by Kola Boof
And as sick as it is, I realize that Dr. Juliet, my mother, is right. This is who we are, and this is our truth. Thanks to Stevedore and his brilliant, lavish way of loving. And I am numb because I fear that no man will ever possess me that way again—first as my father, then as my lover. Loving me like that, literally into being.
“Your visiting time is up!” shouts a uniformed policeman walking through the dungeon with a torch raised above his coal-black arm.
“Accept it!” Juliet urges, squeezing me passionately. “Accept life.”
“I’m starting to.”
“Good,” she says, letting me go. “I’ll be back to fetch you in the morning. I’ll have Fergie draw you a hot bath and fix us a hearty breakfast. And remember, there’ll be some questions by an investigator.”
When it looks as though Juliet is about to turn and walk away, I throw my head back like a child in a fit of silent, voiceless wailing, and the gurgling in my throat and the contortions of my crying face temporarily stop her in her tracks.
Since there’s nothing she can do until morning, and since she knows that my falling to pieces has little to do with being in jail, she tells me the truth: “This is life, Eternity. None of us anywhere are free.”
AFRICA FARMS AIDS CLINIC
None of us anywhere.
Our maid, Fergie, gently awakens me and I notice that I’m in my bed at the clinic and that it’s very dark outside. I remember earlier that morning, seeing my name written on the prison clipboard—Eternity Frankenheimer— and then my jet-black fingers jotting my signature next to it.
“You’re free to go,” the guard had said while staring in astonishment that I could actually write my name. He certainly couldn’t write his.
I remember that an investigator had come by to see me but that I simply hadn’t been able to stay awake after bathing and eating breakfast, because I couldn’t sleep at the prison. Dr. Juliet promised him that he could come and see me in the evening if he absolutely had to question me about Stevedore’s death.
So now he is downstairs.
“His name is Detective Bekki Diallo,” Fergie whispers as she wipes my eyes and mouth with a warm washcloth. Coming out of the dream world, my gaze searches the room for the things that frightened me most as a child. But then I reassure myself that there are no dolls in my room, or perhaps even in the clinic, because Fergie has locked them all away where they can’t stare at me.
I yawn powerfully because I’m well rested and then there I am … standing bare-breasted before the detective in Dr. Quicken’s office and wearing my very finest Oluchi floor-length cotton skirt. Predictably, it’s my bald scalp that causes him to do a double take, because although he himself is an Ajowan and occasionally sees topless women walking in the city, he is not used to black girls who still uphold our ancestors’ ritual of femininity— the shaving and painting of the female head.
I bow gracefully and say to him, “Koto beddi papa” (Welcome, sir), but he does not respond in kind. In fact he grimaces, slightly embarrassed, which alarms my instincts and causes me to study him closely.
He is a tall, handsome, well-educated Cassavan, light brown in color on his neck and hands—but discolored in the face, especially in the center where it’s peeling. His complexion looks unnatural, and within seconds I realize he’s a bleacher. One of those modern city-dwellers in our country who uses fade creams to bleach their skin lighter—and what’s even more pitiful is that with his pecan-colored flesh, he’s already very light complexioned in comparison to most West Africans. But alas … even light brown obviously isn’t good enough. As he talks, I realize from the faint blue film across his gums that he’s also a swallower—a city black who swallows daily what our young people have nicknamed the “Michael Jackson pill,” a pill that’s supposed to make you turn white, provided you take it long enough. But since no one’s turned white yet, we don’t actually know how long that is.
I grin, trying not to laugh as I notice his hair. Junglekinky at the base but the bulk of it slick and straight, resting on his head like a shiny tar cap. It looks so very bizarre on a black man, yet he talks and behaves as though he really does have the “Been-to” hair of a mixed-race or half-caste person. And because I am so exceedingly jet black in color, there is this elitism in his speech and mannerisms that indicates he regards me as inferior.
“So you like sleeping with white men?” he asks.
“Not as much as you wish to be one.”
