Gumbo: A Celebration of African American Writing Part 2

"I'm giving a paper at the Nouveau Roman Society meeting." Her silence seemed to request elaboration. "I'm working on a novel, I guess you'd call it a novel, which treats this critical text by Roland Barthes, SI/Z, exactly as it treats its so-called subject text which is Balzac's Sarrasine."

Lisa grunted something friendly enough sounding. "You know, I just can't read that stuff you write."

"Sorry."

"It's my fault, I'm sure."

"How is your practice?"

Lisa shook her head. "I hate this country. These antiabortionist creeps are out front every day, with their signs and their big potato heads. They're scary. I suppose you heard about that mess in Maryland."

I had in fact read about the sniper who shot the nurse through the clinic window. I nodded.

Lisa was tapping the steering wheel rapid fire with her index fingers. As always, my sister and her problems seemed so much larger than me and mine. And I could offer her nothing in the way of solutions, advice, or even commiseration. Even in her car, in spite of her small size and soft features, she towered over me.

"You know why I like you, Monk?" she said after a long break. "I like you because you're smart. You understand stuff I could never get and you don't even think about it. I mean, you're just one of those people." There was a note of resentment in her compliment. "I mean, Bill is a jerk, probably a good butcher, but a butcher nonetheless. He doesn't care about anything but being a good butcher and making butcher money. But you, you don't have to think about this c.r.a.p, but you do." She put out her imaginary cigarette. "I just wish you'd write something I could read."

"I'll see what I can do."

I've always fished small water, brooks and streams, and little rivers. I've never been able to make it back to my car before dark. No matter how early I start, it's night when I get back. I fish this hole, then that riffle under that undercut bank, that outside bend, each spot looking sweeter and more promising than the last, until I'm miles away from where I started. When it's clear that the hour is late, then I fish my way back, each possible trout hiding place looking even more exciting than it did before, the new angle changing it, the thought that dusk will make the fish hungry nudging at me.

My mother had just awakened from her nap when we arrived at her house on Underwood, but as always she was dressed as if to go out. She wore blush in the old way, showing clearly on her light cheeks, but her age let her pull it off. She seemed shorter than ever and she hugged me somewhat less stiffly than my sister had and said, "My little Monksie is home."

I lifted her briefly from the floor, she always liked that, and kissed her cheek. I observed the expectant expression on my sister's face as the old woman turned to her.

"So, Lisa, are you and Barry pregnant yet?"

"Barry is," Lisa said. She then spoke into our mother's puzzled face. "Barry and I are divorced, Mother. The idiot ran off with another woman."

"I'm so sorry, dear." She patted Lisa's arm. "That's just life, honey. Don't worry. You'll get through it. As your father used to say, 'One way or another.'"

"Thank you, Mother."

"We're taking you out to dinner, madam," I said. "What do you think of that?"

"I think it's lovely, just lovely. Let me freshen up and grab my bag."

Lisa and I wandered around the living room while she was gone. I went to the mantel and looked at the photographs that had remained the same for fifteen years, my father posed gallantly in his uniform from the war in Korea, my mother looking more like Dorothy Dandridge than my mother, and the children, looking sweeter and cleaner than we ever were. I looked down into the fireplace. "Hey, Lisa, there are ashes in the fireplace."

"What?"

"Look. Ashes." I pointed.

The fireplace in the house had never been used. Our mother was so afraid of fire that she'd insisted on electric stoves and electric baseboard heat throughout the house. Mother came back with her bag and her face powdered.

"How did these ashes get here?" Lisa asked, sidling up to the subject in her way.

"When you burn things, you make ashes," Mother said. "You should know that, with your education."

"What was burned?"

"I promised your father I'd burn some of his papers when he died. Well, he died."

"Father died seven years ago," Lisa said.

"I know that, dear. I just finally got around to it. You know how I hate fire." Her point was a reasonable one.

"What kind of papers?" Lisa asked.

"That's none of your business," Mother said. "Why do you think your father asked me to burn them? Now, let's go to dinner."

At the door, Mother fumbled with her key in the lock, complained that the mechanism had become sticky lately. I offered to help. "Here," I said. "If you turn the key this way and then back, it turns easily."

"Monksie fixed my lock," she said.

Lisa groaned and stepped down ahead of us to her car.

Mother spoke softly to me. "I think there's a problem with Lisa and Barry."

"Yes, Mother."

"Are you married yet?" she asked. I held her arm as she walked down the porch steps.

