Blues Ain't No Mockingbird

“Nice place you got here, aunty. We thought we’d take a—”

One of the men attempts to explain why they’re there. But he isn’t asking permission, and he assumes a familiarity with Granny that she does not welcome. In just a couple sentences (one of which is only a sentence fragment), the man inadvertently exposes his entitlement and patronizing attitude. In a matter of seconds, Granny knows what sort of person she’s dealing with.

“‘I don’t know about the thing, the it, and the stuff,’ said Granny, still talkin with her eyebrows. ‘Just people here is what I tend to consider.’”

Granny has rebuffed the man’s halfhearted compliment on her “nice things,” letting him know that she doesn’t care what he thinks about her property. She is only concerned with “people here,” meaning the county men. She is strongly indicating to the men that they are not welcome, without explicitly saying it.

“‘Now, aunty,’ Camera said, pointin the thing straight at her.”

The white man is attempting to reframe things for Granny, literally and figuratively. Literally, he is aiming his camera at her, an action that is meant to reestablish the power dynamics: He is here to take, and she is here to give.

“So here comes…this person…with a camera, takin pictures of the man and the minister and the woman. Takin pictures of the man in his misery about to jump, cause life so bad and people been messin with him so bad.”

This is the point of Granny’s anecdote about the man on the bridge. She pauses as she decides how to describe the man taking pictures, and settles on “this person,” allowing him more humanity than he gave his subject. The camera man snapped pictures, capturing another man’s sorrow without ever fully understanding it. Granny knows, and wants the children to know, how dangerous that sort of remove is.

“I’m lookin to Cathy to finish the story cause she knows Granny’s whole story before me even.”

The narrator looks to Cathy for help understanding her grandmother because Cathy has established her authority on that before. Cathy’s role as interpreter helps the narrator see that Granny’s actions have sensible reasons, and the narrator values Cathy’s insight because of that.

“And I could see her leanin up against the pantry table, starin at the cakes she was puttin up for the Christmas sale, mumblin real low and grumpy and holdin her forehead like it wanted to fall off and mess up the rum cakes.”

The narrator, just prior to this, noticed that Granny isn’t yelling at Tyrone and Terry for roughhousing, so she climbs into the tire swing to see what Granny is up to. The narrator is worried Granny will lash out, and is looking for evidence of that happening, and has found it. This is an important look at the toll oppression has taken on Granny, and how it causes tension in her home.

“And here comes Smilin and Camera up behind him like they was goin to do somethin. Folks like to go for him sometimes. Cathy say it’s because he’s so tall and quiet and like a king. And people just can’t stand it.”

This is an important set of details about Granddaddy Cain. He is kingly in his bearing and not quick to lash out like Granny, but people still “go for him”; they “just can’t stand it.” The narrator thinks the county men may try something, and she knows that this is because of her grandfather’s dignity, which racism and oppression have established he shouldn’t be allowed.

“‘Get them persons out of my flower bed, Mister Cain,’ say Granny moanin real low like at a funeral.”

When Granddaddy Cain returns with the wounded chicken hawk and shows it to Granny “at last,” he shows that he does her bidding. When he hears the way his wife is speaking and hears what she is asking him to do, the reader can trust that Granddaddy Cain will do what he is asked.

“Granddaddy Cain straight up and silent, watchin the circles of the hawk, then aimin the hammer off his wrist. The giant bird fallin, silent and slow.”

Granddaddy Cain is the only bystander who hasn’t ducked or run wild trying to catch or wound the hawk. Instead, he watches—then with perfect aim throws his hammer, killing the bird. This indicates his nature as a quiet man of action, someone who doesn’t make ill-considered moves.

“And we figure any minute, somethin in my back tells me any minute now, Granny gonna bust through that screen with somethin in her hand and murder on her mind. So Granddaddy say above the buzzin, but quiet, ‘Good day, gentlemen.’ Just like that.”

Granddaddy Cain and the narrator share the same tension: that Granny will do something that has dire consequences. The narrator’s anxiety is intense enough to express itself physically as a feeling in her back, but then Granddaddy Gain forestalls Granny’s crisis by dismissing the men. There is power in these quiet words, and it confuses the men. Notably, Granddaddy Cain addresses them as “gentlemen,” a completely respectful and appropriately formal title. If he were to call them “uncle” (as they call Granny “aunty”), they would undoubtedly be astonished or indignant.

“But like Cathy say, folks can’t stand Granddaddy tall and silent and like a king. They can’t neither. The smile the men smilin is pullin the mouth back and showin the teeth. Lookin like the wolf man, both of them.”

The men’s politeness is slowly being revealed for what it is: a tactic. Granddaddy Cain’s self-respect, his respectful way of speaking with them without giving them what they want, is an affront to their expectations, to their privilege. The narrator says the men’s smiles appear wolflike, and it is ambiguous whether this means the smiles are becoming strained and grimace-like, or whether the narrator simply sees the smiles and intuits the men’s phoniness and covert predation.

“He held that one hand out all still and it gettin to be not at all a hand but a person in itself.”

Granddaddy Cain has made a gesture toward the men, a nonthreatening physical gesture that is nonetheless not a request. He wants the camera; he will have the camera in his hand. The narrator says the hand has become a person, and indeed the family’s insistence on privacy and respect is there in Granddaddy Cain’s hand, as is their very humanity.

“‘Can I have my camera back?’ say the tall man with no machine on his shoulder, but still keepin it high like the camera was still there or needed to be. ‘Please, sir.’”

Without their camera, the men feel powerless—a dynamic they aren’t used to. Their discomfort is palpable; the tall man’s body seems to yearn for the weight of the camera, for the return to the former power dynamics.