by Osborne, Jon
The authorities were not called.
CHAPTER 90
Two hours after her bath back home in her apartment in Lakewood, Dana continued her all-too-rare off-day by strolling through the boy’s clothing department at the Wal-Mart in nearby Rocky River. And why not? She wanted to be completely prepared for little Bradley’s arrival when he came to live with her, and Dr. Margolis had made it sound as though that might happen in as soon as a week or so.
Dana’s skin broke out into a wave of warm goose flesh at the stomach-dropping thought.
Browsing the clearance racks in the boy’s department, she lifted up a series of T-shirts featuring such clever sayings as Dear Math, I’m Not a Therapist – Go Solve Your Own Problems and Back Up – I’m Going to Try Science, inspecting the size labels stitched into the back collars. Luckily for her, children’s clothing sizes more or less corresponded with their ages. Since Bradley was five years old, that meant he wore a size 5. Simple enough to understand, right? If nothing else, one fewer thing she’d need to learn – though she knew that she still had a steep learning curve in front of her.
Still, it couldn’t really be considered work when you loved your job, now could it?
Dana smiled to herself and lifted up the next T-shirt. This one pictured Jesus ascending to heaven while the apostles gathered ‘round in awe and wonder. The word bubble coming from Jesus’s mouth read: BRB.
Dana snickered and placed the T-shirt into her shopping cart. Definitely a keeper.
“They grow out of clothes so fast, don’t they? I feel like I’m always buying new ones.”
Dana looked up, startled. Five feet away, a delicately pretty woman of about thirty or so was inspecting the rack of graphic T-shirts next to the one she’d been looking through. The woman smiled at her as she held up another shirt and read the slogan emblazoned across the front. “How old is your son?” she asked.
Dana gathered herself and forced herself to answer the woman, even though social interactions with strangers had never exactly been her forte. Still, now that she was going to be a mother herself, she should probably get used to the idea of hobnobbing with her fellow mothers in the boy’s clothing department at Wal-Mart – among the many other hopelessly glamorous places mothers no doubt frequented. “He’s five,” Dana said, feeling another warm wave of goose flesh ripple across her skin with the words. And why not? It felt good to say them. Natural. “And yours? How old is he?”
The woman put the T-shirt she’d been inspecting into her own cart, this one reading, I Know Karate (And, Like, Two Other Japanese Words). “He’s six – and going on sixty-five,” she said. “Taking me right along with him, too. Anyway, what’s your son’s name?”
“Bradley,” Dana answered, feeling positively giddy now. Even the mere sound of the little boy’s name was like music to her ears.
The other woman nodded. “That’s a great name. My little boy’s named Alexander. Anyway, have a great night. I hope you find some good bargains in this joint.”
Dana widened her smile. “How can I not? It’s Wal-Mart, right? Anyway, you have a great night, too.”
Pushing her cart back out into the center aisle, Dana headed for the toy department thirty yards away. She still needed to buy a Rubik’s Cube, a beanbag, a bicycle and an Operation board game before heading back home for the night – all the same creature comforts she’d loved as a kid. And as soon as she got done with work tomorrow night, she’d be off to about a dozen different department stores in order to do a little price-comparison shopping for bedroom furniture.
Come hell or high water, she’d be ready for her son’s arrival.
An unmistakable spring lightened her step as she pushed her cart through the busy store, completely unable to remember the last time she’d felt this happy. The last time she’d felt this alive. Being Bradley’s mother would mark the single-most important, joyful and satisfying thing she’d ever done in her entire life.
And any way you sliced the bread, that wasn’t a bad payoff, now was it?
Nope, wasn’t a bad payoff, at all.
CHAPTER 91
After thinking it over for a little while, Angel decided to skip the library in favor of the nearest Barnes & Noble bookstore ten miles away in Lakewood.
Angel knew the people at the west Cleveland branch of the library very well – too well, really. And having practically grown up there as a kid, she really didn’t feel up to the task of explaining why the hell she was checking out a bunch of books on white-power hate groups.
