“Thanks for all you’ve done for me, Beechiko; what is this?” he said, staring at a bowl that Beechiko placed before him containing miso soup.
“This is your new breakfast, Mr. Longsfellow.”
“What would I do without you,” Mr. Longsfellow said. He held her hand for a long while. She winked to herself.
With Mr. Longsfellow’s vote of confidence, Beechiko ruled the roost. She made the Crawfords’ lives miserable, being constantly on their case, prying into their cleaning schedule, going after them for every particle of dust they overlooked, for every faint ring in the bathtub. She personally supervised Mr. Longsfellow’s meals, and the laundering of his clothes. Soon, however, her glory would end. Mr. Longsfellow had warned her not to enter the room that had been shut ever since his wife’s death. She couldn’t resist, and in the course of prying through his wife’s belongings came upon her blonde chemotherapy wigs. She was sitting in front of a mirror trying one on when she saw the reflection of her adversary. Samantha was standing in the doorway, leaning against one of its sides, her arms folded and that wicked glint in her eye.
“UUUUUUU. Immon tell. Immon tell, Mr. Longsfellow, he gave orders to everybody not to enter this room, and here you is in here trying on Mrs. Longsfellow’s blonde wig. Only me and Mrs. Longsfellow knew about those wigs. You robbing the secrets from Mrs. Longsfellow’s grave.” Before Beechiko could say anything, Samantha snapped a photo with her Polaroid.
Samantha turned and headed toward Mr. Longsfellow’s study where he had fallen asleep on top of some Great Book. He’d left the television set on. Beechiko started after her.
“Please, please don’t tell. I’ll do anything. Please don’t.”
“You’ll do anything?” Samantha asked.
“Anything, I don’t want Mr. Longsfellow to know.”
Samantha let go with a grin. She pointed to a closet at the end of the hall. “Go get that vacuum cleaner and follow me.”
The Crawfords supervised her now. They made her do all of their chores, and sometimes they wouldn’t even come to work and she’d have to cover for them. It got so that they’d show up only for meals that she had to serve them, in between going to the matinees or the track. One weekend while Mr. Longsfellow attended a conference upstate about the wasteland of American culture, they invited all of their friends over, and made her do all of the cooking, and when they finished eating they made her entertain them on the koto, and ridiculed and laughed at her.
She’d bought the mystical hokiness promoted by black feminist writers which held that black women were sort of like Christ figures who were abused by black men, Herods, Satans, and even the best among them, Pontius Pilates, but in the humiliating scene that she’d just endured, the women laughed louder than the men, and had no sense of the sisterhood that bonded her with them. They were different from the black women she met in publishing circles and at literary parties. Elegant matrons. They were drinking up all of Mr. Longsfellow’s scotch, and they said motherfucker more than the men. She was in bed now, and she could hear the refrains from the tune “Honkey Tonk,” made popular by Bill Doggett. She hated its bass line. Da doom Da doom Da doom Da doom Da. The low-down chicken-pecking vulgar solo made her feel strange in her viscera. She felt a presence in the room. Yes. There before her stood a small figure. The figure began to glow. She recognized him from the newspapers. His face was appearing in all of the Xmas ads. Black Peter. (Black Peter had transformed himself into the image of the post-yuppie Black Peter that the toy makers had designed.)
“I could feel your distress, far away,” he said.
“What, I,” she wanted to scream, but she couldn’t.
“I’m going to grant you the wish that you desire.”
“But.”
“It may relieve your torment, or it may bring additional problems,” he said. Before she could say anything, he disappeared.
22
Tommy awoke, springing up on his pillow. He’d had the same dream. That President Jesse Hatch was wringing his father’s neck and his father was protesting by flapping about and jumping up and down on one leg. “What’s the matter, Tommy,” his aunt said, coming into his room and turning on the lights. She sat down on his bed and embraced him. He cried on her peacock’s breast.
“It was that dream again, Auntie. The President, Jesse Hatch, was wringing my father’s neck, and then, then a man, he all covered with blood, and my father was hopping about and his neck was gone, and blood was spurting out of his — O Auntie, it was awful.”
“You don’t have to talk about it,” his aunt said. She was peering over her glasses. “Your father’s death was very cruel.” First his mother and then his father, and now he was living with his aunt who was a widow. Her husband was killed because he was too busy preening. Tommy got up and had some seeds for breakfast. He cleaned himself and prepared to go to school. The breakfast made him feel better, and he waved to his aunt as he gathered his notebooks, crayons, pencils, and backpack.
School was not a pleasant experience for him. The other kids always razzed him. They made fun of his looks, especially. They felt that they were the best-looking creatures in the world. They were always strutting about, preening, and craning their necks. They wouldn’t talk to him nor would they play with him and at lunchtime nobody would eat with him. His teacher led the young peacocks in ridiculing turkeys, after which the peacocks would turn to him and laugh or tease him with gobbling sounds. All they taught in school was about peacocks, and how they were the handsomest birds on earth. That their proto-ancestor was a cross between a phoenix and a nightingale and that their shit was like angel food. Turkeys and peacocks were cousins but you wouldn’t know it from the way they treated him. It figures, though, if you think about it. Bears and dogs are cousins, too, but whenever you see a photo of them together the dogs are barking at the bears. Tommy Turkey wasn’t doing well in school. Not only was he grieving about his father’s death, the President and his family having had the tough old bird for dinner, but he was tired of hearing about peacocks. Reading books about ancient dead peacocks. Peacocks were beginning to think of themselves as too gorgeous for the supermarket freezer, in a time when California nurseries were cultivating flowers for adventurous tastes. Marigolds were being served with dinner in Japan. Peacocks could be next.
If it weren’t for his aunt reassuring him and giving him confidence, Tommy would have run away to the wild turkeys in the woods. The peacocks wouldn’t wander anywhere near them. One day the peacocks were strutting about as usual, being real pleased with themselves, their teacher telling them how great they were, when Black Peter entered. The peacocks cheered because they had seen Black Peter in all of the promotional ads for the department store. They thought that he was the impostor Peter. Some of them had bought Black Peter dolls. The teacher said something about his objecting to this intrusion, and Black Peter turned him into a plate of roasted peacock, commenced to sit down, tie a napkin to his neck, and dig in. Some of the peacocks threw up. Others fainted. One of them tried to run out of the classroom when Black Peter headed him off, and plucked out some of the peacock’s feathers. The peacocks were scared. They started making those sounds of peacocks when they get scared. Black Peter stood at the front of the class, slapping his hand with his rod. “Tommy Turkey, would you come to the front of the class?” Tommy Turkey pointed to himself, he was so surprised.
“Yes, you, Tommy.” Tommy walked to the front of the room.
“I don’t blame you for what you’ve done to Tommy Turkey, kids, it’s your teacher’s fault, and the educational system’s fault. You just don’t know what it means to be a turkey, how turkeys have provided a food supply for the poor over and over again, but I’m sure, Tommy, that you’d prefer that for the Thanksgiving meal soybeans be substituted for turkey.” Tommy smiled. Some of the other peacocks smiled. Black Peter opened a large book that he’d brought. The painting was by the black illustrator John James Audubon. It was a picture of a turkey. Not only was it beautiful, but Audubon had commented that the turkey was indigenous to North America. The peacocks had never seen a turkey who looked this beautiful, not in a gaudy way as they did, but understated and quiet. Turkeys subtly changed their colors to express their emotions, another fact that the peacocks had never learned.