The first time, for instance, when Precious came across a white man digging a hole in the sidewalk of a street, she could not help but stare, for she had never before in her life seen a white man even carry a pickaxe in broad daylight, much less raise one to dig a hole. Of course, one knew from books and the cinema that white men did such things abroad, but schoolbook knowledge was simply not the same as seeing with one’s very own eyes.
She had been strolling with Shirley and Henry and the two grandchildren toward their car in the parking lot of a shopping mall when she spotted the white man digging the hole in the sidewalk pavement. Beside him leaned a big-belly black man who peered captiously down the hole and bellowed criticism and commentary over the digging. Precious stopped and stared, her mouth agape, at this scene from a movie.
“What you looking at, Mummy?” Shirley asked, edging closer and licking an ice cream cone.
“A white man digging a hole in de sidewalk,” Precious mumbled.
“Damn lazy brute dem,” Shirley groused. “Dey work for de government. If it take a normal man an hour to dig de hole, it take dem five.”
“But digging a hole!” Precious mumbled, confused. “I never know white man could dig hole.”
“Who say dey can dig hole? They’re damn lazy! You want to watch?”
Precious muttered that she did not, for she felt vaguely queasy at the thought of sticking her nose into another’s business, but Shirley had already seized her firmly by the elbow and was half dragging and pushing her across the striped parking lot toward the edge of the road where the men were working, all the while whispering to the children that Grandma had never before seen a white man dig a hole and wanted to see such a wonder up close for herself.
“Is that true, Grandma?” Cheryl-Lee asked in a whisper, excitement shining in her eyes. “You’ve never seen a white man dig a hole?”
Precious tried to mumble something in defense of this embarrassing shortcoming in her upbringing, while doing her best to shake off the official police death-grip with which Shirley steered her across the parking lot.
“Sometimes our garbage man is a white man, Grandma!” Henrietta blurted, skipping merrily at her side.
They were within earshot range of the digging men now, and Precious could even hear the big-bellied black man complaining about the depth of hole.
“It got to be deeper, I tell ya!” he was twanging to the white man, who was so deep down the hole that only his blood-gorged neck blazed above the ragged rim. “I know the line’s down there someplace! You just gotta keep digging!”
The white man hoisted the pickaxe and drove the blade into the earth with a porcine grunt, while the black man slouched with his hands resting heavily against his knees and peered attentively into the hole.
“This is fun!” Cheryl-Lee announced. “Watching a white man dig a hole!”
“How come we never did this before, Mommy?” Henrietta asked peevishly in a tone that implied maternal neglect.
“Lawd Jesus, Shirley!” Precious muttered, tugging at her daughter’s sleeve. “Dey goin’ see we watching dem. Come, make we go back!”
Shirley kissed her teeth in an expression of contempt.
“I am a taxpayer,” she growled. “I have the right to watch any man dig any hole so long as is my taxes paying for it. I am sitting right here and watching my taxes at work.”
She sat down stubbornly on the curb, licked her ice cream cone, and watched the white man dig. The children plopped down in an arc of silence and studiously peered. Henry leaned against the trunk of a tree and looked amused.
Before long they could hear the white man groaning that the sun was too hot and the work too hard, and he and the black man withdrew under the shade of a nearby tree and lolled against its trunk, chatting and swatting idly at the swarms of hovering gnats and flies.
“See what I tell you!” Shirley said triumphantly. “And you say white man can dig a hole! Dig an inch and him take a half hour break! Damn lazy brutes.” She lumbered to her feet and started across the parking lot toward the car.
Though the men had seemed oblivious to their presence, Precious thought some polite explanation of the family’s gawking necessary. With Cheryl-Lee hanging onto her hand, she strolled over to the panting white man whose face was broiled a florid and ugly red by the exertion and the hot sun and said, “That’s a very nice hole you were digging.”
The man looked at her quizzically, turned to his black companion, and asked, “What’d she say?”
