Tuff (34 page)

“White people can’t tell the difference, though.”

“True indeed.”

“But it really hurts when other black folk can’t tell the difference. I expect the white people to clutch their purses, and cross the street.”

“Yeah, back in the day if I saw you coming, Rabbi, I’d cross the street too, but I’d be coming over to your side to take your money.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“Well, Rabbi, at least you sound white. You got that going for you. You spend the rest of your life on the phone, your shit be straight hunky-dory.
But I got one for you, though. What’s the difference between white people and black folks?”

“Is that a riddle?”

“No, I’m serious.”

“White people eat ice cream year-round, even in the winter. And when they give you a ride home, they drop you off, then drive away as soon as you get out of the car. Black folks wait until you’re safely inside.”

“Thanks for the lift, Rabbi.”

“Easy, Winston.”

“All right then.”

The boys standing in the vestibule parted like canal locks; Winston floated through, and they closed ranks behind him. Spencer waited a minute or two, then drove off with a tire squeal, closing the passenger door getaway-style.

T
he butt end of a flauta de pollo disappeared down Winston’s gullet. His napkin already saturated with grease stains, he licked his fingertips and wiped his mouth with the corner of the linen tablecloth. “I don’t know where all these Mexicans came from, but I’m glad they decided to move here. Fucking food is good.” Spencer paid the bill and they left Puebla Mexico, Winston savoring the last of his cold horchata.

Headed north, they walked in silence, digesting the meal and their surroundings. Like the moors of the English countryside or the bogs of the Louisiana bayou in a late-night creature feature, at night the streets of East Harlem undergo a metamorphosis. Only fools and monsters trod in the darkness. Spencer splashed up Lexington Avenue, jumping at every hoot-owl screech. Winston slipped upstream, an urban alligator skimming the swamp’s surface, eyes peeled for prey.

At 110th Street locals jammed the intersection. Oblivious to the automobile traffic, they dashed between cars, yelling and furiously signaling to one another like traders on the New York Stock Exchange floor, closing bell be damned. “It’s hot out here tonight!” Winston remarked with a relish that made it obvious he was referring more to the street frenzy than to the muggy evening. Spencer read the lettering above the gated windows of the post office on the far side of 110th Street, ‘
HELL S
GATE STA ION
.’ At their feet were a couple sitting on milk crates and dressed in T-shirts, cut-off denims, and foam-rubber thongs, watching a black-and-white television powered by an extension cord alligator-clipped to the innards of a lamppost. The Yankee game was in extra innings, and the play-by-play in melodramatic Spanish. The woman, her newly hot-combed hair dipping like an aileron behind her head, looked away from a pop-up and greeted Winston with a broad smile. “Hey, Tuffy Tuff.”

“What up, girl? How you feel?”

When her man saw Winston, he grabbed and held his dog, a stocky black-and-brown rottweiler named Murder, by the collar. “
¿Qué te pasa
, bro?”

“Suave.”

Turning the bill of his baseball cap to an even quirkier angle, Winston stooped to pet Murder. When the dog went to lick his hand, he quickly put its head in an armlock. “What up, nigger?” he said to the animal, who answered him only with pleading brown eyes and a try to yank himself out of the grip. Winston tightened his hold until the dog whimpered. Satisfied, he released Murder and he and Spencer crossed the street.

“Now are you ready to study?” Spencer asked, handing Winston a sheet of paper. “I made up a list of questions I think might be asked at the debate.” Winston took the paper and, without looking at it, rolled it into a tube. “Let’s walk uptown,” he said. “It’ll be quieter.”

Ahead of them a row of red traffic lights receded far into the distance. Spencer felt as if he were about to descend into the concrete depths of perdition, Dante to Winston’s Virgil.

I
t had been a while since Spencer had walked the streets of East Harlem at night. The last time was when he and Rabbi Zimmerman sat shiva on 117th Street with Bea Wolfe, her husband laid out on the kitchen table, dead of lung cancer. For seven days he shuttled between the apartment and the market, sprinting through the chaotic streets for cat food and candles, reciting the kaddish to himself.

