by Touré
Jack Hitlerian had been mayor of The City for just a few weeks, but he was already hungry for a nigger to lynch. He’d campaigned on legalizing racial profiling, tripling the police presence in Rhythmtown, building new jails, and generally arresting Black men as quickly and as vaguely as possible. He’d also campaigned with impunity, knowing his opponents didn’t dare call him racist because Hitlerian was Black.
In Rhythmtown they saw the glint in his eyes that matched his last name. They felt as if troops were rumbling into their ghetto to herd them off to the camps one by one. They were, but Hitlerian wanted someone else to make the first move. He wanted someone to make it easy on him. He was a spider waiting for someone, anyone, to fall into his web. The night he was elected he promised, “The first nigger who twitches wrong will be made a spectacle!” Others could celebrate the first baby of the year. He looked forward to the first nigger capture of his reign.
Hueynewton was in the middle of The City, looking hard into a sea of white skin, wondering which, if any, of these people came from people who’d owned his. He stared at their faces as if he might remember. The question came again and again and the wild fever ripped at him and yesterday’s lash wounds burned anew and his head was filled with Billie’s eerie, haunting timbre, wailing about strange fruit. A white man rushing by bumped him. It was one of those crowded city shove-bumps that happen all the time, but after months of the torture of slavery Hueynewton couldn’t possibly forgive a white man a single trespass, even a tiny one. He grabbed the man’s shoulder, cocked his massive fist, and unloaded in his eye, nearly dislodging it from the socket. Hueynewton stood over him, watching him scrounge in pain on the sidewalk. The police roared in.
When Hueynewton got in the car the charge was felony assault. He thought Emperor would come get him in a few hours. But when they got to the prison hospital one of Hueynewton’s eyes was hanging out and three of his ribs were sticking out and the charge was attempted murder of a police officer. There were three witnesses, all of them cops.
As Emperor Jones raced to The City, Mayor Hitlerian told the assembled media that the man who’d brazenly robbed a local KFC just a few months ago was a descendant of Nat Turner and had come to The City for another killing spree, but they’d stopped him before he’d started. The spider had caught a big fly, cocooned him in prison, and was waiting to eat him.
All of Soul City marched and protested for Hueynewton’s freedom, but he was too big a trophy to be let go. As the battle stretched on outside, Hueynewton sat in his cell and watched the world going on without him. For him, time stopped. Then one day, his watch stopped. The battery was fine. The watch was being honest. Then pieces of him began flaking from all over his body like leprosy in miniature, or the bit-by-bit crumbling of an ancient, dying statue. Each day another piece flaked off. Each day another person forgot him.
28
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AS ALWAYS happened after Mahogany dumped Cadillac, they separated for about a day. After that they would just sort of end up back in each other’s world and fall back into the old pattern. Though she dumped him all the time, they never made up, per se, but they never really broke up, either. The week before the breakup ceremony they had dinner three times and slept together twice. But somehow he had a feeling this breakup ceremony was going to be the end of their relationship.
The evening before the breakup ceremony, Cadillac stumbled through the streets of Soul City, drunk and alone. He thought of the sexy DJ he’d met at the Biscuit Shop eight months ago and wished he could have her back. He’d never had her, but that didn’t make the upcoming ceremony any less painful. After having drinks at two bars and Lolita, he found his way over to the Hug Shop because, well, he needed a hug. Ecstasy Jackson was there. He had no idea why everyone always said leave her alone and then laughed. She drove him home in her Curtismobile while Mr. Mayfield spoke about Freddie, who, like him, was dead.
