by Gayl Jones
In fact, though, Ray do kinda remind me of a combination of all the beautiful gingerbread men I’ve seen, all of them, even kinda like some Indian from India I saw once on a music video from the Caribbean—’cause they’s Indians from India who is immigrants in the Caribbean and has they own communities—and my first thought was, He looks like a Indian god. ’Cause he really did look like one of them gods. And then I started thinking it must be nice to be a people that looks at each other and sees they own gods and ain’t have to look at other people’s gods. I thinks of Maria with her Jesus looking like a Mexican, but that still ain’t the same as they own Mexican gods, ’cause they’s Mexican peoples that looks like they own Mexican gods, even if they has adopted the Catholic god and saints. And they’s even got they saints, though, that looks like theyselves and is the patron saints of they towns and villages and has miracles stories about theyselves.
But that Ray he looks like hisself and a combination of all the beauty I’ve seen. So I’m thinking of that camera zooming in on him, and then the camera pans and looks at me and the peoples starts laughing, ’cause I ain’t the kind of woman they generally sees in the movies, not as a object of desire or delight. And then they starts laughing ’cause they expects the woman to look like Vanessa Williams or somebody, you know the gorgeous type of mulatta African-American beauty. Or depending on the movie’s politics, or its hidden agenda, he might be with some white woman, like when they give the beauteous Raquel Welch, considered their most beauteous white woman, to Jim Brown for a lover. I guess you could call that the Pocahontas mode in reverse, like they’s always talking about racism in reverse. I guess if I was more sophisticated politically, I could have more to say ’bout that.
What is it about me that you like? he asks. I’m talking about Ray. What is it about me that you like? What is it that attracted you to me?
Seems like it’s me supposed to ask that. I says, reaching over and putting soap on the tip of his nose, ’cause I seen them do shit like that in the movies. ’Cept he don’t do like the movies and put suds on the tip of my nose. You know, in the movies the woman puts suds on the tip of the man’s nose, then the man puts suds on the tip of the woman’s nose, and then they starts throwing suds at each other and laughing and then they’s making love. Instead of putting suds on the tip of my nose, Ray looks at me like I’m a fool, then he takes a washcloth and wipes the suds off his nose.
What woman wouldn’t be attracted to you? I asks. You’s beautiful. You’s intelligent. And you’s got a secret life.
Secret life? What do you mean? What do you mean, Nadine? He still wiping his face with the washcloth. It my Bugs Bunny washcloth, though. When I come to his apartment I bought him a Bugs Bunny towel and washcloth set. I started to bring him some wine, but then I seen that Bugs Bunny washcloth set and Bugs Bunny my favorite cartoon character. Of course, he looked at them like they was the present from a fool, but we is using them. I’s also got a matching Bugs Bunny towel and washcloth set for myself and it’s the same Bugs Bunny. If y’all watches them early Bugs Bunny cartoons it ain’t the same Bugs Bunny. The early Bugs Bunny look more like he a villain than a hero. There is something more cunning in that early Bugs Bunny.
