“Nobody,” Ian said, grinning.
Ritz was flummoxed. “And you’re supposed to be some head of diversity?!”
“How else can I lure you nigger bitches here? Image is everything, right? Would you stop by if I had a cross burning in the front yard?”
“How could you?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. If I’m making you uncomfortable, you can always walk.”
The floodgate was open now. The fury, the hurt, and the totally helpless converged and Ritz’s tears wouldn’t stop. “You are so wrong.”
“Look, Ritz, that’s a cotton field. You should know what that is. You niggers have been picking it forever.”
The real Ritz Harper would have had three layers of Ian’s flabby white skin under her nails by now. But she couldn’t move. She couldn’t say a word. She did nothing. Play the game. But what kind of game was he playing? Was Ian just trying to see how far he could go to make Ritz snap and leave? Well, he’d have to do better than that.
Ian’s eyes were on fire. He was in his element. “Do you know your history?”
“I can only go back so far,” said Ritz, composing herself. “My father hasn’t been a part of my life, so there’s a lot that I don’t know.”
Tiny beads of sweat dotted Ian’s forehead. He was an animal on the prowl.
“Do you know the history of white men and black women?” he asked, circling Ritz. “Do you? How can you relate to me if you don’t know our history?”
Ritz transported her mind, praying that her body would soon follow.
“Somewhat.”
“Enlighten me, Ritz Harper. Tell me what you know.”
“I know there were relationships that…” Ritz’s voice trailed off.
“Tell me what you know, girl. Come on, tell me!”
“That when black women were slaves—”
Ian cut her off. “When you were a slave…”
“When my ancestors were slaves…that the slave master would have sex with them. Or, like Strom Thurmond, have families with them.”
Ian stopped circling. “I love it when you women do that.”
“Do what?”
“Try to clean up what happened. Pretend that there was love, or romance. Or that we endured the scorn of society just to be inside of you. You want to pretend that your wretched nappy cunt is some grand prize to be had.”
“Mine is a prize.”
“A prize? We fucked you to relieve ourselves and to make money. You were our breeders, why buy a slave when you can breed your own? When your cunt was on the rag, we fucked your daughters; more than likely they were our daughters, too. Our motive was profit, our pleasure was secondary. Your pleasure was never considered. But we taught you early on how to please us. That’s why you’re such a good fuck today. That’s all you’ve been trained to do. Pleasure us and make us a profit. That’s the real story.”
“That’s enough, Ian. I don’t have to listen to this.”
“You are correct. If this makes you uncomfortable, you can walk.”
“I’m not walking. There is nothing you can do that would cause me to walk out of here without a contract.”
Ian left the room. It was over, Ritz thought.
Ian returned with a pail and a filthy sack dress.
“Take your clothes off,” he commanded as he handed Ritz the sack. “Put this on, and then go out in the field and pick some cotton.”
“Now you wanna role-play, you sick fuck?!” Ritz yelled. “You know what? We can fuck, but I ain’t putting that shit on and I ain’t picking shit!”
“If this makes you uncomfortable, don’t put on the sack and pick my cotton. And don’t get your talk show. Just keep on your labels and leave. Oh, and don’t ever come back to Hollywood. The road to your talk show runs right through me. And I’ll block you.”
Ritz was stuck. How much did she want this really? Now it was a matter of principle. Ritz wasn’t leaving until she had her show—and she would get it at any cost. Play the game. Ritz was going to play the best Kizzy she knew how. She disrobed on the back porch. She slipped on the scratchy sack dress.
Uh-oh, she was getting hot, and a drop of sweat could reveal all beauty secrets.
That brief walk to Ian’s house in the ninety-degree California heat had bothered Ritz, but she didn’t break a sweat; they arrived at Ian’s air-conditioned home just in time. However, the midnight cooldown to eighty-six degrees offered no relief from the staggering heat, a hotness that would only be exacerbated by the physical act of picking cotton. She snatched the pail from Ian’s hand and marched into the cotton field.
Ritz jump-started her body’s sprinkler system just by walking onto the field—the intense heat caused her face and hair to assume minds of their own.
