Erasure

by Percival Everett

  “The language is so real and the characters are so true to life. Girl, I just couldn’t believe this was your first book. Where’d you go to college?”

  “I went to Oberlin for a couple of years, then moved to New York.”

  “A man?”

  “Ain’t it always?”

  The audience laughed.

  “Well, that didn’t work out,” Ms. Jenkins said.

  “Never does.”

  “Never does. And so I got this job at a publishing house. I watched these manuscripts come by and these books come out and I thought, where are the books about our people? Where are our stories? And so I wrote We’s Lives In Da Ghetto.”

  The audience applauded and the camera panned across their adoring faces and smiles.

  “You struck a chord,” Kenya said.

  “I guess I did.”

  “Film rights?” Kenya mugged again to the audience.

  Ms. Jenkins nodded.

  “Millions?”

  Ms. Jenkins shyly put off the question.

  “But a lotta money, right, girlfriend?” Kenya slaps her guest’s knee.

  “Why shouldn’t we get some of that good money, chile,” Ms. Jenkins said.

  The audience exploded with applause and cheering.

  “Let me read a short piece from the middle of the book,” Kenya said.

  “Yo, Sharonda, where you be goin in a hurry likes dat?” D’onna ax me when she seed me comin out da house.

  “Ain’t none yo biznis. But iffan you gots to know, I’se goin to the pharmcy.” I looks back at my dough to see if Mama comin out.

  “The pharmcy? What fo?” she ax.

  “You know,” I says.

  “Naw,” she say. “Hell, naw. Girl you be pregnant again?”

  “Mights be.”

  The audience blew out a collective sigh.

  “Girl, that is some writing, right there,” Kenya said.

  “Thank you.”

  “I don’t want to give the story away, but my favorite part is when Sharonda tap dances in a show for the first time. That was just so, so, so moving.” Kenya smiled at Ms. Jenkins, then held up her book. “The book is We’s Lives In Da Ghetto and the author is Juanita Mae Jenkins. Thank you for being with us.”

  “Thank you.”

  Young doctors have a lot of debt. This was a fact that I had not known, but knew now. School, a new practice, equipment. Especially, a practice like my sister’s. She relied on some grants and was part-time staff at a hospital to help support the place. My sister had taken out an insurance policy on herself, but much of that went to paying off her bills. My mother had some savings, but she was not wealthy. The house was at least paid for. What had been my father’s office was a money drain. And until I could sell my sister’s share, a third of the Women’s Clinic Southeast belonged to me. The two physicians in the clinic with my sister were as young as she, terrified that they were the next targets and unwilling to commit themselves any further into the operation by buying me out.

  DOCTOR 1: This whole venture has always been iffy. I’m nearly ready to cut my losses and get out.

  DOCTOR 2: We have done some good work here.

  DOCTOR 1: What the hell does that mean? We hand out birth control pills and condoms to girls who won’t use them. We treat people who act like we owe it to them. What are we doing? Being role models? These kids laugh at us.

  DOCTOR 2: We didn’t start this to be popular.

  DOCTOR 1: But we are popular. We’re popular the way a drunken uncle is popular because he falls asleep with money falling out of his pockets.

  DOCTOR 2: You’re bitter. You’re sounding like a Republican.

  DOCTOR 1: That’s suppose to fill me with guilt. There’s a new political correctness. I go to parties and I’m afraid to admit what I do for a living. “I practice medicine at a women’s clinic,” I say. “Oh, you perform abortions,” they say and look at me like I’m the villain.

  DOCTOR 2: That’s true.

  DOCTOR 1: You’re damn right. It’s okay to say you’re pro-choice, just as long as you don’t say you’re for abortion. (Pauses) I’m terrified.

  DOCTOR 2: What about our patients?

  DOCTOR 1: They’ll divide up and go to the other clinics.

  DOCTOR 2: What would Lisa say?

  DOCTOR 1: Lisa’s dead.

