Authors: Jamaica Kincaid
Talk Stories (8 page)
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We have just had two enjoyable encounters with Garland Jeffreys, a thirty-four-year-old New York songwriter and performer. The first was at a concert in Alice Tully Hall, at Lincoln Center. We had heard his recordingsâparticularly a song called “Wild in the Streets”âbut had never seen him perform. He came onstage wearing black pants and a tailored gray pin-striped jacket (he removed it during the performance), a black T-shirt, and a tan Stetson hat. He danced around the stage for about five minutes before singing anything. The audience stood up and cheered him. He danced on as if unconscious of the cheers. Then he started to sing. He sang songsâall of them his own compositionsâabout New York, about his mother and father, about interracial love, about growing up in New York, about his own efforts to succeed as a songwriter, about teen-age rebellion, and about politics. He sang some of the songs to a rock-and-roll beat and some to a reggae beat. Whatever beat he used, he used it very
well, and we came away from the concert feeling pleased and excited.
well, and we came away from the concert feeling pleased and excited.
A few days after this, Garland Jeffreys invited us to drive out with him to Sheepshead Bay, in Brooklyn. He grew up there, and he wanted to show us part of his old neighborhood. He picked us up in a big black car, and he told the driver to go by the Belt Parkway. We got our first closeup look at Garland Jeffreys. He is a light-skinned black man with gray-green eyes and curly brown hair. On this occasion, he was wearing black pants, a regular black shirt, a blue plaid tie, and the same jacket and hat that he had worn onstage. He said to us, “I'm going to take you by my high school. I went to Abraham Lincoln High School. Then I'm going to take you by my house. We can't go in, though. My folks aren't in town. They're taking a trip across the country in a car. My folks are named Carmen and Ray. They are the nicest people.”
On the Belt Parkway, just before we reached the exit to the Abraham Lincoln High School, we saw some children playing baseball. He said, “I used to play ball right here when I was little. I was a member of the Saint Mark's Little League. I played ball here from the time I was eight. My father was a great baseball player.”
Then we came to the school. We saw some people dressed in various sports uniforms standing around the grounds. “I ran track here,” he said.
“Were you any good?” we asked.
“No,” he said, and he laughed. “There were always cats there who were faster than me.”
We drove up to the front of the school. It looked like many pictures of American high schools. He looked around and said, “Things have really changed around here. See all these apartment buildings?” He pointed to some apartment buildings just across the street from the school. “Well, they were not here. There wasn't anything around here except a little candy store across the corner. Oh, hell, let's go on.”
Garland Jeffreys directed the driver to go on to Brighton Beach. He wanted to pass by a billiard parlor where he used to play billiards, and he wanted to stop off at Irving's Delicatessen, where he and his friends used to buy sandwiches after they were through playing billiards. At the delicatessen, he bought some meatsâcorned beef and brisketâand potato salad, and some celery tonic, and we ate them in the car.
As we drove on, he said, “Do you see that sign?” We looked at a sign that said “Brighton BeachâPrivate.” He said, “When I was little, I used to wonder why my friends could go into that place and I couldn't. I didn't know what was going on. I used to do everything I could to get into that place. But just look at it. It's a nothing place. I didn't know that then.”
We drove to a section of Brighton Beach where there were some prosperous-looking houses. He said, “I used to come to this part of town three times a year. Trick-or-treating, Happy Thanksgiving, and shovelling snow.”
Then we drove to Sheepshead Bay and passed a restaurant called Lundy's. He said that his grandfather had been the headwaiter there in the twenties and thirties and that his two
uncles and his father had worked there as waiters. We drove by another restaurant, called Pips, where he said he himself used to be a waiter when he was a teen-ager. We drove by a Roman Catholic church, and he said he and his family were its only black members. We drove by a store where he said he bought his first tropical fish. We drove by a drugstore called Kips, where he said he had been a delivery boy. We drove by Ethel's Shop, where he said his mother bought her clothes. We drove by Bay Florist, where he said he had bought his mother flowers for Mother's Day when he was a boy. And we drove by a restaurant called Subway Hero Sandwiches, where he said he and his dad used to stop by for a hamburger and French fries when it was called the Yankee Diner.
