Naguine

Robert Taylor was an old black man that I used to talk to when I did volunteer work at the VA hospital in Ann Arbor. He was retired from GMC Hydromatic in Ypsilanti, Michigan, but he had come up to Michigan from the Mississippi Delta in the 1930s. Because he was still relatively healthy, he enjoyed a certain status among the retired vets, who were mostly in poor health, and he flirted with the nurses, who were mostly female. He also played an old, beat-up acoustic guitar that couldn't keep a tune; the g-string always kept slipping out of tune. But we both played the guitar and liked the blues, so we had something in common.

Now, you probably think that this is one of those stories where an old bluesman teaches a young neophyte a thing or two about the blues, but the truth was that Mr. Taylor's style was very raw and very primitive, and his singing voice sounded like it was being filtred through a speaker that had been cut up with a razor blade. Or maybe it sounded like what a chicken breast would sound like being beaten by a butcher's block to stretch it out (that is, if the chicken were still alive). In other words, most people today probably would have thought that he neither sang nor played very well. However, rather than run out of the room, holding my ears, I politely waited until he was finished with his song, and then I showed him what I could do. He admitted afterwards, "I ain't got nuthin' on you, son!"

Then one day, he told me the story of his life:

I was standing at the crossroads, trying to flag a ride with my guitar in hand, when a band of gypsies rode by and said, "Hey, we're having a party tonight! Why don't you party with us?"

Now, I ain't never seen no band of gypsies before, and I's a little worried. I mean, they all looked like they was pirates or something, and I had never seen wagons like what they had. The wooden wheels of their wagons was carved up with all kinds of swirls and squiggles that I ain't never seen on no wagon before or since. But I was never one to pass up a chance to party, even with a band of gypsies, so I takes their ride and they takes me back to their camp.

Now, they music ain't nothing like I has ever heard before. Today, I would say it sound like Spanish flamingo music. When a Mexican guy at work played his guitar many years later, he got insulted when I aksed if he was a gypsy, but they music sounded like Spanish flamingo too. But the songs that they sung ain't in no American that I has ever heard sung before. They probably ain't in no Spanish neither. I thought maybe it 'cause they drunk or something, 'cause we was drunk by the end of the evening.

Then, after midnight, a gypsy girl offered herself to me. Even though I drunk, she so pretty I couldn't say no. She spent the night with me by the light of the gypsy campfire, and when we was done doing our thing, we falled asleep in each other's arms, almost like we married or something. But when I wakes up the next morning, I finds myself holding a guitar! I couldn't believe it! It wasn't my guitar, so I thinks the gypsy girl musta turned herself into a guitar while I's asleep.

Since I woked up before the gypsies, I switched guitars. I left the gypsies' camp with the guitar I found in my arms that morning and left them my guitar. I thought it was a good deal, but my life ain't been the same since.

The night after I left the gypsies, my guitar turn into a woman at midnight. I couldn't believe it! But this time, I wasn't drunk like the night before. As a matter of fact, I had nothing to drink, but they she was, standing in front of me wiffout no clothes on!

Now you might think that us black folks is black, but this girl's skin was almost as black as mine, and her long dark hair was as black as the muddy Mississippi, overflowing down her back like Old Man River himself when he floods. I loves her hair! And her eyes, they almost as black as two coals. Except when she angry, then they red. If you woulda seen me walking up and down Main Street of my town whiff her, you'd a thunk we a black couple. I didn't have to worry 'bout no white folks lynching me, but she sho' talk funny! When I aks her to cook me breakfast in the morning, she say to me, "You must be avare that I turn back into guitar vhen the sun come up. I can't cook you no breakfast."

Not that we call each other by name too much, at least in the beginning, but when I aks her for her name, she tell me, "My name is Naguine."

Never heard no name like Naguine before. Must be a gypsy name.

Eventually, one thing lead to another. That's to say, Naguine was eventually in the family way. After that, she didn't turn into no guitar at dawn no more but stayed a woman. That meant she could cook me breakfast in the morning if she want, but the first time she cook me breakfast, I think she trying to poison me. Gypsy food ain't nothing like what black folks eat! It also mean she could give me some loving any time of the day, but after a few months of being pregnant, she didn't want to give me no loving no more. "You have two good hands," she say. "Or you can go find somebody else."

Now a man ain't supposed to hit a lady, 'specially when she pregnant, but they was times when I wants to hit her upside the head. But Naguine ain't no ordinary woman. She worshipped some kind of devil. Way as black folks mostly believe in the Lord and accept Jesus Christ as their saviour, Naguine prayed to a statue of some woman with six arms. But only when she thought I's asleep. And she could turn herself into a snake. Sometimes, she even bit me too.

