Disgruntled: A Novel

by Asali Solomon

  I heard the Architect giving a tour to guests who laughed at the size of the kitchen, to which he simply replied, “I don’t cook.” It was a line he would go on to repeat to visitors several times, to much laughter.

  Oh yes, that employment agent, the one who furnished “a clean couple of Caribbean Negroes” to these “good white people.” He was a soul devourer, too.

  I have a confession. I don’t want to tell it but I must. Once, I, too, allowed myself to be led on by the good white people here. Not the mistress or her children, who manage to appear both sickly and fat; I knew what they were about when I first laid eyes on them. No: I began to have a kind of faith in the Architect. He was white, yes, but also a man of vision by definition. I let myself imagine that the Architect might see something improbable behind my dark eyes, that he might apprentice me in the design of his buildings. It had been a mistake to mention this to my wife, who warned me that I expected too much even from good white people, and that we should be glad that we weren’t diving for pennies in the sea at home. I never did tell her how I sometimes went about my tasks as a servant while dreaming of learning to build mansions and concert halls. The memory of this washes over me in an acid wave of shame at least once a day.

  I never did tell her about the conversation with the Architect, when he called me into his study. My heart started to beat rapidly, as if I were a silly little girl, because I thought, Now is the time; he will talk to me about his craft. Instead, he showed me a stained, malodorous blanket draped over the chaise longue where he liked to nap, and demonstrated how to fold it just so. He told me conspiratorially that the Irish housemaid had been banned from straightening the room because she could never get the folding right. “I’m counting on you,” he said with a wink.

  It was after that when I began to see my future as the kitchen with that low entryway and the walls squeezing in to push the breath out of me. Sometimes down in the cell of our room, I would suddenly gasp for air. Elizabeth would ask me what was wrong, but I knew she would not understand. I tried to tell her, Look, just because the Architect is white does not make him more than a man, and just because I am colored does not mean I am less.

  And yet … I cannot stop the faces from swimming into my mind as they emerge from the smoke I can still smell on my clothes. I cannot help but watch their bleeding faces melt like white-and-red candles. I cannot stop tasting what I did not want to eat: the bit of bloody flesh that landed on my lip as I drew my ax back from cleaving the skull of the little boy.

  When I was a little barefoot boy, my mother laughed at me when I said I would become important and make it so that the white people on the island would cut sugarcane and the black people would sit on verandahs, sipping tea. She would not laugh now. I have moved beyond disgrace and into horror and I am ready for the night and the men. Let them come.

  * * *

  Kenya read what her father wrote, each envelope containing a few pages, in stutters. She kept putting the pages down on an impulse to yell down to her mother. But then she remembered she was angry with her mother for keeping this from her. So she did not call out but simply kept reading. It was laughable. But she was not laughing.

  She’d never really thought about her father’s obsession with the butler. It had been one of those childhood things she had not really questioned, like the rugless hardwood floors in her bedroom that regularly gave her splinters, or the fact that Johnbrown didn’t drive. Why had he sent her this and not a single actual letter? Perhaps her mother had been kind to hold this back. It was dated a year ago. But then again, her mother had not known that they were not letters. So no matter what she said, it had been spiteful to keep them from Kenya. And then there was Teddy Jaffrey.

  That Kenya was stuck between and among these people made her angry. Her thoughts whirled about in fury, finally resting in the garage, on the sledgehammer. She imagined herself using the sledgehammer to destroy both of the cars. A Mercedes with busted glass and sledgehammer-size dents would at least project the correct image of her mother’s husband. But the battered cars, surrounded by their own glass—the bewildered expressions of her mother and her mother’s husband—those were secondary. What sent Kenya into a trance was the thought of making contact, the metallic sound of slamming a car with the hammer, the music of breaking glass. That night, just before she finally drifted off to sleep, she saw a flashing image of her father dressed as the TV character Benson, brandishing an ax.

