God's Gym

by John Edgar Wideman

  At last someone arrives from a door I hadn't noticed, addressing me, I think.

  Sorry. Your visit's been canceled. Computer says the inmate you want to visit is not in the facility. Call the warden's office after 9 A.M. Monday. Maybe they can give you more information. Sorry about the mix-up. Now please stand back. Step away from the gate so the next...

  Fanon

  "Today I believe in the possibility of love."

  —Frantz Fanon

  I.

  ON THE SCREEN they are chopping up Lumumba and burning his body parts in an oil drum. Two thick, red-faced, unhappy louts. Brueghel peasants sweating through khaki uniforms, working overtime to clean up the Belgian king's mess. I imagine Chantal beside me, imagine us going to a bar after the movie, and maybe I'll attempt to explain my reaction when I was a kid and first heard Lumumba's name. His name and the others—Kasavubu, Mobutu, Tshombe. Names embarrassing me, sounding like tom-toms, like jibber-jabber blabbered through big African lips at Tarzan or bwana in Hollywood movies. Black, sweaty native faces. Fat eyes rolling and showing too much white. Would I tell her I'd heard my white friends giggling at the funny names even as the news reported rape, massacres, chaos in faraway countries. Terrified Europeans fleeing, wild Africans seizing power. Mumbo-jumbo names. Cannibal names. Nigger names coming to get me. Lumumba-Tshombe-Mobutu-Kasavubu.

  In Accra, Ghana, in 1960, Frantz Fanon met Patrice Lumumba. Both spoke French, Chantal's language, both were thirty-five, and in the next year both would die, Lumumba murdered in the Congo at the beginning of 1961, Fanon succumbing to leukemia in the U.S.A. at the year's end.

  Today I'm much older than these dead men lived to be, these fallen heroes once old enough to be my fathers. Now I am old enough to have a son of thirty-five. How could so many years be lost in an instant. Everything and nothing changing. When Lumumba and Fanon died, I was a boy setting out to conquer the world, a world that, by disposing of them, had expressed its scorn, its determination to prevent boys like me from conquering much of anything. Mercifully or unmercifully, I knew next to nothing about either man back in 1961; I was full of myself, studying hard to win a college scholarship, intoxicated by what I believed were infinite possibilities, unlimited time. Now I understand (and believe me, derive no satisfaction from the fact) that my ignorance of these men, of their countries and legacy, did not indicate simply a personal failure of imagination. Particular kinds of information and knowledge had been erased by my education. Erased ruthlessly, systematically, with malice, just as Patrice Lumumba, Frantz Fanon, and countless others—perhaps our best women and men—have been struck down and erased.

  Neither Chantal nor I recognized the face stenciled with black spray paint on a greenish gray metal shed whose purpose we didn't recognize either in a field we passed each day on our walks back and forth to the beach. Though we remained slightly curious about this somehow familiar face staring back at us, the face and the Arabic script beneath were small details during the three weeks we spent on Martinique over a Christmas holiday a dozen years ago. We were too busy falling in love. Busy fucking our brains out, so to speak. The island a perfect third partner, nibbling, provoking, overloading our senses, enslaving us subtly as we became accustomed to the constant attention of sun, palm trees sighing, the surfs murmur, the breeze's caressing fingers. But once it had registered, the face, like the island's enchanting complicity, never entirely disappeared.

  Strangely, the hotel staff, other guests, shopkeepers, couldn't name the face, and most claimed to be unaware of its existence in the field where a few pale long-horned cattle were tethered near the road's edge to graze. Could the face be one of the island's fabled ghosts, a revenant, playing us. If we stopped believing, if we blinked, would it go away.

  One afternoon a young man on a bicycle, an island native whose small round head bristled with spiky braids, happened to be pedaling toward us, idly zigzagging from one edge of the road to the other, and reached us just as we were opposite the shed. In English, French, and sign language we hailed him, and Chantal asked about the face. Straddling his undersized bike, supporting its weight with one foot on the ground, he stared at the shed, as if surprised it had sprouted in the field since his last trip up the road. Then he firmly shook his head, no, no, turning over his brown hands to prove they too were innocent.

