by Tim Sandlin
“Are Grenadians black?”
Gilia’s hair was in a ponytail, which excited me for some reason. She looked clean and wholesome, like untracked snow. I guess no boy can resist putting tracks in untracked snow.
“Spanish, I think,” she said, “but maybe black. Jamaicans are black and Grenada is somewhere near Jamaica.”
“My garbage disposal predicted a war against black people.”
“That’s interesting.”
“Actually, my housekeeper, Gus, predicted the war against black people, but she heard it from the garbage disposal.”
“Seven thousand marines against construction workers could hardly be called a war.”
I went on to explain Gus, which is no easy trick. She’s six feet two inches tall, and twenty-five years ago she played basketball for North Carolina A & T, back when girls’ teams had six on the floor instead of five the way they do now. Gus reads the New York Times every day and dabbles in the stock exchange, but she believes there’s a sign that migrates around the body, putting hexes on various organs. She won’t eat cranberries or tuna and she once punched out a UPS driver who called her Aunt Jemima. She’s saving her money for a personal home computer.
“We had a black maid but Mama accused her of wasting toilet paper. Now she won’t hire anyone but Quakers,” Gilia said.
“I saw a black woman at Skip’s. She wouldn’t speak to me even though I asked politely if anyone was home.”
Gilia slid the check to her side of the table. “That’s Phadron. Skip hires illegal aliens who don’t speak English. Ryan says Skip threatens them with deportation if they don’t sleep with him and Katrina can’t do anything to stop it.”
“Sounds like a sad situation.” I made a grab for the check but she snatched it away. A traditional Southern woman would have protested delicately, but still let me win.
She said, “I suspect Katrina does her share to balance Skippy’s sins. She’s been awfully chipper the last few days.”
“Chipper?”
“Mama suspects the tennis pro.”
***
That afternoon a thin man in an extremely cheap suit showed up on my doorstep. I’ll wear a sports jacket now and then, but I stopped wearing suits after Lydia told me the neck tie is a phallic symbol. I’m not ashamed of having a phallus, but I sure as heck don’t brag about it.
The man called me Mr. Callahan.
“My name is Sam. I don’t like being called mister; it’s too male.”
“Here, Sam.” He handed me some official papers.
“This is a legal document,” I said.
“You think fast,” the thin man said.
The papers were from Wanda by way of a lawyer and signed by a judge.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Vernon Scharp.”
“Do you enjoy process serving?”
He looked at me to see if I was condescending or interested.
He must have decided I was interested. “I could tell you stories that would straighten your hair,” he said.
“I imagine you run into a lot of shoot-the-messenger mentality.”
“Shoot, knife, and beat with a baseball bat.”
“I’m asking because I own a golf cart manufacturing company, and I’m certain we could find a job for you at the plant.” I gave him the address and told him to speak to Gaylene. “Work for us and you won’t have to wear that suit.”
“What’s wrong with my suit?”
The papers said I was not to dispose of any assets; piddly amounts were okay, but big ticket items were out of the question. I read the papers carefully, then filed them in a jack-o’-lantern.
***
Thursday, I did lunch with Billy Gaines. We met at Tijuana Fats where he asked if I had any plans for the future and was I seeing anybody—Dad kind of stuff. I was touched that at least he tried. He even wrote my birth date and shirt size in his pocket calendar.
I didn’t tell him about the two death threats I’d received in the mail. They were written in purple ink on the title pages of L’Idiot de la Famille by Jean-Paul Sartre and Cancer Ward by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. If I had Clark for a son, I would probably take my supposititious heir to lunch myself.
***
Supposititious is my new word of the month. Say it slowly—supposititious. It means a person you’ve never seen before who shows up out of nowhere, claiming to be your child. Imagine: a special word for people in my situation. Supposititious comes from the same word as suppository. Don’t ask me why.
***
Bastard is another special word for people in my situation. Fatherless. Born of an unwed mother.
The disgrace of being a bastard never bothered me much, growing up. For a long time, I didn’t know it meant anything specific. Bastard was simply another insult, like squirrel or douche bag, that children yelled at each other. Dothan Talbot was the one who taunted me with bastard most. He was the one who explained in detail exactly what the term meant and exactly why I was one. I didn’t care. I had impregnated Dothan Talbot’s girlfriend and everyone knew calling me names was nothing but lame sour grapes.
The single practical skill Lydia taught me as a boy was not to give a hoot what anyone thought of us. That’s a rare attribute in junior high, but with the town character for a mother and a daughter by the eighth grade, I’d have been in big trouble without it.
***
I telephoned Lydia to see how the poison chew toy saga came out.
“Wire me five thousand dollars,” she said. “I need it today, tomorrow may be too late.”
“For bail or lawyers?”
“The Politics of Pudenda is the most important treatise written in this country since Female Eunuch. It will change the very foundation of society.”
“I’m more interested in whether you murdered the President’s dog.”
She made the exhaled sound of impatience. “Hank did one of his chants and buried an antelope liver next to the warm springs. FedEx lost the package.”
“Is this cause and effect?”
