“Mon dieu,” she moaned, “oh, mon dieu.”
By the time he shouted, “Marianne!” again, they were too spent to do anything but lie in a sweat-drenched, slobbery, mussed heap of intertwined human flesh. They wondered with amazement what the sun was doing coming up.
Neither of them could even manage to phone in sick to their jobs that day. Marianne’s office tried to reach her all morning. Prez’s supervisor just happened to be Marianne’s aunt, the wife of “Bourgie Ray.” So, their transgressions against workplace protocol meant nothing to them as they lay cocooned in each other’s arms, oblivious to all but sleep. It was late afternoon before they stirred and marveled at the state they were in.
“What was it like for you?” she asked.
“Making love to you?”
“No. Almost being killed, Prez. What was it like?”
Marianne turned her head on the pillow they were sharing so that she could look into his eyes. Forget his body language and his posturing. Forget about the furrow of his brow and the set of his jaw. Forget about his finely crafted monologues on dialectics and praxis; on the failure of the white left, both old and new, to come to grips with the reality of revolutionary black nationalism. Forget about his lecturing on Internationalism. Forget about his cool oft-repeated mantra that one must be ready for jail, exile, or death in the struggle against US fascism. Mon dieu, could he talk a lot of merde! Forget about it all and look into his eyes.
And she looked as the light went out of them. She saw his eyes cloud over and pain cross his face.
“Marianne, how could you even think about something like that at a time like this? I mean, I was lyin’ here just looking at you and feeling all flushed with . . .”
“Because,” she cut him off, “I love you.”
She watched as his eyes lifted and brightened to become two stars blinking with tears he could not keep from cascading down the sides of his face.
And he thought to himself that she was forever making him betray himself.
Marianne kissed at his tears.
He knew he loved her too.
4
Montreal, May Day, 1969
Toward evening as she came in from a walk with her aunt—well, great aunt—and Jamie, Marianne was gleeful as she stooped to pick up the two bunches of lilies of the valley that had been left in front of Tante Céleste’s door.
“Oh, I just love the smell of muguet,” she gushed. “Don’t you, Tante Céleste?”
“Ahh, mais oui,” said Tante Céleste, as she did her very best to keep her eyes from rolling up. Still, she couldn’t restrain the sly smile.
“How could he have known?” asked a quite-impressed Marianne.
Tante Céleste so wished that Marianne would say Doug’s name instead of referring to him with an omnipresent pronoun. The less obvious it was that they were carrying on the way they were, while Marianne was still supposed to be engaged to Jamie, the better. But perhaps it was only obvious to her, because she was the aunt and she lived downstairs from Marianne. Perhaps Jamie hadn’t a clue, or he really couldn’t care less. She let slip a giggle at the thought of all the moaning and bed squeaking she had to endure.
“What’s so funny, Tante Céleste?” asked Marianne.
“Oh, here it is,” said Tante Céleste, digging in her purse. “Sometimes this key is right under my nose and I still don’t see it.” As she opened her door she asked, “How could who have known, Marianne?”
“Doug, of course.”
Tante Céleste giggled again, thinking about the way Jamie had snapped to attention when Marianne said Doug’s name. The three of them were returning from a May Day demonstration. The large parade had moved down Sainte Catherine Street like a mass of human lava. There had been a contingent of students who had taken part in the May 1968 demonstrations at the Sorbonne in Paris. Tante Céleste wondered if Prez had managed to converse with them and learn that on May Day in France, bunches of lilies of the valley, or muguets, are sold on the streets and given as presents. Les muguets represent good luck.
“You mean about the symbolism of les muguets?” asked Tante Céleste. As if she didn’t know what Marianne was talking about. “He must be having a positive effect on you, dear. I haven’t seen you with a cigarette for a while.”
After some of Tante Céleste’s excellent quiche and café au lait, Jamie left. Marianne was about to depart to her flat with her bunch of muguets when Tante Céleste said, “You know Marianne, at the convent orphanage the most beautiful babies were always the mulatto ones.” Marianne’s steps faltered.
“Oh, what an interesting observation.” Marianne felt her face flush and didn’t want Tante Céleste to notice. “Salut, Tante Céleste,” said Marianne as she reached for the doorknob.
