Toni Morrison's JAZZ Pastiche

What I Would've Named My Kids

I would've named the first one Rose, or maybe not Rose. Joe wouldn't like that name and I wouldn't argue with him. We would've named the first one Frances and it would have been born in that field of cotton, sticking to my flesh with the natural glue that once glued us together, some of it sticking to my own face as I held her in my arms and kissed her on the head knowing once and for all what true Love was and tasting the glue on my lips as I did it. And I would still find bits of cotton on her a week after. Finish picking in the fields and start picking after and it would never end even when we moved to the city. From birth to her death at six, I would still find cotton. After a bad week of constant rain, I would hold my only daughter in my bed, toeing the line of different squeezes, wanting to squeeze Frances hard and full of comfort to stop my baby from shivering and vibrating the bed, but not wanting to squeeze too hard as to make her uncomfortable, her already having only enough energy to cough and cough and cough and cough and cough and cough and cough over the sounds of honking horns and yelling passersbys and those drums that never seemed to go away as it reverberated in her ears and me wondering if they touched my daughter’s at all. And two days later when the coughing and shivering finally stop, it could have been an hour later until I noticed, or maybe I would wake up to find my silent daughter there in my arms held so tightly I would always wonder if I squeezed just too hard in her sleep, all my fault. The first thing I would do is pick a piece of cotton from behind Frances’ ear and stick it in my mouth and underneath my tongue.

And I would’ve named the second one Ulysses and it would have been Joe’s favorite. Always keeping him in his arms even when he slept, and I would always worry when he would bring Ulysses in the tree (where we first met) with him to sleep in the hammock saying this is where the family started and this is where it’s keeping. This is where it’s keeping. When we would move to the city, and when he would be earning more money, he would buy gift after gift to his only son, gifts that babies have no business messing with. Buying Ulysses a red tie saying he’ll need it one day as he tied it around his neck anyway, not too tight now, before he threw up all over it laughing then crying. Buying him a large cap gun that I would be terrified of and think how’s he going to pull that trigger with those nubby fingers of his, and Joe saying he’s going to be just like Father Drew. Buying him a harmonica that Ulysses would absolutely love after he, when chewing on the edge, would slip and breathe into the mouth piece, his first introduction to music and the drums and the sound they all make together. I would always hate the sound of my son’s baby voice with the dissonant sounds of that harmonica. I would see the baby’s blues forming. Goo Goo Gah in B Flat. It’s gonna be a hard life for me. It’s gonna be a hard life for me. All the while smiling at the sounds.

And my worries would never go away, never leaving me as it stuck to my heart, adding a new film of tissue, hard and constricting, over it, always always feeling it in me like my chest was caving in under the gravity. I would feel it as I yelled out my window at a young Ulysses to get out of the damn street and come upstairs and he responding but you do it too mama. I would feel it while he was sleeping on the floor and wake him up yelling why do you sleep on the floor when there’s a bed right next to you, this wood isn't gonna do it for you. I would feel it when he said but mama I like it better on the floor and I would wonder again and again if there is something wrong with my womb, I knew there was. I know there is. 
I would feel it when he didn't clean out the birdcages yelling don’t you know how important it is to clean its home, that’s where it lives and that’s where it’ll be until it dies. And it would worsen when he yelled back at me for the first time. All the yelling always the yelling mama shut up don’t you ever... He would end up running away at one point and I wouldn't feel it anymore and would breathe again.

The third would have been twin boys and we would've name them Jonah and Andy.

Twins have this deep unexplained connection, something that goes beyond being able to finish each other’s sentences and looking exactly alike and one hearing the other say something but understanding the real meaning behind his words he’s trying to hide. It’s way beyond that. Like something mystical, something supernatural, something only they can know but never explain or articulate. Something lost whenever it’s mentioned so they never bring it up. It’s the only explanation for how Jonah knew what to say or babble to keep Andy from crying when they were babies. Or for how Andy knew all the words to the song across the street from where Jonah used to play with the other kids, I would figure. This strange power they had only seemed to bother Andy at all.

Sometimes it was like he couldn't control it, whatever you want to call it, and it would wash all over him, cause his breathing to expand and harden at the same time, and squeeze him so hard that when he inhaled his stomach would rise, but his chest would stay still, all the while hearing the wind travel across the window’s glass, which couldn't calm the thing, and his brother sleeping on his side, back facing him, breathing heavily, normally, in the twin bed only five feet away from his own. 
And Andy sits there, motionless except for his stomach rising and falling, never in a pattern, erratic, and he waits for it to stop. This knowing, this deep, spiritual connection he feels and is too young to know what to do with if there was such an age. Knowing that the brother next to him is dreaming of scattered images, a rope, a piece of candy, a cartoon heart, and a girl Andy has never seen before with curly blond hair and a freckle on her eyelid that he thinks is so beautiful, knowing Jonah'll never remember a thing when he wakes up thinking how tragic, how tragic is it not to know and to know all the same.

And he looks in front of him, his feet under the covers even though it feels too hot just so he doesn't feel as exposed as he has to, the open door and the hallway light that shines into the room and cuts a triangle in between the brothers’ beds and touches the soft warm glow of the street lamp. And he sees the room at the end of the lit hallway, or more the closed door, how it looks yellow in the light and he feels his brothers body across from him and how he can’t move his arms and legs and doesn't want to and just stays in that position for years and years until he finally wakes up and he knows it’s not him, not Andy, who is feeling this, but only this squeezing on his chest and he starts to cry and cry.

Through the drums he hears in the night streets, Andy weeps and sobs and he doesn't know why and doesn't know what this feeling is because he knows it’s not Jonah’s so it must be his. It must be his. It must be his.

And it isn't until what feels like several days later that I come and stand in the doorway listening to the sobs of one my sons and say okay okay calm down let’s go over the list again is it your head. No. Is it your arms, legs? N-no. Is it your hands, your feet? No. Are you sick. Are you nauseous. Are you going to throw up. I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m sorry I’m sorry I don’t know. Shh. Calm down I say. Calm down we don’t want to wake your brother up, come here. Come here. He says I’m sorry I’m so sorry. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what’s wrong. I think I might be dying.

As I carries him to my room, to the bed where my first child died, his toes scraping the floor, him being so tall, as I stop and adjust his weight in my arms halfway to the room and out of breath by the time I reache it, I don't notice how damp my shoulder is really getting from his tears and how hard-pressed his fingers are onto my back and how loud his sobs are getting, still. But he knows that Jonah is in there waking up and forgetting about his dream of the freckled girl, has been awake ever since I entered their room, and now standing just inside the edge of the doorway, waiting until we reach the living room downstairs so he can finally shut the door and finally go to goddamn sleep. It must be his. It must only be his.

©2012