American Histories

by John Edgar Wideman

  AN EMPIRE AT THAT MOMENT WHEN NO ONE

  ANYWHERE ANY LONGER ASPIRES TO THE

  EMPIRE’S STANDARDS

  What would a real Precious think watching a movie about a girl very much like her, a very heavy, very dark teenage girl with AIDS, two babies by her father, a girl who learns to read and write in order to better her life like the taxi driver’s wife in Yellow Sea crosses the water to Korea to better hers. In the darkness of the theater would a living, breathing Precious wolf down popcorn and candy. Suck up rivers of soda through a straw. How is she dressed. Who’s babysitting her very young, very ill kids. If the theater Magic Johnson’s in Harlem, not the multiplex in Union Square where I first saw Precious, would the colored crowd’s responses be in sync with what Precious feels as she watches. Would people signify, sigh, amen, cheer out loud like in the good old days at the Apollo. Is Precious disappointed at the end because the colored audience files out quietly, goes home to bed. Does she wonder why they don’t sweep her up, all the pounds and pounds of her up on their shoulders and bust through the movie-house walls. Dance her through the Harlem streets.

  * * *

  Imagine an audience of Precious composed solely of big, dark-skinned, poor, unwed teenage mothers. Are they ideal spectators. Would they laugh with real Precious at parts she thinks funny. Or would they sit still and silent. Brood. Hide from start to finish. When the houselights come on and they unstuff themselves from seats way too small for large bodies, will they chatter or avoid each other, these dozens and dozens of dark, overweight girls. Would each feel trapped in a theater full of look-alike images of herself. Feel outed, betrayed and ridiculed by a crowd of bodies indistinguishable from hers. Big, brown bodies exposed to entertain the mean eyes of others not her size, not her color. Would the necessity of negotiating rows and aisles crowded with bodies stunningly similar but each one obviously not her provoke the same sense of familiarity, the rush and claustrophobic terror anyone might feel watching a film of themselves on the big screen.

  * * *

  Imagine an audience comprised entirely of Joseonjoks—people of part-Korean, part-Chinese ancestry—watching Yellow Sea. Or watching Precious. I’ve read that Joseonjoks not really exactly welcome in either China or Korea. Mixed people divided like me by division and mixture and sorted into a category that often produces communities mired in poverty, no jobs, separate, segregated, plagued by crude violence, fear, coercion, and misconceptions. People forced to swim in a veritable sea of shitty, yellowish muck in which many drown. I am the taxi driver in Yellow Sea lugging a pregnant woman’s bulky package up steep, outdoor, wooden stairs of a teeming tenement. Raise my fist to proclaim my Joseonjokhood. Hurry back down to my cab to rescue Precious.

  JUNBI-HANI-DUL-SET-SIJAK . . . a cloud counts down in Korean. The taxi driver in Yellow Sea returns to China in a boat he hijacks from Korea. An ancient, white-haired sailor steers the boat. Watches silently, patiently as his passenger bleeds and loses consciousness. Then the sailor dumps passenger into the sea. But that’s not the movie’s end. In Yellow Sea’s final scene the cabdriver’s missing wife, suitcase in hand, reappears. Surprise. Surprise. No sign of her since she left for Korea when the movie began, now here she is walking through a deserted, eerily quiet train station. Her young woman’s flesh-and-blood body spectral as the ancient boatman and boat. Is she arriving or departing. What is she bringing or taking away in her bag. Why did she vanish. Where has she been. Is the story ending or starting up again. Where is the cabdriver. Who got drowned in the Yellow Sea.

  * * *

  In my movie about a real Precious in attendance at a film depicting her life, I seat myself next to her. She’s not a ghost behind me in a ghost Chinese cab. Not a shadow gliding across the screen. She’s massively here beside me in the dark. I sneak looks at her. Sniff her perfume. Does she notice me. Is she curious about my life. Is she sniffing me. Does she hear in a row behind us the young white woman’s sobs I recall from my first viewing of Precious in a Union Square multiplex. Or is Precious too busy with her own story, holding on to herself and letting go of herself as image succeeds image in thin air right before her eyes. Her up there. Her story. Precious and not Precious.

