Reckless Eyeballing (14 page)

The love had some spice to it, the sex was piping hot, and the sun made you drunk. On one side of the island was the Caribbean, soft, peaceful, coated with specks of light from the sun, but on the other side was the killer Atlantic. Two things that blacks all over the Americas had phobias about: the Atlantic, bloodhounds.

Soon the car was leaving the city where castles and hovels existed alongside one another and moving out into the country. On one mountain stood a bronze statue of Koffee Martin, the national hero. On another mountain in the distance he could see the Shoboater estate where Paul's family lived in the style of the colonialists. Once in a while, Paul's father could be seen in town. He was a very fair-skinned man who dressed like Noël Coward and used a walking stick, and did things for the queen of the Mother Country. They drove for about forty-five minutes until they came to his mother's spacious home and lawns. He walked up the steps, the chauffeur following him, carrying his bags. His mother came out and opened her arms. They embraced for a long time.

The maid was the color of carbon paper. She curtsied as Martha Ball and her son entered the house. Some members of the household staff were also present, and they greeted him as copiously as the first maid had. One of the boys—a man who must have been in his early fifties—took his bags upstairs. “Well,” she asked, “did you bring them?”

“I didn't forget, Ma,” he said, taking the record albums from a bag and handing them to her. They were by Tina Turner. His mother and her friends were crazy about Tina Turner, way down here, and come to think of it his mother did resemble Tina Turner, full in the thighs, her hair worn down the sides of her face, and the kind of lips that you get when you cross an Arawak and a Congolese.

“Boy, you know how much I love that girl. The United States, they may be how you say,
Rehob
, but they produce Tina Turner. A red woman like us.” She placed the albums on a hall table. The fellas had said that Ms. Turner's song “Private Dancer” symbolized the bond between white men and Third World women all over the Americas. It was their love anthem.

“Your dinner will be coming soon.” He'd eaten on the airplane but he knew that she'd have to have her way. She always had her way. There was no arguing with her. He knew that he would have to eat again.

“I have a surprise for you,” she frowned. “Boy, why you wearin' that black leather jacket, those jeans and what are those, cowboy boots?” She looked down at his boots. “Who you tryin' to be, Roy Rogers? You done gone to the United States. You done become an American.” She wished that he would come home. Her friends in government would give him an ambassador's post. Many literary men down here were ambassadors, mayors. She wanted him to leave New York. He could even become a banker in one of the overseas banks. Chase Manhattan.

“I may live in the United States, Ma, but my soul is here, my very character was formed by New Oyo.”

“Go on with ya. You have a tongue like your—” She started to say it. All of these years she'd resisted the temptation to tell him the secret. One day she would. They came to the end of the long hall with its hardwood floors, its high ceilings, the vases of flowers placed on tables, the autographed portraits on each wall. Everything was gleaming. Presidents, senators, literary figures, great artists. Some said that she actually influenced the policies of the nation through every president who'd been elected, since they were all believers.

They walked into the dining room with its view of the Caribbean and mountains gingerly touched by clouds. On the slopes of one he could see some goats grazing. A woman was standing with her back to them staring out of the window. She was enjoying the view and held a glass of champagne in her hand. She turned around. He recognized her from her pictures. It was Johnnie Kranshaw. She was very dark and had what some called “dancing eyes.” She wore her hair short and was wearing what some called an “African dress,” though it didn't have the splashy colors of the native women, nor the overstated jewelry. Ms. Kranshaw was a Protestant, all right.

“Ms. Kranshaw. I've heard a lot about you,” he said when his mother introduced them. That he had. The fellas said that if she hadn't been born the white man would have invented her and other vile and terrible things.

“Your reputation precedes you, Mr. Ball. I read the review in the international edition of the
Herald Tribune
. Looks as if you have a hit.”

“We think so,” he said. They sat down for dinner, and the girl brought out the oxtail soup. She served on her right instead of on the diner's left. Martha Ball issued a quick insult. Called the girl a black idiot in the language of the Mother Country. The maid stared dumbly and began to serve from the left. Martha was a stern disciplinarian and was always complaining about how hard it was to keep good household servants. About a third of the youth who lived in this little country town had left for the city, where the unemployment rate was staggering, while still others had traveled overseas to the Mother Country where they were stealing and pimping like every other first generation of immigrants who find themselves subject to hostile treatment and who are barred from the legitimate ways of earning money.

Though some would have us believe that the Italian-, Irish-, and Jewish-Americans went from Ellis Island to comfort without no in-between, in their poor days they could match any black “underclass” statistic for statistic. The writers who tell the truth about those Hell's Kitchen and Lower East Side days are unwelcome. Mike Gold is neglected; he reminds them of the time when they didn't have a pot to piss in. The warts of black Americans were right there for everybody to see and even close-upped in the mass media that harassed them; other groups applied a lot of makeup to theirs. Martha was upset about the youth and often talked to the president about it. Their presence in the Mother Country was giving rise to neo-Nazism, and even the Netherlands, considered a socialistic country, had elected two Nazis from Rotterdam.