“Grandma says she like the way you dug that hole,” Cheryl-Lee explained primly. “This is my Jamaican grandma,” she added.
The men whispered and stared as the family retreated toward the car parked in a distant corner of the enormous striped lot.
“I felt some explanation was necessary,” explained Precious as Shirley drove out of the parking lot. “So we wouldn’t seem uncouth.”
“Lawd God, Mummy,” Shirley muttered. “You don’t understand dis country, you know!”
“I just wanted to compliment him on de nice hole!” said Precious stoutly. “Hi! What’s wrong with dat? Henry, what’s wrong with dat?”
“Nothing!” agreed Henry brightly. “That man has probably dug a hundred holes without a single compliment from the public. I think it’s very thoughtful of you.”
“You would,” Shirley carped.
“I didn’t think there was anything wrong with saying something nice about the man’s hole,” Precious mumbled defensively.
But Henry couldn’t leave matters resting on that shaky note. He had to press ahead one obnoxious step further.
“Let’s play a game!” he said brightly, turning to the children in the backseat. “Grandma isn’t used to seeing white workers. From now on until we reach home, let’s find examples of white working men for Grandma.”
“Lawd Jesus!” protested Precious.
But it was too late. All the way home the children intermittently exploded into piercing squeals of triumphant discovery, crying out, “White man trimming a hedge!”
“White woman mowing the lawn!”
“White man walking a dog!”
“That doesn’t count! That’s not work! Does that count, Daddy?”
“White man painting a fence! Hah! That counts!”
Before long the two daughters were fighting over the passing pool of working white men, as each pirated examples from the other’s hard-won stock.
“That was my white man in the tree! Wasn’t that my white man in the tree, Daddy?”
“I saw the white man painting the fence first! Didn’t I,-Daddy? That’s my white man!”
“I have five white men and you only have two! Nah nah nah naaah na!”
“Dad! Tell Henrietta to stop! She’s provoking me!”
“The white man in the tree belongs to Henrietta. The one walking the dog doesn’t count. But the one painting the house is Cheryl-Lee’s,” adjudicated Henry with a Solomonic air.
Shirley drove home with a sullen scowl.
That evening as Precious lay on her bed thinking about the day’s contretemps, she heard the door creak open and saw Cheryl-Lee framed in the doorway. “Grandma,” the girl asked timidly, “can I come in?”
“Of course, darling,” Precious welcomed, reaching out for her.
The child hurried over, snuggled against her grandmother, then squirmed away. “Can we go under the bed and talk, Grandma?”
“We don’t have to go under de bed. We can talk right here.”
“But I like it under the bed, Grandma!”
Precious sighed. “All right,” she said heavily.
Soon they were scrunched under the bed. Precious heard footsteps briskly approach her door and Shirley call out, “Mummy! I gone to work. See you in de morning.”
“Goodbye!” Precious bellowed back.
She heard Shirley ask in a puzzled tone through the closed door, “Why Mummy sound like she so far away?” and Henry answer nonchalantly, “Oh, she’s probably under the b
ed. She-goes there a lot.”
“Henry, are you driving my mother under a bed?”
“I didn’t do anything but fix up under the bed for her!” Henry squealed.
Shirley’s footsteps beat a brisk tattoo to the front door and a few minutes later Precious heard her car drive away.
“Grandma,” Cheryl-Lee asked petulantly in the under-bed dimness, “didn’t I see the white man painting the fence first?”
Chapter 9
There are men who are brutes, drunkards, and lazy goodfor-nothings, but the too-too man is the only kind a woman constantly has an urge to wash out with an enema. A woman likes a man with gristle in him, one she can sink her teeth into and chew on happily for years as a lifetime cud. Theophilus had been just such a tough-skinned wretch: cantankerous, miserable, headstrong, set in his ways; always trying to shish kebab pum-pum with everlasting pushy, forward, impertinent, rude, and out of order bamboo; always bawling about his dinner, complaining about his clothes, ranting and raving at maid and mistress. If ever a man had gone straight to heaven it was that gluttonous, never-satisfy, big-belly soul, and Precious just lamented the day the wretch had to go and collide with a truck around a corner, stranding her in America with a too-too man for company.
