Jake Ellis said, “I’ll have some of each.”
She beamed. “I prefer the pistachio flavor at Gelateria Crispini in Umbria, Italy.”
“Bet you enjoy eating this by the pool.”
“Oh, I don’t sit by the pool much. I have a fear of water that’s deep like that. I mean, sometimes I will sit in the shallow end and put my toes in, but not for more than a minute.”
“Really?”
“It’s called aquaphobia. I still have dreams about drowning and wake up screaming. Always have since I was a little girl. My momma said that in my past life I must have drowned.”
Jake Ellis followed her into the kitchen, again laughing and whispering.
I used Jake Ellis’s phone, took photos of Mr. Garrett, sent those to San Bernardino, let the boss know we had done what we had been sent to do, and no shovel needed. It occurred to me to search for my daughter on social media not using the name I called her, but using her true first name, her Ethiopian name, Tsigereda. I was about to do that, but my work phone rang.
It was the boss. I handed the phone to Garrett.
He snapped, “You fuck! You gaffled me and now you dare send two niggers to my home? Fucking Shylock, I told the niggers I’ll pay. I will have my people send you the money by midnight. Yeah, every dime by midnight. But I won’t forget this. You set me up; you weren’t going to—you fucker! You are the most arrogant motherfucker I have ever met. No, you look in a mirror, you piece of shit. You sent niggers to my house. You know the difference between niggers and black people? Well, neither do I. You’re a piece of shit, your entire operation is a piece of shit, no one cares about your threats, and after this transaction is done, our business is over and I can launder elsewhere, and know that if we ever cross paths again, day or night, you better run the other fucking way because if I get my hands on you, I will knock all of your fucking teeth out.”
In a slobbering rage, Garrett hung up on my boss and threw my phone back at me.
I said, “I didn’t see that coming. San Bernardino won’t like that.”
“San Bernardino ain’t shit without me. You salmon-stealing niggers aren’t going to be satisfied until you encroach upon and steal everything real Americans have worked for.”
Jake Ellis had come back to the doorway when that outburst had sucked all the oxygen out of the house. Garrett scowled at Jake Ellis, then at me, then gave it all to Jake Ellis. Jake Ellis did those wicked finger snaps. Mr. Garrett gave Jake Ellis that cruel monkey smile. The wife of a jealous man stood back, nervous, and watched it all, breasts high, nipples hard like diamonds.
* * *
—
WHILE JAKE ELLIS taste-tested every flavor of gelato imported from Italy, I packed up our gear. Mr. Garrett couldn’t get us through the foyer fast enough. But Jake Ellis wasn’t done.
Jake Ellis went to Mrs. Garrett, and like he’d done with that winsome sister in the TGI Fridays parking lot, he pulled her into his arms like he had claimed her, and he kissed her. Softly. He held her ass and kissed her in front of her husband, gave her a deep kiss, made her swoon.
Mr. Garrett focused on Jake Ellis. That Boston gangster stare. That harsh monkey smile.
Jake Ellis reciprocated the expression, said, “I’ll give you the first shot.”
“Where are my guns? Just give me one and one bullet.”
“I’m talking going toe-to-toe. That’s how real men fight, not with guns.”
“San Bernardino should have told you who I am.”
“I know who you are. You’re nobody. Without guns, men like you are nobody.”
“You have a lesson to learn, and I’m going to teach you that lesson.”
“Come on. Teach me. Learn me a lesson.”
“I knew cocky niggers like you. Niggers from Dorchester. Knew niggers from Roxbury and South End. They learned about me. They know me like other gangsters knew Whitey Bulger. When I walk the street, when I walk in their ghetto, it becomes my ghetto. They see me coming and cross the road. And if it’s raining, they will throw their bodies on puddles so I can walk and not get my shoes wet. I show up and the craziest of the niggers act like they have some sense, and one nigger brings me a cup of Dunkies while another nigger gets me an ice cream coated with jimmies. Same respect when I go to the North End. Niggers bring me Georgetown cupcakes, niggers bring me Sweet cupcakes. Niggers’ll bring me beers from Coogan’s and a Fenway frank. Go to Dorchester and ask the Irish, the niggers who are more nigger than you niggers will ever be niggers, the halfricans who wish they weren’t niggers, and the habla español niggers who I am.”
