Hokum

by Paul Beatty

  If there was any slight silver lining to this fiasco, it was that now everyone on campus would know for sure that Tommytwo was nobody's piece of Spam. O h yeah, he knew other guys had their doubts about him. He hadn't known how to play bidwist freshman year, he'd thought Don Cornelius was a Spanish explorer. But he had his own doubts about some of them. He'd seen George at Lenox Mall playing video games with white dudes in Emory sweatshirts. And he'd heard plenty of guys in bio asking for recommendations, diction white as milk. He'd heard Pinky in lab one afternoon answering to the name Burgess like a fucking puppy. Burgess. If there ever was a guy with a name whiter than Burgess would he speak now or forever hold his peace. Oh boy. Oh boy boy boy. Tommytwo was screwed.

  "Yo ass be grass, my brother."

  "Yo, like, could you guys please chill."

  "All I was saying was you Fucked, my brother. With a capital F."

  Tommytwo stuffed his fists into his ears and hummed "The StarSpangled Banner." Oh yeah, and his mom, oh man. His mom was going to keel. As for his dad, being at Morehouse was bad enough, let alone getting some girl pregnant. Let alone getting some girl named LaKisha pregnant. LaKisha was different, the real deal. She was from Detroit, down and dirty, knew guys who'd taken heroin, had gone out with a guy who'd stabbed his cousin.

  "She probably planned it, yo ass ax me. Probably took her a needle and poked a hole in the rubber, you ax me. Ax her before you go marryin' her, man, just ax her." Clyde, from Alaska, was the Christopher Columbus of discovering words in black English, but had never heard of overkill.

  "Marry?! Nigger, you need to trip your black ass out the window. What law says brotherman got to go that far?"

  "Word! Babycake come from the screets. Her mama be pleased as punch she found a college nigga to knock her ass up."

  "I said chill," said Tommytwo. There was no rubber. Under all the gold jewelry, LaKisha was an old-fashioned girl. She didn't believe in modern technology separating her Esmerelda from his Big Daddy. That was what she called it. Big Daddy. Even in front of her girlfriends.

  She was one of a kind, as far as Spelman went. Your typical Spelman girl would let a guy spend his last ten bucks on a plate of spaghetti marinara, then go bounding back inside her dorm like a kangaroo, forget the kiss. Not LaKisha. She'd cook a guy a meal on a hotplate. She carried herself like Miss Universe, and he'd figured she was safe.

  "How she be lookin', ya'll?"

  "She fine. Spader like 'em black but fine."

  "Long hair?"

  "Hell naw. To the neck. Baby got a body though."

  "Today she got a body. Six months from now she'll be one big fat stank ho talkin' bout where the pickles—"

  "I said chill!" These assnoses could talk trash all they wanted, but they better keep LaKisha out of it, period. If they'd seen her expression, talking about going to Detroit all by herself to raise the ba . . . the ba . . . the baby. He'd taken in about half the words she'd said out there in the quad, something about having the kid underwater in a birthing pool, teaching it how to swim from day one like a tadpole. LaKisha loved the ocean. Forced him to watch Miami Vice on Friday nights. Popped popcorn on the hotplate. Giggled every time the tinfoil blew up like a balloon. Son, remove yourself from bad situations. Screw you, Dad. I love her.

  "Yo, hand me the phone."

  The guys shouted Tommytwo down. Don't call her, was he out of his mind, leave the bitch be, wait her ass out. It was beginning to get on his nerves. It was his life, his choice.

  "Hands me the phone, Pinky bro. I needs to calls my girl, make sure is she be doing okay." His soul train had jumped track, the words were falling off his tongue mangled, but it was okay for once. He loved LaKisha! They were going to have a baby! Cigars, what he needed was cigars.

  PERCIVAL EVERETT

  from erasure

  2001

  Story idea—a man marries a woman whose name is the same as that of his first wife. One night while making love he says her name and the woman accuses him of calling out the name of his first wife. Of course he in fact has called out the name of his first wife, but also he has called out his present wife's name. He tells her that he was not thinking of his first wife, but she says she knows what she heard.