uncles and his father had worked there as waiters. We drove by another restaurant, called Pips, where he said he himself used to be a waiter when he was a teen-ager. We drove by a Roman Catholic church, and he said he and his family were its only black members. We drove by a store where he said he bought his first tropical fish. We drove by a drugstore called Kips, where he said he had been a delivery boy. We drove by Ethel's Shop, where he said his mother bought her clothes. We drove by Bay Florist, where he said he had bought his mother flowers for Mother's Day when he was a boy. And we drove by a restaurant called Subway Hero Sandwiches, where he said he and his dad used to stop by for a hamburger and French fries when it was called the Yankee Diner.
Then we drove up to the house he grew up in. It is a nice, comfortable-looking three-story red brick house. It was late afternoon, and all the other houses looked busy with dinner-time. He reminded us that his parents were driving across the country. He said, “I can't go in. When I left home, they took my keys away.” He laughed. Then he said, “I love this house now, but when I was growing up I used to wonder how come we couldn't live in an apartment. I used to want to live in an apartment so bad. When I was real little, I used to leave from here early in the morning and go to the schoolyard. I was forever in the schoolyard. I used to be playing ball, getting a sandwich at the corner, and then hanging out with my friends. We used to sing a lot. My favorite song to sing was called âThe Huckle Buck.' That was my song.”
After this, we ran into some friends of his parents. They
embraced Jeffreys. They told him that his mother is very proud of him and that she speaks of him all the time. They also told him that ever since his parents went away all their friends have been regularly receiving postcards with amusing anecdotes about their trip. He said, “Yeah, I get postcards, too,” and he removed from his jacket pocket a postcard from his parents. It said, “Hi!!! We spent 2½ weeks in Houston with Ray and Cora. Had a very nice time there. We are leaving Dallas on way to El Paso. Will get in touch soon. Give love to Carole. Love, Mom and Dad.”
embraced Jeffreys. They told him that his mother is very proud of him and that she speaks of him all the time. They also told him that ever since his parents went away all their friends have been regularly receiving postcards with amusing anecdotes about their trip. He said, “Yeah, I get postcards, too,” and he removed from his jacket pocket a postcard from his parents. It said, “Hi!!! We spent 2½ weeks in Houston with Ray and Cora. Had a very nice time there. We are leaving Dallas on way to El Paso. Will get in touch soon. Give love to Carole. Love, Mom and Dad.”
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July 11, 1977
July 11, 1977
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A young woman who lives in Chelsea writes:
I have a friend who comes from the Midwest, and he is very upset about two things: that soon most cars may come only in economy size, and that soon he may not be able to afford the gasoline even for these economy-size cars. My friend likes to drive around for no reason at all in a big car that uses up a lot of gasoline. When he gets into his car and drives off, he isn't going to the hospital to visit a friend, or going to the beach for a day of swimming and sunning, or going to the shopping mall to do some shopping, or even going somewhere to see some historic natural wonder. When he gets into his car and drives off, he heads for a highway; then, when he is far enough away from the city, he finds a less travelled back road, and then he drives and drives at about fifty miles an hour for hours; then he takes another road back to the highway and he comes home. My friend calls this cruising. Sometimes he will say to me, “I'm going cruising. Wanna
come?” I always say yes. I like to do it, too, but I would never get up by myself and go off in a car with no destination in mind.
come?” I always say yes. I like to do it, too, but I would never get up by myself and go off in a car with no destination in mind.
When my friend goes cruising, he takes with him a six-pack of Schaefer beer in the party-bottles size and an eight-pack of Miller beer in the pony size. The beer is always very cold. He takes these particular brands of beer because he has noticed that these are favorites among the Spanish-speaking people on the block where he lives. He keeps remarking about the difference between these people and the people he's seen in the television commercials for Miller and Schaefer beer. In the car, he never speaks except to swear at a careless motorist, or to point out something that is interesting to him and that he thinks will interest me, too. He turns on the car radio or puts a tape in the tape deck the moment he gets into the car, and the music is never off until he gets home again. He sits behind the wheel with his legs slightly apart, his right foot on the accelerator, the leg crooked at the knee and resting sidewise on the seat, his right hand looking as if it were casually holding the wheel, his left hand on the armrest. He can afford to look this relaxed because the car has power steering.
