I copped a seat near King Cuz, who was playing the back as usual, munching on a maple bar and leafing through a stray issue of Lowrider magazine. When Foy Cheshire spotted me, he tapped his Patek Philippe like I was a deacon walking in late to church. Something wasn’t right about Foy. He kept interrupting McJones with meaningless questions.
“So hurling, that’s also college slang for vomiting, am I right?”
Seeing as he wasn’t using it, I borrowed Cuz’s copy of The Ticker. In the fiscal quarter since the Wheaton Academy’s inception, employment in Dickens was up an eighth. Housing prices had risen three-eighths. Even graduation rates were up a quarter. Finally, black people were in the black. And though it was still early in the social experiment and the sample size was relatively small, the numbers didn’t lie. For the past three months, since the Wheaton Academy went up, the students at Chaff Middle School were performing considerably better. Not that anyone was going to be skipping any grades or putting in an appearance on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire anytime soon, but on average, the scores on the state proficiency exams were approaching, if not mastery, a promising competency. And as near as I could make out from the state guidelines, the improvement was such that, in all likelihood, the school would not be going into receivership, at least not anytime soon.
After the reading was over, Foy strode to the front of the room, clapping like an enthusiastic child at his first puppet show. “I’d like to thank Mr. McJones for that stimulating reading, but before we get into this afternoon’s subject matter, I have an announcement. The first is that my latest public-access show, Black Checker, has been canceled. The second is that, as many of you may know, a new battle has begun, and the enemy dreadnought is right here offshore in the form of the Wheaton Academy, which is an all-white school. Now, I have friends in high places, and they all deny the existence of the Wheaton Academy. But fret not, I have developed a secret weapon.” Foy dumped the contents of his attaché case onto the nearest table, a new book. Two people immediately got up and left. I wanted to join them, but remembered I was there for a reason, and part of me was insanely curious as to what American classic Foy would bastardize next. Before passing it around the room, Foy coyly showed the book to Jon McJones, who shot back a look that said, “Nigger, you sure you want to unleash this shit on the world?” When it reached the back, King Cuz handed it off to me without even looking at it, and as soon as I read the title, I didn’t want to let go. The Adventures of Tom Soarer. It dawned on me that Foy’s written works were Black Folk(s) Art and were going to be worth something one day. I was beginning to regret the book burning thing and that I hadn’t started a collection, because I’d spent the past ten years looking down my broad black nose at probably now-impossible-to-find first-and-only-edition titles like The Old Black Man and the Inflatable Winnie the Pooh Swimming Pool, Measured Expectations, Middlemarch Middle of April, I’ll Have Your Money—I Swear. On the cover of Tom Soarer, a preppy black boy, wearing penny loafers and argyle socks exposed by a pair of flooding whale-print lime-green pants, and armed with a bucket of whitewash, stood bravely in front of a wall splashed in gang graffiti, while a pack of ragamuffin hoodlums looked on menacingly.
When Foy snatched Tom Soarer from my hands, it felt like I’d fumbled away a game-winning touchdown catch. “This book, I’m not ashamed to say, is a WME, a Weapon of Mass Education!” Unable to contain his excitement, Foy’s voice rose two octaves and took on a Hitlerian fervor. “And just as he inspired me, the character of Tom Soarer will galvanize a nation to whitewash that fence! To cover up those frightful images of racial segregation that the Wheaton Academy represents. Who’s with me?” Foy pointed at the front door. “I know these great African-American heroes are down with the cause…” Legally, I’m not allowed to say who Foy name-dropped, because when I turned my head toward what I thought would be Foy’s invisible hallucinations, standing in the Dum Dum Donuts doorway were three of the world’s most famous living African-Americans, the noted TV family man _ i _ _ _ _ _ b _ and the Negro diplomats _ o _ _ _ _ o _ _ _ and _ _ n _ _ _ e e _ _ _ _ _ c _. Sensing the Dum Dum Donut Intellectuals were dying, Foy had pulled out all the stops and called in who knows what favors. Somewhat surprised the crowd was so small, the three superstars cautiously sat down and, to their credit, ordered coffee and bear claws and participated in the meeting, most of which was spent with Jon McJones regurgitating the usual Republican Party bullshit that a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised in a two-parent household than was a baby born after the election of the U.S.A.’s first African-American president. McJones was a snobby Negro who covered up his self-hatred with libertarianism; I at least had the good sense to wear mine on my sleeve. He went on to cite statistics that, even if true, were completely meaningless when you consider the simple fact that slaves were slaves. That a two-parent antebellum household wasn’t necessarily a bond of love but a forced coupling. He didn’t mention that some two-parent slave marriages were between sister and brother, mother and son. Or that, during slavery, divorce wasn’t really an option. There was no “I’m going out for cigarettes” and never coming back. What about all the two-parent households that were childless because their kids had been sold off to who knows where? As a modern-day slave owner, I was insulted that the venerated institution of slavery was not given the viciousness and cruelty which it was due.
