The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup

by Susan Orlean

  “It’s really nice with George,” Tiffany says a little later. Tobin is sitting a few feet away, cradling the phone. “We really discuss things. I do have opinions, but that doesn’t mean they’re right. There are times I might be right, but that’s usually by chance. And there are a lot of times I’ll be wrong. Sometimes it’s like, maybe I’ll be with friends and I’ll put on some clothes and they’ll say to me, ‘Tiffany, that looks awful.’ I’ve been very fortunate to have people who will tell me that kind of thing. I’m not going to be difficult. It really hurts the artist to look difficult. I leave that up to George. Besides, George does it really well.”

  She talks a little about school—a fairly relaxed private Christian high school that has allowed her to come and go as her performance schedule requires. She will be spending more time with a tutor and less in class as the year goes on. Her friends? “Not jealous. If they are, they don’t show it.”

  She says that being in the music business has made her grow up fast, but she recently met some girls who she was sure had already graduated from high school, and she was shocked to find out they were only in ninth grade. She’s cautious about having her hopes up, saying that she wants to be prepared for the day that one of her records doesn’t do well. She had been doing the dishes when she found out that “I Think We’re Alone Now” had hit Number One, and all she said was “Cool.”

  On religion she is heartfelt but vague. “There must be some reason I’ve been given this . . . everything. I hope to do something with it. I think of God as, well, sort of a friend or something I need.” She hesitates and then says, like a solemn showbiz veteran, “Like the way I need my fans.”

  Then she talks a little about music. She admires Aretha Franklin, Luther Vandross, and Stevie Nicks, but it’s really academic—earlier in the day Tobin, with Tiffany at his side, announced, “I’m one hundred percent dominant with the music. If I like something and she likes it, we do it. If I like something and she doesn’t like it, we still do it.”

  Her indulgences to date have been looking for a new house with her mother, going out with boys who are “friends from way back when,” and buying a Saab. “I haven’t really gotten my driver’s license yet,” she says a little sheepishly, “so I can’t really drive it yet. Actually, I wanted a Pontiac Fiero. My friends have them and told me how fast they are. But that’s too tempting for me.” She is so used to being controlled that she shies away from imagining what it would be like to lose it.

  Then she launches into an anecdote about a cousin who used to resent her when she was the youngest kid around and got all the attention and how she doesn’t want to do the same thing to her two stepsisters, who are both younger than she is. It’s the only time that she seems to step out of her caution and let a story loose. “My younger sister now always pinches the dog whenever she walks past him, just to be mean,” she says. “She’s just this little kid, and she needs to control something.”

  THE SHOW BEGINS on time; the hundreds of kids in the audience begin hollering and clapping on time; the band, a group of experienced session musicians who have never performed together before, is spry and businesslike. George Tobin stalks between the soundboard and the video control room, his face set in determination, his arm cocked to push anyone away who tries to distract him at this critical moment.

  Tiffany skips out onstage, deftly switches a dead microphone for a good one, and sings approximately twenty-eight minutes of music. She is a little rushed but mostly on all the cues. She smiles and waves to the audience; between songs she says, “Hi, out there!” and “How are you out there?” She looks cheerful onstage, in a studied but sweet way. It’s not a noteworthy performance, unless you consider that she has never done this before. But she will never have a moment like it again.

  It is a peculiarly cold and dry night for Florida, no balm in the breeze at all. The trees around the stage are waving, and the Disney banners slap against the castle. In the odd light thrown from the stage floodlights, Cinderella Castle looks enormous and historic—it actually does look like a genuine French provincial castle, complete with spiky turrets and embrasures and arrow loops, built in the fourteenth century, instead of what it is: two hundred feet of fiberglass built seventeen years ago. It’s just one of those things that looks absolutely real, but it’s not.