  * * *

  Sometimes I believe parts of a movie and disbelieve absolutely other parts, but the unfolding melodrama can still get to me. Overwhelms. Certain moments too believable. Too real. Stir up too much anguish, foolishness, anger, madness. I have to laugh sometimes during Precious as I laugh sometimes during Yellow Sea to keep from crying.

  * * *

  Does movie Precious really believe she could steal a bucket of chicken from the counter of a fried chicken joint and outrun her pursuers. Maybe better to snatch a wing, darling, or a drumstick. Who couldn’t catch you, Precious, if they seriously wanted to catch you. Your slow, ponderous body out of breath, wheezing after you walk half a block across the hood. How far you think you’d get haul-assing with a whole bucket of greasy chicken tucked under one heavy arm.

  * * *

  And that white chick in the mirror, mirror on the wall of your closet of a room. You don’t even think she’s that cute, do you, Precious. Plenty of fine colored women you’d dream about becoming before you’d dream you’re her, right. Don’t you scorn the airhead blond foolishness displayed by females who look like her in soaps, movies, sitcoms, ads. Don’t you hate her contempt, the superiority of her gaze addressing you over counters of department stores, offices, ignoring you as she sashays her flat ass past you on downtown sidewalks.

  * * *

  And what about those light, bright, think-they-cute colored boys you daydream. Nice work if you can get it, maybe, but why would you bother with those knuckleheads, Precious. You know better than to believe a word the punks say. You know their yellow skin makes them no whiter than you, and you surely understand, don’t you, girl, that your fantasy of hip-hop Hollywood/Bollywood stardom must always end with ceilings and skies crashing down on your tender head.

  * * *

  To survive day by day, my actual Precious, please tell me what resources of intelligence and spirit you deploy. Do you laugh, cry, talk to anybody, Precious. Scream, dance, argue with yourself. Watch cartoons, Oprah, movies. Do you notice bubbles of words overhead. Do you place all the blame for your awful circumstances on a terrible mother and father. Do you ever accuse poverty. Color. White people. Capitalism. The president. God. Terrorists. Yourself.

  * * *

  I am as guilty as the pretend movie we watch, Precious. Guilty of trying to put thoughts in your head. I can only guess what might be best for you to think or do. And my guesses probably wrong, corny, even if well-intentioned. Though one of my guesses is that everybody—like me, like you, Precious—must guess if they hope to sort through the enigma of being alive, adrift in a Yellow Sea.

  * * *

  An overload of information from buds stuffed in your ears. Hip-hop. Rap. Ads. Words from mothers, fathers, teachers, movies, books, politicians, preachers, TV. Too much and never enough. Especially when what feels crucially important inside matters not one iota to a world outside going about its busy, busy business. A world oblivious as the Yellow Sea. Movie of a life keeps steamrolling across the screen and you or I or the taxi driver can’t stop it. Movie never pauses to ask: Hey, Precious. Am I getting it right.

  * * *

  After the bubble/clouds, clashes in the streets, the dying and crying, after blood spilled that fails to return Precious to us, after smoke clears and the neighborhood scraped clean, hosed down, we must take to the streets again. Eight of us exit a church. Preacher and mourners file out behind us. Eight of us, women and men, carrying a coffin. More pallbearers than usual and we would be more, but for the fact only so many fit alongside the coffin. Eight also because everyone’s love and grief for Precious overflowing and the more of us who able to plant a shoulder under her oversize coffin, wrap a fist in one of its solid brass handles, the fewer left to walk alone, stand alone, empty-handed, hearts full, minds full of
an unbearable burden and not a thing to do about it. Not even share the sad job of pallbearing Precious on her last trip through neighborhood streets. No comfort. Nothing for people in the sea of faces to do except bow their heads a moment, weep or pray or turn to stone when the coffin passes. Helpless witnesses one more time, squeezed into another vast throng packing a square, lining streets, avenues, alleys through which the funeral supposed to wind, how long, how long, past every crowded station. Past each individual mourner. Past each cluster and knot of folks who gather with the faint hope the coffin may pass with dignity the spot they occupy before the authorities descend or insupportable love, grief, and anger set people off to rampage the quarter.

