The Sellout (21 page)
“Sure, go ahead.”
A
mite
? I hung my head in embarrassment. I hate when people get all folksy around black people they think they’re superior to. What was next? Fixin’? Sho’ ’nuff? A chorus of “Who Let the Dogs Out”?
“Dad, what are we doing here?” I mumbled, my mouth full of the saltine crackers I’d been stuffing down my gullet since Memphis. Anything to take my mind off the heat, the endless cotton fields, and the thought of how bad slavery must have been for someone to convince themselves that Canada wasn’t that far away. Although he never spoke about it, like his runaway ancestors, my father, too, fled to Canada, dodging the draft and the Vietnam War. If black people ever do get slave reparations, I know plenty of motherfuckers who owe Canada some rent money and back taxes.
“Dad, what are we doing here?”
“We’re reckless eyeballing,” he said, removing a pair of 500x General Patton binoculars from a fancy leather case, placing the black metal monstrosities to his eyes, and turning toward me, his eyes big as billiard balls through the thick lenses. “And I do mean reckless!”
Thanks to years of my father’s black vernacular pop quizzes and an Ishmael Reed book he kept on top of the toilet for years, I knew that “reckless eyeballing” was the act of a black male deigning to look at a southern white female. And there was my dad staring through his binoculars at a storefront no more than thirty feet away, the Mississippi sun glinting off the massive spectacles like two halogen beacons. A woman stepped out onto the porch, an apron tied around her gingham dress, a wicker broom in her hand. Shielding her eyes from the glare, she began to sweep. The white men sat open-legged and open-mouthed, aghast at the sheer fucking nigger audacity.
“Look at those tits!” my father shouted, loud enough for the entire cracker county to hear. Her chest wasn’t all that, but I imagine that through the portable equivalent of the Hubble Space Telescope her B-cup breasts looked like the
Hindenburg
and the Goodyear blimp, respectively. “Now, boy, now!”
“Now what?”
“Go out there and whistle at the white woman.”
He shoved me out the door, and kicking up a blinding cloud of red delta dust, I crossed a two-lane highway covered with so much rock-hard clay I couldn’t tell if the road had ever been paved. Obligingly, I stood in front of the white lady and began to whistle. Or at least tried to. What my father didn’t know is that I didn’t know how to whistle. Whistling is one of the few things you learn at public school. I was homeschooled, so my lunch hours were spent standing in the backyard cotton patch reciting all the Negro Reconstruction congressmen from memory: Blanche Bruce, Hiram Rhodes, John R. Lynch, Josiah T. Walls … so although it sounds simple, I didn’t know how to just put my lips together and blow. And for that matter, I can’t split my fingers into the Vulcan high-sign, burp the alphabet on command, or flip someone the bird without folding down the non-insulting fingers with my free hand. Having a mouthful of crackers didn’t help either, and the end result was an arrhythmic spewing of pre-chewed oats all over her pretty pink apron.
“What’s this crazy fool doing?” the white men asked each other between eye rolls and tobacco expectorations. The most taciturn member of the trio stood up and straightened out his
No Niggers in NASCAR
T-shirt. Slowly removing the toothpick from his mouth, he said, “It’s the ‘Boléro.’ The little nigger is whistling ‘Boléro.’”
I jumped up and down and pumped his hand in excitement. He was right, of course, I was trying to re-create Ravel’s masterpiece. I may not know how to whistle, but I could always carry a tune.
“The ‘Boléro’? Why, you stupid motherfucker!”
It was Pops. Storming out of the car and moving so fast his dust cloud kicked up its own dust cloud. He wasn’t happy, because apparently not only did I not know how to whistle, I didn’t know
what
to whistle. “You’re supposed to wolf whistle! Like this…” Recklessly eyeballing her the whole way, he pursed his lips and let go a wolf whistle so lecherous and libidinous it curled both the white woman’s pretty painted toes and the dainty red ribbon in her blond hair. Now it was her turn. And my father stood there, lustful and black, as she just as defiantly not only recklessly eyeballed him back but recklessly rubbed his dick through his pants. Kneading his crotch like pizza dough for all she was worth.
Dad quickly whispered something in her ear, handed me a five-dollar bill, said I’ll be back, and together they hurried into the car and tore out down some dirt road. Leaving me to be lynched for his crimes.
