“I can see why they would say that about my first play, Suzanna, but they’ll have to change their minds after they see Reckless Eyeballing. They’re going to have to like Cora Mae’s monologue.”
“Man, are the sisters going to get you for that,” Minsk said. Ball thought for a moment.
“I know. But I figure if I can win these white broads to my side, the sisters will follow. The few who think the way they do are dependent upon them. You know how Becky first promoted Johnnie Kranshaw, and then when Johnnie Kranshaw disappeared after a falling out with Becky and her friends, they brought in Tremonisha, and last word I got was that they’re tired of the black American women because they feel they can’t be trusted and are ‘surly,’ and so they’re going to start importing some black women from the Caribbean who’ll be more agreeable and do their bidding for them. Deputize them to go out and smear black men. At least that’s what Brashford said.”
“Yeah, well, they’re hard on us white males, too.” Ball stared at Minsk for a moment.
“Brashford says that you’re not a white male, you’re Jewish, that white men and Jewish men have been fighting for centuries and for you to call yourself a white man is strange. He says that just because you know about Wallace Stevens and Chekhov doesn’t mean that these people are going to accept you as white, no way.”
They’d been through this before. Minsk used to argue about universality and the minimal importance of ethnicity, but that would only encourage Ball to quote more of Brashford’s ranting and raving.
“He reminds me of my father. He’s paranoid too.”
“Yeah. Brashford does go off the deep end from time to time. How’s your father doing?”
“The President’s visit to Bitburg really upset him. First it was the Nativity Decision, you know where the Supreme Court ruled that the display of Christian symbols is a legitimate part of the American Christmas. He said that every Jew was going to find his exit and he’d find his in death. He thinks that the Christians are going to make Jews convert or leave the United States.”
“Well, maybe he has a point.”
Minsk got up and went to the small refrigerator in his bachelor’s kitchen and got a bottle of beer. He was about five-foot-nine-inches and weighed 150 pounds. He went about his house in a jumpsuit and ate 100 percent bran every morning. There were fern plants in his bathroom and health food store soaps.
“I don’t think so,” he said to Ball when he returned to the living room. “He was in some pogrom. This whole town was murdered by the Cossacks.”
“Pogrom? What are you talking about?”
“The Europeans were massacring Jews before they went into Africa after the blacks. Ancient Christians hated the Jews. They were suspicious of them because they wouldn’t mingle with them or worship their gods. At least that’s one theory. In Russia, where my folks came from, discrimination against the Jews was especially virulent, though sometimes they were tolerated; depended upon which czar was in power.”
“Well, all of the Jews over here seem to be eating good. Nobody’s herding them into ghettos. What was wrong with your old man?”
“It happens to old people. They get disoriented. You know. My uncle, his younger brother, says that Pop always acted old. He’d go down to the deli or the automat where some of these old-timers would read and discuss the newspapers and talk about the old days in Russia. He’d spend hours there. Or he’d have his head buried in some books. He wrote poetry in Yiddish. He clung to the old ways while everybody else became assimilated, including my uncle, who used to be a gangster. You can’t get any more assimilated than that.”
“I didn’t even know you had an uncle,” Ball replied.
“Guy was in the mobs, up until before World War Two. Went to St. Louis and opened up a chain of carpet stores.”
“A gangster. In your family?”
“Surprised me too. I thought all of the gangsters were Irish or Italian. But there was some guy named Dutchman. He was a Jew. He ripped off Harlem for millions of dollars. Rigged the numbers so that he was always guaranteed a hefty take.”
“Jewish gangsters. I thought all the Jews were slumlords.” Ball grinned.
“Sure. Einstein, Trotsky, Chagall — slumlords. Fuck you, Ball.”
“Hey, look, man. You’re the one who says he doesn’t affiliate,” Ball said. “So what are you so sore about? Gimme a break.”
“I just hate misinformation, Ian. The Jews own the media, the Jews own the garment district, the Jews own this, the Jews own that. They just libel Jews with that shit so’s to take their minds off of those who really own it. That’s the same shit they used against you blacks. Like the black welfare queen with the fur coats and two homes and diamonds.”
“Okay. Okay. Jim, look, man, I take it back.”
They were silent for a minute, both of their heads buried in the script.
“I’m surprised that we got Cora’s monologue past Becky. She suggested that Cora Mae’s line here on page forty-one read something about her victimization by both the Reckless Eyeballer, Ham Hill, and by her husband. She said that because he leered at Cora the black was just as guilty as the white men who murdered him,” Jim said.
They broke up and the joint they smoked made them laugh even harder.
“She wanted to — I can’t believe it. What a screwy bitch. The man who reckless eyeballed the woman, so she claims, is just as guilty as the men who murdered him. That has got to be the most outrageous crap. Where do broads like that get off?” Ball said. They both laughed until they cried.
“Hear about Tremonisha?” Minsk asked.
“Yeah, it’s all in the newspapers and on TV. Man, the fellas are very bitter. They’re not going to stand for it, according to Brashford. I mean, they just about fought that Vietnam War single-handedly, them and some poor whites, while these middle-class white guys were backing them up in some kind of moving country club at Cam Ranh Bay. These broads should know that the only thing standing between them and these gooks and things that want to strangle them in their sleep is the fellas. At least that’s the way Brashford sees it.”
“She said that rapists ought to be castrated,” Minsk said, his eyes probing Ball’s for a response.
“Half the white boys in the country would be walking around with no dicks if it came to that. They the champs at date rapes and trains. Look at these white boys knocking over these nursery schools left and right — fucking little children in the butt — how sick can you get, fucking pineapples and dead people. You should hear Brashford talk about it.”
“He didn’t see it that way. The Flower Phantom took it personally,” Jim answered. Ball tried to restrain his grudging admiration for the man who had accosted Tremonisha, the man the media was calling the Flower Phantom for his habit of leaving a chrysanthemum with his victim.
“Sounds like a real screwball. My mom always taught me to respect women,” Ball said.
“Yeah, I admire that bond you have with your mother. I was never that close to mine. She was always speaking in Yiddish. Feeding the poor. I was afraid to bring friends home. Afraid she would embarrass me. You say your mother’s clairvoyant?”
“Yeah, a couple of scientists checked her out. Physicists.”
“What?”
“I kid you not, man. These guys came out from some school and did tests on her. She’s got it. When I was a kid, I couldn’t get away with a damned thing. I always wondered how did she know that. Man, did I get a lot of spankings. She’d spank me before I’d even do anything. She’d get all dressed up in black and just appear with a switch in a room where I was into some mischief. Like I’d look up and there she’d be. Gave me the creeps. Anyway, these two dudes say that they are beginning to understand the behavior of particles that communicate with each other faster than the speed of sound, and if you’re close to someone like a family or a wife or something, the particles are familiar and communicate even faster. It’s possible that you could experience an event before it even happens. They call it precognition. They say that’s the way telepathy works. Some people’s particles communicate quicker than others, because there is less debris surrounding their auras, they have clean auras, or something like that.