Gorilla, My Love

by Toni Cade Bambara

  Jewel heard herself laughing. This was the most she had ever known Miss Candy to speak all at once. She seemed younger somehow than the last few times she had seen her. That was good. She would need steady, sure hands when the baby burst her open. Jewel tunneled under the afghan while Miss Candy talked on. If I can just locate the—she searched for “geological” and that took some time—geological stairway, I might be able to get deep down, landing by landing, layer by layer, uncovering the layers of secrets stashed away in mothballs that won’t stay folded, layers and layers down to the nerve-lined pit of black to dig for richness with my fingers and find a someone there who’s been rummaging through the trunks and caves and knows all the terrible hurts that haven’t cracked through to the surface and been revealed in the close-ups damning her, and she’d ask, Is there madness in me, have you stumbled upon any sign of—

  “You look flushed,” Miss Candy said, suddenly there with a hand approaching her forehead. Jewel felt Paul’s hand on her spine, him telling her that if she could get the body to make the statement they could cut the lines out all together, for she was fumbling them anyway. His hand on her spine to feel the contraction, and she forcing the blood to rush there for a good rehearsal at least, no matter what she did after when he moved away. “It’s natural enough to be feverish at this time, but don’t worry, you’re in good hands,” Miss Candy patted. But when he stepped away and called for the contraction again to be sure it was visible at a distance, she felt a constriction in the spine that was not voluntary. And then he was behind the first cameraman, and she felt it again at the base of her back as if some natural growth was being first stifled then strangled. Bound and gagged she struggled through the scene and when he called finish, disgusted, she had ripped off the dress right on the spot, trying to explain about the tyranny of the cloth she’d been forced to wear as though it were the dressmaker’s fault her spine was paralyzed and the several layers of splendid costumes just beneath the skin were being shredded. Of course she had gone on much too long about it. And he had laughed that laugh. The laugh they all laughed which meant if you weren’t careful you would be destroyed. Then he told her her pacing was off, erratic, lousy. And she’d answered that pacing was a director’s duty and the editor’s craft. That’s what triggered off the argument in the car. And why she was in the back seat (thinking on this rhythm, for the past few months she was being propelled by a rhythm other than her own. As if a malaria parasite was clocking her body to its own reproductive cycles. And she’d been dumb enough to think this out with the mouth open. And he had told her that he’d been right in the first place. She should’ve gotten rid of the kid in the beginning. It was driving her crazier than she already was and it was ruining his work). Which is why he hadn’t kept his eyes on the road.

  “Tell me something, Jewel,” said Miss Candy, perching herself on the edge of the couch so she was in profile and not looking at her. “Why did you stay on with him after so long?”

  Jewel squeezed her eyes shut and searched her head for room to lay the words out so she could select carefully. How to explain that she could be the matter on which his mysterious energy could play. Radio waves were unperceived but for a suitable instrument to catch them up and transform them to something sensible. She got hold of “sensible” and decided it meant something else and what a pity. She searched her brain again, like an instrument to detect, record, snatch and reflect the energies that that

  “Like I said to Cathy—you know she was always pulling her hair out over you and Paul, she worships you, her Aunt Jewel the movie star—when a woman lives with a man for ten years she is not being abused. You understand what I’m saying, yes?”

  Jewel examined the parchment face in profile, foxed like a first edition, the head a lean affair carrying the line of the cheekbone up, the tightly braided rows of dark etched onto the scalp and barely visible in this light, the neck thin and sloping, rising up out of dainty shoulders that almost weren’t there, one arm bent with the fragile stemware now empty. The other arm, Jewel discovered, was across her, the hand on the mound rising up straight in front of her mouth. It seemed as if a furnace had fallen on her. And why had she come to this place when what she wanted was to be far from gravity and tides and words and states of emergencies and no longer open to suggestion.

