Michael’s shivering with fury. Just as I’m certain he’s about to make a move, the car spins away. “I be looking for you, Ann! You too, little rag! The Lord gon’ be harvesting you soon.”
I turn. Reggie’s standing, arms crossed, in front of his office. He offers me a grim smile, but says only, “Michael, you got those records for me? The meeting’s about to start.”
We move slowly, as if a spell has been snapped. Rue’s expression, it occurs to me, was like the shut-in boy’s years ago, gazing at me as if he knew me better than I did …
Boys Michael’s age and a few years older gather in Reggie’s office. They’re wearing basketball jerseys and colorful, roomy shorts. One’s T-shirt reads, “The bitch set me up.” Quo Vadis and fade haircuts, old-fashioned baldie beans. Some of the boys sip noisily from 7-Eleven cups or sports drink bottles. Everyone defers to the two or three kids with knuckle rings.
Reggie’s finishing up some business with a man in a gray suit, slender and tall, wearing a small silver earring. Dark. Patient smile. “Amazing stuff out there,” he tells Reggie. “The other day I clicked onto a site about the brain — its reactions to skin color. Believe it or not, some researchers have found that glucose activity kicks in heavily, in a certain part of the brain, whenever a person sees someone of a different race.”
“So … we’re hard-wired for hate?”
The man grins. “Well, it’s the kind of subject your boys here can debate once they’re on-line.”
“Right. I’m sorry I’ve got this meeting here — ”
“I need to run, anyway. I’ll hit you back later.”
“See you over at the gallery tonight? We’ll talk more then?”
“You got it.” They shake hands. The man steps out the door.
Reggie swigs water from a plastic bottle. The boys are getting settled, laughing loudly in groups. I pull Angela Davis from my purse. My hands are jittery. “You disagree with Sister Davis?” Reggie says. He screws the cap onto his bottle, which hisses and pops.
“‘The myth of the black rapist has been conjured up when recurrent waves of terror against the black community required a convincing explanation’?”
“Just thought you’d be interested.”
“So any time a black man is accused of assault, the accuser is ‘perpetuating a racial stereotype’?”
“She’s a provocative writer, isn’t she?”
“Talk about stereotyped — ”
“I’ve got a meeting here.” He taps the bottle on his knee. “Stick around.”
“No thanks.” I brush a hand across my eyes.
“Really. Hang for a while.” Before I can slip away, he claps his hands and calls the meeting to order. The boys sit still, their faces wide with admiration, animation, curiosity. The neighborhood can’t afford to lose them, I think, the way it lost me, or I lost hold of it…
Reggie tells Michael to play a record; Michael punches a button on the boom box. The Geto Boys rap about white cops in coffins. “These your homies, right?” Reggie says, smiling at the boys.
“You got it, you got it.”
“Keeping it real.”
“Word, man.”
They juke their shoulders, dip their heads.
“But see, I listen this shit,” Reggie says, “and — whether it’s just words or not — what I hear is a black man telling other brothers they got to eighty-six each other. Prove who’s king.”
“Tha’s the way it is, G. Get the niggah ‘fore he get you.”
“Ever hear of minstrel shows? ‘Jasper Jack’? ‘Zip Coon’?” Reggie asks. “You think Scarface something new?”
The boys look confused.
“He the same ol’ imbecile Negro been entertaining white folks for centuries. ‘Cause you know who’s buying these records? I know y’all ain’t losing money on them. You copping them from the stores.”
Uneasy grins.
“It’s the white kids in the ‘burbs buying this shit. It’s like, ‘It’s cool to be black,’ but underneath that, it’s ‘Look at that imbecile Negro dance. Entertain me, boy’ Stone, you ain’t with that?” He points to a tall, bald boy in the back of the room who looks at the floor, scratches his thigh. “Yeah, but … yeah, but …”
“Speak up, Stone. You ain’t no dumb nigger, are you?”
“Fuck, no.”
“Then talk like a man.”
The boy stiffens his back. “Reggie, man, Scarface talking the talk. What it’s like on the street. Not in no suburb.”
“What it’s like, or what some E-light record producer on his fat Beverly Hills ass tells you it’s like?”
I’m with the boys on this one. How many Rue Morgues are out there cruising right now?
“What sells in the ‘burbs is the thrill of black danger. White kids thinking they getting close to something scary, something real, just by listening to the music, without having to risk anything.” He glances at me, then paces the room. “You think the smart record producers don’t know that? You think Scarface out thugging all the time? Hell, he probably in some swank business office somewhere, in a strategy session, planning his next marketing campaign.”
Michael crouches by the boom box, tight-lipped and still.
“Besides, you think you learning street life from these tunes? What you learning? Guns kill people? That’s news?”
Despite my tiff with him, it’s a pleasure watching a man take intellectual responsibility in front of other males, instead of playing dumb just to hang with the crowd. That’s an act I’ve seen all too often in the mayor’s office.
“But yo, Reggie, we valid when we respected.”
“That’s wack, guys. Real messed up.”
“You was living large. You did bids.”
“That I did, slick. And when I got out I was a fucking hero.”
“Word.”
“You’da thought I’d won an Academy Award. But I’m telling you, man, a felony rap, you done. Ass out. I’m lucky I savvied in time. Turn up the volume, flash your rings, you might get noticed for a while. But it’s like shooting from the outside without a good inside game. Pretty soon, the world’ll figure your ass out and shut you down. You got no extra moves, you nailed. And Wilson, what’s this shit?” He plucks a green sports drink bottle from a pudgy boy’s grip, whips off the top, and dumps a slushy, sour apple-smelling mixture onto the floor. “Tequila? Gin-and-something? You freeze it in the morning, let it melt all day till it’s good and lethal? Who you think you fooling? You want to kill yourself, boy? That what you after?”
“Sorry, Reggie.”
“You’re going to clean up my floor when we’re done here.” He tosses the bottle onto the slush.
Michael stands up and jams his hands into his pockets. “Reggie, I thought you liked rap, man.”
“I like it fine. All I’m saying is, it’s just music, packaged to make a profit. It ain’t a way of life, all right?”
The boys mumble.
“Let me leave you with this. What’s gonna happen when all these white kids, these image chameleons, lose their hip-hop jones and go to work for Merrill Lynch, hm? Where you gonna be? You down with that? Stone? You down?”
“Yeah. Fuck yeah. I’m down wit’ that.”
“All right, then.” Reggie tells them they’ll meet again next week to learn why Clyde Drexler is the exception that proves the rule.
“What rule?” Stone asks.
“Hoops ain’t your way out the ‘hood.”
“Shit, G, you spoiling all our fun.”
“Better find a new jones,” Reggie says, checking his watch. “Wilson, mop’s in the closet over there.”