Cadillac was the first man Ecstasy had ever brought to her home in Cloud Nine, where she lived with her mother, MacBeth McGroovy-Jackson, her aunts Saddity McGroovy, Freebush McGroovy, Chloe Wofford, Madamazell Brownberry, and Jambalaya Littlejohn, her great-aunt Irie McGroovy, her granma Honeychile McGroovy, and her busybody seven-year-old half sister, Foin Negro. Their large house, surrounded by weeping willows, was unexpectedly ramshackle considering the upscale neighborhood. It was a patchwork of various woods and aluminums and uneven textures and windows of varying sizes. All sorts of architectural ideas were plastered alongside one another like a giant abstract unsolved Rubik’s Cube. The house seemed to be going in thirty-two aesthetic directions because it’d been built over many years by the many men the McGroovy women had had in their lives. Husbands and boyfriends, fiancés and flings—all had come and discovered a houseful of sweet and beautiful women, all ready to dote on any man who dared cross their door. As they fed him and flirted, whispered and worshipped, the men slowly fell in love with the entire lot of them, and, if he was at all inclined, he volunteered to finish the job of working on the house that’d curiously been abandoned by some other guy. As he worked on the house he hung around his girlfriend or wife, fiancée or fling more and more, but it was always too late when he discovered the terrible secret of the McGroovy women: they love too well.
There were no men in the midst of the McGroovys because their men had all been killed, albeit while smiling. Each McGroovy woman, one after the other, fell in love with a man and wooed him til he was hers. They aimed their laser-beam love at him and sometimes he lasted weeks, occasionally months, but no man could survive a McGroovy woman’s love, and eventually the raw heat of it would make him simply spontaneously combust. Sometimes at the climax of sex, sometimes during a hug. The boys they birthed ran away as soon as they could.
It was said the McGroovys had earned their freedom from slavery through love. As the story goes, Voodoo McGroovy was enslaved on the Keeprunnin, Mississippi, plantation of Onus McGroovy. When she was just fourteen she sprouted breasts of a shape so robust that Massa Onus found her irresistible. One night he tiptoed out to the slave shacks and had his way with her for two long hours, a session that left her middle and his face very bloody. Soon Massa Onus was down in the shacks bloodying little Voodoo every night, and every morning she prayed the sun would never again set so she could be free of him. She would’ve given her freedom to escape him, if only it’d been hers to give.
One day, Massa Onus had Voodoo moved from the field to the house, and instead of picking cotton in the sun she was serving meals in the cool with nicer clothes to wear and Massa’s scraps to eat. This did not change her feelings. She still despised him, she just despised him more frequently. After many months of close relations, he fell in love with her and began bringing her little presents, giving her days off, caressing her gently before and after raping her, and letting her get to know him as a man. Love is a flower that blooms in the most arid of deserts, and, somehow, Voodoo began, slowly, to fall in love back. Maybe deep down she knew what would happen.
She stared at him when he entered the room and she lingered in his presence, half hoping he would grab her off into the broom closet, rip open her dress, and have his way with her. She still fought back, she felt she should, but now it was less rape and more rough semiconsensual sex. She didn’t wanna want it, but want it she did. It wasn’t a love she chose, it was a love that chose her. Well, one night he came to her bed and climbed atop her. But instead of passively allowing a dull, dry entrance, she wettened to his touch and was moved by his rhythm. Instead of clawing into him, she enveloped him. Never in her life had a man’s grunt sounded so sweet. And as he rocked above her she crept toward the first and last orgasm of her entire life, and when that explosion finally occurred she felt a love like nothing she’d ever known. She lost all control and screamed out, “Oh, Massa Onus, I LOOOOVES you!” He looked at her in the strangest way, struggling to understand why her words had seemed to unleash a mountain of motion inside his skin. Then he exploded in a million pieces, none larger tha
n a millimeter. Voodoo and several others slipped away that night and beat a path to Soul City.
Now, nearly two centuries later, as Ecstasy introduced Cadillac around the house, Voodoo’s great-great-great-granddaughters MacBeth, Saddity, Chloe, Freebush, Madamazell, and Jambalaya all hoped Ecstasy did not have the family curse. But they were almost certain she did. They all did. They took her aside and told her not to fall in love with this new man, but a McGroovy heart is large and powerful, almost as intoxicating for the lovee as for the lover. So with a mixture of hope and fear, the McGroovy women welcomed Cadillac into their home.
Up in Ecstasy’s boudoir there was a tangible tension as the two sat talking long into the night, a cloud of carnal heat engulfing them. Ecstasy fell into a love funk and forgot all about the family curse (which, of course, was part of the family curse). As the hours grew thin the two got horizontal, the grunting grew great, and who arrived but Death, floating in through the window with timing meant to catch the teapot just before it screamed. Death wasn’t happy about taking Cadillac’s soul across so soon, but no one had forced Cadillac to wander into the web of a black widow of love.
