His Own Where Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  introducing june jordan’s his own where

  the first page

  one

  two

  three

  four

  five

  six

  seven

  eight

  nine

  ten

  eleven

  twelve

  thirteen

  fourteen

  fifteen

  sixteen

  THE DREAM

  seventeen

  DREAM

  the last page

  Copyright Page

  WITCHES, MIDWIVES, AND NURSES

  A History of Women Healers

  Second Edition

  Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English

  WOMEN WHO KILL

  With a new introduction by the author

  Ann Jones

  Great feminist books of the past fifty years don’t fade away. They become Contemporary Classics.

  introducing june jordan’s his own where

  sapphire

  “You be different from the dead,” says the young male protagonist in the first sentence of His Own Where, a wholly original novel written by June Jordan in 1971. Speaking in the language of the streets, and the larger language of the community that he comes from, he announces his ethnicity, class background, and urban environs in that first sentence by a uniquely African American use of the verb to be. His endangered status as a black man-child is also announced by revealing the magnitude of his bond with death even though he is still legally a child.

  The three word title, the possessive form of he, his, is followed by another adjective, meaning belonging to oneself or itself, own, and it could logically be, but is not, followed by a noun, concrete or abstract, a thing or state of being, that is his. But we learn that what is his is a where, an adverb, describing at, or to what place. And it is not long into the book that we learn that the only place of life for this young man is the country of the dead; “his own where” turns out to be a cemetery.

  Ostensibly the plot is simple: young love beset by numerous obstacles, most noticeably race, class, and family structures, jeopardized from within and without. It is June Jordan’s use of language that makes this small novel a literary tour de force. Jordan wrestles with American English, flips it over her slim shoulder, and makes it serve her characters, Buddy and Angela, the challenged young lovers of His Own Where. If we say poetry is about language first and foremost, and I believe we can say that, then this novel rises above mere narrative from its very first pages. For example, on Angela’s first visit to the cemetery, to describe the girl’s discomfort at walking a long distance in uncomfortable shoes, June Jordan uses neither a character-driven interior monologue nor a heavy-handed explain-it-all omniscient narrator. She uses the literary device of a poet: “block after block after block begin to bother her.” This alliterative sequence of nine words provides insight into Angela’s state of mind and her outer circumstances. It is more than a clever device; it is a powerful tool used by the emerging master poet June Jordan was to become.

  Over and over June Jordan eschews typical narrative structure and relies on the tools of the poet to further her narrative strategy and makes the sheer force of her poetics do what a different writer might need pages of prose to accomplish. For example, in a short chapter where she tries to explain his, Buddy’s, evolving love growing out from his singular attachment to his father to include Angela, June Jordan states, “his habits form him.” She goes on to say, “They [Buddy and Angela] become the heated habit of each other.” This heated habit of each other signifies their union, but it also signifies the actions, the erotic physical patterns, formed and repeated, which because of their formation and/or repetition, become heated.

  That the only place for these young lovers to be, to celebrate life, and to procreate is in a cemetery is the true tragedy of this tiny yet epic novel.

  From His Own Where written in 1971, June Jordan will go on to become a political essayist without peer, describing the American political landscape and psyche. Her poetry will become a “poetry for the people,” and she will develop a model for reading, writing, and teaching poetry for generations to come. She will publish twenty-eight books in her lifetime but she, and perhaps rightfully so, will never return to the linguistic and emotional landscape she visited with such pure wonder and language experiment as a new novelist. This makes His Own Where unique in her substantial oeuvre.

  Let us celebrate this contemporary classic, with thanks to the Feminist Press and Amy Scholder, for bringing it back to life for a new generation of readers. And let us take in the vision and imagination of the late June Jordan, who ushered in a new language for capturing the American experience.

  Brooklyn, New York

  February 2010

  the first page

  you be different from the dead. All them tombstones tearing up the ground, look like a little city, like a small Manhattan, not exactly. Here is not the same.

  Here, you be bigger than the buildings, bigger than the little city. You be really different from the rest, the resting other ones.

  Moved in his arms, she make him feel like smiling. Him, his head an Afro-bush spread free beside the stones, headstones thinning in the heavy air. Him, a ready father, a public lover, privately at last alone with her, with Angela, a half an hour walk from the hallway where they start out to hold themselves together in the noisy darkness, kissing, kissed him, kissed her, kissing.

  Cemetery let them lie there belly close, their shoulders now undressed down to the color of the heat they feel, in lying close, their legs a strong disturbing of the dust. His own where, own place for loving made for making love, the cemetery where nobody guard the dead.

  one

  first time they come, he simply say, “Come on.” He tell her they are going not too far away. She go along not worrying about the heelstrap pinching at her skin, but worrying about the conversation. Long walks take some talking. Otherwise it be embarrassing just side by side embarrassing.

  Buddy stay quiet, walking pretty fast, but every step right next to her. They trip together like a natural sliding down the street.