“Wait a minute, Marianne. What’s the rush? We haven’t had a good chat lately.”
Marianne let go of the doorknob, dropped her head, and began to sob uncontrollably.
Tante Céleste was greatly alarmed. She didn’t even know Marianne had such a cry in her, much less a reason for one.
“Oh my god, child, what’s wrong?”
Marianne turned, bent herself way over so that her face was buried in her little Tante Céleste’s shoulder, and wept. She wept until she soaked Tante Céleste’s blouse. She wept until she had cramps in her stomach that made her clutch at her midsection and double over. She wept until there were no more tears to weep and she just whimpered and gasped for air. And little Tante Céleste feared her bones would collapse under all the sobbing weight. But she held her grandniece up until a voice from somewhere said, “I’m pregnant.”
“Oh, my dear, sweet Marianne. Can you ever forgive me? I had no idea. What I said about the orphans . . .”
“I know, Tante Céleste. The last thing anyone would think would be that I would get pregnant accidentally. Me, the great control freak.” More tears gushed down her face.
Afterward, sitting in Tante Céleste’s kitchen, Marianne’s eyes were bloodshot from crying and her nostrils inflamed from blowing her nose so much.
“Your baby’s father, he will make a good father, no?”
“Dead men don’t make good fathers,” replied a very weary Marianne. “War resisters like Jamie came here to avoid going to war. Doug was already in a war. He’s told me stories. He wants to go back to it. But America will kill him.”
5
Chicago, Summer 1968
“FASTIDIOUS, MOTHERFUCKER! I said FASTIDIOUS. You ever heard that word before, you dumb nigger?” Officer James “Rhodes Scholar” Davies was directing his spittle-laced screaming into the face of a kneeling black boy.
Officer James “Rhodes Scholar” Davies had attained the rank of sergeant on the Chicago police force in a relatively short time. And it wasn’t because of his brightness but his malicious self-hate smoldering within. He would just as soon put a bullet in your silly ass for calling him black, or worse, Afro-American. He was a Negro, an American Negro at that, a citizen “of the greatest goddamn country on God’s green-assed earth!” And the day you saw him running around with big ole “Zulu” hair sticking up all over his head; the day you saw him wearing loud-colored pseudo-African pajama-like clothes anywhere; the day you heard him refer to some nappy-head, ashy-skinned, lazy-assed, ignorant nigger that he didn’t even know from the man-in-the-moon as brother or sister, well that would be the day hell froze over. And it would have frozen over because “Rhodes Scholar” Davis would have gone down there and shot the shit out of the Devil for being so goddamned remiss in leaving all the goddamned niggers running around up here when they should be burning up in Hell. And Rhodes Scholar would have shot the Devil full of holes with his two big-assed, nickel-plated, custom-balanced, Colt 45 caliber semi-automatic pistols.
Civil rights leaders’ talk about racist police brutality in Chicago was muted by “Rhodes Scholar” Davis. Police brass and City Hall lo
ved him. He was their equal opportunity showpiece on Chicago’s South Side. It was well known, however, that the equal opportunity really at work was that any black male between the ages of puberty and senility was equally at risk of being brutalized, maimed, or even killed by Rhodes Scholar. And he was particularly vicious when there were white cops around.
White police officers would themselves be sometimes ashamed and repulsed at the things Rhodes Scholar did. Once, while wearing his nickel-plated brass knuckles, Rhodes Scholar had hit a kid so hard that one of the kid’s eyes came out of its socket and rolled on the dirt. Rhodes Scholar went over to the eye on the ground proclaiming, “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a little ophthalmologic problem,” and pompously stepped on the eyeball, crushing it under foot. Not one of the three white police officers present observed this ghastly incident without vomiting. Yet, none would come forward to corroborate the kid’s story when his parents wanted to press charges.
Rhodes Scholar was thus the natural choice to lead the freshly minted Gang Intelligence Unit. He was a tall, muscular, ‘high-yellow’ black man with a trimmed mustache, manicured fingernails, and impeccable tastes in all things expensive. His wife was nearly as tall as he, looked more expensive than he, and was certainly as ‘high-yellow’ as he. They’d been known to brag at parties, “yeah, we’re bright, light, almost white!! Ha-Ha-He-He-Ha.”
