Tuff

  “If I could’ve would’ve should’ve, but you know how a white girl do. Ol’ girl was kicking out gear, jewelry, sucking balls. Set a nigger out with a pass to the entire New York Film Festival. One time that crazy ho grabbed my arm, cut me with some scissors, and started sucking my blood.”

  “Come on.”

  “I’m serious. Wiped her mouth, talking about ‘Now we are both Negroes.’ I was like, ‘Negro? You ain’t Negro, bitch, you delusional.’ ”

  “That’s what you get for messing with a white girl,” Charles said, nodding his head knowingly. “I’m telling you, white women is evil. Why any motherfucker would fuck with a white girl is beyond me.”

  “Charley, how can you say that? Your mother and your sister is white.”

  “Then don’t you think I should know what I’m talking about?”

  Fariq slapped palms with Charles. “Charley O’ right. Any nigger who marry a white girl is marrying her because she white and no other reason. Unless a nigger meets a white bitch because they the sole survivors of an airplane crash and stranded on a desert island, he marrying her because she white. I don’t give a fuck what he say about true love, pretty eyes, and a nice disposition.”

  “Who said anything about marriage? Me and a white babe, picture that. Smush, what you looking like that for?”

  “I’m picturing.”

  “Don’t even feel it. None of y’all would even know what to do with a dark-skinned babe. Yolanda is … man, please.”

  “You and Landa still fucking?” Fariq asked, somehow phrasing the question in an innocuous manner.

  “Of course.”

  “You know what I mean when I say ‘still fucking’? Is she invisible yet? I’m not talking about when you be fucking and thinking, ‘Why am I fucking this bitch?’ but when you be fucking and thinking, ‘Why am I fucking?’ That’s when your woman becomes invisible.”

  “Come on now, we been going out for two years, married for one. The attraction piece there, but hey, it ain’t easy. Before we get down to business I be sitting on the edge of the bed sipping a brew or smoking some cheeb, sometimes both. Gettin’ primed, know what I’m sayin’? Yolanda looking at me all sad, holding her breasts like food, like she’d give them to me if she could, if it would make me happy. She say, ‘Why you have to drink and smoke that shit before we make love? Shouldn’t I be enough?’ and I’m hitting the joint for all I’m worth, talking about, ‘Yeah, bitch, you should.’ ” To show his precoital exasperation, Winston took two hard pulls on the imaginary marijuana cigarette in his hand, then said, “I be like, ‘Man, this shit ain’t hitting right.’ ”

  When the laughter died down, Nadine tried to bring the conversation back to the lovemaking distinctions between the Caucasian and the Negro. “You never said, was there a difference in how a white girl fucks and how we do it?”

  “It ain’t like I been with a whole bunch of white girls. All I know is Latin babes like to pull on your ears, but I’d say, no difference in the coochie—pussy’s pussy.”

  “I fucked a woman who didn’t have a pussy,” volunteered Armello, reluctantly tearing his eyes away from the sex video. “Una vieja—bitch was about fifty. Met her in Zebulon, North Carolina. She didn’t have a pussy, had a hysterectomy when I got with her. Stuck my entire hand up in there,” Armello slowly opened and closed his fist. “So much room in that mug, I could feel the wind blowing. Coño, if I’d’ve had a flashlight, I could have made shadow puppets on the insides of her stomach.”

  Using the light from the television, Armello illustrated his sexual escapade by producing shape-shifting silhouettes, substituting the bedroom wall for some aging southern belle’s cervix. Barking canines metamorphosed into jellyfish. Pachyderms transformed into craning swans. Finding Armello’s story a repulsive anaphrodisiac, Winston excused himself from the room. “Me voy. Smush, dame chavo.”

  “How much?”

  “A pound.”

  Winston took the five-dollar bill from Fariq, and said his goodbyes. “Tell Antoine I’m gone.”

  Making his way downstairs, Winston could see the party was winding down. The living room smelled of musty men and spilled beer; plastic cups were strewn across the sticky floor. The bay windows, fogged from the night’s activities, were beginning to clear. The few remaining couples held hands and made out in the corners of the living room. A tall man slow-danced by himself, spinning, dipping, and softly crooning lyrics to a saccharine love ballad.