Fifteen minutes later, she parked the Cabriolet in an empty space before hurrying inside the huge chain bookstore teeming with people. So much for the publishing industry wheezing out its last death rattle. To paraphrase Mark Twain’s immortal line, the stories of the publishing industry’s demise had obviously been greatly exaggerated.
She browsed the aisles for twenty solid minutes before finally deciding on two books to buy. One was titled White Power for Beginners. The other purported to explain the long history of hate groups in America, including a lengthy chapter on The Brotherhood.
She paid for the books with her debit card – almost fifty bucks, which pissed her off almost worse than the outrageous fee she’d been charged for parking downtown – before leaving store and heading over to Edgewater Park, where she sat down on the same bench that she and Malachai had sat just a few days before. Angel sighed heavily, wondering where he was right now – and what he might be up to at the moment.
She let out another sigh, missing Malachai badly as she settled down into the bench and dropped her Coach bag to the ground at her feet. It seemed like a lifetime ago already since she’d last seen him, and she immediately decided – right then and there – that she’d be seeing him again tonight. Had to see him tonight, really.
Angel stared out at the tranquil lake and felt infinitely grateful for her peaceful surroundings. The same soft easterly wind blew gently across the same blue-gray waters of Lake Erie. The same familiar merchant marine ships bobbed up and down on the same beautiful waves. The same seagulls sang their same dissonant song in the clear blue skies high overhead.
Reaching into her purse, she slipped her sunglasses onto her face against the bright sunlight streaming down from above and opened up White Power for Beginners.
The first chapter consisted of a dictionary of racial slurs. There were forty-four of them, which she couldn’t help but notice was a multiple of eighty-eight.
Heil Hitler.
GREAT NAMES TO CALL OUR NIGGER FRIENDS
1. Antique farm equipment: Niggers were once the country’s cheapest form of field labor.
2. Aunt Jemima: Nigger bitch on the box of popular breakfast foods.
3. Baboomba: From the booming of niggers’ car stereos.
4. Buckwheat: Nigger character from The Little Rascals television show.
5. BUN: Big Ugly Nigger.
6. Burrhead: Reference to niggers’ hair texture.
7. Canadian: Alternative to “nigger”. Used in politically sensitive company.
8. Coon: Reference to the Portuguese word for slave pens or barracks – “barracoons”. Also short for “raccoon”, an animal known for its innate tendency to steal.
9. Crickets: Niggers who stay up all night playing loud, thumping music. Especially used in the Midwestern part of the United States.
10. DAN: Dumb Ass Nigger.
11. FEB: In the United States, February is Black History Month.
12. GAR: Redneck term for niggers. Short for nig-GAR.
14. Ghetto hamster: Nigger children. A disposable pet.
15. Halfrican: A Black/White mix.
16. Hotel: Derived from Ebonics. As in, “I gave the bitch crabs and the hotel everybody.”
17. J.J.: A goofy nigger. From the character on the television show Good Times.
18. Jigaboo: Very dark-skinned niggers. From the 1975 movie Cooley High.
19. Jungle bunny: Reference to the jungle origins of most niggers.
20. Kaffir: Afrikaner word for blacks. Used in the 1989 movie Lethal Weapon 2.
21. Kunta Kinte: Nigger character in the 1976 Alex Haley novel Roots.
22. Lawn jockey: Most lawn jockeys are black, just like most niggers are black.
23. Lucius: Reference to poor niggers. During the period prior to the Civil War, many niggers named their children after famous Romans. (E.g., Lucius, Marcus, Scipio, etc.)
24. Moolie: Short for melenzane, or “eggplant” in Italian. Eggplants have very dark purple skin, making them appear almost black.
