Some Sing, Some Cry

by Ntozake Shange

  Lawrence complimented Mabel on her organization skills. “Breakfast for twenty people, and the hotcakes are still hot!” Everybody got grits, eggs, biscuit, sausage, and preserves, to boot. “So this is Southern hospitality!”

  Cinn took a moment aside with Jesse. “I’m so proud of you,” she said. “All that you’ve done.”

  “If I didn’t have you to push me at first, I wouldn’t have got this far,” he mused and looked at his little church now teeming with folks, the scattered groups about the grounds—all waiting on his word. He put his arm around his cousin, who was more than a sister. “You were the first one to get me to say anything. Now cain’t shut me up.”

  Abbott, Tokyo, and James all wanted to participate actively in the march. Young James had the idea that they should bring the instruments they could carry and accompany the march with music. Abbott suggested that they could play rhythmically to keep the march full of spirit. Tokyo asked Alelia if she’d join them. Alelia hesitated at first, but finally she softened at the joy and openness she felt in Tokyo’s entreaties. All four of the young folk approached Jesse, who guffawed, then chuckled slowly and said, “I was thinkin’ you might wanna perform some at the church rally aftuh. But children, I don’t know if you should be carryin’ anythin’ but the signs to the march. Those instruments look expensive. Lord knows we don’t want ’em to get wet. They might turn the water hoses on us. And I’m sure the dogs might like to get a nice bite outta that drum hide.”

  No one had seen much of Joshua, Jesse and Mabel’s son. It turned out he was painting placards, END SEGREGATION. FREEDOM NOW! 1861–1961, A HUNDRED YEARS IN LONG ENOUGH. While the signs were drying around him, the sounds of Ray Charles, Nina Simone, and Charles Mingus danced in his head. When Joshua overheard the children’s entreaty to his father, he grabbed for James’s big bass drum and began to mark a rhythm. James took the cue instantly and began a counterpoint on the snare. Not to be left out, Abbott swiped Aunt Mabel’s triangle and added a treble part. Joshua nodded, and the three boys marched off to gather the student marchers who were milling about the Reverend’s home. “Amen, Amen, and the child shall lead them,” Jesse said as he looked upon his son, and when Jesse saw Joshua and his nephews were in place, he motioned that the march should begin.

  Alelia watched as the men gathered to lead a march that she had largely helped to organize. Will you look at this? I’ve been relegated to just someone in the crowd. She felt Tokyo take her hand. “Come on, Lia. Don’t pay them any mind. I like your hair.” Led by Tokyo, Alelia jockeyed through the group to be with her family up front.

  Over the rhythm of the drumbeats, Jesse bellowed, “Do not err, my beloved brethren. ‘Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.’ James chapter one, verse nineteen. Do you understand what the Lord is saying to us?”

  The crowd of about seventy folks responded, “Yes, Lord!” “Amen!” “Hallelujah!” “Preach, brother!”

  Jesse continued, “We’re gointa march to Bessemer Town Hall. We march in peace to let the world know we want to vote, we want to sit anywhere we please on the bus and the trains, we want to eat in decent restaurants and to walk in the front door of every public place. We want what every other American citizen wants. No more, no less! Just equal to the rest!”

  From the moving crowd came voices muttering, “Yes!” “Speak on it!” “Tell the truth!” Voices picked up Jesse’s closing couplet, and turned it into a chant, “No more, no less! Just equal to the rest!” Their steps were rallied by the percussive rhythms provided by Joshua, James, and Abbott as Jesse went on with his sermon, “But brethren let me remind you, we come in peace, we are not a rageful folk. ‘For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. Chapter one, verse twenty. We want our rights, and neither the heat of the sun nor the might of the sheriff will turn us away from our goals. In the face of fear, we have faith. In the face of power, we have truth. In darkness, we have the light. Wrong-doers, we got the right.”

  In a short time the deep green of the Alabama forest gave way to the public square of the town of Bessemer. Alelia boldly stepped forward, parting the line of men, and linked arms with her father. As Jesse smiled pridefully, she began a strong “We Shall Overcome.” The congregation assembled from the nearby towns of Midfield, Lipscomb, Kimberly, and Leeds joined in as they approached a formidable assembly of state troopers carrying loaded rifles and holding back a fierce pack of dogs.

