Of course John's mother was much older than the other black radical poets. She was in her forties and most of them were in their twenties or early thirties. She looked young, though, and engaged in the same kind of inflammatory rhetoric they did. She became very popular on the circuit because she said pithy, pungent, unexpected things, and because she undermined the other poets in hilarious and harmless ways. Students who heard her read almost always laughed loudly and raised their fists and stomped and yelled "Right on!" This was extremely gratifying to her, because she wanted more than anything in the world a rapport with people younger than herself. This is not to suggest she used the Black revolution to bridge the generation gap, but rather that she found it the ideal vehicle from which to vindicate herself from former ways of error.
No, she had not, as several of the other poets claimed, truly believed in nonviolence or Martin Luther King (she had found his Southern accent offensive and his Christian calling ludicrous), nor had she ever worked as a token Negro in a white-owned corporation. She had never attended an interracial affair at which she was the only black, and it went without saying that all her love affairs had been correct.
On the other hand, her marriage to a lower echelon post-office functionary, who, though black indeed, was not suited for her temperamentally, foundered for many years, and shortly after the birth of a son was completely submerged. And though she was heard from coast to coast blasting the genteel Southern college she had attended for stunting her revolutionary growth and encouraging her incipient whiteness, and striking out at black preachers, teachers and leaders for being "eunuchs," "Oreos," and "fruits," it was actually the son of her unsuccessful marriage that lent fire to her poetic deliveries. He was never mentioned, of course, and none of the students to whom she lectured and read her poetry knew of his existence.
He had been dead for three or four years before she even began to think of writing poetry; before that time she had been assistant librarian at the Carver branch of the Municipal Library of New York City. Her son had died at the age of fifteen under rather peculiar circumstances--after removing a large and ferocious gorilla from its cage in the Bronx Zoo. Only his mother had been able to piece together the details of his death. She did not like to talk about it, however, and spent two months in a sanitarium afterward, tying a knot over and over in one of her nylons to make a small boy's stocking cap.
A year after she was released from the sanitarium she cut her chignoned hair, discarded her high-heel patents for sandals and boots, and bought her first pair of large hoop earrings for a dollar and fifty cents. A short time later she bought a dozen yards of African print material and made herself several bright nunnish dresses. And, in a bout of agony one day she drew small, elaborate sacrification marks down her cheeks. She also tried going without a bra, but since she was well built with good-sized breasts, going braless caused backache, and she had to give it up. She did, however, throw away her girdle for good.
She might have been a spectacularly striking figure, with her cropped fluffy hair and her tall, statuesque body--her skin was good and surprisingly the sacrification marks played up the noble severity of her cheekbones--but her eyes were too small and tended to glint, giving her a suspicious, beady-eyed look, the look of pouncing, of grabbing hold.
The students who applauded so actively during her readings almost never stopped afterward to talk with her, and even after standing ovations she left the lecture halls unescorted, for even the department heads who invited her found a reason, usually, to slip out and away minutes before she brought her delivery to a close. She received all payments for her readings in the mail.
And sometimes, after she'd watched the students turn and go outside, laughing and joking among themselves, puffing out their chests in the new proud blackness and identification with their beauty her poetry had given them, she leaned against the lectern and put her hands up to her eyes, feeling a weakness in her legs and an ache in her throat. And at these times she almost always saw her son sitting in one of the back rows in front of her, his hands folded in his lap, his eyes bright with enthusiasm for her teachings, his thin young back straight.
She had renamed him Jomo after his death. Softly she would call to him, "John?" "John?" "Jomo?" And though he never answered her he would amble down to the lectern and stand waiting while she gathered up her notes, her poems, her clippings from newspapers (her voluminous collection of the errors of others). He would wait for her to wipe her eyes. Then he would go with her as far as the door.
The Diary of
an African Nun
OUR MISSION SCHOOL is at the foot of lovely Uganda mountains and is a resting place for travelers. Classrooms in daylight, a hotel when the sun sets.
