by Paul Beatty
The whole ride over, I watched No M.O. Clark dig his fingernails into the palms of his thick hands, peel off layers of skin, roll them into tiny flesh balls, and pop them into his mouth. No M.O.’s goal in life was to be a criminal mastermind. He thought if he could remove his fingerprints, he’d be the bane of the FBI, a mystery thief slipping in and out of the Federal Reserve, leaving nothing behind but greasy smudges. The drawback to No M.O.’s plan was that all the sandpapering and scraping had turned his hands into a blistery mass of flesh so tender he got paper cuts from counting money. Unable to hold silverware, No M.O. ate nothing but marshmallows, cotton candy, and white bread. When feeling brave, he bought large bags of french fries and waited for the hot morsels to cool so he could eat them without scalding himself. A favorite GTH parlor trick was to get No M.O. so excited about his grandiose dreams he’d want to slap hands with someone in celebration of his genius. The sound of a No M.O. high five was a sickening splat not unlike the scrunch of a family of snails being stepped on. No M.O. came away from these handclasps alternately screaming in pain and blowing on his hand to take away the sting.
Cruising down Central Avenue in the old business district, we were plainly behind enemy lines. The rusty alarm boxes over the barred doors to the pawnshops and soul-food kitchens all read, “Sears, Roebuck and Co. Alarm System” in lightning-bolt quotation marks. Mountains of Sears all-weather radial tires snow-capped with white Sears Kenmore appliances in disrepair filled the vacant lots. Feeling a little homesick and hoping to motivate the troops, Psycho Loco stood up and yelled, “Sears sucks. Montgomery Ward’s rules.” Following his lead, shouts rang from every car in the convoy. “Ward’s! Ward’s!” The outburst triggered a small avalanche of Sears Diehard batteries, which rumbled down a vulcanized slope, crushing a toaster oven, to the joy of the transvestite soldiers.
After we had driven for about fifteen minutes, No M.O. slowly removed his hand from the seat, green ooze momentarily clinging to Pookie’s vinyl upholstery, and pointed to a metal archway. “There go Bilkenson Gardens,” he said. We drove up to the main entrance. Psycho Loco pursed his lips and winked at the security guard. The guard smiled, removed a rubber from his wallet, opened the wrought-iron electric gate, then turned his attention back to a small black-and-white Sears television.
Bilkenson Gardens was a slight misnomer. There were no bee-pollinated flowering fields or lush meadows populated by butterflies and snapdragons. Just stagnant and algae-laden ponds formed by the runoff of leaky fire hydrants and clogged sewers, serving as landing pads for mosquitoes and flies.
“Let’s be on da lookout for dese friggin’ calzones,” warned Joe Shenanigans. “I don’t know about youse guys, but I wanna whack dese fucking strombolis.”
The caravan broke up into search-and-destroy teams. Our platoon drove west, easing past rows of rundown bungalows till we saw five guys dressed in white Lacoste shirts and white golf hats standing on the porch of a small brick cabana. They looked like golf pros sipping lemonade at the nineteenth hole, leisurely rehashing the last round of play. As we got closer, Psycho Loco straightened his tits and whispered their names—“Casper, L’il Spooky, C-Thru, Opaque Nate, and the Invisible Nigger,” all of whom were staring lustily at the “females” in the car. With a flirtatious squint in his eyes, Joe Shenanigans lasciviously ran his tongue over his top lip, sending the Ghost Town gangsters into a frenzy. The courtship ritual began with the sugary sweet words of budding love.
“Set that shit out, baby!”
“Goddamn, girl, your breastesses is big. A sandwich is a sandwich, but your titties is a meal.”
“Hey, ho, com’ere and let me put a little something on your chin.”
Pookie played coy and piloted the car around the block, the hard-ons of every Ghostbuster following us like dowsing rods.
“Damn, Joe, if you was a girl you’d be a fucking slut. You was looking at them niggers like you wanted some dick bad.”
“Aw, nigger, fuck you, I bet we pull that skirt off your ass, your panties be wet as a motherfucker, stank bitch.”