"Not yet."

"You'd better get started. You don't want to be fifty with little kids. They'll run your tail into the ground."

My father had been considerably older than my mother. In June, when school ended, we would drive to the house in Highland Beach, Maryland, and open it for the summer. We'd open all the windows, sweep, clear cobwebs, and chase away stray cats. Then for the rest of the summer we would all remain at the beach and Father would join us on weekends. But I remember how the first cleaning always wore him out and when it came time to take a break before dinner and play softball or croquet, he would resign to a seat on the porch and watch. He would cheer Mother on when she took the bat, giving her pointers, then sitting back as if worn out by thinking about it. He had more energy in the mornings and for some reason he and I took early strolls together. We walked to the beach, out onto the pier, then back, past the Dougla.s.s house and over to the tidal creek where we'd sit and watch the crabs scurrying with the tide. Sometimes we'd take a bucket and a net and he'd coach me while I snagged a couple dozen crabs for lunch.

Once he fell to his b.u.t.t in the sand and said, "Thelonious, you're a good boy."

I looked back at him from the ankle-deep water.

"You're not like your brother and sister. Of course, they're not like each other, either. But they're more alike than they're willing to admit. Anyway, you're different."

"Is that good, Father?" I asked.

"Yes," he said, as if figuring out the answer right then. He pointed to the water. "There's a nice fat one. Come at him from farther away."

I followed his instructions and scooped up the crab.

"Good boy. You have a special mind. The way you see things. If I had the patience to figure out what you were saying sometimes, I know you'd make me a smarter man."

I didn't know what he was telling me, but I understood the flattering tone and appreciated it.

"And you're so relaxed. Hang on to that trait, son. That might serve you better than anything else in life."

"Yes, Father."

"It will also prove handy for upsetting your siblings." Then he leaned back and proceeded to have a heart attack.

I ran to him. He grabbed my arm and said, "Now, stay relaxed and go get help."

That turned out to be the first of four heart attacks he would suffer before just out and shooting himself one unseasonably warm February evening while Mother was off meeting with her bridge club. His suicide apparently came as no surprise to my mother, as she called each of us, in order of age, and said the same thing: "You must come home for your father's funeral."

Dinner was typical, nothing more or less. My mother said things that made my sister roll her eyes while she smoked an entire pack of imaginary cigarettes. Mother told me about telling all her bridge buddies about my books, asking as she always did if there wasn't a better word for "f.u.c.k" than "f.u.c.k." Then my sister dropped me at my hotel and perfunctorily committed herself to lunch with me the next day.

I was scheduled to present my paper at nine the next morning, so my intention was to get to bed early and maybe sleep through it. However, when I entered my room I found a note that had been slipped under the door that told me to return a call to Linda Mallory at the Mayflower. I went to the lobby for the telephone.

"I was hoping you would come to the conference," Linda said. "The secretary in your department told me where you'd be staying."

"How are you, Linda?"

"I've been better. You know, Lars and I broke up."

"I didn't know you were together. I suppose asking who Lars is at this juncture is pointless."

"Are you tired? I mean, it's early yet and we are still on California clock, right?"

"Is that Bay area talk? California clock?" I looked at my watch. 8:20. "My paper's at nine in the morning."

"But it's only eight o'clock," she said. "That's five for us. You can't expect me to believe you're going to bed at five. I can be over in fifteen."

"No, I'll come there," I said, fearing that if I declined completely, she would show up anyway. "I'll meet you in the bar."

"There's one of those little bars in my room."

"In the bar at eight-forty-five." I hung up.

Linda Mallory and I had slept together three times; two of those time we had s.e.x. Twice in Berkeley when I was doing some readings and once in Los Angeles when she was down doing the same. She was a tall, knock-kneed, rather shapeless-however-thin woman with a weak chin and a sharp wit, a sharp wit when men and s.e.x weren't involved at any rate. She zeroed in on male attention like a Rottweiler on a porkchop and it became all she could see. In fact, before her ears perked to male attention she could be called attractive, dark eyes and thick hair, lean and with an easy smile. She liked to f.u.c.k, she said, but I believed she liked saying it more than doing it. She could be pushy. And she was completely without literary talent, which was both irritating and, in a weird way, refreshing. Linda had published one volume of predictably strange and stereotypically "innovative" short fictions (as she liked to call them). She'd fallen into a circle of "innovative" writers who had survived the sixties by publishing each others' stories in their periodicals and each others' books collectively, thus ama.s.sing publications, so achieving tenure at their various universities, and establishing a semblance of credibility in the so-called real world. Sadly, these people made up a good portion of the membership of the Nouveau Roman Society. They all hated me. For a couple of reasons: One was that I had published and had moderate success with a realistic novel some years earlier, and two, I made no secret, in print or radio interviews, what I thought of their work. Finally, however, I was hated because the French, whom they so adored, seemed to hold my work in high regard. To me, a mere strange footnote to my obscure and very quiet literary career. To them, a slap in the face perhaps.