  * * *

  The fantasy of using the sledgehammer was so vivid that Kenya woke up the next morning with a gasp, wondering if she had not destroyed the cars in her sleep. Then she briefly wondered if she’d dreamt up her father being in prison. She had not. Her mother was contrite and, when Teddy was out of earshot, said that maybe one day they could go to the prison.

  “When?” asked Kenya, and she knew from the look on Sheila’s face that her mother’s offer had been only partly sincere. But then one cold Saturday in November, they were driving there.

  “So what does he say in his letters?” Sheila asked after getting on the expressway.

  “Nothing much,” Kenya lied, keeping her eyes straight ahead. “Prison food is bad. He’s reading a lot, you know, Malcolm X–style.”

  “Sounds right up his alley,” her mother muttered. “A life of study.”

  Kenya had not expected prison to be so bright, or their visit to take place in a room so crowded. It reminded her of the lunchroom at Lea School. It had the same ammonia smell, and people were eating things that made their fingers greasy, just as the cafeteria food had. But unlike cafeteria food, these things were homemade. Kenya watched as a withered but sparkling-eyed old woman unwrapped fried chicken and slices of chocolate cake for her grinning son. Kenya hadn’t known you could bring care packages to prison as if it were camp. She suspected that her mother had known and still had packed nothing. Her mouth watered as the old woman poured what looked like lemonade from a thermos.

  Though there were some extremely hard-bitten white people, the visitors were mostly black women, some with small children. One tiny girl in a lacy yellow dress and a blizzard of white barrettes chanted, “Ma-ma, ma-ma, ma-ma, ma-ma,” impervious to a harried woman desperate to show her prisoner that the girl could say “Dad-dy.”

  Johnbrown appeared in his blue jumpsuit. His eyes, which were bright and sad, triggered something behind Kenya’s own rapidly filling eyes. She saw her mother blinking hard. They had been a family. After pausing in the doorway, he moved slowly toward Kenya and folded her into him. “Monkey,” he said, his hug engulfing her in a smell of cigarettes and sour milk. He hugged her mother. They sat down at one of the small tables, she and her mother crowding one side, he on the other.

  “I can’t believe it,” he said, wiping away tears. Kenya remembered the one previous occasion she’d seen him cry, just before fleeing her mother’s hospital room. How disgusted she’d been and how hurt.

  “It’s been a long time,” said Sheila.

  “You look beautiful, both of you,” Johnbrown said. Kenya now thought it was absurd that she’d expected him to comment on her mother’s hair. Her own she wore in at least one hundred tiny braids with extensions, done by a woman in her house on City Line Avenue, despite her mother’s offer to “take her to the hairdresser.” It was Kenya’s business to say no as much as she could.

  “Say thank you, Kenya.”

  “Thank you, Kenya,” she blurted.

  Her mother scowled, but Johnbrown laughed. “How is your new school?” he asked.

  Kenya was in her fifth year at Barrett. “My new—?” she said. “Oh, it’s fine.”

  “Getting good grades?”

  “Kenya is number three in her class,” said Sheila.

  “I wouldn’t expect any less,” he said.

  “How’s prison?” asked Kenya.

  Her father laughed his high-pitched laugh. It was so familiar and yet so ancient that it made Kenya laugh, too.

  “It is not great,” he said. “Not gr
eat. And you see who’s here.”

  “Sure do,” said Sheila, shaking her head.

  “I mean, you know,” he said, and Kenya did know exactly what he would say, but he said it anyway, “that the majority of prisoners in the U.S. are white.”

  “But it sure doesn’t look like it here,” said her mother.

  There was a pause.

  “We don’t have a lot of time,” he said. “So I want to say—”

  Sheila raised her hand. “Let me give you two a minute.”

  “But what I have to say includes you, too, baby.”

  “‘Baby’? Oh no, no.”