  Once out the door Winston saw the little Joad girl sitting alone on a car bumper, fingering her bell, the preteen divas having gone home for the night. “Your moms still ain’t come out?” Winston asked.

  The girl shook her head no and asked, “Did you see her in there?”

  “What she look like?”

  “Like me, but a little older.”

  Suddenly, Winston was in a hurry to get home. He held the door open and waved the girl inside. Crossing the threshold, the girl stopped and punched him in the stomach. Before she could scamper inside, Winston lifted her by the collar, ripping the bell from her neck before setting her down. “You don’t need to let her know you coming, you just let her know you there.”

  On his way to the subway he hoped that Yolanda would still be awake when he got home. He pictured her wearing a sheer silk teddy, two sticks of Black Love incense burning, a bottle of baby oil resting on the nightstand.

  To avoid the stifling heat of the subway station, he waited at the top of the stairs, ears cocked for the roar of the next Manhattan-bound train, eyes on a group of cornrowed turnstile jumpers hurrying past him into the bowels of the transit system. He thought about what Fariq had said earlier: how women become invisible. Sex becomes routine. A salvo of gunfire rang out on the street above him. Winston was looking forward to the routine.

  Girl, you my shorty, my wisdom, my Earth.

  13- TIPPECANOE, TYLER, AND TUFFY TOO

  Look at Ben Franklin. Tuffy, holding a starched one-hundred-dollar bill up to his face, was scrutinizing the old statesman’s portrait. Nigger look upset. Like somebody just told him, “You discovered electricity? So what, the radio ain’t been invented yet.” Crisp notes of the same denomination as the one in his hands swelled his pockets. So much so, he barely had room enough for his keys and bubble gum, much less his pistol, which he now toted in his sock. And Ben look like he about to say, “Motherfucker, if I was twenty years younger I put my pilgrim shoes so far in your ass …” Winston smelled the bill, aahed, then stuffed it back into his pocket.

  On every corner of the intersection of Lexington and 106th Street his newly hired support staff, consisting of Inez, Fariq, Charley, and Yolanda and Jordy, canvassed the Monday-morning commuters. Fariq handed a woman a flyer, then shoved a clipboard in the drowsy worker’s face. “That’s him, right there,” he said, pointing across Lexington Avenue in Winston’s direction. “Hell yeah, he’s a good man—the best.” Fariq called out to his candidate, “Tuffy! Come over here, yo!” Winston kept his head down, his eyes fixed on his new shoes, looking for scuff marks on the burnished leather. “Get over here, son, and shake this lady’s hand. She wants to meet you!” Pretending he couldn’t hear Fariq’s request over the traffic noise, Winston cupped his ear, mouthed “Thank you” and greeted the woman with a grand-marshal parade wave. The woman waved back and signed the petition. Shouting over the woman’s head, Fariq cursed his friend’s lethargy. “Tuffy, you want these people to vote for you, you supposed to come running. You they servant. You doing for them. Don’t let that little chump change in your pocket fill your head, nigger!” Winston juggled his testicles and shouted, “Suck my dick, motherfucker!” The potential voter slunk into the subway, looking at the composed figure on the flyer, then crazily at the real candidate holding his crotch and yelling obscenities.

  Winston thrust his hands into his pockets and squeezed the knot of bills. A jolt surged through his body. It was as if the bills were electrified. His joints jumped. His skin tingled with privilege—proving Ben Fran
klin’s research on conductivity is still incomplete.

  A slim-hipped woman in a receptionist-tight black skirt walked past Winston and did a double-take. “That you on that poster?” she asked. He peered over his shoulder at the campaign poster in the restaurant window behind him. He and Inez had designed it two nights ago over gin and lemonade. It read:

