Dog War (8 page)

“I have five white men and you only have two! Nah nah nah naaah na!”

“Dad! Tell Henrietta to stop! She’s provoking me!”

“The white man in the tree belongs to Henrietta. The one walking the dog doesn’t count. But the one painting the house is Cheryl-Lee’s,” adjudicated Henry with a Solomonic air.

Shirley drove home with a sullen scowl.

That evening as Precious lay on her bed thinking about the day’s contretemps, she heard the door creak open and saw Cheryl-Lee framed in the doorway. “Grandma,” the girl asked timidly, “can I come in?”

“Of course, darling,” Precious welcomed, reaching out for her.

The child hurried over, snuggled against her grandmother, then squirmed away. “Can we go under the bed and talk, Grandma?”

“We don’t have to go under de bed. We can talk right here.”

“But I like it under the bed, Grandma!”

Precious sighed. “All right,” she said heavily.

Soon they were scrunched under the bed. Precious heard footsteps briskly approach her door and Shirley call out, “Mummy! I gone to work. See you in de morning.”

“Goodbye!” Precious bellowed back.

She heard Shirley ask in a puzzled tone through the closed door, “Why Mummy sound like she so far away?” and Henry answer nonchalantly, “Oh, she’s probably under the bed. She-goes there a lot.”

“Henry, are you driving my mother under a bed?”

“I didn’t do anything but fix up under the bed for her!” Henry squealed.

Shirley’s footsteps beat a brisk tattoo to the front door and a few minutes later Precious heard her car drive away.

“Grandma,” Cheryl-Lee asked petulantly in the under-bed dimness, “didn’t I see the white man painting the fence first?”

Chapter 9

There are men who are brutes, drunkards, and lazy goodfor-nothings, but the too-too man is the only kind a woman constantly has an urge to wash out with an enema. A woman likes a man with gristle in him, one she can sink her teeth into and chew on happily for years as a lifetime cud. Theophilus had been just such a tough-skinned wretch: cantankerous, miserable, headstrong, set in his ways; always trying to shish kebab pum-pum with everlasting pushy, forward, impertinent, rude, and out of order bamboo; always bawling about his dinner, complaining about his clothes, ranting and raving at maid and mistress. If ever a man had gone straight to heaven it was that gluttonous, never-satisfy, big-belly soul, and Precious just lamented the day the wretch had to go and collide with a truck around a corner, stranding her in America with a too-too man for company.

It was morning. Precious and Henry were at breakfast, with Shirley asleep and the children gone to school.

Henry was fussing about the kitchen, provoking Precious to inwardly fulminate about him in this vein as he fried her an egg she did not want, had not asked for, and was perfectly capable of frying for herself if she had felt for an egg, which she did not, although the brute still insisted on frying one. It was a perfectly fried egg, with not a trace of grease or singed lacy edges, and Henry had just carefully slid it onto her plate like a Frenchman dishing out a serving of bullfrog foot.

She stared hard at him and swallowed her peevishness.

“Precious? You want any orange juice?”

“No, thank you.”

“Does my juice have too much pulp?”

“I just don’t feel for any orange juice.”

“I don’t mind squeezing a fresh batch, you know!”

“Lawd Jesus, hanging on de cross!” Precious whispered.

The too-too man was right and correct in everything he did or said in the irritating way of the catechism. You could not say that he was
too this
or
too that
because if you did you would seem an ungrateful wretch. You could not find the proper words to express your grievance about such a man without appearing small-minded and petty. So you held your peace and kept quiet, and this very suppression of righteous irritation made you feel strongly to kick him down and reach for your enema pan.

Henry was such a too-too man.

Precious baked banana bread. She had taken a job at a temporary agency and on her first day off she spent the whole morning baking, and when the children came home they snacked happily on the warm banana bread as they chittered about their schoolday adventures.

Henry came home that evening and counterattacked with his own banana bread, claiming that he had been meaning to make it from last week but kept forgetting, and since Precious made her bread and the children had so eagerly eaten it, he would cook his own too while the pans were still warm.

So Precious was forced into waging banana bread war with a man.

And the wretch had the gall to win.

His banana bread was plainly better than hers as she could tell from the very first nibble. Then he suggested that hers wanted more vanilla and sugar.