  Block after block after block begin to bother her. Nothing familiar is left. The neighborhood is changing. Strangers watch them from the windows.

  Angela looking at Buddy, look at his shoes and wish for summertime and beaches when his body, ankle, toes will shock the ocean, yelling loud and laughing hard and wasting no sand.

  Buddy think about time and the slowspeed of her eyes that leave him hungry, nervous, big and quick. Slide by the closedup drugstore, cross under the train, run the redlight, circle past two women leaning on two wire carts, and reach the avenue of showrooms. Green, blue, yellow, orange cars driving through, cars at the curb, cars behind the glass, cars where houses used to stand, cars where people standing now, and tree to tree electric lights.

  “Play the radio?”

  Buddy turn it with his thumb. The plastic handle strings around his wrist.

  No moon no more

  No moon no more

  I want to see what I seen before.

  Please no surprise

  Please no surprise

  I just want to see your lovin eyes.

  Holding her hand in his is large and hers almost loose inside it. She feel visitor-stiff, but the music make a difference, and his hand.

  Cars make Buddy mad. Right now his father lying in the hospital from what they call A Accident. And was no accident about it, Buddy realize. The street set up that way so cars can clip the people easy kill them even. Easy.

  “What you say?” she ask him.

  “Damn,” he answer her. “Another one. Another co
rner. Street-crossing-time again.”

  “You crazy, Buddy? What you mean?”

  “I hate them. Corners. They really be a dumb way try to split the people from the cars. Don’t even work. Look how a car come up and almost kill my father, minding his own business, on the corner. Corners good for nothing.” Buddy frown so bad that Angela start laughing. Buddy swing around her waist.

  “Show you what I mean.”

  He jump back behind her. Walk forward like a flatfoot counting steps: Left-foot-right-foot-left-foot-one-two.

  “Here come the corner!”

  Down. Buddy buckle at the knee for down. When he really reach the corner then he drop to one knee. Seem like a commando on the corner. Wild looking left then right. Arms like a rifle in rotation: Covering the danger east and west. Buddy standing on his two feet urgent. Put his face an inch from her: “Watch now. Here. It’s here.” He roll the radio dial to loud yell over it. “Not clear! Not clear at the crossing. On your mark,” (whispering in her ear) “get set.” Buddy stop. “Green. Where’s the green? You seen it, Angela?” He fold his arms and spread his legs and hold everything right there. “Well my Lookout Man is out to lunch.” Buddy sitting on the curb, to wait.

  Angela feel a question, but the radio so loud she would have to scream. With him, she rather not be screaming.

  Angela not laughing and no smile. Buddy sitting on the curb and she beside him, so he roll the dial to soft.

  “You see them signs. The curb-your-dog signs. But the people be like slaves. Don’t need no signs. Just do it. Curb-the-People. Step right up, then down, then up. Then out. Into it. Into the traffic, baby. You be crucify like Jesus at the crossing. Traffic like a 4-way nail the joker on his feet. It be strictly D.O.A. for corners. Danger on Arrival. D.O.A. Even dogs can smell that danger, smell it just as good as looking at the lights. You tired?”

  “No,” She is. But nothing they can do about that. No bench. No sidewalk, walkway tables, benches. Only fences fixed outfront.

  “Buddy, this no place to stop.”

  Rises from the curb, his arm around her, moving on together, slower walking easy on the edge. The sidewalk is a concrete edge.

  The lined-up traffic multiplies. The fenders blur. Windshield swiping windshield chrome and autocolors. Hold her close, his side comes long and close beside her.

  At the intersection they will cross together. Intersection circus stunt for everyday.

  “Angela, look out.”

  She hear his shaking inner sound. She listen to him. Coordination is together trial.

  Matched to her to him out in the middle of the mess machinery. He be strong enough and she be fast enough to swerve it safely through, across, around, ahead. Landed on the other edge, the sidewalk opposite. She smell intoxicating leather jacket, how he wears it, how he smells to her.

  He slowly flaming from the small size of her neck, its naked expectation.

  “Buddy, this is a cemetery. Let’s go back.”

  “No. Let’s go on.”

  “I don’t like it here.”

  “Why not?”

  “You know why.”

  “Angela, where can we go beside the cemetery. What else is there?”

  “We can go home.”

  “Home.” The idea, the memories, the fact of home straightens him away from her, from what she probably mean.

  “Just trust me five more minutes. Trust me.” They step ahead, single file. She following him. He leading them, both of them. Trees like a skinny curtain start appearing. What they can see are cemetery furnishings. Somebody leave a potted plant. The flabby petals from the $4.95 racketeer store close to the scene of the absolutely dead.

  They notice the one-by-one increasing trees. She watch Buddy how he walk ahead of her, how he seems a bit ahead of her. They come to a silent place. The only sounds, the engine highway sounds.

  They climb up sidesoil to a fence that stretches high above their heads and out beyond arm-stretching.

