I couldn’t escape basketball practice. At two o’clock every afternoon Coach Logan’s assistant, Mr. Wurlitz, went around to all the classes I missed and gathered my assignments. At two-thirty he kowtowed and politely asked if I would like to join the rest of the team for practice.
I wasn’t the basketball team’s only hired gun. In hopes of dominating Valley basketball, the El Campesino Real Conquistadores brought in Anthony Price from Gardena, Anita Appleby from Torrance, and Tommy Mendoza from Echo Park. A few white players would get giddy on bus rides to games, confiding in me that playing with black players was a dream come true. Singing in the shower and jiving in the gym—what more could there be to life?
*
Early in my senior year I sat down for my weekly career-planning session with Ms. Baumgarten. This time she didn’t pester me about applying to the DeVry School of Technology but looked up from her desk, shaking her head as if I’d done something wrong. “I think they might have made a mistake,” she said, handing me an opened envelope. My SAT scores had arrived. According to the tables, my verbal score was in the ninety-eighth percentile and my math score in the eighty-seventh.
“What you mean, mistake?”
“Gunnar, you haven’t been to calculus once in the past two months, and Mr. Kissio says you wrote an English Lit. composition called ‘Machisma Hermeneutics—Hemingway and the Hacienda Gringolust, An Obsession with the Latino Male.’ There’s no way you could get these kinds of scores.”
Soon letters from colleges addressed “Dear Scholar” instead of “Waddup to the best guard in the nation” began arriving. Now academic recruiters from various schools across the nation called me at home or visited me at school during lunch. The armed forces academies, Harvard, and Boston University were the most aggressive pursuers. I had a good time with the stuffy admirals and majors. After giving me the standard make-the-world-safe-for-democracy spiel, they’d ask what interested me. Removing a picture of Oliver North from my wallet, I’d say in a hushed tone, “Covert ops. Not your average banana republic puppet government stuff—I want to form a rebel army of Laplanders and overthrow all those neutral Scandinavian wussy socialists.” I soon stopped getting letters and visits from West Point and Annapolis.
The Harvard recruiter was a marginally known bespectacled public intellectual who had moved west to Los Angeles to set up a think tank of mulatto social scientists called High Yellow Fever. We had dinner at a chic Hawaiian restaurant in Marina del Rey. The regality of the Harvard man’s pinkies was hypnotic. Encased in gold rings, these majestic fingers never touched any part of the pu-pu platter, coolly avoided the stem of the wineglass, and punctuated his points on affirmative action with a bombastic vigor unseen since Frederick Douglass. He popped open his pocket watch and suggested we drive to his house for a nightcap. I was mesmerized; this was the first nigger I’d ever seen who owned a pocket watch and the only one I’ve heard say “nightcap.” On the drive over I held his timepiece to my ear, listening to its spring works as if I were an eighteenth-century Pacific islander hoping to trade beads for a metal cricket.
The ersatz egghead lived in Cheviot Heights, in what I swore was the same house I’d stolen the security sign from a couple of years before. Over dessert he gave me a copy of his latest book, Antebellum Cerebellums: A History of Negro Super-Genius, and showed me his prized collection of Peggy Lee records. After one listen to “Surrey with the Fringe on Top” I’d pretty much decided I wasn’t going to Harvard, but I didn’t say anything, because the French pastry was humming.
“Gunnar, why do you want to attend Harvard?”
“It seems like Harvard wants me to attend Harvard. I could give a shit. Harvard, Princeton, Howard, Cornell, Fisk—I’m just determined to get out of Los Angeles. My mom keeps saying Ivy League, Ivy League, Ivy League.”
“Look, Gunnar, I understand your reticence, but you’re being offered a rare opportunity to sit in the lap of academe and suckle from the teat of wisdom.”
“Yeah, yeah. I prefer formula milk, your shit doesn’t stink as much.”
Sensing he was losing me, he called to his wife. “Honey, come and meet this fine young man I was telling you about.”
A white woman in a see-through chiffon gown sashayed into the dining room like a fashion model.
“Baby, this is Gunnar Kaufman. The boy genius projected to do wonderful things with his life. Gunnar, this is my wife, Mindy. You may recognize her—she was the down clue girl on Crosswords for Cash.”