In minutes, Ritz’s head-to-toe beauty secrets would be revealed and reversed.
First, sweat trickled down her forehead and onto her eyelids; the fox lashes jumped off her lids and fell to the ground. They resembled little red spiders as a hot and lazy breeze carried them away.
Next, beads of sweat broke through her flawless, shimmery cheeks. Ritz’s perfectly blended mineral makeup bonded with the sweat, and the makeup’s zinc oxide invaded her pores. Ritz’s face stung as if a hundred hands were smacking the hell out of her.
Not that she could scream in pain; Ritz’s lips sucked her moisturizing lipstick from the inside; and the chapped skin was forming just as quickly on the outside.
From there, Ritz’s weave went commando.
Sweat saturated her scalp, causing her roots to revert into tight, coarse miniature coils that gradually separated from the sewn-in weave’s tracks. The excessive scalp steam also caused the expensive human-hair weave to revert to its natural state, now showing more attributes of My Little Pony doll hair rather than the “virgin cuticle strands from Panama” that Ritz purchased.
Ritz’s body sweat caused her sack dress to come alive and irritate her all over, like hungry ants crawling up and down her flesh.
Ritz bent over and examined the strange plants. She pulled down on a burr attached to a plant’s stem and twisted the cotton fibers off. She put it in the pail and noticed a dot of crimson—she’d nicked her finger.
Ritz grew tired and weak, and as she bent over to reach for another cotton plant, nausea struck.
She vomited in the field.
Ian stood on the porch and watched Ritz pick cotton. He was enjoying every moment. Even in a sack she was beautiful—elegant even. Her pride wasn’t confined to her clothes after all; it was in her walk. It was in her veins. It was even in those tears that streaked her face.
“Connect with your past!” Ian shouted to Ritz. “Humble yourself.”
Ian smiled. That ambitious whore would sell her soul for a shot at the tube—they all did. Ian’s minidick hardened as he watched his slave-girl fantasy unfurl. He stroked his dick and put on a condom. He stepped out of his khakis and headed into the field, buck-ass naked. Ian fantasized, I’m gonna fuck that little nigger girl real good in the field.
He was going to grab her by the hair and drag her back into the house where no one could hear her cry. He would degrade her. Then he’d make that shivering, naked little nigger girl lie across his feet to keep him warm as he slept.
“If it makes you uncomfortable—”
Ritz spun around to see the short, fat, bald, naked white man ogling her. Ritz jumped and pounced on Ian, biting, scratching, and mauling him everywhere as he rolled around in the cotton to get away from her.
“I’ll make your motherfucking ass uncomfortable!” Ritz yelled. “You like cotton, huh? I’ll give you all the cotton you’ll ever want.”
Ritz smashed Ian’s fat back and flat ass with the cotton pail until she knocked him out cold. She enjoyed her handiwork—seeing that fat, naked racist resting atop his beloved bed of cotton plants.
18
Rise
3 A.M.
Ritz couldn’t sleep in strange places. She never could. She lay across Ian’s bed u
ntil she grew tired of hearing him snore out in the field. She rose, carefully peeled the sack dress over her head, and followed the dim light to the parlor; perhaps her clothes were down there. She descended the stairs and, again, came upon the mahogany display case. This time the housekeeper wasn’t there to shoo her away.
Ritz opened the door and examined the collectibles. The first item that caught her eye was a postcard. On it was a caricature of a young black girl, braids sticking straight up, and very pregnant. She was in a watermelon patch, with a half-eaten slice in her hand and a devilish grin on her face. The caption read, “I is not expectin’. I’s been eatin’ melons.”
Ritz saw black figurines in sexually suggestive positions. African-caricature Zulu Lulu stirring sticks. A nutcracker fashioned as a buxom black woman; the nut was to be cracked between her legs. And then Ritz found the holy grail of racist paraphernalia, a postcard of a whistling black woman, with bulging eyes and big, ruby lips, and a protruding, pregnant stomach. The caption read, “I went all de way wif L.B.J.”