  I was driving up Highway 395 on my way to fish the South Fork of the Kern. At the junction of 178 and 395 I stopped for a bite. It was summer and dusk was coming on and so it was late enough and still eerie enough for the weirdos to be out. I sat in a booth and was called "sugar" by the middle-aged waitress while a couple of guys spoke French to each other in the booth behind me. When traveling, it is best to eat without regard to health or one might not eat at all. I was carving into what was called a chicken fried steak and was unable to detect chicken or steak, but it was clear that it was indeed fried, when a couple of stringy, gimme-capped, inbred bohunks came noisily into the restaurant. Their keen hearing, though it did not allow them to know it was French, picked up the annoying cadence of a "fern" language. They sat at the counter and cast more than a few glances toward the French-speaking men, until they could take it no longer and walked over to them.

  "You boys funny?" The skinnier and taller of the two asked.

  "Funny?" one of the Frenchmen asked.

  "You know, queers," from the second long-fingernailed, backwoods, walking petri dish.

  "Ah, queers," the Frenchman said. "Oui."

  "Oui," from bumpkin number one, who looked at his buddy and shared a laugh. "Come on outside so we can kick your ass."

  "I don't understand," the second Frenchman said.

  Bumpkin two must have stepped or leaned closer. I registered the alarmed expression on the face of the waitress, who then called out that she didn't want any trouble.

  "Outside, faggots. You ain't chickens, are you? It's two against two.

  That's fair."

  "Actually, it's two against three," I said. I put the bite that was on my fork into my mouth.

  Bumpkin one stepped over to look at me, then laughed to his pal, "I think we got the nigger riled."

  I chewed my food, trying to remember all the posturing I had learned as an undersized teenager.

  "You a faggot, too?" he asked.

  I pointed to the fact that I was chewing. This confused him slightly and I could see for a split second his fear. "I might be," I said.

  "So, you want to fight, too."

  I didn't want to fight, but the fact of the matter was that I was already fighting. I said, and still I am proud of it, "Okay, if we're going to do this, let's do it. Just remember that this is one of the more important decisions you will ever make."

  I'd overshot my mark. His fear grew and turned into rage and he hopped back and yelled for me to get up. I was afraid now that I might really have to do something I didn't do very well, throw punches. I stood and though I wasn't a skinny wire, I was not much larger than either of them. The second bumpkin yelled for the gay men to get up, too.

  They did and I wished I'd had a camera to capture the expressions of those two provincial slugs. The Frenchmen were huge, six-eight and better, and healthy looking. The rubes stumbled over themselves backing away, then scrambled out of the diner.

  I was laughing when the men asked me to join them, not at the spectacle of the rednecks running out, but at my own nerve and audacity, to presume that they needed my help.

  C'est plus qu'un crime, c'est unefaute.

  COLSON WHITEHEAD

  from John henry days

  2001

  alphonse miggs lies on his bed half-naked, contemplating the fissures of a mothball. His striped boxer shorts almost reach his knees, the tops of his socks almost reach his knees, out of his T-shirt extrude soft fishbelly arms. He hasn't removed his shoes yet. Lying on the bed with his shoes on is something he would never do at home, not even on the puUout sofa in the basement where he sleeps these days, and is a luxury. He is in room 12 of the Talcott Motor Lodge, in a museum of previous guests' scratches and gouges, grateful to have a place to call his own.


  The mothball's surface is too pocked and imperfect to roll away.

  Rarely in his recent memory has he been as happy as when he unpacked his clothes. In any drawer he pleased. He had saved this task (extra-special treat) for after the banquet. In the top drawer Alphonse delicately placed his underwear and socks, in the second his shirts, and in the last his pants. One, two, three. Every item of clothing level in his palm as if he were handling packages of moody nitroglycerine. In the ledge above the sink he placed his travel kit just so. Eleanor was not there to stop or move his placements and each time his hand departed one of his possessions he felt a blush of freedom. A bona fide sensation.