It was morning. Precious and Henry were at breakfast, with Shirley asleep and the children gone to school.
Henry was fussing about the kitchen, provoking Precious to inwardly fulminate about him in this vein as he fried her an egg she did not want, had not asked for, and was perfectly capable of frying for herself if she had felt for an egg, which she did not, although the brute still insisted on frying one. It was a perfectly fried egg, with not a trace of grease or singed lacy edges, and Henry had just carefully slid it onto her plate like a Frenchman dishing out a serving of bullfrog foot.
She stared hard at him and swallowed her peevishness.
“Precious? You want any orange juice?”
“No, thank you.”
“Does my juice have too much pulp?”
“I just don’t feel for any orange juice.”
“I don’t mind squeezing a fresh batch, you know!”
“Lawd Jesus, hanging on de cross!” Precious whispered.
The too-too man was right and correct in everything he did or said in the irritating way of the catechism. You could not say that he was too this or too that because if you did you would seem an ungrateful wretch. You could not find the proper words to express your grievance about such a man without appearing small-minded and petty. So you held your peace and kept quiet, and this very suppression of righteous irritation made you feel strongly to kick him down and reach for your enema pan.
Henry was such a too-too man.
Precious baked banana bread. She had taken a job at a temporary agency and on her first day off she spent the whole morning baking, and when the children came home they snacked happily on the warm banana bread as they chittered about their schoolday adventures.
Henry came home that evening and counterattacked with his own banana bread, claiming that he had been meaning to make it from last week but kept forgetting, and since Precious made her bread and the children had so eagerly eaten it, he would cook his own too while the pans were still warm.
So Precious was forced into waging banana bread war with a man.
And the wretch had the gall to win.
His banana bread was plainly better than hers as she could tell from the very first nibble. Then he suggested that hers wanted more vanilla and sugar.
Precious stared at him with disbelieving eyes, wondering how much she was expected to endure for a green card.
“How many perms you set today?” Precious flung spitefully at him as she retired to her room, where she crawled under the bed to nurse grievance.
A few minutes later came a tap on her door.
“Hullo?” cried Precious, sulking under mattress batty.
“Are you thinking, Precious?” Henry asked through the closed door.
“Yes, I am.”
“May I come in?”
“Why? You want an enema?” she mumbled.
“What did you say, Precious?”
“I said, one minute, please,” she bawled loud enough for him to hear.
She slid out from under the bed to meet face-to-face with the oily too-too wretch.
He cleaned out her room one day when Precious was at work, and when she came back she took him aside and said please not to clean out my room for I am a woman and no man is supposed to clean out my room, I am supposed to clean out my own room plus man’s one too, and I have been doing it for years and take pride in keeping a clean room and don’t need any man to come and sneak-clean my room behind my back when I am at work, and while she said this Precious kept a winsome smile on her face so that she wouldn’t hurt his feelings.
But the next week he had cleaned out her room again, down to vacuuming the floor and dusting off her dresser, and she took him aside and this time she wore no winsome smile on her face when she said that she did not want her rass room cleaned out by any man, and though she did not use that nasty word “rass” she had sorely felt like it, and please to leave her boudoir alone for a woman’s boudoir was her castle, it was the place where she reigned supreme and where man must not venture except when woman invites him in for a joint of bamboo, and she wanted to make matters so clear that never again as long as she lived would any too-too man ever attempt to clean out her room, did he understand?