“What a load of crap,” I said, interrupting McJones with a schoolboy raise of the hand.
“Like you wouldn’t rather be born here than in Africa?” C _ _ _ n _ _ w _ _ _ snapped back with a streetwise inflection that belied his curriculum vitae and his V-neck sweater.
“What, here?” I pointed at the floor. “Like in Dickens?”
“Well, maybe not a hellhole like Dickens,” McJones said, giving the other guests a “Don’t even bother, I got this” glance. “Nobody wants to live here, but you can’t even pretend to tell me that you’d rather be born in Africa than anywhere else in America.”
You’d rather be here than in Africa. The trump card all narrow-minded nativists play. If you put a cupcake to my head, of course, I’d rather be here than any place in Africa, though I hear Johannesburg ain’t that bad and the surf on the Cape Verdean beaches is incredible. However, I’m not so selfish as to believe that my relative happiness, including, but not limited to, twenty-four-hour access to chili burgers, Blu-ray, and Aeron office chairs is worth generations of suffering. I seriously doubt that some slave ship ancestor, in those idle moments between being raped and beaten, was standing knee-deep in their own feces rationalizing that, in the end, the generations of murder, unbearable pain and suffering, mental anguish, and rampant disease will all be worth it because someday my great-great-great-great-grandson will have Wi-Fi, no matter how slow and intermittent the signal is.
I said nothing and let King Cuz do my fighting for me. In twenty years, I’d never heard him say anything in a meeting more substantive than acknowledging the fact that the iced tea could use more sugar, but there he was, facing off with a man with four advanced degrees who spoke ten languages, none of them black except French.
“Nigger, I refuse to let you impugn Dickens like that!” Cuz said sharply, standing up and pointing a freshly manicured nail at McJones. “This is a city, not a hellhole!”
Impugn? Maybe twenty years of Dum Dum Donuts rhetoric hadn’t all gone to waste. To his credit, McJones, despite Cuz’s tone and size, didn’t back down. “I may have misspoken. But I must take exception to your implication that Dickens is a city, when it’s clearly a locale, nothing more than an American shantytown. A post-black, post-racial, post-soul flashback, if you will, to a time of romanticized black ignorance…”
“Hey, look, fool, save that post-soul, post-black bullshit for somebody who gives a fuck, ’cause all I know is that I’m pre-black. Dickens born and raised. Homo sapiens OG Crip from the goddamn primordial giddy-up, nigger.”
King Cuz’s little soliloquy seemed to impress Ms. R _ _ _, because she uncro
ssed her ankles, opened her legs just enough to show off some right-wing inner thigh, and then tapped me on the shoulder.
“That big motherfucker play any football?”
“A little running back in high school.”
“Мои трусики мокрые,” she said in lip-licking Russian.
I’m no linguist, but my best guess is that it meant Cuz could penetrate her secondary anytime he wanted. The old veterano strode into the middle of the donut shop, the rubber soles of his canvas sneakers squeaking with every step. “This, you proudly uncool motherfucker, this is Dickens,” and to some beat that only he could hear, he broke into the complex gangster soft shoe known as the Crip Walk. Never turning his back to the crowd, he pivoted on the balls and heels of his feet. His knees together and his hands free, he skipped around the room in tight concentric circles that collapsed upon themselves as quickly as they expanded. It was as if the floor was heated, and too hot for him to stop in one spot for even a second. King Cuz was debating with McJones the best way he knew how.