Usually he don’t call me Nadine, so I wants to ask why he call me Nadine, and what do he see the difference between me as Nadine and me as my other names, but I says, I mean I knows you when you’s with me, Ray. But I hear all this talk about you, like you going down to Latin America and different places when people’s having they revolutions. And you going to el centro to free different people. And that story you told me about you getting deported from Mexico, you know. And then there’s the secret assistance you provide to different peoples. And there’s all your guerrilla lawyers and your friends who’s guerrillas. I believe that y’all is fighting the right fight, ’cause y’all is for the oppressed peoples. And y’all is teaching different peoples how to discipline and revolution theyselves. I have taught a few individual peoples how to discipline and revolution theyselves, but I knows that is like child’s play compared to what y’all does, and y’all’s idea of a abundant revolution for the world. I knows that you knows enough about me to know what my capacities are, and you’s got sense enough to know that I don’t belong in none of y’all’s strategy meetings. Of course, Monkey Bread would probably say that y’all undervalues my true worth. I’m thinking of this man that come to the Perfectability Baptist Church with his gun, and the preacher asked him why he was bringing a gun to church, they hadn’t had nobody to bring no gun to that church since 1919 when they was fighting them white fools in Memphis that had just seen The Birth of a Nation and thought that colored people was who that movie portrayed us to be, that we was the nation’s villains and they was its heroes and saints, and all the colored peoples gathered to the Perfectability Baptist Church to defend theyselves with they guns, and so the man says that he’s bringing his gun to church ’cause he heard the sermon was on soldiering for the Lord, so the reverend tells him that every soldier in the Army don’t carry no gun, that some peoples in the Army does other things than carry guns, and that there is even such a thing as Spiritual Warfare. So the man say, You can fight your Spiritual Warfare, Rev, and these others can do the things that don’t require no guns, but I’m gonna keep my gun, Rev. The Reverend couldn’t convince him that the sermon were a metaphor, so the man just sat in the back with his gun, being a soldier for the Lord. I knows that y’all is right, though, not to try to make no guerrilla warrior out of me, unless I could go to y’all’s guerrilla war with some type of glorified stun gun, like in them science fiction movies. ’Cause to tell you the truth, Ray, when I’m transporting revolutionaries that fought on different sides of the same revolution, I can’t tell who is who. I mean especially when they’s from them countries where it ain’t just black and white and they’s all the same color and looks like the same people and fighting each other over the purity of an idea or the purity of a religion. And some of them fools even tries to start a revolution in the back of my truck. Now you know if I don’t let no undisciplined peoples drink hooch in the back of my truck, I ain’t going to let nobody start no revolution in the back of my truck. If some of these people don’t learn how to revolution theyselves, I’m going to get back in my truck and revolution them myself. At least that’s what I’m thinking. But you knows me better than I knows you. Ray, because I tells you everything I am and most of who I’d like to be. I don’t tell people much about my childhood, ’cause that the only child I feel I’s got, the girl baby I usedta be, and for some strange reason I’ve always felt that I’s got to be her protectress. I know it sounds like a stupidity for someone to make they child self they own child and to protect her like they would they child. I remember Delgadina wanted to know why I don’t talk about my childhood. I wouldn’t even tell Delgadina that and I tells you, Ray. You don’t know my childhood, Ray, but you knows the full woman that I am and most of who I wants to be. And look at all the muscles in your arms. You don’t see muscles like that on most intellectual men. You is a macho-type man as well as a intellectual. You’s got all them books, but you still rolls up your sleeves and fights the true fight. You is a man of action as well as a thinking man. You romances me, but then you’s got friends that is genuine guerrillas, and even guerrilla women friends, some of whom is gorgeous, I means like la loba. ’Cept I guess what’s secret to me, other people knows. A lot of them peoples that knows you south of the border. I wonder what you’d be like if I went across the border with you.
Do you want to come?
I starts to make a joke out of that, but I knows he means across the border.
I’ve got to go down to Chiapas. Some of us are driving down there. Do you want to drive to Chiapas with us? We’re taking the jeep, but we can take the Land-Rover if you want to come along.
Naw. Plus I wouldn’t be going there just with you. I’d wanna just be with you.
You can’t build a revolution on just two people.
T
hat what y’all doing—building a revolution?
I go where I’m needed, where I think I can do some good.
Working with different revolutionaries?
Most of the time it ain’t the revolutionaries that need you. It’s the ordinary people.
Yeah, Delgadina was telling me about the Mexican Revolution where the people, the ordinary country-type people in the little Mexican villages they was as scared when the revolutionaries came into their little villages as they was when the federales came, ’cause they treated them the same. I mean, they didn’t see no distinction between the way the revolutionaries was treating them and the way the federales was treating them. I mean, maybe they liked the ideas of the revolutionaries, but the revolutionaries created havoc in them little villages the same as the federales. . . .
Wes got that type of soap that floats, so I’m playing with that soap. I ain’t going to tell y’all what kinda soap ’cause I don’t want to be no advertisement for me. And Monkey Bread say I’m already a advertisement for Budweiser.
