Yes, I have." Penny looked at him with a mixture of fear and awe. I’ve read about you in the papers. You’re the chief of the Harlem Mau Mau. You advocate cannibahsm as a weapon to be used by Negroes against the white power structure.”
“That is correct.”
“And you’ve written a book, haven’t you?”
“I have. A cookbook. It contains some truly rare recipes. Saute of Southern fried segregationist. Alabama Sheriff au gratin. Roast of Mississippi klansman. Pan-broiled politician a la Wallace. Filet of Florida motel owner. White trash hash. That’s especially good when it’s warmed over a burning cross.”
Penny’s mind was spinning. If Punjab was really XX, a spy who had infiltrated GRABB, if all the others were also impersonators, that still left one question unanswered: Who, in reality, was John Fuller Gall? The question nagged at her mind: Who is John Gall? Who is John Gall?
It was one question to which Penny was never to have an answer. Nobody could answer it. Even Little Effin’ Aynie, now revealed as architectural reporter Dominique Fantail, would flounder in the quicksand of her own confusion in attempting to identify Gall. Who is John Gall? Aynie’s answer would make Gall a what, rather than a who, thereby removing him from the human race and relieving the human race of any need to consider him at all.
Now, however, Penny had already ceased to consider the question. She had her own predicament to ponder. Not quite sure what that predicament was, she timidly put the question to XX. “What are you going to do with me?” the deliciously frightened girl asked.
“You shall find out soon enough. For now we must get out of the enemy’s territory.” XX picked Penny up and carried her to the elevator. A few moments later they emerged from a basement entrance onto a side street just a few doors from Park Avenue. Still keeping a firm grasp on Penny’s arm, XX forced her into a parked car. He started the vehicle and piloted it uptown, toward Harlem.
“Do you really mean all those terrible things you say about what Negroes will do to white people if they take over?” Penny asked after they’d been driving in silence for a while.
“I do.”
“But why do you hate us so? Surely you realize there are well-meaning white people who want to help your race.”
“They’re the worst kind. I hate them most of all for what they did to me.”
“What they did to you?”
“Yes. You think my voice is high because I’m plugging for a job in a church choir?”
“Oh! You mean your-—your—” Penny was at a loss for words.
“My missing parts. That’s right, lady. That’s what happens when a black man gets mixed up with well-meaning whites. They call it penal reform.”
“But how did it happen?”
“It's a long story. But if you really want to know, I’ll tell you. It all started when I was a kid, with a white lady social worker in Harlem.”
“Oh, those people are so dedicated,” Penny enthused. “So well-meaning.”
“Sure. They took up the white man’s burden right where Kipling left it lying. Anyway, I was around thirteen or fourteen when this white lady social worker took me in hand. Almost right away, she had a profound effect on my life.”
“How do you mean?” Penny wanted to know. .
“She made me see the light. Before she came along, I was crazy about fried chicken. Ate it whenever I got the chance. Watermelon, too. But she made me see how I was conforming to a stereotype, and so I cut those particular calories out of my diet. I did a pretty fair rumba, but she made me see my natural rhythm for what it really was: ammunition for pigeonholing bigots. She taught me to miss the beat and be purposely clumsy. Yes, she was something. I’ll never forget the day I told her I hoped to grow up and be rich so that some day I might own a Cadillac. She practically had apoplexy on the spot. Only one thing got her social-working dander up worse than that: the time I told her I liked listening to Amos and Andy on the radio. Believe you me, she made me see that Hattie McDaniel, Bojangles, Rochester, Stepin Fechit1 , all that gang, were nothing but traitors to the race.”
“Still, I can sort of see her point,” Penny said hesitantly.
“Oh, sure. But the trouble was she was taking the few enjoyments I’d had right out of my life. That was all right, though, because she was also teaching me to be good and surly. You see, I’d been brought up to be polite to people. But she made me see that being polite to white people was just being an Uncle Tom. Yessir, she made me see the light. The times I rode home with my feet aching because I wouldn’t take any of the empty seats at the back of the bus!”
“She was just trying to give you a sense of racial pride.”
“No kidding? Well now, aren’t you real perceptive? But you’re right. That’s what she was trying to do. And she set about it with a vengeance. She lugged all kinds of books on the ethnic background of the Negro up to my home. History, primitive art, music, culture, tradition—she fed it all to me until it was coming out of my ears.”
“You don’t sound very grateful,” Penny objected.
“Maybe that’s because I know now that she had an ulterior motive. One so ulterior that she probably wasn’t even aware of it herself. You see, she’d get all fluttery and excited about the wonderful contributions of the Negro to the world. I do believe, looking back on it, that she was the first black supremacist I ever met. But she got carried away with her own admiration.”
“What happened?”
“Well, all the time she was convincing me of Negro superiority, you see, she was convincing herself. Now you have to picture this white lady social worker. She was one of these frustrated thirtyish types. Rimless eye-glasses, fervently bony, face like a horse, and given to pimply blushes and hot flushes. Well, she got one of those hot flushes with me one night. Came on strong. Seems one stereotype she’d never gotten rid of was the concept of the Negro being a superior stud. That night she was out to put it to the test.”
“How awful! What did you do?”
“I wanted to oblige her, but she was just plain too unappealing to me. Unfortunately, this must have come across. She got real desperate then. Told me if I didn’t make love to her she was going to scream rape and have me locked up. I tried, but it was still no good. Then she left in a huff.”
“Did she do what she threatened to do?”
“No. I think she realized that even an ofay cop wouldn’t believe any man—even a black man-—would try to rape her.” '
“What did you do?”
“I took all the books she’d left on the ethnic background of the Negro and lined them up and urinated on them. Then I threw them in the garbage. That was the end of the white social worker and me. But it was only the beginning of what I was to suffer at the hands of well-meaning white liberals.”
“Tell me about it.” Penny was genuinely interested.
“I met a rich white lady who was just getting in on the fad for tolerance. I was a godsend to her. See, she was short one cocktail-party Negro.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, you see, with tolerance the ‘in’ thing with the upper classes, it became necessary for every hostess to have at least one Negro present when she threw a party. But my benefactress was more ambitious than that. She always had to have two Negroes—two Negroes of roughly the same height and build.”
“Why?”
“She had an eighteen-foot couch, a custom built job, in her living room. It was done in pure white velvet. She’d sit a Negro at each end of the couch like a pair of bookends. We supplied just the right finishing touch for the color scheme.”
“But that’s not integration!” Penny said indignantly.
“Maybe not. It was good interior decoration, though.”