Oreo

by Ross, Fran

  They went back to Slim’s office, where he had Oreo sign a release saying she had been paid for doing the commercial and had no further claims on Mr. Soundman, Inc. Then he gave Oreo ten dollars.

  “How much would a pro get for doing that?” she asked.

  A LOT MORE, his balloon admitted.

  “Well?”

  Slim handed her another ten dollars and held up his REMINDS ME OF SAM SCHWARTZ cardboard again.

  Oreo shrugged a “So what can I tell you?” and shook his hand.

  Oreo outside Mr. Soundman, Inc.

  She stood in the doorway and saw a curious procession coming down the street. A black pimp and ten prostitutes, five white, five black, in alternating colors, wended toward her in a ragged V, a checkerboard wedge of wedges. The pimp’s walk reminded Oreo of Fonzelle, her brother’s friend. But Fonzelle’s was a heavy choreography, this one lighter, more fluid. It was as though the pimp were swimming down the street, a swan breasting the current for his cygnets. The cob would take two stroking steps, glide to a stop, flutter his arms ostentatiously to his hips, turn to see that he was still followed at a respectful distance, and continue downstream. His clothes seemed to grow out of him, hugging his lithe, sigmoid torso more snugly than a suit of lights a torero’s sinuosity. He was fledged in a suit of pearlescent pink velvet, a soft dawn-gray shirt, a blushing-rose string tie. His long-billed velvet cap raked this way and that as he skewed about to check on the progress of his brood. The rake’s progress, Oreo thought, and laughed to herself. Occasionally he paused to buff his nails, perking his chest with anseriform hauteur. When he stopped, the women stopped; when he moved on, they followed. Oreo decided to name him after an adulterer and, as a student of British history, dubbed him Parnell.

  The first woman behind the pimp carried a high stool and a white parasol. She was obviously his bottom woman, since she had been entrusted with his throne. She was white. The next eight pens in the bevy carried only their purses and a pent-up expression. The last woman in line, black, carried a shoeshine box with a built-in footrest. His next-to-bottom woman, Oreo surmised. Only the favorites got to do all the extra work. Oreo’s assessment of their relative rank was supported by the fact that all the women except the first and last were wearing similar crotch-high red dresses, while the bottom women wore pink ones that matched Parnell’s suit, enabling the dullest observer to distinguish the stars from the chorus line at a glance.

  The group passed Mr. Soundman and came to a halt in front of the next stoop. Parnell casually turned to face the street and crossed his arms. He uncrossed them long enough to snap his fingers, then crossed them again. The white bottom woman placed the stool under his bottom, the parasol over his head, and the pimp sat, one rose-booted foot on the middle rung of the stool, the other straight in front of him. He snapped his fingers again. The black bottom woman approached him, carrying the shoeshine box as though it were a chalice. She lifted his foot from the ground and placed it on the footrest.

  The two bottom women then stepped to either side of him. He snapped his fingers again. The two queens nodded to their eight ladies-in-waiting. The first of the eight took a deep breath, knelt before her liege lord, and began shining his shoes. After about five minutes of creaming, buffing, and polishing, the pimp snapped his fingers.

  It’s a wonder the friction from all that finger-snapping doesn’t set his phalanges on fire, Oreo was thinking, when she saw that the pimp was repaying his bootblack—or, rather, bootrose—with a boot in the behind. Oreo was alone in her surprise. The two queens were impassive, the ladies-in-waiting stolid. The shoe polisher herself apparently regarded the boot as her customary tip. She merely rubbed her rear and hurried up the steps of the building in front of which all this took place. She disappeared inside.

  Oreo did not persist in her surprise when she saw that this ritual was to be repeated through all the women in line: the polishing of the boot, the booting by the boot, the hotfooting it into the building. By the time the last woman had snapped her rag at the rose-colored boots, the sun was virtually recoiling from the surface of the leather. Sunbeams gratefully ricocheted away whenever Parnell wiggled his toes. Another finger-snap and the two queens helped him off his stool, which one retrieved while the other fetched the shoeshine box. As the two women turned to go up the steps, the pimp gave them both a resounding whack on the bottom, this time with his hand, further proof that they held a special place in his balls.

