Tuff (17 page)

“Damn, this year’s crop is dumber than we were,” Winston said, pulling his head from the door frame and walking abjectly toward the teachers’ lounge. Ms. Dunleavy looked up from her lunch and saw a round silhouette pause on the other side of the fire glass. She opened the door. “Good eve-ning,” Winston said in a slow Hitchcockian drawl.

“Winston, good to see you.” Seeing Jordy curled in his stroller, she asked, “Is that your son? He’s so cute, may I hold him?” Winston turned his back to her, wheeling the baby out of reach. “Can’t do that. No white person has ever touched him. If one does, I’ll have to kill him. Like a mama rabbit does when a human handles her kid.”

Ms. Dunleavy had been Winston’s teacher last fall when he attended the GED preparatory program at the community center. Her notions of English didn’t feel right in his mouth. For Winston language was an extension of his soul. And if his speech, filled with double negatives, improper conjugations of the verb “to be,” and pluralized plurals (e.g., womens), was wrong, then his thoughts were wrong. And oftentimes her corrections had the effect of reducing him to ethnic errata.

In an alternative school whose faculty were mostly ex–flower children still mad at Bob Dylan for going electric, Ms. Dunleavy was a tolerable teacher. She just taught. She never grilled Winston about his home life, digging for literary fodder to be used in a persona poem or a condescending novel so orchestrated for political correctness it read like
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
meets a televised broadcast of the President’s State of the Union Address.

She didn’t conduct her geography lessons from a summer Sandinista intern’s perspective and in a Public Radio accent:
People, today I’m going to place a red flag in every Latin American country where the United States has conducted covert operations to assassinate its leader. Say the names of the countries with me as I insert the flag: Cuuu-baaa, Ar-hen-tee-na, Neek-kar-rah-ghgxgwhaw
. During arithmetic Ms. Dunleavy didn’t adopt a faux street attitude to explain how to divide fractions in the local vernacular.
So peep this, when you be like wanting to divide fractions, you take the reciprocal of the divisor, “reciprocal” means flip the script, find
the highest common digit, squash the common denominators, then multiply across. That’s stupid dope, right?
Unlike the male teachers, she didn’t compound her sins by being constantly late for class, and not-so-discreetly fucking the students on the weekends.

Despite his resistance to Ms. Dunleavy’s ministrations, Winston was on the verge of reaching the delinquent’s equivalent of the four-minute mile, a two hundred score on the GED, when he quit school. When Ms. Dunleavy asked him why, he replied that he was afraid of what he’d do if he failed the test. “I know I’ll hurt somebody.” He also said he was afraid of what he’d do if he passed the test. “I know I’ll hurt myself. Sabotage my life.”

Winston could hear the overlapping small talk coming from the conference room next door. “My father in there?” he asked Ms. Dunleavy.

“Yes, he is. Are you going to stay for the reading?”

“Hell no—my father’s poems is worser than shit you used to make us read. You all be falling for that Black Panther Up-with-People bullshit too.”

“Your father is an inspiration to thousands of people involved in the struggle.”

“All I know is when that nigger starts reading, I be struggling to stay awake. First thing he does, every time, is put his watch on the podium, all serious-like. As if what he has to say is so important. Like the Revolution might start at any moment, so there’s no time to waste. Then Pops proceeds to ignore the watch and read for three hours. Whitey could put us all back in slavery and the nigger would still be reading.”

“Winston, you need to come back to school—it’s never too late.”

“But it’s always too hard.”

Winston lifted Jordy from the stroller, then walked into the conference room, wedging himself in the nearest corner. His entrance went unnoticed by everyone except Fariq, who silently acknowledged his friend with a raised eyebrow and an almost imperceptible lifting of his chin. Winston’s “peoples” sat around an oak table like off-Broadway dramaturges planning the last act of his life. Inez sat at the end of the table nearest him. On her right were Yolanda, Fariq, and Spencer. To her left a hedgerow of fluffy salt-and-pepper Afros crowning the heads of Winston’s father and his Panther cronies, Gusto, Dawoud, Sugarshack, and Duke, each with a steel Afro pick tucked over one ear. At the foot of the table, in front of an empty chair, sat a speakerphone.