He glanced about, looking for Mr. Wolfe’s ghost or another remnant of a Jewish presence. A vagabond wearing a weather-beaten sweater and grimy polyester pants sat cross-legged in front of a
panadería
. The smell of fresh-baked bread mixed with the stench of dried urine. There was an eerie lacquered sheen to the man, as if he’d been bronzed by gritty air and
polished by the warm night winds. Catching Spencer’s gaze, the vagrant put his thumb and forefinger to his lips. “You got a square?” Not knowing exactly what a square was, Spencer shook his head, sidestepping away from the man with a patronizing smile he hoped would placate them both. Winston handed the man a cigarette.

“Do you know if any Jews still live in the neighborhood?” Spencer asked. Tuffy shrugged, saying he occasionally saw old white people taking baby steps to and from the market, or store owners collecting the day’s receipts and hopping into their Cadillacs. Maybe they were Jewish, he didn’t know. A war whoop rolled down the street. Ahead of them a brood of rough-looking young men blocked the sidewalk. The boys jumped up and down like freshly oiled pistons, feverish with the boundless energy that comes from being on a New York street corner after eleven p.m. En masse the group moved toward Spencer and Winston. Spencer braced for an act of violence. He was thankful Fariq wasn’t with them. Fariq would sense his fear, hear his insides knotting like a ship’s lanyard, notice his eyes avoiding the boys as if they were lepers and he a gentleman too polite to stare.

Tuffy pointed to a second-floor bay window. Tucked in the corner of the window was a small sign,
RAYMOND TENNENBAUM—ABOGADO Y SEGUROS
.

“You asked if there are any Jewish people in the neighborhood—Tennenbaum sound Jewish, don’t it?”

Spencer agreed, his head sinking toward the ground. The boys were within mugging distance. He could almost hear Fariq saying something about the irony of Tennenbaum making money off both ends: insuring the public against the crimes of colored boys like these, then defending the same kids after they’d committed the crimes.

“Rabbi, take your hands out your pockets,” Tuffy whispered. “And lift your fucking head up.”

Spencer did as he was told. The boisterous youths were only two steps away from him—so close he could feel the chill emanating off their ice-cold scowls. Winston walked toward the group, reached out, and, without breaking stride, shook the hand of the lead gargoyle.

It was the same with nearly every band of young people they met: a firm yet quick slide-’n’-glide handshake exchange that, like comets hurtling around the sun, seemingly propelled each party up the sidewalk to the next rallying point. “What up, kid?”

“Coolin’.”

“Tranquilo.”

“Stay up, son.”

Some handshakes ended with a finger snap, others with a light touching of knuckled-up fists. “Peace, God.” One man, whom Winston apparently hadn’t seen in a while, received a handshake that collapsed into a strong, spinning bear hug that chicken-winged their elbows out to the side. “Nigger.”

“My man. Fuck’s happenin’?”

Spencer asked why he warranted an embrace from Winston rather than the standard soul shake. “Rabbi, that nigger got stories to tell, but the fucked-up thing is, he so deep in the life, he can’t tell them.”

Not having spent much time with Winston on his home turf made it difficult for Spencer to determine if he was campaigning or just taking his leisurely nighttime stroll up the avenue. He knew so many people. And those who were too busy to hail him watched him knowingly.

“Winston, it’s too late now but you should’ve taken the election seriously—you probably could’ve won.” Tuffy looked at Spencer like he was crazy. He spat and put the rolled-up debate questions to his mouth. Through the paper megaphone he yelled to two sisters sitting on a fire escape three stories above them. “Where your brother at?”

“Wagner!” one shouted back.

Tuffy shook hands and exchanged pleasantries with many locals, but few received the bear hug. As with prime numbers, the farther uptown they zigzagged, the greater the distance between the persons who got the grip and the loving embrace. Between 109th and 112th Streets, Winston squeezed homeboys and homegirls 2, 3, 7, 11, and 13 like lost children found in the amusement park; 23, 29, and 37, all standing in line to get into the La Bamba dance hall on 115th Street, were crushed like sympathetic friends at a funeral. In the lobby of the Chicken Shack on 117th, Winston, 41, and his sister, 43, were hugged like football players in the end zone celebrating a Super Bowl touchdown. Now, at 119th and Second Avenue, Winston was tapping 73 on the shoulder.