  He stood on the sidewalk, one hand on his hip, gazing with shielded eyes at his coruscating boots. All his women were inside, but he seemed to relish just standing there on the sidewalk.

  Oreo estimated that half the block was watching from windows and doorways just as she was. Finally, she could stand it no longer. She reached into her handbag and put some loose change in the middle of one of the ten-dollar bills Slim had paid her. She crushed the bill lightly around the coins and bounced down the steps, humming to herself and swinging her cane. She walked briskly past Parnell, smiling a free and open smile.

  She was a step beyond him before he spoke. “Hello, big stuff,” he said softly, “where you going with your bad self?”

  Oreo didn’t answer.

  “Not speaking, huh? Dicty, ain’t you, Miss Siditty? Okay, hello, small stuff,” he said in a put-down voice.

  Oreo turned, looked at his crotch, pointedly assessing the cob’s cobs, and said, “Hello, no stuff.”

  “Ouch!” he said. “You got me that time, baby.” He smiled and glided toward her.

  Oreo smiled back and dropped the money. The coins tinkled all over the sidewalk, but the pimp did not make a move toward them. His eyes glommed on to the ten-dollar bill. Oreo pretended to be preoccupied with gathering all her coins. She turned away from Parnell. In that split second, he bent over to pick up the bill. In the second half of that split second, Oreo turned back to see a lovely close-up of his rear. She drew back her walking stick like a pool cue and (decisions, decisions) leaned toward ball-breaking or buggery. Oh, hell, she decided, I don’t want to get pimp shit all over his nice cane. She switched her grip and instead gave him a grand-slam clout across the ass. If his howl meant anything, it meant that he was now the only person on the block with four cheeks to sit on. Parnell staggered and fell into the gutter. As Oreo ran down the street, she saw three things happen. One, a sanitation truck came into the street. Flush! Two, all up and down the street, witnesses to the flushing, at the extreme edge of hysterical laughter, clung to their windowsills (Parnell’s suit was ruined, but the water merely beaded on his boots and ran back into the gutter). Three, Parnell’s women appeared at the door, a look of revelation on their faces.

  11 Cercyon

  Oreo catching her breath around the corner

  She smiled her cookie smile every time she thought of Parnell’s sodden rise from the gutter. His arms extended like wings away from his soiled and dripping suit, his fingers spoked out from his palms at a web-splitting stretch. Oreo hoped that the look of revelation on the faces of the prostitutes meant that they had discovered Parnell was vulnerable. If one stranger could whip his ass, why not ten friends?

  Oreo knew she would have to be careful as she roamed around the neighborhood waiting for her father to show up at the whorehouse. Parnell did not look like the kind who would take to humiliation like a swan to lakes. As soon as he changed his clothes, he would probably be out looking for her—a drag, since she had to hang around to try to catch Samuel before he started catting.

  Oreo was hungry. She ducked into a luncheonette, sat in a booth in the back, and ordered a hot-sausage sandwich, a Shabazz bean pie, and a Pepsi.

  The woman behind the counter, obviously the owner, was huge, a giant high-yellow Buddha. To the tune of “St. Louis Woman,” she sang, “I hate to see my only son go down, I hate to see my only son go down.” She repeated these lines thirty-seven times. The repetition was driving Oreo mad—she wanted to hear the rest of the parody.

  The woman beckoned to her when the sausag
e was ready. Oreo carried the food to the booth herself. No one else was in the place. The woman did not seem inclined to talk, had merely grunted, to show she had heard, when Oreo ordered, and now went back to her copy of Vogue. Oreo did a double take. Vogue? She had misjudged the woman. Harper’s Bazaar, yes; Vogue, no, she would have sworn. Oreo now saw that she had missed the gaining-circulation squint of the eyes, the condé nast flare of the nostrils. Oreo was disappointed in herself. It was like mixing up the Brontës. After all, Branwell’s staggering style was not Anne’s.