  Angela be blinded by the light wiggles blinding in the silent waterfills her eyes. They say nothing, just look and feel full. It be like a big open box, sides of sloping stone, moss covered rainy dark and, behind them, a little to the left, there be a small brick tower room, a locked-up house where no one ever live.

  Buddy say, “This is the reservoir.” Angela be thinking water and, over by the furthest rim of it, they see the roof of streets and houses that they know. Nobody close to them. Buddy and Angela begin to make believe about the house next to the reservoir. They see how they would open it up, how they would live inside, what they would do with only the birds, the water, and the skylight fallen blinding into it.

  “What they saving the water for? Who suppose to use it.”

  “Saving it for birds. This a bathroom for the birds.”

  They laugh about the pretty water bathroom for the birds.

  “Be nice if we can swim here.”

  “They not hardly let you swim in it. Unless you be a bird.”

  Go over to the doorsill of the house, sit down for talking.

  “Why you bring me here?”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “So quiet. I don’t know.”

  “How come you always want some sound?”

  “Real quiet bother me. But then again, when I go to like the supermarket they be playing loony tunes and you be looking at a can of soup, or pork chops, but you have to hear dah-dah-blah-blah and violins and mustard and potatoes dahdah-blah-blah-violins, it can make you feel really weird.”

  “So what you want to hear with mustard and potatoes?”

  “Well, could be somebody like that kind of music, but I don’t. I rather be hearing other things. Like if you play the radio and we decide what we want to hear I mean at this very moment.”

  “What you want?”

  “You talk to me, Buddy. Tell me what you thinking.”

  They have to leave soon. Reservoir growing dim. They have to walk back.

  “What you doing tonight?”

  “Study, can you stop by after you see your father?”

  “I don’t know. Might be really too late.”

  “Is he better?”

  “No. My relatives rap strong about insurance and inheritance. I say he be dying, but not dead. And at the hospital they be fooling with him. Half the time I go, can’t see him. They exploring this or that, testing him for what not. The other half, he be sleeping, from the pills they give him. The dude that knock him down, you know that dumb-head driver? Last week he actually come by, call himself paying some respects. I tell him that respect don’t make him better, but I say well let him come. Don’t make no difference. My father dying lonely and I figure that respect don’t hurt a lonely man.”

  Call it accidental but to him, to Buddy, was no accident. Things set up like that. You cross the street you taking chances. Odds against you. Knock his father down, down from the sidewalk stop, down from the curb, down bleeding bad, ribs crushed. The lungs be puncture, and his father living slow inside a tent.

  two

  the hospital seem nice. Nothing too loud or filthy, beds adjustable, regular food. Different people, men and women, asking how you are, how you feel. Friends drop around. Privacy. Whole attitude all allright. You suppose to heal, be well, stay well in the hospital.

  Don’t let no rumbly trucks rock through the streets. Floors be clean enough to eat on. Buddy sure the whole city should be like a hospital and everybody taking turns to heal the people. People turning doctor, patient, nurse. Whole city asking asking everybody how you are, how you feel, what can I do for you, how I can help.

  Fantastic if the city turn into a hospital the city fill with a million people asking a million other people how you feeling, how’s everything, what you need. Dig, policeman move up to this Momma, ask her do she sleep well.

  She say no. Explaining how the heat turn off at midnight. Policeman make a note. Act like a nurse.

  That was how he meet her, Angela. Inside the hospital. Father dying in a
semiprivate room more private than the room he share so many years ago, with Buddy’s mother. Semiprivate room for dying seem all right. Who want to be alone, completely. Seem all right for living too; a semiprivate room for keep alive. Buddy by the bed, sitting still. His mind remembering home.

  Brownstone and cigar smoke. Women pocketbooks and peppermint. Shined shoes. His father sharpening the Sunday razor slap the leather slap the blade to silver sharp. In the bureau drawer blue enamel cufflinks, brassy bullets from the war. Few photographs. His mother prim-sarcastic posing straight ahead. Old box of contraceptives. Blow them up. Bounceback old-timer tricks from when.

  When his mother and his father in the doublesoftbed underneath the walnut crucifix cost not so much as you might think. It be so heavy hanging there above the double-decker pillows too clean for anybody use them. But they use them when they use to be asleep around the morning after Buddy father do his downtown nightwatch. And before when Buddy mother leave without him, Buddy. Disappear his father say without no reason.

  But Buddy remember how his mother use to stay gaze on the ground around the neighborhood. She brokenhearted in the brokenland of Brooklyn small-scale brokenland. She cry the day they rip one tree right out the concrete ground in front of the dining-room windows. Tree already attacked by lightning on a rainy afternoon when Buddy watch the men their caps firm to the eyebrows walking to the corners, carrying a paper bag of lunch. And when he watch the women breasted motherly and crooked walking with a Horn and Hardart/Bargaintown/Macy’s Christmas shopping bag. The dining room, where she cry that day, on other days unusual with celery and olives.