“Glad to meet you, Gunnar.” She grabbed my hand and kissed me lightly on the knuckles, then locked her hazel eyes on my crotch. “You’re bigger, I mean different from the other boys. No tie, no tweed jacket. Muscles. I like you. What’s a four-letter word for a Russian mountain range?”
“Ural.”
“Smart, too.” She touched the tip of my nose with her finger and skipped back to wherever she had come from, rubbing her rear end as if it pained her.
“Gunnar, there are fringe benefits to going to Harvard. Corporeal hors d’oeuvres, if you will.”
I snickered as the recruiter’s sales pitch grew more desperate.
“I’m going to be frank with you. If I get you to attend Harvard, I get seventy-five thousand dollars, exactly enough to buy a new motor home.”
“Motor home?” I asked.
“Couple of years back, some demonic rowdies from down there”—he jabbed his finger angrily toward the ground—“destroyed the old one. They smashed the windows, slashed the tires, urinated on the engine, set fire to the interior. We haven’t gone rappelling in the sierras since Lord knows when.”
I couldn’t believe it was this cat’s house me and Psycho Loco had rampaged the night Pumpkin died. “From down where?” I asked.
“Down there!” he repeated, pointing over the stone slope of the San Borrachos Mountains and apparently growing agitated from having to recall the memory.
“Hell, you mean?”
“No, I mean Hillside. The entire community is a Petri dish for criminal vermin.”
“So I should go to Harvard and learn to become a gentrified robber baron instead?”
“Yes, you should. I got mine, you get yours. Those poor people are beyond help, you must know that. The only reason I and others of my illustrious ilk pretend to help those folks is to reinforce the difference between them and us. There’s a psychological advantage to being the helper and not the helpee. You know the phrase ‘Each one, teach one’?”
“Yup.”
“Well my motto is ‘Each one, leech one.’”
I stopped listening and went out by the pool. The view of Los Angeles, including Hillside, was magnificent. The web of amber streetlights looked like a constellation fallen to earth, awaiting some astronomer to connect the glowing dots to give form to its oracularity. From the sundecks of Cheviot Heights I imagined dimes falling from a stumblebum’s Styrofoam cup as shooting stars streaking the night. I heard the nervous laughter of the Seven Sisters standing in doorways, deciding whether to study or hang out. I felt sorry for the night laborers on the moons, selling roses from a bucket and bags of oranges to the comets.
The public intellectual excused himself and then returned with a bundle of black nylon rope and rappelling equipment. “When you go to Harvard, we’ll go mountain climbing on your weekends. Let me show you how.” He wrapped a belt around my waist, then threaded the rope through its metal loop. Anchoring one end around the pool’s stepladder, he pulled the rope tight to make sure it was secure. “Hold the rope loosely with your left hand and use your right to control your speed. When you want to brake, pull back. That’s it—now lean back, get your butt down. There you go.”
I stepped over the pile of rope and tossed the coil over the fence. It tumbled down the wall until the knotted end was dangling about ten feet from the streets of Hillside.
“What in the hell are you doing? Now you have to recoil the goddamn thing.”
Ignoring his admonitions, I scaled the fence, planted my fee
t firmly against the wall, lowered my butt, and leaned into space.
“Gunnar, where do you think you’re going?”
“Home.”
“Don’t you live in the Valley?”
“Nope, I live in Hillside, the depths of hell.”
“You’re no Sir Edmund Hillary. Get back here.”
“And you’re no Lionel Trilling. Later.”
I lowered myself into the night.
Mom was disappointed that I wasn’t going to Harvard; she thought the public intellectual sounded like a decent man.
“There’s a note on the table for you. The recruiter from Boston University stopped by the house.”
“He came by the house?”
“She came by the house, and she said she’ll be back tomorrow.”
*
Ms. Jenkins sat at the kitchen table playing spades with me, Scoby, and Psycho Loco and fielding our questions, my mother hovering over us like a pit boss.
“Would you like another brew, Ms. Jenkins?” I asked.
“Sure, I likes these Carta Blancas—smoother than a motherfucker. Boston doesn’t have nothing like this.”
