by Paul Beatty
But Winston had the power to stop the violence. Oftentimes when he came upon a scene of aggression the combatants stopped pummeling each another, unsure on whose side Tuffy, the neighborhood superpower, might intervene. Winston imagined himself dressed in a suit and tie, his face superimposed on the political circular. But the daydream quickly slipped away from him. In his mind the handbill yellowed into an Old West wanted poster. “Wanted for Councilman Eighth District—Winston Foshay. Start the violence!” Winston released the flyer into the slipstream. I’d be a good-ass politician, though. The sheet of paper boomeranged in the wind and reattached itself to his hip like a house cat afraid of the backyard wilderness. Winston folded the flyer and stuffed it into his back pocket.
“Tuff, it was dead bodies, the whole nine.”
“Yup.”
“We still alive.”
“Yup.”
“Culture cipher, my brother. The fundamental black man manifest as the elemental hierarchy of the earth-sun dichotomy—”
“Don’t start.”
“Yacub—”
“I’m serious, don’t start.”
Fariq gave up trying to enlighten Winston to the ways of the knowledgeably holy five percent, and ran through possible acronyms for I-N-R-I to occupy his hyperactive mind. If Needed, Resurrect Immediately. Idolatrous Necrophilia, Religious Intercourse. Inspected—Natural Redwood Immobilizer. Is Nothing Really Important?
“Tuff, I bet you that I-N-R-I is Latin for some shit.”
Tuffy’s head was buried in the market’s night box, trying to talk to the proprietor through three inches of Plexiglas; if he heard Fariq he didn’t answer.
I Negro—Remedy Intoxication.
3- TUFFY AND YOLANDA
Winston didn’t realize how drunk he was until he arrived at his apartment and couldn’t insert his key into the lock. After a few misses he resorted to the method he picked up from watching his next-door neighbor return home after a payday binge. Bending down and closing one eye, Winston placed his left index finger on the keyhole. With his right hand he pressed the tip of the key into his left shoulder. Using his left arm as a guide, he slid the key into the lock with his right hand. Winston opened the door as quietly as possible, rehearsing his excuse to Yolanda for why he didn’t call. “I was at Keith’s crib and that nigger’s phone is off, so I sent Taurus to tell Jamilla to tell Yusef to tell Laura to call you. But I didn’t know Yusef got a restraining order against Jamilla after she set him on fire for fucking Wanda. Turn out that fool under house arrest anyway, and couldn’t tell Laura or nobody else nothing, nohow.” He was slowly making his way down the dark hallway when a block of light from the bedroom illuminated him like an escaped convict.
“Don’t worry about trying to creep, the baby woke.”
“All right.”
Walking past the bedroom, he hurriedly made his way to the bathroom.
“You not going to come see your son?”
“What, he got a mustache? I know what he look like.”
Winston took a no-handed piss. He held up the sandwich bag. The goldfish was swimming in water murkier than Winston’s alcohol-laden urine. Wedged in one corner, the fish opened his mouth every two seconds, as if he had something to say but couldn’t remember what it was. Flushing the toilet, Winston dangled the bag over the whirlpool, contemplating ridding himself of one more responsibility. “Seat,” Yolanda called out.
“Down,” he grumbled, a long, whispered “Fuck” lingering behind him as he headed for the kitchen. Taking a deep casserole dish from the cupboard, he filled it with tap water and spilled the goldfish into it. The fish swam an appreciative lap in its new home. Winston flicked the glassware, calling the fish to attention. “Is it safe?” Yolanda was giving him time to fix a quick meal before she went into her de rigueur Impertinent Black Mama act. Winston went to the refrigerator and removed a stick of margarine and two large flour tortillas. With a match he lit the gas burners and flipped the tortillas over the open flames. When the tortillas showed the first signs of charcoal burns, he whipped the hot disks onto the counter and ran the margarine stick over the doughy circles. Rolling the tortillas into dripping tubes of oleo, Winston chewed and tried to think of a name for the fish. Yolanda’s voice rushed into the kitchen, demanding obedience like God talking to Abraham. “Turn off the stove, wash your hands, then bring me some Kool-Aid.”
“Dustin,” he said to his pet. “Since you’re a survivor, like Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man.” Winston dipped his finger in the water and began poking the fish in the head. After each jab he’d lean close to the water and ask his light-headed pet, “Is it safe?”