25. Mud people: Only White people have souls. God made everyone else – including the niggers – out of mud.
26. NAGA: North American Ground Ape. Used by LAPD police officers during the 1960s Watts riots in Los Angeles.
27. Nigger: Most likely derived from “niger”, the Latin word for black. The most politically sensitive of all racial slurs.
28. NOG: “Nigger out of gas”. Used by white police officers to refer to niggers who run out of gas, then wait by the side of the road for the authorities to supply them with some, which by law they supposedly must do.
29. Octoroon: A person who is one-eighth nigger. Used in 14th century Spain to classify a person’s worth in society.
30. Pickaninny: Origins in the days of slavery. Three possible definitions:
a) Slave owners would “pick a nincompoop” from the lineup of slaves;
b) Slave children who couldn’t pick cotton, “Ain’t pickin’ any”; or:
c) In some parts of the South, breasts are referred to as “ninnys”. Therefore, pickaninny may refer to nigger women who were used as wet nurses for White children.
31. Point-Six: Reference to the Three-Fifths Compromise of 1787, in which the North and South agreed that blacks would count as three-fifths of a person for census purposes. (3/5=.6)
32. Porch monkey: Niggers sit on their porches to cool themselves off in the summertime, since they’re all too goddamn poor to afford air conditioning.
33. Quadroon: A person who’s one-fourth nigger. Coined during the Civil War as a measurement of how “white” you needed to be in order to serve.
34. Reggie: Common name of famous nigger sports stars. (E.g., Reggie Jackson, Reggie Miller and Reggie “Ain’t” White.)
35. Shine: Many niggers worked as shoeshines in the 1920s.
36. Shitheel: Reference to the color of a nigger’s feet. Southern origins.
37. Smoke: Reference to a nigger’s skin color.
38. Spade: The spades in a standard deck of playing cards are black, just like most niggers are black.
39. Spoda: More Ebonics. Reference to how niggers speak. As in, “We ain’t spoda be here.” (“We aren’t supposed to be here.”)
40. Spook: Niggers blend in at night, much like ghosts. Watch for their smiles while trying to run them down.
41. Tar baby: Reference to a nigger’s skin color.
42. Terence: From the nigger singer Terence Trent D’Arby, who famously claimed that his debut album marked the most important album since Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, then proceeded to bore the shit out of his audience with his self-important lyrics.
43. Webe: Pronounced wee-bee. Refers to the inability of niggers to conjugate the verb “be”, thus resulting in “we be” instead of “we are”.
44. Wikki wikki: A DJ turntable scratching noise often heard in rap music, which all niggers love.
CHAPTER 92
The Race Master finally returned home to Massachusetts after the vicious and thoroughly enjoyable dogfight down in Virginia just as the clock neared three a.m. A hundred thousand dollars richer now, he knew that the extra money would be put to an extremely worthy cause.
Slipping beneath the heavy covers on his comfortable, king-sized Tempurpedic bed, he soon fell into a deep sleep with Bane doing the same at the foot of the enormous bed six feet away.
That was when the dream came again.
***
In his dream, the Race Master is seventeen years old again.
He and his buddies are raising hell in the streets of East Berlin, just like they always do, drinking heavily and enjoying their newfound status as first-tier officers in The Fourth Reich, the neo-Nazi organization to which they’d all belonged since childhood.
The police had picked up his older brother at the end of the night, but they’d spring him out first thing in the morning, just as soon as their hangovers cleared. Surely the nigger that his brother had beaten to within an inch of his life would survive the brutal attack.
The Race Master is extremely intoxicated as he walks back to his family’s palatial home on the outskirts of the city. Fumbling with his keys, he drops them twice before finally managing to slide the correct one into the lock on the massive set of double doors out front.
Blood.
The blood is everywhere. His father is hanging upside down from the crystal chandelier in the marble-tiled foyer. The old man’s throat has been slit open like a kosher hog. A huge puddle of red shimmers on the expensive tile below.
In a daze, he makes his way slowly up the winding staircase to his parents’ bedroom. There he finds his mother.