  * * *

  Eight dressed in black—black gloves, shiny black shoes—eight because zigzag progress through the neighborhood will cover miles, consume hours, a lifetime maybe, so a good idea on a scorching day to include extra pairs of shoulders, hands, feet, and then if one of us totally exhausted, she or he can slack off a half minute and not exactly be missed, not set the litter lurching.

  * * *

  Not one dip or sigh or falter acceptable today in the cadence of our march. Our slow-motion surge through the streets. Easy, easy. Take her easy, people. Eight also because Precious quite large. A big big girl. Not just heavyset—heavy. Big and heavy. A load, you might as well go on and say if you got to go there. A load for four, eight, sixteen, a hundred pallbearers, even if it’s only the memory of Precious inside the xxl, brass-fixtured, silk-lined, ebony coffin.

  * * *

  Not that I’m complaining. Just sharing plain truth from the point of view of one of eight brothers and sisters toting Precious. Child’s heavy. Dust and ashes of Precious a load. Her absence a load. Precious gone, never be back. Weight not gone. We must bear the weight of her death, weight of our lives.

  * * *

  Knees about to buckle first step I took and I would have wiped out next step if I didn’t remember the bubbles, the clouds. Remember to slide, glide as clouds instructed. Slide and glide the only way to get that solid lead coffin through the streets, up and down hills, across bridges, around corners, squeezed through skinny alleys, following an intricate map of the neighborhood we chant inside our heads. Not stepping or striding but a sort of slide/glide, feet barely touching the pavement, you know, like dancing salsa the proper way a Dominican guy had tried to teach me once, but I didn’t catch on. Too much freelance and jitterbug in me back then.

  * * *

  Once we have her kind of hoisted up in the air, it becomes partly a matter of holding on tight, hoping Precious doesn’t float away, and partly getting ready for the unbearable weight when she starts coming back down. We slip ourselves under her. Slip rope-a-dope out of her way. Fly her again when she’s ready to fly.

  * * *

  Almost lose her every time. Lose her like the taxi driver loses his wife when he sends her alone across the Yellow Sea. Precious never stops shivering inside the coffin. Rolls from one side to the other as if she’s small as a doll, but enough Precious weight in the empty box to drive with a single blow the spike of a tall, sturdy grown man like me down into the pavement till not even the crown of my head shaved bald in mourning shows.

  * * *

  Not about brute strength. It’s about balance and sharing. We learn to count silently to ourselves and don’t lose track. Tune our bodies to rock back and forth as Precious rocks back and forth. Learn her rhythm. Let it become ours so we always got her and she’s got us.

  * * *

  A matter of silence and listening, as the clouds foretold. Of weave, of steady give and take of shoulders and hips and feet. Partly a group vibe, part solo. Alone. Not alone. Partly forgetting, partly remembering. Like almost dead one moment, alive the next. What it takes to keep from drowning in the Yellow Sea, from going down under killing weight.

  THE IRREDUCIBLE MIRACLE IS . . . WE HAVE

  SUSTAINED EACH OTHER

  Going where. Going. Going. Old city gone. Harlem, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, Wall Street, Battery Park, towers of steel and glass gone.

  * * *

  Each time I read a cloud, words hover like music above my head. Like music that plays at the end of Precious:

  Took a long time to find this place . . . a long long time to recognize your face.

  BUNNY AND GLIDE

  * * *

  We are innocent. Our faces blacked up to make mischief not wreak havoc. Not hurt anybody. We are friendly masks. Your neighbors. Don’t you almost hear our familiar names in the aliases we have assumed.

  Innocent. Our wannabe dark color a final guarantee we are safe and you have nothing to fear. You can look right through our color if you choose and see our bright eyes, bright smiles, bright faces lighting up the darkness, yearning to play with you. Ghost dance with you. Not rob your piggy banks.

  SNOW

  * * *

  He awakens. Goes to the window, opens the curtain, pulls up the shade, and sees snow. Remembers what it is. Where it is. Looks. No snow out the window last time he looked. Where has he been.

