UNMITIGATED BLACKNESS
Twenty-four
I expected the air-conditioning in the Supreme Court to be for shit, like it is in all the good courtroom movies: Twelve Angry Men and To Kill a Mockingbird. Movie trials always take place in humid locales in the heat of summer, because the psych books say crime goes up with the temperature. Tempers run short. Perspiring witnesses and trial attorneys start yelling at each other. The jurors fan themselves, then open four-paned windows looking for escape and a breath of fresh air. Washington, D.C., is fairly muggy this time of year, but it’s mild, damn near frigid, inside the courthouse, yet I have to open a window anyway — to let out all the smoke and five years of judicial system frustration.
“You can’t handle the weed!” I shout at Fred Manne, courtroom artist extraordinaire and film buff. It’s the dinner break to what has amounted to the longest Supreme Court case in history. We’re sitting in a nameless antechamber passing time and a joint back and forth, butchering the climax of A Few Good Men, which isn’t a great movie, but Jack Nicholson’s disdain for the actors and the script and the way he delivers that last monologue carry the film.
“Did you order the Code Red?”
“I might have. I’m so fucking high right now…”
“Did you order the Code Red?”
“You’re goddamn right I did! And I’d do it again, because this pot is fucking unbelievable.” Fred’s breaking character. “What’s it called?” It being the joint he’s holding in his hand.
“It doesn’t have a name yet, but Code Red sounds pretty good.”
Fred has sketched all the important cases: same-sex marriage, the end of the Voting Rights Act, and the demise of affirmative action in higher education and, by extension, everywhere else. He says that in his thirty years of courtroom artistry, this is the first time he’s ever seen the court adjourn for dinner. First time he’s ever seen the Justices raise their voices and stare each other down. He shows me an artist’s rendering of today’s session. In it a conservative Catholic Justice flips off a liberal Catholic Justice from the Bronx with a surreptitious cheek scratch.
“What does ‘coño’ mean?”
“What?”
“That’s what she whispered under her breath, followed by ‘Chupa mi verga, cabrón.’”
My colored-pencil caricature looks terrible. I’m in the lower-left-hand corner of the drawing. I can’t speak to the Court allowing for unregulated corporate spending on political campaigns, or the burning of the American flag, but the best decision it’s ever made was to prohibit the use of cameras in the courtroom, because, apparently, I’m one ugly motherfucker. My bulbous nose and gigantic ears protrude from my bald Mount Fuji — shaped head like fleshy anemometers. I’m flashing a yellow-toothed smile and staring at the youngish Jewish Justice like I can see through her robe. Fred says the reason they don’t permit cameras has nothing to do with maintaining decorum and dignity. It’s to protect the country from seeing what’s underneath Plymouth Rock. Because the Supreme Court is where the country takes out its dick and tits and decides who’s going to get fucked and who’s getting a taste of mother’s milk. It’s constitutional pornography in there, and what did Justice Potter once say about obscenity? I know it when I see it.
“Fred, do you think you could at least shave down my incisors? I look like fucking Blackula.”
“Blackula. Underrated movie.”
Fred unclips the press laminate from his lanyard and uses the metal fastener as a makeshift roach clip to finish the rest of the weed in one mighty toke. His eyes and nasal passages closed tight, I ask him can I borrow a pencil. He nods yes, and I take the opportunity to remove all the brown-colored implements from his fancy pencil case. Fuck if I’m going down in history as the homeliest litigant in Supreme Court history.
During social studies, otherwise known in Dad’s curriculum as the Ways and Means of the Indefatigable White People, my father used to warn me about listening to rap or the blues with Caucasian strangers. And as I got older, I’d be admonished not to play Monopoly, drink more than two beers, or smoke weed with them either. For such activities can breed a false sense of familiarity. And nothing, from the hungry jungle cat to the African ferryboat, is more dangerous than a white person on what they think is familiar ground. And as Fred returns from exhaling a cloud of smoke out into the D.C. night, he has that Ain’t-I-a-Soul-Brother glint in his eyes. “Let me tell you something, my man. I’ve seen them all come through here. Racial profiling, interracial marriage, hate speech, and race-based set-asides, and you know what the difference is between my people and yours? As much as we both want seats at the ‘table,’ once you get inside, you motherfuckers never have an escape plan. Us? We’re prepared to leave at a moment’s notice. I never enter a restaurant, bowling alley, or an orgy without asking myself, If they choose this moment to come get me, how in the fuck am I getting out of here? Cost us a generation, but we learned our fucking lesson. They told you people, ‘School’s out. Ain’t no more lessons to be learned,’ and you dumb fucks believed them. Think about it, if the damn storm troopers were to knock on the door right now, what would you do? What’s your exit strategy?”
There’s a knock on the door. It’s a court officer gulping down the last of a prefabricated spicy tuna roll. She’s wondering why I have one leg dangling out of the window. Fred simply shakes his head. I look down. Even if I were to survive the three-story fall, I’d be trapped in a tacky marble courtyard. Walled in by thirty feet of overblown Colonial architecture. Surrounded by lion heads, bamboo stalks, red orchids, and a silty fountain. On our way out, Fred points to a small, Hobbit-sized side door behind a potted plant that presumably leads to the Promised Land.
I reenter the chambers to find an insanely pale white boy in my seat. It’s like he’s waited until the fourth quarter of the ball game to move down from the upper deck, sneak past the ushers to take a courtside chair vacated by some fan who’s left early to beat the traffic. I’m reminded of the black stand-up trope about white patrons returning to find “niggers in they seats” and drawing straws to decide who’s going to ask them to move.
“You in my seat, dude.”
“Hey, I just wanted to tell you that I feel like my constitutionality is on trial, too. And you don’t seem to have many people in your cheering section.” He waved his invisible pompoms in the air. Ricka-rocka! Ricka-rocka! Sis! Boom! Bah!
“I appreciate the support. Much needed. But just slide over one.”
The Justices file back into the courtroom. No one mentions my newfound tag-team partner. It’s been a long day. Bags have appeared under their eyes. Their robes have wrinkled and lost their sheen. In fact, the black Justice’s garment seems to be stained with barbecue sauce. The only two people in the courtroom who look fresh are the Jeffersonian Chief Justice and a mackadocious Hampton Fiske, each with not a hair out of place or displaying the slightest sign of fatigue. However, Hampton has one-upped the Chief Justice with a costume change. He’s now resplendent in an argumentative bell-bottomed, ball-hugging, chartreuse jumpsuit. He doffs his homburg, cape, and ivory-handled cane and adjusts his bulge, then stands aside, as the Chief Justice has an announcement to make.