All the Right Stuff (17 page)

“You should care, if you have a little girl,” I said.

“So run it, fool,” Keisha said.

“The social contract is an agreement between people and between the people and their government for everybody's mutual benefit,” I said.

“That doesn't mean a thing to me,” Keisha said. “And I can lay that on CeCe all day and it won't mean a thing to her, either.”

“Okay, I got another way of looking at it,” I said. “Say there's a track that runs from here to the Harlem Children's Zone on 125th Street, okay?”

“I know where it is,” Keisha said.

“And somebody told you that if you went along that track, you'd get a free dinner for the rest of the week for you and your daughter, okay?”

“Go ahead.”

“And as you walked along the track, you saw some people running by you, and some roller skating by you, and some just playing cards along the way,” I said.

“Which is what you see if you walked down there from here,” Keisha said.

“But then, when you got to 125th Street, they handed you seven peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and said, ‘That's your free dinners,'” I said. “How would you feel?”

“I'd feel mad,” Keisha said.

“Especially when you saw that the people who got there first were getting coupons to have dinner at a fancy restaurant. And when you asked the people why you were only getting peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, they told you that you lost the race and that's all the losers get.”

“They should have said it was a race in the first place,” Keisha said.

“That's what the social contract is about, letting everybody know what's going down,” I said. “Now, if they told you that if you came to Elijah's Soup Emporium, you were going to get some money, you would be thinking you needed to know if it was a race or not, right?”

“Go on.” Keisha sat down and pulled CeCe up on her lap.

“But you see that everybody else knows it's a race, too,” I said. “But the ones who got there first also got bicycles to come back uptown.”

“Okay, so I ran into a foul situation,” Keisha said. “I would just leave it alone and go about my business.”

“What I'm saying about the social contract is that you're in it now,” I said. “And you can't walk away from it. You're in a race that has rules and has rewards for people who know those rules and know how to deal with them well. The people who started out knowing it was a race have a big head start on you, and they're going to get theirs no matter what you do.”

“You buying this?” Keisha turned to Elijah.

“I'm buying it because I believe that what Mr. DuPree is saying is true,” Elijah said. “There are agreements, written and unwritten, that determine how we live, to a large extent.”

“Okay, so from the get-go … you think if I go down to 125th Street and
after
I get down there they tell me I was in a race—
after
I get down there they tell me—that I was being treated fair?” Keisha asked.

“Yo, mama, I didn't say it was fair—” I started.

“I'm not your mama,” Keisha interrupted. “And just run it down—is that fair or not?”

“It's not fair, but it's real,” I said.

“Go on....” Keisha was looking at me sideways.

“So what I'm saying is that if you want to hook CeCe up, you got to school her on what's going on. She has to know she's in a race, she has to know what the rules are, and she has to learn to deal.”

“And who is making these rules and setting up this race?” Keisha asked.

“People who make the laws,” I said. “The government, sometimes. Special interest groups. People on the top.”

“I never heard of this crap before I met you, Paul.”

“And when you were coming downtown the first time and saw people sitting on the side of the road playing cards and not even in the race, you know they haven't heard of it, either.”

Keisha turned to Elijah. “Don't we have a Constitution that says everything is supposed to be fair?”

“Mr. DuPree?”

“It's fair under some conditions,” I said. “If you know what's going down, and have the wheels to deal, then it's just about fair. If you don't know what's going down, or if you think you can skate by, or if you mess up and break one of the big rules, then you have a problem.”

“Like having a baby?” Keisha asked, pulling CeCe closer to her.

“Like not realizing what you need to do for your baby,” I said. “If you got it going on, then CeCe should have it even better than you.”

“And is that what you guys sit up here and talk about every day?” Keisha asked.

“Quite a lot of the time,” Elijah said.

“So how is CeCe going to get all of this when I don't even know it?” Keisha asked. “There's stuff out there that—ways of getting over—that I can't get next to, and you're saying I have to know it to pass it on to my daughter?”

“You kind of know it now,” I said. “You see things going on. You see people who aren't doing anything with their lives—”

“Watching the world go by.”

“Watching the world go by and becoming victims of anything that comes their way. You see it, and that's why you're out there practicing that outside shot. You're aiming yourself for college because you know that's a better way.”

“I don't even care about myself,” Keisha said. “I just want CeCe to have all the right stuff so she can do well.”

“How old is your daughter?” Elijah asked. “She's really lovely.”

“Going on two.” Keisha's face softened. “If Michelle Obama doesn't run, CeCe'll be the first black woman president.”

CeCe made a sound that could have been “president” and stuck her chin up in the air. She was as pretty as Elijah said she was, and even prettier when responding to Keisha.

“I got to be going,” Keisha announced. “I guess I'll see you Friday, Paul. And you'd better be thinking about my three-point shot between now and then.”

“I'll have it locked up,” I said.

Keisha picked CeCe up with one hand and put her back on her hip.

“Good-bye.” Elijah waved at the baby as he walked her and Keisha to the door.