Death knew the sheet-dancing of a McGroovy woman was always an orgy of two of undreamed of erotomaniacal frenzy. But the lust of those two was so electric and athletic that their passion turned him into a peeper. Even though he was impossibly busy, Death turned patient. As Ecstasy’s amorousness rose, happy Death got a show, and poor Cadillac, the doomed, cocooned fly looking lovingly at the spider, was moments from a jolt of the unsurvivable McGroovy megakilowatt love and could do nothing for nothing is all he knew. At least, Death thought, his end will be happy. Unbeknownst to all three of them, pressed against the outside of Ecstasy’s boudoir door were MacBeth, Saddity, Chloe, Freebush, and Madamazell, who were eager to see her happy, yet feeling they should probably break in and save the poor boy even though that would incur Ecstasy’s formidable wrath for the foreseeable future.
The moment was about to arrive. Cadillac was in ecstasy in Ecstasy and her love was just a bit away from boiling and Death, dying to avoid the mess spontaneous combustion always created, reached into his pocket for his Mont Blanc to cross Cadillac off his list as MacBeth bent silently toward the keyhole just trying to get a peek, while her sisters stood stone still around her trying not to freak, but somehow, from outside the boudoir door, came a tiny, little creak. It was Foin. She was supposed to be in bed, but she was kneeling on the floor, looking around the corner, staring at her aunts, not about to let this theater go on without her. Such a nosy busybody. She moved a millimeter and made a noise that broke Cadillac’s concentration. He was deeply drunk on Ecstasy’s love but somehow experienced a moment of clarity. Mahogany appeared in his mind. He loved her and he would show her in front of all of Soul City. “Stop!” he yelled out. Ecstasy and Death froze and McGroovy ladies of all ages breathed a sigh of relief. “I can’t do this,” Cadillac said. “I could never love you the way you love me.” He had no idea. Later that night around midnight, Mahogany was at home getting ready for the breakup ceremony when there was a buzz at her door. She wasn’t expecting anyone. It was Precious.
Nobody’d seen her for months. She was twitching horribly and she seemed to ask for money, but Mahogany couldn’t understand her because Precious spoke as if she were deaf. Her eyes were hollow and her face looked sunken as if the life were being sucked out of her from the inside. Her hat was pulled so tight that there were no curves where the ears should’ve been. You couldn’t tell if there were ears there or not.
Mahogany handed Precious some money, but when she reached for it a flake dropped from beneath her hat. They both saw it.
Precious blinked and her eyes were big with tears. She took off her hat. There was nothing left of her ears. They’d withered away flake by flake. Now it looked like there were flat patches of scorched earth on both sides of her head.
29
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CADILLAC AND Mahogany’s breakup ceremony was held on Saturday, February 13, at the Sunflowers’ home, 123 Bluestone Road in Honeypot Hill.
It began at two p.m. The Revren Hallelujah Jones officiated.
More than two hundred people squeezed into Mama Sunflower’s backyard for the event. The Inquirer had team coverage. Mama Sunflower was shocked to see so many people come to the ceremony. She just knew most of them had never met Mahogany or Cadillac. But she was too thrilled to see the relationship ending to worry about all that. Indeed, more than half the folk at the breakup ceremony didn’t know the two. They’d come as if to a public hanging to see the end of this couple that had ruined their lives. But those who actually knew them were sad. Even though she kept dumping him, somehow their dysfunctional nonrelationship worked. The girls from the Biscuit Shop felt those two deserved each other.
Carrie Cosmopolitan, the breakup-ceremony planner, had arranged a very short, simple ceremony. First, the Revren Hallelujah would have thirty seconds to say a few words about Mahogany and Cadillac. Then their friends would have twenty seconds to say a few. Then both Mahogany and Cadillac would get five seconds to state their main gripe with the other, but both had to speak at the same time so neither could say they didn’t get the last word. And it was never on the schedule, but at every breakup ceremony there was a fight. With the baby just a month away, the city was tense. The audience at the Sunflowers’ that afternoon had the rococo sadism of a crowd at a heavyweight title fight, happily awaiting the violence that would surely arrive at any second.