“You see where they bomb the Club Med; they going to chase the tourists away. Bad as the economy is. They say they want to chase our foreign friends away, but can they run it? No. This place will end up looking like Haiti, I tell you. I told the president he should crack their coconut heads. They mess up.” Some of the young radicals had been rounded up by the police, who were imported from the Mother Country.

“They're nothing but a bunch of illiterate peasants,” Martha said. She had been an illiterate peasant herself at one time, hanging her one and only dress on the clothesline each day and trying to make do with a ragged child under a leaking corrugated tin roof. It had all changed after the contest between her and her only rival, Abiahu.

“They want independence. What they know 'bout independence? Who in their right minds would give them a nation? Way it is now, we a part of the Mother Country. The shelves in the stores are full. There's plenty of petrol, perfume, fashions.” Johnnie Kranshaw was picking at her soup. Ian could tell that she was embarrassed. He'd seen her name in the newspapers in connection with benefits for left-wing causes. Reading for political prisoners and the millions starving in the Third World. Noticing her discomfort at hearing his mother's views, he changed the subject.

“Ms. Kranshaw,” he began. “I know that the thousands of your fans would like to know where you disappeared to. You'd become a mother goddess of the feminist movement. And then, at the height of your success, poof,” he said with a wave of his hand. His mother gazed at his hands. Articulate, expressive like his father's. He was huge and muscular like his father, too, and had prodigious lips, and a snug nose. Johnnie Kranshaw leaned back. The Caribbean magic seemed to have brought her peace. The photos on her
Playbills
made her look combative.

“Every time I run into an American at the hotel, they ask me that,” she said.

“I'm sorry,” Ball said. “I didn't mean to be intrusive—”

“She has a right to keep her business to herself,” his mother said, placing her hand gently atop Johnnie Kranshaw's. They looked each other in the eye.

“It's all right, Martha,” Johnnie Kranshaw finally said. “I know that many a night I've asked myself that question over at that tourist trap with a view. Chain smoking. If it wasn't for your mother inviting me out here on weekends I don't know what I'd do.” The maid entered. She came and picked up the soup bowls and placed them on a tray. Martha was glaring at her. The maid's hands were trembling. Johnnie Kranshaw continued: “They should put a skull and crossbones label on the elixir bottle of success in the United States. It's thrilling, all right. The interviews, being recognized on the street, having credit cards, meeting people you've seen in
People
magazine, the special treatment at the hotels, favors piling up in your mailbox and people asking you to endorse things. Success in the United States is like the potent rum you have down here, makes you want to do the Soca all night. It gives your soul a gorgeous feeling, but the next morning you have a hangover.”

The three of them laughed. Like Tremonisha Smarts' plays, her plays were grim, even though the fellas called her a clown. He remembered the cruel things that he and the fellas had said about her. “I should have known when [she mentioned the name of the leading feminist critic] called me ‘seductive' and ‘ravishing' something must have been up. I should have heeded the warning signs. You know, in the original version of my play
No Good Man
, the man and wife get back together at the end. Becky changed the play so that it had the wife running off with another woman.” Ian cleared his throat. He began to have a coughing spasm. “Anything wrong, son?” his mother asked. “No,” he said.

“I went along with the program. I didn't care what black men and women were saying about me. Why should I? They hardly attended the theaters where my plays were shown, but they always had plenty of opinions.” When she said
black men
she looked at Ian. He looked down at the plate. It was a dish from Guadaloupe, some sort of fish with curry. Ian was beginning to miss the States. He could do with a hamburger along about now. They had a Wendy's and a Burger King in town. They were informal embassies where the youth went to practice their American styles. They wore jeans and played Prince and George Clinton on their radios. McDonald's now occupied a fortress building that had been used by the Mother Country during wars waged by Europeans over the spoils of New Oyo.

He continued to listen to Johnnie Kranshaw's narrative. She had a wholesome figure, he could tell, and for fifty-two years of age she still had all the stuff in the right places. He'd never made it with anybody over fifty, but the fellows say that after making it with a fifty-year-old you don't want none of these young women who have the devil with a red mouth where their pussies should be. He wondered how it would be if he was holding her titties and giving it to her from behind, maintaining his pleasure by concentrating on something dull. He wondered how it would be to give her what the Germans call a
durchficken
. He put it out of his mind. Besides, the only lover she seemed to be fucking was the Caribbean sun.

“One day I was having lunch with Becky at the Four Seasons, and during the course of our conversation I asked her to see if she could get a friend of mine's book published. The book was about natural childbirth and the black community, and do you know what she said?” His mother and Ian stopped eating. They definitely were interested in what Johnnie Kranshaw was going to say.

“Boy, did that bitch get hot. She turned red as a beet, and started talking so loud some of the other people in the restaurant started looking our way. She said that neither she nor her friends in publishing would have anything to do with a book whose subject matter was even remotely connected to the penis.

“She said that the penis had been used as a weapon against all women for thousands of years and that there would be no peace in the world as long as men were not disarmed of their penises.” The fellas were right about Becky, Ian thought.