“Let me help you out, a little. I mean you could walk away from this tonight if you just tell us WHAT THE FUCK FASTIDIOUS MEANS!” Rhodes Scholar barked at the youth before him.
The poor kid was sobbing uncontrollably. He was absolutely terrified. And how was he supposed to speak anyway, choking as he was on the gun Rhodes Scholar had shoved in his mouth.
Rhodes Scholar was wearing a pair of fine black leather gloves. “I can pick up a dime with these things, man,” he once bragged to his partner.
His nickel-plated forty-fives were harnessed in their custom shoulder holsters. In his hand was a little Czech-made 25-caliber automatic pistol with a rival gang member’s name etched on it, the type of which Rhodes Scholar and the GIU kept a nice cache.
“F-A-S-T-I-D-I-O-U-S!! What do you think it means? You think it has something to do with speed, nigger? I mean, all of you black-assed studs think you’re so fast, don’t you? Motherfucker, I’M TALKING TO YOU!! The word fastidious begins with f-a-s-t. Do you think the word had anything to do with speed?! LOOK AT ME, WHEN I’M TALKING TO YOU!!”
The kid looked up, drenched in tears, mucus flowing from his nostrils, and nodded.
“No, you stupid son-of-a-bitch; the word means being obsessive about cleaning up the garbage off the streets.”
BANG, BANG!!
Rhodes Scholar fired a quick two-shot burst into the kid’s mouth, jerking his head violently back, causing the top rear portion of his skull to crack open, and leaving him sprawled on his back right in the park that served as a truce gathering and communal party site for the rival gangs. The crimson flow of a young life spilling out would forever stain that hallowed soil. Rhodes Scholar threw the pistol on the ground beside the murdered youth and as the unmarked car screeched away, he yelled, “Killer Knights! Killer Knights thang!”
There was a truce established between K-Knights and King Kobras that had been holding. The truce zones had increased, and the killing had stopped. Oh, sure, there would always be punch-outs. There was even a knifing that resulted in the attacker being expelled from his gang for breaking the truce. But the truce had held and was still holding solid.
But all that was before the King Kobras had found Baby D in the park with the top of his head blown off. And a gun with Prince Earl of the Knight’s name on it lying next to the body.
Prez had gone to Prince Earl, who swore he didn’t do it.
“Aw, c’mon. Prez!! You KNOW me, man! Me with a little fuckin’ 25 cal. A fuckin’ pea shooter. AWW MAANNN!! Every livin’ ass and swingin’ dick know that Prince Earl don’t fuck wid no small shit, man. Everybody knows I don’t handle nothin’ smaller ’n a three fifty-seven Magnum. A fuckin’ 25?! With my name on it, even!! What? I’m stupid now, too?! AAWWW!! C’Mon. ’N besides, nigga, I GAVE MY FUCKIN’ WORD!!”
Prez believed him. But that wasn’t going to bring Baby D back to life.
And matters weren’t helped at all when Prince Earl’s mother’s Buick Electra 225 was hit with a Molotov cocktail. Whenever you want to stir up trouble big time in the ghetto, mess with someone’s mother.
*
“Hey, Prez?” It was Prince Earl on the phone. “You know I gave you my word that I wouldn’t do no roll-down without tellin’ you ’bout it first. Well, homes, they fuckin’ wid my Momma. They burned up her car man, ’spose she was in it, man. We rollin’, man. AND DON’T TRY TO TALK YO’ SHiT EITHER, MAN! ’Cause we packin’ heavy and we rollin’ hard. They ain’t gettin’ away wid dat shit, man.”
“‘They,’ who, Prince Earl?” Prez asked, very calm yet very firm. “‘THEY,’ WHO, Prince Earl?” It was 9:30 on a Friday night.
“Da fuckin’ Kobras, man. What?! YOU DAFFY OR SOMETHiN’, PREZ?!
“DA FUCKIN’ KOBRAS!!” screamed Prince Earl into the telephone.