“You can show me who you are right now.”
Jake Ellis waited for Garrett to make a move. A war was about to start, and this was the epicenter of another Elaine race riot akin to the one that had happened in the Arkansas delta.
Jake Ellis said, “This Boston bum is just another coward with Twitter courage.”
Mr. Garrett ended his monkey smile and the hard man casually walked away.
“Ebola-scented African, this is done. Off my property. I won’t ask again.”
Jake Ellis shouted, “I can’t hear you. Want to man up and say that to my face?”
Garrett turned around, came back. Not afraid. Again smiling like everything was okay in his world. “You know why niggers are like Mondays? Nobody likes Mondays. So, last time, both of you Mondays get the fuck off my property or I’ll have you arrested.”
“You’re about to run out of your nigger allotment.”
“My allotment? Oh, I have an allotment? So I can’t tell you that my favorite Dick Gregory book is the one entitled Nigger? Not the book Nigger by Randall Kennedy, but the book Nigger by Gregory. I don’t want you to get confused because there are so many Nigger books out there. I have an allotment? So, it would offend you if I say that my favorite Richard Pryor album is That Nigger’s Crazy? My favorite Denzel movie is Training Day. My favorite line in the whole movie? When he says, ‘Nigger, please.’ No wait. ‘My nigger.’ That’s the line. ‘My nigger.’ How can you have a well-appointed and powerful word to yourself, a word that you claim you hate but regurgitate all the time, yet no one else but a nigger can use so freely? Do niggers have nigger allotments, or just men like me? I mean, some of you moolies call each other niggers like it’s the only noun, verb, and adjective you know how to spell. And most of the time you spell it wrong. Just like with Pryor and Gregory, I’m old-school, so the original spelling, the way they spelled nigger on their albums and books for the world to see, that is the only correct spelling as far as I’m concerned. When I say ‘nigger’ it offends you, but when you call each other a nigger, you give each other a high-five and a hug like you’re part of NWA. I’m confused. You call each other niggers in America, Kanye and Jay were niggers in Paris, and those niggers have stolen a word invented by a white man and made themselves billionaires, and I bet they never sent a thank-you card. Your rappers have infected music with the word nigger and now it’s all over the world. I hear that African niggers are calling themselves niggers like American niggers. I know a little about African niggers. I travel. I’m not dumb. I can turn on satellite radio right now and niggers are calling each other nigger like it’s their first name, middle name, and surname. The niggers on Jamie Foxx’s radio station called each other niggers all day and night. So, do this, nigger, take it as a compliment that out of respect, like Mark Twain, I have learned to do the same. I mean, let’s be real. Don’t expect me to listen to Tupac and skip the best parts of the goddamn song. He says ‘nigger’ like it’s poetry and I can feel his pain and loathing and resentment. And love. He loved niggers. Don’t expect me to do the same with a Biggie record. Don’t expect me to hear a Richard Pryor joke or a Tiffany Haddish joke or a D.L. Hughley joke and leave out the best parts when I retell it. That nigger comedy on Netflix is another level of poetry. And don’t expect me to think more of niggers than niggers think
of themselves. You call yourselves niggers. I’m going to follow your lead and do the same. Besides, I like saying it, to be honest. Nigger, nigger, nigger. It elevates your blood pressure, messes you up, and that sensitivity makes me laugh, considering all the bullshit niggers have to say about everybody else. Everybody is riding the nigger wave. Whites call themselves niggers for kicks. But the wetbacks. Have you heard them? Wetbacks call each other niggers more than niggers call each other niggers, so I guess they want to be the next set of niggers America has to keep in their place. Nigger, nigger, nigger. That pisses you off a lot more than if I called you a tar baby or a jungle bunny. Only have to say one word for niggers to lose their minds. And that is the word they call the most offensive in the world. Yet you have that shit on repeat. Nigger, upsetting an uppity nigger like you, that’s hilarious. It’s the funniest shit, nigger. The funniest shit since niggers were set free. What say you, nigger?”