She is completely naked and lying on her back in the bed. Only the shiny silver handle of the decorative sword from his father’s SS uniform is still visible between her spread thighs.
On the north wall of the bedroom, a chilling message has been scrawled in the beautiful woman’s precious Aryan blood:
LEAVE GERMANY NOW.
CHAPTER 93
The plastic handles of six overloaded Wal-Mart shopping bags dug deep into the fingers on Dana’s left hand and cut off her circulation as she stepped inside her apartment and headed immediately for Bradley’s bedroom in the northeast corner of the modest six-room setup – the same space that had previously been known as her home office.
She dropped the bags onto the floor in Bradley’s bedroom – infinitely thankful to finally offload the shoulder-snapping weight – and turned around just as Oreo sauntered into the room behind her. The cat rubbed his fat body against her legs and started up his generator-purr – letting her know he was happy his mama had finally made it back home while she looked around laid out the scene in her mind.
Bradley’s bed would go where her desk was now, right next to the single window in the room. That way the sun could warm his little face should he ever get cold. His nightstand would go in the area currently taken up by her printer setup. Close enough to his bed for easy access but still far enough away to ensure that he wouldn’t bump his fragile skull against one of its sharp corners should he ever fall out of bed. The beanbag and Bradley’s own little desk would go where her bookshelves were now.
Dana resisted the urge to clean her hands of imaginary dust. There. Simple enough, right? This mother stuff was fun already.
Smiling, she went over to the closet and placed the tiny hangers she’d purchased at Wal-Mart onto the metal rod stretched across the small space. The new clothes she’d bought for Bradley would need to be washed first before they moved into their new home in his closet. Wouldn’t want any of the dyes to irritate his sensitive skin, after all.
Dana shut the closet door and widened her smile. She was feeling confident at the moment – maybe a little too confident, she knew – but what the heck, right? Still, being a mother no doubt had a slew of problems that she hadn’t even considered yet. Right now, though, she really didn’t care. Because before she knew it, Bradley would be here with her, and after that her life would never be the same again. And thank God for that.
Because for the first time in her life since she’d been four years old, Dana could actually envision a future for herself that wasn’t filled with blood. Instead, for the first time in her life since she’d been four years old, she could finally see a future for herself that would be filled with love. And who in their right mind wouldn’t be feeling just a tad bit confident about that?
She leaned down and stroked Oreo’s soft fur, praying sh
e were still in her right mind. Because after everything she’d been through her in life – after all the murders, blood and loss – no doubt that particular subject still remained the source of highly spirited debate in some quarters.
Still, if all went well for her and Bradley, two broken people just might get the chance to make each other whole again. And any way you sliced the bread, that wasn’t a bad payoff, now was it?
Nope, wasn’t a bad payoff, at all.
CHAPTER 94
Angel snapped shut the disgusting book, unable to comprehend the hateful garbage she’d just read.
Her heart raced. Her skin felt clammy. Her stomach swam with nausea. A weird, indefinable shame blushed across her cheeks and throat.
Was it really that bad out there? That fucking vile? Angel had been subject to racism before in her life, of course – like just about every other black person in the world – but never before with words as ugly as some of the ones she’d just read.
She spent the next twenty minutes staring blankly out at the waves on Lake Erie. A jogger hustled past, followed by a young mother pushing a stroller. The jogger was white; the young mother black. What was the difference between them, she wondered?
They looked to be about the same age, shared approximately the same level of physical attractiveness. They probably would’ve been best friends if they’d met in a society even a fraction less fucked-up than theirs. But out here in the real world, where black and white just didn’t mix, the two women didn’t even glance at each other as they passed one another, didn’t even acknowledge each other’s existence.
Angel opened up the book again, her insides still churning with a dull, aching frustration that was spreading out to the rest of her body from the pit of her stomach. Directly following the racist dictionary was a selection of one-liner jokes. She didn’t find any of them in the least bit funny, of course.
How could anyone?