“You mean just like you shot Baby D?” Prez knew he was playing with fire here because he really didn’t know if the Kobras were involved or not, but he had a hunch. And he needed Prince Earl to pause, if only for that proverbial second. “Prince Earl, give me an hour to check it out, man?”
There was the tensest silence on the other end that Prez had ever heard. Finally, a “fuck you, man. Hell no!”
“But, Prince Earl, you know you gettin’ played, man. You know it. Give me a half-hour, then. The pig is playin’ you, big time!”
It would take Prez maybe twenty minutes to get to Prince Earl’s home. If he had no other hand to play, he was certain he could get Sharon, Prince Earl’s sister, to get their mother to talk to Prince Earl just long enough so that Prez could assemble his group and start some door-to-door peace-keeping. Sharon would do it, he thought, for old time’s sake.
“Prince Earl. Have I been wrong yet?”
“O.K. motherfucker, you got your half-hour. Better make good use of it, Prez. Better make damned good use of it.”
“Wait for me to call, Prince Earl. Wait for my call, man. O.K.?” pleaded Prez to the sound of the dial tone.
Seventeen minutes and thirty seconds. That was how long it took for Prez to get to Sharon’s. Once he hit the Eisenhower expressway, he never lifted the accelerator from the floor. That was faster than the eighteen minutes flat he had done when Sharon phoned him on that sweet summer’s night not that many moons prior to tell him that nobody was going to be home for a while and she thought she was ready for it, but that he should hurry up before she changed her mind.
Prez was replaying that first night he made love to Sharon, when he saw the burned-out rubble of Mama Bell’s car. Jeezus! he thought as he pulled his car up behind. The air was contaminated with a too-familiar molten-metal stench. He could tell the fire trucks never even showed up. There was not a sign of water having been used anywhere. He thought about how hot it must have gotten around the burning car and how dangerous it must have been for the children in the neighborhood. He wondered if anyone had suffered from smoke inhalation. Then, he thought that if no fire trucks came, then no ambulances came either. And, of course, no cops. That is, good cops who do a good job of looking out for the neighborhood.
Prez went around to the driver’s side of the car, which was where the Molotov would have hit, and looked around for bits and pieces of broken glass. He found larger chunks than he anticipated, took one look at them, and rushed right up to Sharon’s door and rang. Mrs. Bell came to the door.
“Hello, Mrs. Bell.”
“Well, hello Preston. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? But I should have known you’d be comin’ around. You militants seem to go hand-in-hand with burnin’ and sh
ootin’. Oh, but I forgot, you’re no militant. You’re a political party member.”
Prez regretted telling Sharon anything about himself. When she began to really get serious about Prez, she began to worry that something would happen to him and pestered him to disassociate himself from the Black People’s Party. Little did he know that Sharon’s very best friend was her mother, in whom she confided everything. And soon he was getting badgered by Mrs. Bell about going back to college, becoming a lawyer, and fighting the system that way instead of through dangerous militant confrontations. One night, Sharon had given him an ultimatum after seeing a TV news flash blare that two “ex-members” of the BPP were involved in a shoot-out with the police. Two police officers and one ex-BPP member were killed. One ex-BPP member was captured. And the cops were looking for a third assailant.
A third “assailant,” thought Prez at the time; assailants are instigators. He knew those boys didn’t initiate anything. They were trained not to. Later he learned the three of them had been ambushed due to the work of an informant. They had to return fire in self-defense. “It was the BPP or me!” she had said. So Prez gave her an intense embrace, and then just walked out the door. Sharon didn’t even bother to call after him.
“I’d really like to just use your phone, if I may, Mrs. Bell.” Prez never asked after Sharon, especially to Mrs. Bell.
“Well, you certainly know where the phone is in this house, don’t you, Preston,” she replied, still speaking to Prez from behind the screen door and not inviting him in.
“Yes ma’am, I do. Is it alright if I come in and use it?”
“Ain’t no lock on that screen door, boy. You know that. You know where the phone is.”
Still not inviting him in, and not opening the screen door either, Mrs. Bell turned around and went back down the hall.
Prez rushed straight into the living room to the blue phone beside the blue sofa upon which he had spent many hours with Sharon.
Exile Blues Page 3