1 Gorilla, My Love
Toni Cade Bambara (1972)
That was the year Hunca Bubba changed his name. Not a change up, but a change back, since Jefferson Winston Vale was the name in the first place. So far as I was concerned it was a change completely to somethin soundin very geographical weather like to me, like somethin you’d find in a almanac. Or somethin you’d run across when you sittin in the navigator seat with a wet thumb on the map crinkly in your lap, watchin the roads and signs so when Granddaddy Vale say “Which was, Scout,” you got sense enough to say take the next exit or take a left or whatever it is. Not that Scout’s my name. Just the name Granddaddy call whoever sittin in the navigator seat. Which is usually me cause I don’t feature sittin in the back with the pecans. Now, you figure pecans all right to be sittin with. If you thinks so, that’s your business. But they dusty sometime and make you cough. And that’s how come I’m in the navigator seat most times and get to be called Scout.
So Hunca Bubba in the back with the pecans and Baby Jason, and he in love. And we got to hear all this stuff about this woman he in love with and all. Which really ain’t enough to keep the mind alive, though Baby Jason got no better sense than to give his undivided attention and keep grabbin at the photograph which is just a picture of some skinny woman in a countrified dress with her hand shot up to her face like she shame fore cameras. But there’s a movie house in the background which I ax about. Cause I am a movie freak from way back, even though it do get me in trouble sometime.
Like when me and Big Brood and Baby Jason was on our own last Easter and couldn’t go to the Dorset cause we’d seen all the Three Stooges they was. And the RKO Hamilton was closed readying up for the Easter Pageant that night. And the West End, the Regun and the Sunset was too far, less we had grownups with us which we didn’t. So we walk up Amsterdam Avenue to the Washington and Gorilla, My Love playin, they say which suit me just fine, thought the “my love” part kinda drag Big Brood some. As for Baby Jason, shoot, like Granddaddy say, he’d follow me into the fiery furnace if I say come on. So we go in and get three bags of Havmore potato chips which not only are the best potato chips but the best bags for blowin up and bustin real loud so the matron come trottin down the aisle with her chunky self, flashin that flashlight dead in your eye so you can give her some lip, and if she answer back and you already finish seein the show anyway, why then you just turn the place out. Which I love to do, no lie. With Baby Jason kickin at the seat in front, egging me on, and Big Brood mumblin bout what fiercesome things we goin do. Which means me. Like when the big boys come up on us talkin bout Lemme a nickel. It’s me the hide the money. Or when the bad boys in the park take Big Brood’s Spaudeen way from him. It’s me that jump on they back and fight awhile. And it’s me that turns out the sho