When I am in the car with my friend, I think of other times I have been in cars with people just for the fun of driving. When I was little, my mother would say, “We are taking a motorcar trip to ⦔ and she would name some place hours away from where we were. Then we would pile into the car and drive to the place and turn right around and come home
again. At the time, my mother was in love with religious music, especially if it was sung by Jim Reeves, and she would turn the car radio to a radio station that played religious music, mostly sung by Jim Reeves. On the night of my sixteenth birthday, my godmother and her husband took me for a drive in their gray Hillman (an English car), and on the car radio I heard the disc jockey say that my mother had requested that “Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen,” by Neil Sedaka, be played in honor of me. I didn't know what to make of it, hearing my name on the radio, but what was worse was that my mother would think that just because I liked rock and roll I liked Neil Sedaka. Then, when I was in my early twenties, I had a boyfriend who would take me for long drives in the country, and while we were driving he would play over and over, on the tape-deck machine, the song “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” by Procol Harum. Afterward, we would go to bars that had electric-blue-lighted jukeboxes. I have known, in fact, many boys who like to drive around and listen to tapes or to the radio and drink beer. I have never known any girls who did this. Not even one.
again. At the time, my mother was in love with religious music, especially if it was sung by Jim Reeves, and she would turn the car radio to a radio station that played religious music, mostly sung by Jim Reeves. On the night of my sixteenth birthday, my godmother and her husband took me for a drive in their gray Hillman (an English car), and on the car radio I heard the disc jockey say that my mother had requested that “Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen,” by Neil Sedaka, be played in honor of me. I didn't know what to make of it, hearing my name on the radio, but what was worse was that my mother would think that just because I liked rock and roll I liked Neil Sedaka. Then, when I was in my early twenties, I had a boyfriend who would take me for long drives in the country, and while we were driving he would play over and over, on the tape-deck machine, the song “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” by Procol Harum. Afterward, we would go to bars that had electric-blue-lighted jukeboxes. I have known, in fact, many boys who like to drive around and listen to tapes or to the radio and drink beer. I have never known any girls who did this. Not even one.
My friend from the Midwest has told me about some of his driving adventures. He says that he once drove around the state of Wyoming with a friend for five days with only eight dollars between them, plus his friend's father's oil-company credit card. He says that the state of Wyoming is the best for driving. He says that he knows every driving inch of the old logging roads in the state of Michigan. He says that driving around in the summer in an air-conditioned Buick in the flatness
that is Nebraska is the only boring thing he has found to be a complete pleasure. He says that stretches of Ohio were made for driving around with nothing in mind. It is the memory of these things that makes him hate a future of economy cars and gasoline shortages. He curses the modern age and people with too many children. In the meantime, he continues to drive around for no reason at all in his big car that uses up a lot of gasoline. Just the other night, a nice summer evening, we went for a drive up around the Woodstock area. Suddenly, on the car radio we heard “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” by Marvin Gaye. My friend turned to me and he smiled, because he knows that I know that this is one of his super-favorite driving songs. At the end of the song, he turned around and we came home.
that is Nebraska is the only boring thing he has found to be a complete pleasure. He says that stretches of Ohio were made for driving around with nothing in mind. It is the memory of these things that makes him hate a future of economy cars and gasoline shortages. He curses the modern age and people with too many children. In the meantime, he continues to drive around for no reason at all in his big car that uses up a lot of gasoline. Just the other night, a nice summer evening, we went for a drive up around the Woodstock area. Suddenly, on the car radio we heard “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” by Marvin Gaye. My friend turned to me and he smiled, because he knows that I know that this is one of his super-favorite driving songs. At the end of the song, he turned around and we came home.
