Othello condemning his blackness and trying to compensate for it, it’s Desdemona condemning her whiteness and trying to compensate for it and talking about the vices of her race, and then there’s the Hama of Japan, they appear in the book, and they’re like the blacks in Japan, you know. The Japanese might have a good regard for individual Hama. There’s a lot of quotes from LeRoi Jones.
That is a man to quote from, but he ain’t LeRoi Jones.
I mean when he was LeRoi Jones in the novel, ’cause some of it is set in the 1960s and Desdemona is the one who is depicted with the exotic history and there’s a lot of plays on her name, because she’s the metaphor for the things that in Shakespeare’s Othello, Othello is a metaphor for. Desdemona is depicted as the exceptional white, you know. If all whites were like you, Othello is always saying. But you know the whole color scheme is different. And Othello is always pondering about the meaning of Desdemona, you know. He’s always telling Desdemona she’s far more African than white. There is the assumption throughout the book that African is right. The narrator of the novel or rather the multiple narrators make clear that they are not condemning Desdemona but only her whiteness, and they keep trying to build her up as a heroine even though she’s white. I still kept thinking of Miguelita, though. The book kept reminding me of Ishmael Reed . . .
He in the Daughters of Nzingha bookshop, ’cause they’s got men’s books too. Monkey Bread say she make sure them Daughters of Nzingha bookshops purchases all of his books, even though he makes satires of us Daughters of Nzingha types of African-American womanhood.
. . . you know, though it ain’t by him. But whiteness is a flaw in the novel, and Desdemona keeps having to defend her whiteness. Or sometimes she doesn’t defend it at all. You’re white, says Othello. Says who? she replies. The traditional preconceptions that people have about what African is, they have in the novel about what white is. The assumption is that although one can be heroic with white skin, white is not synonymous with heroism, or, although Desdemona can be good with white skin, white is not synonymous with goodness. You know. So Desdemona is constantly trying to prove that she’s only white without, that she’s as dark and heroic as Othello.
That Othello supposed to be a true Shakespearean hero. I think we’s got a Othello Johnson somewhere amongst the Johnsons. I know there’s an Othello.
Even Othello comes to the defense of Desdemona. He says, She’s only white on the outside. To the imagination white represents evil, but is white necessarily evil? Why can’t Desdemona be white without and within? So throughout the book Desdemona refuses to acknowledge her whiteness, and wants to be as dark and good as Othello and the rest of his tribe and thinks she has to be the same color as him in order for him to truly love her. So she’s always traveling down to the Caribbean and to Africa to get some color, you know. But he’s always telling her he so in love with her that most of the time he forgets she’s white. But this ain’t enough for Desdemona.
What about lago? Is he in the book? I seen that play Othello myself, and I know you can’t parody Othello without lago being in that book.
He’s somebody she meets in the Caribbean and then again in Africa. He’s just got a minor role but instead of reminding Othello of his blackness he’s always there reminding Desdemona of her whiteness. Why forget you’re white? he keeps asking her. That’s absurd. And he’s also always reminding her of her inferiority. He’s white himself but he sees himself as superior. Sometimes lago appears as a bondslave, other times a pagan, other times a statesman. And he always likes to talk to Desdemona of the superiority of Othello’s tribe and the inferiority of her tribe. He refers to Othello as a black pearl richer than all of Desdemona’s tribe. Either that or it’s his wife Emilia that tells Desdemona that. Then there’s a scene where Desdemona confides in Emilia. Need I become dark to become virtuous? They�
��re in the Caribbean sipping banana some kinda drinks made with bananas I forgot the name naw I make those myself. But white represents barbarism, madness, chaos. Everyone must overlook Desdemona’s color rather than look at it.
Has Miguelita read that book?
Naw, I don’t think so. All the gods in the novel are repainted dark, even Jesus. And Desdemona is the one with the double consciousness except the narrators don’t call it double consciousness they’ve got another word for it. Sartre appears in the book and tells Desdemona that she’s the victim of language, that all she’s gotta do is change the language and white can be right. ’Cept Desdemona keeps justifying her whiteness even to Sartre. Even Shakespeare appears and tries to convince Desdemona who she is. Language is the only way people perceive nonobjective and metaphysical realities, he says. He tells her that although Othello may glorify the woman Desdemona he’ll always condemn her whiteness, so he tries to get her to return to his play where she can be her true white self. It’s okay if Othello stays in the neo-African novel, which is what the narrators call the novel. He tells her that as long as she inhabits that neo-African novel that the darkies in the novel—that’s what he calls them—will continue to develop attitudes toward her skin color and continue to order their religion on the basis of it and also to justify their behavior toward her with complex theories and even more complex theories. But I is who I is and I belongs with my Othello, says Desdemona.
Is you is or is you ain’t my baby? I sings. That’s what he’s signifying on there.
So Shakespeare tries to coopt Othello to try to get him to come back to the play and offers him so cowries or shit, and also tries to convince him that European civilization is superior to the African world because of the innate superiority of European languages, and that especially French is the greatest language in the history of mankind. Othello starts speaking some Eskimo I mean Inuit language to Shakespeare or some sorta of non-European native language that’s supposed to be more complex than any European language. Maybe it ain’t Inuit. I think Shakespeare returns to his play with Desdemona and Iago and they keep trying to convince Othello by playing him all kindsa European music especially Mozart, you know, and trying to convince him that he’s the true savage beast that they’re trying to tame. And then they’s got a lot of subliminal messages in the music. Trying to convince Othello that only Mozart is the music of essential humanity. They even have Mozart compose music for the Barbary horse, as they call Othello. And another piece of music called “The Lascivious Moor.” Except all this is subliminal.