by Ishmael Reed
“Fine. I accept your generous invitation.”
“Good, Doopeyduk. You and your wife come over about seven. Okay?”
“Seven it is,” I said, opening the door to my apartment.
Fannie Mae was curled up on the sofa watching the Art Linkletter show where a life supply of pigeons had been awarded to four cripples and some parents of children with harelip.
“How was it at the hospital today?”
“Nothing unusual. They bumped off a couple of old geezers whose insurance had run out, dear.”
“How can you stand workin’ round dem crazy people? Why don’t you go out to da Harry Sam Ear Muffle Factory? Georgia Nosetrouble asked me why you hadn’t. She said dat she had lost sleep tryin’ to figure out why you hadn’t gone out to da Harry Sam Ear Muffle Factory to see if you couldn’t get a job, tossing ear muffles into a box like all da res of da mens round here. She said dat she wondered what you thought made you so special. Dey make some good change too, for dat little pipsqueak, skinny-assed check you bring home don’t pay for the fun I likes to have. Da blond wigs I ordered from Mlle. Pandy Matzabald haven’t been paid for yet.”
“You just don’t understand me, dear. I’m not the type that could withstand the steady demoralization that a routine job like that would cause. You see, as a Nazarene apprentice, I’m interested in finding out what makes people tick.”
“Dey don’t wash demselves. Dat’s why dey tick.”
“You’re always poking fun at my job. Why did you consent to marry me if you didn’t respect my work?”
“I wanted to get away from dat crazy woman who’s my daddy’s mother. She was gettin’ ready to shove me into da oven allatime in preparation for her sorcery exams. Da cinders were ruining my dresses. You were da first mark to come along who wanted to remove me from dat situation. So you’re boss in my book. Anyway, I like da way you talk. It’s cute.”
“Gee, Fannie Mae, for a moment there, you had me worried. I didn’t think there was mutual warmth and respect between us. The Nazarene manual demands that of young couples.”
“See, dat’s what I mean. You’re sweet. You talk different.”
“Guess what the doctor said today, Fannie Mae, dearest?”
“What he say?”
“Said that he thought I’d be working in the shock room soon. Said he’d never seen me shirk my responsibility so that if I didn’t shuck anybody soon, I’d be in the shock room.”
“He say shuck?”
“Sure, Fannie Mae. He’s a real hippy. Reads Evergreen Review and eats cheese blintzes at Max’s Kansas City, a place where all the artists hang out downtown. Mixes with us orderlies and is crazy about Duke Ellington. Anyway the shock room is a place we wheel people into and boom the living daylights out of their brains so that they can return to normal life and behave themselves like the rest of us ’mericans. I’ll be in charge of the tongue blades. You really have to be on top of yourself to hold down a job like that.”
“It better be on top of yourself and not on top of none of dem fast women dat work up dere. If I ever hear dat you are servin’ as prop for some women’s tongues, I’ll slash your clothes.”
“Aw cut it out, Fannie Mae. I put the blade on the patient’s tongue. This requires considerable expertise and it also means a five-dollar raise.”
“Well, I hope it hurries up and happens. I sho don’t feel like sittin’ round here all day when Georgia Nosetrouble and me can be in the movies watchin’ some fine lookin’ man like Gregory Peck and Troy Donahue. And speakin’ of good-lookin’ mens, why don’t you get yo hair konkalined? Yo hair looks nappy. Why don’t you slick it down with some lye?”
“What’s the use?” I said, walking up to my ankles in the slush on the kitchen floor. When I opened the frig, something grabbed at me. I shut it quickly.
“Damn Fannie Mael Why don’t you clean the place out sometimes? These blobs in the frig are about to invade the kitchen.”
“MOTHAFUKAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. What do you think I am, some kind of bowlegged pack animal who’s gone empty your slops dat you can keek and give orders to? If you want somebody to clean dis place, why don’t you get somebody to come in and do daywork.” She waved her hands and screeched like the real scourge of a scrounge she was.
“Ok doky,” I said meekly, as she went to the phone to dial the Screws.
“Now next time you raise your voice at me, I’m gone get da MAN downtown on you.”
“I was just kiddin’ honey, little mommy and sweet poppy-stick.”
She returned to the television where SAM was making an announcement from the low-down nasty room.
