He slept while flies zoomed around his bean. Like the nasty little dive bombers they were, they dashed against his forehead. He jerked, one eyelid open and one shut, then went back to sleep.
Fannie Mae and I reached the door of our apartment and I put the key into the latch. Wheezing, I lifted Fannie Mae for the traditional threshold caper.
“Put me down, fool! You simple or somethin’?”
“But Fannie Mae, dearest. This is included in the marriage rite prescribed by the Nazarene manual.”
“Aw dem white folks done fussed yo skull wit all dat crazy talk. Let’s go inside like somebody’s got some sense. You come on like some senile mailman with a case of dropsy.”
Inside we examined the five empty rooms of our first apartment. Through the walls came the voices of our neighbors: “Who ate dat last piece of pie son of a bitch you ate it who ate it he ate it then what’s the crust doin’ in you greasy choppers if he ate it cause he snuck and ate it while you was sleepin’ fool did you eat the pie yes I ate it woman you gone whup me about it aw woman don’t whip da man let him res woman why don’t you jess hush and let peoples res. …”
Outside the belching of foghorns. The interminable helicopters. The snow falling. EATS EATS EATS EATS.
The next morning my father-in-law called. A ninety-year-old punkish-looking mothball, he was devoted to thumb-sucking and living with the tales-of-the-crypt voice who decorated his house with crocheted pillows of Niagara Falls. He had been president of the colored Elks in 1928 and once kissed Calvin Coolidge’s ass. He now sat about the house all day drinking Champale malt liquor and watching daytime melodramas on TV. Cobwebbed antlers rested upon his head.
He said, “Fannie Mae, dahlin’. I am spitting up dese colors, see, and I would like for you to come over and put some pink powder in between my toes for dey is crawlin’ wit what appears to be some kind of anamuls. Also, baby, as you know, I is real sceered of da dak. Dere are dese spooky shapes sitting atop my bedposts and dey won’t go a-way, no matter how hard I huff and puff. Now baby, you know dat don’t make no kind of sense. Yo daddy, as you will recall, was da head of da colored Elks in 1928 and I must send out correspondences. Granmama put some Uncle Jeeter’s powder under da pillow and dat didn’t seem to help a-tall. In fact, DEM SPECTERS DONE GOT BOLDER! Please come over and shoo dem away ’cause dey is makin’ me wet the bed and scream and hollah fo Granmama who’s tryin’ to get her witchcraft doctorate and make somethin’ out of herself. I will expect you fust ting in da morning and tings can be da way dey was ’fo you married dat boy what sticks prongs in people’s heads and makes dem bounce up and down lak dey is some kinda acrobat. Dis is da Grand Exalted Ruler of da Elks signin’ over to his daughter.” (Click.)
“My father wants me to come over to his house and read old-timey pamphlets to him,” Fannie Mae announced. “I’ll be back in two weeks.”
“Why can’t his mother do that?”
“She’s taking a course under the Mojo Power Retraining Act, dat’s why. You so simple.”
“Somebody ought to take a stick and bang the big sissy upside the head with it. Rusty dusty overgrown Mickey Mouse flapper afraid of the dark and calling for that ogress. Heh, heh, heh.”
“Don’t be thinkin’ ugly ’bout my family. You’re jess jealous ’cause he was da head of da colored Elks in 1928 and all you can do is take care of all dem screwballs skipping around what needs a shrink.”
“Well, a kat who sits in the house all day wearing a moose headpiece got a whole lot of marbles to collect.”
“Don’t be laffin’ at my daddy,” Fannie Mae said, hurling a pan of lye at me. I ducked and the solution went through the window. Below, there was the sudden clang of a cowbell accompanied by a scream. Then many klang-a-langs in rapid succession quietly dying in the distance.
“I was just jokin’, dearest. Don’t get excited.”
“You best be jokin’. Now I’m gone go over to Daddy’s and take care of him. Dere is some week-old green chickens dat I bought at Gooseman’s supermarket for seventy cents a pound. You can nibble on dat for a while.” She threw her garment about her and rushed from the apartment.
But she forgot something. I went to the closet and removed a plastic container from the shelf. I opened the window and yelled at Fannie Mae.
“YOU FORGOT SOMETHIN’, SWEET PICKLE BUNCH.”
“Whatchawont?”
“You forgot … the antler polish,” I screamed.
Fannie Mae escaped from her dad’s house just as her grandmother was about to shove her into the oven in one of the grimmer exercises prescribed by the witchcraft syllabus. We met our neighbors shortly after she returned home. Our only contact with them had been the creaking of bedsprings and the “O sock it to me good joogie woogie” that came through the rice paper the housing authorities tried to pass off as a wall. Riding in the elevator one day, having just returned from work, I stood next to a man who was reading a comic book. He seemed amused by its cover: King Kong atop the Empire State Building with the Joint Chiefs of Staff wriggling in one hand while the other hand is flinging down all the fuken airplanes.
Also aboard the elevator was a Nazarene apprentice and two children. The children were involved in a scuffle.
“Gimmie my cap. Gimmie back my cap,” said one to the other. One child drew back his fist and was about to strike his companion when the Nazarene apprentice put down his clipboard and intervened.
“Now children, you mustn’t fight. HARRY SAM won’t hold you in his lap when he comes out of the comfort station.”
The children looked at one another curiously before examining the priest.
“How would HARRY SAM like this?” one of the children said, before hauling off and kicking the priest in the shins.
The other child delivered a quick karate chop whose impact caused the priest to slump to the floor in a coo-coo daze. I nudged the man standing next to me.
“Don’t you think that we ought to put an end to this?”
“Aw dem jess chirren playing,” was his reply.
I was about to pull the children from the helpless Nazarene apprentice when the elevator opened and they scooted out between the legs of the black Screw who was walking down the hallway. The cowbell was jarred. Ting ting. Half of the Screw’s face was white. The Screw unbound the Nazarene apprentice and removed the gag from his mouth as the man reading the book and I walked toward our respective apartments.
“No tellin’ what dese kids gone be doin’ next,” the Screw philosophized.
“Thanks,” said the Nazarene apprentice, assembling his scattered notes and the copy of the magazine Studies on the Flank.
“Here, let me hep you up suh.”
“Don’t bother, Screw. What on earth happened to the other side of your face, Screw?”
“I don’t know, suh. I was sitting out de doors yestiddy and some fire rain come out da sky and scalded my face.”
“Fire rain. Isn’t that interesting? One of those many bizarre happenings in the ghettos, I presume. O, this is so thrilling! I even enjoyed the roughing up those kids gave me. You see, I’m working on a paper on the mores of segregated housing projects for the University of Chicago. I might even write this incident up in a magazine I edit called Studies on the Flank. It enabled me to observe culturally deprived children at first hand.”