by Gayl Jones
New York City.
I think she’s going to ask him why they’s going to New York City, ’cause I wants to know myself. She don’t ask him, though. Maybe she already know him so well that she already know why he going out there. Or maybe that Eden Pride from New York City. Or maybe he like that artist I heard on TV who said you don’t know if you’s a true artist till you tries to be a artist in New York. Lotta artists thinks they’s artists till they tries to be a artist in New York. I wants to ask him whether he’s taking his sculptures to New York.
I don’t get out there to New Mexico.
If you own you some property out there you might. The Navajos take pretty good care of it. But it does need fixing up. Lotta folks when they come out there and see it’s Navajos running it they don’t want to stay there. You know what I’m saying. I think you oughta keep your ownership but I’ll sell the Navajos mine. They the managers. You don’t have to go out to New Mexico to manage that motel.
If that’s what you think is best, Charlie T.
Then he give her them papers, tip his cowboy hat to me, and stroll out of the cantina.
That’s him, she said, like a fool.
I got me another Budweiser and took one of the stools that was closer to her.
He’s looking good, she said, folding up the papers and putting them in her apron pocket. Last time I seen him he looked like he been through a season in hell. Course that was when he was married to me. I can’t fault Eden Pride none. I wish I coulda kept him looking that good.
And you know I’m sitting there wondering if this the same Delgadina. Then one of those vatos comes in the bar and she serves him a whiskey, fritos and salsa.
You look like you been through a season in hell, she said.
I didn’t know whether she was talking to that vato or remembering Charlie T. Juarez.
Now don’t y’all ask me no more about that Charlie T. Juarez ’cause I only seen him once. Years later, when I was living in New Mexico my ownself, I seen someone, I thought was him. He was with a Chicana, though, and nobody coulda mistaken her for no Eden Pride. I mean with a name like Eden Pride. Naw, it wasn’t Delgadina either.
Here’s a letter somebody sent you from Paris, say Delgadina, and reach under the bar.
Paris? I asks, then I’m wondering who know me in Paris and how they know to write me c/o Delgadina.
Who I know in Paris? I’m asking myself, then I’m thinking maybe it my legendary uncle Buddy Johnson, but he wouldn’t know nothing about my whereabouts or about Delgadina; then I’m thinking it Nefertiti Johnson, ’cause I did send her a fan letter; I thought maybe it were from Maria’s cousin, that maybe she had immigrated from Mexico to Paris, but she ain’t know about Delgadina neither.
CHAPTER 16
I SIT UP AT THE BAR AND OPENS THE LETTER, then I order me another Bud Light and goes to one of them booths to read it. I don’t sit near the crazy gringa, ’cause she be telling me her crazy gringa stories whilst I tries to read it. Anyway she reading her own mail from Paris, probably that Sophie woman.
Dear Nadine,
I is writing to you c/o Mr. Delgado’s cantina ’cause everybody know where that is. I forgot to bring my address book, and we’s in Paris.
Didn’t I say come to California and see the world? My star and I is in Paris, the City of Lights, girlfriend. (Even got Bud Light.) It’s just like the picture books, ’cept my star says she bored. Is we in the same Paree?
She’s doing a movie. She plays a seventeenth-century French duchess who likes to collect specimens from Africa, like the Hottentot Venus, and put them on display in them intellectuals’ saloons. I plays one of the African specimens. My star wanted to play one of the randy whores, but she the duchess. I’m sending you a book of poetry about the Hottentot Venus by a African-American woman author.
They’ve even got a Rajpoot Indian frequenting the saloon. Anyway this Martinican man rescues the Hottentot woman from being put on exhibition in the saloon. I’m in love. In the movie, though, people pay to see my steatopygia, my buttocks. You know these Europeans has always been crazy. You look like the Venus Hottentot. They’s got a lot of mosquitoes in Africa says the woman who plays the Hottentot, who’s a real Hottentot. I told her you looks like her.