Each time Garrett said nigger, it was like a knife being twisted in Jake Ellis’s gut, and that double-edged blade went from his gut into mine. Jaw tight, I told myself that it was just a word. Couldn’t let Garrett see me sweat. But Jake Ellis was African, and where he came from, men like Garrett were the minority. Jake Ellis hadn’t been brainwashed to be passive, hadn’t been programmed to turn the other cheek, to let white men and white women spit on him. He never stepped out of the way of a white man or woman, never backed down to a man based on his color.
Garrett said, “You act like you’re the first bad man. Nigger, I was a bad man before you were born. And, nigger, I’ll be a bad man long after maggots are eating away at your dead body.”
Jake Ellis stood, riled, hands in fists. “After San Bernardino is settled, we will meet again.”
“I look forward to it. Nigger, I look forward to seeing you again. Just know this. ‘All I got beef with is those that violate me; I shall annihilate thee.’ That’s some Biggie Smalls for you. Now, while I’m nice, African nigger, leave before I force you to get down on one knee and bow to Zod.”
Jake Ellis told him, “I bow to no man. Only to my god, and he’s not yours.”
Garrett marched on: “And stay off that nigger Twitter. Living on the Internet will keep you worked up. I can tell by your bigoted conversation you’re on leftist social media way too much. Niggers like you find something to be offended by every day. Or you wake up and invent something to be offended by, and I find that as offensive as fake news. You wake up and shit on America before your first cup of coffee. If niggers hate America so fuckin’ much, there’s always Africa.”
“And if you hate niggers, there is always Europe.”
“Not for Europeans, you’d still be a baboon-fucking spear chucker.”
“Go back where you came from. Go back into the caves of Caucasia.”
Garrett grinned. “Uppity nigger got a lesson to learn.”
The man from Boston moved through giant double doors. Pushed them open wide.
Jake Ellis exhaled like a bull ready to charge. My blood pressure was way up.
Garrett called out, “Alexa. Play John Lennon.”
Without hesitation, Alexa answered like a loyal servant. “Which song?”
“That song from 1972. ‘Woman Is the Nigger of the World.’”
“Playing ‘Woman Is the Nigger of the World’ by John Lennon and Yoko Ono.”
The former Beatle began to sing. And Garrett conducted and sang it louder, sang about women being seen as subhumans, slaves, property, seldom educated, no gust, no confidence, scorned for trying to be a man. Once upon a time, some women were burned alive when their spouses died. For a white woman to believe she was oppressed, she had to be compared to the race of women dehumanized the most. Even then, many didn’t believe it. White women couldn’t fathom they were chattel. It meant one thing when Lennon sang it, but when Garrett played it, it felt ominous, deadly. Garrett was threatening his wife. Jake Ellis’s eyes told her she didn’t have to go back. Mine told her that she didn’t have to go back, but she sure as hell couldn’t go with us.
Garrett called back, voice calm yet strong, “Elaine. Woman. Come inside. Find me a deck of cards so we can play a game of spades.”
Mrs. Garrett looked at the mansion as if she couldn’t imagine another life, and she reacted as if her peniaphobia was about to start acting up. She didn’t want to fall back to her side of Compton. Compton had a beautiful side. I could tell she wasn’t from that part of a good city with a bad reputation. I didn’t have to be a gumshoe to see she was a wife and a moll combined. She lowered her head and left without saying good-bye, moved like an agile and apologetic puma. From the front, there was a lot of glass. The house was made to showcase the luxuries and art inside. We saw Mrs. Garrett rush up the staircase. Lennon sang, but Mr. Garrett roared louder than the instruments, and off-key. The man of the hour had done his best to be cool, calm, and collected in front of us, but once his front doors closed, he had let loose. Sounded like he was screaming, throwing plates, turning over chairs. I was glad we had hidden all of Garrett’s guns, left them wrapped in Saran Wrap and tucked in Ziploc bags, all of that stuffed into Hefty bags, drowning in the deep end of his Olympic-size pool.