The question is in the eyes of all who come here: Why are you--so young, so beautiful (perhaps)--a nun? The Americans cannot understand my humility. I bring them clean sheets and towels and return their too much money and candid smiles. The Germans are very different. They do not offer money but praise. The sight of a black nun strikes their sentimentality; and, as I am unalterably rooted in native ground, they consider me a work of primitive art, housed in a magical color; the incarnation of civilization, anti-heathenism, and the fruit of a triumphing idea. They are coolly passionate and smile at me lecherously with speculative crystal eyes of bright historical blue. The French find me charmant and would like to paint a picture. The Italians, used as they are to the habit, concern themselves with the giant cockroaches in the latrines and give me hardly a glance, except in reproach for them.
I am, perhaps, as I should be. Gloria Deum. Gloria in excelsis Deo.
I am a wife of Christ, a wife of the Catholic church. The wife of a celibate martyr and saint. I was born in this township, a village "civilized" by American missionaries. All my life I have lived here within walking distance of the Ruwenzori mountains--mountains which show themselves only once a year under the blazing heat of spring.
2
When I was younger, in a bright blue school uniform and bare feet, I came every day to the mission school. "Good morning," I chanted to the people I met. But especially to the nuns and priests who taught at my school. I did not then know that they could not have children. They seemed so productive and full of intense, regal life. I wanted to be like them, and now I am. Shrouded in whiteness like the mountains I see from my window.
At twenty I earned the right to wear this dress, never to be without it, always to bathe myself in cold water even in winter, and to wear my mission-cropped hair well covered, my nails clean and neatly clipped. The boys I knew as a child are kind to me now and gentle, and I see them married and kiss their children, each one of them so much what our Lord wanted--did he not say, "Suffer little children to come unto me"?--but we have not yet been so lucky, and we never shall.
3
At night I sit in my room until seven, then I go, obediently, to bed. Through the window I can hear the drums, smell the roasting goat's meat, feel the rhythm of the festive chants. And I sing my own chants in response to theirs: "Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum, adveniat regnum tuum, fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra. ..." My chant is less old than theirs. They do not know this--they do not even care.
Do I care? Must I still ask myself whether it was my husband, who came down bodiless from the sky, son of a proud father and flesh once upon the earth, who first took me and claimed the innocence of my body? Or was it the drumbeats, messengers of the sacred dance of life and deathlessness on earth? Must I still long to be within the black circle around the red, glowing fire, to feel the breath of love hot against my cheeks, the smell of love strong about my waiting thighs! Must I still tremble at the thought of the passions stifled beneath this voluminous rustling snow!
How long must I sit by my window before I lure you down from the sky? Pale lover who never knew the dance and could not do it!
I bear your colors, I am in your livery, I belong to you. Will you not come down and take me! Or are you ev
en less passionate than your father who took but could not show his face?
4
Silence, as the dance continues--now they will be breaking out the wine, cutting the goat's meat in sinewy strips. Teeth will clutch it, wring it. Cruel, greedy, greasy lips will curl over it in an ecstasy which has never ceased wherever there were goats and men. The wine will be hot from the fire; it will cut through the obscene clutter on those lips and turn them from their goat's meat to that other.
At midnight a young girl will come to the circle, hidden in black she will not speak to anyone. She has said good morning to them all, many mornings, and has decided to be like them. She will begin the dance--every eye following the blue flashes of her oiled, slippery body, every heart pounding to the flat clacks of her dusty feet. She will dance to her lover with arms stretched upward to the sky, but her eyes are leveled at her lover, one of the crowd. He will dance with her, the tempo will increase. All the crowd can see the weakening of her knees, can feel in their own loins the loosening of her rolling thighs. Her lover makes her wait until she is in a frenzy, tearing off her clothes and scratching at the narrow cloth he wears. The eyes of the crowd are forgotten. The final taking is unbearable as they rock through the oldest dance. The red flames roar and the purple bodies crumple and are still. And the dancing begins again and the whole night is a repetition of the dance of life and the urgent fire of creation. Dawn breaks finally to the acclaiming cries of babies.
5
"Our father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth--" And in heaven, would the ecstasy be quite as fierce and sweet?
"Sweet? Sister," they will say. "Have we not yet made a convert of you? Will you yet be a cannibal and eat up the life that is Christ because it eases your palate?"
What must I answer my husband? To say the truth would mean oblivion, to be forgotten for another thousand years. Still, perhaps I shall answer this to him who took me:
"Dearly Beloved, let me tell you about the mountains and the spring. The mountains that we see around us are black, it is the snow that gives them their icy whiteness. In the spring, the hot black soil melts the crust of snow on the mountains, and the water as it runs down the sheets of fiery rock burns and cleanses the naked bodies that come to wash in it. It is when the snows melt that the people here plant their crops; the soil of the mountains is rich, and its produce plentiful and good.
"What have I or my mountains to do with a childless marriage, or with eyes that can see only the snow; or with you or friends of yours who do not believe that you are really dead--pious faithful who do not yet realize that barrenness is death?
"Or perhaps I might say, 'Leave me alone; I will do your work'; or, what is more likely, I will say nothing of my melancholia at your lack of faith in the spring. ... For what is my faith in the spring and the eternal melting of snows (you will ask) but your belief in the Resurrection? Could I convince one so wise that my belief bears more fruit?"
How to teach a barren world to dance? It is a contradiction that divides the world.
My mouth must be silent, then, though my heart jumps to the booming of the drums, as to the last strong pulse of life in a dying world.
For the drums will soon, one day, be silent. I will help muffle them forever. To assure life for my people in this world I must be among the lying ones and teach them how to die. I will turn their dances into prayers to an empty sky, and their lovers into dead men, and their babies into unsung chants that choke their throats each spring.
6
In this way will the wife of a loveless, barren, hopeless Western marriage broadcast the joys of an enlightened religion to an imitative people.
The Flowers
IT SEEMED TO MYOP as she skipped lightly from hen house to pigpen to smokehouse that the days had never been as beautiful as these. The air held a keenness that made her nose twitch. The harvesting of the corn and cotton, peanuts and squash, made each day a golden surprise that caused excited little tremors to run up her jaws.
Myop carried a short, knobby stick. She struck out at random at chickens she liked, and worked out the beat of a song on the fence around the pigpen. She felt light and good in the warm sun. She was ten, and nothing existed for her but her song, the stick clutched in her dark brown hand, and the tat-de-ta-ta-ta of accompaniment.
Turning her back on the rusty boards of her family's sharecropper cabin, Myop walked along the fence till it ran into the stream made by the spring. Around the spring, where the family got drinking water, silver ferns and wildflowers grew. Along the shallow banks pigs rooted. Myop watched the tiny white bubbles disrupt the thin black scale of soil and the water that silently rose and slid away down the stream.
She had explored the woods behind the house many times. Often, in late autumn, her mother took her to gather nuts among the fallen leaves. Today she made her own path, bouncing this way and that way, vaguely keeping an eye out for snakes. She found, in addition to various common but pretty ferns and leaves, an armful of strange blue flowers with velvety ridges and a sweetsuds bush full of the brown, fragrant buds.
By twelve o'clock, her arms laden with sprigs of her findings, she was a mile or more from home. She had often been as far before, but the strangeness of the land made it not as pleasant as her usual haunts. It seemed gloomy in the little cove in which she found herself. The air was damp, the silence close and deep.
Myop began to circle back to the house, back to the peacefulness of the morning. It was then she stepped smack into his eyes. Her heel became lodged in the broken ridge between brow and nose, and she reached down quickly, unafraid, to free herself. It was only when she saw his naked grin that she gave a little yelp of surprise.
He had been a tall man. From feet to neck covered a long space. His head lay beside him. When she pushed back the leaves and layers of earth and debris Myop saw that he'd had large white teeth, all of them cracked or broken, long fingers, and very big bones. All his clothes had rotted away except some threads of blue denim from his overalls. The buckles of the overalls had turned green.
Myop gazed around the spot with interest. Very near where she'd stepped into the head was a wild pink rose. As she picked it to add to her bundle she noticed a raised mound, a ring, around the rose's root. It was the rotted remains of a noose, a bit of shredding plowline, now blending benignly into the soil. Around an overhanging limb of a great spreading oak clung another piece. Frayed, rotted, bleached, and frazzled--barely there--but spinning restlessly in the breeze. Myop laid down her flowers.
And the summer was over.
We Drink the Wine
in France
(Harriet)
"JE BOIS, TU BOIS, il boit, nous buvons, vous buvez. ..."
They are oddly like a drawing by Daumier. He, immediately perceived as Old; she, Youth with brown cheeks. His thin form--over which the double-breasted pinstripe appears to crack at the base of his spine--is bending over her. His profile is strained, flattened by its sallowness; unrelieved by quick brown eyes that twitch at one corner and heavy black eyebrows lightly frosted with white. There is a gray line of perspiration above his mouth, like an artificial moustache. His long fingers are busy arranging, pointing to the words on the paper on her desk.
She is down low. Her neck strains backward, bringing her face up to his. She is a small, round-bosomed girl with tumbly hair pulled severely back except for bangs. Her eyes are like the lens of a camera. Now they click shut. Now they open and drink in the light. Something, a kind of light, comes from them and shines on the professor of French. He is suddenly amazed at the mixture of orange and brown that is her skin.
"En France, nous buvons le vin!" The force of his breath touches her. She draws in her own. It makes a gasping sound that shocks him. He springs upright. Something stiff, aghast, more like a Daumier than ever, about him. The girl is startled, wonders why he jumped back so fast. Thinks he does not want to mingle breaths with her. For a hot flurried moment she feels inferior.
The professor takes cover behind his desk. His eyes race over the other forms in the class. He wonders what they notice. They are even worse than adult foreigners; they are children. When they see him going to the post office underneath their windows they call their friends to come and look down on his balding head. In the classroom they watch him professionally, their brown eyes as wary as his own. The blue-eyed girl begs for, then rejects, kinship. With him. With them. Her skin is white as the ceiling. The brown and rose of the skins around her do not give her a chance to exhibit beauty. By the range of colors she is annihilated. For this he feels vaguely sorry for her. But it is a momentary pang. He is too aware of her misery ever to bring it up. Hearing the bell he turns from her. For a moment his eyes lock with those of the girl who never has her French. She is dreaming, has not heard the bell, is unaware. For a moment she drifts into his eyes, but the click comes and the eyes go blank. When she passes him at the door his heart flutters like old newspapers in a gutter disturbed by a falling gust of wind.
2
The professor goes by for his mail: it is a magazine and a letter from Mexico, where he will go as soon as summer comes. He can hardly wait to leave Mississippi for even greater sun. The surrounding beauty has crept up on him gradually since his arrival three years ago. He can no longer ignore it and it hurts him, terribly. In Mexico he will find an even slower-infecting beauty. When it becomes painful he will begin to explore countries even farther south. He has been chased across the world by the realization of beauty. He folds the letter, looks with horror at the narrow walls and low ceiling of the post office, rushes out into the bright sunshine.
3
Harriet is an ugly name. She wonders if it would sound better in French. She leans forward from the weight of six large and heavy books. She is not stupid, as the professor of French thinks. She is really rather bright. At least that is what her other teachers say. She will read every one of the thick books in her arms, and they are not books she is required to read. She is trying to feel the substance of what other people have learned. To digest it until it becomes like bread and sustains her. She is the hungriest girl in the school.