Yolanda was sitting on the edge of the rumpled bed breast-feeding their eleven-month-old son, Bryce Extraordinaire Foshay, Jordy for short. Upon hearing his father enter the room, Jordy released Yolanda’s nipple with a loud, wet smack. A bridge of drool sagged between the tip of the mother’s teat and the baby’s chin. As Jordy turned toward his father, the link of saliva snapped and the spit rope swung into the baby’s chest. Winston looked at the clock radio on the nightstand; it was two-thirty in the morning. A happy little gurgle bubbled from Jordy’s throat and the males greeted each other with puffy-cheeked smiles. “What up, little nigger?” Winston said, bussing his son on the forehead.
“I told you about that. Where you been … big nigger?” Winston sheepishly opened his mouth to speak, ready to unravel and inflate his prefab excuse like a passenger jet’s emergency slide. “Don’t even feel it, Tuff.”
Winston closed his mouth, offered Yolanda the Tupperware glass of Kool-Aid and a bite of his tortilla. She waved him off. He sat next to her. She had the gruff look of a cop standing two steps away from a car pulled over on the highway, one hand on her gun, asking to see a driver’s license and inquiring how many drinks were had this evening. Winston sobered up quickly and told his story, spraying tortilla crumbs over Yolanda and the baby. Whenever he reached a turning point in the tale, he illustrated the episode by removing the appropriate item from a pocket, then tossing it on the mattress: first the gun, then the empty bag of pork rinds, followed by the bubble-gum fortune, and lastly a thick rubber-banded roll of bills. Winston finished his tale, stuffing down the last of his tortilla. He licked his oily fingertips and waited for a reaction. Yolanda examined each piece of evidence carefully, looking for a flaw in the story. She read the bubble-gum fortune, snickering at the comic: “Bazooka Joe’s hilarious.” She placed the bag of pork-rind crumbs over her nose and mouth and inhaled, testing it for freshness. Whipping the bag behind her back, she snapped, “What’s the expiration date?”
“Yolanda, please.”
“I know your ass, you always check.”
“July nine.”
Yolanda examined the date and grunted. She inflated the bag with a quick breath of air and loudly popped it against his head. Handing Jordy to Winston, she picked up the gun, expertly ejected a bullet from the chamber, aimed at her reflection in the bureau mirror, then, with cowboy élan, spun the firearm around her finger. Anticipating a misfire, Winston tucked Jordy into his chest and ducked beside the bed.
“Baby, what the fuck you doing? That thing’s loaded!”
“Don’t worry, I put on the safety. You been running around with a loaded gun in your pocket with the safety off. Lucky thing hamburgers don’t have legs, ’cause you might have had to chase one down and shot your dick off.”
“Take a bigger gun than that—magnum maybe.”
“Yeah, sure.” Yolanda put the gun underneath the mattress, then yanked the rubber band off the roll of money. Licking her thumb, she quickly counted the money into neat little hundred-dollar stacks. Winston was whisking a giggly Jordy through the air and making airplane noises. “Stop it, you going to keep him up.”
Winston sat back down on the bed, bouncing the baby on his knee.
“You mean to tell me Smush just lent you seven hundred dollars.”
“He didn’t want to at first, talking about he would have t
o liquidate some stocks, but I liquored that nigger up and guilted him into it. Besides, it’s his fault I almost got killed.”
“How is it his fault?”
“Nigger know I didn’t want to work in Brooklyn.”
“Tuffy, why can’t you tell Smush no?”
Yolanda started to pout and busied herself restacking the money. Pretending obliviousness to her irritable mood, Winston nuzzled Jordy’s snot-encrusted nose. Yolanda placed the money in the top dresser drawer, removed the baby from Winston’s arms, and walked into the living room. As she belted her black satin nightgown with one hand, she issued Winston a caveat: “Better be a goldfish in here.” Winston kicked off his shoes, folded his arms behind his head, and lay back on the pillow, awaiting the tirade. “How this stupid nigger get to be my baby’s father?”
“You know damn well how—I wooed the fuck out of you.”
Yolanda had been working as a cashier at the Burger King on Fourteenth and Sixth Avenue, the filthy one around the corner from the YMCA. It was her first job since she’d started going to school part-time at York College, and even after six months she was still a gung-ho serf in the Burger King’s fast-food realm. She wore her paper crown with pride, pretending that every customer was possibly a mysterious Burger King plain-clothed inspector making a clandestine inquisition of her franchise. Super-sizing the Whopper Combo orders with a smile, and never forgetting the “Thank you, come again” salutation, Yolanda had a reputation to live up to—her photo Scotch-taped to the Employee of the Month plaque.
