by J. J. Murray
Candy? That child is smart, so maybe I created her all by myself. She got her daddy’s sleepy eyes, but that’s it. She’s tall, and she can ball. But she’s at Duquesne University on a partial academic scholarship because I didn’t even let her apply to Pitt, and she is kicking ass in all her classes, but she won’t play on the basketball team.
“I’m not into that anymore, Mama,” she tells me. “I can’t be a doctor if I’m at practice all the time.”
That’s right—my little girl is going to one day be a surgeon or a researcher or something medical like that. My baby is going to take care of me.
It’s lonely in the condo without her, but it’s okay. It’s like I’m starting over or something. I know I still got game, I know I could probably contribute something to those WNBA teams out there even though I’m no model like that Lisa Leslie wench, but…I’m planning on getting a master’s degree in education so I can get out of the classroom and into an office behind a damn desk where I can punish all these trifling, snot-nosed chaps. I’d make a good administrator. I’d be Ms. Joe Clark, and I wouldn’t need a bullhorn or a bat. I have the “stare,” and I know I make at least one crusty-faced boy pee his pants every week with that stare when I’m on hall duty.
Unfortunately, a master’s degree costs money, and when your daughter only gets a partial scholarship to a private university, you have to rearrange your priorities. So I’m taking one night class at a time for the next, oh, seven years. Instead of jumping right in and getting bored to death with classes like “School Management,” “Curriculum Review,” and “Secondary School Law Mandates,” I take a class in technical writing.
On the first night, I arrive early at Allegheny Community College and take a seat in the back row in a comfortable burgundy chair in front of a slate gray table. There isn’t a single desk in here, and I already feel more like an adult. Out of habit, I slide my hand under the table. Not one bulging glob of gum. Maybe I should get a master’s and teach somewhere like this. I mean, the room is carpeted, and the walls and ceiling are soundproofed. It’s quiet. I like quiet. Seventh graders aren’t quiet even though I make them be quiet. Shit, sometimes when the chaps aren’t making any sound, I hear their little bodies growing.
I have to get me a teaching gig like this. The lights work, the clock works, and I bet that computerized thermostat by the door works, too. At Cherry Grove, I have to cuss and fuss at the custodian to get any of that shit working, and most times I have to rub an ice cube on the thermostat in my room to get the heat to come on. And the toys! The teacher has a huge TV/VCR hanging from the ceiling at the front of the room with speakers on each wall, an impressive computer on his desk that is hooked to the TV, and an overhead projector from this century. My overhead at Cherry Grove smokes like a crack addict every time I turn it on. I look with envy at the file cabinets with locks and the garbage can with a plastic liner.
I would love to teach history in a room like this. But it wouldn’t be all white man’s history. By the time I got through community college and then to Clarion, I was white man’s history-ed out. I’d probably teach world history or one of those upper level courses in African history. I know all of that, and if the state of Pennsylvania would let me, my seventh graders would know all of that, too. But no, I have to teach to the damn statewide test, mainly on the history of Pennsylvania. Oh, I throw in lots of art history because I love the work of Jacob Lawrence to death, but there’s only so much I can squeeze in because of that test.
A strange assortment of mostly old, married, white, and wrinkled people surround me, including an Italian guy who sits next to me.
Time to invent Johnny. Hmm. The critics roasted my last two main male characters, saying they were too weak, wimpy, and easily controlled. Johnny can’t be, even if he’ll look a little like me:
He isn’t bad-looking, maybe in his early forties, gray hair, coal-dark eyes, taller than me, paler than the moon. No wedding band. He smiles at me as he sits, so I cut off all the Italian jokes in my head. He has a nice smile, and it makes his eyes look mysterious. I hope he sits next to me for the next fifteen weeks.
And since there aren’t any brothers up in here, I might actually learn something about technical writing without getting hit on. I don’t want to be saying, “No, I am not a freshman, and no, you cannot have my phone number, and yes, I am old enough to be your damn mama.”
Though the attention might be nice.
