PROUDFLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness ISSN: 1543-0855 Issue 5 (2007)

Jessica Alarcón

Ventriloquist

Limp as cotton limbs, just swinging

Unless there is a cold piece of metal singed through

The parts that are most important to use when controlling the movements of a dummy;

Amazing how the ventriloquist can project his voice

And speak through the dummy and make it look as if it were she own voice;

Look how she sit on he lap widdout wincing;

An everybody is watching but dey still don see his hand up she skirt;

That is how he makes she talk;

And she laugh, and she cry, and she play, and she pray and…

Her face is made to be a wood plaster

and nobody even notices the changes

Unless he make she jump;

But this is a drama, so they think it is a part of the act

She just sit and sit and sit, wishing for a cricket to come an turn her into a real girl

No. . . . a real woman

An she promise not to tell a lie so she can keep she flat pecan nose

But dey ain’t no crickets and dey ain’t no one to carve no new faces

So she just sit still as the ventriloquist

Wiggle he hands under she skirt.

Perfect Woman

Things are much better now that I am invisible. I was a fireball exploding, demanding to have a space where my flames, no matter how minute or grandiose, would be able to burn freely; not for destructive purposes. I just wanted to be able to warm up a room or something. So I doused a little gasoline on my tongue and I spat what turned out to be embers on the cold, hard floor—quickly extinguished. Then I decided to change shapes so that I could at least exist.

Now I cannot move, so I rely on memory. I hate the cold, cold like my wedding rings that have embedded a mark so deeply that even when I remove them (to do domestic work, of course), the light circle that coils around my finger reminds me of what I have done with my life. Cold like on-demand sex, you better get it while you can, because who knows when your turn will come around again. Was I robbed of young adulthood? Or given the chance to become a woman? I thought I was a woman, but I am not. I am a mime who does a good impersonation. I can play the happy, subservient woman ready to dance to the beckoning bells. I can be a loud mute playing with the silence while I pull imaginary ropes or smile to amuse you as I creatively show you the box I have come to live in. Cold like these sad narratives and I don’t even like the cold, my words are meant to carry steam.

But where do you go when you have nowhere to go? What do you say when you can only talk to yourself? I just travel through memory. I remember being a child when the sounds of laughter filled the house. Everywhere we would go; the white people would stop and say, “My, you sure do have some well-mannered children!”—(to be niggers). They never said it, but that is probably what they were thinking.

My parents are from the city (by way of the country) and saying “sir” or “ma’am” was almost as bad as cursing—my parents said it made them feel old. Instead, we just responded with a well-enunciated “yes” or “no”. They took special care at grooming us with values that worked in the home and out in the world, but the world greatly changes from the time when you are eight years old, rushing to snatch open the screen door before the street lights come on and the days when you are “grown” and the street lights remind you that the night has only begun. Those lights are so warm, but it is early in the morning now and there are no lights that tell me when to come home.

Like yesterday, when I learned what it meant to be a perfect woman. The perfect woman is the one who sits in the background waiting to be painted. She is a silent canvas. It’s easier like that anyway.

I told him I never wanted to be anybody’s token love, and now his love is my only token. And I just have to keep on pantomiming, keep pantomiming, even when my arms get tired because that is what is keeping me alive. The only problem is that I am alive and I am dead, although I am dead and alive too. And as long as I can keep staying alive. . .

Maybe what I have lost (or what I need to find) is sitting at the bottom of my purse. Somewhere between the chewing gum I tucked in a scrap sheet of paper and the my-mamma-didn’t-warn-me-about these things list, I will find it. And are we still talking about him? Or am I also invisible because the house is happiest when I am a canvas tucked away on a shadowy wall or behind a bookshelf where I fit perfectly against the cold wedge of a corner.

My eyes can’t stop searching for the logic; (although he tells me there is difference between logic and truth) and so I have to be trusting and patient, knowing that a reward is coming (so I’m told) but in the meanwhile you will find me—a canvas, dancing in the background waiting to be painted because I have become the perfect woman.

The Caged Bird

I know why the caged bird. . .

Flies all around her wiry metal box and fights like hell

to get out of her prison

I know why she can bump her head a million times

Against

The bars and will still get up to try again

Oh yeah, I know why

And don’t believe the hype becuz

She only sings when people come around

And when they come around, you should see the sight

They whistle in mockery, or tell her that she must think she is pretty

Perched up there on the arms of a big tree

Some say that her work is too easy, and that all she has to do is fly (in a cage, mind you)

and look for

seeds

. . . While keeping her song of course

And they only like to hear the happy music

Coming from her cage. . .

And sometimes

even that is not enuf.

Citation Format:

Jessica Alarcón. “Ventroloquist,” “Perfect Woman,” and “The Caged Bird” PROUDFLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness: Issue 5, 2007.

Copyright © 2007 Africa Resource Center, Inc.