  Jesse paused about fifty yards away from the courthouse steps and raised his hands for the chanting and drumming to stop. In the silence, pregnant with intent, he directly addressed the sheriff. “Sheriff Campbell, we’ve come here in peace to register to vote. If you let us by, there’ll be no need of trouble.”

  The sheriff took a couple of labored arthritic steps down the granite stairs with a great grin on his face. “Ya nigras best be goin’ on along. This is not the day to register and sides ya’ll ain’t eligible. I’d advise you to go on away now.”

  In the silence that followed, Jesse’s flock remained still. “Sheriff, we’ll come every day till it’s the right day,” Jesse responded ruefully, “and we’ll stay heah today in case the person in charge shows up.”

  The sheriff’s face turned reddish orange, his voice filled with bitterness and disgust. “I tol’ y’all to git. Now git!” No one moved. “Ya ain’t got business heah, git goin’. The first person who comes nigh these steps, I’ll shoot. Do you nigras understand?”

  No one moved. In the quiet, Joshua put his drum down and walked alone. Stepping ahead of the marchers, he walked boldly toward the courthouse. The sheriff signaled the troopers, who cocked their rifles, but Joshua kept moving. From somewhere in the right flank a shot rang out. Joshua fell to his knees, but kept on moving, bracing his body, dragging himself with his arms. The sheriff acted as if he didn’t see the newspapermen or the cameras. He nodded and another shot rang out. This time Joshua fell flat, gushing blood. Alelia and Mabel ran toward his body and cried his name.

  In disbelief, Jesse walked toward his son. Praying the whole time, he lifted the boy from the ground. His congregation surrounded him, his son’s blood spilt upon the ground.

  Pandemonium ensued. Some marchers scattered, some stood stunned. Some troopers advanced, others hesitated, the sheriff calling for order through the bullhorn. A group of the students hoisted Joshua up and put him into the back of Mr. Goodenough’s car. Miz Patrick and Miz Butler tended to Mabel, who fell backward, then ran to the car where her son lay dying. While Cinnamon shielded the children and tried to push them back, Lawrence gathered Jesse, who remained crumpled on the ground, and bustled him into the car. Then it sped off toward Birmingham. “Joshua honey, please don’t die, hang on, chile!”

  Tokyo and Lia stood together in the dusty street, watching the bedlam as if in a dream. Not knowing what to do, Tokyo took Lia’s hand and sang out, “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me . . .” She didn’t even know she knew the song. Didn’t understand the words. But it seemed to calm the square. The remaining marchers gathered in a cluster and, following the two girls, retreated back to the church. No ambulance came. In Jefferson County, they were for whites only. No doctor appeared. The nearest emergency room that would admit Negroes was in Birmingham. The Walkers, together with the marchers, took solace in song. It had always saved them before, but there would be no victory that day.

  For years, Abbott struggled gravely with what happened to Joshua. These feelings he dared not speak to his family. Instead, he found a place for his yearnings in the mournful music of Ben Webster and the frenzied wails of Albert Ayler, and even Maceo. For hours at a time he locked himself in his room with his horn, his cry. His saxophone signaled a different attitude, a dissonant, impatient, and furious resistance.

  After that fateful trip South, such a riff was running through his mind when Abbott was casually walking through the South Side of Chicago, catching the trail of sounds from rehearsal session
s at the jazz and blues clubs that lined 47th Street. A voice on a loudspeaker disrupted his reverie. “Listen, my brothers and sisters, the white man is the manifestation of Yacub,” the strident voice declared, “in Biblical terms, none other than the Devil. Do you understand me?” A crowd had gathered around a van bedecked with speakers. “Amen” and “Speak Brother,” “Tell the Truth!” The young serious men with clean pressed suits and bow ties, who meandered through the crowd selling copies of Muhammad Speaks, amused him. Just for the hell of it, Abbott bought one. He found mention of the Republic of New Africa, Robert Williams arming poor black people with weapons to defend their homes from the Klan. He was surprised by the international news coverage of people of color, but was most intrigued by the column by a Malcolm X.