Want some, get some, bad enough, take some …
Velis aliquam, acquīris aliquam, canīnus satis, capīs aliquam.
As the sparse crowd gathered around the two foes, I did what I’d come to do. I removed my daddy’s picture from the wall and tucked it under my arm. Segregating the city with his photo up would be like having sex in the room next to your parents’ bedroom. Not being able to concentrate. Not being able to be as loud as you wanted to be. I quietly dipped out as King Cuz was teaching McJones, _ _ _ l C _ _ _ y, _ _ _ _ n P _ _ _ _ _, and a dreamy-eyed _ o n d _ _ _ _ z z _ _ _ _ e the Crip Walk. And they were picking it up like pros. Strutting around like old-school bangers. It figures, because passed down from the Masai and stolen from the Cherokee war dances you see on old Westerns, the C-Walk is an ancient warrior dance. One that designates its baggy-pants danseur noble as target. It’s a dance that says, “You may fire when ready, Gridley.” And any nigger in the limelight, even those conservative shills, knows what it’s like to have the bull’s-eye placed squarely on your back.
I was untying my horse when Foy placed a father-figure arm around my shoulder. There was an uptight and nervous look to his goatee that I’d never seen before. His neck was caked with dirt, and a deep stench of body odor wafted over me.
“You riding off into the sunset, Sellout?”
“I am.”
“Long day.”
“That crap about being better off under slavery is too much even for you, isn’t it, Foy?”
“At least McJones cares.”
“Come on, he cares about black people like a seven-footer cares about basketball. He has to care because what else would he be good at.”
Knowing I was never coming back to the Dum Dum Donut Intellectuals, Foy gave me the same sorrowful look the missionaries must’ve given the jungle heathen. A look that said, It doesn’t matter if you’re too stupid to understand God’s love. He loves you regardless, just hand over the women, the distance runners, and the natural resources.
“You’re not worried about that all-white school?”
“Naw, white kids need learnin’, too.”
“But white kids aren’t going to buy my books. Speaking of which—” Foy handed me a copy of Tom Soarer, then signed it without me asking him to.
“Foy, can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“I know it’s probably urban myth, but is it true that you own the really racist Little Rascals movies? Because if you do, I can make you an offer.”
Apparently I touched a nerve. Foy shook his head, pointed to his book, then lumbered back inside. As the glass doors opened, I could hear King Cuz, the nation’s wealthiest black man, and two legendary Negro ministers plenipotentiary rapping the lyrics to NWA’s “Fuck tha Police” at the top of their lungs. Before placing Tom Soarer in the saddlebag, I read the inscription, which I found vaguely threatening.
To the Sellout,
Like father, like son …
Foy Cheshire
Fuck him. I galloped home. Drove the horse hard down Guthrie Boulevard, inventing some inner-city dressage along the way as I ignored the traffic cop and ran the horse through a series of figure eights by dashing in and out of the orange construction barrels in the shut-down center lane. On Chariton Drive, I latched onto a tiring skateboarder and, with one hand on the reins, pulled her along like a long board cabriolet from Airdrome to Sawyer, whipping her into a sharp turn onto Burnside. I don’t know what I expected from trying to restore Dickens to a glory that never existed. Even if Dickens were to one day be officially recognized, there’d be no fanfare or fireworks. No one would ever bother to erect a statue of me in the park or name an elementary school after me. There’d be none of the head rush Jean Baptiste Point du Sable and William Overton must’ve felt when they planted their flags in Chicago and Portland. After all, it wouldn’t be like I founded or discovered anything. I was just brushing the dirt off an artifact that had never really been buried, so when I arrived home to Hominy, he excitedly unsaddled my horse. Eager to show me some newly disambiguated entry in an online encyclopedia written by some anonymous scholar:
Dickens is an unincorporated city in southwest Los Angeles County. Used to be all black, now there’s hella Mexicans. Once known as the murder capital of the world, shit ain’t as bad as it used to be, but don’t trip.
