It Occurs to Me That I Am America

by Richard Russo

  • • •

  Fatima. She knew what she wanted, and when she got it, she had a great, full-throated, openmouthed laugh, made all the more joyous by a generous gap between her top front teeth. That’s how I remember the first nonstop weeks of our affair, talking and touching, out on the town, or back at my place, in bed—as one long gust of unchecked, lusty laughter.

  It was her town, so she led the way, and she was careful to keep a low profile, always driving a little Japanese car when she came to see me, never the black Mercedes. She wore jeans and T-shirts and baseball caps, making herself as nondescript-looking as she could, and took me to quiet little out-of-the-way places where nobody seemed to notice her, much less to know her. And we always returned to my place—she never once invited me to hers.

  I didn’t much mind. Of course she wanted privacy. Or that was how I figured it, anyway, until one night, as we lay naked beneath my ceiling fan, I told her, “You know what, Fati? I love you.” And she said, “How much?”

  That made me laugh. “You mean, like—would I die for you?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “What good would you be to me dead? No. I mean, would you kill for me?”

  What if I had said yes? Would I now be telling you a different story? I didn’t say no. I told her: “I would prefer not to.”

  “That’s not what I asked you,” she said. She sounded irritated, and that irritated me. “Come on,” I said, “has anybody ever loved you liked that, Fatima?”

  “Without a doubt,” she said. “The man I’m supposed to marry does.”

  That was the first I’d heard of such a man. She seemed surprised by my surprise. She thought it was obvious that we were only enjoying each other as a diversion until, inevitably, the rest of our lives reclaimed us. She said, “I’ve been pledged to marry him since we were six years old.”

  Their fathers had made the arrangement as part of a pact that ended nearly a century of bloody political and business feuds between two of the country’s most powerful families. It was a gentleman’s agreement, but to Fatima it had always seemed an inescapable destiny. Only in her Wisconsin years had she ever known what she called “the savage freedom of not belonging.”

  “I could have stayed there,” she said. “I could have just become this Fatima-the-American you seem to fancy. Well, I didn’t.”

  “So you’re saying that you belong to him—this man who’d kill for you?”

  “No more than he belongs to me.”

  I had pulled a sheet over my body, and Fatima got out of bed and got dressed.

  “What about you?” I said. “Would you kill for him?”

  “That’s the deal,” she said, “the pact our fathers made. Brutal—yeah, maybe. But breaking that pact would be way more brutal.”

  • • •

  I found this note, slipped under my door, two mornings later—a single paragraph, without salutation or signature:

  I can’t blame you and I don’t blame you. To blame you for wanting my wife would be to disparage her. That you want her means only that you are a man. So what? That she must have wanted you too—that is the problem. That means you are a man whose existence is intolerable to me. You must understand my need for relief. There are many ways that I could dispose of you, just as there are many ways that I could end my own life. Those are the two solutions to our mutual predicament. A duel presents the most unprejudiced means of determining which of them will be our fate. I trust that a man worthy of my wife’s interest will not hesitate to give me the satisfaction of accepting my challenge.

  Was he joking—the fiancé? Apparently not, because as I sat rereading the note in bewilderment for the sixth or seventh time, he phoned and, after announcing himself, instructed me to meet him “for our contest” at dawn the next day at such and such a secluded pasture alongside the lagoon. Then, without waiting for a response, he hung up. Not fifteen minutes later, a messenger came to my door, handed me a large envelope, and hurried away. Inside was another note: “I will bring pistols. You will have the choice of weapons. In all other particulars we will proceed according to the rules detailed in the pamphlet here enclosed.”

  I never looked at that pamphlet. I didn’t like being ordered around, and I couldn’t have cared less about the rules of dueling. I knew nothing about pistols, had only fired one a few times in my life, and had never had even a fleeting wish to shoot another person. The absurdity of the situation maddened me—and, at the same time, the absurdity appealed to me, too. My thoughts spun and scrambled. It seemed obvious to me that I could not go through with this folly, and equally obvious that I must. No doubt it was a trap. Or perhaps the fiancé really did want to commit suicide by summoning me to shoot him. But then again he had made clear that he would do away with me if I didn’t show up, so I might as well take my chances. And maybe I deserved it. Maybe all I had wanted since I struck that bicyclist was punishment, some commensurate measure of annihilating oblivion.

  Time flew, and time stalled, and noon became dusk, and suddenly it was past midnight, and I did not know what I would do, and I knew I would do it. Was Fatima behind this? Was this the killing she wanted me to do for her to prove my love? I had no idea. I would never know. I had only one way to know.

  “You must understand my need for relief.” Yes, fiancé, yes, that was the only thing I understood absolutely, as I eased the Skylark through the fog-shrouded streets of the sleeping city in the first damp gray light of false dawn. When I pulled up to the field, a riot of crows tumbled from a stand of scraggly trees and filled the air overhead. The fiancé stood beside a black Mercedes. I had not seen him before and could not see him too clearly now. His second approached, carrying a box with a pair of pistols. The weapon I took felt good in my hand. The second spoke at length, with legalistic precision, explaining what was to happen, but I remember only the cawing of the crows and how that was drowned out, in turn, by songbirds going off everywhere at once in a manic collective euphoria as the night melted into day.