Ritz flipped the card over and it was signed, “Sir Ian, Johnson’s darkie Democrats would get a kick out of this revised political slogan!” The author’s small print indicated the card surfaced during the 1964 presidential race between Lyndon B. Johnson and Barry Goldwater. Out of her disgust Ritz saw an opportunity. If Ian tried to back out of the deal, she would have proof of what a racist bastard the diversity czar really was.
Ritz swiped the postcard, and still naked as a jaybird, she buried the card deep inside her weave. She latched the cabinet and proceeded to the parlor where she was confronted by the housekeeper.
“You should be in bed, lying across his feet,” the mock mammy said.
“I need my clothes,” Ritz said coldly. “Role play is over. I want to shower.”
“Oh, no, Ritz, I don’t want you in my shower.”
“You know my name?” Ritz said, surprised.
“We listen to your show all the time. Master Ian loves it. He says that you’re good for breaking down black Hollywood on the air all the time. I said, ‘How you doin’?’ when we first met.”
Ritz felt the urge to throw up again but she couldn’t. She stood there, naked with a stranger, in a strange house, playing a sick game without knowing the rules.
“What is going on here?” Ritz asked. “You can tell me. I don’t understand.”
“My opinion is worthless. I dust. I open doors. I lose an occasional bet with Master Ian over someone like you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that I never would have expected you to stay here. Master Ian says that black women don’t know who they are, that they would do anything to make it. But I told him, not you. I bet him that you would walk because after you were shot your name was splattered all over the airwaves out here. The Hollywood Reporter did a full page about your incident, and that perhaps the shooting was just the wake-up call to get you to consider television. Your television show was going to happen with or without Ian; you were a hot commodity all along. But then you strolled right in here and proved him right.”
“Um, you won your bet. I whooped Ian’s ass. He’s sleeping it off in the cotton field. Get my clothes!”
The housekeeper scrambled, “Okay, just don’t wake him or I’ll be fired.”
Ritz might have lost the talk show deal, but she couldn’t bear being the ultimate disgrace to everything Maddie had ever tried to teach her. What would Cecil think of her? What would Tracee think? What was Chas thinking now?
Chas! She had to get back to Rutger’s. She had to get back to someone she knew.
19
The housekeeper led Ritz to the guest shower. The muted pink and beige decor was just what Ritz needed to calm her insides. She ran the hot shower until the room filled with steam. She found a bar of decorative soap and entered the stall.
To Ritz’s surprise, the soap produced invigorating, frothy suds. She caressed her face, neck, and body with the suds, and the stream of hot water massaged her body. The housekeeper entered, delivered Ritz’s clothes and some fresh towels, and left.
Every drop of water was bringing Ritz back to life.
After what must have been an eternity for the nervous housekeeper, Ritz shut off the water and exited the stall. She dried off, wiped the steam from the mirror, and was aghast at her appearance. Ashen skin; swollen eyes; dry, cracked lips. Clearly she was dehydrated and had been through a hell of an ordeal.
Ritz stared into the mirror, looking beyond her physical appearance. She rubbed her eyes and gasped at the sight of her mother’s reflection.
“Mom?” Ritz whispered. Ritz’s mind was spinning. The last time her mother had appeared was when Ritz was in a coma and was this close to joining her mother in the afterlife. So why was she here now?
“Am I dying, Mom?”
Her mother had consoled her last time. But not this time.
“Open your eyes. Know who you are! Don’t beg for what is rightfully yours!”
Then her mother was gone.
Ritz gasped. “Open my eyes? Don’t beg?”
The housekeeper knocked on the door and Ritz was eager to let her in.
“Come in, please.”
“Oh, I thought you’d be dressed,” the woman said nervously. “Master Ian is waking up.”
“I’m not putting the sack back on. I’m wearing my street clothes, and tell him that I’m not walking to Rutger’s.”
“You shouldn’t have beat him. Master Ian has a long memory.”
“Call him master one more time and I’ll kick your teeth down your motherfucking throat!” Ritz roared. “Say it again…I dare you.”
“You can’t say that. You’ve got to stay in character. You won’t get your talk show if you talk back to him.”