Psycho Loco put a cassette into the deck, barraging Bilkenson Gardens with a screeching aria. Mood music, he called it. The boys quieted themselves and made ready. I expected guns, but Psycho Loco and Joe Shenanigans removed fancy crossbows and arrows from under the seat. No M.O. was filling balloons with liquid drain opener.
“What about the guns?” I pleaded. “You do know that the Second Amendment gives you the right to form a militia and bear arms? By the fear invested in me, I hereby proclaim the Gun Totin’ Hooligans a militia. So bear some goddamn arms.”
Psycho Loco turned around in his seat, shook his head disapprovingly in my direction, and told me that whenever the Gun Totin’ Hooligans acted vengefully, they stuck to the old ways, and tradition meant no guns unless absolutely necessary. The car wheeled around the last corner and I cowered in my seat as No M.O. knotted the end of his last liquid drain opener balloon and Psycho Loco and Joe Shenanigans wet their arrowheads with aerosol deodorant.
A fool from Ghost Town called out from the street, struggling to be heard over the wailing French contralto, “I knew you fine bitches would be back. Why don’t you all come inside, drink a little Riunite on ice, and get busy?” The car braked to a slow glide; Psycho Loco and Joe lit a lighter, and the tips of their arrows flamed like giant aluminum matches. The boy in the white hat cupped his hands to his mouth. “Hey what’s up with that music?” With a war whoop, Psycho Loco, No M.O., and Joe stood up, and a salvo of flaming arrows and balloons zipped through the air. The stunned homeboys from Ghost Town dove for cover, their hats flying off their cornrowed heads and parachuting down to earth as the arrows bounced harmlessly off the brick bungalow onto the concrete, where the fires petered out like dud Fourth of July fireworks. One projectile found a home in the rear tire of a Buick Supersport, causing the car to howl and list to one side. They wouldn’t be chasing us.
No M.O. had the best aim; one of his balloons exploded on one boy’s chest. Succumbing to the fumes, the kid dropped to the sidewalk, gurgling and clawing at his burning eyes. A hyped-up No M.O. hopped out of the car and yelled in the wounded boy’s face, “Induce vomiting, motherfucker,” and hustled back to the car.
Eventually Ghost Town rallied and rushed the car as we pulled away. The fastest boy pulled a sawed-off shotgun out of nowhere like an outlaw magician, and a knot of buckshot danced on the car’s rear end like water droplets on hot oil. The opera singer sang on, her voice blowing past my ears as Pookie sped out the main entrance and toward the freeway.
“Psycho Loco, what are we listening to?”
“Delibes’ Lakmé. It’s from act two—the lovers declare their undying devotion, then they die.”
I noticed none of the boys bothered to remove their wigs or makeup. I placed one hand over my heart and raised the other high in the air and celebrated life by hitting the high notes with the rest of the fellows. Somehow I knew the words.
Six
It was mandatory for every male student at Phillis Wheatley High to attend the monthly “Young Black and Latino Men: Endangered Species” assembly. Principal Henrietta Newcombe opened the meetings by reminding us that despite the portrayal of inner-city youth in the media (she didn’t mention the name of the assembly), we weren’t animals. These hour-long deprogramming sessions were supposed to liberate us from a cult of self-destructiveness and brainwash us into joining the sect of benevolent middle-class American normalcy. Once, before we listened to the motivational speeches, Principal Newcombe conducted an extemporaneous Gallup poll in hopes of uniting us against something other than ourselves.
“Raise your hand if
… you are on welfare.
… you don’t live with your parents.
… you’re a father.
… you’ve ever been handcuffed.”
I raised my hand, much to everyone’s surprise, especially that of Ms. Newcombe, who invited me to tell my story. “You all see how any colored bo
y, no matter how academically and athletically gifted, is a target? What happened, child?”
I was reluctant to testify, so Principal Newcombe prompted me in her gentle manner. “How old were you when the white man shackled you like a captured African animal?”
“Eight.”
“You got arrested at age eight?”
“Well, I wasn’t exactly arrested. When I was in third grade, this cop visited our class to talk about his job and shit.”
“Young man!”