  “How do you feel … about it all? You mustn’t blame yourself. People always do of course. That’s what it means to be the survivor. But … I could use something to eat. Maybe you should just have a little soup for now.” She patted the legs bunched up under the afghan. “I’m so glad you’ve come. I was expecting you right after … months ago. No one knew where you were for so long a time.” Miss Candy stretched to capacity to kiss her granddaughter, who was barely available above the woolen wrap.

  Jewel followed Miss Candy around the room. In one light she looked like salami. Bending to the fireplace with the dishes and fork, she looked like a wizened dwarf. The glint from her earrings shone like a side eye. Jewel forced an intake of air and tried to give herself over to the aromas. There was some sloshing in the pot. She would not eat the soup. It would be simple enough to just set it aside. There was clinking of metal. She waited to hear the woman set the grinder wheel in motion. But instead she heard a car-horn sound and not too far away. Then blobs of light streaking through the front drapes. Miss Candy went to the window and Jewel thought she detected a sinister grin.

  “It’s Cathy,” she said turning. And it was Miss Candy again, M’Dear, Other Mother as the young nieces and nephews called her, no one else. Jewel tried to get to her feet. You had to be on your feet to deal with Cathy. She wasn’t sure she was up to it. The strident clothes, the face sealed over in pancake, the breastplate jewelry. She had to be beaten, bruised and screamed at to reach. Jewel always felt compelled to grab her by her ears and scream hard into them, the mouth, the nose, to get to the person buried below under all the metallic sheeting and cloth and greasy cement that just vaguely let the features through but didn’t seem to affect the voice box any. She had seen Cathy last, not counting the funeral, which was a sudden five-minute notice, and she’d seen no one there but Paul, who seemed older and with much more gray hair than she remembered in real life, and she stood there joking about Dorian Gray till she realized she was talking out loud and then the fit and the diving under the flowers for cover but gagging, a week before the accident she’d seen her. Their anniversary actually, which Cathy had staged as a surprise. Which it was.

  There were ghosts in the kitchen. She had stumbled in aware of some night visitation that would reveal its purpose if she could wait. A clump of dishtowel stuff was by the door, and she wiped her feet automatically and shuffled over the sugar, gritty by the sink, past the table tumbled down with cloudy glasses. Bits of this and that were on the greasy stove. Her head was itching, scratching it produced blobs of greasy dye under the fingernails which she flicked and wiped on her bathrobe. Pumped to her mouth suddenly were last night’s poor choices and she raced to the sink and banged too hard and got scared, looking down at an elbow or a knee, poking her navel out. She couldn’t get close enough to the sink or in time.

  “Damn, baby,” he said, moving into the kitchen, meaning the kitchen. “Oh shit,” he said, meaning the smell. “It gets worse and worse. Other women don’t have morning sickness twenty-four hours around the clock every day of the year. Oh no,” as she turned to face him, the vomit plastered down the front of the bathrobe. He backed out of the kitchen, yelling from the bathroom that he was going to stay at a hotel for a few nights cause his nerves were shot. And she found herself leaning on the breadknife, asking the arbiter below her ballooning breasts if she may take the giant step.

  Cathy had come in late afternoon and found her in the bathrobe, huddled on the window-seat.

  “Look, sugar, you’re going to have to get your shit together better than this. Your door was wide open. The house is a mess. You’re a horror. The baby ain’t shaping up nearly as fat as your breasts and chins are. A
nd you’re putting Paul through a whole lotta unnecessary shit. He just called me from the Hotel Albert to come over here and get things in order and I certainly—”

  “Please stop talking.”

  “Say wha?”

  “Just shut up. Finally.”

  “Look,” coming closer and motioning her to get out of the bathrobe as she took off her coat and threw her bag on the couch. “I’ll gladly do the laundry and clean the house and shampoo your hair and deal with that atrocity tale you’re wearing, but I am not about to shut up. And I will tell you why.” She stood over Jewel and took the bathrobe by the nape of its neck and held it dangling. “What you need is a reality tester. What you got is a hard head and a niece who loves you. Now, didn’t I stand by you when you decided to have this baby, cause you need something of your own to love, right? So I’m entitled to run my mouth a little. And what I want to say is this. You gotta get out of here. You can come stay with me till after the baby and you decide what to do. It’s killing both of you whatever it is. And it’s dumb cause you both such groovy people. O.K. I’m extreme, I admit it. Best way to solve problems, I always thought, was abandon them. Know what I mean? Like there was this story that got hold of me when I was little—”

  “Please shut up.”

