Welcome to Braggsville

by T. Geronimo Johnson

  But hadn’t all three of them swayed after the stats instructor like seamen ashore for the first time in months. The boys weren’t hunting MILF, as some crudely put it, but hadn’t all three of them felt the spike of a strong and willful attraction operating independently of reason while in office hours with the stats professor. Nearly fifty she was if a day, but that mattered not, because in their eyes three ages defined humans: their own, grad students, and everybody else. Hadn’t they all disagreed about whether the photos on her desk were of children or grandchildren. Hadn’t they all fidgeted in that backless chair, smitten by her voice, the soft German accent, gray feathered wings, ripe fruit scent, feigning confusion over problems, leaving with their book bags covering their laps, ashamed that she who possessed this allure was so matronly, and yet even more sensuous because of that fact. Through her window in winter the hills of Tilden Park, flush with snow, glowed like full, pale breasts. Hadn’t they all made a point to avoid mentioning Freud because, You can’t trust every diagnosis to some old dusty tome.

  At end, it was Candice he wanted, and Charlie he missed, at least the Charlie he thought he knew, and Daron considered his education complete, for he had learned the most important lesson: Nothing was as it seemed.

  With them he was the opposite of what he was with high school friends like Jo-Jo, with whom he watched Baywatch and, later, porn, beheaded mailboxes and knighted possums, skipped rocks and classes. Jo-Jo? Did he ever like BSG as much as he claimed? Probably not. He certainly never wore the BSG T-shirt Daron gave him for his sixteenth birthday.

  No. Nothing was as it seemed.

  Virtue, e.g., exempli gratia, for example, he always thought meant: a good thing, a positive quality or characteristic; he did not think it to mean simulated as opposed to actual. A few days after SF, he received from school a notice hand-addressed to Daron Davenport. His mother blew her whistle. Ignoring her complaint, brushing the spelling off as a typo, Daron ripped open the letter to discover that he was being summoned to a Faculty and Student Review Board for a disciplinary hearing regarding his role in recent unfortunate incidents. The letter quoted some code of conduct he allegedly endorsed by virtue of enrolling.

  No, nothing was as it seemed. Words were different, definitions ramifying until a profusion of meanings rendered them meaningless. Review meant investigation, just as religious meant superstitious, life of the party meant insecure, and standing up for oneself, macho. Holding a door for a woman? Chauvinistic. Words he’d long thought he understood grew to unwieldy dimensions, taking on new connotations and denotations both, over the last couple of years. Currency, for example, also meant recency (which wasn’t in many dictionaries), as well as whether or not an object possessed value at certain times and in particular circumstances, like the day he tried to use Braggs-bills a few miles over in Vickstown. Of course there was also recent, of recent-unfortunate-incidents fame, recent meaning, in this case, that Louis’s death was three weeks past, but still felt to Daron like that morning, every morning. And the lesson to be learned from it escaped him.

  He didn’t understand how different his education had been, how profound his deficit, until arriving at Berkeley, where he learned that being valedictorian in a small segregated high school was about as honored as Confederate dollars. Likewise, what he learned in Berkeley was a grossly inflated currency with zulu value at home, as his parents unintentionally demonstrated when they reviewed his transcripts during a brainstorming session, as his mother termed family meetings.

  What! D’aron broke curfew? D’aron let Marci copy off his test? D’aron was caught shoplifting? We’ll have a little brainstorming session at home. It was a term borrowed from the younger teachers, the ones who also said that, Everyone is a winner, No one is a loser, and Every effort is worth an A. To storm the brain. Like a fort! Like a hurricane! The term had a cosmopolitan air that excited his mom, who read parenting magazines with a keen appreciation for her geographical isolation, but disgusted his father, who said, If a picture is worth a thousand words, I reckon a kick in the ass must be worth at least a million, and I’m one damned generous Christian dictionary.

  But D’aron was too old for corporal punishment. Depositing him across the knees conjured new connotations, as his mother discovered the hard way when one of the young teachers walked in on her punishing D’aron for skipping a week of ninth grade math and spending the afternoons at Pickett Rock pokering with Jo-Jo. The next twelve weeks of mandated Wednesday counseling sessions ate up work hours and raised issues that Mrs. Davenport was well prepared to keep buried away her entire life as opposed to exhuming in a windowless office furnished like a regional airport hotel. As she explained during the last and final psychological suppository session, walking out instead of responding to yet another question conflating her father and sex, This is worse than coffin birth. I’m perfectly happy being unhappy if this is what it takes to be happy.

