Victor LaValle - Ecstatic

— An’ where’s de res’ of yo kin? Yer Maw and Paw and sech?

— I don’t have no other family, Nabisase whispered into the microphone. It’s just my grandmuvver and me. We’re orphans.

Even after Nabisase left the tent under a blush of hearty applause with Grandma hitched on her back again, even while the old man bent to pray for the poor child, I didn’t move except to take the wallet out my pants and check the name on my driver’s license.

The band came and left the block three times while other girls told their woes. Regardless of race, culture or where they’d come from, Ohio, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, the out-of-town girls really exaggerated their local accents, but still ended up using the same pitiful Southern-Fried pitch. As if suffering was in the nature of only one region.

Whereas Miss Innocence demanded beauty and virginity this little carnival was a desolation pageant; in the testifying tent subjugation brought about our rapture.

The winner got a modeling contract.

Girls were in competition for print work in local advertisements. Nothing national, the contest just wasn’t that big. Maybe there’d be some catalogue work for the Grand Prizee.

Uncle Arms would announce the winner on Sunday afternoon to accommodate the many new participants who’d need the night free for that other, bigger pageant.

— Now I’s so prowed tuh help dese gurls cause I know what de bad days is. Am I lyin? I am not. But lemme tell of sumpin good which is dis heah Oonited Stetes dat we lib in.

— I know der ben tubles, look at me an tel who know dat betta. But I ben to Aingland. Iss funny ta tink about, ain’t in? Me. Uncle Allen, in Aingland and Frans too.

— An ova der dey got de rish peeple an po’, but you know dey poor peeple cain’t neva get rish? Not neva? Dey got class ova deah, dat’s whut some peeple say. Well dey got class ova deah awlraght! Po class, workin class an uppa class.

— Den I come back to Amerrca an eben dough I seed us fightin wif eash otha I know dat if one a y’all git money den yous livin rich. We got no classes in de States an I’m prowed of it. We got dem peeple borned rish an dem othas dat becum it, but boff gets ta buy a fahn house. Am I lyin? No I am not.

Even I was feeling proud as Uncle Arms went on. I believed him because I could see him. Uncle Arms was his own billboard for striving.

— We not gonna hab just one oh two winnas an pack up dem otha gurls. Naw. We gonna hab many gurls workin cause I wan plenny of ’em ta git a chans. Dis heah is abou oppoitunitee.

The people applauded happily but nobody gave up their ghost; if you think he sounds like a preacher then you’ve just never met a man who works on commission.

Like most others I left the tent. Those who remained only wanted to speak with Uncle Arms. At first he obliged them from the stage, but even with that extra foot he was shorter than a number of the men and some of the women. When he finally stepped down for handshakes he disappeared.

I walked over to the third tent although I wasn’t looking for my sister anymore. Is it fair for me to have been insulted? I was a wart that been dissolved. Good that I didn’t see Nabisase or Grandma because I would have thrown my last two malapees at those foundlings. I would have screamed that my sister had lied. I would have ruined her chances. That’s how angry I was.

In the third tent blue or yellow tickets had been distributed to the teenage girls, but I’ll bet it didn’t take long for the women with the yellow ones to realize they might as well be in the deli line at a supermarket. When I left the second tent it was five o’clock and the third tent already looked like an OTB at closing, with losing tickets covering the floor.

When he walked outside I tried to bump into old Uncle Arms myself, but kept missing him. Misjudged the angle of his head versus my elbow. When my sister publically crossed me out of her record book it made me wonder why they’d wanted me to come down here at all. I thought I’d be needed during the pageant, but I guess I really was only the driver. And they didn’t want to leave me in their Rosedale home in case I’d rub my dirty, naked buns across their pillows.

After the third try to bump him I just introduced myself. — I’m a reporter, I said.

His first reaction was to recoil. — No no, I promised, I’m here to write three thousand words about the other pageant.

This calmed him. — Where fum? he asked.

— When did they start calling you Uncle Arms?

He made a scouring face. — None eva do, ta ma face.

— I’m sorry.

He smiled showing two gold capped front teeth. — I saw ya in dat suit an’ I taught dat you had mannas, Brass Ankles.

— I do.

— Well whut ye did wit ’um? Et ’um?

— Look, I don’t want to get into an argument. My fault. I’m sorry.

I followed him past the third tent, where a woman swept the yellow tickets away.

— How long ya ben in town?

— Since yesterday night.

— Fine anythin’ ta tern yer nickel yet?

— Only that some of your girls have been lying about their circumstances.

We went off Braddock, right on Louden. A pawnshop one block away advertised a sale on weapons. This meant handguns as much as knives. Rifles more than nun-chucks.

Along the wall of this corner pawnshop there hung a white banner showing Uncle Arms’s grinning picture. Not a painting, but a professionally digitized photograph. The caption read: Your Uncle has got just the place for you. For home loans call.

— Mm hmm, Uncle Arms replied.

— I’ve got proof of one contestant in particular who’s falsified her family history. My editor says it’s a much better story. The depths to which people will sink just to win. I’m very excited about it.

— Wha paypa it wuz you workin wit?

— The New York Observer. We’re mean-spirited.

I expected him to question me. Maybe even yell. Instead old Uncle Arms pushed me into these bushes. He sacked me amid some Canadian Hemlock.

— What you claim to have heard you shall not speak again, he whispered.

He crouched on the balls of his feet. The back of my head was against the shaded earth.

I asked him, — Where’d your accent go?

By six o’clock that Saturday evening I was back outside the Hampton Inn next to vomiting from fear as I walked to the front desk. I poured myself coffee from a silver urn on a table.

The clerk was a pencil-shaped woman in green vest with a white long-sleeved shirt underneath. She waited for me to speak but my coffee was so hot that I was concentrating on keeping my mouth shut to keep from spitting it on the floor.

So she finally asked me, — Are you 603?

— 350 at the most!

She hesitated, but I wasn’t trying to be cute.

— Did you leave your bath running when you went out today?

— No?

— Sure?

— I’ll have you know that I haven’t bathed once in twenty-four hours.

She believed me, which solved the problem of my guilt, but she stepped backward and covered her nose with one hand.

— The maid came to take up your sheets, she explained from her distance. The whole room was flooded up in there.

— I’m sorry about that.

She stepped forward quickly. — Why apologize?

— No one likes to see bad things happen to good hotels.

She didn’t step away again, but did keep her hand over her face. I reminded myself to find time for soap this evening.

— You don’t have to worry, the clerk said. The maid put down towels. It was about sixty of them. We’ll find you another room.

Saved; not liable; excused from small-claims court; I should have felt lucky. Instead I stood in the lobby with dirt on the back of my neck and sweat stains darkening the inseam of my slacks, indignant.