I must admit, they was a time or two when I tries to kill her. Both times, she turn to a snake and bit me. One time, I tore up the whole house trying to chop her up with a hatchet. The furniture was all kindling, and the dishes was all broke up on the floor. They was pans everywhere too, because I's throwing them at her. The babies was all scared too, crying, "Turn back, mama! Turn back! Turn back before daddy kill you!"

Then I has her cornered, and I shout, "I gots you now, you snake woman!"

But then she turn to a woman again and says, all dignified: "I could turn into a venomous snake, you know. Be thankful I didn't have venom."

After that, Naguine didn't turn herself into a snake no more, except when she felt like eating a mouse. She used to eat some strange things! She could turn into other animals, too. One time, she turn into a giant bull fog and swallowed a sparrow whole down by the creek. I couldn't believe it! Another time, she turn into a pelican. She also turn into a manitee when we was living in Florida, but she got run over by somebody in a boat and had a bad scar on her leg.

Then I gets to thinking, What if she wants to turn into an alligator and eat me? When you'se living with a witchy woman, you never know. She have mood swings, you know, so she couldn't always help herself.

But she always gave me good loving. That's why we have lots of babies. Most of our babies was like me, unable to change themselves into snakes and frogs, but we has one daughter that can walk on water. Among her peoples, only womans can walk on water but not mans. I seen a couple of her sisters walking across the bayous or across the Florida Everglades at night or early in the morning round dawn. With lanterns in they hands, they look just like what the Cajuns call "foo foolettes," or "will-o-the-wisps," from a distance. It's a pretty sight, but they was strange peoples! They come to visit us 'cause they's always travelling, way as we stay put in one place, 'cept when I gots to go look for a job. We could never visit them 'cause they's always moving. They's thiefs and fortune tellers, you know, only one step head of the law.

Then, one day after the War, Naguine says to me, "I have heard from my family that the automobile plants in Detroit are hiring. Maybe you should see about finding a job in Detroit."

That was Naguine's way of telling me to get a job. Seeing that I's a veteran just come back from the War, they's no work for black folks like me down South, 'cept picking cotton or grinding sugar cane, so I followed the Mississippi River up north. They's hiring in Detroit, but they only want me as a janitor 'cause I's black. I wants to work on the assembly line or run a machine, but I's willing to take any job I could get. I spend forty-four years working at Hydromatic, from 1946 to 1990. Eventually, I becomes a machinist 'cause I wents to school and learns everything I could 'bout running machines. I retired as a tool and dye maker. Though I talks like a black man from down South, I don't read and write like one. I read newspapers every day.

Two or three years after I got hired, I bought a house on Grove Avenue in Ypsilanti, where all the black folks live, and Naguine came up from Florida with the kids. In 1970, we sold the house on Grove and bought another one on Warner Avenue in Ypsilanti Township in what was a mixed neighbourhood. After that, Naguine start going to the church at the corner of Wallace Boulevard and Michigan Avenue and got saved. She stop turning herself into animals after that and live the life of a good Christian woman, at least as far as I know.

Then, after I retire, she got cancer and die. My daughter a nurse, so Naguine die at home in a hospital bed in the living room. And what do you think happen when Naguine die? She turn back into a guitar right before everybody's eyes! But when I tries to play her, I finds I can't play a lick. It be so many years since I play my guitar that I forgets everything I knowed before I got married. This guitar that I play, this be Naguine. I starting to get back what I knowed before, but I sho' ain't no Elmo James…


Now, I wasn't going to tell an old man that his guitar couldn't possibly have been a real live woman, because I have always believed in being respectful towards the elderly, so I decided to just humour him. Besides, it was a good story, and I was able to kill some time just listening to him.

Then, as I was about to leave to go back to work, Mr. Taylor had some visitors. About ten or twenty people who looked like Roma crowded into his little private room, speaking all at once in a language that I had never heard before. They sounded like they were from India, except that they were dressed like gypsies, with the men in white puffed sleeve shirts and the women in long and billowy multi-coloured skirts. Most of them were as dusky as the silt that formed the Mississippi Delta, with black hair and ebony eyes to match, though some of the children had light brown hair and lighter skin. Most of them had rotten teeth, however, though one of the younger woman, a very beautiful young woman, had shiny white teeth to rival the pearly Gates of Heaven.

One of the men took Mr. Taylor's guitar and started playing what sounded like Spanish flamenco music while some of the women danced and beat their tambourines. I couldn't believe it! I wondered if there wasn't some veracity to the fantastic story that Mr. Taylor had told me, but then I shook my head and said to myself, "Nah, can't be! People can't change their shape at will." Or can they?

Mr. Taylor and his gypsy relations had to take their party outside, because some of the other clients at the retirement home complained about the noise. They partied from the afternoon until about eight o'clock at night, when visiting hours were over.

After that, I looked at Mr. Taylor's badly out-of-tune guitar in a different light.