His mouth falls open like a monkey’s and the skin on his wide, flat nose cracks and peels all the more. An instant mutual disgust flares between us.
“The science lady claims that you’re not a patient, you don’t have AIDS.”
“No, I don’t have AIDS,” I answer.
“Did you murder Dr. Stevedore Frankenheimer?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“No, I didn’t … sir. Call … ME … sir.”
And there in his eyes I can see the words sparkling like sickle fire: You topless, backward, black-as-night jungle bitch! I can see his desire to brutally strike me about the face—for being midnight black and for not being in awe of him.
“No … I didn’t … sir.”
“The Gon-ghossa has already assigned an Englishman, Detective Lance Hightower, to investigate the murder of your father. But as a formality, and in my capacity as Detective Hightower’s assistant, I am to question you as a matter of record.” He begins checking off notes on his clipboard. While writing, he manages to fish out his wallet, remove a paper photograph, and hand it over to me. Bemused, I notice that it’s a picture of a pale, fatigued, resolute-looking white woman with a half-caste child sitting on her lap. Without even glancing at me, the detective assumes I’m impressed and announces, “My wife Zelda and my son Simon.”
Something about the pale woman and beige-brown child enchants me, but I don’t want him to have the satisfaction of knowing. I hand back the photograph. Then to my utter shock, Detective Bekki Diallo addresses me as though he’s some loving older brother delivering valuable advice: “It’s dangerous for a girl as black and ugly as you are, little sister, to be walking around thinking so much of herself. These Caucasoids raised you like a princess, but look at your skin, you’re blacker than Satan. You need to find a husband and have some boy children and stay out of the sun.”
My eyes (black-magic eyes, Stevedore used to call them) stare up at him, acknowledging that he’s stupid. All I want, seriously, is to spit on him. Ratchet up a hunk of snot and just spit it on him, because although my greatest curiosity in life is an African man who actually lives in a city—I hate this one.
“It says here that you’ve recently auditioned for the starring role in a film,” he adds.
I nod. My stomach fills with dread at the remembrance of what it was that triggered Juliet to reveal to me that I’m a clone—the auditions that Stevedore had me undergo for the lead role in the film biography that the Americans had come to our nation to make—The Racist.
It was Stevedore’s dream that I be cast as Orisha— the Ajowan mother who is kicked to death in the streets of DakCrete for trying to get the young people to stop swallowing skin-lightening pills and bleaching themselves. In fact, as the script explains, this is the reason the young Africans have nicknamed Mother Orisha “The Racist”—because how dare she question their reasons for wanting to be brighter, and how dare she hand out pamphlets from health officials decreeing the epidemics of kidney failure, skin cancer, and liver disease that are so obviously the result of the skin-lightening agents? It is Mother Orisha’s black womb and preaching black gums that stand between them and their dream of achieving a better life, a more successful existence. One in which their color in this white man’s world will no longer matter—because they won’t have any color.
“Keeeel dat racist witch!” the African children chant as Fanta bottles and rocks fly against Orisha’s head. One of her eyeballs is gouged out; bones resist but crack like celery; skin is pounded apart like yam—they p
elt her slender tallness with a hate so vicious it crushes consciousness. How dare she judge them? How dare she acknowledge their embarrassment about their coloring? I can almost remember feeling it, and even more clear is Stevedore’s voice, his gaze entering my head mysteriously as he assures me, “You, Eternity, were born to play this part.”
Of course, I hadn’t known what he’d meant by such a curious, passionate announcement, but I was her all right. And what a masterstroke it would be for him as creator to watch the actual clone of this slain activist portray her very life over again. His tongue and what I think of as his hard, beautiful Richie Cunningham penis enter me at the same time. And there in the darkness, it’s as if my girl-cave is a lavish cathedral, like the kind Juliet used to make him go to on Sundays in the city to give confession—only it’s me now that he’s inside of, confessing to. My pussy is his church.
“This is what I’m talking about,” the detective warns me, suddenly. “Why on earth would some Negroidfaced girl from the Oluchi region be trying to humiliate herself with silly dreams of becoming the star of a major Hollywood film? It’s affected you negatively—being raised by Caucasoids. You think too much of yourself.”