I ain’t no private detective, but in my investigations, though, I have discovered the following about your true uncle Buddy:
After the war he spent some time in France where he was in love with this French woman who turned out to be a collaborator with the Germans during the war, but she was so beautiful that after they had her up to Cognac, they released her, but when they seen her with a Negro at least some of the French, because they believed all the American tales, wanted to send her up to Cognac again, so your uncle returned to America. He spent some time in the States and returned to France during the period of the Algerian war, when he was in love with an Algerian woman who the French claimed was a conspirator and he helped her to escape and they escaped to Spain, I believe. Either that’s your uncle or somebody else’s uncle, but they’s got the same name. I met a woman named Madame la Sagesse who told me their story. She’s rather disillusioned with Paris but still comes here, she says, to visit her African friends.
They’s a lot more splivs in this Paris than you would imagine. They Jim Crows people over here too, though. Marseilles is the gateway to Africa.
A lot of the people you think is splivs here in Paris, though, is North Africans and Algerians and ain’t even Afro-French, though they’s got a lot of them Afro-French. Madame la Sagesse who claims to be descended from the real Venus Hottentot is from one of the islands, although when she’s not in Paris she spends most of her time in Quebec.
The Luxembourg Gardens is beautiful. Our pension is on the Rue Bourbon-le-Château.
When he ain’t acting, my Martinican friend teaches a course in stage design. He is also a watercolorist. He ain’t like a lot of intellectuals who thinks they’s supposed to lead you around by the nose. His name is the French word for fisherman but it sounds like the French word for sinner because in French the word for sinner and fisherman sounds kinda alike.
He wants to take me with him to Amsterdam. He don’t like my nickname, Monkey Bread, and calls me by my real name Cricket, which ain’t my real name neither. I think you and Mr. Freeman are the only ones who know my real name. He has a room in an Ethiopian hotel where I even met a real African prince. Can you imagine me roaming around Europe with some man I hardly even know? I might go to Amsterdam. My star supposed to be doing a movie in Amsterdam.
Yours,
Monkey Bread a.k.a. Cricket
P.S. You said you couldn’t remember how I got my nickname Monkey Bread. ’Cause I used to be real light-skin when I was a girl—what they used to call yellow in them days—so first my nickname were Banana, but then this little boy be saying, Banana? Banana ain’t nothing but Monkey Bread. Then everybody start calling me Monkey Bread. Course I don’t look like Monkey Bread now, you know, but they still calls me Monkey Bread. And even you still calls me Monkey Bread. You know, I think I have figured you out, Nadine. I think you are like that Mrs. Wisdom. I think you are attracted to people who you think represents culture and superior intelligence. I don’t mean always they culture, the European culture. I remember that we was always acquaintances growing up and we starred in plays together, but when we become real friends was when that English teacher told everybody that I wasn’t as dumb as they thought I was. Then you started believing that you could learn from my intelligence. I’m not saying it’s something that you knew that you were doing. I mean like that Delgadina in Texas City, and then that man that you won’t tell me nothing about. I think they likes you because of your powerful personality and you is attracted to them because of what you can learn. The reason I likes you is because you is the freest woman I know. You tells people what you wants to tell them and refuses to tell them what you don’t. You might lie a little and say that it is for security reasons, but that is because of the knowledg
e that you have acquired about people. You know how we is. You have certainly told me over the years more than I have needed or wanted to know. But you is also sort of my protectress. Do you remember when you and John Henry had to rescue me? Everybody was talking revolution. I think I wanted to start a revolution among our ownselves. There’s a woman who belongs to the Daughters of Nzingha and every time anybody say something to her about revoke tion she say revolution yourself or talk about how people got to revolution theyselves or how you would say it revolution us ownselves. She believes in the other types of revolution ’cause the rumor is that she finances them, but I guess that is only for them peoples she is convinced have revolutioned theyselves first and that she can trust to revolution others. I think she must be a free woman, but peoples say she have psychological problems, so I thinks you is freer than her, Nadine, ’cause you is both sane and free. It’s kinda easy to be free when you’s crazy. But then you is a slave to your insanity or you manipulates it, like Mrs. Wisdom’s cat in that poetry. Nzingha has the superior wisdom and is the wisest woman I know—do that make you want to join the Daughters of Nzingha—and has the freedom of her own womanhood, but she has the Daughters of Nzingha to contend with, and so has to be a example to us, but you don’t have to be a example to nobody but yourself.