“Slurp, slurp. Dis is the boss, folks. SAM. Slurp. Now I’m not gonna get all flowery like the fella what preceded me, quotin’ all them fellas what wore laurels and nightgowns. I’m gonna give you people the straight dope. Now dere’s rumors goin’ round here that the Chinamens ’bout to run away wit all our fine suburban women. I know that all who loves SAM HIMSELF and ME all in one realize that your man would never tolerate no little yellow dwarfs wit pocketknives slashing our women’s discothèque pants, hip boots, miniskirts or none of them otha fashions that me and Mlle. Pandy Matzabald thunk up for um to wear. Slurp, slurp.
“So that you folks won’t get all alarmed, I’m gonna send ABOREAL HAIRYMAN out there to Westchester to check this stuff out. You all know A.B., a nice gent who uses big words like quibbicale, that I drug out of the Seventeen Nation Disarmament Conference gin mill and made a roving ambazzador. Now when A.B. comes back, I’ll clue you in on what’s happening.
“Now one more ting before I get back to the low-down nasty room where Mlle. Pandy Matzabald can go downtown on me. To the creeps on the steps of Sprool Hall at Berkeley. KEEP IT UP YOU FREE-LOADEN COMMUNISTS TAFFYPANTS SISSIES. I GOT MY EYES ON YOU AND YOUR MINISTRATORS HAVE PASSED ON YOUR NAMES TO ME. JUST KEEP IT UP AND MY SCREWS WILL CLAMP DOWN ON YOU SO HARD PUNKS DAT YOU’LL WISH THAT YOU WAS DEAD. DON’T FORGET NOTHIN’ ESCAPES MY EYES SINCE I GOT THESE HERE BINOCULARS WITH THE FORTY BOOKS OF GREEN STAMPS.
“And also to the jerk who said back there a week ago that I wasn’t given you ’mericans the smart money odds on the way tings was going down in ME. Yeah wise guy. I read what you had to say about my foreign matters and you know what I tink about it. It’s shit. That’s what it is. Shit. So get lost buddy and shaddup. What my cutie pies don’t know, won’t hurtum.
“Excuse me for gettin’ all steamed up, little pink pussies. But when these clowns say I’m not lookin’ out for ya, IT MAKES ME MADI UNNERSTAND? Because you know that I’m nuts about ya. Gotta go now, all you little pimple-pie poopsies.
“This was Daddy. Take it easy, toots. Don’t take no wooden nickels and if you do, name um after me. Har, har, har, har. Good night, good night, good night. I hate to say good night. When the moon comes over the mountain and wherever you are Mrs. Kalabash. …”
(Dictators have always fumbled their exits.)
“Kee, kee, kee. Dat man tickles me.”
“Fannie Mae,” I said. “You’re not supposed to put down our leader like that. Why … why … I loves the man.” I fell to my knees and repeated the oaths I’d learned at the Harry Sam College: “Harry Sam does not love us. If he did, he’d come out of the John and hold us in his lap. We must walk down the street with them signs in our hands. We must throw back our heads and loosen our collars. We must bawl until he comes out of there and holds us like it was before the boogeyman came on the scene and everybody went to church and we gave each other pickle jars each day and nobody had acne nor bad breath and cancer was just the name of a sign.”
“Aw fool, get up off da damn flo. You look ridiculous.”
“Fannie Mae, you’re not supposed to interrupt me when I’m repeating my vows.”
“I’m not going to argue with you. I have to go downtown to Mlle. Pandy Matzabald’s head shop and pick up my wig.”
“Well, when you come back, the neighbors want us to come over and have supper with them.”
“Good, den I can leave da green chickens till tomorrow.”
“You’d need the Seventh Fleet to get into our frig anyway, it’s so full of arrogant bacteria.”
“What you say?”
“Nothin’ dear. Hurry back.”
The neighbor’s wife greeted us. She wore a hairdo called the porcupine quill. Her feet were chalked and her dress was covered with sunflower prints.
“Come on in, yawl, and res you self. My husband told me dat you was gone stop over tonight. We is all home folks so don’t be shamefacedy. M/Neighbor is ’n da baffroom but he be out directly. De rukus juice is on da livin’-room table and da chittlins is stirring and da hog jile and egg pone is jes comin’ long swell. Dere’s some oldie but goodie records on da victrola so yawl jes go on in while I makes da res of da suppa.” In the living room two pictures hung side by side on the wall. One of J/Christ and the other of Jacqueline Kennedy’s riding boots.