  “Somebody makes a pot of coffee or maybe it was a stew, no matter. And they put in salt instead of sugar. So they don’t know what to do. So—”

  “You don’t put sugar—”

  “So some bright person suggests they dump some cracked eggshells in to absorb the salt. But then the egg shells turn a funny color. Like unedible-looking. So some other Einstein decides on some kerosene which will color—”

  Jewel pressed up against the window. She could see the pavement below still wet from the rain. Cathy was moving about the room dumping ashtrays into a paper bag and fluffing up pillows and talking talking talking.

  “So they wind up with this terrible mess of eggshells and car tires and bicycle chains and whatnot and they’re tearing their hair out as to how to turn this into a good stew or pot of coffee or whatever it was supposed to be, I forget. So someone with half a brain says they should call in the lady from Philadelphia. Or the lady from Mali in some versions, depending on what folks are printing the book. And the lady strolls in with her umbrella and Red Cross shoes and dumps the shit out the back door and sets a fresh pot of water on to boil.”

  “And you are the lady from Philadelphia?”

  “And I’m here to tell you that you are losing your mind and have to get out of here.” She had gone into the kitchen now and was banging around with the pots on the stove. Jewel half expected a coffeepot with snow tires to be cooked up. She had to admit she felt better. She would get up and help. “And another thing,” said Cathy coming back with a dishtowel. “Hey, you look weird, Jewel.” Jewel felt something erupting hot and acid and churning. She leaned away from the window and tried to get up and tripped over her slipper, dragging the dishtowel out of Cathy’s hands.

  Within minutes, the candelabra went skidding across the flagstone, banging the seltzer bottles down like bowling pins. Teddy has a penchant for dying off banisters as you know, Cathy, so we killed him many times, sometimes running him through and dumping him over the banister from above, sometimes conking him over the head with the battle-ax from the iron man standing on the landing, then shoving him over the banister toward the piano. Sometimes we hoisted him on to the chandelier so he could catapult over the rail. The bear, though, was a bit dodgy at first. One of the youngsters, or maybe just a dwarf under contract from before and now no work of that kind, had stomped both eyes out. And the teeth were yellow and needed touching up, plus the bald spots. But the make-up man said he was an expert on toupee jobs. Oh yes, there was an egg in attendance. A large egg. It wasn’t in the script. Matter of fact, none of this was in the script they gave me. They do that to you sometimes to show contempt. So you can’t keep up. I didn’t bat an eye. So this egg, like I was saying. So large that the cameramen had to break it up into a thousand million

  “Cathy’s here,” Miss Candy announced, going to the door.

  Jewel got to her feet at last and had just enough time to fluff her hair where the pillows had mashed it when Cathy came in behind bushels and bushels of those flowers. Jewel heard someone screaming and saw Miss Candy run toward her as she was running out.

  Patches of open water persisted beyond the pilings, steel-gray and blue, pieces breaking off to float from the ice, resisting the freeze. Icicles hung from the underside of the wharf, a ghostly skirt dripping onto the ice below, pockmarking the surface. Jewel untied the yawl, the whiskered knot giving in crackles. Pushing off, her back to the ocean, she could see the family next door to Bad Williams’ building a fire in the yard, burning old spade handles and last summer’s bait baskets. “Winter is icumen in,” she sang, and tugged at the motor’s starter string. The charred and sooty heaps were blowing apart, gusting out of the yard and down past the wharf, streaking gray marks across the frozen surface. From this angle, she thought, I could skip stones clear across to Miss Candy’s window. She turned to meet the water ahead where it was open and the strength of the water broke up the log jams of ice, leaving dead gulls to pitch and bob on their frosty beds.