I puts Monkey Bread letter into my shirt pocket and go up to the bar. They ain’t much business in the bar, so Delgadina sitting up there reading E. D. Santos. She a Chicana woman writer, I think Delgadina ideal of the Chicana woman writer or the educated Chicana or something. I don’t think she known to the publishing establishment, though, ’cause Delgadina always got to order her novels.
Somebody come up to Delgadina and say something.
I’m reformed, she say.
I ain’t know what she talking about. I’m wondering what Delgadina got to be reformed about—least the Delgadina I know. Then I think I hear her say something sound like, You better reform your own ass. ’Cept I ain’t sure if that what she saying. Then she saying something in Spanish. And then she giving whoever the man is a copy of one of the E. D. Santos books to read. I ain’t read them myself, so I can’t tell y’all what they’s got to do with reformation. Or maybe it’s that people has got to reform they ownself.
I sits up at the bar drinking me another Bud Light. But I also thought the letter was from Ray. ’Cause I ain’t know his whereabouts. I pays for them beers and gives Delgadina a tip—she say she ain’t want no tip, but I always gives her a tip anyway, ’cause she the bartender, then I goes out, gets in my truck and heads for the mission school, ’cause I know if anybody know he whereabouts, the whereabouts of Ray, it be that nun. Got to call him Father Raymond, though. Got to remember he Father Raymond.
But she telling me that the immigration authorities is wise to him and he don’t want to compromise the movement. We in her office in the mission school. I’m talking about the nun who first introduced me to Ray and them new Underground Railroad people. She ain’t behind her desk now, that nun I’m talking about, but standing in her nun’s habit looking out the window into the courtyard at them Mexican and Native American childrens. They’s having they recess, playing kickball and other children’s games. She a bigger woman than she seemed the first time I seen her behind that desk when she thought I’d come there to apply for that housekeeper job, and she a broader-shouldered woman. Talking about that John Henry Hollywood’s having Egyptian shoulders. She got Egyptian shoulders. I don’t know if the real Egyptians got shoulders like that or just them in them museums. Or maybe just the aristocratic Egyptians be having shoulders like that. At first I didn’t think she were the same nun, though, but she got the same mannerisms as that other nun. She scratching underneath her wimple, and I’m thinking it must get hot and itchy and sticky underneath that wimple, especially in South Texas, and be wondering how them nuns be wearing all them habits in South Texas anyhow, but then I be thinking about them desert peoples in North Africa that wears clothes that looks like them habits. I be thinking she might take that wimple off, though, but she don’t. Probably that’s why they got a lot of them plainclothes nuns like they got them plainclothes detectives and shit.
They was in the classroom, her and them Mexican and Native American childrens, then when she seen me coming up to the mission school she come to the door of the mission school and motioned me into the classroom. Them Egyptian shoulders be looking almost as wide as the door of the classroom. So I come in the classroom and I sat in the back of the class till they did they geometry, that Euclidean geometry I think, then she send them out to play. But I be watching her drawing them circles and triangles and shit on the board and solving them theorems, and they be talking about different-type angles and shit. I didn’t know that elementary schools learned that geometry and solved them theorems and shit; I thought that geometry were just high school. I be pretending it me up there teaching them that geometry, but I don’t understand a lot of that shit, excuse my French, so I just starts rereading that letter from Monkey Bread, ’cause I don’t much like classrooms anyhow like I said and that Monkey Bread letter transport me to Paris, France, and I be thinking that if that Delgadina do become a private detective maybe I could hire her to hunt up my uncle Buddy Johnson. Of course I couldn’t afford to be sending her to that Paris, though. Delgadina she be talking about how they uses them computers, like I said, a lot of them modern-day private detectives and maybe she just put my uncle Buddy name in that computer and find out exactly what boulevard in that Paris he is and where he soul food restaurant, or maybe I go to that Paris and hunt for my legendary Uncle Buddy my ownself. You my legendary uncle Buddy Johnson? I be asking. And he be saying he didn’t know he legendary. And I be telling him how he even in a storybook, at least somebody in a storybook with the same name as my uncle Buddy. But that nun, she real dexterous at that board teaching them kids that geometry and drawing them circles and triangles and shit. And them kids real bright too though some of that geometry look like Greek. When I glance up from Monkey Bread letter she drawing a circle without even using one of them machines. I thought you supposed to use them machines when you draw a circle. I try drawing a circle on Monkey Bread’s letter but it don’t look nothing like a circle. And she be talking to one of them kids who say he want to be a architect and she be saying them architect gotta know that geometry.