M/Neighbor came from the bathroom. “Why looka heah, if it ain’t Mister and Missus Doopeyduk. Glad you could come by. Here, let me pour you some rukus juice,” he said, filling our glasses with Thunderbird wine. We took a drink and were further accosted by the neighbor’s solicitations. Suddenly, rapid and spirited discussion came from a room in the rear of the apartment.
“Do other people live here?” I asked.
“Dat’s my teen-ager,” the neighbor replied. “He’s in da back room with a friend who visits him. Little white boy named Joel O. Dey got maps of SAM in dere on da wall.”
“Maps of SAM? Why that’s absurd,” I said. “SAM’s nothing but a o-bop-she-bang-a-klang-a-lang-a-ding-dong an out-of-sight not-to-be-believed …”
“Yes, that’s what they always told me and you, Mr. Doopeyduk. But dese smart-aleck kids tink dey can figure da MAN out.”
“This I have to see. Will you call them in here?”
“Sho, Doopeyduk. M/NEIGHBOR’S TEEN-AGER!”
“Whatchawont, Pop?” came the reply from the room.
“Me and Joel O. are studying for the lecture tonight down at the B.B.B. Club.”
“Boy, when I tell you to do something, you do it, boy. Understand, boy? Now git yo tail in here and talk to us grown peoples. Pay attention to what grown peoples be saying.”
“But grown people don’t say anything of significance any more, Pop. They’re just a bunch of middle-aged rukus-juice drinkers who drop bombs on people and listen to that smelly man who’s been holed up in the John for thirty years.”
I was appalled. “What! WHAT THE CHILD SAY?”
But before I could register my shock, the neighbor had slapped his son’s face.
“What did you have to go and do that for, Pop?” he asked, as the little white boy comforted him.
“Listen heah,” M/Neighbor continued, rukus juice hanging from his lips in spidery strings. “Repeat after me.
In my father’s house …”
“In my father’s house …”
“What grown peoples be saying …”
“But Pop. That’s not even correct grammar.”
“Damn the grammar, you black-assed bastard. Now repeat after me before I smacks you again. What grown peoples be saying …”
“What grown peoples be saying …”
“Is not never supposed to be joked around about.”
“Is not never supposed to be joked around about,” the M/Neighbor’s son replied. “Now, can me and Joel O. go down to the B.B.B. meeting?” he asked. Joel stood next to him wearing a parka. His hair was draped about his shoulders and on his chest he wore a “Flower-Power” button.
“Where you mannish kids going tonight? Don’t be comin’ in heah all time of da night again no mo. Dat boy Joel O. has got his own apartment and he can do what he wants to do but yo tail has to answer to me ‘cause I’m footin’ the bills … And before you go, ’pologize to Mr. Doopeyduk for getting him all upset.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Doopeyduk.”
“That’s all right, my boy. But you must always be careful about what you say about our great leader. You only give aid and comfort to our enemies when you speak ill of him. Of course you kids were only speaking in jest.”
“Jest, hell,” the little white boy said for the first time. “When we come to power, it’s going to be curtains for the generation that gave us Richard Nixon and his scroungy mutt, Checkers.”
“See you later, Pop, and it was a pleasure meeting you, Mr. and Mrs. Doopeyduk.”
“Clao,” said the little white boy as the pair walked out of the door.
“Why, I must lodge a protest tomorrow morning about this man who’s subverting the young youth. Report this subversive to the authorities. How long has this been going on, M/Neighbor?”
“Dey always be readin’ some kinda books. Got da author’s picture on da wall. He’s a colored man but he look lak one of dem Anglishmens. Wears a goatee. Sometime dey wear dem tablecloths what African peoples wear and dat little white boy be talkin’ funny. Two, three words at a time. Somethin’ ’bout ‘psychedelic guerrilla/Mao Mao/folkrock fuckrock Ra cock/freak stomp group grope/sunra’s marimbas/yin yang.’ It’s way over my poor brains. And da B.B.B. thing supposed to stand for SAM has got body odor.”
“That does it,” I said, rushing to the telephone to dial the Screws.