Precious stared at him with disbelieving eyes, wondering how much she was expected to endure for a green card.

“How many perms you set today?” Precious flung spitefully at him as she retired to her room, where she crawled under the bed to nurse grievance.

A few minutes later came a tap on her door.

“Hullo?” cried Precious, sulking under mattress batty.

“Are you thinking, Precious?” Henry asked through the closed door.

“Yes, I am.”

“May I come in?”

“Why? You want an enema?” she mumbled.

“What did you say, Precious?”

“I said, one minute, please,” she bawled loud enough for him to hear.

She slid out from under the bed to meet face-to-face with the oily too-too wretch.

He cleaned out her room one day when Precious was at work, and when she came back she took him aside and said please not to clean out my room for I am a woman and no man is supposed to clean out my room, I am supposed to clean out my own room plus man’s one too, and I have been doing it for years and take pride in keeping a clean room and don’t need any man to come and sneak-clean my room behind my back when I am at work, and while she said this Precious kept a winsome smile on her face so that she wouldn’t hurt his feelings.

But the next week he had cleaned out her room again, down to vacuuming the floor and dusting off her dresser, and she took him aside and this time she wore no winsome smile on her face when she said that she did not want her rass room cleaned out by any man, and though she did not use that nasty word “rass” she had sorely felt like it, and please to leave her boudoir alone for a woman’s boudoir was her castle, it was the place where she reigned supreme and where man must not venture except when woman invites him in for a joint of bamboo, and she wanted to make matters so clear that never again as long as she lived would any too-too man ever attempt to clean out her room, did he understand?

That was Jamaica, Precious, said Mr. Too-too, this is America. Here men pick up and clean up after women. Men help with laundry and dishes and change diaper. In fact, when it came to wiping doo-doo baby bottom, he was foremost champion, for he himself used to wipe all the baby bottom in this family since Shirley was too busy being police and didn’t like the smell of baby doo-doo, while he thought it cleared his nose better than vapor rub, and anyway he was liberated and only doing what a liberated man did in America.

Did she imprison him in America? Was she his warden? Must her room be held hostage? Must he go on a cleaning rampage through her personal possessions just because he was liberated?

Of course not, said Too-too with an ingratiating smile, and Precious felt like saying, don’t smile so at me when we arguing about cleaning up my room, or so help me God I going thump you down on de spot, but she was a lady and only gritted her teeth and muttered that it struck her as no laughing matter and she was serious as a judge about not wanting man to clean her-room.

“I like cleaning up your room, Precious!” Henry insisted. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

Precious jumped like she had sat down on a bee, for she instantly recognized the tone of voice the too-too wretch was using. It was a tone that sighed, “Precious, how you so fat and juicy, eh?” and more than one man had whispered it while tamping a wriggly tongue down the shaft of her earhole and trying to coax pum-pum out of her. Indeed, the last time she had heard that tone was from Theophilus as she was helping prop up middle-aged Brutus for his weekly ride.

She glared at Henry and growled, “I box down more dan one man already dat take dat tone to me.”

She jumped up and headed abruptly for her room.

“What did I say, Precious?” Too-too whined, chasing after-her.

She turned to face him. They were in the narrow hallway outside her bedroom door, and he was peering at her like he was puppy dog and she was beefy bone. She felt to point a fingernail in his face and deliver stern warning but, instead, merely stomped her foot and retreated into her room.

“Precious,” he scraped outside her door plaintively, “I think we’re having a cultural misunderstanding!”

He washed out her drawers. It was such a shock for her to come home from work one evening and find her dirty drawers washed, rinsed, and folded neatly on her bed that if she had had dentures she might have swallowed them and choked to death. Then and there she made up her mind that she was going to thump him down on the spot, and she threw open her bedroom door and charged into the kitchen looking for the panty-rinsing wretch.

He was not in the kitchen.

“Henry!” she called, going so far as to poke her head into his-bedroom, thinking that whether in kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, or laundry room, he was still getting thumped down.

He was not in the bedroom, bathroom, laundry room. He-was nowhere in the house.

His car was gone and he had left her a note.