“Is there a black buck Rebecca ain’t fucked from here to Natchez?”
“Well, least she knows what she likes. Your dumb peckerwood ass still ain’t decided whether you like men or not.”
“I’m bisexual. I likes both.”
“Ain’t no such thing. You either is or you ain’t. Man crush on Dale Earnhardt, my ass.”
While the good old boys argued the merits and manifestations of sexuality, I, thankful to be alive, went inside the store for a soda. They carried only one brand and one size, Coca-Cola in the classic seven-ounce bottle. I twisted one open and watched the effervescent sprites of carbon dioxide dance in the sun rays. I can’t tell you how good that Coke tasted, but there’s an old joke that I never understood until that bubbling brown elixir slid soothingly down my throat.
Bubba the redneck, a nigger, and a Mexican are sitting at the same bus stop when BAM! a genie appears out of nowhere in a cloud of smoke. “You each get one wish,” says the genie, adjusting his turban and his ruby rings. So the nigger says, “I wish for all my black brothers and sisters to be in Africa, where the land will nourish us and all Africans can prosper.” The genie waved his hands, and BAM! all the blacks left America and went to Africa. The Mexican then said, “
Órale
, that sounds good to me. I want all my Mexican peoples to be in Me-hee-co where we can live well and have yobs and drink from glorious pools of tequila.” BAM! They all went to Mexico and left America. Then the genie turns to Bubba the redneck and says, “And what is it you desire, Sahib? Your wish is my command.” Bubba looks at the genie and says, “So you’re telling me that all the Mexicans are in Mexico and all the niggers are in Africa?”
“Yes, Sahib.”
“Well, it’s kinda hot today, I guess I’ll have a Coke.”
That’s how good that Coke was.
“That’ll cost seven cents. Just leave it on the counter, boy. Your new mommy be back in no time.”
Ten sodas and seventy cents later, neither my new mother nor my old father had returned and I had to take a wicked piss. The fellows at the gas station were still playing chess, the attendant’s cursor hovering hesitatingly over a cornered piece as if his next decision decided the fate of the world. The attendant slammed a knight onto a square. “You ain’t fooling nobody with that Sicilian gambit chicanery. Your diagonals is vulnerable as shit.”
My bladder about to burst, I asked black Kasparov where the bathroom was located.
“Restrooms are for customers only.”
“But my dad just purchased some gas…”
“And your father can shit here until his heart’s content. You, on the other hand, are drinking the white man’s Coke like his ice is colder than ours.”
I pointed to the row of seven-ounce sodas in the cooler. “How much?”
“Dollar-fifty.”
“But they’re seven cents across the street.”
“Buy black or piss off. Literally.”
Feeling sorry for me, and winning on points, black Bobby Fischer pointed into the distance at an old bus station.
“See that abandoned bus station next to the cotton gin?”
I sprinted down the road. Although the building was no longer operational, balls of cottonseed still blew in the wind like itchy snowflakes. I made my way to the back, past the gin, the empty pallets, a rusted forklift, and the ghost of Eli Whitney. The filthy one-toilet bathroom buzzed with flies. The floors and the seat were flypaper sticky. Glazed to a dull matte yellow by four generations of good ol’ boys with bottomless bladders, pissing countless gallons of drunk-on-the-job clear urine. The acrid stink of unflushed racism and shit shriveled my face and put goosebumps on my arms. Slowly I backed out. Underneath the faded
WHITES ONLY
stenciled on the grimy lavatory door, I ran my finger through the grit and wrote
THANK GOD
, then peed on an anthill. Because apparently the rest of the planet was “Colored Only.”
At first glance the Dons, the hilly neighborhood about ten miles north of Dickens that Marpessa moved to after she married MC Panache, looks like any well-to-do African-American enclave. The tree-lined streets are twisting. The houses are fronted with immaculate Japanese-style gardens. The wind chimes somehow coerce the air currents into Stevie Wonder songs. American flags and campaign signs supporting crooked politicians are displayed proudly in the front yard. When we were dating, sometimes after a night out, me and Marpessa would cruise the neighborhood, wheeling Daddy’s pickup truck through streets with Spanish names like Don Lugo, Don Marino, and Don Felipe. We used to refer to the modern but smallish homes with their pools, plate-glass windows, stone facades, and weatherproofed balconies overlooking downtown Los Angeles as “Brady Bunch houses.” As in “The motherfucking Wilcoxes came up, dude. Them niggers kicking it in a Brady Bunch house off Don Quixote.” We hoped one day to live in one of these homes and have a barrel of children. The worst thing that could happen to us was that we’d falsely accuse our oldest son of smoking, a poorly thrown football would break our daughter’s nose, and our slightly slutty maid would constantly throw herself at the mailman. Then we’d die and go into worldwide syndication like all good American families.