“Sorry. Then he started explaining what each item on his belt was for. When he gets to the handcuffs, he asks for a volunteer to help demonstrate how they work and chooses me, although I didn’t have my hand raised. Anyway, the cop asks me to pretend I’m the bad guy and he handcuffs me, both hands. In the middle of reading me my rights, he asks me if I can get out of the handcuffs. I was so skinny I lowered my arms and the cuffs slid to the floor. The whole class is laughing. Then the cop says, ‘Don’t worry, in a few years they’ll stay on.’”
Principal Newcombe nodded compassionately. “See how they do a young nigger? Now I’d like to introduce this month’s distinguished speaker.”
The monthly orator was usually a local businessman, community activist, obscure athlete, or ex-con. He’d bound up onstage with lots of nervous energy, wave, and say a hearty “Wassup, fellas?” to prove he was hip and could speak our language. Some speakers tried to rouse us with scare tactics. The ex-con showed off his scars and told butt-fucking stories. During the question-and-answer session the kids only wanted to know how many bodies did he have, did the tattoos hurt, and did he know so-and-so’s brother. The mortician from Greystone Bros. spoke about how business was good and asked us if we could kill a few more niggers this week because his twins were starting college in the fall. Other community leaders tried to sway our self-destructive sensibilities with the flashy, superbad, black businessman-pimp approach to empowerment. Great Nate Shaw, who owned Great Nate’s Veal ’n’ French Toast over on Centinela, made a grand entrance in a purple stretch limousine. Dressed in a tuxedo, cape, and top hat, twirling a pearl-handled walking stick, Great Nate strode down the auditorium’s center aisle looking like a lost member of the Darktown Follies just bursting to sing “That Ol’ Black Magic.” His chauffeur trailed obediently behind him, carrying the shoeshine box that had catapulted “the black Ronald McDonald” to tacky affluence. Two weeks later some boys from Wheatley High in cahoots with his chauffeur followed Great Nate home, robbed his house, and kidnapped his wife. I heard they got more money from the Hollywood wardrobe agency they sold his clothes to than from the ransom Nate paid for his wife. The ex-football player scored points by passing around pictures of himself arm in arm on Caribbean beaches with bikini-clad white women. After his presentation, hands shot up, and Principal Newcombe looked so pleased, figuring she’d finally made a breakthrough. The first boy held up a Polaroid and asked the former jock, “Did you fuck this one?”
No matter who the delivery boy, the message was always the same. Stay in school. Don’t do drugs. Treat our black queens with respect. I made decent money taking bets on whether the distinguished speaker-of-the-month would say, “Each one, teach one” first or “There’s an old African saving, ‘It takes an entire village to raise one child.’”
I suppose I could afford to be snide. I had a personal motivational speaker, Coach Motome Chijiiwa Shimimoto. The stereotype is that most successful black men raised by single mothers had a surrogate father figure who turned their lives around. A man who “saw their potential,” looked after them, taught them the value of virtuous living, and sent them out on the path to glory with a resounding slap on the butt. Coach Shimimoto didn’t do any of those things. He just paid attention to me. The only time he ever told me what to do with my life was during basketball practice. There he constantly pulled and pushed me around the court. I was a skinny six-foot-four-inch pawn in the chess game unfolding inside his head. “Kaufman, where are you supposed to be?” Looking into his small hamster-brown eyes, which through his thick Buddy Holly glasses looked absolutely minuscule; I’d say, “I don’t know, Coach.” Coach Shimimoto, his face covered in perspiration, would snatch the bottom of my shorts and drag me to wherever it was I was supposed to be, droplets of sweat dripping off his nose and trailing behind us. “You’re here, Gunnar,” raising his hands and demonstrating the proper technique for denying the basketball. “If Roderick Overton gets the ball on the box, we lose, weak-side help. Comprende, stupido?” I can’t say that I learned any valuable lessons from Coach Shimimoto. He never gave me any clichéed phrases to be repeated in times of need, never showed me pictures of crippled kids to remind me how lucky I was. The only thing I remember him teaching me was that as a left-hander I’d have to draw from right to left to keep my charcoals from streaking. Coach Shimimoto was also my art teacher, and even there he was always looking over my shoulder, beads of his sweat splattering my water-colors.