Stung deeply, but not the least bit irrational, I inform him that I’ve appeared in dozens of films. Stevedore made countless movies using his own equipment, and in every single one that Father made, I, Eternity Frankenheimer, am the star. If he likes, the detective can go out to storage room A-11 and view the cans of celluloid and even get one of the scientists to screen them on the wall in the clinic cafeteria.
He ignores this information, but at last gets to the point. “I could help you, you know.” I hadn’t expected it, but he jumps right in, his clouded eyes casting me as a stain. “The Michael Jackson pill is difficult to purchase since they made the new antibleaching laws in West Cassavaland and Senegal; not everyone can afford it. Unless you know someone with connections, you get overcharged and your usage gets interrupted. But I’ve got unlimited access to a regular supply straight from Europe. That’s where they make it, you know. Kindis-Europa (Magnificent Europe). I can get you Nadinola skin-bleaching cream from Canada and Mexico, and wigs and human hair from Korea too. I could keep you supplied with all that.”
In his eyes I see young black schoolgirls and desperate housewives of DakCrete giving him sex in exchange for these products. “What about Percy Commey?” I ask him, and as I say that name, it’s as if I’ve placed burning coals beneath his feet. Percy Obliteri Commey, of course, is the celebrated Ghanaian boxer who made international headlines in 2001 when the right side of his face literally fell apart during a boxing match because of his chronic use of skin-bleaching agents. One small cut on Commey’s cheek, courtesy of his opponent, had progressed during the match into small skin-cracks around his nostrils, and then another cut at his right ear, until all the skin on his right side began peeling off before the whole world like a bleeding black mask. Not only did Commey lose his National Super Featherweight belt when it was discovered by the boxing league that he was a bleacher, but also the respect of the West African people, including those who were fellow bleachers and swallowers, because along with the shame of being a national figure caught bleaching, he had also brought his sexuality into question by entering the boxing ring wearing a Jheri-Curl (niggerlox).
“And don’t forget about our region’s own Wife of Tarzan. She died trying to become Fanta-colored,” I remind him to rub it in.
At last he is silenced, because not only have I raised the names of shame, but I’ve finally convinced him that the glints in my black-magic eyes represent not envy or exasperation over his white wife and half-caste child, but rejection and contempt. To me, he’s just another well-dressed, high-up Pogo-nigger who wishes to someday wake up white, even if it’s through his grandchildren.
And for that—he slaps me! His whole big hand, hard and loud across my face like thunder.
“Ouuuuuheeee!” I scream at the painful sting. My hands hold the right side of my head, and my eyes immediately flood with so many tears they look like stars.
“Eternity!?” shrieks Dr. Juliet from another room, and then she’s busting through the door. “Eternity!?”
I am bent over and sobbing. Detective Diallo turns on Dr. Juliet, shouting belligerently, “What kind of child hasn’t the manners to respect the positions of men?”
“Yes sir,” Dr. Juliet snaps back at him, angrily. Her hands, I think to myself, are as big as any man’s, but still they’re very gentle and I’ve never once seen her use them in a fight. She orders him, “Please leave us now.”
“You’re lucky you haven’t been assigned to be the killer,” he tells me. “Any dark child will do. And you, scientist—teach this black jungle bitch some respect!” He yells at us as though we’re Oluchi tribal wives who’ve dropped his pan bread in the ashes, his stinging hand clutched into a fist with which he wishes to bash us both. Then he storms out.
“What happened?” Dr. Juliet asks me.
“I didn’t want to be light-skinned,” I tell her.
WIFE OF TARZAN
Seeing the moon outside my window makes me feel cursed now that I know how I was brought back into the world. I glimpse its full whiteness, the spectral glow of its pearly emulsion embracing my stricken stare like sadness absolute. I tell Fergie, “Close the curtains, please.”