I wrote this book called Pure Revolution and it dealt with that idea, says Ray. Actually, it’s a philosophical novel, not a polemical novel. It imagines a universe where ideas fight each other. Not like here, where people fight each other over ideas. Oh, there are ideas worth fighting for. I don’t mean that. Anyway, in my novel, there’s something called the Revolutionary Idea, in its pure sense. But people pervert it to mean what they want it to mean, just as they pervert all the ideas in the novel. Yet, it is the ideas that fight each other, and the truest ideas triumph. In most revolutions, the revolutionaries end up becoming the devils that they fight. I mean, once the revolutionaries are in power, they become the oppressors. That doesn’t mean I’m not for revolution. I had so many people misinterpret my book. But when I’m in countries that are having their revolutions, it is like you say, the ordinary people, they just want to get out. I haven’t just been in Latin America, I’ve been in Indonesia, China, the Philippines. . . .
That’s what I means, Ray, I don’t know your secret self.
And most of them still believe in the American Idea. I mean, the true idea of America. I think the America Idea is everywhere but America. I mean, those who have the idea of what America really means. . . . You know, you’ve started seeing these signs they’ve started putting up on these border-town businesses—American-owned—I make it a point not to patronize any of those businesses ’cause they don’t know what an American is. . . .
They think an American is just white people.
Well, I wasn’t going to say it exactly like that. There are a few whites in our group who seem to know what an American is. But they’re the exception. They’re not the rule. And even with them, they believe that they . . .
That they’s supposed to be the strategists. Like in them multiracial-type movies and shit. They’s got people of every race in them, but it’s just the whites supposed to be the strategists and the idea-makers.
To tell the truth, they become fewer and fewer. I mean, those who know what America is. That’s why I told you we’re not the mainstream Sanctuary movement.
Una unión fuerte incluye a todos, I says, thinking of that union line.
Exactly, says Ray.
How come I ain’t never heard of you? A lot of people who do what you do, they’d wants people to know about them. I mean you, Ray. They always gets on television and advertises theyselves. At least Essence magazine knows who they is and gives them awards, and they makes them stars who don’t do nothing but be stars, look like stars that don’t do nothing but be stars, or they appears on them television documentaries, like when they first did that documentary about the Nation of Islam, not that y’all is a Nation of Islam. Or at least somebody like Bryant Gumbel knows about them and puts them on TV. They might be minor leaders, but television knows about them. To tell you the truth, when that nun sent me to you, at first I thought you’d be white, and then when I saw you was colored, I thought at least you’d be somebody colored I had seen on television.
Ray takes the Boating soap out of my hand and puts it in the soap dish. He says nothing, then he says, I guess I have this idea that the purest revolutionary is the one who is less known. I guess I’ve thought of the others as celebrity revolutionaries, you know. I don’t mean all of them. Some of them are true. But that’s the way the media work, to confuse people, even about their true leaders.
’Cause I wouldn’ta knowed about Malcolm if he wasn’t on no television. I was just a little girl when I seen him on television. But he’s the first black person I heard to call the white people that pale thing and to tell us we was golden. And if we hadn’t seen them revolutionaries on television, them people who was playing Malcolm and el Ché at the revolution would have been playing. . . . I ain’t know who they be playing. . . . I usedta be thinking that myself, though. I remember I usedta see some of them minor revolutionaries and they be having their strategy meetings televised and it seem like they enemy would always be there knowing who they were and taking notes and shit. I usedta always have that idea myself, how could them be true revolutionaries and televise they strategy meetings or even have them in them school auditoriums, you know, I mean them revolutionaries on the different campuses, them student revolutionaries. Maybe they had other strategy meetings that they didn’t televise or didn’t have in them school auditorium, but seem like they was telling plenty of strategies to the general public. Then the people learn they strategies and develop counterstrategies. Seem like that’s why they’s so many counterstrategies ’cause all they strategies on television. Maybe that’s why they even give Raquel Welch to Jim Brown to try to confuse the people. Me and Monkey Bread we used to watch them strategies on television all the time and that inspired Monkey Bread to have her revolutionary party. But then I know there’s a lot of people who wouldn’t let nobody lead them if they didn’t know who they are. They’d be saying, Who are you? ’Cause I don’t know who you are. I ain’t seen you on TV.