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July 18, 1977
July 18, 1977
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A young woman we know writes:
I grew up on an island in the West Indies which has an area of a hundred and eight square miles. On the island were many sugarcane fields and a sugar-making factory and a factory where both white and dark rum were made. There were cotton fields, but there were not as many cotton fields as there were sugarcane fields. There were arrowroot fields and tobacco fields, too, but there were not as many arrowroot fields and tobacco fields as there were cotton fields. Some of the fifty-four thousand people who lived on the island grew bananas and mangoes and eddoes and dasheen and christophine and sweet potatoes and white potatoes and plums and guavas and grapes and papaws and limes and lemons and oranges and grapefruits, and every Saturday they would bring them to the market, which was on Market Street, and they would sell the things they had grown. This was the only way many of them could make a living, and, though it
sounds like farming, they weren't farmers in the way a Midwestern wheatgrower is a farmer, and they didn't think of the plots of land on which they grew these things as The Farm. Instead, the plots of land were called The Ground. They might say, “Today, me a go up ground.” The Ground was often many miles away from where they lived, and they got there not by taking a truck or some other kind of automotive transportation but by riding a donkey or by walking. A small numberâa very small numberâof the fifty-four thousand people worked in banks or in offices. The rest of themâthe ones who didn't grow the things that were sold in the market on Saturdays or work in the factories or the fields, the banks or the officesâwere carpenters or masons or servants in the new hotels for tourists which were appearing suddenly all over the island, or servants in private homes, or seamstresses, or tailors, or shopkeepers, or fishermen, or dockworkers, or schoolchildren. All of these different people doing all these different things did this one thing: they were all up and about by half past five in the morning, and they did this without the help of an alarm clock or an automatic clock radio. Every morningâworkday, Saturday, or Sundayâthe whole island was alive by six o'clock. People got up early on weekdays to go to work or to school; they got up early on Saturday to go to market; and they got up early on Sunday to go to church.
sounds like farming, they weren't farmers in the way a Midwestern wheatgrower is a farmer, and they didn't think of the plots of land on which they grew these things as The Farm. Instead, the plots of land were called The Ground. They might say, “Today, me a go up ground.” The Ground was often many miles away from where they lived, and they got there not by taking a truck or some other kind of automotive transportation but by riding a donkey or by walking. A small numberâa very small numberâof the fifty-four thousand people worked in banks or in offices. The rest of themâthe ones who didn't grow the things that were sold in the market on Saturdays or work in the factories or the fields, the banks or the officesâwere carpenters or masons or servants in the new hotels for tourists which were appearing suddenly all over the island, or servants in private homes, or seamstresses, or tailors, or shopkeepers, or fishermen, or dockworkers, or schoolchildren. All of these different people doing all these different things did this one thing: they were all up and about by half past five in the morning, and they did this without the help of an alarm clock or an automatic clock radio. Every morningâworkday, Saturday, or Sundayâthe whole island was alive by six o'clock. People got up early on weekdays to go to work or to school; they got up early on Saturday to go to market; and they got up early on Sunday to go to church.
It is true that the early morning is the most beautiful time of day on the island. The sun has just come up and is immediately big and bright, the way the sun always is on an island, but the air is still cool from the night; the sky is a deep, cool
blue (like the sea, it gets lighter as the day wears on, and then it gets darker, until by midnight it looks black); the red in the hibiscus and the flamboyant flowers seems redder; the green of the trees and grass seems greener. If it is December, there is dew everywhere: dew on the painted red galvanized rooftops; dew on my mother's upside-down washtubs; dew on the stones that make up her stone heap (a round mound of big and little stones in the middle of our yard; my mother spreads out soapy white laundry on these stones, so that the hot sun will bleach them even whiter); dew on the vegetables in my mother's treasured (to her, horrible to me) vegetable garden. But it wasn't to admire any of these things that people got up so early. I had never, in all the time I lived there, heard anyone say, “What a beautiful morning.” Once, just the way I had read it in a book, I stretched and said to my mother, “Oh, isn't it a really lovely morning?” She didn't reply to that at all, but she pulled my eyelids this way and that and then said that my sluggish liver was getting even more sluggish. I don't know why people got up so early, but I do know that they took great pride in this. It wasn't unusual at all to hear one woman say to another, “Me up since way âfore day mornin',” and for the other woman to say back to her, with a laugh, “Yes, my dear, you know de early bird ketch de early worm.”
