Tragic Magic

by Wesley Brown

  “What are they?”

  “What you do here matters.”

  “No it doesn’t.”

  “Then why do you stay?”

  “Because this is what I do best.”

  “Then it matters.”

  “No it doesn’t. My being here or not being here doesn’t change a thing. What I do could be good, bad, or indifferent. It still doesn’t make any difference.”

  “But if it’s important to you, then that makes the difference.”

  “Bullshit!”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “Shit. Do you think you changed anything by what you did? You’d a done better letting them kids kill each other. That kid that cut you probably feels he can get away with anything now.”

  “But I didn’t do what I did for those kids. I did it for myself. And you know, that was the first time I can remember doing something where I wasn’t trying to prove something to somebody else?”

  “And you damn near got yourself killed for your trouble.”

  “Well, at least it was my doing and not anyone else’s.”

  “You’re a fool.”

  “So what!”

  “Touché!”

  “I think I’m feeling well enough to leave now,” I said.

  “All right. You can go.”

  “Take it easy, Doctor Blue.”

  “No, I doubt if I’ll take it at all.”

  I looked through a glass and saw Alice, Pauline, my mother and father, and my sister Debra. A version of the opening statement of the theme to “So What” played in my head. Why wasn’t there a dirge in my slide for Otis? Would Alice help me help us both out of the wee hours of the blues? Would Pauline jump on my case with her usual “Now, ain’t this some shit?” line? Would Debra and my folks send me through all kinds of changes? Was Doctor Blue right about me being a fool? I walked out into all of that and all the rest, hoping I’d be able to play the chord changes between what I did mind and what didn’t matter.

  ONE LAST RIFF BEFORE

  WE HIT IT AND QUIT…

  IT WAS WITH A STRANGE ELATION that a week later I found myself alone with Alice. She had invited me over for dinner, and after we’d eaten, I felt guilty that my thoughts were on going to bed with her and not on Otis’ funeral, which had been earlier in the day.

  “It’s still hard for me to believe that Otis is dead,” I said.

  “Hard or easy, it’s all the same,” she said.

  “I guess you’re right. You know, I still haven’t been able to feel anything behind his death.”

  “What do you want to feel?” she asked.

  “Something.”

  “Oh, come on, Melvin! Otis was never your friend.”

  “Maybe that’s what’s been bothering me—knowing that I hated him all those years we were supposed to be so tight. And now that he’s dead, feeling guilty about it.”

  “That’s nothing to feel guilty about. I can see why you resented him. I never understood why you let him make you his flunky. If I were you, I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. But, Melvin, you’ve always been hung up on what you’re supposed to feel, and not what you do feel. You want to be on everybody’s side but your own.”

  We were on the couch and she was sitting with her legs crossed with the right foot tucked behind the left ankle. I followed the way her finely whittled body weaved its way vinelike up into the couch.

  “How’re you doing?” she asked.

  “I’m all right. Still a little sore, that’s all.”

  “Does that hurt?” she asked, sliding her hand along the left side of my rib cage.

  “Unh, unh,” I lied. She continued rubbing, moving her hand in a slow, waxing motion up into my chest. Our breathing became labored and loud enough to be heard. I cupped her face tentatively in my hands as if to make sure she was real.

  “It’s been a long time,” I said.

  “For me, too,” she said.

  “I’m not sure I’m gonna know how to act.”

  “I think you’ll remember,” she said.

  Our mouths met and I sucked back the pungent taste of brandy, nicotine, and onions. She moved her mouth to my ear and drove me to moaning with the flicking of her quick tongue. “Let’s go in the bedroom,” she whispered with my ear still in her mouth.

  I had no sense of undressing as my rising desire for Alice seemed to pressure the clothes right off me. As she undressed, the light from a shaded floor lamp caught the cognac color of her body. We got into bed and I lay my hands on her feverishly, wanting to do everything at once. My mouth found its hunger in her sweet and sour mouth, under her arms, on her breasts, in the creases of her navel, at the peak of her thighs, behind her knees, and on her fingers and toes. Her taste was sweet soap mixed with the salty moisture of her heated odor.

  Rolling around the bed like tumbleweed, we finally came to a stop with Alice on top of me. She reached between my legs and as I swelled she sucked and cowlicked me into a frenzy. Moving over top of me, she lowered herself down, guiding me until I was inside her. The feel of how snug we fit set my whole body on fire. We began to move and when my stomach hollowed out in a contraction, her rounded pelvis drove into the space, pushing me deeper inside her. The sheets of the bed hissed under us as our stomachs made a click song, and sweat washed up against the shore of our ribs.

  My mouth locked open, but I couldn’t catch enough breath to scream. Tears stung my eyes.

  “Ohhh shit! God damn, baby! What you trying to do, make butter?”