Cadillac smoothed in to the Sunflower home that afternoon with a secret burning in his pocket. He was either going to win the lottery or get laughed out of town. But he had to try. Flying sex was too good to give up just because she kept dumping him. Besides, to him she was still that sexy DJ who wore Jimmy Choo heels with her Biscuit Shop uniform in the middle of the afternoon. Sure, she had a superiority complex, but if he could fly he’d probably have one, too. At the end of the day, he just loved her. To him, she was the cactus whose milk was so sweet it was worth the needles. If they were gonna have a breakup ceremony he was gonna go down fighting.
Carrie got the Revren, Mahogany, and Cadillac ready to go onstage. Cadillac turned to Mahogany. Without turning her head she said, “Shut up.” He did. The Revren, barely five-foot-two and as fragile as a man made of aluminum foil, turned up and looked at her with a stare that could stop hearts. He had baptized Mahogany. The two of them would not make a fool of him today.
The Revren Hallelujah Jones had given up breakup ceremonies a few years ago after a particularly gruesome one in which Amber Sunshower had started a near riot that left Coltrane Jones with a twice broken left arm. But the good Revren saw nothing wrong with having the spotlight shine on him now and again, and Mahogany and Cadillac were a prominent Soul City couple. (“You call them controversial and tempestuous,” the Revren told the Inquirer. “I call them misunderstood.”) But he coulda stayed at home if they thought he’d be the straight man in some madcap slapstick fiasco. “Behave yo’selves!” he commanded. Then the three moved onto the little stage.
A moment later, Ubiquity Jones quietly slipped in. She stood at the back, watching for a glimpse of Cadillac. As soon as she saw him she read his mind and found he was thinking about one thing: the surprise. People noticed Ubiquity sashaying on tiptoe over toward Mama Sunflower, but no one dared say a thing.
The Revren began the ceremony. “We are gathered here today . . .”
Ubiquity breathed in deeply, calling attention to herself, announcing less than silently that it was time for a quiet gossip bomb. She whispered just loud enough for Mama Sunflower and the ladies around her to hear. “Ain’t it a shame she has to watch her daughter marry a boy from The City?”
Mama Sunflower didn’t turn her head. Everyone knew that voice. Mama whispered, “Girl done lost the sense She gives a baby. This is a breakup ceremony and she wasn’t invited.”
The ladies gasped quietly.
“Looks to me,” Ubiquity whispered nastily, “
like she in for a surprise.”
The Revren called out, “If anyone has a reason why these two should not break up, speak now or forever hold your peace!”
The city’s anger poured out from the crowd. Someone yelled, “City boy!” Then someone screamed, “Fly away, Judas!” Mama Sunflower looked ashen. It seemed the whole world was against them. Then Cadillac stepped to the center of the stage.
“I know this baby will fly,” he said to her as the yelling went on around them. “But even if it can’t, I’d still love you.” He got down on one knee and pulled out a robin’s-egg-blue box that said TIFFANY. All of Soul City gasped. He popped the question, then opened the box. There was a little rainbow trapped inside.
Mahogany turned away immediately. There was no way she could look at it. She was tired though she’d just woken up, the baby was kicking like crazy, and her Jimmy Choos were killing her. But she was impressed that he’d risked extraordinary public humiliation for her. She realized he’d stuck by her through everything. That he couldn’t ruin her life any more than he already had. And having a man she could boss around forever was not bad at all. Then she peeked at the ring. It was a two-carat nugget. It’s huge, she thought. And then her icy heart began to melt. She did love him. She’d fought so hard against it, but he was the lid to her pot. She didn’t wanna want it, but want it she did. It wasn’t a love she chose. It was a love that chose her.
And so Mahogany Sunflower finally decided to give Cadillac Jackson a chance. She looked down at him and said, “Maybe.”
The crowd went wild as if they’d seen a surprise knockout. But they weren’t sure who’d won. For anyone else maybe would’ve been crushing. But for Cadillac at that moment with that woman, maybe was victory enough. He stood and Mahogany leaned in and gave him a kiss on the mouth. A brief, closed-mouth kiss of like. Like that could blossom. Maybe.