I don’t lead people. I help people acquire the knowledge to lead themselves. I’m still acquiring knowledge myself. We have advisors, spiritual, economic, political, legal, all kinds.
I’ve heard some people call you the General.
Those who feel they need a general. But I’ve never believed that everyone has to be a warrior, like you’ve acknowledged. When you look at societies, they have the warriors, the intellectuals, the working people, the artists.
You tries to be everything, I says. I means you lets us others pick and choose who we wants to be, but you tries to be everything.
He said nothing, then he said, I don’t mean a caste system where you make the people be one thing or the other. Or even a de facto caste system, where it’s usually the poor who fight the wars. So we allow people to do what’s in their capacity to do. We have people with us who just teach English as a foreign language, for example, who’ve never even been to a detention camp. I know you don’t like going to the detention camps.
Naw, Ray. And I ain’t like you, Ray, trying to be everything. I just drives my truck. They’s got people sitting out there all day in the hot sun and treating them like cattle. It looks like them Nazi concentration camps. I’m having dreams about them detention camps and it’s me sitting in them. God. Ray. You ain’t supposed to treat people like that, that’s human beings.
That’s why we need more people like you.
What do you mean?
’Cause you identify with people on the human level. I mean, we need the grand theorists, the strategists like Alvarado, who have the grand ideas about humanity in general, defending rights and freedoms, as principles. . . .
I starts to ask him why Alvarado they grand theorist, but then I ain’t heard him at none of them strategy meetings, so I can’t ask why he the grand theorist. Then I’m thinking ’bout some story that Delgadina read to me once, some Russian story. One of the characters was just a ordinary sailor, he didn’t have no ideas about humanity in general, but he were always going a
round showing his concern with peoples on a little, individual basis; but then there was this other sailor who were the intellectual and he had all the grand ideals for humanity, but he had no tolerance for peoples on the little, individual basis. So I guess that what Ray means, that his group need both them kinds, the kind that ain’t tolerate no fools like Alvarado and the kind like me that tolerates every kind of fool they is. Which ain’t the exact truth. I tries to discipline the hooch drinkers. I drinks Budweiser, but that ain’t hard liquor. And now that Monkey Bread is sending me that root tea from the Daughters of Nzingha I don’t drink as much of that Bud. I’m thinking all that, though, while Ray talking. If peoples could tell a polyphonic story, then y’all be listening to me tell my thoughts whilst y’all’s is also listening to Ray’s talking. I knows they is those amongst y’all that has got the conceit that I can’t think and listen at the same time, but that is another hidden talent that I has. And can even watch TV whilst I’m listening and thinking. This is the only bar in town that caters to the Indians, someone says on my little pocket TV that’s perched against the bathroom door.
Warriors like the other Ray. You say I try to be everything, but. . . . And you’ve met the other people in our group, our artist who helps with the documents, our guerrilla lawyers, our other refugee workers.
Y’all’s even got y’all’s own comedian. Then I think he’s going to tell me his own idea or ideal that he has of hisself, but he don’t.
So we need people like you, he says. I need someone like you.
I needs you too, Ray, I says. I means it, but I’m also thinking if that’s what we’d say if we was in the movies and whether we’s supposed to reach for each other now and start a-kissing. I knows that in the movies the peoples don’t spend all they time in a love scene just a-talking to each other. Then I says, I don’t go with y’all to them detention camps, though. I went to one with Maria when she was trying to get her cousin out of one. But that wasn’t no detention camp. They had jailed her and Maria and Journal and me went there and had to prove that she would have resources if she got admitted to America, and so Maria says she could work with her making dolls and showed them her bank account. And I had to prove that I’m a resourceful person even though I ain’t even her cousin, just ’cause I went there with them, and had to sign some kinda affidavit that I knew Maria. I don’t know what that was about, I just said that I knows Maria and told them that she is a young woman of substance. I think Maria’s cousin returned to Mexico, though. But if Delgadina becomes a private detective, then Maria can hire Delgadina to search for her cousin.