“Sam. Listen when I talk. We’re in a bidding war with Simon and Schuster, I must have five thousand dollars today. This afternoon.”
“Oothoon Press is in a bidding war with Simon and Schuster?”
“Are you so pussy-whipped by the harlot you can no longer fathom the English language?”
“Are radical feminists allowed to say pussy-whipped?”
“In Politics of Pudenda Muriel Blackwell has a plan to end all wars and injustice. She calls for an international ban on the male gender owning private property. Once the greed motive is removed from men, women can stabilize society.”
“Her theory sounds fascinating, Lydia, but I can’t send any cash right now.”
“Sam.” Her voice was loud, on the edge of frantic. “Oothoon can’t change society without that money.”
Oothoon Press got its name from a poem by William Blake. Blake’s Oothoon is raped—“Bromion rent her with his thunders”—then her husband accuses her of asking for it; says she enjoyed being raped. So he seals her in a cave. Lydia calls this the Every-Woman story.
“Don’t most publishers make a profit on books and use that to buy more books?”
“Spoken like a true anal-aggressive. Where would the world be if Virginia Woolf’s publisher thought about profits?”
“My life wouldn’t be any different.”
There was a moment of silence. “Wire the money, Sam.”
“Wanda slapped a temporary restraining order on my assets.”
“So?”
“So if I give you five thousand dollars they might put me in jail.”
“I am not giving up Politics of Pudenda for that cow. You can just go to jail for your mama; my work is more important than yours anyway.”
Interesting leap of logic. I decided to change the subject. “How’s Maurey?”
“Here’s an idea. Transfer all the family funds into my name. That way Wanda can’t rob you blind and I’ll se
nd out whatever you need to get by, just like you do for me.”
I didn’t say anything. The only way to handle a conversation with Lydia is to shut up and frustrate her. Hank Elkrunner learned that long ago, but I never quite caught on.
Lydia said, “Pete drug in this week. Hank says there’s something wrong with him.”
“There’s always been something wrong with Pete.”
“I can’t believe I raised a homophobe.”
“What’s wrong with Pete has nothing to do with him being gay. He was a weird kid years before he turned to men for comfort.”
“Pete brought his lover home with him. Chet is a polite boy who supports my campaign to re-educate America.”
“Shannon moved a man into her room.”
“Good for Shannon.”
“They pant and grunt all night and he sits in Caspar’s rocker.”
“You should have burned that chair when the old goat died.”
“Things aren’t going well here, Lydia. I could use some motherly compassion.”
“For five grand I’ll ship you all the compassion I’ve got to spare.”
***
I looked pudenda up in my Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary. It’s the plural of pudendum—the external sexual organs of a woman, which is roughly what I had figured. Pudenda is Latin for something to be ashamed of. Chew on that fact awhile.
18
I wrapped a towel around my waist and stepped from the bathroom of room 247 at the Ramada Inn to find Katrina Prescott sitting on the edge of the bed in her bra and panties, crying.
“What’s the matter?”
“You don’t love me.”
I blinked twice. “Am I supposed to?”
“My husband doesn’t love me.” Her voice was fragile. “My son doesn’t love me. You’d think at the very least, my lover would love me.”
I didn’t know what to say. Maybe it’s because of the early years with Lydia and Maurey, but I’ve always saved love for family and friends. Lovers were something different.
Katrina’s hands twitched in her lap as she whispered. “Nobody loves me.”
I wanted to deny that, but when it came time to say what she needed to hear, I failed.
“Katrina, you threatened me with repercussions if I refused you sex. It’s hard to love someone who holds you with threats.”
“I love Skip.”
I sat down. “Jesus.”
She said, “Christ.”
***
Wanda telephoned.
“You have a beautiful voice, Wanda.”
“Where’s the money I was promised?”
“Have you thought long and hard about coming home? I want you to consider saving our marriage as an option.”
“You’ve broken every promise you ever made me. I don’t know why I dreamed this time would be any different.”
“I haven’t broken every promise.”
“Name one.”
“I was nice to your mother.”
“Mom thinks you’re a sleazy bastard.”
“I was monogamous, like the vows said we both should be.”
“Go ahead, rub my face in it.”
“Most women like a man who’s monogamous.”
“Sam, you are lousy in bed.”
“Let’s shoot for a second opinion.”
“No wonder you’re obsessed with your tongue. It’s bigger than your dick.”
“No one’s ever complained.”
“Your daughter is a slut.”
I was silent awhile, thinking. “Wanda, I changed my mind. I don’t want you to come back after all.”
“Sensitive, aren’t we?”
“Have a nice day.”
I hung up.
***
When the phone rang, I was standing crucified halfway up the climbing wall. I’d positioned a two-inch lip to stand on and Katrina had strapped each outstretched arm to pitons wedged into plaster artificial cracks. Back to the wall, literally and metaphorically, my major fear was falling off the lip and ripping out both shoulder sockets.
What happened was I had made the mistake of using the old “I’ll bet you have fantasies you’ve never told anyone” line. Katrina’s fantasies are considerably more complicated than your average woman’s fantasies—nothing as tame as lick-the-anchovy on a merry-go-round.