  “Yeah, that’s right! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” she panted without missing a stroke in the insistent churn of her hips. I was in a crazed state, bucking to come and at the same time not wanting to spend myself. I pounded my fists into the bed; then kneaded Alice’s back with my hands and finally let them ride her writhing behind. But if you move you lose! If you Move you Lose! If You Move You Lose! IF YOU MOVE YOU LOSE!

  Lying in the wetness and smell of spent desire, we were curled back to front into spoons with me contracted into Alice’s back.

  “Melvin?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You remember what I said at that party when you asked me if I liked to fight?”

  “I remember.”

  “Well, I’m serious about that. If I can’t fight with whoever I’m with, I’d rather be alone.”

  “But what do you mean by fight?”

  “I’m not talking about being beat up on, but living my life in a certain way. For a long time I didn’t care enough about myself to fight for the way I wanted to live. So I let myself get fucked over by men I didn’t even care about. It’s taken me a while to come out of that, but now I’m at the point where I’m not going to use myself up anymore with men I don’t care enough about to fight with. I like you, Melvin, but we won’t get along if you don’t fight or try to stop me from fighting.”

  We didn’t say any more. There was only the hush of our bodies laboring slowly, slightly apart. Everything that had happened over the last week had taken a lot out of me, and listening to Alice gave me the jitters. She was definitely up to something more than a little light sport. But I figured I had done enough fighting for a while and didn’t know if I had the energy to get conjugated with her. A part of me wanted to renege on everything and just lay dead. Hadn’t I earned that right? I had paid my dues. Yet what I would trade off by basking in the non-use of myself could be even worse, since a thing never meant a thing until it moved.

  I pulled Alice’s full spoon-shape closer to me.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  _____

  I would like to express my gratitude to Erica Vital-Lazare for her enthusiastic championing of Tragic Magic as part of the inauguration of McSweeney’s OF THE DIASPORA; to Amanda Uhle for her unstinting efforts, shepherding the novel to publication; to Frank Johnson for all he’s done to introduce Tragic Magic to a new generation of readers; and to Ismail Muhammad for his generous foreword, which enlightened me with its engagingly fresh perspective.

  ABOUT THE AUT
HOR

  _____

  WESLEY BROWN is an acclaimed novelist, playwright, and teacher. He worked with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in 1965 and became a member of the Black Panther Party in 1968. In 1972, he was sentenced to three years in prison for refusing induction into the armed services and spent 18 months in Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary. For 26 years, Brown was a much-revered professor at Rutgers University, where he inspired hundreds of students. He currently teaches literature at Bard College at Simon’s Rock and lives in Chatham, New York.

  OF THE DIASPORA

  _____

  A BOOK SERIES FROM McSWEENEY’S

  OF THE DIASPORA is a series of previously published works in Black literature whose themes, settings, characterizations, and conflicts evoke an experience, language, imagery, and power born of the Middle Passage and the particular aesthetic which connects African-derived peoples to a shared artistic and ancestral past. The first novel in the series is Tragic Magic by Wesley Brown, originally published in 1978 and championed by Toni Morrison during her tenure as an editor at Random House. It’s followed by Praisesong for the Widow, a novel by Paule Marshall originally published in 1983 and a recipient of the Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award. The third book is a collection of editorial photography by Lester Sloan framed within a conversation with his daughter, Aisha Sabatini Sloan.

  The series is edited by Erica Vital-Lazare, a professor of creative writing and marginalized voices in literature at the College of Southern Nevada. Published in collectible hardcover editions with original cover art by Sunra Thompson, the first three works hail from Black American voices defined by what Amiri Baraka described as a strong feeling “getting into new blues, from the old ones.” OF THE DIASPORA—North America will be followed by series from the diasporic communities of Europe, the Caribbean, and Brazil.

  Other books in the OF THE DIASPORA series:

  PRAISESONG FOR THE WIDOW

  by Paule Marshall

  Avey Johnson—a Black, middle-aged, middle-class widow—has long since put behind her the Harlem of her childhood. Suddenly, on a cruise to the Caribbean, she packs her bag in the middle of the night and abandons her friends at the next port of call. The unexpected and beautiful adventure that follows provides Avey with the links to the culture and history she has so long disavowed. Originally published in 1983, and a recipient of the Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award.

  CAPTIONING THE ARCHIVES:

  A CONVERSATION IN

  PHOTOGRAPHS AND TEXT

  Photos by Lester Sloan; text by Aisha Sabatini Sloan

  In this father-daughter collaboration, photographer Lester Sloan opened his archive of street photography, portraits, and news photos, and noted essayist Aisha Sabatini Sloan interviewed him, creating rich, probing, dialogue-based captions for more than one hundred photographs.

  Available at bookstores, and at store.mcsweeneys.net