Raychelle Dinkins was his first love. His first kiss. His first slow dance. His second fuck. His first regular drug customer. Back in junior high when Winston and Raychelle were an item, she was a thick-framed teen who had what Winston liked to call “a luscious, dark black, hard-ass gospel body.” A heroin addiction had eaten away her muscle like jungle rot. Turned her into a wisp of a woman so thin her pregnant belly seemed to account for half her body weight. “Winston!” Raychelle shouted, raising
her bony arms to hug him. Winston tucked her head into his chest, resting his chin on her flaky scalp. The familiar scent of the perfume she’d been wearing since seventh grade flared his nostrils and caused an involuntary growl to rumble from his throat, the sweet smell taking him back to ditch parties at Kevin Colón’s house, where he spent school days sipping wine coolers and listening to Hector Lavoe sing love ballads he couldn’t understand. “You speak Spanish, what he sayin’, Raychelle?” Taking a break from notching a hickey on his neck, she would cock an ear toward the stereo. After a few bars she’d stick her tongue and her translation in Winston’s ear. “He saying, ‘Fuck math, fuck English, fuck me right now.’ ”

“Raychelle!” her boyfriend, an integer, a regular nigger, called from across the street. He was clapping his hands, a drill-sergeant coach urging his recruit through the obstacle course. “Let’s go!” As she turned to leave, Winston hooked an arm around her waist, swept a lock of stringy hair from her ulcerated face, and planted an affectionate kiss on her cheek. “How many months?”

“Seven and a half.”

The boyfriend, seeing the kiss, took three strides into the street. “Bitch, come on!”

“Hold up, motherfucker!” Raychelle licked her thumb and brushed it across Winston’s eyebrows. “You know what I’m a name it, right?”

“Lonnie if it’s boy. Candice if it’s girl.”

“You remember.”

“Come on now, this Tuff.”

“How’s Jordy?”

“He all right. He don’t never talk, but he cool.”

“Raychelle, them niggers ain’t going to be at the spot forever, and unless you got some works, you best to come on!”

Raychelle bussed Winston on the eyelids, then, stomach-first, waddled into the street, tumbling after her already-departed boyfriend, who seemed to pull her along as if she were a mangled kite he was trying to get airborne. The couple moved briskly past a brick wall plastered with graffiti and campaign posters. Winston spat. The street lamp hanging overhead began to flicker. The strobelike flashes illuminated Winston and Spencer as if they were caught in a silent-movie lightning storm. “Damn, she used to be fine.”

“I bet she was. You can still see it. She still got some booty left.”

“Check you out, Rab, showing a little zest,” Winston said, still gazing up at the light. He handed Spencer his questions back, then clapped his
hands. The beam steadied. “What they going to ask me at the debate, Rabbi? They going to ask about Raychelle?”

“They will. They’ll hand out index cards and ask the audience to write down their questions and pass them to the front.” Spencer unrolled the paper like a medieval herald. “ ‘Mr. Foshay, what do you plan to do about drugs in the community?’ ”

“You not hearing me, Rabbi. Are they going ask me about Raychelle? Are they going to say, ‘Tuffy, you know all the troublemakers, if you get elected what you going to do about Raychelle, or Petey Peligroso?’ ”

“Winston, the idea of a debate is to address the issues on a broader scope. I doubt they’ll mention anyone by name.”

“That’s because they know better. Because then I’d say, ‘What you going to do about your son, your niece, your nephew, yourself?’ I’d throw it back in they face, word.”

They continued north on Second Avenue, Spencer tossing out prospective debate questions in the affected stuffy yammer of a television moderator. “Children having children. A problem. A moral disgrace. How do we prevent it? Mr. Foshay?” Although he was listening, Winston looked straight ahead, keeping his answers to himself, vainly trying to remember which one of the upcoming bodegas carried the Captain Nemo chocolate cakes he was craving.
You ain’t never going to stop kids from having sex. Those that want to fuck going to fuck. What you need to do is be real with them. Hip them to the Astroglide. Squeeze it out the tube, slap it on the rubber, and the pussy feel normal
.

“Rap music … violent television programming … films that glorify crime. Are they influencing our youth and pushing them in the wrong direction? Isn’t the answer censorship, and not warning labels and ratings?”
Has anyone ever thought that this type of entertainment is … what’s that word Yolanda be using after we have one of our angry fucks? Cathartic. Maybe if niggers wasn’t listening to rap music, and watching these bullshit films, they’d be even more violent. And for that matter, if the white man wasn’t making these movies, he’d be more violent too
.