blue (like the sea, it gets lighter as the day wears on, and then it gets darker, until by midnight it looks black); the red in the hibiscus and the flamboyant flowers seems redder; the green of the trees and grass seems greener. If it is December, there is dew everywhere: dew on the painted red galvanized rooftops; dew on my mother's upside-down washtubs; dew on the stones that make up her stone heap (a round mound of big and little stones in the middle of our yard; my mother spreads out soapy white laundry on these stones, so that the hot sun will bleach them even whiter); dew on the vegetables in my mother's treasured (to her, horrible to me) vegetable garden. But it wasn't to admire any of these things that people got up so early. I had never, in all the time I lived there, heard anyone say, “What a beautiful morning.” Once, just the way I had read it in a book, I stretched and said to my mother, “Oh, isn't it a really lovely morning?” She didn't reply to that at all, but she pulled my eyelids this way and that and then said that my sluggish liver was getting even more sluggish. I don't know why people got up so early, but I do know that they took great pride in this. It wasn't unusual at all to hear one woman say to another, “Me up since way âfore day mornin',” and for the other woman to say back to her, with a laugh, “Yes, my dear, you know de early bird ketch de early worm.”
In our house, we got up every day at half past five. This is what got us up: every morning, Mr. Jarvisâa dockworker who lived with his wife (she sold sweets she had made herself to schoolchildren at the bus depot just before they boarded buses that would take them back to their homes in the country) and
their eight children in a house at the very end of our streetâwould take his herd of goats to pasture. At exactly half past five, he and his goats reached our house. We heard the cries of the goats and the sound the stake at the end of the chain tied around their necks made as it dragged along the street. Above the sound of what my mother called “that early morning racket,” we could hear Mr. Jarvis whistling. Mostly, he whistled the refrain of an old but popular calypso tune. The words in the refrain were “Come le' we go, Soukie, Come le' we go.” If we heard only the crying of the goats and the sound of their chain, we knew that it was Mr. Jarvis's son Nigel, a rude wharf-rat boy, who was taking the goats to pasture.
their eight children in a house at the very end of our streetâwould take his herd of goats to pasture. At exactly half past five, he and his goats reached our house. We heard the cries of the goats and the sound the stake at the end of the chain tied around their necks made as it dragged along the street. Above the sound of what my mother called “that early morning racket,” we could hear Mr. Jarvis whistling. Mostly, he whistled the refrain of an old but popular calypso tune. The words in the refrain were “Come le' we go, Soukie, Come le' we go.” If we heard only the crying of the goats and the sound of their chain, we knew that it was Mr. Jarvis's son Nigel, a rude wharf-rat boy, who was taking the goats to pasture.
We weren't the only ones who got up to the sound of Mr. Jarvis and his goats. Mr. Gordon, a man who grew lettuce and sold most of it to the new hotels and who lived right next to us, would get up soon after Mr. Jarvis passed. He would throw open all the windows and all the doors in his house, and he would turn on his radio and tune it to a station in St. Croix, a station which at that hour played American country-and-Western music. It may have been from this that my mother developed her devotion to the music of Hank Williams. Mr. Gordon was very nice to my family, but that didn't prevent me from deciding that he resembled a monkey, and so I nicknamed him Monkey Lettuce. I called him this only behind his and my parents' back, of course. We never tuned our radio to the station in St. Croix. Instead, at exactly seven oâclock, my parents turned on our radio and tuned it to the station on our island. A man's voice would say, “It is seven
o'clock.” Then another voice, a completely different voice, would say, “This is the BBC, London.” Then we would listen to the news being broadcast. At around that time, we sat down to eat breakfast.
o'clock.” Then another voice, a completely different voice, would say, “This is the BBC, London.” Then we would listen to the news being broadcast. At around that time, we sat down to eat breakfast.