  She threw her leg over the side and was not surprised to find the water was not cold at all, warm in fact, like late summer. She cocked both cameras and steadied them on the seat beside her. She was out beyond the old mill now, only faintly heard the weird music in the rafters, and just barely seen some hairy something or others hardened on the shelves that the blades of snow made. She faced around again and took up one of the cameras. The dunes were snow castles. She shot it.

  “I’d like to listen to you, Cathy. You’ve always given sound advice, M’Dear. But I am some other mother’s rambling polar bear and we simply do not swim in similar pools.” She shot the boat seat, the spot she’d just relinquished when she stood up.

  Steadily, slowly, she hooked up the time attachment on the other camera, stooping, elevated it with the camera case. Then slowly up again to strip, stooping again to ease herself over the side. Counting the final wink as the camera whizzed, then release to the water, the last three fingers pause, then are gone. The water is warm. Hot, in fact. But she hadn’t counted on the pain. The pain that burrowed up under her tongue and pulled at the roots of her teeth, her hair, her vagina. That wrenched the hinges off her thighs and pulled her anus inside out. She was moving every which way and all at once, There’d be sharks. But she couldn’t gather enough of herself to go in one direction and avoid them. There’d be rocks. Unamenable things at the bottom to tear her and make her bleed. And there’ll never be blood enough to make her clean.

  “Don’t push any more, sugar, just breathe, just breathe.”

  “Pant, Jewel. Pant, pant, pant, dammit.” Miss Candy gave her knee a hard knock. “I said to pant now. Talk quickly. Anything. Pant.”

  “Lord iam notworthy lordiam notworthy lordam notworthit.”

  “Wasn’t she having contractions, Miss Candy?”

  “She never said a word. Numb, I think. I felt only mild thumps and pulls.”

  “Damn, I came just in time.”

  “None of us ever come in time,” said Miss Cathy.

  Jewel didn’t let on she was awake and spying. She watched the ancient dwarf pull the creature glistening with seaweed out of her left thigh. She watched them smile at the thing and then at her. The smile that meant if you didn’t plan carefully, you would be destroyed. It was best to play the scene out with a few lines and bide her time. The dwarf now had metamorphosed into a salami, but she was fooling no one. A salami can be sliced. And she’d come to the right house for sharp blades for the job. As for the metallic monster in the mud encasing, there was always dynamite. She’d have to empty her head to get some room for something befitting the sea urchin now howling for her blood.

  Sweet Town

  IT IS HARD TO BELIEVE that there was only one spring and one
summer apiece that year, my fifteenth year. It is hard to believe that I so quickly squandered my youth in the sweet town playground of the sunny city, that wild monkeybardom of my fourth-grade youthhood. However, it was so.

  “Dear Mother”—I wrote one day on her bathroom mirror with a candle sliver—“please forgive my absence and my decay and overlook the freckled dignity and pockmarked integrity plaguing me this season.”

  I used to come on even wilder sometimes and write her mad cryptic notes on the kitchen sink with charred matches. Anything for a bit, we so seldom saw each other. I even sometimes wrote her a note on paper. And then one day, having romped my soul through the spectrum of sunny colors, I dashed up to her apartment to escape the heat and found a letter from her which eternally elated my heart to the point of bursture and generally endeared her to me forever. Written on the kitchen table in cake frosting was the message, “My dear, mad, perverse young girl, kindly take care and paint the fire escape in your leisure …” All the i’s were dotted with marmalade, the t’s were crossed with orange rind. Here was a sight to carry with one forever in the back of the screaming eyeballs somewhere. I howled for at least five minutes out of sheer madity and vowed to love her completely. Leisure. As if bare-armed spring ever let up from its invitation to perpetuate the race. And as if we ever owned a fire escape. “Zweep,” I yelled, not giving a damn for intelligibility and decided that if ever I was to run away from home, I’d take her with me. And with that in mind, and with Penelope splintering through the landscape and the pores secreting animal champagne, I bent my youth to the season’s tempo and proceeded to lose my mind.