  Asleep. Snowing as he slept. Not him snowing. It. Snow falling as he sleeps then awakens, outs himself from bed, pushes aside a curtain, pulls/draws up a shade/blind, and sees snow through the window. Sees through snow. Through himself making up a snow story. Sees snow begin after he pulled/drew down the blind/shade then closed the curtain across the window to make darkness for sleep. Sleep after his eyes close. Snow beginning before he awakens. While he slept in the dark. Falling. Snow falling. Darkness falling.

  Snow older than his story. Older than him. He cannot go where it begins. He does not know where/when/how it begins or what it is he sees as he falls, falling, fallen, fell. Night’s blackness. Snow’s whiteness. There like the push of his bowels demands attention every morning. Snow one story he tells himself looking outside through the window. Through words. Through snow.

  Sees through words as he sees through a window. As if words not there. As if they are not in the way. Like a window is there and not there if he sees through it when he awakens, pulls open the curtain, draws up, pulls up whatever else covers a window, to look out. Out there. There where he cannot know or go. What he looks at through a window, sees through words.

  GHOST DANCER

  * * *

  Small, scraggly, begging bird ghost dances in margins of the little enclosed green space I call my garden until it gets my attention and I go inside to fetch crusts of bread I save to feed it. A kind of robin, I learn from Internet pictures. Not the fat, red-breasted American robin. Tiny robin the French call an orange-throated thrush.

  It hops, darts, freezes. Sudden fits of hunger, fear, curiosity, greed. Hop-hopping, hip-hop it comes and goes or stops to profile, body slightly tilted towards me, a single black eye fixed on me. Dot ending a sentence. Then its head twitches, once, twice, side to side too fast to follow so the single eye directed at me, divided from the other by skull and beak, can show whatever’s visible to its second eye.

  Sustained fits of boldness often bring it close, hop-hopping along a trail of crumbs I sprinkle so it ends only inches from a lounge chair in which I settle myself. Close enough so I could stretch out my arm and reach down and pet the bird. Even closer if it chooses to hop up next to my hand on the chair’s arm. That close, though I couldn’t touch it, even if I tried. Too wary. Too fast. Eyes on mine. Quick pecks. Quick choices. Quick eye. Pick, peck-peck until it suddenly swoops away.

  * * *

  On a deserted stretch of beach near Toulindac I often sunbathe naked, and improbably, one day there’s the bird. Far from my garden, atop a tall boulder whose color matches the bird’s drab, mottled wing feathers. No doubt about it, same creature. Same meager size. Faded orange bib. Its beggar’s beady eye. Hunger, fear, curiosity, greed. Same silent, spying questions it overhears me ask and I overhear it ask.

  * * *

  Mind elsewhere, my eyes see a bird on a rock. I’d been halfway dozing, sprawled on a towel on warm sand, thin
king about nothing in particular besides clear blue sky, glittering sea I expected to greet my eyes each time I opened them to look around and luxuriate in the good luck that had brought me to that place, at that hour, that day. Reminding myself before I shut my eyes again to remember to write in my journal how the texture of certain mowed fields passed on the drive to Toulindac resembled the coats of vast, sleeping animals. Though many birds of various kinds frequent the beach, I wasn’t watching them nor listening to their cries, no thoughts of birds or much of anything else in my mind when the small robin appears.

  * * *

  As usual it perches long enough—four, five seconds—to let me know it’s there and sees me and knows I see it, belly empty or not, demanding to be filled. Same bird in a cove miles from my backyard, way, way too far away for it to range, and I understand, before it flies off, that back in my garden a hawk or cat or winter had gotten it.

  COLLAGE

  * * *

  In this collage I want Romare Bearden to save the life of Jean-Michel Basquiat. It never happened. Or happened and no witness of the conversation between Bearden and Basquiat while they spray-paint graffiti in a vast graveyard of subway cars:

  Do you believe writing changes a wall.

  You mean make a wall fall down. Make a new wall. That what you mean.

  Yeah. Different after we scratch on it. Different wall.

  Gotta be.

  How you know that. Who told you that.

  We’re different each time we write. You. Me. Wall gotta be.

  Scratch on a wall, it belongs to us, right.

  No. Huh-uh. Write on it, nobody owns it. Anybody walk right through it.

  No wall, where’s the writing.

  Still there. Inside the other side.