But that nun she be tugging on her wimple and be telling me about how she be getting one of them new computers for them kids so’s they can keep up with the modern world. You can even learn you that geometry on them computers, she be saying, with that new computer software you be learning that geometry and all kinda math and science even that astronomy and she be wanting them kids to be able to compete in the modern world, not just in their little villages in Mexico or Mexico City or South Texas. She be telling me how some of them Mexican kids come across the border to go to her school and then they gotta go back across the border and they’s some Americans, Norteamericanos, that don’t even want them to come across the border to go to school, ’cause they’s some of them that’s petitioning the state government maybe even the federal government so’s that them kids won’t be allowed to cross the border to go to school.
They be wanting to change the law so’s the Mexican childrens can’t come across the border to go to school, you know, they be having to stay in Mexico. I be telling her about them trade shows ’cause they has the most newfangled computers and shit, that a lot of the most newfangled computers are at them trade shows even before they’s on the market, you can find every type of computer at them trade shows, but I don’t say “and shit” ’cause she a mm.
The kids both them Mexican and Native American kids you can hear them talking that Spanish on the playground, though some of the Native Americans they be talking some of them Native American languages, maybe that Navajo or that Yaqui, if them Yaqui Indians got them a language called Yaqui. First time I heard Yaqui, though, I be thinking they said Yankee. The nun she be telling me that the mission school is
more enlightened than it used to be. They used to ban the kids from talking they own language, even on the playground. The Native American kids they weren’t allowed to speak they native languages and them Spanish kids they weren’t allowed to speak that Spanish. ’Cept she say most of them Native American kids they be speaking that Spanish with them Mexican kids, and I know that ’cause like I said I be hearing them speaking that Spanish, though she know some of them native kids they speaks Navajo like I said and some of them other native languages. She be saying she trying to learn some of them Native American languages herself, but she be saying a lot of them native languages is more difficult to learn than them European languages, though she say she know a few words in Navajo and Náhuatl. I think she say Nahuatl, ’cause she be saying that Nahuatl a language too. And she be showing me a book with some of them native languages and a lot of them do look like Greek and a lot of them native words is longer than them German words. Especially one of them Canadian Indian languages she show me, but she say she be specializing in the native languages of the Southwest. But in them old days before that mission were enlightened, them Native American and Mexicans and native Mexicans, they had to just speak English at the mission school, and even on the playground they had to speak English. But now they’re more enlightened. On the playground the kids can speak Spanish or they can speak they Native American languages, but it’s only in the classroom that they must speak English, except for Spanish class they can speak that Spanish. And maybe if they have one of them Navajo classes they be speaking Navajo, but I be thinking they should get them a real Navajo to teach that class or a real Yaqui if they be teaching them a Yaqui class. And then I be wondering if she not just the same gringa nun I first met, but is she a real gringa ’cause she ain’t sound as gringa as when I first seen her and then I be thinking that maybe she one of them gringa-looking Mexican women or Mexican American women ’cause they’s gringa-looking women in Mexico same as African-looking women.