It read:
Precious: Am cooking a stew for dinner. Did the wash today, including your underthings. Hope I didn’t starch the collar of your blouse too much. Ironed this morning before work, too. No rest for the wicked. See you at dinner.

She was stalking back into her bedroom with a scowl when she heard a door slam and rushed into the kitchen with her fist doubled, ready to thump.

It was Shirley, coming home from a meeting.

They sat in the kitchen and drank coffee. Shirley saw that her mother was agitated and asked what was troubling her. Precious put the case bluntly.

“Your husband have de nerve to wash out my underwear dis morning! I going to thump him down, Shirley! So help me, I-am just going to thump him down!”

Shirley frowned and looked puzzled. “Why? He didn’t do a good job?”

“Do a good job?” Precious shrieked. “What business does dat man have washing out my underwear, please? What?”

“But Mummy! Is I train him, you know.”

“Train him? To wash woman panty? If dis was Jamaica, de police would lock him up.”

Shirley chuckled. “Mummy, you too old-fashioned. Henry is a modern American man. I put him through a long training. I-discipline him de right way. Don’t undo all de years of training I give dat man now.”

“Tell him to leave my underwear alone if he value life and limb, to say nothing of liver, eyeball, and gall bladder!”

That night she heard Henry come home and stir about the house, picking up odds and ends discarded by the children and stacking dishes away, and she heard Shirley talking to him in the kitchen followed by anxious murmurs from Henry. A few minutes later someone tapped softly on her door and Henry whispered, “Precious?”

She lay in bed and pretended to be asleep.

“Precious!” he called again, this time more insistently. She-replied with a bogus snore loud enough to inform the wretch that she was asleep.

“Is your mother sleeping?” she heard Henry ask and could not make out Shirley’s garbled reply, so she gave out another thunderous snore that would have made it plain even to a deaf man that she was asleep and snoring.

“She doesn’t usually go to bed this early, does she?” she heard Henry ask again.

Precious tiptoed to the door, stood silently behind it, and blasted a boar’s snore through the wood. There was silence for a moment while the idiot digested the snore. Finally she heard him say in a chastened voice, “I suppose she’s sleeping,” and scrape away from her door as she flung another handful of bullfrog snores after the retreating brute.

“You wretch!” she carped, sneaking back to her bed. “You nearly make me blow me sinus out me nose-hole!”

The next day he was sorry.

He was sorry at breakfast when he fried her an egg even though she had already explained that there wasn’t her equal in the world when it came to egg frying. He was sorry at work, for he called her between perms, she herself being off that day, to say that he was sorry. And he was sorry in the evening hours as he fluffed the cushion of her easy chair when she sat down to watch television. Ever since he recognized her habit of fluffing the cushion before she settled down to a nightly diet of American television murder shows, he had taken this preparatory fluffing upon himself as a bounden duty, and while he fluffed the cushion he explained how sorry he was that he had washed her underwear.

“Precious,” he said earnestly, “I really am sorry. This is a culture difference we’re encountering.”

She snorted.

“Will you forgive me, Precious?” he asked, smiling in a way that God had intended only for the hyena.

She faced him squarely and stared hard at the hands hovering dangerously within fluffing distance of her cushion.

“Sit down over dere!” she ordered. “Leave me alone, Henry. I am in a bad mood.”

So he sat and he gave her that look from the sofa that said, “Precious, how you so fat and juicy, eh?” and she opened her mouth as if to deny that she was fat and juicy and to assert that even if she were, it was still none of his stinking business.

“I’m telling you, Precious,” he lobbed from the sofa, “we’re working through culture conflict here.”

Matters got worse. He mopped her floor. He cooked her a special dessert. He scoured out her tub. And he was watching her. She could tell. He was watching her because he had noticed that she was fat and juicy while his own wife was scrawny and aerobic. She couldn’t really blame him for this interest, however, since everyone knew that one plump woman could drive more man crazy than a thousand female jogger, and he repeatedly told her with his tone and eyes that he had noticed how sweet and juicy she was by asking, “Precious, would you like another cup of coffee?” or, “Precious, do you want to watch another program?” or once, with special effrontery which nearly earned him a box, “Precious, tell me what your favorite dishes are and I’ll cook them.”