  A big smile said he wished to be helpful, but he shrugged his bare, bony shoulders after a glance at the shed. Now his turn to be curious, checking out Chantal, meeting my gaze for the first time before quickly hiding his eyes behind long, curled lashes. I could hear his thoughts. Whoever else I'd become, wouldn't I always be a shy, skinny brown kid daydreaming on a bike. Who are these strangers worried about a face painted on the side of a metal box, a beat-up face and gang tags and scribble-scrabble writing. Why are these people minding my business, stopping me, bothering me about a face nobody sees, this pretty blond woman and a man as brown as me with nothing better to do than stroll half naked, white hand in black hand, like trouble itself, up and down my road, on my island, asking questions about stuff nobody with good sense cares about, not asking my name, not offering some little work and tip, why else they think I be pedaling the live-long day up and back, up and back, scuffling for a little change.

  When we reached the entrance to the beach, I looked back over my shoulder. The boy hadn't moved from the spot where we'd left him, the minibike, his long, lean body sidesaddle astride it printed hazily against the glare, a Giacometti stick figure frozen yet moving, watching the field sleep.

  Fanon didn't claim the crude, spray-painted replica of his face until I recalled he'd been born there, on the French island of Martinique, and once that connection had reconnected in my brain, other memories were freed—his face in a photo snapped during the first Presence africaine conference in Paris in the fifties, his face on the back cover of The Wretched of the Earth, a color shot of him illustrating a magazine review of Black Skin, White Mask. Of course it's Frantz Fanon. Who else. Why had it taken me so long to recognize him. To recognize the sadness and anger of his gaze. His eyes staring through me. Who are you. Why are you here on my island with this woman. Is it so easy to become one of them.

  On the rooftop of my apartment building one morning last fall, the draft of my Fanon book open, waiting for me to begin again, I was distracted by an enormous plume of dark smoke billowing above the skyline. A constant scream and hoot and whine of sirens in the streets below. Before long tenants who'd been watching TV began to gather on the roof, and from their stunned, disbelieving comments I learned that planes had rammed the Twin Towers and the giant buildings were burning.

  Just the day before, in an oddly begrudging, ambivalent biography of Frantz Fanon written by a guy who seemed basically to mistrust and underestimate Fanon's intelligence even as he painstakingly constructed a monumental life for his subject, I had read that Fanon defined the Third World as a colossal mass facing Europe and that the Third World's project must be to resolve problems to which Europe has found no solutions. The face stenciled on the wall was speaking again: Someone's tired of waiting for Europe. The project has begun.

  ***

  According to the dreadlocked brother waiting tables at Aunt Kizzy's snack stand, this road should take us to the best beaches. I'm losing faith as the road narrows, roughens, ain't hardly road no more, an obstacle course of steep ruts, hulking boulders, potholes, a mud-colored track between margins definitely not road, to my left reedy muck that could swallow the tiny rental car without a burp, to my right squatty trees whose gray roots and branches braid into an impenetrable tangle running low along the ground. Glimpses of ocean pop into view, the promised land drawing me on. I dodge rocks, drop blindly over precipices where there might or might not be more road for the tires to grab.

  After a steep climb, we shed a rocky wall blocking our view and below us, at the foot of an immense seam of stone, sea sparkles, visible to the horizon. I slow the car to take in the view. Just beyond a jumble of boulders edging a stone
shelf that's pocked and furrowed like an ancient face, yes, yes, golden sand stretches. A few bodies are visible sunning on exposed ledges or hunkered in caves of stone, but the beach appears empty as paradise.

  Blacktop now, the road descends as abruptly as it rose, continues on level ground. Woods conceal the water until we reach a line of tall trees straight and bare as fenceposts. Through rows of black trunks we can cop peeks of crackling ocean, sand bleached nearly white just before it meets turquoise water.

  This is what we've been looking for. Hungry for. Remember how quickly we unpacked the car. You never looked more gorgeous, girl. Your orange sarong transparent as orange tissue paper as you chaloupe in and out of shafts of light spilling through a roof of leaves and branches. Returning to the day now, I don't need to invent to make it perfect. Blue sky, hot sun, whitecaps breaking on miles of gloriously vacant beach.

  Forgive the guidebook tone. Your memory for detail better than mine anyway. This map I'm drawing more for me than you. Stopping time on this page so the island can't change.