  Then we were walking away from each other—the fiancé and I—wading, really, through the dew-heavy grass, holding our pistols, counting our paces. I lost count.

  The second called: Halt.

  I remember thinking I do not want to die like this. I remember thinking I do not want to live like this.

  The second called: Turn and face.

  We stood then at our little distance, two men, silhouetted in bright haze, pointing pistols at each other. Were we supposed to shoot now? Was he waiting for me? Was I waiting for him?

  The second called: Gentlemen.

  What was happening?

  Gentlemen!

  Why didn’t that man shoot me?

  The second called: Fire!

  There was some commotion off to the side, a crow beating past, and my arm swung that way, and I shot it. I hit it. I could never do that again. Pure luck, an accident: the bird blew apart, feathers and blood. I was elated. The fiancé had to think that I could have killed him just as easily.

  But why didn’t he shoot?

  The second called again: Fire!

  And there was another commotion: a car swerved onto the field, and jerked to a stop, and out flew Fatima, wailing No! Then the fiancé fired, and Fatima fell.

  He shot her in the thigh, and as she went down, he ran to her. It looked, from where I stood, like a tender reunion. He was binding her wounds. She was stroking his face.

  • • •

  I left them there then. I don’t think anyone noticed. I dropped my pistol in the field, drove the Skylark to the aerodrome, and twenty-four hours later I was sitting in a rocking chair on my mother’s porch in New Jersey.

  I was sitting there still a couple months later when the mailman brought me a postcard: “It was only a flesh wound. He’s a very good shot. I didn’t even need a cane at our wedding. You see, as promised, everything’s fixed like nothing ever happened. Love, Fatima.”

  PHILIP GOUREVITCH is a longtime staff writer for the New Yorker, th
e former editor of the Paris Review, and the author of three books: The Ballad Of Abu Ghraib / Standard Operating Procedure, A Cold Case, and We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Guardian First Book Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, among other honors. Gourevitch’s books have been translated into twenty languages, and in 2010 he was named a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France. He is completing a new book, titled You Hide That You Hate Me and I Hide That I Know.

  JAMES HANNAHAM

  * * *

  White Baby

  A black American couple wanted a child. They wanted a child very badly but could not have one of their own. After many discussions, they went to an adoption agency. A heavyset black receptionist in a loose blouse greeted them in the reception area. She made them feel hopeful and welcome. The receptionist nodded sympathetically and gave them each a clipboard.

  Soon, a woman with real authority came out. Her authority came partly from the fact that she had made them wait. Clearly, her time was more valuable than theirs. Also, she wore a stern expression and a dark purple tailored suit. From her dark, coarse hair, you might guess that she had black or Latin ancestors, but you couldn’t tell for sure, even if you squinted, listened for an accent, or sought out certain inflections in her voice. She had an Anglo name, and she said nothing personal about herself. The woman took the couple’s clipboards and looked them over. In the box where the adoption agency asked what race of baby they wanted, both the man and the woman had put an X in the box marked WHITE. The adoption agency woman pointed to the boxes to show them the X mark and asked if they had made a mistake.

  “No,” the wife said. “No mistake. We want a white baby.”

  “A white baby,” said the possibly ethnic lady. “White babies are hard. Why a white baby?” It sounded to the couple as if she wanted to stop them from getting a white baby. It sounded as if she would not help them get a white baby.

  The couple sighed. “We just want what anyone else would want,” the husband said. His wife grabbed his forearm supportively and said, “This is America!” which explained everything. But that did not satisfy the lady who might’ve been passing for white. The couple fidgeted and frowned.

  Eventually the wife explained that they felt a white baby would have a better chance at success if black Americans raised him. “A white baby raised by black people could become the president of the United States,” said the potential adoptive father. “Or he could become a rap star.” The opportunities were boundless for a white baby raised by Negroes. “If not that, he could at least go top ten on the R & B chart.”

  “But plenty of white people are already raised by black people,” the creamy-skinned woman said. The black couple got very offended. “We are doctors. We have medical degrees,” the wife said scornfully. “We are not going to become domestics. We have the right to be parents, and we have the right to adopt whatever type of child we want.” A white baby needed black parents, they agreed, in order to get the best of both worlds. The world of prosperity, abstract thinking, winter sports, technology, mayonnaise, and spiritual emptiness that white folks lived in, and the world of authenticity, ignorance, poverty, dancing, fattening food, and connection to God that black people lived in. The couple wanted a white baby, they said, because a white baby raised by black people could have extremely diverse friends and interests, and no one would question his ability to play basketball or his credibility as a financial advisor.

  “If we can get a male, and he’s good-looking, the sky’s the limit,” said the husband. “Everyone always wants to help a white boy.”