  “But I didn’t mean—”

  “I’m going to be right over there, Kenya. Good seeing you, Johnbrown. You take care of yourself, okay?”

  Johnbrown sighed. He and Kenya watched her mother go sit in one of the chairs bolted to the walls. Then her father reached out for her hand and held it. As far as she could recall, it was an unprecedented gesture for him. His hand was moist; she tried not to pull back.

  “First, what I wanted to say to you—both of you, really, so please relay this to your mother—is that I’m sorry. I made mistakes that I’ve had a long time to think about, starting the day I ran away. I hope you never have occasion to feel as sorry as I do. Okay?”

  “Okay,” said Kenya.

  “Second, I’m not going to be in here that long, just a few more months. And when I come out, I want to be your father again. I know your mother’s got her own thing, and that’s great, but you’re my daughter and I love you more than anything.”

  “I guess,” Kenya said without thinking.

  “You guess?” Johnbrown laughed.

  “Thanks?” It was no one’s fault but Johnbrown’s that they were here. Did they really need to make declarations of love? Instead, Kenya screwed up her courage to ask a question. “What about Cindalou and the baby?” she asked.

  “Tell you the truth, I don’t know what’s going on with me and Cindalou. Yes, you do have a sister, and she’s not a baby anymore. But none of that changes us.”

  “What’s her name? My, um, sister.”

  “Amandla. It means—”

  “I know what it means,” Kenya said, annoyed. Didn’t he remember their trip to the Free South Africa Rally in Washington, D.C., by chartered bus?

  “Want to know what I love best about Amandla?” said Johnbrown, grinning.

  Kenya felt her eyes narrow.

  “How much she reminds me of you.”

  “I’m sure,” Kenya muttered, trying to decide on a feeling that wouldn’t make her cry. It was hard, though. No more Cindalou. What did it mean? She thought of telling him about Teddy Jaffrey. She kept her mouth shut.

  “… So promise me,” he was saying, “that when I get out, we can be family again. It’s the only thing I’ve been thinking about since I’ve been in here. That and, you know, staying alive.”

  The mother of the girl in barrettes gripped her daughter’s arm, stressing that it was her last chance. The girl began crying. (“Mama,” she wailed.)

  “Baba,” she said. “Those letters you sent?”

  Kenya’s father’s expression was a curious mix of cornered and eager. “The drafts? I was wondering when you might ask about that.”

  “I thought The Key was philosophy and history.”

  “Well, philosophy and history—those are just ways of telling stories. This is a story, too. You know I met this really cool white dude in here, Garrett Hadnitch. Kind of weird, but mostly in a good way, I think.”

  Garrett Hadnitch. The name rang a bell, but it was too faint.

  Johnbrown continued. “Anyway, he’s a writer. He’s even written two novels in here, really good stuff. We talk about books. I was telling him about Julian Carlton—and he already knew the story. He’s an architecture fanatic, really into Frank Lloyd Wright. Anyway, the story is part of The Key.”

  “But why are you sending them to me?” Kenya asked before she could stop herself. She tried not to sound how she’d felt reading them at first. It was like when she was little and helped with the laundry, finding frayed edges and holes as she folded her father’s boxer shorts. When she was eight, the sight of that ragged underwear had made her sad. It looked like the shame of being alive.

  Her father leaned back, looking a little sad. “I’m not sure,” he said. “I think I wanted you to keep them safe. I’ve been working on more. Do you want me to stop sending them?”

  “No,” Kenya said quickly, unsure if she was telling the truth or not.

  The guard announced that the visiting hour was ending.

  Johnbrown looked at Kenya, and she watched him pick up his shoulders and force a smile that would have earned Sheila’s disdain years ago.

  “Don’t kill any white people, okay, Baba?” she said, giving him her own brave smile.

  “Just in the mind,” he said. “Maybe on paper.”

  As they hugged goodbye, Kenya’s father spoke in a stage whisper. “Say, Monkey. What the hell did your mom go and do to her hair?”