“Aw fool, set yo butt down. Dem boys jess tryin’ to have some fun,” Fannie Mae said, after remaining silent throughout the entire episode.
F/Neighbor walked into the room with the platter of steaming hot chittlins and a side dish of potato salad.
“A man what’s been in the baffroom fo thirty years—no tellin’ what he smell like,” Fannie Mae continued.
“I gots to go along wif you, child,” the F/Neighbor interjected. “Unless he got a powerful deodorant, he smellin’ like dese chittlins when dey’s cookin’. But less stop talkin’ ’bout polotics and eats some food. Dere’s plenty.”
Although shocked at these pronouncements, the neighbor and I were so taken by the meal that we decided not to pursue the matter.
After the dinner, I asked, “Do you have any more children?”
F/Neighbor rose from the table and ran sobbing into the living room. Fannie Mae went after to comfort her.
UH O, I thought. You’ve made a blimp of a blooper this time, Bukka Doopeyduk.
The M/Neighbor explained. “We had a child dat disappeared around three years ago.”
“Didn’t you have the Screws look into the matter?”
“Yes, dey searched. But dey couldn’t find hide nor hair of him.”
The women returned. F/Neighbor, red-eyed and stunned. Fannie Mae assisted her into the chair.
“I’m sorry, F/Neighbor. I wasn’t aware of your loss,” I said.
“Dat’s all right, Mr. Doopeyduk. I should have gotten over it by now. By the way, Mr. Doopeyduk,” F/Neighbor asked, “does that name come out da Bible?”
“No, my mother won it in a lottery.”
They all laughed and I was pleased that my quip had helped to glide over an unpleasant and embarrassing incident. Afterward we played whist. I couldn’t get the missing child out of my mind. I looked out over the M/Neighbor’s shoulder toward the island across the bay. The helicopters dipped and rose above the roof. Again the snow. The stillness. The four letters, EATS.
I came home one day, walking dejectedly, grumbling. I had been demoted from the shock room. I had placed a tongue blade into a banker’s mouth carelessly and he had nearly strangled to death. He was a powerful and influential man in HARRY SAM who had been picked up by the Screws for enticing sailors and was placed on the psychiatric floor to avoid publicity. His psychiatrist had witnessed the mishap and had reprimanded me before the nurses. They cut my salary and placed me in a ward with the violent patients. My job was to clean the wastes which hung from the walls in gobs and change the catatonic patients. I was in a miserable mood when I arrived at the apartment.
Fannie Mae was entertaining Georgia who sat in a chair smoking a cigarette butt and swinging h
er legs. When she saw me, she nodded disinterestedly and continued smacking her gum.
“Georgia and her husband are goin’ to move into da projects building next to ours,” Fannie Mae announced.
I nodded at the girl, who smiled mischievously, then picked up a comic book lying on the coffee table. I stepped over the comic books which were strewn about the house and walked into the bathroom. The house was filthy. The dishes filled the sink, clogging it so that I expected some pulsating thing to reach out and assimilate me into the decayed eggs, meat and vegetables. The place stank of food. The refrigerator contained provisions crawling with bacteria.
“Dear,” I said, “why don’t you at least try to keep the house in a sanitary condition?” I pleaded. “It looks like a pigsty.”
“Don’t start no mess,” she replied, looking at Georgia for support.
Blood rushed to my head. I gritted my teeth and threw a glass against the wall. The women ignored this, continuing to read the books and chatting with each other.
“Why don’t you get up off your big funkey sometime and pick up a mop? I break my ass emptying shit at the hospital and you lay around here all day, half-dressed, watching ‘The Edge of Night,’ ‘Search for Tomorrow’ and ‘The Guiding Light.’”
“Look, my man. Nobody told you to get that job. At the Harry Sam Ear Muffle Factory they makes good money.”
“Why don’t you get a job and help me, tramp? Plenty of women work nowadays. What’s so special about you? ’Round here lying on the floor reading comic books like some empty half-wit.”
The picture of Nancy Spellman dressed like a little red Kewpie doll swung around on the wall and crashed to the floor below. Nancy was the Chief Nazarene Bishop. Poor Nancy, I thought.
“See what you made me do, bitch! Nancy Spellman fell off the wall.”
“I’m sick of dem sweetback-looking white mens on my wall anyway.”