  Naturally, the maybe-not-white woman was taken aback by their candor, and at the same time seemed surprised by the couple’s articulateness with regard to these issues. She also thought they might be insane. “Are you sure?” she asked.

  “Oh, we definitely want a white baby,” the black woman said.

  “Yes, we do,” the black man said, nodding gravely.

  “And even if you can’t find one for us,” his wife said, blackening her attitude to emphasize her seriousness, “I’ll be damned if I’m gonna sit here and let someone question our right to even want a white baby.”

  The black woman made her spine broom-straight and looked her in the eye. She stuck out her neck and shifted it a little, blackly. “Do you think we’re not good enough to have a white child?”

  The adoption agency woman looked perplexed, but she backed down. “It’s just that white babies are so hard to get, even for white adoptive parents,” the woman said. “There’s so much demand and not enough supply.” Her tone of voice had become high-pitched, soothing, afraid. “Plus, black children are so much more in need, and you could really help a black child more by raising it in its own culture. You could really make a huge difference in a black child’s life.”

  “We know, we know. We’ve talked all that through,” the black woman said, waving her hand in the air. “And we still want a white baby. Nothing you can say will change our minds. This is a free country, we want what we want, and why should we let anyone stop us from achieving our goals?”

  “Please!” the lady suddenly snapped. “You know it isn’t practical! Can I at least get you to consider the alternatives? I could place a Middle Eastern child with you.”

  “That’s not white!” the black woman shouted.

  The black man leaned forward in front of his wife and pointed to his mouth. “Read my lips,” he said. “White! Baby!”

  “Okay, okay, I understand your needs, and we really do want to place children with families who want them more than anything else. This won’t be easy, but I’ll see what can be done,” the adoption agency woman said, blowing air through her cheeks. They knew she wouldn’t do anything.

  It took several years and a discrimination lawsuit, but eventually the stork delivered a white bundle of joy to the black couple. “Here he is,” a new woman from the adoption agency announced. “Say hello to Jeremy!”

  The black couple were overjoyed. They signed all the papers and brought Jeremy home. He had round blue eyes like fishbowls and skin as white as a bathtub. The new black mother rocked the baby in his blanket as her husband waved good-bye to the adoption agency woman through their picture window.

  After the lady left, the black wife scooped the boy up and lifted him out of the crib. She undid the folds of his blanket and held the child up to her husband, who took a hearty bite out of Jeremy’s face. The new mom chewed off Jeremy’s tiny fingers. Blood went everywhere. The boy screamed and cried and kicked for as long as he remained alive. When the child finished struggling, the husband and wife picked his bones clean. Afterwards, the wife boiled them for soup stock.

  “I can’t believe how hungry I was,” said the black man.

  JAMES HANNAHAM’s most recent novel, Delicious Foods, won the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, was selected for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers program, was one of the New York Times’ and Washington Post ’s 100 Notable Books of 2015, and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Fiction. His debut, God Says No, was honored by the American Library Association’s Stonewall Book Awards. He has published short stories in One Story, Fence, StoryQuarterly, and BOMB. He was a finalist for the Rome Prize. He teaches in the Writing Program at the Pratt Institute. He contributed to the Village Voice from 1992 to 2016, and his criticism, essays, and profiles have appeared in Spin, Details, Us, Out, BuzzFeed, the New York Times Magazine, 4Columns, and elsewhere. He cofounded the performance group Elevator Repair Service and worked with them from 1992 to 2002. He has exhibited text-based visual art at the James Cohan Gallery, 490 Atlantic, Kimberly-Klark, and the Center for Emerging Visual Artists.

  ALICE HOFFMAN

  * * *

  In the Trees

  America the plum blossoms are falling.
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  When you have a secret in our town, you have to carry it close to your heart. You have to be careful even when you sleep to make sure you don’t announce your crimes while you’re dreaming. Everything is a crime here, even falling in love. That is what happened to me. My mother had warned me that being a woman could bring you sorrow, but I didn’t listen. Not then. It was July, the time of year when the river is so blue it hurts to look at it. Fishermen come here from all across the country. My father owns a bait store, and everyone stops there, people from California and New York and Chicago. Men who are ruined, and those who are so rich they can’t even count their money anymore. There’s only one motel in town, but local folks open their houses, put their kids in tents in the yard, then rent out their bedrooms. You have to catch visitors from out of state while you can, my father says. We have a sort of trout that cannot be found anywhere else, called a blue rainbow. In school we’ve been told it was the original fish, the one that fed the multitudes, and that all other trout are descended from our rainbows. But we are taught many things I no longer believe. Less than a hundred years ago, there were countless wolves in our hills; now the last one to be caught is in the historical museum. I go there sometimes just to stare at him. You can see the stiches in his pelt, and his eyes are made of yellow glass. How can something so beautiful come to an end so quickly? Now we have hundreds of rabbits. It’s the penance we pay. When I walk to school in the morning they’re on everyone’s lawn. There’s not much grass left anymore, just patches of dirt. Sometimes the rabbits refuse to move out of the way; they block the sidewalk, and when I run, they chase me.

  • • •