  A GENTLE REIGN

  KWABENA OPPONG, WHO IS THE KING AND supreme ruler of the African Ashanti tribespeople living in the United States of America, has a throne in his living room. The throne is a simple wooden armchair, with squared-off legs and arms and a wide, curving back decorated with medallions and baubles made of pounded tin. At each end of the throne’s back rail is a metal ornament shaped like a sweet onion. The throne was a gift from the Ashanti king in Ghana, the West African nation that is the home of the tribe, to the Ashanti king in the United States. The two Ashanti kings are in somewhat different situations: The Ghanaian king is royally born, richly rewarded, divinely inspired, and holds his office for life. The American Ashanti king is elected every two years from the ranks of an Ashanti social and cultural organization called the Asanteman Association of the United States of America, Inc. The first Stateside king, Kwadwo Tuffuor, was a plumber. The second, Kusi Appouh, repaired air-conditioners and refrigerators. Kwabena Oppong is the third king; he drives a cab.

  At the time he was elected, Kwabena Oppong was given the throne, which he will keep until January, when a new king takes over. He was also given the title “Nana,” which is an Ashanti term of respect and means something like “Beloved” or “Your Honor.” The people in the tribe now always address him as Nana, and he will be called Nana forever.

  When I first met Nana, he was living with his family in a two-bedroom apartment in River Park Towers, a high-rise housing project in the South Bronx, near Yankee Stadium. This is hardly a kingly address, but the apartment was cheery and not without touches of royalty. In the living room, besides a large rubber plant and a furry mustard-colored couch and matching love seat, there were four strikingly large framed photographs—one of the current African Ashanti king, Otumfuo Opoku Ware II, in opulent ceremonial garb, and three of Nana Kwabena Oppong at his coronation celebration, at the Roosevelt Hotel, in New York City. A brass-and-wood plaque that said NANA KWABENA OPPONG CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR ENSTOOLMENT AS ASANTEFUOHENE OF NEW YORK 23RD MAY 1987 was propped up on a small side table. The throne was wedged between the couch and a color television set.

  Nana’s four-year-old son, Dennis, greeted me at the door and then ran into the living room, grabbed a bag of Cheetos, and sat down on the throne. The television was tuned to Jeopardy. Nana waved to me from the kitchen, where he was standing with the telephone balanced on his shoulder and his hand cupped around his ear.

  “One of my people,” he said, pointing to the phone. “I’ll be done in a minute.” He listened for a moment, with a worried look on his face. Then he spoke briefly in Ashanti. The language has a lot of gs and ns, and seems to erupt from the back of the throat. When spoken rapidly, Ashanti sounds like bubbling stew. When Nana speaks, it sounds like a gentle simmer. He spoke for a few more minutes, and then ended the conversation, looking considerably cheered up. He walked into the living room and handed me a Diet Coke.

  “Everyone always has a problem for the king,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s just the way it is. If you’re going to be king, you find that out. Now, let me drink first, please. In Ashanti tradition, the host has to drink first to show he hasn’t poisoned the drinks.” As he sipped, he glanced across the room. “Oh, Dennis, get off the throne now!” Nana said. Then he let out a deep sigh. “I really can’t help it,” he told me. “The kids sit in it all the time.”

  At the time, Nana was in the first year of his reign and was just getting the hang of being a king. “I definitely love being the king,” he said, after Dennis was dethroned. “But sometimes things aren’t exactly the way they seem. This job can be so bothersome. Some of the time, I really don’t love the bother.” He went on to sa
y that as king he is expected to act many roles—to be, in effect, a combination of supreme court justice, party planner, marriage counselor, religious leader, master of ceremonies, diplomat, and icon. He is regarded by his tribespeople here as the surrogate for the king in Ghana, and is often called on to settle personal, marital, and business disputes; he is the central figure at the monthly meetings of the Asanteman Association; he has to travel to important Ashanti occasions in other American cities; and his attendance is expected at all the Ashanti social events in the New York area. Every Ashanti I’ve met has been either gainfully employed or in school, but the parties come in a constant stream and usually last all night. It’s a rare week that goes by without an African holiday or a funeral, a wedding, a picnic, a puberty celebration for a young girl, a sweet sixteen party for an older girl, or an event called an “outdooring,” which is a baby’s coming-out party. (In old Ashanti tradition, babies were kept inside for a week after birth, so the spirits wouldn’t be tempted to snatch them back.) “Africans love to party,” Nana explained. “I have to go to all of them. Sometimes at these events, I don’t have to do anything. I don’t speak, eat, or drink at ceremonies. But I have to be there. The king has to be there to make it an event. Sometimes it interferes with my driving the cab.” A typical week for him is likely to include fifty hours of driving the cab, thirty or forty phone calls from Ashanti wanting something, a party, and a meeting of the association.