Spencer was proud of himself. It had taken him a week to make the
arrangements but by gathering all of Winston’s loved ones in a single room, he’d performed his first mitzvah, and he wasn’t going to let Clifford Foshay’s brutish tactics sour the miracle. He knew of Clifford’s Panther reputation for being an intimidator, and the square-shouldered leather jacket and Mennonite beard only enhanced it. It wasn’t hard to see where Winston had learned his bullish ways. “Where this fucking boy at?” asked Clifford without bothering to even look at the door. He reached for Spencer’s arm and, leather sleeve creaking menacingly, seized Spencer by the wrist. “Fuck time is it?” He hiked up Spencer’s sleeve and, not finding a watch, sank back into his chair. “Where’s your watch, brother? You know, Brother Malcolm said, ‘Don’t trust a man who doesn’t wear a watch.’ ”

Spencer didn’t flinch. “Where’s
your
watch, Mr. Foshay?”

“Nigger, my watch is in my bag with my poems. Where it’s supposed to be. And don’t puff your chest out at me, I know who you are. You that fucking Negro rabbi white folks drag out every time they need a reasonable black opinion.”

“That’s right, that’s right. Why should we trust you?” echoed Sugarshack. Clifford’s squires sat back in their seats, stroking their goatees and finishing one another’s sentences. “Do you understand what Mao meant when he said—”

“ ‘In the relationship that should exist between the people and the troops, the former may be likened to—’ ”

“ ‘—water, and the latter to the fish who inhabit it’?”

Clifford held up his hand for quiet. “You a Tom. One of those political, cultural, social theorists. And now you cozying up to my son?”

Spencer sat upright in his chair. “I do subscribe to one theory. A metatheory, if you will. That is, I think a good theory should be generalizable, accurate, and simple.”

“Fuck kind of theory is that?” Clifford groused, finally letting go of Spencer’s wrist.

“It’s the GAS Theory, a theory about theories. But no theory meets all three of the criteria: generalizable, accurate, and simple.”

“Einstein’s theory of relativity!” shouted Sugarshack, pleased with himself for citing the grandest of theories.

“Generalizable and accurate, but not simple,” Spencer answered.

“What about the theory that fags and Hindu people talk a lot?” volunteered Gusto, unsheathing his Afro pick from his head and forking out his natural. Clifford frowned and asked, “Whose theory is that?”

“It’s
my
theory, mofo,” Gusto answered, burying his metal-toothed rake in his now lopsided hairdo.

“Sounds more like a prejudice than a theory,” Spencer said. “But for the sake of our getting-to-know-you discussion, we’ll call it a theory—though a simple one, it is definitely not generalizable, or accurate.”

Tired of playing the wallflower at a party supposedly thrown in his honor, Winston uprooted himself, placed Jordy on the table in front of Inez, and sauntered to his seat. Jordy crawled down the length of the tabletop and nestled himself in his father’s lap. “Man, the only theory that satisfies all three bits of the GAS Theory is the GAS Theory itself.”

“Where in hell you been, smartass?” asked Clifford.

“Where in hell
you
been?”

“Boy, don’t get uppity with me. Back in my day we didn’t need an intervention to straighten no young black boys out. Things was together. The community raised the children. If Mrs. Johnson saw you wasn’t acting right, she called you, you came. She put the stick to your behind, and you took it. Sent you home, called your mother. When your mother said, ‘Is what Mrs. Johnson said true?’ you said yes, and took another beating from your parents.”

Tuffy casually waved off his father. “If shit was so righteous and
together
back in the day, how come
you
turned out so fucked-up?”

Clifford stood up, his hand raised high overhead. “Nigger, don’t disrespect me!” The speakerphone crackled to life and the scratchy voice of Winston’s mother called out, “Clifford, you leave Winston alone!”

“Tell that nigger something, Ma,” Winston said, pulling the speakerphone closer to him and adjusting its volume upward, “before I have to stuff them ‘We Shall Overcome’ civil rights sunglasses up his ass.”

“How you doing, son?”

“Good, Mama. I miss you.”

“I’m here for you, baby, but I only got another thirty minutes until my lunch break is over.”

Spencer scooted in closer to the table. “Speaking of theory, I think we’ve just seen a bit of Freud’s Oedipal theory at work.”

“Now that’s one theory that isn’t generalizable,” said Yolanda. “It surely doesn’t apply to black folk. True, a nigger might want to kill his father, but he sure as hell doesn’t want to fuck his mother. He might fuck a cousin, but Mom is out.”

Spencer picked up his pen and pad and began. “I’m pleased everyone
could make it. We are here to help Winston Foshay get on what is called ‘the right track.’ We all know him to be a troubled youth with loads of untapped potential. And Winston, I know that you are cynical about this process and it probably feels like a funeral to you, but please keep in mind that whatever you hear said today, we, unlike Antony, Brutus, come not to bury you, but to praise you.”