Linda was already in the bar when I arrived. She wrapped me up in a hug and I remembered how much like a bicycle she had felt in bed.

"So," she said, in that way people use the word to introduce beating around the bush. "We had to come three thousand miles to see each other when we live in the same state."

"Funny how things work out."

We sat and I ordered a scotch. Linda asked for another Gibson. She played with the onion in her gla.s.s, stabbing it with the red plastic sword.

"Are you on the program?" I asked. I hadn't seen her name, but then I hadn't looked.

"I'm on a panel with Davis Gimbel, Willis Lloyd, and Lewis Rosenthal."

"What's the panel?" I asked.

"'The Place of Burroughs in American Fiction.'"

I groaned. "Sounds pleasant enough."

"I saw the t.i.tle of your paper. I don't get it." She ate the onion off her sword just as our drinks arrived. "What's it about?"

"You'll hear it. I'm sick of the d.a.m.n thing. It's not going to make me any friends, I'll tell you that." I looked around the bar and saw no familiar faces. "I can just feel the creepiness here."

"Why did you come then?" she complained.

"Because this way my trip is paid for." I swallowed some scotch and was sorry I hadn't requested a water back. "I'd rather admit to that than say I came here because I care about the proceedings of the NRS."

"You have a point." Linda ate her second onion. "Would you like to go up to my room?"

"Smooth," I said. "What if we don't have s.e.x and say we did?" After an awkward spell, I said, "So, how's Berkeley?"

"It's fine. I'm up for tenure this year."

"How does it look?" I asked, knowing full well it couldn't look good for her.

"Your family's here," she said.

"My mother and sister." I finished my scotch and became painfully aware that I had nothing to say to Linda. I didn't know enough about her personal life to ask questions and I didn't want to bring up her recent breakup, so I stared into my gla.s.s.

The waitress came over and asked if I wanted another drink. I said no and gave her enough for the two Gibsons and my scotch. Linda watched my hands.

"I'd better get some rest," I said. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Probably."

FROM RL's Dream.

BY WALTER MOSLEY.

Inez used to kiss him at night when she thought he was asleep.

She'd come to his corner of the big room after he'd been in bed for a while. First she'd strike a match on a piece of sandpaper that was tacked up on the wall. Then she'd puff on the pipe in little gasps until At.w.a.ter could smell the sweet smoke of her cured tobacco.

Inez came very close but he kept his eyes shut, not even making a peep, because "li'l boys s'posed t'be 'sleep when it gets dark outside-an' thas all they is to it." But he wasn't asleep. He was wide awake in his cot, fooling Inez; and that made him want to laugh and dance. But he couldn't make a sound while she was still there.

Inez hovered over him. He could feel it like you could feel the harvest moon when it was over the frail sharecroppers' huts in the Delta. And like that moon she brought sweet smells and slight breezes that tickled his skin the way Kiki did over sixty years later up on the fourth floor.

The child had ants in his hands and feet. He wanted to laugh out loud and caper to let Inez know that he was fooling her. He couldn't keep it in, but if he moved, Inez would get mad. Inez got mad when children couldn't control themselves. She wasn't like Ruby. Ruby was rounder and darker and she smiled almost all the time. Inez was sweet-smelling but Ruby smelled like bread.

Ruby didn't get mad even when At.w.a.ter kicked over the bucket of cleaned and peeled turnips, or when he threw that rock and broke Ruby's grandmother's colored window (which Ruby's mother had given her from the deathbed). Ruby never got mad. She'd just let her eyes get real big and say, "At.w.a.ter! How did we let that happen?" and then they'd get together and work hard to clean up the mess before Inez could find out.

But it was Inez who came out to check on At.w.a.ter at night after the alcohol lanterns were turned down. It was always Inez. And At.w.a.ter was always scared that he wouldn't be able to control himself and would make a peep and then Inez would be mad and he'd have bad dreams.