  Nana has an entourage of a queen mother (who is neither his wife nor his mother but another association member, elected as second in command, who specializes in women’s and girls’ issues) and eight or nine elders, including a chief linguist, who is the Ashanti equivalent of a White House spokesman, and a number of junior elders, who oversee various neighborhoods and give counsel. In the long run, though, the headache of being king derives from the fact that Nana is the one who is constantly in demand. That afternoon, for instance, after we had been speaking for only a few moments, the phone rang. Nana went into the kitchen and answered it, listened for a long time, spoke in Ashanti briefly, and then came back to the couch. “That was a member of the club who wants to know how to send the body of his brother back to Ghana for burial,” he said. A moment later, the phone rang again: “Someone wants to make sure I’ll pour a libation and make a blessing before a wedding.”

  Later: “I’m arranging a performance of our cultural group, with drumming and dancing. That was the guy who is making the invitations.”

  Later: “That was a man who needs help in getting a loan and also needs a ride to the meeting next week.”

  Later: “That was another man in the club—he’s having a problem with his wife. I have to go over to his house this evening.”

  Much later: “Someone trying to sell a newspaper subscription. That one wasn’t an Ashanti.”

  Nana has a few other royal accoutrements besides the title and the throne: several robes made of gorgeous Ghanaian fabrics (“I wear them only for special ceremonial times. When I’m not king anymore, I’ll have to give them back”); two Advent loudspeakers (“We use those at meetings and for performances of our cultural group. I don’t like having them, because I have to take them in my car anyplace the club needs them”); an umbrella of deep-gold silk edged with fringe (“The umbrella is very important. Ghana is very sunny, and you don’t want a king walking out in that sun”); and a small wooden stool filled with the spirits of his tribe’s ancestors. The stool is a representation of the sacred Golden Stool, which, according to Ashanti legend, was divinely created and delivered to the first Ashanti king as a symbol of his supremacy. When an Ashanti king ascends to the throne, he is said to have been enstooled. The stool gives Nana’s wife, Georgina, the creeps, so she keeps it hidden in the bedroom closet and lets Nana bring it out only for ceremonial use.

  Nana does not, as Ashanti kings traditionally did, receive gold dust, wives, slaves, or cattle for his trouble, but he has often said that being king has changed his life. “I’ve learned so much about people that I never knew before,” he told me. “I’ve learned a lot about communicating. Before, I didn’t know much about other people’s ideas or their actions. Now my knowledge has been broadened. The people give me so much love and respect. That’s what I’ve liked most about being king.” Although very little in his life up to now might appear to have prepared him for the job, he seems to have taken to it instinctively. He has quickly become comfortable with the attitude of royalty—one of his boilerplate phrases is “A king’s greatness is his people”—but if he ever savors the loftiness of his position he has clearly not let it turn his head.

  “Everyone knew Nana would be a good king,” one of the elders said recently. “He’s fair, and he loves his people. During his reign, he has got more and more respect. The more we see how humble and warmhearted he is, the more we see the intensity of Nana.”

  Another one of the elders says, “I wasn’t sure what kind of king Nana would be. But Nana has fitted into the job very well. It isn’t easy being king. It’s a touchy thing. You have to be without any arrogance at all. After all, once you become the king your people look up to you and serve you. Your life changes. You have to act kingly. For instance, even at the height of provocation you can’t strike anyone. You can no longer dance, like a common person. You receive special consideration from the rest of the Ashanti. If you walk in the room, people bow their heads. If you go to the airport, your people carry your suitcases.”

  NANA’S PUBLIC SITUATION has occasionally made him see his private situation differently. For instance, he told me that day that he thought the housing project he and his family lived in was going downhill as fast as his station in life was going up, and he was planning to move as soon as possible. “There are drugs and other problems—it’s not the way it used to be here. It’s not good for the kids,” he said. “Anyway, a king isn’t supposed to live in an apartment in the Bronx!” He told me that after considering the options he had decided to buy a house in Teaneck, New Jersey, because the greenery of New Jersey reminded him of the part of Ghana where he grew up.

