by Gayl Jones
They really do have cocoa police.
Oh, yeah.
There’s a place called Cocoa, Florida, and all the police are Cocoa Police.
We is the Cocoa patrols. We patrols Florida for all you Negroes and Seminoles, says Monkey Bread. We was patrolling y’all’s asses throughout slavery times and we is still patrolling y’all. We is the Cocoa patrols. We patrols all the Cocoa around South Florida. Nadine, I does believe that you is the runaway slave Aunt Blossom. We does believe that you is the same Aunt Blossom on this runaway slave poster. We is quite convinced that you is the same Aunt Blossom that ran away from Master Bwana. We knows that you is the one who is active in the Underground Railroad. We knows you ain’t no Harriet Tubman, but everybody can’t be Harriet Tubman. Rub-a-dub-dub get out of that tub. We is taking you back to South Florida, Aunt Blossom. Hush. I wants to hear this subversive conversation.
John Henry leaves the bathroom and returns with a funnel so’s he can hear the conversation.
Oh, yeah? asks Ray. So anyway, we were the cocoa police and they played the other police, and we outmaneuvered them all the time. So when we were playing those child’s games, well, I didn’t feel any different from them, and those games allowed me to show my cleverness. Well, that’s the best they’d called me was clever. The mother of the Irish boy when she was serving us milk and cookies said that she’d heard I was very clever. But the thing that happened that made me realize the consequences of being different was. Well, all the boys usedta run across this woman’s lawn. It was a nice long lawn and the boys just liked to run across it. I’d always be respectful, so I wouldn’t run across it. But one day I decided I’d be like the other boys and run across this woman’s lawn. So the next thing I know she’s out on the porch scolding me. Telling me that I’m a bad boy, that I’m the most despicable boy in the neighborhood. Now she’d seen the other boys run across her lawn plenty of times, even been out there and watched them run across it and just smiled at them. But me I did the same thing and I was a sneaky, bad, and despicable boy. So I stood there and let her scold me. I thought that would be all of it. Then the next thing I know this policeman comes to my house, not a cocoa police, and he’s got a warrant for me to be brought into juvenile detention for trespassing on this woman’s property, and I’m branded a juvenile delinquent and get the reputation for being the bad boy in the neighborhood, even though I was no different from the other boys.
You said you were more clever.
I mean, in my essential humanity I wasn’t different from the other boys. When I read Twain I saw myself too, not Jim, but the clever boys. My cleverness then became referred to as cunning. I was a cunning, sly, sneaky little boy. I stopped playing with the little white boys and just sat on my porch. I read or played Chinese checkers or games like that. I’d watch them still run across the woman’s lawn, and there were no consequences. But I was the juvenile delinquent of the neighborhood. They brought me before a judge and everything. I had been trespassing, but what was boyhood behavior with them was a criminal act with me. It was then that I learned what law was. In the abstraction. And in the enforcement.
I know what your story means.
Yeah?
That’s what you’s doing now. That childhood memory is what you’s doing now. I mean, they lets the white boys and girls, all the peoples they consider white, run across the American lawn, but then when the colored boys and girls, the peoples they considers nonwhite, run across it, then they starts enforcing the laws. I mean the laws is there, but they enforces them at they own discretion. Or they makes laws that say little colored boys and girls can’t run across they lawn. . . . Delgadina is interested in that, though. She is always reading these books about how racism, sexism, and classism influences the law. I knows one of them books that she got talks about that. But she say she ain’t just got book knowledge of that. She say that she usedta belong to this group that usedta go and monitor the courtrooms, and they usedta monitor these places where people takes complaints. She say a lot of times people of color would come and give they complaints and that the peoples supposed to take complaints would discourage or even refuse to take they complaints, but then when gringos would come, especially if they had complaints against peoples of color, the peoples that takes complaints would always be ready to take they complaints. She ain’t say what that group of hers did besides just document and monitor all them abuses. Some of them books that she got say the same thing, but she have got more than book knowledge. I knows that on television I were watching one of them cop shows, and this female cop pulls these white youngsters over and discovers that they has drugs and she lectures them and scolds them and then sends them on they way and tells the audience that they’ll remember that lecture and scolding and won’t do drugs. She don’t book them for possession or take them to the court or nothing. Then I’m watching another show and they gets this person of color with the same amount of drugs and ain’t even have all the drug paraphernalia as them white youngsters—which suggests that maybe they ain’t just possessors of drugs but dealers, and they don’t lecture him and shit, they charges him with possession of drugs and he become part of the criminal justice system. I think he a Chicano. But when you study them law, you learns that they is just discretionary. Them white youngsters they have a different idea of the cops than the peoples of color. But that’s why Delgadina tell me not to believe them when they says that peoples of color is a criminal people, ’cause every group is just as criminal. Some they just lectures and scolds. She have monitored with this group the criminal justice systems all over the world and it is always the dominant group that has the less peoples in the criminal justice system, and it ain’t because they is less criminal-minded peoples. Why she say that even if you goes to Mormon country, where the Mormons dominates the other white Christians, you would think that them other white Christians is criminal peoples. She even read to me the depiction of non-Mormon whites in Mormon country from a book that she have, and it sounds just like peoples