Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

June Jordan was Professor of African American Studies at U.C. Berkeley and was born in New York City in 1936. Her books of poetry include Haruko / Love Poems and Naming Our Destiny: New and Selected Poems. She was also the author of five children's books, a novel, three plays, and five volumes of political essays, the most recent of which was Affirmative Acts.

For more than ten years, she wrote a regular political column for The Progressive magazine. Her honors included a National Book Award nomination, a Rockefeller Foundation grant, and a National Association of Black Journalists Award. June Jordan died in Berkeley, California on June 14, 2002.

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Soldier

Basic Civitas Books

Chapter One

I was born on the hottest day, in Harlem. A beastly heatset records while my mother labored more than twenty-fivehours, alone, inside a shuttered hospital room.

    No one gave her anesthesia or any other comfort.

    The staff kept my father waiting beyond the closed door.And, stunned by her incessant weeping, her repetitive, weepingpetitions to the Lord for some relief, he could scarcely decidewhether to sit, to stand, or to smash up a chair, a pane ofglass, a coffee cup.

    My mother continued to moan. And she begged God toforgive her for these outbursts of ingratitude.

    She was being blessed with a child. Months before, she hadbeen visited in her sleep by angels who had told her that thisfirstborn would prove to be a great help to her people: Coloredpeople. She was being blessed.

    But she felt sundered by an agony that would subside onlyto return with a piercing intensity that lasted quite beyondher sensible endurance.

    Her own sweat and bits of shit and blood drenched thesheets beneath her torment and she twisted and she toiledthrough arduous hours of her sacred tribulation, and shetried?she tried?to praise Jesus and His suffering as she sufferednow, the curse of every woman.

    This, then, was her cross to bear: This giving birth to me.

* * *

They were both West Indian immigrants. Both of them cameto America from barefoot, peasant levels of poverty. But therethe similarities disappeared.

    My father quit after the first few months of grade school inJamaica because, he said, the other children laughed at therags he wore.

    My mother completed the equivalent of high school and so,as my father reminded her, again and again, she knew how toread and write "long before" he got around to teaching himselfthose skills.

    But my mother grew up in the dirt-floor cabin of a mountainvillage without electricity or running water. She wouldoften whisper to me pictures of the frightening shadows of bananaleaves below the changing message of the moon.

    She came to this country because my grandmother, a domesticworker in New Jersey, finally sent for her.

    My father came because his older brother, down in Panama,tried to take his teeth out with an ordinary pair of pliers.

    Or: He came because he'd finished his stint as a British soldierwho served in a cavalry regiment of Her Majesty's somethingor other in World War I.

    It was hard to settle my father into a steady frame of reference.

    He was a "race man," an admirer of Marcus Garvey, an enthusiastfor theories about African origins of the humanspecies, a zealous volunteer boxing instructor at the HarlemYMCA, devotedly literate in the available Negro poetry andpolitical writings?and, also, he would angrily insist that hewas not "black," not a "Negro."

    Looking at him, you'd have to say that my father was extremelyhandsome, possibly white, and at least 50 percentChinese.

    Listening to him, you'd have to conclude that he was passionatelyconfused and volatile.

    Calling himself the Little Bull, my father was short, conspicuouslyfit, truculent, and generally (with women) flirtatious.

    Believing that "idleness is the devil's plan," he stayed busy;reading through the night, his index finger tracking each syllablethat he silently mouthed, or writing letters to governmentofficials, or designing the next household or backyardproject, or refining a schedule of forced enlightenment for me,his only child.

    He was forever loquacious, argumentative, and visionary inhis perspective.

    And he was addicted to beauty, which is probably why hemarried my mother.

    She had flawless brown skin and enormous dark browneyes. She was very beautiful. She was also very sad. But my fathermistook her sadness for dignity, and he treasured her reserve,her hesitant pacing, her mysterious poise. He also savoredthe teasing of her artificial quiet, the fullness of herbosom, and her quivering lower lip. She walked that proud Jamaicanwalk, allowing for no haste, no misstep, no embarrassmentof clumsy impulse.

    He was a man's man. She was a man's woman, thrilled to bechosen by an unemployed, ambitious West Indian who wouldmake her his wife: He would be the stubborn provider whowould take proper care of her in this strange, fast-talking city.

    And on the afternoon when he did at last get work, as anelevator operator, my father ran the whole length of Manhattan,uptown to their two cramped rooms, to shout, "A job! Ajob! I got a job!"

    He intended to keep every single promise he made toher?and to himself.

    All he wanted in exchange was her fidelity, her respect, alittle loosening up on the affectionate side of things, and ason.

* * *

I loved orange juice. It seemed to me that orange juice anddaylight fused in my mind as soon as I could focus. It wassuch a wonderful color! And you could see orange pulp particlesmoving inside that delicious liquid! A bottle or a glass oforange juice presented me with an aquarium that I could taste.And, oh! The pleasures of that color and that movement ofthat coloring on my tongue!

    I could look and look at orange juice. I wanted and I hopedfor and I never forgot about orange juice.

    Milk was good for you.

    I hated it.

    But orange juice and the transparencies of glass and suffusingmodulations of a day's light could and would excite meawake, my eyes wide open for more orange juice: More!

* * *

Half a year after I was born, it must have been Christmastime.The square rooms of our public-housing apartment feltcrowded to me as many more visitors than usual came andwent. A variety of unfamiliar voices boomed and lilted aroundthe tree and my wicker bassinet.

    My mother did not feel like starch or smell like food. Itried to reach for the tiny holiday rhinestones I saw sparklingaround her neck and swaying from her ears. But she'd shakeher head and tickle my stomach and singsong a nursery rhymeto distract me:

Hey diddle diddle
The cat and the fiddle
The cow jumped over the moon
The little dog laughed
To see such sport
And the dish ran away with the spoon

    My mother had the habit of connecting a particular part ofmy body to every noun. For example, she'd say "Hey diddlediddle" and, at the second "diddle," she'd choose a spot?perhapsmy cheek or the tip of my nose?and she'd press or pinchor kiss that chosen counterpart: "The cat" (scratching myelbow) "and the fiddle" (squeezing my thumb).

    It's fair to say I could not help but fall in love with words.

    In this regard, my favorite rhyme was

This little pig went to...