  The whole episode was an affront to Oreo’s judgment, and she resolved to be less quick to snap in future. For example, what of the only son the woman was so musically concerned for? Oreo could not refrain from wondering, Is he real or imaginary? She was at first inclined to think real. A woman with the proprietor’s solidity gave one the impression of practicality, a reflex grasp of—no, a stranglehold on—everyday life. Such a woman, with her banana fingers, might well despair of the sexual proclivities of any son who was not a Kodiak bear and hence, to forestall such despair, would train up her child in the way he should go, which would be in any direction but down. Any blow jobs connected with any son of this mother would be to, not fro. Another point: the reader of Vogue was ofttimes a traditionalist. A traditionalist would wear at all times—waking and sleeping, resting or laying waste the countryside—a wedding ring. Oreo looked again at the banana fingers of the left hand. No band of gold bruised the bunch. This, of course, was not conclusive proof. It would be hard to find a ring that could contain those plantains. What is more, a store owner might think it politic to keep valuables that were not for sale out of sight of thieves. But Oreo felt that if this woman had a ring, she would wear it—and let thieves come if they dared. No, she was not married; she had no relatives, not even a sonlike nephew to sing about. Nephews who worked for her would toil around the clock and think twice before complaining about the low wages—and there was no nephew in sight. Q.E.D. The copy of Vogue was again the crucial clue. It took imagination to persist in reading a magazine whose cover date was January, 1928. Yes, the only son of the song was—mirabile cantabile (which in Oreo’s pidgin Latin meant “wonderful to sing”)—imaginary.

  Oreo finished her bean pie, took a last swig of Pepsi, and paid the check. She said good evening to the proprietor, who grunted, licked her finger, and turned a page of her magazine. This Sakyamuni was now sitting on one of her counter stools, her apron hammocked across her knees. If she sat like that much longer, impassive and idol-like, she would present a cruel temptation to deranged incense burners in the neighborhood.

  Oreo pushed open the screen door. She raised her chin to sniff the dark, peppery air outside the luncheonette, when suddenly her left arm made a distinct L behind her back. Her walking stick was jerked from her right hand. She turned her head. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Parnell. “Oh shit,” she said softly.

  “Um-hm,” Parnell gloated. “Got you by the short hairs this time, baby.”

  “Can we talk this over?” Oreo asked.

  “Oh, we gon talk it over, all right—and then some.” Parnell was marching her down the street with her arm still behind her back, making no attempt to hide the fact that he was coercing her. People looked on with perhaps a shade less curiosity than they would have lent to a change of traffic light.

  One man greeted Parnell with “What’s the haps, my man? See you got a new worker for the vineyard. She saying something too. Choice cut, man, choice,” he said, looking Oreo up and down. She looked him up and down in retaliation, but he didn’t notice as he swung down the street.

  Oreo wondered whether to use WIT on Parnell right on the street, but she decided to wait and see what kind of game he would try to run. She told him there was no need to twist her arm. “I’m not going anywhere. I’ll go along with your program.”

  “You better believe it. I got something special in store for you, baby. You really gon dig it. That is, it gon dig you.” He chuckled to himself at his turn of phrase.

  They turned into Parnell’s block. He relaxed his grip, out of fatigue. She could see now that he was wearing a suit of identical cut and style to the fine pink feathers he had strutted earlier. This one was midnight blue, more appropriate for evening. His boots too were blue-black and scintillated like a vein of anthracite struck by a miner’s Cyclopean lamp.

  The hustler hustled Oreo up the front steps. Inside, the first floor was dark. All she could see was a light under a door at the end of a narrow hallway. They went up the stairs to the second floor. Parnell opened the door into a large square room with a huge wrestling mat in the center. On chairs around the periphery of the room were one little, two little, three little prostitutes, four little, five little, six little prostitutes, seven little, eight little, nine little prostitutes—where was the tenth? Oreo wondered. The black bottom woman was missing. The nine young women looked as if they were about to greet Oreo as a sorority sister. They started to make a place for her along the wall.

  “This is the bitch that ruined my baby-ass-pink suit—and put my ass in a sling,” announced Parnell. He tenderly touched his behind.

  Oreo translated their collective murmur as “Oh-oh, too bad for you, honey.” Behind their masks of loyalty, Oreo thought she detected a tentative snicker at Parnell.

  “Now she gon get hers this evening,” Parnell said. “Just in case any you bitches begin to begin to think you can run some shit on me, I’m gon show you what happens to little girls whose mamas didn’t teach ’em no manners.”