And as she blocks out the moon and its whiteness, I take the damp cloth away from my still-stinging cheek, lay it on the nightstand, and turn up my palms to gaze in wonder at the slits on my wrists, barely mended as it’s now been only four days since my initial suicide attempt.
I want only to open the earth (my wrists) and be held by Stevedore. But he has already saved me from my suicide attempt. I am alive, and just yesterday he died; yet like a grown man bound and gagged in a tiny wooden box, I feel the new life that he put inside me kicking from within, the voice of its white father lamenting bitterly: Ife kwulu ife akwudebe ya (If one thing stands, another thing stands by it). He is referring to our clinic’s philosophy that happenstance and synchronicity order matter; not coincidence. This is why I can’t help but wonder about Detective Diallo and what it’s like to actually bleach one’s skin and swallow pills and hate one’s own flesh—not his being, but his flesh—to literally spit curses from the eye of his penis in the hope of erasing his own people.
I wonder in confusion about our nation’s “Poem of Patriotism,” words erected by proud African men on that day of our people’s independence: For we are the Africans … the children of the earth’s first garden … that perfect, deliberate blackness that can only be described as the genesis of vision itself. Let freedom ring.
“How can he, a black man, just erase us?” I ask as Fergie tucks me in.
My words stop her cold. Her face hardens like a boarded-up wall beneath a cracked mirror. In shame’s fleeting shadows, the door of privacy within her stare makes it obvious that she has more in common with Detective Diallo than with me. It startles me into a chill.
“Fergie?”
She whispers into my ear, conspiratorially, “Beautiful people owned us, and that’s how we found out that we were the damned.”
“Beautiful people?”
“Angel’s food cake is white, devil’s food cake is black. You never noticed that? I believe it’s because God loves his white children more than he loves his half-castes … and he loves his half-castes more than he loves us black ones. Otherwise, why would he let them conquer us and colonize and enslave us and have nothing but good riches to show for it? The white man took us off the dirt roads and put us on buses. He put shoes on our feet and created airplanes so that we could fly. He invented cameras and showed us pictures that only prove how ugly and poor we are. That computer you love because it puts the world at your fingertips—it’s from the white man’s genius. On all the stamps and money in Africa, you’ll notice the face of the white man’s mother printed right across it, because that’s how much he loves his mother—he wants to see her ima
ge everywhere he goes. The whiter she is, the more he loves her. No such tragedy as a white woman being too white. But how many African women do you know who can boast that they’re not too black? I tell you, God loves the Caucasoid race. I’ve put ice cubes in the white man’s glass and I’ve put ice cubes in the black man’s glass, and it never fails—the white man’s ice is colder.”
The white man’s ice is colder?
Her words pierce my heart as though the syllables are cells from the AIDS virus, and though I’ve already died and left this earth in a past life for trying to glorify my people’s darkness, the truth confronts me now that this is what the martyr gets—nothing. I have been erased and I am back and nothing has changed. And as her words suffocate my soul, it’s the knowledge that nothing has changed that makes me long for an endless sleep, a sweet suicide. But Fergie won’t shut up. I’ve set free her bitterness; her impassioned whisper splashes forth, “It’s the young insecure ones like you who think it’s a tragedy to be ugly, but you’re wrong. Women like me understand that we don’t need beauty—because Jesus loves us. In His blue eyes, by His Father’s mercy, we shall be saved.”
“The river blacks,” I venture, “say that Jesus was a black man, an African.”
“That’s because they’re ignorant. If Jesus was black, why would black people be swallowing a pill to make them white and straightening their hair to be like Christ? For all and sundry, he was white—and someday, when I cross over, I shall be white and blue-eyed too. I’ve told all my children and all my grandchildren and all my great-grandchildren that when Jesus comes back for us, we’re going to walk in the light. Praise God, the feet of sweet Jesus. Praise His goodness and mercy.”
When tears come to Fergie’s eyes, because she so pitifully longs for that colorless day of acceptance, unconditional love, and inclusion, I feel compelled to spit in her round mud-colored face. Of course, I don’t dare. But I bring up something that for her kind is worse than spitting in her face.