  Putting clothes in any old drawer feels like a political act because recently in the Miggses' household, 1244 Violet Lane, there has unfolded a cold war over spaces. It happens in every household of course, someone picks out a favorite chair or side of the couch; over time someone comes to a choice, or all at once—on the first day the new chair arrives in the house and is claimed. In Alphonse's home the usual pattern of domestic boundary erection has attained the aspect of warfare, with the attendant gamesmanship of posturing, deployment, arcane strategy. Not to mention hurt feelings on both sides.

  Alphonse and Eleanor married for all the usual reasons: fear of death, fear of being alone, the compulsion to repeat the mistakes and debacles of their parents' marriage. It was a small ceremony; Eleanor's six-year-old niece caught the bouquet, leading to jokes at the expense of Eleanor's unmarried older sister, whom everybody pretended was not a lesbian. On the honeymoon cruise they made brief love several times, with the lights on for the first time ever, as there was no one who could see them except whatever beings lived in the darkness outside the porthole. Eventually they bought a home.

  The prefabricated house at 1244 Violet Lane came equipped in its natural state with nooks and cubbies. These were areas in rooms that would offend the eye if not occupied by a thing or object. That corner in the living room. That somehow frightening blank spot in the foyer. The mantel, with its unbroken plane that spoke of manifest destiny. These were areas that needed to be filled or else something else might roost there that was unwanted, a negative feeling or perception. A great flood of refugees from knickknackland set up lean-tos where appropriate, dispossessed tchotchkes earned citizenship. Artificial flowers insinuated into the small nook between the bay windows in the dining room and doilies accepted their missions with a grim certitude that belied their frilly edges. Alphonse's second-place trophy from his senior year achievement in the hundred-yard dash posed in the foyer on a three-legged table whose radius forbid objects larger than single-flower vases or small pictures, perfect for the sub majestic dimensions of the die-cast second-place trophy. Whether the architects of the house placed these nooks out of a farsighted sense of need or mere perversity is beyond telling, but Alphonse and Eleanor passed the test with flying colors and swiftly the house looked lived in. Together they chose where things went.

  A routine of married life settled in. For the first couple of years Alphonse spent an inordinate amount of time looking at his hands. Lifelines and their mysteries crisscrossed and terminated in his palms. His cuticles obtained nicks and imperfections that healed over time and he observed the process. Alphonse tried to read something there, a clue or two. He took this preoccupation as a symptom of incompleteness, despite what surface appearances told him. He had a good job, for example; middle management was only a better tie away. Around him the house was in great shape, as they outgrew the wisdom of the home decorating magazines. Sometimes they entertained other married couples of their acquaintance for dinner to discuss the issues of the day. But still. Then one afternoon, in his doctor's office as he waited for his annual physical, Alphonse discovered an article about hobbies. It caught his eye. The article elaborated about a psychological need common to most folks, a hole that needs filling. Stamp collecting, the article suggested, was a wholesome interest amenable to the beginner but equally rewarding for the seasoned collector. He showed the article to Eleanor, who nodded, and he sent away for a starter kit from one of the philately companies recommended in the article.

  The basement proved perfect for this new interest. The basement was great for storage and one day would make a fine barracks for the washer and dryer, but in the early period of their marriage served only as the home of the fuse box, oft-worshiped during hurricane season. Then the stamps arrived. He scraped a table down the stairs, untangled an extension cord to power the lamp and created a space for himself not far from the water heater. Above him spiders wove secretions into traps amid a maze of bent copper tubing. The basement became a place that was completely his, different from the communal nooks and cabinets and drawers upstairs, the spaces that testified to their shared effort to make a home together. They agreed where to put the vase, the porcelain unicorn, together they ratified the placement of the wedding picture, but the basement was his. An inequity blossomed. It was a full third of the house's cubic space and he had claimed it. It was a place to masturbate and think about the world and mount his stamps, glory over his collection of railroad stamps.

  Stamps like to be touched in a certain way. Soak them until they are wet to separate them from envelopes, and when they are wet enough they have to be handled just so. With tongs. It is his hobby. And so it went on for years. She never went down there. And then Eleanor retaliated. It took years but it happened.