Other than Scoby, there was no one I talked to more than Coach. After practice he’d try to fatten me up on churritos and chimichangas, while he told stories of how the GIs had taught him to play ball in the internment camp during World War II. He was never very good, but he was a hustler. It was his pluckiness and a front line comprising the Asazawa triplets, Ruth, Ruby, and Roy, that enabled his team to win the Internment Youth Championships in 1945. The prize was the team’s picture in the camp newspaper and a Caesar salad made with lettuce picked from his family’s repossessed farm.
Coach Shimimoto loved the “purity” of athletics, but the provincial protocol made him uncomfortable. Being a coach was tantamount to being knighted or elected president; the appellation and its circumscriptions stuck with you for life. Even Shimimoto’s wife called him Coach. Shimimoto often pleaded with me to call him something else. “Gunnar, we’re friends. Come up with a clever nickname for me, like Chi-whiz or Moto-scooter.”
“Coach, if you’re going to be an authority figure, you’ve got to live with the dehumanizing consequences.”
I often think the real reason Coach Shimimoto feted me was to get inside Nicholas’s head through me. Nicholas was his prize student, his ticket to high school coaching fame. Shimimoto knew that in thirty years reporters would call him at home and ask what it was like to coach, if not the greatest, the most unique basketball player in the world. Coach had his answer all prepared; he would tell them, “Nicholas doesn’t understand the game, but the game understands him.”
Both Nicholas and I entered tenth grade with solid basketball reputations. Nick was the wizard and I the sorcerer’s apprentice. My duties were to get Scoby the ball so he could score, play tough defense so the other team wouldn’t score, and bow reverentially after each dazzling feat. The first game went as expected. We played our archrivals, the Aeronautic High Wind Shears, in our first home game of the season. Aeronautic ranked fifth in the city, but Scoby made seventeen straight baskets to lead the Phillis Wheatley Mythopoets to their first basketball victory in four years. He made shots from all over the floor. He kissed one thirty-five-foot bank shot off the glass so sweetly that the shot left lip prints on the backboard. After each successive basket, the legend of Nicholas Scoby documented itself shot by improbable shot; what was once urban lore was now irrefutable public knowledge.
At one point Scoby shot a jumper from deep in the corner over the outstretched arms of three Wind Shears. The ball splashed through the net and the opposing coach turned red, stomped his feet, and yelled at his players to stop Scoby at all costs. One of the coach’s obedient henchmen planted an elbow in Scoby’s temple, which sent him into the stands head first. As he staggered dazedly back to the bench, Psycho Loco walked onto the floor and paced back and forth in front of the Aeronautic High bench, repeatedly slapping his thigh and challenging the team. “You fools see this two-and-half-inch thick length of pipe from my crotch to my knee? That’s not my dick, it’s a Remington twelve-gauge sawed-off. The next motherfucker to touch Scoby is going to be performing shotg
un fellatio and become a victim of some seriously unsafe sex.”
Unlike at the playground, here a collective self-esteem was at stake. People who didn’t give a fuck about anything other than keeping their new shoes unscuffed all of a sudden had meaning to their lives. They yelled at the referees, sang fight songs, razzed the efforts of the other team. With the outcome of the game still in doubt, I was at the free-throw line going through my routine. Three dribbles, eye the front of the rim, deep breath. A voice barrel-rolled out of the stands, demanding attention. “Come on, Gunnar, we need these.” We? I didn’t even need these free throws. I missed the first one on purpose. The crowd moaned and spit, instantly stricken with psychosomatic bellyaches. “Please, make this next one, please, goddammit.” They were hypnotized and didn’t even know it, and I was the hypnotist. I had the power to make them cry or send them home happy, clucking like chickens. I sank the next one and fans stormed the court, and before I could look up at the scoreboard I was buried under a pile of exulting bodies. “We won! We won!” When I was finally exhumed by Coach Shimimoto, he asked me how did I feel, and I shrugged my shoulders with indifference. “What a competitor. What self-control. That hold on your emotions will take you far, wait and see, Gunnar.” When he freed me from a playful headlock, I wanted to shout, “But Coach, I really don’t give a fuck.” But why spoil his joy?
It was Nicholas’s and my first organized game, and afterward over the phone we joked about how we didn’t know to wear jockstraps instead of underwear, when the referee needed to touch the ball, what to say when the team huddled around Coach Shimimoto and clasped hands.