  And when his father, mad as a wet cat, last raised the hickory switch to tan D’aron’s hide—in tenth grade—the boy run off and spent the night at Quint’s, avoiding his old man for a week.

  Daron, for his part, thought talking was the worst possible thing to do with his parents. He had never gotten along better with them than during those months in Berkeley when they communicated primarily through texts and e-mails, when Reach Out and Touch Someone became Reach Down and Type Something, but if he texted his mom while she was in the same room, a common practice with his friends, she made a horse face that broke his heart.

  Brainstorming, therefore, had at last taken root in popular opinion throughout the household. In this session, they were to come up with job possibilities. Daron wanted to take a one-year leave of absence from school. His father knew Daron didn’t want to enter the hotbox even as a visitor. The house rule, though, had always been, School or work! (Also often intoned in the manner of Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now and followed by a humming of Ride of the Valkyries.)

  But after reviewing their son’s record of completed courses, and hearing a brief summary of each, they were flabbergasted. Math and science, yes, but [Novel, Nov-ooo, Nove-o, Noo-voo?] Russian Cinema, The People’s History, Introduction to Ethnic Studies: The Native Today? It was as if these classes existed only to prove that they could. His father rose from the kitchen table, bearing his weight with his knuckles, leaning over Daron. These are like gonzo porn.

  At least they get paid for that, don’t they? asked his mom.

  With a hairy, calloused hand, his father picked a syllabus out of the pile and read a course description: This class will prepare students to recognize and become knowledgeable of people’s biases based on race, ethnicity, culture, political ideology, sexual orientation, age, religion, social and economic status, and disability. Students will also learn to recognize how dominant culture influences marginalized groups. She-it. God-der-damn-it. What about hair and eye color? Or foot size? I could have saved you, no, me, a bunch of money. At least for what this class costs.

  It’s not all critical theory. We learn about the world differently now. You didn’t . . . you know.

  His father stood behind him and placed a hand on Daron’s shoulder. His mom following suit, Honey, please.

  His father took several deep breaths, squeezing Daron’s shoulders tight enough to send a warning to his neck. Critical theory, you say? Named assly, all right.

  Can you explain that better, dear?

  School’s different now. (Daron stands at the free-throw line, gathering his energy. No bouncing, no lead-in, folks, he just shoots and . . .) I know it might seem strange, but I’m honored that you share your feelings with me. ( . . . brick.)

  Frowning, his mother blinked as though momentarily blinded.

  Are you going to feel honored when I knock you into next week? I will. His father cracked his knuckles as he picked up another syllabus. Listen to this one. He snapped the paper in the air. Don’t believe everything you think. His father pondered that a moment. Ain’t that the truth. That professor’
s a real genius. I don’t need to go to college for this stuff. I woulda told you this, son: People generally aren’t too fond of people who are different. No one can warm to everybody. That ain’t never gonna change. Only thing’ll change is what counts as different, from time to time. So, try to take ’em as individuals. Know you can’t fix the world. Get rid of niggers, you got coloreds. Get rid of coloreds, you got blacks. Get rid of blacks, you got African-Americans. It’s all the same if you don’t like ’em. See, ’cause if you don’t like ’em, you’ll make some new shit that’s too clever for them to know all fuck what’s happening. Like Ed down in purchasing, he calls ’em Mondays. You think that changes what’s in the man’s heart? You think a different word confuses his emotions? No. Why Mondays? Why? Why? Nobody likes Mondays. Do I agree with Ed? No. He’s funny, a real cut, but I don’t agree with him. I woulda guessed you didn’t either and that I didn’t have to pay for my son D’aron Little May Davenport to take a class to tell him to act right and treat people goddamned fairly. It’s a damned insult to your mother and me. It would be like if we went out and rented ourselves a kid to come live here on the holidays. Analyze stable and dynamic inequities? Analyze heterogeneous interactions? Analyze class markers in language? Professor, there is another word in analyze that oughta put you on the scent of how this smells to me. He turned away from Daron, skimming the rest of the list as he paced, Diversity and Social Justice, Urban Fieldwork, the New Democracy.