  Money was tight. I went over to the English Department at American University and asked for a job. I gave them my curriculum vitae:

  Curriculum Vitae

  Thelonious Ellison

  Citizenship: USA

  Social Security #: 271–66–6961

  Address: 1329 Underwood St.

  Washington, DC 20009

  Education

  University of California, Irvine, M.F.A., Creative Writing, 1980

  Harvard University, A.B., English, 1977

  Publications

  (books)

  Personal Knowledge, a novel, Tower Press, New York, NY, 1993.

  The Persians, a novel, Lawrence Press, New York, NY, 1991.

  The Second Failure, a novel, Endangered Species Press, Chicago, IL, 1988.

  Shedding Skin, short stories, Lawrence Press, New York, NY, 1984.

  Chaldean Oracles, a novel, Fat Chance Press, Lawrence Press, 1983.

  (short works)

  “Euripides Alibi,” short story, Experimental Fiction, Santa Cruz, CA, v.5, no.3, 1995.

  “The Devolution of Twain’s Memory,” fiction, Theoretical Ropes, Spring, University of Texas, 1995.

  “House of Smoke,” short story, Lanyard Review, v.7 no.1, New Orleans, LA, 1994.

  “The Last Heat of Misery,” short story, Alabama Mud, Fall, Dallas, TX, 1994.

  “Climbing Down,” short story, Frigid Noir Review #45, Santa Fe, NM, Spring 1993.

  “Night Deposits,” short story, Frigid Noir Review #44, Santa Fe, NM, Winter 1992.

  “Façon de parler,” short story, Out of Synch, University of Colorado, Winter 1992.

  “Clem’s Resolution,” short story, Last Stand Review, University of Virginia, v.20, no. 2, 1991.

  “Another Man’s Wife,” short story, Esquire, New York, NY, September 1990.

  Teaching History

  Professor of English, University of California-Los Angeles, 1994–95.

  Associate Professor, UCLA, 1988–94.

  Visiting Professor of English and Honors, University of Minnesota, fall 1993.

  Faculty, Bennington Writing Workshops, Bennington College, 1992, 93.

  Honors

  Timson Award for Excellence in Literature, The Persians, 1991.

  3 Pushcart Prize prizes, 1990, 92, 94

  National Endowment for the Arts, Fiction Fellowship, 1989.

  The D. H. Lawrence Literary Fellowship, University of New Mexico, 1987.

  Selected Readings and Lectures

  1995-Rutgers University

  1993-University of Michigan

  -Bennington College

  1992-Vassar College

  -Pen-American Center, New York, NY

  1989-Univerity of Virginia

  1988-Rutgers University

  Member

  Nouveau Roman Society

  Modern Language Association

  Associated Writing Programs

  The chair of the department was a large man with a large head and I could not keep from staring at it. He no doubt perceived my fascination with his cranium, but what he told me was what I expected to hear. “Of course, the most I would be able to do is pull together some kind of visiting thing, but the department’s all gone for the summer.” He looked out his window and scratched that noggin. “We do need a lecturer for a survey of American Lit in the fall.”

  “How much does it pay?” I asked.

  “About four thousand, thirty-nine hundred and something. Not much.” He continued to stare at my credentials.

  “That’s for the whole semester?” I asked.

  The big head nodded.

  “Thanks.”

 
Brown trout emerge from spawning gravels in spring and soon establish feeding territories. Young browns prefer quieter water than rainbow trout and tend to grow at a slower rate. Some spend their lives confined to headwater streams, but most of them migrate downstream to better habitat and feeding in rivers and lakes. Some brown trout live to be twenty years old. Browns are canny, the most wary of trout.

  Lorraine was in the kitchen, standing over a pot of rice on the stove. She was wearing a yellow apron, perhaps the only one she had, I thought, since I had seen her in nothing but a yellow apron over a dark dress my entire life. When I was a child I imagined she had drawers of yellow aprons, a favorite yellow apron, a yellow apron for weddings and a yellow apron for funerals. I sat at the table.

  “How are you feeling today, Lorraine?” I asked.