“Whatever.”
Ritz reveled in the commotion coming from the cotton field. The naked beast was angry now! Ritz strutted into the den, smashing and wrecking everything in sight. She became the bull in the china shop.
Ian’s grunts and heavy steps were growing closer.
“I’m in here, you fat, pasty motherfucker!” Ritz yelled. Her eyes were wild and fierce.
“You bitch! What the fuck are you doing down here?! Annie, call the police! Call the goddamn police!”
Annie was too startled to move. Ritz and her path of destruction had rested at the Wall of Fame. She touched the first picture on the wall.
“Now, wait a goddamn minute, Ritz!” Ian bellowed. “Don’t you go messin’ with those.”
“You like to role-play. You call me by my new name: Sojourner Nat Turner.” Ritz tore the end of the picture, threatening to pull it from the wall.
“Ritz…”
She ripped it from the wall and placed her hand on the next photo.
“What’s my name, bitch?!” she screamed.
“Sojourner!!!”
Ritz ripped the second photo from the wall. “Say my whole name!”
“Sojourner Nat Turner!”
Ritz focused on the stunned housekeeper, who had picked up the phone to dial. “Um, if you dial the cops, I will beat your ass with that phone. I will pulverize your brainless head. In fact, I’ll just rip your head off and let your shoulders wear that little mammy hat. Do you understand me? Now get your stupid ass over here and learn something.”
The housekeeper moved away from the desk and sat on the couch.
“You ain’t allowed to put your black ass on my couch, Annie!” Ian was now fully enraged.
“What you say, motherfucker?” Ritz ripped another picture off the wall and reached for yet another one.
Ian threw up his hands. “I’m sorry. She can sit wherever she wants to.”
“Nawl, that’s not good enough. Tell her to take her drawers off and rub that nice nappy cunt all over your Italian leather. Go on, tell her!”
Ian hesitated, until Ritz tore another picture.
“Rub your cunt on the couch, Annie.”
“If this makes you uncomfo
rtable, you can always leave,” Ritz said to her.
The housekeeper removed her pristine, white bloomers.
“That’s right,” Ritz instructed her. “Rub that cunt all over that couch.”
Ian’s face was red-hot. “You will never get a show nowhere when I’m done with you,” he growled, practically foaming at the mouth. “You won’t even get airtime on the public-access channel. You dirty, black, smelly, funky monkey bitch. You fucking nigger monkey whore, dirty rotten, rotten, rotten, filthy, filthy bitch! I will destroy you! You fucking nigger! I will destroy all you fucking nigger bitches. You have no right to live. You are lower than the muddy shit on the bottom of a pig’s foot, you rabid slut nasty stupid fucking bitch!”
Ritz watched him with delight. She wanted him to explode.
“Did I tell you that your dick looked like a Q-tip, after I dog-walked your ass in that cotton field?” she squealed.
Ian’s veins were playing peekaboo inside his pale forehead. His temples were tap-dancing. He snorted and spat as he came closer to Ritz.
“You fucking breeder. You monkey. You’re a petri dish for every disease on this planet!”
Ritz baited him even more. “And yet you can’t help but want to fuck each and every one of us.”
“You voodoo julu bitch.”
“Yeah, we use voodoo to fuck with you.” Ritz was enjoying this now. “So what!”
Ian balled his fist. He was well within striking distance now. “If you tear one more autographed photo off my wall, there will be strange fruit hanging in the backyard. Candy-apple red.”
Ritz placed one hand on another picture. She stood on her tippy-toes and made her body extralong. She stared at Ian from above. Ritz talked slowly and quietly; she wanted to feed him every word, morsel by morsel.
“You fucked up, Ian. The women on this wall were unknown. They had to take your abuse or go without their big break. But I arrived with the Ritz Harper Excursion. I’m not a nobody and I don’t need a big break from you. But if you don’t play my game, I’ll make you famous.”
The color drained from Ian’s face. “You can’t threaten me. You’ll never work in this industry.”
Ritz Harper Goes to Hollywood! Page 9