  His head swirled with a whole set of possibilities he had never even considered. When Abbott arrived home, he heard Thelonious Monk’s piano and above that his mother shouting for Lawrence to turn off that “awkward two-fingered piano playin’.” He’d heard these squabbles all his life and they were never resolved. His parents loved each other so much, yet they were complete opposites in taste. They had grown tolerant and laughed at each other. But he was in no laughing mood. He had bought a bunch of Muhammad Speaks as well as How to Eat to Live by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad himself.

  “Dad, I’ve got to talk to you. There are Negroes out there who don’t believe in that ‘turn the other cheek’ mess. They believe we should fight for our rights and separate from the white people.”

  Overhearing, Cinn was taken aback. How could her son be voicing such foolishness? “Abbott, we’ve been through this so many times. We’re full-fledged Americans and deserve to be treated as such. Those folks you’re talking about want a revolution or an uprising or something that’s never going to happen. Don’t you see what happened right here to the Black Panther Party? They’ll get killed is all.”

  “Like Joshua?” The venom in Abbott’s voice stunned his mother to silence. “I watched Uncle Jesse try to scoop his son’s guts off the street. You don’t have to worry about me. I won’t go down like that. Time comes, I’ll be carrying a gun.”

  As he stomped out of the room, Cinnamon started right behind him. Lawrence caught her by the arm.

  “I’ll talk to him.”

  “Talk to him? When?”

  Abbott could hear Tokyo flipping from one colored radio station to another in her bedroom, her voice drowning out the records. The Motown sound and Chicago’s Chess Records had monopolized the national market. Abbott thought of his sister Tokyo and her aspirations and just shook his head. Baby love feel-good music, they preferred dancin’ in the streets to organizing and protest. For his part, he was ready to leave the planet. With a deep sigh he thought of running off to play with Sun Ra’s Heliocentric Arkestra. There was so much he could learn from John Gilmore and Marshall Allen. He could hear June Tyson’s voice luring him into galactic adventure and imagined Tokyo in her place. Just then, Tokyo knocked softly and entered. “Hey, Abbie. I got a new song. Wanna hear it?”

  28

  As pigeons skedaddled over the tiled roofs of Paris, Raoul was bleeding from the nose and mouth, his hands bloodied with the blood of others. Three French hoodlums had attacked him, ruined his amplifier and threatened his guitar, but Raoul was not one to give in easily, especially while they shouted, “Sale Arabe, sale noir! Dirty Arab, filthy black!” This made Raoul furious. He knew he had a knife in his leather jacket. But where? They laughed as they tried to break his fingers, but Raoul Johnson miraculously got out of their hold and found his knife. “Sale Arabe, sale noir, enh,” he seethed as he jabbed at them. Dirty nigger rang in his ears. He protected his guitar as best he could.

  He was worried lest these hooligans follow him from the Métro station at Les Halles to the Twentieth Arrondissement where he lived with his parents Baker and Raschel. But the fellow with the stringy brown hair didn’t budge when Raoul pulled the knife. The other two laughed some more.

  “Isn’t it just like a filthy Arab to have a knife?”

  Suddenly Raoul lunged forward and slashed his sharp blade through the cheek of one of the blond bigots. Then he was ready for the other two. As they backed away, he grabbed his guitar and boarded the Métro. His hands were covered in blood, but his guitar was safe. I’ll have to stay away from Les Halles for a while. He decided again to speak frankly with his parents about his desire to move to the States. As the train zoomed down the tracks he improvised his own rendition of Jimi Hendrix’s long-fingered electrified psychedelic bluesy rock. That’s the sound of the future! He kept telling his father this, but Baker Johnson, whose jazz combo was a Paris institution, would hear none of it. Nonetheless, he would have to listen to his battered son this night.

  Raoul’s mother, Raschel, was Genya’s daughter. He had grown up hearing of how his grandmother Genya had battled against the Nazis in Paris and how Raschel’s sister Bruria fought for the independence of Algeria. Raschel busily tended to her wounded son, all the while asking questions about the brawl. How many? What names did they use? How had he succeeded in fighting them off? She was proud of him, three against one! Just as Raschel finished wrapping Raoul’s torso, her husband’s key rattled the door.