“What did you say?” Martha asked. Johnnie Kranshaw closed her eyes and transmitted her answer to Becky. “I turned to the bitch, cool as you can be, and I said, ‘Heifer, you wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for some man's thing.'”

“Well, what did she do?” Martha asked.

“She ran out of the restaurant. Well, two days went by and I was worried about her, I mean she used to call me every day. So I called the office and they told me that she had left instructions that I never call her at home again. Two weeks later, my photo was supposed to appear on the cover of
MaMa
, you know, the big feminist magazine. They had Tremonisha's picture on there and said that just as surely as Eddie Murphy had replaced Richard Pryor, Tremonisha would take my place. They took back all of the praise they'd heaped upon
No Good Man
, and next thing I know, nobody in New York was doing my work. And Becky had said that my play was the most important play of the 1980s, but I just picked up her biography,
Pilgrim's Daughter
, and I'm not even in the index. I read about this package that a travel agency had for Caribbean travel and came down here for two weeks. I stayed. And thanks to your mother and her friends, I've met some people who respect me for what I am.” She burst into tears. Martha Ball rose, went over to her and comforted her. Ball was embarrassed. He thought of all the pressure her play
No Good Man
had put on the fellas.

“What's wrong with American women,” Martha said. “One of the students from Mother Country University who comes to visit me said that she went to some women's conference in Copenhagen and there were these women from all over the world. They were talking about poverty and birth control and infant mortality. She said that all the American women wanted to talk about was sex. And I read in one of the Miami papers that we get down here that Ann Landers conducted a poll of American women and found that over seventy percent said they didn't like to get fucked, oh, excuse my French,” Martha Ball said.

“Penetration,” Johnnie Kranshaw said. “They said that they are opposed to penetration. They want to be cuddled. And hugged. Charlene Hatcher Polite was right. They ain't nothin' but a bunch of brat women. They're the most privileged women on earth, but all they do is complain.”

“Maybe that's why the American man is always prowling the world with his warships. He can't find no sexual satisfaction at home so he uses these military exercises as a cover for finding exotic women, women that will give him the pleasure he don't get at home. They been leaving those Anglo women since the Crusades, going over into the Arabian countries, raping women. Trying to find women who won't give them none of that ‘Dear, I have a headache tonight.' Look at all the different kinds of babies that the Caucasian man has left all over the world. Ian, how do you get along with American women?” his mother asked.

“Oh,” Ian said, nervously, “I don't have time to go on dates. I'm too busy trying to…well…you know, go for it.” His mother frowned.

“He means, he wants to be a success,” Johnnie Kranshaw explained.

“He speaks so much of that American language that he's forgotten the Mother Tongue. Wears his hat at the dinner table.”

“It's okay, Martha, it's a cowboy hat. Many American men wear them and sometimes won't remove them even when they're going to bed. They sleep and die with their boots on.” He removed his hat.

“Thank you,” his mother said, squinting her eyes with annoyance. The two women began some small talk. Where there were bargains in downtown New Oyo, where there were some sales going on. They spent time at the beaches and on the tennis courts. That is, when Martha wasn't giving advice to the high and mighty, running events of the country through the president. He wondered were they sleeping together. And Johnnie Kranshaw. She went to lectures and to museums. Had become almost a student of the indigenous dance.

Ball skipped the dessert. Down here they put sugar and rum into everything. It was still a sugar plantation economy. Sure the lavish estates had become tourist restaurants. They were operated by the original plantation owners. They still kept it all in the family, but the president had a black face, and so they didn't fear the uprisings of the former ages, led by men possessed by Orishas.

“Now this is coffee. This is one thing about New Oyo I missed,” he said, taking a sip of the coffee from a tiny cup.

“You see, I told you that they've made him into…into…an American,” his mother said, nearly in tears.

“Look, Ma, I didn't mean it that way.”

“The
Tribune
said that Tremonisha was the first director of your play. What happened to her?” Johnnie asked.

“She was getting hassled in New York. Seems that she couldn't please anybody, catching it from all sides, the brothers and the sisters, and then she had a fight with Becky; and Randy Shank—he tied her up and shaved off her hair. Didn't you hear down here? He was going around shaving off the hair of feminists whom, he felt, were smearing the reputations of black men.”

“He what?”

“Didn't you hear in the newspapers? He pulled a gun on a cop and was killed after trying to assault Becky French.”

“I can't believe it,” Johnnie said, her mouth open.

“Sure, he got to twelve women before they caught him.”

“His greatest role,” Johnnie said.

“Who is this man you're talking about? He sounds crazy to me. Why hadn't they locked him up? If we would have caught him down here we would have given him the African treatment,” Martha said.

“He was actually harmless. A brilliant playwright. Some have called him the first modern black playwright,” said Johnnie.

“He would dress in a leather coat and matching beret. He wore a mask. Said that he was using a method that the Resistance used after World War Two. Shaving the heads of those who collaborated with the Nazis.” Martha started to laugh and wouldn't stop until Johnnie reprimanded her.