Fariq twisted the bill of his baseball cap to a rakish angle. “Tuffy, I don’t know what this fool talking about, but I came to make sure you find a job so you can pay me my ends, nigger.”

“Fuck you, man. You get it when I got it.”

“Let’s get started. Winston, one of a Big Brother’s initial duties is to alert the members of his Little Brother’s support group, assess the strength of the social network, then formulate a plan of action.”

“One minute.”

“Yes, Mr. Foshay.”

“I cannot in good conscience agree to be party to this without knowing where your political sympathies lie, Mr. Throckmorton. How do we know that you’re not leading Winston down the road to black apathy?”

“For the record, okay, I don’t believe in labels.”

“You still a Jew asshole.”

“Thank you, Fariq. As I was saying, before I was so rudely labeled, is that political terms such as ‘left,’ ‘right,’ ‘Democrat,’ ‘Republican’ have no meaning to me. They convey nothing about one’s political personality or motivations. I judge one’s political savvy on whether or not they capitalize the
b
in ‘black’ and can pronounce ‘Ntozake Shange.’ ”

“Who?” asked Dawoud.

Gusto nudged his stolid partner. “You know, that sister who wrote that play—
Rainbows for Colored Chicks Whose Arms Too Short to Slap Box with God
.”

“Yeah, I remember. Some bitch talking about how brothers don’t respect them. That shit was pretty good—I saw it while I was coked up.”

“Can we return to discussing Winston’s welfare?”

Clifford drummed his fingers on the table. “I just don’t want my son’s integrity as a strong black man compromised. We must ensure the boy develops himself as a black man, a descendant of African aristocracy, the southern working class, and some hellified Brooklyn niggers who took no shorts.”

Waving a mindful finger, Spencer interrupted him. “I think we
shouldn’t take this black-man’s-right-to-self-determination thing too far with Winston. It’s like calculating pi to the five-billionth place—so what?”

“Wait a goddamn minute!”

Like channelers at a séance, everyone looked around to see where the disembodied yell was coming from. “Hey, anybody out there?”

“Oh shit, it’s Moms on the speaker phone. Everybody shut up! Go ’head, Mama.”

“Listen up. It’s Winston’s life. Let Winston decide what he wants to do with it. I’ve got to go—bye, son. I’ll call back in a few minutes.”

“Love you, Mama.”

After Mrs. Foshay’s reproach the gathering sat upright in their chairs, waiting for Winston to take command of the meeting and his life. Winston, oblivious to the restlessness surrounding him, rummaged through his backpack and removed a box of food. He set a tin of pernil, habichuelas, and arroz amarillo topped with gandules aside. He unwrapped a thin, flimsy burrito and bit into it. After just one bite he spit out the mouthful of food. “Taco Bell will definitely fuck up your order. I told them no onions.” Winston took his time rewrapping the rest of the burrito. He wiped his mouth with a napkin and said, “First, these niggers gots to go.”

“Who, us?” asked Gusto, Dawoud, Sugarshack, and Duke, flabbergasted, their index fingers pressed to their breastbones. “How you going to act?”

“You four draft-dodging dashiki-wearing brown-car-driving leather-trenchcoat-in-the-summer-sportin’ stuck-on-stupid-played-out-1970s reject motherfuckers need to raise. You all ain’t none of my social support network.”

Clifford defended his friends. “Winston, you’ve known these brothers all your life. Who looked out for you when I was gone? They did. Who turned you on to Miles and Monk? They did.”

“Them niggers didn’t turn me on to shit. They only came over to the house to crash, smoke weed, and flirt with Moms. And when the electricity was turned off, they’d steal my boom box since it ran on batteries and force me to listen to all that fucked-up plink-plink-bong music.”

Clifford covered Winston’s hand with his own and squeezed. “Winston, these are four brothers who’ve been around the block. Proud black men who’ve sacrificed their youth so young people like yourself wouldn’t have to go through what they did. Do you remember?”

Winston’s resolve began to weaken as he recalled how comforting it
was having the four men requisition the tiny apartment like Allied liberators. Their cocky banter made him and his mother laugh. Their menthol cigarettes dangled from ashtrays he’d made in school like smoking cannon from castle ramparts. Winston felt protected. And though he was too young to know the war had been over for more than a decade, he longed to be old enough to fight on the Revolution’s frontlines. After dinner the men would sit on the couch and clean their weapons. Carefully, they’d place dabs of brown oil on the guns’ mechanisms, smearing the droplets with their fingertips.