I fetched her another beer, making sure Scoby and Psycho Loco didn’t peek at my cards. Ms. Jenkins and I were trying to set those fools.
“What does Boston have?” Scoby asked, spinning a king of hearts across the table. “Not much. No black radio. No black clubs. No black political power base. No drive-thru fast food.”
“So why would I want to go there?” I asked, trying to emphasize to Nick that this was my interview.
“You told me that you wanted to get as far out of L.A. as possible. That’s either Orono, Maine, or Boston, Massachusetts, and I know you not no goddamn moose lover. Besides, Gunnar, I’ve seen your poetry in all the literary journals. I didn’t make the connection until I saw the same poems scrawled on the walls in the neighborhood. You probably don’t know it, but you already have a following on the East Coast.” Ms. Jenkins covered Nicholas’s king with a six of hearts.
“This our trick, nigger poet with a bourgeois following on the East Coast,” Scoby crowed.
“Nicholas, be quiet,” my mother broke in. She liked Ms. Jenkins, but she wasn’t about to sell me down the river to any second-rate institution. “Now you said Boston University is Ivy League, but I don’t recall its being an Ivy school.”
“Well, BU is not an original member, but we recently paid to join the Ivy League.”
“What?” said Psycho Loco incredulously, laying a three of hearts on the growing stack of cards and staring me in the eye. “You can’t buy your way into the Ivy League.”
“You know how colleges have endowments that they invest in the stock market and futures, right? A couple of months back, the Massachusetts lottery was up to five hundred million dollars. The trustees of BU decided to buy thirteen million dollars’ worth of lottery tickets, figuring if they covered every possible number combination they would win at least their money back, if not more. As luck would have it, BU was the sole winner. A little hush money in the right pockets, a few well-publicized millions to each member school, and Boston University is in the Ivy League. Of course, we had to offer tuition remission to all the students with IQs under 125 we kicked out, but they’ll get into other schools, if they don’t snort it all away.”
“Oh shit,” I said and slapped down a five of spades.
Ms. Jenkins picked up the book. “‘Oh shit’ is right. So we’re looking for some black students who are going to turn shit out. You down, Gunnar?”
My mother broke in. “Sounds good to me.”
“Ma!”
“What about me? Can I go?” asked Nicholas, handing Ms. Jenkins a copy of his transcript and SAT scores.
“Scoby!” I whined.
“With grades and test scores like these, Nicholas, you’re a shoo-in, full ride and all.”
“What about married couples’ housing?”
“Psycho Loco, what you talking about? Married housing!” I shouted, throwing down a jack of clubs.
“When you turn eighteen, Gunnar?”
“June twenty-seventh.”
“Then you’ll be married, nigger.” Psycho Loco stood and flung down a queen of spades with such force it landed on the table with a loud pop. “Get up on that, Ms. Jenkins. You know a dirty bastard such as meself is cutting clubs.”
Ms. Jenkins laughed. “Fool, you ain’t said shit if an ace of spades has yet to be played,” and she blanketed Psycho Loco’s queen with the ace of spades, followed reluctantly by Scoby’s nine of clubs. “We have married housing. Gunnar, you and the missus can live in one of our luxury on-campus condominiums.”
“I’m not getting married!”
“Gunnar, I like the sound of your going back to Boston and following in the footsteps of your great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Euripides. It’s as if the Kaufman legacy has come full circle.”
“Ma!”
“So it’s settled, Gunnar’s going to BU. Mr. Loco, why don’t you attend Boston U? I’m sure I could get you admitted under the auspices of our Unique Quality Life Experience Program.”
“Naw, I don’t think college is for me. I’d get in there and have to shoot the entire history department. ‘What you mean, remember the Alamo?’ Blam! Blam! Blam! That be some multiculturalism for yo’ ass.”
“I’m not getting married.”
*
With my immediate future assured, I stopped going to class and steadily began to lose interest in playing basketball. During games, when I wasn’t playing I sat on the bench reading. Coach Logan threatened to fail me if I didn’t commit myself to basketball. Psycho Loco suggested I take the GED and forget school, which I did. I decided my last day of school at El Campesino would be the playoff game at Phillis Wheatley. The papers tried to create a civil war atmosphere by depicting Nicholas and me as best friends fighting on enemy sides. There were ugly undertones to the whole affair. The headlines read “Kaufman Seeks to Demystify B-ball Prestidigitator.”