  THE REVOLUTION MAY BE DEAD,

  BUT THERE IS A GHOST IN THE MACHINE

  EAST HARLEM—VOTE FOR WINSTON FOSHAY

  CITY COUNCIL 8TH DISTRICT

  A SCARY MOTHERFUCKER

  AMBIVALENT ON DRUGS, GUNS, AND ALCOHOL IN THE COMMUNITY

  AGAINST CATS IN THE SUPERMERCADOS

  ANTI-COP

  ANTI-COP

  ANTI-COP

  TOPPLE THE SYSTEM: VOTE SEPTEMBER 9TH—A PARTY

  Underneath “A Scary Motherfucker” was an eighteen-by-twenty-four-inch photo of a sullen-faced sixteen-year-old Winston staring directly into the camera. His features were ashen. His eyelids drooped to an angle two degrees from slumber. An unlit cigarette hung in the corner of his mouth. Inez had taken the snapshot moments after a judge cleared him on drug-trafficking charges because the arresting officer was two hours late to the proceedings. She had implored him to smile. “You’re free,” she said. Winston looked relieved, not free. He made the obligatory vow to go straight, but never smiled. Soon after taking the suit and bow tie back to the Nation of Islam member Fariq had borrowed it from, he returned to his old ways.

  “Yeah, that’s me,” he said to the woman.

  “I thought so.” The hesitancy disappeared from her voice; her posture slumped with a friendly casualness. Her hand dropped away from the flap of her purse. “Why you look so mean in that picture? You a rapper or something?”

  Winston frowned. The woman’s misconception was a common one. There was a slew of overweight rap artists, and rarely a week passed in which someone didn’t mistake him for Chub Boogie, Fat Max, or Tonnage, and request that Winston “kick a verse” or “bust a rhyme.”

  “Why a fat nigger always got to be a faggot-ass rapper?”

  “I’m sorry. I just thought since you out here handing out flyers and got a poster up, you was promoting your album. You never see a poster of a nigger your age on the wall unless he selling records.”

  “True, but I’m running for City Council.”

  “Oh snap, you really running? I thought City Council was the name of your posse or something. You serious?”

  “I guess so.”

  Winston gave her a flyer and showed her his clipboard.

  “You registered?” he asked. The woman shook her head.

  “Well, fill out this card, sign right here, and you can vote for me come September.”

  As she scribbled in the pertinent information, Winston looked over her shoulder. “Mmm, you smell good. Let me ask you something—what’s that you wearing?”

  “Let me ask you something—how you funding your campaign?” Snapping to attention, Winston stalled for time. He wasn’t about to admit that this morning Inez gave him fifteen thousand dollars, two thousand flyers, the campaign’s single poster, and a pep talk. With tears in her eyes, she explained half in Japanese and half in English, how at seven-fifteen this morning, she stormed into the local congressman’s office, an ex-socialist ally turned capitalist pawn, and threatening his lone staffer that she knew her reparation check was old, but if the United States government didn’t cash it immediately, she’d rally every concentration camp survivor, bus them down to Washington, D.C., bind their wrists with barbed wire, and sit them down on the steps of the Capitol building until they bled to death trickle by trickle or her check was cashed. Then she handed the staffer a photo of the congressman as a young radical intern proudly showing off his birthday gifts, a framed photo of Stalin, a plastic Sputnik model, a signed copy of Das Kapital, and a lid of grass—Maui Wowee to be specific. A call was made to D.C., and an hour ago Inez gravely pushed fifteen thousand dollars across her coffee table.

  Winston had seen ten times that amount in various neighborhood drug spots, but he knew how much suffering the money represented, and like the millionaire Hollywood megastar who acts flabbergasted at having found one hundred thousand dollars in a duffel bag, he perfunctorily bulged his eyes and dropped his jaw. As he jammed the money into his pockets, his mood changed. He began to feel a sense of indebtedness to Inez. “Ms. Nomura, I’ll help collect the nine hundred signatures, but I ain’t doing shit else but the sumo thing and the debate. No shaking hands and kissing babies.”

  “I know,” she had said, and handed him an extra five hundred dollars.

  “I got a little scratch saved up,” Winston told the woman. “You know, gots to be prudent with your funds.”

  The woman brushed aside a loose braid and tucked it behind her ear.

  “Where I know you from?” he asked her.

  “Didn’t you run with Eric and Tango over on Mount Pleasant?”

  “Yeah, how you know?”

  “I’m Isabel’s sister.”

  “You shitting me. So you must’ve been there when Alex and Kayson got into their little thing.”

  “Who you think mopped up the blood? I knew I knew you. Now I know how you got your money—that place was a goldmine. You the only one I know who held on to any of it. You must’ve broke out before Lester got popped.”

  “Right after. Fifty came in and blew up the spot, next day my shit was ghost.”

