Voices of Play: Miskitu Children's Speech and Song on the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua

4. Performing Gender in Song Games

78 One June afternoon, when there was a break in the rainy weather, some kids between the ages of seven and eleven were playing marbles in an open space between their houses. It was determined that Coral and Ruby had won the game, but there was an argument about the number of punishments that should be inflicted on the losers. The punishments were called koko, which signified a winner flicking a marble against a loser’s knuckle a certain number of times, and tali, which signified a winner slapping the underside of a loser’s wrist with two extended fingers, also a certain number of times. The number of times these punishments would be administered was supposed to be decided at the beginning of the game, but, not surprisingly, there was a discrepancy in various players’ recollection of that decision. Mariana, a loser in this particular game, believed that she should only receive two koko, but the others insisted that five were her due, in addition to four tali. Coral and Ruby mustered all their strength to deliver the koko and tali, which the losers received without additional protest. Then Coral announced , “Ahora vamos a niños-niñas juegos, no?” (Now let’s go to boys’girls ’ games, no?). Her utterance of “niños” was a slip of the tongue, immediately corrected by saying “niñas juegos” (girls’ games). I asked them if marbles were not intended for girls, and they said no, that was a boys’ game. But, I queried, the girls did play marbles, didn’t they? Yes, Coral replied. I asked them why they played a “boys’ game,” trying to get at the divergence between the discourse on gendered boundaries between games and the embodied performances that crossed those boundaries. But at that Chapter Four Performing Gender in Song Games Performing Gender in Song Games · 79 moment Jeson came along and asked in Miskitu, “How many [koko] did you get?” Example 4.1 shows the multilingual dialogue that followed. Example 4.1 1 Jeson: An alki banghram? How many did you get? 2 Lula: Ya? Who? 3 Jeson: Man nani. You all. 4 Coral: Faiv! Tu shi. Five! To her. 5 Lula: Mariana ( ) an Coral wal. Mariana ( ) and Coral two. 6 Ruby: Koko. Koko. 7 Jeson: Yang ra lika kumi sin ai daukras. You haven’t done even one to me. 8 Ruby: Mek ai giv yu wan. Let me give you one. 9 Jeson: Mek ai giv yu firs. Let me give it to you first. 10 Coral: No, yo firs, yo tali, tali, tali. No, me first, me tali, tali, tali. 11 Lula: Duro. Hard. ((Coral slaps Jeson’s wrist with her fingers.)) 12 Jeson: Ah, dat is noting. Ah, that’s nothing. In the first seven lines above, the kids’ utterances are centered around Miskitu, with the exception in line 4 of Coral, who tended to be Spanish and Kriol English dominant. In line 8, Ruby’s use of Kriol English is a 80 · Voices of Play more significant shift, and Jeson reciprocates by switching to Kriol English as well.1 Coral’s hybrid utterance in line 10 combines Spanish, “No, yo,” with the Kriol English “firs,” recycled from Ruby’s and Jeson’s previous turns. Through this format tying, Coral brings Spanish and Kriol English together with the game term tali, which works in any language. Following Lula’s direction that Coral should slap Jeson’s wrist duro (“hard” in Spanish ), Jeson responds in Kriol English as he did in his previous turn. The linguistic heterogeneity of the children’s discourse paralleled a heterogeneity in the gendered voices enacted. Jeson’s nonchalant comment “Ah, that’s nothing,” upon receiving a physical blow, indexes a stance of toughness that is a desirable quality in local discourses of masculinity. On the other hand, toughness is not a quality exclusive to performances of masculinity. The physical punishments koko and tali were inflicted as energetically by girls as they were by boys. Both boys and girls in this community were often socialized by their older siblings and cousins to be tough and even aggressive. From the time they were toddlers, little girls and boys were set up in mock fights with other toddlers; their older peers guided the toddlers’ fists to strike one another until they were utterly confused and flustered, usually breaking down in tears. At that point the toddlers were comforted and...