Blues Ain’t No Mockin Bird
Toni Cade Bambara
The puddle had frozen over, and me and Cathy went stompin in it. The twins from next door, Tyrone and Terry, were swingin so high out of sight we forgot we were waitin our turn on the tire. Cathy jumped up and came down hard on her heels and started tap-dancin. And the frozen patch splinterin every which way underneath kinda spooky. “Looks like a plastic spider web,” she said. “A sort of weird spider, I guess, with many mental problems.” But really it looked like the crystal paperweight Granny kept in the parlor. She was on the back porch, Granny was, making the cakes drunk. The old ladle dripping rum into the Christmas tins, like it used to drip maple syrup into the pails when we lived in the Judsons’ woods, like it poured cider into the vats when we were on the Cooper place, like it used to scoop buttermilk and soft cheese when we lived at the dairy.
"Go tell that man we ain’t a bunch of trees.”
“Ma’am?”
“I said to tell that man to get away from here with that camera.”
Me and Cathy look over toward the meadow where the men with the station wagon’d been roamin around all mornin. The tall man with a huge camera lassoed to his shoulder was buzzin our way.
“They’re makin movie pictures,” yelled Tyrone, stiffenin his legs and twistin so the tire’d come down slow so they could see.
“They’re makin movie pictures,” sang out Terry.
“That boy don’t never have anything original to say,” say Cathy grown-up.
By the time the man with the camera had cut across our neighbor’s yard, the twins were out of the trees swingin low and Granny was onto the steps, the screen door bammin soft and scratchy against her palms. “We thought we’d get a shot or two of the house and everything and then——”
“Good mornin,” Granny cut him off. And smiled that smile.
“Good mornin,” he said, head all down the way Bingo does when you yell at him about the bones on the kitchen floor. “Nice place you got here, aunty. We thought we’d take a——”
“Did you?” said Granny with her eyebrows. Cathy pulled up her socks and giggled.
“Nice things here,” said the man, buzzin his camera over the yard. The pecan barrels, the sled, me and Cathy, the flowers, the printed stones along the driveway, the trees, the twins, the toolshed.
“I don’t know about the thing, the it, and the stuff,” said Granny, still talkin with her eyebrows. “Just people here is what I tend to consider.”
Camera man stopped buzzin. Cathy giggled into her collar.
“Mornin, ladies,” a new man said. He had come up behind us when we weren’t lookin. “And gents,” discoverin the twins givin him a nasty look. “We’re filmin for the county,” he said with a smile. “Mind if we shoot a bit around here?”
“I do indeed,” said Granny with no smile. Smilin man was smiling up a storm. So was Cathy. But he didn’t seem to have another word to say, so he and the camera man backed on out the yard, but you could hear the camera buzzin still.
“Suppose you just shut that machine off,” said Granny real low through her teeth and took a step down off the porch and then another.
“Now, aunty,” Camera said, pointin the thing straight at her.
“Your mama and I are not related.”
Smilin man got his notebook out and a chewed-up pencil. “Listen,” he said movin back into our yard, “we’d like to have a statement from you . . . for the film. We’re filmin for the county, see. Part of the food stamp campaign. You know about the food stamps?”
Granny said nuthin.
“Maybe there’s somethin you want to say for the film. I see you grow your own vegetables,” he smiled real nice. “If more folks did that, see, there’d be no need——”
Granny wasn’t sayin nuthin. So they backed on out, buzzin at our clothesline and the twins’ bicycles, then back on down to the meadow. The twins were danglin in the tire, lookin at Granny. Me and Cathy were waitin, too, cause Granny always got somethin to say. She teaches steady with no let-up. “I was on this bridge one time,” she started off. “Was a crowd cause this man was goin to jump, you understand. And a minister was there and the police and some other folks. His woman was there, too.”
“What was they doin?” asked Tyrone.
(page 1)
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