Jake Ellis spat and scowled like a fighter who had lost for the first time in his career, his anger, his disappointment, powerful like Tyson after being downed by underdog Buster Douglas. Just like with Tyson and Douglas, there would be no rematch. Jake Ellis had to take this L and go home. If San Bernardino had seen this level of unprofessionalism, hell would have broken loose.
John Lennon sang us off the property. As Jake Ellis pulled into the dry heat, I tried to remember how many times Garrett had called his wife woman. If a white woman was the nigger of the world, it made me wonder what a black woman was in this world, if not the universe.
CHAPTER 9
THEN WE WERE in the Mustang on the way back, top down, hella hot evening air blowing on our heads, air conditioner cooling our feet as dry air sucked moisture from my flesh.
Jake Ellis fumed, “He went to Princeton? This is an American top-shelf education?”
“I grew up around men like him. Mississippi. Oklahoma. They are in California, Oregon, and riding the trains in New York too. Men like him will call a black man a racial slur over and over like it’s his Viagra, and when a man like Garrett gets hit in the eye, he’ll sue claiming assault.”
“What’s an uppity nigger?”
“A black man who thinks he’s better than the lowest of the low white men.”
“Well, he’s an uppity honky.”
“That knife won’t cut hot butter.”
“That peckerwood. He acts all big-man, like the colo from Babylon.”
“Peckerwood. Sounds funny when you say it. Like Woody Woodpecker–wood.”
“I heard a comedian use that word a few times.”
“Black comic?”
“White comic. He said it was an insult. But I ain’t never called a white man that. Everything you call them sounds stupid and is ineffective. Honky sounds more stupid.”
“I forgot. Besides colonialists, what y’all call them in Africa?”
“Obroni or oyibo or oyinbo. Depends on where you are.”
“Peckerwood sounds better. Especially the way you make the letter p pop.”
“Bruv, I need your black people to create better insults for white people.”
“There are no better insults. Nothing you say carries the same history. No white man was called a honky or redneck before he was lynched, because they weren’t lynched. There are no pictures of hundreds of black folks smiling as white men were hanged from trees by their necks. They were odd people, but never strange fruit. Black people didn’t take pictures of whites hanging from trees, then make those into postcards to send their relatives. No white organization had to wave a flag from its window announcing a white man was lynched that day. Black people had to send that mess
age to other black folks. Whites never stepped off the sidewalks to let blacks pass. Whites have always had the right to look a black man in his eyes. There was no Caucasian version of The Negro Motorist Green Book telling white people where and when it was safe to travel, no book needed to tell them where they could eat or find a bathroom so they didn’t have to go on the side of the road or in the bushes. White man has always felt powerful, if not safe. He’s always been more comfortable. He has never been the black man’s chattel. His folks weren’t crammed in the bottom of a ship. When they call us niggers, they’re doing more than insulting. They’re pouring salt on unhealed wounds, throwing four hundred years of history in our faces. They’re reminding black men and black women that we were enslaved, that we’re free because men like him begrudgingly decided to free the poor niggers, that in this system the poorest and worst of them are still better than us, that in their eyes, and that by law, by his law, we can still be beaten, lynched, or gunned down. They’re reminding you what they can still do to you.”
Jake Ellis did that finger snap. “They can do that to the black American with one word.”
“Bro, we’re called that out of the womb. By the time you’re in kindergarten, you know there is a difference. You sense the danger. You see how your folks react when called a nigger by white folk. They react like the whip hitting Denzel’s back in Glory. You see big black men get scared of little white women because they know the destruction one white woman can cause. You learn how to survive that shit on the daily. You get called that playing sports. If you’re alone, white boys band together and come up behind you, call you nigger to scare you, and that’s white-boy fun to them. Men like Garrett call you that in the boxing ring. Playing football, the other team yells it in your face to get you off-balance. They know how to rile you, just like Garrett knew how to pour gas and throw a match on your soul. Our worthiness, humanness, has been defined by this melanin-blessed epidermis. It’s their definition of us, but it doesn’t have to be our definition of ourselves. Still, I feel you, bro. Every black man or black woman will be called nigger one time too many. Some will cry and walk away mad, and some will snap and beat the fuck out of a fool.”
Bad Men and Wicked Women Page 8