Some white dude with a pockmarked face and thick glasses comes in and says he’s Professor Holt. He calls roll, and half of the class is missing. When he gets down the alphabet to where I should be, I don’t hear my name. Probably because I added the class so late. I’m most likely at the bottom of his roll sheet. When he calls out “Johnny Smith,” the Italian man next to me says, “Ciao.”
I have me some wicked-ass thoughts concerning “chow” after that and start imagining all sorts of things, like how Johnny’s pale skin would look against my firm, black, round booty, but he definitely isn’t a “Smith.” Who’s he trying to fool? Maybe he’s in the witness protection program.
And that’s exactly where Johnny will be. Not exactly believable, but at least the critics can’t say Johnny’s soft. I know I’m leaving myself open for attack—“What are the chances that she happens to meet a guy at a community college who’s in the witness protection program?”—but anything’s possible in romantic comedies.
“Welcome to Creative Writing,” Professor Holt says.
Say what?
“We don’t have a text for the class, though you might want to pick up a copy of The Elements of Style from the bookstore.”
“Excuse me,” I whisper to Johnny.
“Yes?”
“Did he say ‘creative writing’?”
“Yes.”
“This isn’t technical writing?”
“No.”
“I’m in the wrong place. I’m supposed to be in technical writing.”
He smiles. “You want to take technical writing?”
I’d much rather be creative. “Not really.”
“Then you are in the right place.”
Damn, he’s got some fine eyes, but what the hell’s that accent? He has to be from Brooklyn or something. “What should I do?”
“See la professore after class, and he will make the change.”
Damn, he has a fine voice with just enough Italian accent to wet my panties. “Just like that?”
“Just like that.” He leans closer, and I get a whiff of some exotic cologne. That shit definitely isn’t Old Spice. “What is your name?”
“Ebony.”
“Ah, a good name for you. You are a precious tree.”
And then I shiver. I literally shiver there in that heaven of a classroom. Yeah, I say to myself, I am in the wrong place at the right time.
I push away from the laptop and massage my lower back. I know it’s only a prologue and two chapters, but there are three parts, right? This ought to hold Henry for a while, maybe even get me a real advance.
Now if I could only hold the real Ebony…
Drifting off to sleep moments later on the couch, I dream of my precious tree, my E., my Ebony.
4
When I wake in the early afternoon, I realize that I’m hungry. I forget to eat when I’m writing, hot tea and soda keeping me going since I quit drinking two years ago, and the rabbit food in Henry’s refrigerator looks stale, wilted, and rubbery.
I close the refrigerator.
Stale, wilted, and rubbery.
I now know how to grind out the history of the Underhills to start my book. But should I use first person or third? I don’t want it to be a memoir. First-person memoirs get stale and whiny in a hurry, and third person will allow me a little poetic license to be selectively cynical and cruel. Third person it is.
Chapter 1
Peter Rudolph Underhill was a distant descendant of the Vikings and a recent descendant of the Underhills, a stale, wilted, and rubbery people from E
ngland who settled in and settled for Long Island when Long Island was young, Manhattan could be bought for the cost of a pair of bleacher seats at Yankee Stadium, and Native Americans were as yet unconverted by the sword to Christianity.
“Damn, that’s harsh,” I say to the screen. “True, though.”
Captain John Underhill, Peter’s most distant relation in so many ways, got kicked out of or left Puritan New England along with John Seaman and came to Hempstead, Long Island, during the seventeenth century to live among the more tolerant Dutch. There Johnny U. met and married a Dutch girl who promptly died, most likely of boredom because Henry Hudson’s landing spot of Coney Island hadn’t been invented yet, leaving him no choice but to marry an English Seaman girl.
“And the Seamans have been Underhill ever since,” I say, repeating an ancient family joke.