  We swam naked. Or rather, you swam and I played in water up to my chest, performing my clumsy riff on body surfing, wishing I hadn't grown up in a city with segregated pools, wishing I'd learned to be a fish like you. When you shoot out of the water next to me, grinning from ear to ear, you look so fine I have to scoop you into my arms. Your hair's plastered like dreadlocks to your skull, bright beads of water stick to your lashes, pearls on the tips of your ears. Then you slide down my chest into the water and while I grip your hands you float on your back, a spoke in a turning wheel, till you kick back into my arms and I lift you again. Breakers smack our backs, splash our faces. The water's roar drowns whatever silliness we holler back and forth. I'm pulled deeper by the current, a step too deep, and a wave punches my feet out from under me. I lose my grip on you and you stroke into a high foaming wall of water, last thing I see until I pop up and regain my footing, spitting, coughing, arms flailing like I'm beating out a fire.

  Later that afternoon company arrived. A few strollers up and down the beach. Some clothed, some not. So it was demi-paradise, roll your own rules. No need to cover up, you decided. Nothing to hide from strangers a city block away, meandering along the water's edge. Then a tall guy tanned black as a native settles down maybe twenty yards away, spreading out his towel nonchalantly, pretending to ignore us but really—I spy on him as intently as he spies on you—he can't take his eyes off you. Belly-flopped on the hot sand, peering over the top of my book, I try to guard you and let you go, pretending the man's eyes can't hurt you, can't spoil our privacy.

  I hoped I could slay my demons that day by watching another man's eyes on you, a white man no less. Believed I might free myself of jealousy that day and maybe in the days to come if I stayed clear about what could or couldn't be stolen from us, what couldn't be owned or possessed.

  I was mistaken. Even before the shouting match next morning, I had been squirming all night watching you in other men's arms. Black men, white men, doing whatever they pleased with your body. You offered them the same eyes, same lips and smiles you offered me. I woke up angry, drenched in sweat. Aroused and ashamed. Hungry for you. Afraid to touch you. I hated myself for making you up, making up the island. Scrubbing it clean of shadows. Playing hide-and-seek with Fanon's face. Stealing an island that belonged to its African dead. Who will never own it, never leave. Their screams, bones, and blood the island's flesh.

  One of those thirty-minute downpours kept us in bed the last morning on Martinique. While the weather cleared, we drank coffee and talked. At first light I'd gone outside to the little covered terrace, tried to ignore the bad dreams, calm myself with the ritual of fixing our coffee on the propane stove. Back beside you, waiting for you to waken, I'd listened to the silence of the sky darkening, then to the palm trees rustling and rattle. Do you remember how they imitate the sound of rain pounding long before the rain starts, then the same sound again after rain's over.

  The white guy staring at you on the beach yesterday. What do you think he was thinking.

  Nothing much. Men, black or white, believe it's their duty to stare at women.

  His stare white not black. The master checking out his property.

  Black or white. Why is there always a difference for you. The man on the beach could have been gay, peeping at you maybe. Or black and white. Black or white makes no difference to me. I have probably been with more black men than white. To my eyes black men, they ... you are more beautiful, more fun usually.

  Forbidden fun.

  Yes and no. Plenty of French people do not like to see black with white. But not like in America. Not your terrible lynching.

  Black or white doesn't matter in Paris, right. Except black more beautiful, huh. Plenty of handsome Africans and West Indians to pick from. Why bother with white fellas. Why fuck that Antoine.

  Why are you speaking in such an ugly way. Years since I've seen Antoine. Why are you talking about him. I love you.

  You're not being honest with me. Or yourself. You say you've known him ten years, C'mon. That ain't no casual affair. Your Great White Hope, you just don't want to admit it.

  Stop it. I've known him a long time, yes. But no way we were lovers that long. Never really lovers. Not love like we have. For years at a time I might not see him.

  Except when he called, you'd go. Right. And fuck him again, right.

  You're not listening. I've told you many times that was a small part of it.

  But it always happened, didn't it. Must have been some kind of special attraction. Why would you keep going back, if not. His whiteness maybe. A change of pace from your fun black boys. A little white-French-boy homecoming for you.