  Raoul jumped away from Raschel’s protective care and ran up to his father. “Papa, I’m so glad you’ve come. I was attacked tonight by three dirty Frenchies. They tried to break my fingers. They called me ‘sale Arabe, sale noir’! How can I be both, Papa, a filthy Arab and a filthy nigger? I was born here. I’m a Frenchman, just like they are, I told them and I cut them, all three!”

  Raschel was piqued. “No, you are not a Frenchman just like them. You are black, American, Arab, and Algerian. You must carry yourself like that. Always, mon fils.”

  Baker set down his trumpet case, embraced Raoul, and sighed, “Son, I settled here to escape what you just went through, but it looks like racism just keeps showing its ugly face. But you’ve got to stop carrying that knife. That will land you in a French jail for a very long time. Now give it to me.”

  Raschel cried out, “You’re leaving him with no protection.”

  Baker said, “I’m leaving him with a future. That’s what I’m doing. So you beat them, three to one, huh?”

  “Oui, Papa. They didn’t get a chance to touch my guitar.”

  “That’s my man, that’s my man, Raoul, but no weapons.”

  “What revolution was ever successful with no weapons?” Raschel scoffed.

  Raoul was often totally confused by his parents’ conflicting ideas. He grabbed his instrument and took refuge in his room where he could still hear Raschel and Baker accusing each other. Raoul put on his headphones and pumped up the volume on his electric guitar. He’d heard this dispute all his life. Black, American, Arab, and Algerian. He didn’t feel like he belonged anywhere.

  On Chicago’s South Side the crowd at the Regal was as wild as the ticket: Sly and the Family Stone, Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles, and, opening for them, the Walker Family Band. Tokyo looked vampish in her sequined stockings, head feathers, and mini-mini dress. Abbott and James were in Temptations-style two-toned tails. Leading the band of twelve musicians, they rocked the house, but it was clear that Tokyo was the real star. Her brothers were just her sidemen. She had the power over the people that night. With her renditions of Diana Ross, Tina Turner, Justine “The Bells” Washington, even Billie Holiday and Dakota Staton, it was Tokyo the crowd wanted, and she knew how to work them, too. She had done her studying and it had done her well. She cruised through a medley of the group’s local hits, but it was her song they wanted, and she knew how to sing it. In flaming red satin and stiletto heels, Tokyo approached the footlights barely whispering; the whole hall silently attentive. Then she belted out a note like Etta James, and launched into the party groove that everybody had been waitin’ for, “Jump Up!” Number 12 on the R&B charts with a bullet.

  “Jump up,

  You been givin’ me the runaround,

  Jump
up,

  But I got no time for none of your messin’ round,

  Jump up,

  I’m tired you tryin to put me down,

  Jump up,

  Listen to what I’m throwin’ down,

  You’re through tellin’ me what to do,

  Cuz I’m through with you!

  Jump up,

  Right now like I’m tellin’ you,

  Jump up,

  You’re through tellin’ me what to do,

  Jump up,

  Wait, wait, here’s the breakin’ news,

  I through messin’ around with you,

  I’ll dance all night, dance all night, dance all night if I want to!

  Jump up,

  Come on everybody now,

  Jump up,

  Up on your feet and party down,

  Jump up,

  I’m gonna show you how,

  To dance all night, dance all night, dance all night if you

  want to!”

  While her brothers led the eight-piece backup band in synchronized choreography, Tokyo was shakin’ and bakin’, kickin’ her taut muscular legs as she slithered from one side of the stage to the other, seductively tossing her head forward so her cluster of curls fell over her eyes just so. The song she had written after a petulant tantrum, thrown when her parents wouldn’t let her go to a party near the projects, had become a defiant teenaged anthem of sexual rebellion. When they finished, the crowd wouldn’t let ’em go. They shouted “Amen” and “Go girl” till the lead act in the wings was getting impatient. The teenager threw up her hand and sang ever so sweetly into the mike, “Now way-ay-ait uh minute . . .” An encore of the Isley Brothers’ “Shout” left the audience roaring for more.

  Waiting in the wings was a white girl with curly hair and hippie clothes. She tried to catch their attention. Tokyo and James ignored her, but Abbott stopped to listen. “My name is Bethany Cooper,” she said. “I represent one of the anti-war groups. A week from now we’re having a coalition of all the anti-war groups to stage a citywide rally. Will your group play? ‘Jump Up!’ That song could be powerful.”