Blues Ain't No Mockingbird

Toni Cade Bambara’s short story “Blues Ain’t No Mockin Bird” was published in her 1972 collection, Gorilla, My Love. The story is narrated from the perspective of a young, unnamed Black girl as she observes her grandparents’ reaction to white men who want to film her family for the county’s food stamp campaign. This guide refers to the version found in the 1992 First Vintage Contemporaries edition of Gorilla, My Love.

The young girl is playing in the yard with her cousin, Cathy, and neighbor twins, Tyrone and Terry. The boys are flying high in the tire swing, and Cathy and the narrator are splashing in a mud puddle. Aware that her Granny is ladling rum into tins, “making the cakes drunk,” the narrator briefly ruminates on other things for which Granny has used the ladle:

The old ladle drippin rum […] like it used to drip maple syrup into the pails when we lived in the Judson’s woods, like it poured cider into the vats when we were on the Cooper place, like it used to scoop buttermilk and soft cheese when we lived at the dairy (129).

Then, Granny speaks: “Go tell that man we ain’t a bunch of trees” (129). This draws the narrator’s attention to some white men who have evidently been on the property for some time that day, filming the family as though they are landscape or some other spectacle. Before the narrator can respond, the men approach and try to ingratiate themselves to Granny, smiling, complimenting her vegetable garden and calling her “aunty.” They want her to give a statement about the county’s food stamp campaign—yet they also try to flatter her by remarking that if everyone were so industrious and grew their own vegetables in their garden, food stamps would be unnecessary. Granny remains resolute, not returning their smiles and repeatedly implying that they need to leave: “Suppose you just shut that machine off,’ said Granny real low through her teeth, and took a step down off the porch and then another” (131). When one of the men still points the camera at her and again calls her “aunty,” she responds, “Your mama and I are not related” (131).

The men back off but continue filming, and as Granny watches them, she tells the children a story about a time she saw a man threatening to jump off a bridge. A crowd had formed, including the police, the man’s minister, and “[h]is woman.” The woman was so upset that she was biting her own hand, and the minister and police were trying to talk the man down. Suddenly, a man appeared with a camera and took pictures of the man on the bridge. Granny says:

‘This person takin up the whole roll of film practically. But savin a few, of course.’

‘Of course,’ said Cathy, hatin the person. Me standin there wonderin how Cathy knew it was ‘of course’ when I didn’t and it was my grandmother (131-32).

The children are rapt, but Granny stops the story there. Impatient, the boys ask if the man jumped; Granny only gives them a long, hard stare until they fall silent, seeming to realize that the story was not for their entertainment.

Granny goes back inside, and the narrator assumes Cathy will tell her the rest of the story because Cathy seems to know so much more about Granny than she does. For example, their family has moved several times, and Cathy knows it’s because Granny has repeatedly grown frustrated with each milieu—whatever the locale, white people have been disingenuous, patronizing, or intrusive:

[I]t was on account of people drivin Granny crazy till she’d get up in the night and start packin. Mumblin and packin and wakin everybody up sayin, ‘Let’s get on away from here before I kill me somebody.’ Like people wouldn’t pay her for things like they said they would. Or Mr. Judson bringin us boxes of old clothes and raggedy magazines. Or Mrs. Cooper comin in our kitchen and touchin everything and sayin how clean it all was. Granny goin crazy, and Granddaddy Cain pullin her off the people, sayin, ‘Now, now, Cora’ (132).

Granddaddy Cain has tried to soothe his wife, but he has reluctantly gone along with the move each time. Cathy starts to tell a story of her own, which turns out to be “Goldilocks,” and the boys begin roughhousing. The ruckus doesn’t bring Granny outside the way it usually would, and when the narrator gets into the tire swing, she can see Granny in the kitchen, staring at her cakes and mumbling, her hand on her forehead.

Then, the narrator hears Granddaddy Cain making his way toward the house from the woods, holding a wounded chicken hawk on his shoulder. He is a big man, and his steps can be heard all the way up at the house. Two of the county men, whom the narrator inwardly nicknames “Camera” and “Smilin,” approach Granddaddy Cain. They don’t speak, but they film him as he passes on his way to nail the wounded chicken hawk to the toolshed door. The bird is still alive and flapping violently, trying to free itself. Granddaddy Cain stops momentarily to show Granny that he’s got the hawk “at last,” but she’s too distracted by the county men to pay attention, so he continues on his way. The men continue to approach, still filming. Granny calls over to her husband and, in a distinctly aggravated moan, instructs him to stop the men from trampling her flower bed.

Just then, the hawk’s mate appears, screeching and careening through the air. The children and the county men are afraid, but 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” (134). The county men draw nearer, and all the while there is the sound of Granny’s groans. Granddaddy Cain and the narrator seem to share a tension, knowing that before long, “Granny gonna bust through that screen with somethin in her hand and murder on her mind” (135).

Granddaddy Cain bids the men a good day, but when they approach him, smiling, he holds out his hand. Realizing he wants the camera, one of the men places it in his hand but still tries to explain their aim of filming for the county. Granddaddy Cain is silent, even as they ask for it back. Then, he plucks off the top half of the camera. One of the men snatches it back and complains that the exposed film will be ruined, but Granddaddy Cain simply warns him, “You standin in the misses’ flower bed […] This is our own place” (136). The men stare, then finally gather their things and leave. As Granddaddy Cain makes his way through the house, Granny’s groans have turned to humming, and the smell of rum has returned. The story ends with Cathy saying she’d like to write a story “[a]bout the proper use of the hammer” (136).