“What else are you going to tell her about the social contract?” he asked when he came back to the kitchen. “I think you've convinced her that it exists. And I like the way you compared it to a race course. That was clever.”

“Maybe I'll tell her something about being active,” I said. “That you have to be active with the social contract or you can't use it, like John Sunday, and some of Sly's friends. They reached a point where they stopped being active and let themselves be used by the system.”

“If she's got that child's welfare at heart—and I think she does—then she'll be active,” Elijah said. “She doesn't seem like the kind of person who is going to sit at the table and wait for the pot to boil.”

“But the hardest thing she's going to have to deal with?” I asked.

“That people are going to be working against her,” Elijah said.

“Who?”

“People who think they can take advantage of her,” Elijah said. “People who want to use her talents, or her body, for their own purposes. Some people who just might not want her to get ahead in the world. You know, there are people like that.”

“I think that's more or less where I was going,” I said. “The social contract is not big on being fair. I think that every time you see that something is unfair, you feel bad and you want to give up.”

“That's the time—cut up a couple of those vidalias from under the sink—that the theory of the social contract comes in handy,” Elijah said. “You know the theory, how the system is supposed to work, and you don't close your eyes or your mind and walk away.”

I took the vidalias from the closet under the sink, peeled them, and started to cut them up. Elijah was right about Keisha. She was an active person, and having CeCe in her life just gave her more motivation. Still, even she got discouraged once in a while.

“You want to add a side dish of cornbread to today's soup?” Elijah asked.

“Why?”

“Just to keep our interest going while you run down to me when we should start teaching children about the social contract,” Elijah said. “Or do you think we shouldn't bother with it at all?”

“Can I go out and buy the cornbread and save my answer for tomorrow?” I asked.

“We're making the cornbread,” Elijah said. “And yes, we can save your answer for tomorrow.”

“So why are you all up into Keisha
and her baby?” Mom asked. Her face was tight and she was looking around the room, at the walls, at the clock, at anywhere except toward me.

“Mom, I'm not
all up into Keisha
!” I said. “Why are you saying that?”

“You came in here jumping up and down about how you had convinced her to come to the gym and work on her three-point
whatever
and how she was going to use the social contract to help her baby,” Mom went on. “What do you have to do with her baby, anyway? Why isn't the father looking out for her?”

“Why are you mad because you thought I helped somebody?” I asked. “You're making it seem like—”

“Paul, you spent all summer working and talking about this social contract and who was doing what, and the best thing you can come up with is how good Keisha is and how bad everyone else is and I don't get how you can judge one person over the next!” The kitchen light was off, and the sun coming through the curtains only illuminated half of Mom's face clearly.

“Mom, who am I judging?” I asked. “Who?”

“You were talking about those friends of Sty—or Sly—or whoever, over at his place,” Mom said. “They didn't do this and they didn't do that or they should have known better. Maybe those people just made a few mistakes. They're not the only ones who have made mistakes, you know.”

I finally got it.

“Mom, you're talking about my father, right?”

“I'm not talking about anybody,” Mom said. “I'm just saying that you shouldn't be judging people so fast.”

“Okay, so you want to know what I think about him?”

“No, I don't!”

“Do you mind me telling you?”

“I'm not interested,” she said.

“I think the way our society is set up, the social contract works easily for some people,” I said. “And for others, it's a lot harder. Look at Anthony. He's got it made with his going to film school. His dad's a doctor and his mom is bending over backward to ease his way. All that's cool, and it's making his life easier. With George and Sly's other friends, it was harder. And that thing with Binky and the chukka sticks shows you that it's not always fair. And I see that.”

“That's really so
big
of you!”

“Okay, I'll leave it alone if you need me to,” I said. “I don't need to sit here while you put me down.”

“Go on!” Mom said. “I'm listening.”

“Okay, for my father it was harder, and maybe he would have had to be a superhero to handle it,” I said. “Maybe he realized he was up against it and it was making him sick and, like Sly said, he was self-medicating.

“One thing I know is that the social contract, no matter how you look at it, isn't going to be the same thing for everybody, and for many people, it's not going to be fair. No matter what Keisha did or didn't do, it's going to be harder on her little girl than it should be. But I know this—that if Keisha can really get into it and see how things work, she's going to be better off.”

“A contract should be fair,” Mom said.

“The way I see it is that it's fair for the kind of people who draw up the rules,” I said. “So Rousseau and all his friends were looking at the social contract and saying that people who looked like them and who had their smarts could deal with it. The same with Locke and Hobbes and some of the others.”

“I don't know any of those people,” Mom said.

“You don't have to know their names,” I said. “You just have to know that they were talking about how governments were set up and how the people had to live. They were talking about people who knew the rules and why they worked and were scoping them out to make sure they were getting a fair deal.”

“They weren't talking about your father,” Mom said. “Is that what you're saying?”

“Yes, that's it,” I said. “So I know it was harder for my father and for everybody in the world who lived like he did and who didn't have the … the knowledge, maybe—”

“The right stuff?” Mom asked. “He didn't have the right stuff, so he was
nothing
, right?”