For ten years, ever since our breakup, I’d periodically park outside her crib, wait until the lights went out, then through the binoculars and a sliver of open bay window curtain, I’d take in the life I should’ve been living, a life of sushi and Scrabble, kids studying in the living room and playing with the dog. After the children went to bed, I’d watch
Nosferatu
and
Metropolis
with her, crying like a baby because the way Paulette Goddard and Charlie Chaplin in
Modern Times
circle around each like two dogs in heat reminded me of us. Sometimes I’d sneak up to the porch and, in the screen door, leave a snapshot of the growing satsuma tree on her porch with
Our son, Kazuo, says hello
written on the back.
There isn’t much you can do about segregating a school when school isn’t in session, and that summer I spent more time outside her house than for legal reasons I care to admit, until one warm August night, the forty-foot Metro bus parked in Marpessa’s driveway forced me to abort my stalker protocol. Like their white-collar comrades, it’s not unusual for black blue-collar employees like Marpessa to take their work home with them. Regardless of your income level, the old adage of having to be twice as good as the white man, half as good as the Chinese guy, and four times as good as the last Negro the supervisor hired before you still holds true. Nevertheless, I was surprised as hell to see the #125 bus sitting in her driveway, its back end blocking the sidewalk, its right-side tires ruining a once-perfect lawn.
Tree photo in hand, I crept past the gardenias and the Westec security sign. Rising to my tippy-toes, I peered into a side window, cupping my hands around my eyes. Even in the cool of the midnight air, the vehicle was still warm and thick with the scent of gasoline and the sweat of the working class. It’d been four months since Hominy’s birthday party and the
PRIORITY SEATING FOR SENIORS, DISABLED, AND WHITES
signs were still up. I wondered aloud how she got away with them.
“She says it’s an art project, nigger.”
The barrel of the snub-nosed .38 boring into my cheekbone was cold and impersonal, but the voice behind the gun was the exact opposite, warm and friendly. Familiar. “Dude, if I hadn’t recognized the smell of cow shit on your ass, you’d be dead as good black music.”
Stevie Dawson, Marpessa’s younger brother, spun me around and, gun in hand, gave me a bear hug. Behind him stood a red-eyed Cuz, a tipsy grin happily cutting across his mug. His boy Stevie was out of jail. I was glad to see him, too; it’d been at least ten years. Stevie’s rep was even more dastardly than Cuz’s. Gang-unaffiliated only because he was too crazy for the Crip sets and too mean for the Bloods. Stevie hates nicknames, because he feels real bad motherfuckers don’t need one. And although there are a few hardheads around the way who answer to their Christian names, when niggers say Stevie, it’s like a Chinese homophone. If you’ve been around, you know exactly who they mean. In California you get three strikes. If you’re convicted of two felonies, the next guilty verdict, no matter how minor, can mean life in prison. Somewhere along the line the catcher must have dropped Stevie’s third strike, because the system had sent him back to the plate.
“How did you get out?”
“Panache sprung him,” Cuz answered, offering me a sip of Tanqueray that was almost as nasty as its diet grapefruit soda chaser.
“What, he performed one of his shitty benefit concerts and snuck you out in a speaker?”
“Power of the pen. Between his TV cop gig and the beer commercials, Panache knows some big-time white people. Letters were written, and here I am. Conditionally paroled like a motherfucker.”
“What conditions?”
“The condition that I don’t get caught. What else?”
One of the dogs began to bark. The kitchen curtains parted, spilling light onto the driveway. I flinched, even though we were out of sight.
“No need to be scared. Panache ain’t here.”
“I know. He’s never here.”
“And how you know that, you been stalking my sister again?”
“Who’s out there?” It was Marpessa, saving me from further embarrassment. I mouthed to Stevie that I wasn’t there.
“It’s just me and Cuz.”
“Well, bring your asses inside before something happens.”