She didn’t notice Winston and his posse enter the store, each hooded druid bundled in overstuffed down jacket, ski mask, headphone earmuffs, shaking the December snow from their bodies like wet dogs and stomping their boots on the just-mopped floor. The group was bunched up at the counter jostling for position when Winston spotted Yolanda salting the french fries. He’d only gotten a glimpse of her, but already there was an expanding hollow in his chest. A machine in the kitchen emitted a long beep and Yolanda’s thick, tight body glided over to a silvery panel. She pressed a button, mindful of her long cherry-red fingernails, and removed a batch of breaded chicken pieces from a deep fryer. Winston saw several rings on each hand—a sign, he thought, that she might have a man. Yolanda placed the chicken in the warmer, and her squat profile revealed the arc of her right breast. The brown polyester pants gave her buttock a sexy sheen in the store’s fluorescent light. Her face Winston couldn’t see, since her head was turned. She was talking to the manager about some take-out trivialities. Winston stared at the nape of her neck, exposed by a granny-bun hairstyle. He shivered. Yolanda turned, topped off a soda, and faced Winston. Seeing him standing there transfixed, she started, then smiled. Their eyes met, and they were instantaneously on page 6 of a Harlequin romance novel on a spinning pharmacy book rack.
As she made her way back to her register, Winston retreated a few steps and let his hungry friends surge ahead of him in line. That wasn’t no “Welcome to Burger King” smile, Winston thought. Baby trying to say a little something. Yolanda avoided Winston’s stare. As she took the orders of his friends, she absentmindedly stroked the thin baby hairs meticulously greased to her temples, silently repeating the dating mantra passed down by generations of black women: Niggers ain’t shit. Niggers ain’t shit. Niggers ain’t shit.
“Next person in line, please,” Yolanda politely called out. Winston bellied up to the register and gazed at the menu. He took his time, carefully choosing his opening words to the woman he knew would be the love of his life: “One Whopper cheese, no pickles, no onion. Two king-size chicken sandwiches, light on the dressing.”
Yolanda repeated the order into the microphone, hiding the thrill she felt in the back of her throat. “Will there be anything else, sir?” Oops, she walked into it, the lounge lizard’s classic window of opportunity. Yolanda gripped the microphone tightly and steeled herself for the inevitable pickup line.
“Yes—large onion rings and two apple turnovers.”
Yolanda felt both relieved and disappointed. Maybe he didn’t like her. Maybe he wasn’t staring at her but at the conveyor belt of greasy burgers behind her. She looked into Winston’s cupcake-brown face and repeated his order. Remembering her customer protocol, Yolanda pushed the fries and beverages. “Would you like to try our new cheddar cheese curly fries and something to drink?”
“I’ll take an orange soda.”
“What size?”
“ ’Bout your size.”
Yolanda blushed but didn’t waver a second. “That be about a medium.”
Winston laughed, leaned over the countertop, and shouldered his way into her life. “You from Queens.”
Normally Yolanda would ask a customer to step aside so she could take the next order. Now she glanced from Winston’s face to his hands, marveling at the smoothness of his skin. “How can you tell?” she asked.
“The dolphin earrings, the cellophane-crimped bangs, more silver than gold on your wrists. Might even have a little Long Island in you.” Though Winston’s deductions were correct, Yolanda pretended to be unimpressed with a sassy “Sooo.”
“Where at? Hollis? Kew Gardens?”
“Queens Village, near the track. That okay with you?”
“Long as you ain’t from Brooklyn, I’m straight. You got a man?”
Yolanda held up her hands, showing off her collection of department-store promise rings.
“But can he be burnt?” Winston asked.
“Light a match.”
Holding trays of lukewarm burgers in wax paper and brimming with more jealousy than they’d care to admit, Winston’s boys chided him into hastening his mack.
“Let’s be out, Chubbsy Ubbsy.”
“Oh, Miss Crabtree, I have something heavy on my heart.”
“You going to have something heavy on your lip in a minute.”
“Baby girl going to have something heavy on her lap in minute.”
Winston struggled to resist the gravitational pull of his boys. He didn’t want to succumb to the forces of friendship physics, huddle up and get into a bitch-this-and-bitch-that round-table synopsis. Yolanda rescued the conversation by acknowledging the nappy-headed ballast hindering the weightlessness of puppy love. “Your team cock-blocking and shit.”