Between the time I got up and eight o'clock, I would have helped my mother fill her washtubs with water, swept up the yard, fed the chickens, taken a bath in cold water, polished my shoes, pressed my school uniform (gray pleated-linen tunic, pink poplin blouse), gone to the grocer (Mr. Richards) to buy fresh bread (two fourpence loaves, one each for my mother and father; a twopence loaf for me; and three penny loaves, one each for my little brothers) and also to buy butter and cheese (made in New Zealand), gone to Miss Roma to have my hair freshly braided, and eaten a breakfast of porridge, eggs, bread and butter, cheese, and hot Ovaltine. By that time, it was no longer early morning on our island, and half an hour later, together with two hundred and ninety-nine other girls and three hundred boys, I would be in my school auditorium singing, “All things bright and beautiful, All creatures great and small.”
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I now live in Manhattan. The only thing it has in common with the island where I grew up is a geographical definition. Certainly no one I know gets up at half past five, at six o'clock, at half past six, at seven o'clock, at half past seven, at eight o'clock. I know one person who sleeps all day and stays up all night. I know another person who has to take a nap if
he gets up before noon. And how easy it is, I have noticed, to put a great distance between you and a close friend if you should call that friend before ten in the morning.
he gets up before noon. And how easy it is, I have noticed, to put a great distance between you and a close friend if you should call that friend before ten in the morning.
I wake up, still, without an alarm, at half past five. In the neighborhood in which I live, it is very quiet at that hour. It is not romantic at all to hear nothing in the city. At around six o'lock, I begin to hear the sound of moving vehicles. Trucks. I know they are trucks because the sound I hear is a rumbling sound that only trucks make. The sound sometimes comes from streets far away. If I get up and look out, I might not see anyone. If I see anyone, it is almost always two or three men together, dressed identically, in tight black leather pants, a black leather jacket, a black leather cap, and black leather boots. They will walk very quickly down my street as if they are in a great hurry. When I look out, I never notice the early light playing on the street or on the brownstone houses across the street from me. In Manhattan, I notice only whether it is sunny and bright or cloudy and gray or raining or snowing. I never notice things like gradations of light, but my friends tell me that they are there.
Between six and seven, I sit and read women's magazines. I read articles about Elizabeth Taylor's new, simple life, articles about Mary Tyler Moore, articles about Jane Pauley, articles about members of the Carter family, articles about Candice Bergen, articles about Doris Day, articles about Phyllis Diller, and excerpts from Lana Turner's autobiography. I know many things about these peopleâthings that they may have forgotten themselves and things that, should we ever
meet, they might wish I would forget also. At seven o'clock, I watch the morning news for one whole hour. I watch the morning news for two reasons: it makes me feel as if I am living in Chicago, and on the morning news I see and hear the best reports on anything having to do with pigs. I don't know why the morning news makes me feel as if I am living in Chicago and not, say, Cleveland, but there it is. I love Chicago and would like to live there, but only for an hour. Some days, after watching the morning news, my head is filled with useless (to me) but interesting information about pigs. Some of the information, though, is good only for a day. Then, for half an hour, I watch Captain Kangaroo. I love Captain Kangaroo and have forgiven him for saying to Chastity Bono, when they were both guests on her parents' television show, “Now, let me lay this on you, Chastity.” Surely a grown man, even if he is a children's hero (perhaps because he is a children's hero), shouldn't talk like that.
meet, they might wish I would forget also. At seven o'clock, I watch the morning news for one whole hour. I watch the morning news for two reasons: it makes me feel as if I am living in Chicago, and on the morning news I see and hear the best reports on anything having to do with pigs. I don't know why the morning news makes me feel as if I am living in Chicago and not, say, Cleveland, but there it is. I love Chicago and would like to live there, but only for an hour. Some days, after watching the morning news, my head is filled with useless (to me) but interesting information about pigs. Some of the information, though, is good only for a day. Then, for half an hour, I watch Captain Kangaroo. I love Captain Kangaroo and have forgiven him for saying to Chastity Bono, when they were both guests on her parents' television show, “Now, let me lay this on you, Chastity.” Surely a grown man, even if he is a children's hero (perhaps because he is a children's hero), shouldn't talk like that.
Then it is half past eight and no longer early morning in Manhattan, either.
â
October 17, 1977
October 17, 1977
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