sounds when they is describing peoples of color. They is depicted in all of the same stereotypes, ’cause the non-Mormon whites don’t dominate in Mormon country. So I knows what you means from book knowledge and more than book knowledge. I wish us didn’t have to spend all us time thinking and talking about race, though. But this country were built on race. And there is always something in America to remind you that race matters. Personally, I think that is one of the controls the peoples has is to keep you thinking and talking about race so’s they can think and talk about everything else. Sometimes they thinks and talks race, but they considers it marginal, whereas for us it’s primary. Sometimes I refuses to think and talk race. But to tell you the truth, whenever I even goes to my trade shows, race is there, ’cause they is peoples that looks at me like I not supposed to be interested in the modern and newfangled electronics. So the story you tell me about that white woman is just the story of America. It is like one of them leitmotifs that Delgadina talks about. I think even Delgadina wanted to become a lawyer once, but when she discovered the true meaning of the law, ’cause she monitored it for herself, it just made her cynical. If she do decide to become a private detective I think that that is how she might use her knowledge of law. And I think she would have more freedom than she would have being a lawyer. That Delgadina she is like them Renaissance women ’cause she know about everything. Most peoples they don’t imagine no Chicana like her. Even when I watch Comedy Central on BET, all they Chicanas is just hoochie women. I laughs at they accent myself. In fact, I laughs at my own accent when I hears them comedians using it. When I hears Shuckie Duckie, I think that his name, and some of them other southern-style comedians using my accent I laughs. It would be interesting to hear a intellectual type of comedian to use my type of accent but to do intelligent humor. You know the type of humor that is generally associated with intellectual humor. But they still makes humor out of everybody’s accent, though. Shuckie Duckie were talking about playing his comedy act in Japan where they referr
ed to him as Shucka Ducka, you know, making comedy out of the Japanese accent. Shucka Ducka-san. I probably couldn’t imagine Delgadina myself if I didn’t know her. But that white woman turning you into a childhood criminal for just running across her lawn that is just the story of America. I likes to collect the stories of America, especially the colored people’s stories of America. I knows all the white people’s stories of America. I has always been more interested in the colored people’s stories of America, ’cause they ain’t all in the books. All the white people’s stories of America ain’t in all the books neither, but they gets more opportunity to get in the books than the colored people’s American stories. I means us own whole voices. I’s traveled all over America and any person of color who has got a story to tell, I listens. They is a lot of people of color who is used to telling white people they stories, but they ain’t usedta telling another person of color they stories. They is peoples that has to relearn how to tell other peoples of color they stories, ’cause they is things they don’t have to explain. But they is so used to explaining theyselves and they motives to white people that they thinks they has to explain to me. I knows who they is without them telling me. ’Cause I has learned to listen. I knows the story of America. But the story of America is everybody’s story. Another thing I don’t like, though, is even us is deluded into thinking that the significant events of us history is only when it have to do with white people, that us can’t be significant independent of white people. As if peoples of color don’t have a story unless it converges with the white man or the white woman’s story. Perhaps sometimes you’ll tell me the story of your whole boyhood.
Ray look at me but don’t say nothing. I know I ain’t told him the story of my whole girlhood. I know I ain’t told him my whole story neither. I ain’t know why I said that, ’cause I know peoples don’t tell you they whole story.
The strange thing about it is that years later that woman discovered she was colored too, say Ray. It was during the years of Roots and she decided that she’d trace her roots and traced them back to Jamaica. Well, she thought they were some old wealthy British Jamaican family, maybe owners of some large cane plantation, you know, so she goes to Jamaica to find the patriarch of her family. And when she goes to the little village she finds out the patriarch of her family is a little black man. They took her up a little goat path to the little black man’s house. . . .
I’ve heard that. A lot of rumors where Roots influenced white people to trace they roots, and a lot of them when tracing they roots discovered that they own roots led them to Africa. That not all they roots led them to Europe. Some of they roots even led them to Asia. Maybe that’s why they’s whites who wants a new definition of whiteness, ’cause they knows that they themselves can’t maintain themselves as white with the old definition of whiteness. They’s them that say all peoples has they origins in Africa, though. But white people themselves in America is discovering the colored world. A lot of the peoples that they thought was white they is discovering resembles more the colored people of America than the so-called whites. They might coopt them for white and allow them to play white, but they is colored peoples. They still believes in the supremacy of whiteness, it just seems that they is in the process of modifying the old definitions. Even us African Americans is modifying us definitions, ’cause we sees all the colored peoples who resembles us but claiming they’s white, or claiming they is neither black nor white. I knows who I am myself. What did she do?
People say she went insane. The people that were with her came back to the States. They say she stayed in that little house. All the family had moved to America, but they still had that little house there. And she stayed there, they say, and just went insane.
She coulda still played white in Jamaica, ’cause Delgadina said she went to Jamaica once and they thought she was white. She didn’t have to go insane. She coulda just stayed in America and played white.