  What the hell are those, he demanded to know, besides the titles of angry speeches? And what the hell, both parents demanded to know as they left the kitchen, did he have any right to be angry about?

  For one, Daron was angry about the review board. When he e-mailed his professor to inquire about it, the professor promptly replied, and when Daron wrote him again, he again promptly replied, and so the exchanges proliferated without ever clarifying, to Daron’s satisfaction, the particulars of the Faculty and Student Review Board:

  Dear Daron,

  Again, let me share how saddened I was to hear about the tragedy that occurred in the wake of your heartfelt attempt to cast light on the gross hypocrisies of reenactments as a commemoration of states’ rights. Most distressing is the ensuing media windstorm and the events you experienced in town following Louis Chang’s passing.

  The most anyone can hope for in this country, whether they know it or not, is to never be made aware, to never know—definitively, undeniably, with religious certainty—how the accident of race has charted their life, for better or for worse. Though realizations of that sort, facing that monster, are good for the soul, they rob us of the illusion of autonomy, liberty, free will, agency, and replace those oft noble, always necessary hallucinations with fate, chance, and providence, reminding us of the effect that others, capricious or willful, may have on our lives. The enormity of this realization can be crushing, especially to a sensitive soul.

  In truth, we earn little of what we take.

  You have wavered between pride and prejudice on the South. Do not idolize California, we have our share of problems and have become a prison state in the last twenty years. Our institutions eerily resemble post-Reconstruction chain gangs, but without the chains. The machinery of this cephalopod operates a three-card monte, but the chips always end up in jail, which here means being thrown in solitary for even possessing ethnic literature.

  I hope that you will return to UC Berkeley next fall. You would find the distance invigorating, and should you choose to continue this project as a reflective essay, a documentary, or, as I suggested at our meeting, a novel, consider my full support extended.

  Yours in truth and freedom

  until justice rolls and freedom rains,

  Professor P.

  For kicks, Daron replied, Can it be a graphic novel? To which the professor replied, Certainly, still with no mention of the review board.

  He was also angry about Candice. Just that morning he found a black footie with orange piping and an orange toe box, and imagined sorting it into her pile while she hummed along elsewhere in the house, tickled to have a boyfriend who embraced housework in that clumsy puppy way, but that was not to be.

  For reasons inarticulate he knew it could not happen, not with Candice’s professor parents, originally from New York, oh the mysteries of that city—Woody Allen; mafiosi; bearded Jewish diamond dealers; Warriors, come out to play—could not happen any more than a cop could say, Sorry, could not happen any more than D’aron could wing a Gull. In fact, back in high school, when Jean, a Gull, asked D’aron to prom with his sister, D’aron said he’d be out of town, or rather, he agreed as such when Jean suggested it. He wasn’t lying. Jean said it first. No. Nothing was as it seemed.

  NO. NOTHING WAS (EXACTLY) AS IT SEEMED. But neither was it always the opposite.

  When Jean asked D-nice to prom with his sister, D-nice said he’d be out of town, or rather, he agreed as such when Jean suggested it. He wasn’t exactly lying. Jean said it first. And, boy was D-nice relieved when Jean suggested it. Hell, D-nice pocketed that idea quicker than found money. Jean was more Jo-Jo’s friend anyway. Like everyone else who made varsity by their sophomore year, Jo-Jo had a friend in the Gully. D-nice knew they practiced together or worked out sometimes, but he didn’t know how good of friends Jean and Jo-Jo were—or how good of friends Jean thought they were—until Jean asked Jo-Jo to prom with his sister. Jo-Jo claimed he’d be on front counter that night. None of them said anything for a moment. Just stood there behind the visitors’ bleachers taking long draws on the Pall Malls Jo-Jo stole from Mrs. Lee’s General & Feed.