  All this time, Oreo had been flexing her arm, ready to fling Parnell to the floor as soon as things got a bit sticky. But she was curious. She still had not peeped his hole card.

  “Now, y’all have heard rumors to the effect that I’m keeping some kinda way-out instrument of torture in that spare room.” He cocked his head toward a door at the opposite end of the room, cater-cornered from where he and Oreo were standing. “I want to tell you in front that this is one heavy torture, chicks. I ain’t had to use it on any you yet. Y’all been good little girls, humping your hineys off for li’l ol’ me. But this bitch”—he gave Oreo an extra arm twist, which she added to her revenge list—“this bitch is something else. It gon be my pleasure to see her split wide open.”

  Oreo was getting a little worried now—she might actually have to hurt Parnell. If push came to shove, how many of these women would fight for Parnell once she made her move and started pushing and shoving him all over this room? Would she have to rack them all up? And what the fuck was this instrument of torture?

  Parnell snapped his fingers, and all heads snapped his way. He pointed to the woman farthest from him. “Knock three times on that door, then step aside.” The woman looked puzzled but did as she was told. Nothing happened. “Knock again—harder,” said Parnell. The woman had no sooner lifted her knuckles after the third knock than the door burst open. She did not step aside soon enough and was knocked down as something—Oreo at first thought it was a small white horse—rushed out and bore down on them. Oreo looked again. It was a man, virtually on all fours, caparisoned in a black loincloth.

  He cantered over to Parnell and nuzzled his hand. Parnell patted him, and the man straightened up as far as he could, to a slight stoop. He was deeply muscled. His withers twitched as though covered with flies. His dark forelock covered his eyes like a shade as he pawed the ground, impatiently waiting for Parnell to tell him what to do.

  “This is Kirk,” Parnell said, stroking the man’s back. “Kirk is from out of town, folks. Say hello to the bitches, Kirk.”

  Kirk raised his upper lip and nickered, showing teeth long and strong, with a decided overbite.

  “Thattaboy,” said Parnell. “We got your first American playmate for you, Kirk. Young and juicy. You like that don’t you, Kirk?”

  Kirk pawed the ground twice. Oreo assumed that meant “yes” and that “no” would be indicated by one hoof-strike.

  “Strip for the ladies,” Parnell
said, pantomiming to make sure he understood.

  After a moment of incomprehension, Kirk did as he was directed. A gasp went up from the nine prostitutes. Parnell looked, and looked again, with a “What hath God wrought?” expression of envy on his face. Kirk’s equipment unfurled like a paper favor blown by Gabriel at the last party in the history of the world. His demanding “digit” made undiscriminating Uncle-Sam-wants-you gestures around the room.

  Oreo was impressed. Male genitals had always reminded her of oysters, gizzards, and turkey wattles at best, a bunch of seedless grapes at worst. On the other hand, most marmoreal baskets (e.g., the David’s) resembled the head of a mandrill (a serendipitous pun). An inveterate crotch-watcher, she had once made a list of sports figures whom she classified under the headings “Capons” and “Cockerels.” The capons (mostly big-game hunters, bowlers) were men whose horns could be described by any of the following (or similar) terms: pecker, dick, cock, thing, peter, prick, dangle, shmendrick, putz, shmuck. The cockerels (gymnasts, swimmers) sported any of the following: shlong, dong, rod, tool, lumber. Neutral words (member, penis) were applicable in cases where the looseness or padding of the standard uniform made definitive assessment impossible (baseball, basketball, football, hockey, and tennis players). But Kirk’s stallion was a horse of another collar, of such dimensions that he could have used a zeppelin for a condom.

  “Are you planning what I think you’re planning?” Oreo asked cautiously.

  “Um-hm,” smirked Parnell.

  “No-o-o!” the checkerboard Greek chorus chorused plaintively. Parnell silenced them with a glance.

  “Does the fact that I’m a virgin get to you?” Oreo asked.

  Parnell smiled as at a baby’s funeral. “Just makes it all the juicier.” He gave her the look of the expert. “Besides, you prob’ly lying. At your age, looking like you do? No way.”