Captain John is infamous for taking part in the killing of 120 Matinecock Indians, the very same Algonquin tribe who taught the early settlers the whaling trade that would rule Long Island for two centuries. And for this “heroism” that pacified a bunch of crabby English farmers, Captain John earned a monument to himself in Mill Neck—the strangest plaque Peter had ever seen. On one side of the plaque, John is hacking Matinecocks to bits with his sword. On the other side, he is reading the Bible to a smiling group of Matinecocks. John’s philosophy must have been: “If they don’t believe in God, I believe that I’ll cut them to ribbons so they can meet God.”
He was not the only Underhill to do this—just the first.
Peter Underhill lived with the other one.
“Okay, Captain,” I whisper. “Let’s write the history of you according to you.” This will definitely not be another chapter of English history, since the Captain was about as English as the English muffins Henry has turning to dark green mold in his refrigerator.
If Peter believed all the stories that his father told him about his ancestry, Peter could write the most amazing tales of adventure on the high seas, adventures rivaling Moby Dick and any book in the Horatio Hornblower series.
Good thing Peter had a public school education and access to a library to keep his family history straight.
According to David Jonathan “The Captain” Underhill, his ancestors made Long Island what it is today. The Captain’s kin were swashbucklers, legendary whalers, and expert sailors—so he said. In actuality, they were whalers and shipbuilders, barrel makers and carpenters, and rope and sail makers until the whaling industry on Long Island collapsed before the Civil War.
“Ah, that would be the life,” the Captain often said about whaling. “Nothing between you and forty tons of wild whale but a sharp harpoon and the deep blue sea.”
Whaling, Peter found out, was a brutal life filled with danger, stench, and little or no pay. Whalers, most of them Native Americans, former slaves, or poor whites with little or no schooling, would leave Long Island for voyages of several years to supply the world with whale-blubber oil, shoehorns, men’s collars, umbrella stays, and hoopskirts.
Once the whaling industry went belly-up, the Captain’s great-great-grandfather became a bay man in his pound boat, dredging the Great South Bay for bluepoint oysters.
“Ah, that would be the life,” the Captain often told Peter about dredging. “Just you in an open boat, drifting or rowing through the shallows using your tongs”—heavy, long, iron-toothed rakes—“to harvest the best-tasting oysters in the world.”
Until the oysters, too, went the way of the whale, Peter’s grandfather dredged with steel-toothed nets and even started using a power dredge before the “Long Island Special”—the great unnamed storm of 1938—gave all those oysters and clams an early grave.
After Grandpa Underhill went to his own whiskey-induced early grave in 1939, Peter’s father became a farmer for a few days. “Too much bending over, too much time on my knees, too much digging,” he had complained. “Potato farming was like dredging on land.”
He drifted along Long Island’s south shore until he landed in East Hampton, where he became a fisherman using shore nets to catch menhaden or mossbunker before hiring himself on to a boat to help bring in cod, striped bass, bluefish, bonito, sea bass, and an occasional shark for tourists.
He also claimed to have saved the country from the Nazis.
“I was there in forty-two,” he used to say to anyone who would listen. “Good thing, too, or we might have had us the Nazi invasion of Long Island.”
According to the Captain, he was the one who found metal boxes that several Nazi spies had buried in the sand at Amagansett.
“I found them, and don’t let anyone tell you different,” he told Peter. “I saw the U-boat, and I found the box, and inside that box was a shovel and a bomb.”
As a child, Peter believed his father’s every word. “My daddy was a hero during World War Two,” he would tell his friends.
“Come to think of it,” I say to myself, “all our daddies were heroes back then.”
While the Captain was indeed living near Amagansett in 1942, he had nothing to do with any of it. He was just a seventeen-year-old boy with a healthy imagination and probably heard John Cullen—the real Coast Guard hero—retell the tale of the shovel, a detonator that looked like a pen, an Army cap, and explosives disguised as a hunk of coal.
After that particular act of heroism, the Captain lied about his age and joined the U.S. Navy, shipping out on the battleship Iowa during both World War II and the Korean War.