Yeah. Except she knew what that little black man meant in America.
Well, I still think she coulda continued to play white. Wasn’t no cause for no insanity. Or she coulda gone out there to California, ’cause Monkey Bread says there’s so many mixed people out there that they’s got different rules for whiteness than everywhere else in America. I mean if discovering the nigger in her woodpile as the old people usedta say were enough to make her crazy.
Nigger in her woodpile?
You know that old expression the old people usedta have. They’d see certain white people and say they must have a nigger in they woodpile.
Naw, I never heard of that.
I think everybody’s got a little nigger somewhere in their woodpile myself. Even them that claims European. They just tries to make you think that Othello was the only Moor over there. Delgadina say them Moors was over there for centuries. And more Moorish knights than Lancelot. And there weren’t just one Desdemona fond of them Moors’ good looks. And them enchanted Moorish princesses was the ideal of beauty. They knows they’s got them in they woodpile, that’s why they prefers to call them Moors. But don’t nobody want that nigger in they woodpile.
What do you mean?
I mean ’cause they always gets the best of theyselves to represent theyselves and always gets the worst of us to represent usselves. And the worst of usselves is that nigger. That’s the worst of usselves. So don’t nobody want that nigger. . . . But I don’t wanna talk that talk with you. You’s my seventh love, well, you’s my sixth love and my seventh love.
Say what? Now you know he’s giving me that look that men give women.
I mean, there’s this woman in our neighborhood that usedta write poetry and she’d sometimes read her poetry to me. Well, she would write plays and poetry and stories and all kindsa writings. A lot of good poetry, and better poems than this one, but my favorite one was about the seven loves.
MY SEVENTH LOVE
My first love was puppy love.
My second anticipation
My third was the love of movie stars,
My fourth Imagination
My fifth a stronger love
termed infatuation
My sixth was a greater love
A mature situation
Along came my seventh love
That Cupid must have shot
And Cupid must have shot me too
For that Love hit the spot.
I was a little girl, that little poem helped me to understand the different kinds of love. I mean, little girl love and mature love. So I knew that every love wasn’t love. Course when I seen that little figurine of Cupid I didn’t think he were the proper representative for love, so that’s why I calls you my sixth and seventh love. That’s just a little poem to make children understand about love. She’s got adult people’s poetry too.
There’s some adults I know that need a poem like that, he said.
Yeah, ’cause we’s only got one word for love. ’Cause I knows when I wants your loving, that ain’t all I mean. I mean, what the peoples thinks I mean. Or wants to think I mean. When I recited that poem for Delgadina and told her that poem helped me to understand love, except for that Cupid, then she said, We ain’t all got the same Cupid. So that’s still my favorite poem about love. ’Cause I know I ain’t got the same Cupid as that little plaster of paris figurine. You know them little plaster of paris Cupids that people likes to put amongst they whatnots?
Yeah.
We of the Cocoa Patrol knows that you is Aunt Blossom and this must be that rebel that got our aunt Blossom the bestest Aunt Blossom on us plantation involved in that Underground Railroad, ’cause we knows that Aunt Blossom on her own would not have participated in liberating nobody. Now that we has learned, Aunt Blossom, about your connection to the Underground Railroad, we knows that you is a good storyteller, tell us all about it, Aunt Blossom, (describe everybody, you writing this down, John Henry? Name names and describe hideouts, and how exactly did y’all escape us best Cocoa Patrols. You is the most cocoa of the cocoas. While we is brin
ging you back to South Florida you can tell us some of your stories. Why, Aunt Blossom, it’ll be just like Chaucer when he’s got them pilgrims on they pilgrimage, and name names make sure that you names names ’cause you can’t tell no good story, Aunt Blossom, and if you is good at drawing maps we’d like a few maps as well and provide us with all the details, yes Aunt Blossom, we knows how suggestible you are and that Ray have got you convinced that you should be liberating people instead of fixing us our favorite of your cornbread and cornpone and corn pudding and quality protein cornflakes and corn-fried potatoes and yam sandwiches and corn candy and Peruvian watermelon salad. . . .
Then Monkey Bread seem like she become Gladys Knight of Gladys Knight and the Pips, ’cept she a combination Gladys Knight and a preaching woman. She say, Aunt Blossom, don’t you listen to them patrollers, escape from them Cocoa patrols, Aunt Blossom, and keep on keeping on, you is too strong, Aunt Blossom, not to keep on keeping on, we is too strong, Aunt Blossom, not to keep on keeping on, you is too strong, Aunt Blossom, not to keep on keeping on, we is too strong, Aunt Blossom, not to keep on keeping on. And while she singing that, John Henry is singing, Too strong not to keep on keeping on, keep on keeping on, keep on keeping on, keep on keeping on.
Nadine, that ought to be the motto of your new trucking company, Keep On Keeping On. When you ships via the Mosquito Trucking Company you knows that you is shipping with a company that’ll keep on keeping on. Then she becomes a preaching woman again: