Rudy & Pyrate have GOT to read this story. Google Toni Cade Bambara.


][<


Gorilla, My Love
by Toni Cade Bambara

That was the year Huna Bubba changed his name. Not a change up, but a
change back, since Jefferson Winston Vale was the name in the first
place. Which was news to me cause he'd been my Hunca Bubba my whole
lifetime, since I couldn't manage Uncle to save my life. So far as I was
concerned it was a change completely to somethin soundin very
geographical weatherlike to me, like somethin you'd find in a almanac.
Or somethin you'd run across when you sittin in the navigator seat with
a wet thumb on the map crinkly in your lap, watchin the roads and signs
so when Granddaddy Vale say "Which way, Scout," you got sense enough to
say take the next exit or take a left or whatever it is. Not that Scouts
my name. Just the name Granddaddy call whoever sittin in the navigator
seat. Which is usually me cause I don't feature sittin in the back with
the pecans. Now, you figure pecans all right to be sittin with. If you
thinks so, that's your business. But they dusty sometime and make you
cough. And they got a way of slidin around and dippin down sudden, lik
maybe a rat in the buckets. So if you scary like me, you sleep with the
lights on and blame it on Baby Jason and, so as not to wast good
electric, you study the maps. And that's how come I'm in the navigator
seat most times and get to be called Scout.

So Hunca Bubba in the back with the pecans and Baby Jason, and he in
love. And we got to hear all this stuff about this woman he in love with
and all. Which really ain't enough to keep the mind alive, though Baby
Jason got no better sense than to give his undivided attention and keep
grabbin at the photograph which is just a picture of some skinny woman
in a countrified dress with her hand shot up to her face like she shame
fore cameras. But there's a movie house in the background which I ax
about. Cause I am a movie-freak from way back, even though it do get me
in trouble sometime.

Like when me and Big Brood and Baby Jason was on our own last Easter and
couldn't go to the Dorset cause we'd seen all the Tree Stooges they was.
And the RKO Hamilton was cloased readying up for the Easter Pageant that
night. And the West End, the Regun and the Sunset was too far, less we
had grownups with us which we didn't. So we walk up Amsterdam Avenue to
the Washington and /Gorilla, My Love/ playin, they say, which suit me
just fine, though the "my love" part kinda drag Big Brood some. As for
Baby Jason, shoot, like Granddaddy say, he'd follow me into the fiery
furnace if I say come on. So we go in and get three bags of Havmore
potato chips which not only are the best potato chips but the best bags
for blowin up and bustin real loud so the matron come trottin down the
aisle with her chunky self, flashin that flashlight dead in your eye so
you can give her some lip, and if she answer back and you alread finish
seein the show anyway, why then you just turn the place out. Which I
love to do, no lie. With Baby Jason kickin at the seat in front, egging
me on, and Big Brood mumblin bour what fiercesome things we goin do.
Which means me. Like when the big boys come up on us talkin bout Lemme a
nickel. It's me that hide the money. Or when the bad boys in the park
take Big Brood's Spaudeen way form him. It's me that jump on they back
and fight awhile. And it's me that turns out the show if the matron get
too salty.

So the movie come on and right away it's this churchy music and clearly
not about no gorilla. Bout Jesus. And I am ready to kill, not cause I
got anything gainst Jesus. Just that when you fixed to watch a gorilla
picture you don't wanna get messed around with Sunday School stuff. So I
am mad. Besides we see this raggedy old brown film /King of Kings/ every
year and enough's enough. Grownups figure they can treat you just
anyhow. Which burns me up. There I am, my feet up and my Havmore potato
chips really salty and crispy and two jawbreakers in my lap and the
money safe in my shoe from the big boys, and here comes this Jesus
stuff. So we all go wild. Yellin, booin, stompin and carryin on. Really
to wake the man in the booth up there who musta went to sleep and put on
the wrong reels. But no, cause he holler down to shut up and then he
turn the sound up so we really gotta holler like crazy to even hear
ourselves good. And the matron ropes off the children section and
flashes her light all oer the place and we yell some more and some kids
slip under the rope and run up and down the aisle just to show it take
more than some dusty ole velvet rope to tie us down. And I'm flingin the
kid in front of me's popcorn. And Baby Jason kickin seats. And it's
really somethin. Then here come the big and bad matron, the one they let
out in case of emergency. And she totin that flashlight like she gonna
use it on somebody. This here the colored matron Brandy and her friends
call Thunderbuns. She do not play. She do not smile. So we shut up and
watch the simple ass picture.

Which is not so simple as it is stupid. Cause I realize that just about
anybody in my family is better than this god they always talkin about.
My daddy wouldn't stand for nobody treatin any of us that way. My mama
specially. And I can just see it now, Big Brood up there on the cross
talkin bout Forgive them Daddy cause they don't know what they doin. And
my Mama say Get on down from there you big fool, whatcha think this is,
playtime? And my Daddy yellin to Granddaddy to get him a ladder cause
Big Brood atin the fool, his mother side of the family showin up. And my
mama and her sister Daisy jumpin on them Romans beatin them with they
pocketbooks. And Hunca Bubba tellin them folks on they knewws they
better get out the way and go get some help or they goin to get trampled
on. And Granddaddy Vale sayin Leave the boy alone, if that's what he
wasnts to do with his life we ain't got nothin to say about it. Then
Aund Daisy givin him a tasteof that pocketbook, fussin bout what a damn
fool old man Granddaddy is. Then everybody jumpin in his chest like the
time Unle Clayton went in the army and come back with only one leg and
Granddaddy say somethin stupid about that's life. And by this time Big
Brood off the cross and in the park playin hadball or skully or
somethin. And the family in the kitchen throwin dishes at each other,
screamin bout if you hadn't done this I wouldn't had to do that. And me
in the parlor trying to do my arithmetic yellin Shut it off.

Which is what I was yellin all by myself which make me a sittin target
for Thunderbuns. But when I yell We want our money back, that gets
everybody in chorus. And the movie windin up with this heavenly cloud
music and the smart-ass up there in his hole in the wall turns up the
sound again to drown us out. Then there comes Bugs Bunny which we
already seen so we know we been had. No gorilla my nuthin. And Big Brood
say Awwww sheeet, we goin to see the manager and get our money back. And
I know from this we business. So I brush the potato chips out of my hair
which is where Baby Jason like to put em, and I march myself up the
aisle to deal with the manager who is a crook in the first place for
lyin out there sayin /Gorilla, My Love /playin. And I never did like the
man cause he oily and pasty at the same time like the bad guy in the
serial, the one that got a hideout behind a push-button bookcase and
play "Moonlight Sonata" with gloves on. I knock on the door and I am
furious. And I am alone, too. Cause Big Brood suddenly got to go bad
even though my mama told us boud goin in them nasty bathrooms. And I
hear him sigh like he disgusted when he get to the door and see only a
little kid there. And now I'm really furious cause I get so tired
grownups messin over kids just cause they little and can't take em to
court. What is it, he say to me like I lost my mittens or wet on myself
or am somebody's retarded child. When in reality I am the smartest kid
P.S. 186 ever had in its whole lifetime and you can ax anybody. Even
them teachers that don't like me cause I won't sing them Southern songs
or back off when they tell me my questions are out of order. And cause
my Mama come up there in a minute when them teachers start playin the
dozens behind colored folks. She stalk in with her hat pulled down bad
and that Persian lamb coat draped back over one hip on account of she
got her fist planted there so she can talk that talk which gets us all
hypnotized, and teacher be comin undone cause she know this could be her
job and her behind cause Mama got pull with the Board and bad by her own
self anyhow.

So I kick the door open wider and just walk right by him and sit down
and tell the man about himself and that I want my money back and that
goes for Baby Jason and Big Brood too. And he still tryin to shuffle me
out the door even though I'm sittin which sows him for the fool he is.
Just like them teachers do fore they realize Mama like a stone on that
spot and ain't backin up. So he ain't gettin up off the money. So I was
forced to leave, takin the matches from under his ashtray, and set a
fire under the candy stand, which closed the raggedy ole Washington down
for a week. My Daddy had the suspect it was me cause Big Brood got a big
mouth. But I explained right quick what the whole thing was about and I
figured it was even-steven. Cause if you say Gorilla, My Love, you
suppose to mean it. Just like when you say you goin to give me a party
on my birthday, you gotta mean it. And if you say me and Baby Jason can
go South pecan haulin with Granddaddy Vale, you better not be comin up
with no stuff about the weather look uncertain or did you mop the
bathroom or any other trickified business. I mean even gangsters in the
movies say My word is my bond. So don't nobody got away with nothin far
as I'm concerned. So Daddy put his belt back on. Cause that's the way I
was raised. Like my Mama say in one of them situations when I won't back
down, Okay Badbird, you right. Your point is well-taken. Not that
Badbird my name, just what she say when she tired arguin and know I'm
right. And Aunt Jo, who is the hardest head in the family and worse even
than Aunt Dausy, she say, You absolutely right Miss Muffin, which ain't
my real name but the name she gave me one time when I got some medicine
shot in my behind and wouldn't get up off her pillows for nothin. And
even Granddaddy Vale -- who got no memory to speak of, so sometime you
can just plain lie to him, if you want to be like that -- he say, Well
if that's what I said, then that's it. But this name business was
different they said. It wasn't like Hunca Bubba had gone back on his
word or anything. Just that he was thinkin bout gettin married and was
usin his real name now. Which ain't the way I saw it at all.

So there I am in the navigator seat. And I turn to him and just plain
ole az him. I mean I come right on out with it. No sense goin all around
that barn the old folkstalk about. And like my mama say, Hazel -- which
is my real name and what she remembers to call me when she bein serious
-- when you got something on your mind, speak up and let the chips fall
where they may. And if anybody don't like it, tell em to come see your
mama. And Daddy look up from the paper and say, You hear your mama good,
Hazel. And tell em to come see me first. That's how I was raised.

So I turn clear round in the navigator seat and say, "Look here, Hunca
Bubba or Jefferson Windsong Vale or whatever your name is, you gonna
marry this girl?"

"Sure am," he say, all grins.

And I say, "Member that time you was baby-sittin me when we lived at
four-o-nine and there was this big snow and Mama and Daddy got held up
in the country so you had to stay for two days?"

And he say, "Sure do."

"Well. You remember who you told me I was the cutest thing that ever
walked the earth?"

"Oh, you were real cute when you were little," he say, which is suppose
to be funny. I am not laughin.

"Well. You remember what you said?"

And Granddaddy Vale squintin over the wheel and axin Which way, Scout.
But Scout is busy and don't care if we all get lost for days.

"Watcha mean, Peaches?"

"My name is Hazel. And what I mean is you said you were going to marry
/me/ when I grew up. You were going to wait. That's what I mean, my dear
Uncle Jefferson." And he don't say nuthin. Just look at me real strange
like he never saw me before in life. Like he lost in some weird town in
the middle of night and lookin for directions and there's no one to ask.
Like it was me that messed up the maps and turned the road posts around.
"Well, you said it, didn't you?" And Baby Jason lookin back and forth
like we playin ping-pong. Only I ain't playin. I'm hurtin and I can hear
that I am screamin. And Granddaddy Vale mumblin how we never gonna get
to where we goin if I don't turn around and take my navigator job serious.

"Well, for cryin out loud, Hazel, you just a little girl. And I was just
teasin."

"'And I was just teasin,'" I say back just how he said it so he can hear
what a terrible thing it is. Then I don't say nuthin. And he don't say
nuthin. And Baby Jason don't say nuthin nohow. Then Granddaddy Vale
speak up. "Look here, Precious, it was Hunca Bubba what told you them
things. This here, Jefferson Winston Vale." And Hunca Bubba say, "That's
right. That was somebody else. I'm a new somebody."

"You a lyin dawg," I say, when I meant to say treacherous dog, but just
couldn't get hold of the word. It slipped away from me. And I'm crying
and crumplin down in the seat and just don't care. And Granddaddy say to
hush and steps on the gas. And I'm losin my bearins and don't even know
where to look on the map cause I can't see for cryin. And Baby Jason
cryin too. Cause he is my blood brother and understand that we must
stick together or be forever lost, what with grownups playin change-up
and turnin you round every which way so bad. And don't even say they sorry.


XXX

--
To terminate puerile preservation prattling among pals and the
uncoffee-ed, or to change your settings, go to:
<http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/bullamanka-pinheads.html>