  With Eleanor lately there has been this flurry of clubs. It is almost as if he looked up one day and she'd gone through the Yellow Pages or ripped off every contact number from every flyer in every laundromat in town. Or maybe one club leads to another club, a pyramid scheme of interest and hobby. She makes one friend and the friend is a clue to another friend in another club. "It's just something to pass the time," she says when he asks her to explain the newest prop in her repertoire, the next alien thing she has brought into the house, bylaws or instructional literature. When she says this she is returning his stamp excuse to him and it is not lost on either party.

  She is on the steering committee of two maybe three charities now. The book club. Every month there's another discounted hardcover from the local big chain. He's never heard of the books before he takes them into his hands and reads the dust covers. They seem to be about women overcoming, or women suffering, and then there is a little note of triumph at the end. Eleanor affects a note of irritation whenever he asks a simple question about the books. Sometimes he'll be reading a philately magazine and will look up to see Eleanor squinting at him over the hardcover edge as if he lives in its pages. It seems the only time she cooks nowadays is to test out the storage capabilities of her latest acquisition from her plastics club. In this club the membership requirements are that you like to get together to trade plastic food storage devices. He opens the door after a long, a too long, day at work, to a smell fit for the kitchen of a really fancy restaurant, one they might visit on a special occasion, if they still celebrated their anniversary for example. But there will be nothing on the dining room table except the honed gleam of the wood polish. In the kitchen the grand repast is already interred in her plastic containers, in flat lozenges, in sleek cylinders, in deep rectangles with rounded corners. Haifa liter, liter and two liter and in between. The tops are available in many different colors, everything stacks inside everything else conveniently. The plastic is opaque and he can barely make out the contents. He'll tilt one and watch a brown liquid collect in the bottom corner. Eleanor will be in the living room with a book while he inspects container after container. The things in the plastic containers are not leftovers in the strict sense for they have been prepared specifically for storage. She throws them out the next day in preparation for the next configuration of containers. Sometimes he'll happen into the kitchen during the cleaning ritual. Certain orange globules of grease resist the capabilities of the soft side of the sponge and force her to turn it over to the abrasive side. Then the plastic becomes clean.

  The storage devices necessita
ted her membership in a recipe club so she could have novel foodstuffs with which to fill her containers, which in turn required the purchase of cookbooks. Exotic recipes from foreign lands necessitated the purchase of rare herbs, ingredients that would never be used again yet required still more storage. His cereal was exiled to a not as convenient cabinet, displaced by carmine dust (for color) and lime green relishes (for tangy aftertaste). He went downstairs one day and noticed his World War II spy novels, all twenty years' worth, in boxes on the floor of the basement; their homelands upstairs had been invaded by cookbooks. His racing trophy was on the floor next to them; it had been displaced by a group photograph of the steering committee of the Clothes for Orphans fund-raising dinner. He has no idea where things he might need are stored these days. Scissors, duct tape, the menus of establishments that deliver food, they have been replaced by Eleanor's diverse materials and cannot be found. How could he not see it as revenge for the basement?

  Perhaps they had had a decent conversation lately but about what he doesn't know.

  Perhaps he'd feel better if she had bruises on the inside of her thighs or worked late at the office or constantly returned to him thin excuses, but instead it's these clubs. As a gesture—no, it was more than that it was an attempt at de-escalation—he said she could use his computer down in the basement, but Eleanor was adamant about getting her own. Instead she took him up on his other offer, made a decade and a half before, to use the guest room as her office, and in there she made a clubhouse for her clubs. Her new computer makes invitations and bulletins and flyers a snap. The new word processing programs make everyone into a desktop publisher. Slowly she mastered fonts. They had not used the pullout sofa in the guest room for years; she moved a desk in its place, and one of her club friends helped her move the sofa downstairs one afternoon. Now Alphonse sleeps there nights. They had long before grown bored with each other's bodies and laid off the sex thing. Some nights he comes out only for food.