  Don't be an idiot. If he was passing through the city and I had no attachments, why not see him. I never said I didn't enjoy his company. If I was free when he called, we'd get together. It happened a few times over the years. I never wanted more. Believe me, I could have made it more. I'm sure he liked me, but I knew better than to fall in love with a man like him. He was terrible with women.

  Okay. Maybe you were smart enough not to fall in love. But you weren't willing to give up on him, either. You left the door open. Let him use you.

  We used each other. He needed help on a project in the Caribbean. It was winter. I was between jobs. Broke. Depressed. New York can be so gray and horrible in February. He offered me work. A week on a tropical island. Why would I say no.

  More than a job, wasn't it. You both understood quite well he was offering more than a job.

  He was my friend. A man who could make me laugh. Of course I said yes.

  If a condition of the bargain is fucking him, isn't that more than friendship.

  Is it. No one forced me to do anything. I chose to go. Enjoyed the trip. I needed to be away from the city. From my troubles. Needed someone to look after me, make me feel alive, feel like a woman.

  I guess he did just that, huh. Made you feel like a woman.

  Not the way I feel with you. Not the way I feel with you on our island, my love. Please stop. A different time, a different place. Not our island.

  Different, you say. Another island, you say. Different time. Different place. Fuck that. It's always the same goddamn island.

  Dear Chantal,

  It's raining this morning, and I hear your voice teaching me Verlaine. Il pleut dans la ville. Il pleut dans mon coeur. Stumbling out of bed last night to pee, I stubbed my toe. Cursed myself. Cursed the inventor of wine. No need to check the clock. Every night my 3 A.M. terrorist slaps me awake. Tortures confessions from me. Some nights I never get back to sleep. With so much misery and murder everywhere, why should anybody sleep soundly. The clock's ticking. Time's running out. The 3 A.M. wake-up call reminds me I'm not exempt. I can't be black and white, rich and poor, guilty and innocent. Ain't never been rich but you know what I mean, jellybean. Ashes, ashes, we're all falling down.

  But I'm not writing to fuss about the state of the world. I'm writing to say
hello. How are you? Where are you? We've lost touch so I can't mail this epistle, but I'm going to bundle myself up in it and walk the streets like one of those sandwich-board people. Perhaps a kind stranger will read the words and pass them on to another stranger and so forth till one day a stranger passes them on to you. Wouldn't that be something. Would it be enough to bring you back from the dead. Summon me from the dead. Where, oh where has my sweet lamb strayed.

  II.

  She's alone, sitting up in bed watching dawn ignite the window blind's edges, arms hugging her drawn-up knees, remembering how quiet Paul became the last morning on Martinique. Quiet after shouting accusations, after bruising her shoulders, after making love. No more questions about other men. He'd become one of them, his features blurring, dissolving, any man, no man. She remembers his empty, unfocused smile when, finally, he got up from her side and stood naked at the bathroom door. Remembers herself naked too, sitting up like this, wondering who he saw. Wonders, would he be jealous today if she told him she's fallen in love with Osama bin Laden's sad eyes.

  Somewhere Paul sits fussing with the Fanon book he'll never finish. She wishes this certainty could comfort her on a gray morning, chill air misting the suddenly vulnerable windows on the top floor of her high-rise, the wind's moaning and groaning, amplified as it swirls around balconies, gusts into corners, shrieks from ground to roof in air shafts. A gigantic thud buckles the building. She wipes the glass, expects to see bricks toppling, falling in rows precise as formations of geese, but instead, needles of rain slant, invisible unless she stares and stares...

  Paul's somewhere poring over yellow sheets of tablet paper. Cramped, scrawled words written, unwritten, rewritten, layers of words too thickly impacted for anyone not Paul to decode. Will he ever decipher them. Could he if he tried. Hunched over a desk or slumped in a cushioned armchair, a mug of sludgy black coffee near at hand. How many mornings had she awakened to the scene. Fascinating at first. Yes. Reassuring. Whether she wakes up or not, he'll be there. Steadfast. Undistractable. His reliability more than a routine. His nature. Who he is. She can count on it. Him worrying the manuscript no matter what else is going on in the world. Then the steadiness begins to grate. Some mornings she wants to hit him. Blurt out, How dare you. Worse than all that, finally, was getting used to him, sorry for him once she understood he had no choice.