That was Jamaica, Precious, said Mr. Too-too, this is America. Here men pick up and clean up after women. Men help with laundry and dishes and change diaper. In fact, when it came to wiping doo-doo baby bottom, he was foremost champion, for he himself used to wipe all the baby bottom in this family since Shirley was too busy being police and didn’t like the smell of baby doo-doo, while he thought it cleared his nose better than vapor rub, and anyway he was liberated and only doing what a liberated man did in America.
Did she imprison him in America? Was she his warden? Must her room be held hostage? Must he go on a cleaning rampage through her personal possessions just because he was liberated?
Of course not, said Too-too with an ingratiating smile, and Precious felt like saying, don’t smile so at me when we arguing about cleaning up my room, or so help me God I going thump you down on de spot, but she was a lady and only gritted her teeth and muttered that it struck her as no laughing matter and she was serious as a judge about not wanting man to clean her-room.
“I like cleaning up your room, Precious!” Henry insisted. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”
Precious jumped like she had sat down on a bee, for she instantly recognized the tone of voice the too-too wretch was using. It was a tone that sighed, “Precious, how you so fat and juicy, eh?” and more than one man had whispered it while tamping a wriggly tongue down the shaft of her earhole and trying to coax pum-pum out of her. Indeed, the last time she had heard that tone was from Theophilus as she was helping prop up middle-aged Brutus for his weekly ride.
She glared at Henry and growled, “I box down more dan one man already dat take dat tone to me.”
She jumped up and headed abruptly for her room.
“What did I say, Precious?” Too-too whined, chasing after-her.
She turned to face him. They were in the narrow hallway outside her bedroom door, and he was peering at her like he was puppy dog and she was beefy bone. She felt to point a fingernail in his face and deliver stern warning but, instead, merely stomped her foot and retreated into her room.
“Precious,” he scraped outside her door plaintively, “I think we’re having a cultural misunderstanding!”
He washed out her drawers. It was such a shock for her to come home from work one evening and find her dirty drawers washed, rinsed, and folded neatly on her bed that if she had had dentures she might have swallowed them and choked to death. Then and there she made up her mind that she was going to thump him down on the spot, and she threw open her bedroom door and cha
rged into the kitchen looking for the panty-rinsing wretch.
He was not in the kitchen.
“Henry!” she called, going so far as to poke her head into his-bedroom, thinking that whether in kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, or laundry room, he was still getting thumped down.
He was not in the bedroom, bathroom, laundry room. He-was nowhere in the house.
His car was gone and he had left her a note.
It read: Precious: Am cooking a stew for dinner. Did the wash today, including your underthings. Hope I didn’t starch the collar of your blouse too much. Ironed this morning before work, too. No rest for the wicked. See you at dinner.
She was stalking back into her bedroom with a scowl when she heard a door slam and rushed into the kitchen with her fist doubled, ready to thump.
It was Shirley, coming home from a meeting.
They sat in the kitchen and drank coffee. Shirley saw that her mother was agitated and asked what was troubling her. Precious put the case bluntly.
“Your husband have de nerve to wash out my underwear dis morning! I going to thump him down, Shirley! So help me, I-am just going to thump him down!”
Shirley frowned and looked puzzled. “Why? He didn’t do a good job?”
“Do a good job?” Precious shrieked. “What business does dat man have washing out my underwear, please? What?”
“But Mummy! Is I train him, you know.”
“Train him? To wash woman panty? If dis was Jamaica, de police would lock him up.”
Shirley chuckled. “Mummy, you too old-fashioned. Henry is a modern American man. I put him through a long training. I-discipline him de right way. Don’t undo all de years of training I give dat man now.”
“Tell him to leave my underwear alone if he value life and limb, to say nothing of liver, eyeball, and gall bladder!”
That night she heard Henry come home and stir about the house, picking up odds and ends discarded by the children and stacking dishes away, and she heard Shirley talking to him in the kitchen followed by anxious murmurs from Henry. A few minutes later someone tapped softly on her door and Henry whispered, “Precious?”
Dog War Page 6