  “You know T.J. got a thirty-year bid behind that.”

  “I heard.”

  “Well, anyway, I got to go to work,” the woman said, handing back the clipboard. “I’m going to vote for you—I like a man who supports the community. You better not get in office and start fucking up.”

  “What could I possibly do to make things worse?”

  When the morning rush hour ended, Fariq and Charley surrendered to the tedium. Turning their clipboards in to Inez, they abandoned the struggle, going home to catch up on the sleep they’d lost the night before. Winston spent the rest of the day fending off the advances of aggressive women who were just glad to see a young nigger doing something positive, listening to people’s problems, and shrugging his shoulders when they asked what would he do for them if elected. “At least you honest,” they’d say, signing the petition while prattling on about an inept mayor, a do-nothing school board, disrespectful kids.

  It was now late afternoon. The old-timers were out in force, trolling the streets for opportunity; yet their protégés, those wild-eyed, disrespectful kids, were missing in action. Now that Winston had noticed it, their absence was off-putting, and he was angry with himself for not being aware of it earlier.

  Winston counted the number of signatures on his petition. Eighty-six. That ain’t so bad. With what everybody else got I’m probably damn near halfway there.

  A voice came to Winston from above. “You got my vote, you fat motherfucker! Anything to keep your crazy ass off the streets, moreno.” Tuffy looked skyward, not bothering to shield his eyes from the sun. “Amante, what up, bro? Where the party at?” Perched on a rooftop, Edgar Amante, the local party promoter, was running wires from a small transformer into a washtub-sized satellite dish, working his day job. “Qué te pasa, papi? I heard you was running for City Council, I ain’t believe the shit till I seen the poster.”

  “But I’m saying, where the set at tonight? I need to get loose.”

  “No party tonight. Everybody’s gone to the Rock or to the Tombs.”

  “What?”

  “Word up, son. You ain’t know? The task force was rolling deep last night. UCs was popping niggers left and fucking right, bro. The news said it was something like nine hundred niggers arrested. Matter fact, what you doing out here?”

  “I was in Brooklyn last night.”

  “You lucky, B.”

  “Thanks, yo. I’m out.”

  “How’s the descrambler I hooked you up with working out?”

  “Straight.”

  Winston
ran across the street toward Inez, Yolanda, and Jordy. “Honey, I’m going down to the precinct. I know where I can get some signatures.”

  Winston kissed Jordy, then reversed course and tromped up the hill to 102nd Street. He was headed for the police station with a dumbfounded Yolanda and Inez in tow. Halfway down the block he spotted a police cruiser backing out of its parking space and blasting hip-hop music through the PA system. Winston threw himself into the backseat, slamming the door behind him. Both officers stopped bobbing their heads and wheeled about, guns drawn, yelling commands over the music: “Hands, motherfucker!”

  Slowly, Winston peeked around the barrels of the guns pointed in his face. “Bendito, that you?” he asked the driver.

  “Tuffy? Puñeta, I almost blew you away.”

  “Bendito!” Tuffy lowered his hands, “You’re a real cop now? Gun, badge, and everything? Shit, man, congratulations.” Bendito’s partner went ballistic. Leaning over the seat, he jabbed the gun into Winston’s cheek. “I said hands, you son-of-a-bitch!”

  Winston glowered at the officer and dropped his hands into his lap. “Son, you best to get that gun out my face before I take it from you and beat you to death with the butt end. Bendito, you better tell your boy something.” Bendito lowered the music and his partner’s gun. “It’s okay, I know this one.” The officer holstered his weapon, “You don’t know how close you were to getting lit up.”

  “You don’t know how close you were to a bagpipe funeral and a plaque on the wall: ‘In memory of Officer—’ “—Winston tugged on the officer’s nametag—” ‘Officer Bitch-Ass.’ ” Insulted, the officer raised a fist, but Winston slapped him before he could deliver the punch. And until Bendito separated them, the two flailed at each other like children fighting over dinner scraps. “Tuffy, get out of the car, now!”

  “Naw, Bendito, man, you’ve got to arrest me.”

  “It’s our first day, I can’t arrest you. And it’s not Bendito anymore, it’s Ben.”

  “I need to go to jail and I don’t feel like taking the bus, Ben.”