  Ghana is a modern concoction of regions ruled by neighboring but not necessarily neighborly tribes, of which the Ashanti is the largest. During the sixties and seventies, Ghana’s economy crumbled, and its government, formed in 1957, when the country (called Gold Coast until then) was granted independence from Britain, followed suit; there are people who say that for a time in Ghana the coups were more regular than the trains. A coup in 1979 put a flight lieutenant named Jerry Rawlings in power. Rawlings calls himself a radical populist and is a member of the Ewe tribe, which has never been in what anyone would describe as total harmony with the Ashanti (although, as it happens, he is married to an Ashanti woman). In the second half of this century, it became fashionable for any Ashanti who could afford it to go to Great Britain or the United States for college. Rawlings’s rise to power, combined with the continued failure of Ghana’s main crop, cocoa, convinced even more Ashanti to leave. Most have families back in Africa and still think of Ghana as home. There are probably close to ten thousand Ashanti in New York, mainly in Brooklyn and the Bronx, and about twenty thousand living elsewhere in the United States.

  “The Ashanti have become a traveling tribe,” an association member named Kojo Nsiah-Amanquah told me after describing his own pilgrimage from Ghana to Temple University, in Philadelphia, to study insurance. But when Nana first announced his intention to move approximately twelve miles, from the Bronx to New Jersey, a certain amount of panic broke out; some members of the tribe worried that a king in Teaneck would be less accessible to them than a king in the Bronx, and insisted that Nana consider their opinions and concerns before relocating.

  One of Nana’s favorite words is aggravation, which he pronounces like a drumroll, with five or six syllables: “ag-gar-ra-va-tion.” By his standards, aggravation is a condition that exists in this world in almost unlimited supply, and has almost unlimited negative potential. Aggravation, in its specific Nana-exasp
erating form, is what happens when something like deciding to move to New Jersey, which comes with its own raft of difficulties, takes on a new load of complications because it is perceived as a matter of royal policy. Nana told me that he considered all the anxiety unfounded, but, as aggravating as it might be, it was his duty to smooth things out and assure everyone that once he was in Teaneck he would be as available as ever to carry out his responsibilities as king. He called a number of the worriers individually and pleaded his case. As another gesture of appeasement, he announced that as soon as he moved he would quit his job as a cabdriver, which keeps him out of reach for hours at a stretch (he admitted that, because of his driving schedule, he was making a lot of royalrelated calls from phone booths), and instead take a job in a Laundromat. “A king in Teaneck doesn’t seem to be a problem to me, but some of the people are really worried,” he said. “I keep telling them, ‘There will be no problems with New Jersey. I’ll be here for you, just the way I am now. There won’t be any problems.’ You see, if the king is in New Jersey they can still call anytime. A king in a cab is actually much harder to get on the phone.”

  WELL AFTER NANA’S REIGN is over, it will live on both in the memories and on the videotapes of the members of the Asanteman Association. A crew of cameramen, hired by the club, films almost every social event, and I got accustomed to receiving invitations like this one:

  FLASH! FLASH! FLASH!

  THE KING’S WELCOME DANCE IN

  HONOUR OF

  Osabarima Nana Kodwo Mbra V

  Omanhen of Oguaa Traditional Area

  MUSIC BY = GUMBE SOUNDS

  SUPPORTED BY DISC JOCKEY

  VIDEO BY = AGYEMAN RECORDING

  STUDIO

  SPECIAL ATTRACTION = CROWNING OF

  MISS OGUAA

  In fact, the first time I went to a meeting of the association, the proceedings were delayed for an hour while members viewed videos of Nana’s coronation and then filled out forms to order them. There were two different tapes—one shot in a standoffish, scan-the-crowd, public-television style befitting a House of Windsor affair, and the other more in the manner of a home movie, with a number of blurry close-ups of Nana’s left cheek and ear. There seemed to be a lot of enthusiasm for both tapes. “It’s important that we record all this for posterity,” the queen mother, a tall, bashful nursing home attendant named Ama Asantewaa, said to me as we stood in the group of people watching the monitors. “The Ashanti have a high sense of history, so we like to have records of everything that goes on.”