According to Katrina, all her life—from puberty anyway, which to hear her tell it came at six—she had dreamed of decking herself out in a cheerleader uniform and dancing for Jesus on the Cross. Don’t ask me; I think it had something to do with being raised Catholic. All those years of kneeling before a nearly nude longhair twisted her sense of desire. She said each night after she said her prayers and before she went to sleep, she would reach up and touch the man hanging over her and wish he were real.
Saturday afternoon after my household had left for the day, Katrina showed up in the Page High red sweater and white pleated skirt and her hair in pigtails. She did warm-up cheers while I hung naked on the wall.
Two bits
Four bits
Six bits
A dollar
All for the Pirates
Stand up and holler
Then she jumped high, squealed, and came down in splits. Twenty-five years out of high school, yet the woman had the flexibility of a teenage gymnast. She hung a pom-pom on my penis and pranced around the room, doing kicks over her head and shouting “Go, team!”
Playing Jesus was okay; I’d always had a crucifixion complex. Also, I was exactly the same age as Christ when they nailed him.
What I didn’t like was hanging from a climbing wall with a pom-pom on my dick. I’d never even climbed the climbing wall, which was actually a bunch of Matolius Simulators bolted to oak. I only bought it for Shannon because a few years ago she decided she had to go out to Wyoming and climb the Grand Teton. That summer, she did—zipped right up the sucker. She came home all jazzed for rock climbing, but by Christmas she was into mountain biking and had abandoned the climbing wall, never to touch it again. I’d forgotten we even owned the thing until Katrina realized the possibilities of suspending Jesus six feet off the floor.
So, the phone rang and Katrina brought it over on the long cord, and she stood on top of a Nautilus bench press bench to prop the phone between my shoulder and ear.
“Cowboy, your life is about to take a turn for the worse.”
“Is this Skippy?”
Katrina dropped down a couple steps and commenced to suck.
“I recently purchased a seven-millimeter Mauser with your name etched on the stock.”
“Skip, I fail to see why you are angry with me.”
“Consider this a last warning.”
“I’ve never done anything to you.” I looked down at the part in Katrina’s hair. Her scalp was a concrete-colored furrow aimed at my belly. She was working amazingly hard, for a married woman.
“Tomorrow your S is going to hit my F.”
I’ve always had mixed feelings about the blow job. It feels terrific, but over the years men have taken a superior attitude toward women who give oral pleasure. Appreciation gives way to power, which leads to the cocksucker charge.
“What exactly do you want me to do?” I asked.
“Buy time on every radio station in town.”
“Ouch, not so rough.”
“Go on the air and announce you are an illegitimate bastard with no notion of paternal lineage. Hell, say the whore gave virgin birth if you want, just put a stop to rumors of my involvement.”
“I haven’t heard any rumors of your involvement.”
“I’m faced with snickering at the club. Even my wife has started to doubt my innocence.”
Skip’s wife switched her attention from the head to the ball sac.
“You should have thought of that thirty-four years ago.”
“Last warning, hear. Tomorrow, your name is mud.”
After Skip hung up I couldn’t lift my head and release the phone for fear of
cold-cocking Katrina. I simply hung there with a twisted neck while she mangled my privates.
When Katrina came up for air, she asked, “What’d Skipper want?”
“The usual.”
“Let’s trade places.”
That’s when Gus walked in.
***
“You got that nice Gilia girl fooled into thinking you’re all right. Why you want to go sticking your pork where it don’t belong?”
Gus was baking pumpkin pies—dozens of pumpkin pies. She’d taken one look at me spread-eagle on the wall and marched straight into the kitchen where she banged pans together until Katrina gathered up her pom-poms and went home.
I stuck my finger into a cooling pie. Gus swatted at me. “That’s not for you.”
“Twenty-five pies and I don’t get a bite?”
“You don’t deserve a bite. Get out of my way.”
“She asked me to do it.”
All my women can be fierce when they decide I’m stupid, but Gus can look bigger and meaner than any of them. “Ever’ time a woman ask you to do something, you have to do it?”
“I can’t very well say no.”
“What you can’t do is pork any woman that lets you pork her.”
“Why not?”
“Goddamn, you’re a fool.” Gus stalked to the oven, thrust her hands into mitts, and began shuttling pies in and out.
Throughout adulthood, I have been promiscuous as hell when I’m single and monogamous as hell when I’m not single. No exceptions; no compromises. Should Gilia and I ever formalize the connection, I would be true and blue for however long we stuck together, right up to death do us part. But in the meantime, according to my take on right and wrong, it was perfectly fair to relax with Katrina. I was in the right.
Of course, this nifty rationale blew to smithereens at the thought of Gus telling Gilia what Katrina and I had done on the climbing wall.
“What’d you come back so soon for?” I asked. “I thought you were gone for the afternoon.”
Gus straightened. “I got home and found your letter in my apron. Figured you better read it.”
“Someone sent me a letter?”
“Black woman. A black woman writes a letter it must be important. Black woman isn’t going to send you chitchat.”