And that’s all I know about his war experience. He rarely told me anything about life aboard a battleship, not that I ever asked. I just assumed that he saved the country again and didn’t want to brag about it. Other than the plank of wood from the Iowa’s deck that he had encased in glass to display on the Argo, there are no other artifacts from his military service. I’ll have to do some more research here. It was such a huge chunk of his life—almost twenty years. Knowing him, he was hiding something. Either that or nothing on the Iowa required his particular brand of uncommon valor. I make a note to myself on a legal pad:
Research IOWA (1942–1953):
areas of conflict (if any)
Check Internet, USN records
“Now we can go to Levittown,” I say to my last cup of Earl Grey. I’ll have to get some more tea bags. And some more brown sugar, too. Regular sugar just isn’t sweet enough.
When the Captain got out of the Navy after serving twenty years, primarily on and off the Iowa, he scraped up enough money to put twenty percent down on a house in Levittown—the so-called “Potato Field Miracle,” America’s first planned community. Then he retired and let his military pension pay his bills, acquiring his boat, the Argo, and sailing it whenever he pleased. The Captain seemed to prove the Old Norse adage: “Brave men can live well anywhere.”
The Captain must have liked what he saw at first. He lived in a cramped, tiny house farther from the Sound and the ocean than he probably would have liked, and the house had one spindly tree in the yard, but somehow he stayed and found himself a wife. Maybe he liked Levittown because it was a town full of WW II and Korean War vets. Maybe he liked the block parties, the pig roasts, the volleyball and basketball games, and the conformist nature of the development itself. Maybe he liked the fact that all the houses looked alike, that no homeowner could say that his house was better. Maybe he just liked the closeness of it all, as if he were living on a beached, cramped battleship.
But there isn’t a “maybe” about it. The Captain liked Levittown because it was one hundred percent pure Caucasian.
I save my work so far and run a few searches on the Internet for information on Levittown today. Not much has changed. Just three percent of Levittown is nonwhite, 1,600 (or 0.4%) of 40,000-plus residents are black. Houses that cost $8,000 back in 1948 are selling for $160,000 and up now. The racial covenants in the housing contracts are supposedly a thing of the past, but there are some awful long memories on Long Island. And I doubt that Levittown even has a single nonwhite realtor selling those li
ttle boxes.
The Captain was a racist
my fingers type before I can stop them. I pause a few moments. I’ve been thinking this about my father since I was thirteen, but I’ve never actually typed it or written it down. It’s a powerful statement, and though it’s true, do I want to brand my father a racist forever?
Of course I do. It’s almost as if I have to.
The Captain was a racist. He oozed it in nearly everything he said or did from the time WPA workers showed up along Long Island’s south shore after that terrible storm in 1938. Men, many of them black, were making two dollars a day cleaning up after a storm that wiped out his father. He didn’t see them as helpful.
He saw them as responsible.
“Damn n———showing up like they could do anything useful, getting paid for our misery.”
From that point on, he hated anyone nonwhite. He was culturally, linguistically, institutionally, and environmentally racist, using the N-word and “colored” long after it was socially unacceptable or politically incorrect to do so, even among other racists. He was the only man Peter ever knew who cheered whenever Yankee slugger Reggie Jackson struck out, the only man in Huntington to root for the hated Boston Red Sox because they “only had that one Spic pitcher” (Luis Tiant). Peter remembered him rooting against the Jets in the 1969 Super Bowl since Joe Namath was an “eye-talian” with “hippie hair.” The Captain made Archie Bunker, his favorite TV character, look like the Pope.
“Once them pickaninnies started getting into Levittown,” he would say, “I knew it was time to leave before Levittown became a ghetto like every other colored neighborhood in this country.”
He packed up in the fall of 1963 during “the third year of the reign of that Catholic anti-Christ”—John F. Kennedy, who the Captain considered a “snot-nosed rich kid who got lucky during the war”—and the Captain and his wife Helen Pearson Underhill (a waitress formerly of Troy, New York) moved to Huntington to a house they could barely afford in a neighborhood of upper-middle-class snobs who wouldn’t give him or his family the time of day.