  “Fine, Mr. Monk.” She put the lid on the pot and moved along the counter to chop some celery. “It’s a good thing you’ve done, coming home to care for your mother.”

  I didn’t say anything, just watched the motion of the blade through the vegetables.

  “I’m sorry if my books offend you, Lorraine.”

  She was taken off guard by my directness, but kept chopping, peppers now.

  “You know, just because my characters use certains words doesn’t mean anything about me. It’s art.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Have you ever used the word fuck?” I asked.

  She stopped cutting, seemed almost ready to laugh. “Yes, I have, Mr. Monk. It’s a word which has its uses.”

  “Yes ma’am.” I watched as she stirred the rice again. “Do you have any family in D.C.?” I asked.

  “No. I used to have an auntie, but she died a long time ago. This is the only family I’ve ever known.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “I don’t miss my family. I never knew them.”

  “No, I mean I’m sorry this is the crazy family you landed in.”

  “Ya’ll aren’t crazy,” she said. “Ya’ll are different, that’s a fact. But you’re not crazy.”

  “Thanks. Hey, Lorraine, where would you go if you couldn’t live here?”

  She put the lid on the pot and stared down at it. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you have any friends?”

  She shook her head, but said, “A couple.”

  “Do you have any money saved?” I knew how much Lorraine was paid because I was now making out her checks. It was not bad considering she had free rent and food. “Do you have anything?”

  She cleared her throat. “I’ve saved a little bit. I’ve never been much good at saving. Why are you asking?”

  “Lorraine, Mother’s getting up there. What’s going to happen when she dies?”

  “I’ll stay here and take care of you, Mr. Monk.”

  I looked at the old woman, nearly as old as my mother, and hadn’t a clue what to say next. I got up and started to leave, stopped at the door to the dining room, looked back and said, “That will be fine, Lorraine.”

  Ernst Kirchner: I’m glad, no proud that those brown shirts are burning my paintings.

  Max Klinger: What do you mean?

  Kirchner: Imagine how I would feel if monsters like that tolerated my work.

  “Monksie, are you feeling okay?” my mother asked. She sat down on the sofa beside me.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “What about you? How was your nap?”

  “Like a nap.”

  “Would you like me to make us some tea?”

  “No, honey, stay where you are. Relax. You can’t run yourself ragged because of an old lady.” She looked at the fireplace. “Thank you.”

  “Pardon?”

  “For coming to live here,” Mother said.

  “I love you, Mother,” I said, as if to say of course I’d be there.

  “I miss Lisa,” she said.

  “Me, too.”

  Mother arranged the fabric of her skirt on her lap. “I’m lucky to be able to get around the way I do. I even make it up those stairs without getting winded.”

  “That’s terrific.”

  “Will Lisa be coming by later today?”

  “No, Mother.”

  “Because I miss her. Did I say something to hurt her feelings? I know she and Barry broke up.”

  “I don’t think so, Mother.”

  I called my agent to check on the status of my novel and he had no good news for me. Three more editors had turned it down. “Too dense,” one had said. “Not for us,” a simple reply from another. And, “The market won’t support this kind of thing,” from the third.

  “So, what now?” I asked.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” Yul said. “If you could just write something like The Second Failure again.” The ice clinked in his glass.

  “What are you telling me?” I asked.

  “I’m not telling you anything.”

  Second Failure: My “realistic” novel. It was received nicely and sold rather well. It’s about a young black man who can’t understand why his white-looking mother is ostracized by the black community. She finally kills herself and he realizes that he must attack the culture and so becomes a terrorist, killing blacks and whites who behave as racists.

  I hated writing the novel. I hated reading the novel. I hated thinking about the novel.

