“I’m here for you, baby, but I only got another thirty minutes until my lunch break is over.”
Spencer scooted in closer to the table. “Speaking of theory, I think we’ve just seen a bit of Freud’s Oedipal theory at work.”
“Now that’s one theory that isn’t generalizable,” said Yolanda. “It surely doesn’t apply to black folk. True, a nigger might want to kill his father, but he sure as hell doesn’t want to fuck his mother. He might fuck a cousin, but Mom is out.”
Spencer picked up his pen and pad and began. “I’m pleased everyone could make it. We are here to help Winston Foshay get on what is called ‘the right track.’ We all know him to be a troubled youth with loads of untapped potential. And Winston, I know that you are cynical about this process and it probably feels like a funeral to you, but please keep in mind that whatever you hear said today, we, unlike Antony, Brutus, come not to bury you, but to praise you.”
Fariq twisted the bill of his baseball cap to a rakish angle. “Tuffy, I don’t know what this fool talking about, but I came to make sure you find a job so you can pay me my ends, nigger.”
“Fuck you, man. You get it when I got it.”
“Let’s get started. Winston, one of a Big Brother’s initial duties is to alert the members of his Little Brother’s support group, assess the strength of the social network, then formulate a plan of action.”
“One minute.”
“Yes, Mr. Foshay.”
“I cannot in good conscience agree to be party to this without knowing where your political sympathies lie, Mr. Throckmorton. How do we know that you’re not leading Winston down the road to black apathy?”
“For the record, okay, I don’t believe in labels.”
“You still a Jew asshole.”
“Thank you, Fariq. As I was saying, before I was so rudely labeled, is that political terms such as ‘left,’ ‘right,’ ‘Democrat,’ ‘Republican’ have no meaning to me. They convey nothing about one’s political personality or motivations. I judge one’s political savvy on whether or not they capitalize the b in ‘black’ and can pronounce ‘Ntozake Shange.’ ”
“Who?” asked Dawoud.
Gusto nudged his stolid partner. “You know, that sister who wrote that play—Rainbows for Colored Chicks Whose Arms Too Short to Slap Box with God.”
“Yeah, I remember. Some bitch talking about how brothers don’t respect them. That shit was pretty good — I saw it while I was coked up.”
“Can we return to discussing Winston’s welfare?”
Clifford drummed his fingers on the table. “I just don’t want my son’s integrity as a strong black man compromised. We must ensure the boy develops himself as a black man, a descendant of African aristocracy, the southern working class, and some hellified Brooklyn niggers who took no shorts.”
Waving a mindful finger, Spencer interrupted him. “I think we shouldn’t take this black-man’s-right-to-self-determination thing too far with Winston. It’s like calculating pi to the five-billionth place — so what?”
“Wait a goddamn minute!”
Like channelers at a séance, everyone looked around to see where the disembodied yell was coming from. “Hey, anybody out there?”
“Oh shit, it’s Moms on the speaker phone. Everybody shut up! Go ’head, Mama.”
“Listen up. It’s Winston’s life. Let Winston decide what he wants to do with it. I’ve got to go — bye, son. I’ll call back in a few minutes.”
“Love you, Mama.”
After Mrs. Foshay’s reproach the gathering sat upright in their chairs, waiting for Winston to take command of the meeting and his life. Winston, oblivious to the restlessness surrounding him, rummaged through his backpack and removed a box of food. He set a tin of pernil, habichuelas, and arroz amarillo topped with gandules aside. He unwrapped a thin, flimsy burrito and bit into it. After just one bite he spit out the mouthful of food. “Taco Bell will definitely fuck up your order. I told them no onions.” Winston took his time rewrapping the rest of the burrito. He wiped his mouth with a napkin and said, “First, these niggers gots to go.”
“Who, us?” asked Gusto, Dawoud, Sugarshack, and Duke, flabbergasted, their index fingers pressed to their breastbones. “How you going to act?”
“You four draft-dodging dashiki-wearing brown-car-driving leather-trenchcoat-in-the-summer-sportin’ stuck-on-stupid-played-out-1970s reject motherfuckers need to raise. You all ain’t none of my social support network.”
Clifford defended his friends. “Winston, you’ve known these brothers all your life. Who looked out for you when I was gone? They did. Who turned you on to Miles and Monk? They did.”
“Them niggers didn’t turn me on to shit. They only came over to the house to crash, smoke weed, and flirt with Moms. And when the electricity was turned off, they’d steal my boom box since it ran on batteries and force me to listen to all that fucked-up plink-plink-bong music.”
Clifford covered Winston’s hand with his own and squeezed. “Winston, these are four brothers who’ve been around the block. Proud black men who’ve sacrificed their youth so young people like yourself wouldn’t have to go through what they did. Do you remember?”
Winston’s resolve began to weaken as he recalled how comforting it was having the four men requisition the tiny apartment like Allied liberators. Their cocky banter made him and his mother laugh. Their menthol cigarettes dangled from ashtrays he’d made in school like smoking cannon from castle ramparts. Winston felt protected. And though he was too young to know the war had been over for more than a decade, he longed to be old enough to fight on the Revolution’s frontlines. After dinner the men would sit on the couch and clean their weapons. Carefully, they’d place dabs of brown oil on the guns’ mechanisms, smearing the droplets with their fingertips.
“I remember when Gusto shot me, cleaning his fucking rifle. That’s what I fucking remember.”
“You know that was an accident.”
“Dead in my fucking thigh.”
“Shit was an accident.”
Clifford shook Winston’s shoulder, and Winston blinked away the memory of his leg pulsing blood. Brenda tying a bathrobe-belt terry-cloth tourniquet around his leg.
“Winston.”
“What?”
“We’re all black men here, and men, especially black men, make mistakes. We need to forgive each other and work together. You’re a smart enough young man, not so different from Malcolm, Huey, and Eldridge when they were your age. Many a great black man has been in the same position you’re in now. Jesus, Hannibal, Pushkin, Babe Ruth, and Beethoven all listened to their elders, and you must do the same.”
Winston looked at the man he had designated to be his elder. Spencer was wearing a stonewashed blue oxford shirt. He looked under the table: his new mentor’s sockless feet were shod in pewter Sperry Top-Siders. Sugarshack, noticing the look of chagrin on Winston’s face, reached across the table and fingered Spencer’s collar. “Nigger look like CIA, don’t he? This the type nigger you want on your team?”
Winston popped off the plastic lid to his Spanish food and placed his face in the rising steam. Wrestling the slabs of fatty meat with his plastic utensils, he spoke without looking up. “Look, maybe y’all was throwing grenades, toting shotguns, feeding kids and shit back in the good ol’ days, but now you ain’t doing a damn thing but playing off-beat bongos and a dented-up saxophone behind my father’s wack-ass poetry, so even if Spencer is a CIA agent, you ain’t got nothing to worry about, because the statute of limitations has long expired on whatever revolutionary shit you’ve done.”
Clifford shook his head. “Son, you’re missing the point. I know you think we’re old-fashioned, paranoid, and who knows what else—”