Bubba the redneck, a nigger, and a Mexican are sitting at the same bus stop when BAM! a genie appears out of nowhere in a cloud of smoke. “You each get one wish,” says the genie, adjusting his turban and his ruby rings. So the nigger says, “I wish for all my black brothers and sisters to be in Africa, where the land will nourish us and all Africans can prosper.” The genie waved his hands, and BAM! all the blacks left America and went to Africa. The Mexican then said, “Órale, that sounds good to me. I want all my Mexican peoples to be in Me-hee-co where we can live well and have yobs and drink from glorious pools of tequila.” BAM! They all went to Mexico and left America. Then the genie turns to Bubba the redneck and says, “And what is it you desire, Sahib? Your wish is my command.” Bubba looks at the genie and says, “So you’re telling me that all the Mexicans are in Mexico and all the niggers are in Africa?”
“Yes, Sahib.”
“Well, it’s kinda hot today, I guess I’ll have a Coke.”
That’s how good that Coke was.
“That’ll cost seven cents. Just leave it on the counter, boy. Your new mommy be back in no time.”
Ten sodas and seventy cents later, neither my new mother nor my old father had returned and I had to take a wicked piss. The fellows at the gas station were still playing chess, the attendant’s cursor hovering hesitatingly over a cornered piece as if his next decision decided the fate of the world. The attendant slammed a knight onto a square. “You ain’t fooling nobody with that Sicilian gambit chicanery. Your diagonals is vulnerable as shit.”
My bladder about to burst, I asked black Kasparov where the bathroom was located.
“Restrooms are for customers only.”
“But my dad just purchased some gas…”
“And your father can shit here until his heart’s content. You, on the other hand, are drinking the white man’s Coke like his ice is colder than ours.”
I pointed to the row of seven-ounce sodas in the cooler. “How much?”
“Dollar-fifty.”
“But they’re seven cents across the street.”
“Buy black or piss off. Literally.”
Feeling sorry for me, and winning on points, black Bobby Fischer pointed into the distance at an old bus station.
“See that abandoned bus station next to the cotton gin?”
I sprinted down the road. Although the building was no longer operational, balls of cottonseed still blew in the wind like itchy snowflakes. I made my way to the back, past the gin, the empty pallets, a rusted forklift, and the ghost of Eli Whitney. The filthy one-toilet bathroom buzzed with flies. The floors and the seat were flypaper sticky. Glazed to a dull matte yellow by four generations of good ol’ boys with bottomless bladders, pissing countless gallons of drunk-on-the-job clear urine. The acrid stink of unflushed racism and shit shriveled my face and put goosebumps on my arms. Slowly I backed out. Underneath the faded WHITES ONLY stenciled on the grimy lavatory door, I ran my finger through the grit and wrote THANK GOD, then peed on an anthill. Because apparently the rest of the planet was “Colored Only.”
Fourteen
At first glance the Dons, the hilly neighborhood about ten miles north of Dickens that Marpessa moved to after she married MC Panache, looks like any well-to-do African-American enclave. The tree-lined streets are twisting. The houses are fronted with immaculate Japanese-style gardens. The wind chimes somehow coerce the air currents into Stevie Wonder songs. American flags and campaign signs supporting crooked politicians are displayed proudly in the front yard. When we were dating, sometimes after a night out, me and Marpessa would cruise the neighborhood, wheeling Daddy’s pickup truck through streets with Spanish names like Don Lugo, Don Marino, and Don Felipe. We used to refer to the modern but smallish homes with their pools, plate-glass windows, stone facades, and weatherproofed balconies overlooking downtown Los Angeles as “Brady Bunch houses.” As in “The motherfucking Wilcoxes came up, dude. Them niggers kicking it in a Brady Bunch house off Don Quixote.” We hoped one day to live in one of these homes and have a barrel of children. The worst thing that could happen to us was that we’d falsely accuse our oldest son of smoking, a poorly thrown football would break our daughter’s nose, and our slightly slutty maid would constantly throw herself at the mailman. Then we’d die and go into worldwide syndication like all good American families.
For ten years, ever since our breakup, I’d periodically park outside her crib, wait until the lights went out, then through the binoculars and a sliver of open bay window curtain, I’d take in the life I should’ve been living, a life of sushi and Scrabble, kids studying in the living room and playing with the dog. After the children went to bed, I’d watch Nosferatu and Metropolis with her, crying like a baby because the way Paulette Goddard and Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times circle around each like two dogs in heat reminded me of us. Sometimes I’d sneak up to the porch and, in the screen door, leave a snapshot of the growing satsuma tree on her porch with Our son, Kazuo, says hello written on the back.
There isn’t much you can do about segregating a school when school isn’t in session, and that summer I spent more time outside her house than for legal reasons I care to admit, until one warm August night, the forty-foot Metro bus parked in Marpessa’s driveway forced me to abort my stalker protocol. Like their white-collar comrades, it’s not unusual for black blue-collar employees like Marpessa to take their work home with them. Regardless of your income level, the old adage of having to be twice as good as the white man, half as good as the Chinese guy, and four times as good as the last Negro the supervisor hired before you still holds true. Nevertheless, I was surprised as hell to see the #125 bus sitting in her driveway, its back end blocking the sidewalk, its right-side tires ruining a once-perfect lawn.
Tree photo in hand, I crept past the gardenias and the Westec security sign. Rising to my tippy-toes, I peered into a side window, cupping my hands around my eyes. Even in the cool of the midnight air, the vehicle was still warm and thick with the scent of gasoline and the sweat of the working class. It’d been four months since Hominy’s birthday party and the PRIORITY SEATING FOR SENIORS, DISABLED, AND WHITES signs were still up. I wondered aloud how she got away with them.
“She says it’s an art project, nigger.”
The barrel of the snub-nosed.38 boring into my cheekbone was cold and impersonal, but the voice behind the gun was the exact opposite, warm and friendly. Familiar. “Dude, if I hadn’t recognized the smell of cow shit on your ass, you’d be dead as good black music.”
Stevie Dawson, Marpessa’s younger brother, spun me around and, gun in hand, gave me a bear hug. Behind him stood a red-eyed Cuz, a tipsy grin happily cutting across his mug. His boy Stevie was out of jail. I was glad to see him, too; it’d been at least ten years. Stevie’s rep was even more dastardly than Cuz’s. Gang-unaffiliated only because he was too crazy for the Crip sets and too mean for the Bloods. Stevie hates nicknames, because he feels real bad motherfuckers don’t need one. And although there are a few hardheads around the way who answer to their Christian names, when niggers say Stevie, it’s like a Chinese homophone. If you’ve been around, you know exactly who they mean. In California you get three strikes. If you’re convicted of two felonies, the next guilty verdict, no matter how minor, can mean life in prison. Somewhere along the line the catcher must have dropped Stevie’s third strike, because the system had sent him back to the plate.