“Yeah.”
“What’s your name?”
“Winston.”
“What they call you on the streets?”
“Tuffy.”
“Yolanda.”
Yolanda slid Winston a brown tray overflowing with food he didn’t order. Jammed into a forest of french fries, a two-inch figurine of the Burger King surveyed his cholesterol domain. Impaled on the king’s lance was the receipt with Yolanda’s phone number scribbled over the subtotal. Winston dropped a bundle of crumpled bills in her hand and assured her of a phone call that evening. A macho “All right then” and he was off to share his spoils with the homies, forgetting the change. As Yolanda watched him plod away, she wondered what her friends would say when she showed up at the club with a big-boned roughneck. She could hear Tasha now: “That huge nigger sure is ugly, hope he can sing.” With a smile at her musing, she called out, “Next,” and without looking back Winston answered, “Me, goddammit!”
Their first and only date was a Christmas Eve boat tour circumnavigating Manhattan. Yolanda and Winston met at the Battery Park marina, Winston punctual for the first time for an appointment that didn’t involve a court proceeding. Yolanda arrived an independent woman’s mandatory fifteen minutes late. Winston flashed the tickets he’d bought a week in advance and the giddy couple ran down the gangplank, elbowing past the out-of-towners and racing up the spiral stairs to the upper deck. Yolanda sat next to a porthole window and Winston squeezed in beside her.
“Got enough room?”
“Plenty.”
Winston lifted Yolanda’s curls and a cold sea breeze raised goose bumps on her neck. She braced for a kiss; instead, Winston slapped a Dramamine patch behind her ear. “Wha
t’s that?” Yolanda asked.
“In case you get seasick.”
“Thanks, but the boat don’t go but two miles an hour.”
“Knots.”
“I know.”
As the boat chugged around snowy Gotham, they talked over the droll tour guide, defining the landmarks for themselves. “See that building?” Yolanda asked, pointing at a limestone-and-steel skyscraper, “I used to work there two summers ago—thirty-second floor, in the cafeteria.”
“For real? You know that tan building right next to it? I used to slave there, Strudder, Farragut, and Peabody.”
“What’d you do?”
“Kept the fax machine from getting clogged.”
“That’s it?”
“My shit was high-tech, right? I lasted two whole days on that one.”
The roof speaker crackled, “Ladies and gentlemen, I know it’s a cloudy night, but those of you with binoculars can see the Rikers Island guard towers just past the Triborough Bridge. Commissioned in 1936, Rikers Island jail is the former residence of nefarious felons such as the Son of Sam, alias David Berkowitz, child-killer Joel Steinberg, the Cosa Nostra don John Gotti, and Harlem drug lord Nicky Barnes—”
Yolanda stood up and waved at the distant jailhouse. “Ahoy, Luscious and Tabitha! Jasmine, what up, girl?” Winston hissed and looked down at his feet. “You okay?” Yolanda asked, knuckling the brooding boy on the chin. “You know somebody in Rikers?”
“Please, I know much niggers on the rock.”
“ ‘Many niggers,’ or ‘a lot of niggers,’ ” Yolanda corrected.
Winston nodded, blinking to hold back his tears and a slew of sins past, present, and future. “You got bad memories?” Yolanda asked. Winston kept looking at his feet. Yolanda pulled on Winston’s earlobe, stroked his eyebrows, looking for the hidden lever that spins the bookcase, revealing the secret room. Winston raised his head and took a deep breath. He unlocked his chest plate and removed his armor piece by heavy piece. Fuck it. Winston started with his first arrest at age thirteen after a summer’s day spent shoplifting and chain snatching with every teenage boy from the block. At dusk, he and the posse were walking down Forty-fifth Street, nineteen deep—pissy drunk, brash and boisterous as soldiers on a three-day pass. Someone shouted “Pockets!” pointing at a man exiting the movie house. Before the sex fiend noticed the red-eyed wolf pack surrounding him, they were on him. Four kids grabbed a pocket and yanked. With a loud Mama-making-Sunday-morning-dustrags tear, the man’s pants fell apart at the seams. His billfold dropped to the ground and vanished before he had a chance to shout “Hey!” Coins and peep-show tokens clattered onto the sidewalk and raced around his shoes. The man scrambled after what remained of his belongings, trying to hold up his shredded pants, and fight off the boys, who descended upon the coins like pigeons upon breadcrumbs.