  I went to what had been my father’s study, and perhaps still was his study, but now it was where I worked. I sat and stared at Juanita Mae Jenkins’ face on Time magazine. The pain started in my feet and coursed through my legs, up my spine and into my brain and I remembered passsages of Native Son and The Color Purple and Amos and Andy and my hands began to shake, the world opening around me, tree roots trembling on the ground outside, people in the street shouting dint, ax, fo, screet and fahvre! and I was screaming inside, complaining that I didn’t sound like that, that my mother didn’t sound like that, that my father didn’t sound like that and I imagined myself sitting on a park bench counting the knives in my switchblade collection and a man came up to me and he asked me what I was doing and my mouth opened and I couldn’t help what came out, ‘Why fo you be axin?”

  I put a page in my father’s old manual typewriter. I wrote this novel, a book on which I knew I could never put my name:

  MY PAFOLOGY

  by Stagg R. Leigh

  Won

  Mama look at me and Tardreece and she call us “human slough.” That how it all start up. “Human slough,” she say, “You lil’ muthafuckas ain’t nuffin but human slough.” I looks at her and I’m wonderin what “slough” means and I don’t like the look on her face and so I get up from the chair I been sittin in and I walk across the kitchen and grab a big knife from the counter. She say, “And what you gone do wif that, human slough?” And I stab Mama. I put the knife in her stomach and pull it out red and she look at me like to say why you stab me? And I stab Mama again. Blood be all on the floor and on the table, drip drip drippin down her legs and my baby sister starts screamin and I says, “Why you be screamin, Baby Girl?” And she look at me and she say it because I be stabbin on Mama. I look at my hands and they all covered wif blood and I realize I don’t know what goin on. So, I stab Mama again. I stab her cause I scared. I stab Mama cause I love her. I stab Mama cause I hate her. Cause I love her. Cause I hate her. Cause I ain’t got no daddy. Then I walk out the kitchen and stand outside, leavin Mama crawlin round on the linolum tryin to hold in her guts. I stands out on the sidewalk just drippin blood like a muthafucka. I look up at the sky and I try to see Jesus, but I cain’t. Then I wonder which one of my fo’ babies I’m gone go see.

  I wake up and I’m just soaked in sweat, been sweatin like a fuckin pig. I throw them sheets off me and pull on some jeans. I tighten up my belt and then yank my pants down on my ass. The tee shirt I’m wearin be funky as shit, but I don’t give a fuck. The world be stinkin, so why not me? That’s what I says. So, why not me? That’s my motto. So, why not me? It be eleben-thirty in the moanin. I check the kitchen f
loor fo’ blood on my way through. That was a fucked up dream, real fucked up. I step on outside and look up at the sky and I wonder which one of my fo’ babies I’m gone go see.

  Aspireene’s mama be keepin company with some nigger they call Mad Dog, so I don’t need to be sniffin round her crib. I ain’t gonna have some buck pop a cap in my ass. No suh. Tylenola’s mama be a crazy bitch and she done got herself a nine and I know she gone pop a cap in me if I shows my face cause I ain’t give her no money and she been askin fo’ three monfs. My oldest girl, Dexatrina, her mama still be in love wif me. I could go hit it once, but gettin out, man it like gettin coke outta milk. I decide I’m gone go see my boy Rexall. He got Down Sinder, but he okay. In dis fuckin world, he don’t need no brain no way. Better not to have one. He be three now and he was always knocking shit over. I smack him once and his mama say fo me not to, say he cain’t help it. I told her to go fuck herself, little big-head nigger got juice on my good pants. Yeah, I’m gone smack him. I’m gone go see Rexall, cause I’m his daddy. I takes care of my babies.

  My name is Van Go Jenkins and I’m nineteen years old and I don’t give a fuck about nobody, not you, not my Mama, not the man. The world don’t give a fuck about nobody, so why should I? And what I’m gone do instead of going to work over at that Jew muthafacka’s warehouse over on Central is go over to the high school and wait for Rexall’s mama. Her name be Cleona. She’s a dreamer, always talkin bout graduatin and goin to the communy college and bein a nurse or some shit. Her dreamin don’t bother me none. I hope she do make herself some real money some day. But she be actin funny a lot, like she think I ain’t good enough fo’ her ass. Fuck her. All I know is I can go over her house when her mama gone and cut me out a piece. She ain’t too good then.