Yes, if Dickens ever became a real place again, in all likelihood Hominy’s wide smile would be all the reward I’d ever receive.
Twenty
Keep this under your hat, but over the next few months the resegregation of Dickens was kind of fun. Unlike Hominy, I’ve never had a real job, and even though it didn’t pay, driving around town with Hominy as the African-American Igor to my evil social scientist was sort of empowering, even though we were mocking the notion of being powerless. Monday through Friday at exactly one o’clock he’d be out front standing next to the truck.
“Hominy, you ready to segregate?”
“Yes, master.”
We started small, Hominy’s local fame and adoration proving invaluable. He’d soft-shoe his way inside, bust out an insanely intricate song-and-dance routine from old Chitlin’ Circuit days that would’ve made the Nicholas Brothers, Honi Coles, and Buck and Bubbles green with blackface envy:
’Cause my hair is curly
Just because my teeth are pearly
Just because I always wear a smile
Like to dress up in the latest style
’Cause I’m glad I’m livin’
I take these troubles all with a smile
Just because my color’s shady
Makes no difference, maybe
Why they call me “Shine”
Then, as if it were part of the act, he’d stick a COLORED ONLY sign in the storefront window of a restaurant or beauty shop. No one ever took them down, at least not in front of us; he’d worked too hard for it.
* * *
Sometimes in homage to my father, if Hominy was on his lunch break or asleep in the truck, I’d enter wearing Dad’s white lab coat and carrying a clipboard. I’d hand the owner my card and explain that I was with the Federal Department of Racial Injustice, and was conducting a monthlong study on the effects of “racial segregation on the normative behaviors of the racially segregated.” I’d offer them a flat fifty-dollar fee and three signs to choose from: BLACK, ASIAN, AND LATINO ONLY; LATINO, ASIAN, AND BLACK ONLY; and NO WHITES ALLOWED. I was surprised how many small-business people offered to pay me to display the NO WHITES ALLOWED sign. And like most social experiments, I never did the promised follow-up, but after the month was up, it wasn’t unusual to get calls from the proprietors asking Dr. Bonbon if they could keep the signs in the windows because they made their clientele feel special. “The customers love it. It’s like they belong to a private club that’s public!”
It didn’t take long to convince the manager of the Meralta, the only movie theater in town, that he could cut his complaints
in half if he designated floor seating as WHITE AND NON-TALKERS ONLY, while reserving the balcony for BLACKS, LATINOS, AND THE HEARING IMPAIRED. We didn’t always ask permission; with paint and brush we changed the opening hours of the Wanda Coleman Public Library from “Sun–Tue: Closed, Wed–Sat: 10–5:30” to “Sun–Tue: Whites Only, Wed–Sat: Colored Only.” As word started to spread of the success Charisma was having at Chaff Middle School, every now and then an organization would seek me out for a little personalized segregation. In looking to reduce the youth crime rate in the neighborhood, the local chapter of Un Millar de Muchachos Mexicanos (o Los Emes) wanted to do something other than midnight basketball. “Something a little more conducive to the Mexican and Native American stature,” a sporting endeavor that didn’t require a lot of space where the kids could compete on equal footing. Name-dropping the hoop success of Eduardo Nájera, Tahnee Robinson, Earl Watson, Shoni Schimmel, and Orlando Méndez-Valdez did nothing to dissuade them.
The meeting was brief, consisting of two questions on my part.
First: “Do you have any money?”
“We just got a $100,000 grant from Wish Upon a Star.”
Second: “I thought they only did things for dying kids?”
“Exactly.”
During the height of the government enforcement of the Civil Rights Act, some segregated townships filled in their municipal pools rather than let nonwhite kids share in the perverse joy of peeing in the water. But in an inspired act of reverse segregation, we used the money to hire a lifeguard who posed as a homeless person and built a “Whites Only” swimming pool surrounded by a chain-link fence that the kids loved to hop, so they could play Marco Polo and hold their collective breaths underwater whenever they spotted a patrol car passing by.