  When Jo-Jo said, Front counter, D-nice didn’t ask how Jo-Jo knew his schedule that far in advance when he couldn’t remember which jersey to wear on game day. After Jo-Jo said, Front counter, Jean turned to D-nice, cocking his own coffee bean as he did so, offered more than asked, Bet you got work or something going on out of town, too, don’t you, D-nice? Elseways you could stand for Jo-Jo. D-nice nodded. What else was D-nice to do? What else was D-nice to say if Jean didn’t comprende that some white people earned points for attending the Gully’s Bruiser prom, and others anted them up, and among his friends were only anteers, could only be anteers? Among his friends were the muscle in the big brick hotbox, not the shirtsleeves in the rib. Later, when D-nice mentioned this, and winked like he knew Jo-Jo wasn’t really working, Jo-Jo tossed him a thrashing glance the likes of which he’d never before given him.

  When prom night pranced up, the one night when cummerbunds were as plentiful as belly button rings, Jean straight vultured Main Street slow as cold butter, times three he did, before squeaking sneaker into Mrs. Lee’s General & Feed, first pacing around his Ford LTD a few times like to get his horns sharpened, his shoulders winged out like he was rearing for confrontation. D-nice watched the whole thing from across the street, stayed safely inside Lou Davis’s—waiting, waiting, waiting, it felt—waiting so long that Rheanne accepted a date he didn’t offer, waiting for Jean to come out grinning like a crow just how he did not five minutes later, nipping at a cone he most certainly didn’t break a bill on.

  At that sight D-nice felt a deliberate relief slip right up next to him close as a crowded pocket. Jo-Jo and Jean hadn’t shared a word between them or practiced passing for even a handful of the three weeks and five days until prom night. Jo-Jo would act himself again, as he had not done for the three weeks and five days he and Jean were incommunicado, twenty-six days Jo-Jo had enumerated with dramatic gnashing, counting them off like a prisoner, bellyaching until a grist-biting envy grabbed piercing hold of D-nice’s left ear and nearly drove him to find Jean and tell him something Nana did say: Just for a reverend is in the Lord’s house don’t make it his sermon, or his sheep. Was it true? In sooth, D-nice didn’t know.

  But he knew that he wanted to scream those three-and-some-odd weeks Jo-Jo was off his squash, punch something and scream, yell about it all, the two proms, the anteers and the antees. Punch the proms, the anteers, the antees, kick them all in the
ben-was. Then the next year come ’round, Jo-Jo surprised them all and went to the Bruiser prom with Jean’s sister.

  ALL JO-JO SAID WAS, It ain’t free, D, it ain’t free. And it ain’t what it looks, either.

  When Jo-Jo was in fifth grade, his parents worked the night shift, leaving him in the care of his fat-cracklin’ half sister, whom Quint was stuck on sticky as blackstrap molasses. Whenever he four-wheeled out to see Jo-Jo’s sister, Quint dragged D’aron along, his rationale being that it was lonely pups most likely to piss on the sofa. While Quint and Jo-Jo’s sister made cow sounds in the back room, Jo-Jo and D’aron played Madden NFL on Xbox, camped on the couch, slouching, the one football position at which D’aron excelled.

  However he meant it, Jo-Jo was right when he insisted, It ain’t free. After Jo-Jo, who never missed a day of school or work, took off for Bruiser prom, he was fired, and coach benched him for a month, even though it cost the team three games, and Jo-Jo missed playing for the scouts. He didn’t complain a minute. Just smiled and said he was always running late and it finally caught up with him. D’aron nodded, wanting to believe him, all the while thinking everything was exactly as it fucking seemed, people just preferred to pretend otherwise.

  Chapter Twenty-7

  Nothing fires up the disco balls like sexual assault. When you want to get the cops out quickly, lights all the way, you don’t report a murder. Fun’s over. You don’t report a mugging unless you’re witnessing it. After a mugging, they’ll take a report over the phone if you let them. And burglary? Depending on where you live, those barely get house calls these days. If you want the police to come out quickly, ASAP, you report a rape. They fly to a rape, some for the wrong reasons, but they fly. They go code blue-and-white all the way. They might get to be a hero. And unlike bank robberies, no officer has ever died investigating a rape or been shot after walking in on a rape. The other thing about reporting a rape is that it involves lots of people. Needs cops, counselors, investigators, an ambulance, rape kits, EMTs, emergency room doctors. It’s more than just taking a report and driving off. You only got two EMTs. So that’s your message to me. I’m still not sure what you’re trying to say. But you called for help and no one came. I’m here now. You can tell me. ’Cause the thing is, D’aron, I think you knew all this already.