Bill asked if everything was all right when I walked into the kitchen after having been on the phone. I told him that all was well and he told me that he was going out with an old friend. He told me that his friend was coming to collect him shortly. He told me not to wait up.
I hadn’t noticed before the box containing the letters from Fiona to my father smelt of lavender and rose-leaves. This time, without actually reading the letters, I attended to the script, the hand at work, and found a purity there that perhaps reflected the depth of feeling. I imagined that nurse had had small but strong hands with trimmed nails, a weaver’s hands perhaps. I opened each letter, then thumbed through the pages of the curiously chosen novel. With Silas Marner I found a slip of paper and on it was written the lower East Side Manhattan address of Fiona’s sister. Her name was Tilly McFadden.
Editor: What a surprise.Stagg: I just called to ask if I need to make any changes in the manuscript since you plan to bring the book out earlier.Editor: No, it’s just perfect as it is.Stagg: Will I see galleys soon?Editor: No need to bother with that.Stagg: There is one change I’d like to make.Editor: Certainly.Stagg: I’m changing the title. The new title is Fuck.Editor: Excuse me?Stagg: Fuck. Just the one word.Editor: I so love My Pafology as the title.Stagg: We’ll call the next book that. This one is called Fuck.Editor: I don’t think we can do that.Stagg: Why not?Editor: The word is considered obscene by many.Stagg: The novel has the word fuck all through it. I don’t care if many find the word obscene.Editor: It might hurt sales.Stagg: I don’t think so. If you like I can give you back the money and take the book elsewhere.
FUCK A Novel Stagg R. Leigh
14
The fear of course is that in denying or refusing complicity in the marginalization of “black” writers, I ended up on the very distant and very “other” side of a line that is imaginary at best. I didn’t write as an act of testimony or social indignation (though all writing in some way is just that) and I did not write out of a so-called family tradition of oral storytelling. I never tried to set anybody free, never tried to paint the next real and true picture of the life of my people, never had any people whose picture I knew well enough to paint. Perhaps if I had written in the time immediately following Reconstruction, I would have written to elevate the station of my fellow oppressed. But the irony was beautiful. I was a victim of racism by virtue of my failing to acknowledge racial difference and by failing to have my art be defined as an exercise in racial self-expression. So, I would not be economically oppressed because of writing a book that fell in line with the very books I deemed racist. And I would have to wear the mask of the person I was expected to be. I had already talked on the phone with my editor as the infamous Stagg Leigh and now I would meet with Wiley Morgenstein. I could do it. The game was becoming fun. And it was nice to get a check.
Jelly, JellyJellyAll night long
Behold the invisible!
Bill did not come home that night, but came in the following morning, smiling and talking fast. I had collected some of Mother’s favorite recordings and was taking them to her with a CD player. He seemed high to me, but I couldn’t imagine on what and I had never been good at making those kinds of calls. I asked if he was all right.
“Yeah. Why?” was his response.
“I don’t know,” I said. “You just seem different.”
“Different? Like how?”
“Never mind.”
“No, I want to know how I seem different.” The edge on his voice was amplified by its suddenness.
“There was no subtext,” I said. “If you want to know, I thought that maybe you were high.”
“High on what?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care.”
“This is because I’ve been of no help regarding Mother, isn’t it?”
“No.”
“You’re mad because I stayed out all night. Should I have called?”
“I’m going to see Mother.”
“That’s why I’m in town.” Bill tried to look like he wasn’t high. “But I can see that my presence isn’t urgently required.”
“I was on my way out when you came in. I waited around this morning for you and so I decided to leave. Now, you’re here. So, I’m asking you, would you like to go with me to visit Mother.”
“I need to shower. And it’s my business where I’ve been.”
“I’ll wait.”
“No, that’s okay. You go on. She’s probably wondering what’s keeping you.”
I watched his lips and realized I understood nothing he was saying. His language was not mine. His language possessed an adverbial and interrogative geometry that I could not comprehend. I could see the shapes of his meaning, even hear that his words meant something, but I had no idea as to the substance of his meaning. I nodded.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he said.
He was mocking me. That was it. He understood my confusion and was using it against me. I nodded again.
“Go on.” As I reached the door, he said. “I was wrong to think you’d understand. Actually, I didn’t expect you to at all. You’re just like Father. You always were and you’re growing up to be him.”
I nodded.
“Go on. Go see Mother without me. Time has a way of deflating purpose and becoming all those things that the center of our being would rather reject. Be that as it may though, my center is far more centered than that tainted middle of yours. I’m true to myself in spite of the detours and interruptions I have encountered beyond the shelf of what is my beach.”
I didn’t nod this time, but left.
Sitting in the attending physician’s office, awaiting a report on Mother’s first night’s stay, I was able to examine the small shelf of books behind the doctor’s desk. There were books by John Grisham and Tom Clancy, a paperback of John MacDonald and things like that. Those books didn’t bother me. Though I had never read one completely through, I had peeked at pages, and although I did not find any depth of artistic expression or any abundance of irony or play with language or ideas, I found them well enough written, the way a technical manual can be well enough written. Oh, so that’s tab A. So, why did Juanita Mae Jenkins send me running for the toilet? I imagine it was because Tom Clancy was not trying to sell his book to me by suggesting that the crew of his high-tech submarine was a representation of his race (however fitting a metaphor). Nor was his publisher marketing it in that way. If you didn’t like Clancy’s white people, you could go out and read about some others.
Where fo’ you be goin?Mis’sippi.Why fo’ you gone way down dere?I gots to get ‘way from this souf-side Chicago.Shit, Mis’sippi aint nofin but da souf-souf-side Chicago.(They laughed together.)
The doctor was a fat, unhealthy-looking man, but a natty dresser. His wingtips were polished to a shine and the sweater vest (despite the warm weather) he wore blended perfectly with his suit. He sat behind the desk and I imagined him to look like Tom Clancy, though I had never seen as much as a newpaper photo of the man. Then I imagined him trying to squeeze through the small hatch of a submarine.