By now Coach Shimimoto had convinced Scoby not to be ashamed of his talents and to play hard, not to please others but to please himself. In the past two years Scoby had scored over a thousand straight baskets, and a local media usually clamoring for perfection from its athletes couldn’t accept the perfect athlete. Instead of appreciating Nicholas’s gift, they treated Scoby as an evil spirit, an idiot savant with a bone through his nose who made the basketball sail through the hoop by invoking African gods. Scoby denied that he was a demigod and told his falling-out-of-the-tree story, but the rumors persisted. One report had him drinking chicken blood and kissing shrunken heads before games. Another had him commiserating with a witch doctor and practicing in a grass skirt. In a failed attempt to inject some humor into the situation, Coach Shimimoto told the news services that during a trip to Africa he had found Nicholas throwing coconuts into a hollowed-out tree trunk from seventy-five feet away and that at age four Nicholas could thread a needle in one try every time. I was portrayed as the Golden Child, white society’s mercenary come to teach the pagans a lesson. “Starting at guard for El Campesino Real Conquistadores, Hernán Cortés-Kaufman.”
On the morning of the big game, the El Campesino cheerleaders rousted all the white players out of bed for a unity breakfast at a diner in the Valley. They called me from the restaurant to say they wished I could be there eating pancakes with the rest of the team but I lived so far away. While the whities pep-rallied over banana pancakes, I planned my first rebellious act.
During the pregame shoot-around, I walked over to the scorer’s table and made some changes to the starting lineup sheet. The horn sounded to signal the start of the game, and as the team huddled around Coach Logan for instructions I stood on the outskirts, slipped on a pair of white gloves, smeared my lips with cold cream, and hid my head under my warmup jacket. The crowd quieted as they announced the starting lineups.
“And now the visiting El Campesino Real Conquistadores. At center, Lawrenc
e O’Shaughnessy.” Larry, the lone white starter, ran out to center court, nervously clapping his hands and jumping up and down waiting to greet the rest of the starting team. “At a forward, Anthony ‘Rastus’ Price.” A few people in the crowd laughed as Anthony jogged to his spot with a quizzical look on his face. The announcer continued, “At the other forward, Anita ‘Aunt Jemima’ Appleby. At guard, Tommy ‘Nigger T’ Mendoza.” Anita and Tommy peeled off and ran to their stations, red-faced but chortling with the crowd. The laughter died down as the fans strained to hear what the announcer would say next.
The band went into an extended drumroll as I sat alone on the bench, my head down and hands folded under my armpits. “At guard, first team all-city, second team all-American, Hillside’s own Gunnar ‘Hambone, Hambone, Have You Heard’ Kaufman.” I lurched from the sideline, shuffling through the gauntlet of astonished teammates as slowly as I could, my big feet flopping in front of me, my back bent into a drooping question mark. My gloved hands slid along the floor, trailing behind like minstrel landing gear. The gymnasium erupted. People rolled in the aisles with laughter; light bulbs popped. I don’t suppose they could hear me whistling “The Ol’ Gray Mare” through the powdered doughnut that was my slack-jawed mouth. I stood at center court and gave a hearty “Howdy, y’all.”
Coach Logan tried to get me replaced, but it was too late. The scorebook listed me as a starter, and the referees could find nothing in the rulebook about playing with white shit on your face, and I successfully argued that if you could play in a wrist brace, you could play in cotton gloves. Larry won the opening tip-off and out of force of habit passed the ball to me. I streaked past everyone and threw down a thunderous slam-dunk. Someone called a time out and Coach Logan substituted for me. I shuffled off the court in a somnambulant gait and headed straight to the locker room to cheers of “Gunnar! Gunnar!”
When I returned, fresh-faced and dressed in street clothes, Logan ordered me to sit and shut my monkey ass up. Oblivious to his ranting, I threw my uniform in a pile at his feet, set it afire, and sat next to Coach Shimimoto for the rest of game, which Wheatley won by sixty points. My mother didn’t seem too displeased; she and Psycho Loco were in the stands making summer wedding plans.