  * * *

  Though eleventh grade was the most important for getting into college and her SAT scores had only been okay, Kenya often found it impossible to concentrate on school. Her rank had slipped to near the middle of the class, which stung, but not quite enough to move her to action. Just as at Lea School, where she would have rather felt separate from her classmates because she was a prodigy, she knew she should have been the “brilliant black girl” in her class at Barrett, the heir to those brave children in the South who’d shined their shoes each morning only to get kicked and spat on in their fight for a good education, the descendant of all of those remarkable Negro Firsts. She should have been proving herself more worthy of a mother who had used education to catapult herself from a housing project to a large house in the suburbs.

  Alas.

  That year, Kenya got a mind-numbing part-time job filing and organizing the supply closets at the office of her grandmother’s old friend Dr. Walton. Social life mainly meant getting into a car with Lolly, Zaineb, and Phyllis and going to Bennigan’s, TGI Friday’s, or the movies. On the nights she stayed in, she read desultorily in her bedroom with Sheila’s tiny old black-and-white TV on in the background, keeping her company.

  Teddy Jaffrey, who had finally passed the real estate exam and quickly become successful, had offered to buy Kenya a big new color set, but she said she didn’t need it. “Kenya doesn’t go in for that kind of thing,” her mother had said, sounding both nasty and admiring. Sheila herself had initially seemed apprehensive about Teddy’s lavish new ways. But she finally warmed to his gifts of jewelry and her first fur coat. As for the kind of thing Sheila herself went in for now, one evening in November she came home to a (leased) black Mercedes-Benz to match Teddy’s blue one. He’d actually had a bow tied on it, like in the commercials.

  “I couldn’t wait for Christmas,” he said, because now they celebrated Christmas, as well as a rather cursory version of Kwanzaa.

  Teddy convinced Sheila to get rid of the couch that had been one of her signature purchases with Lars after they moved into Grandmama’s and replace it with beige sectionals that took up twice as much space. He also offered to pay to put a sun porch on the back of the house. Sheila bubbled about it for months, looking at magazines and drawing up plans. Finally, in the spring, construction workers showed up, filling the backyard with stacks of wood and bags of cement, carelessly squashing Grandmama’s rosebushes.

  Since Teddy seemed wholly preoccupied with being the Man, Kenya felt sure that he would not come into her room again. Still, what she most enjoyed about going out was the chance to escape him and her mother on weekend nights. Sometimes they entertained Teddy’s friend Bert, who sounded like a black person, and his latest black girlfriend, usually a thin, whispering type. Sometimes Alma Lewis and her husband came over to play pinochle. But even if it was just Sheila and Teddy, they always drank wine and got loud. Louder still were the four-foot speakers that Teddy h
ad bought for a spare room upstairs that he now called the Surround Room. Unfortunately, the Surround Room, which had been so designated because it had a particular electrical hookup, was next to Kenya’s room. She could hear her mother and Teddy’s friends laughing into the nights. She also had to listen to their music, as well as Sheila and Teddy’s playful arguments over music. Incredibly, Teddy’s favorite song was “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now,” which always made Kenya remember the humiliating May Day performance at Lea School. Back then, while doing the imbecilic steps, she had noticed just how slow and depressing the song actually was. As the fifth grade had shuffled to the right and the left, she had thought of how easily they could be stopped.

  Meanwhile, Teddy made a show of “banning” Sheila’s music from the stereo, especially her beloved Donny Hathaway.

  “That nigger,” he said, “can turn anything into a funeral song. I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t a song called ‘To Be Young, Gifted and Black’ supposed to sound inspirational? Shit makes me feel like eating a gun.”

  “Or getting really high and falling out of a window,” said Bert, and Kenya remembered that this was the story of how Donny Hathaway had died.

  “Y’all leave Donny alone,” said Sheila. “He was a tortured genius.”