T. Johnson - Welcome to Braggsville

What the hell are those, he demanded to know, besides the titles of angry speeches? And what the hell, both parents demanded to know as they left the kitchen, did he have any right to be angry about?

For one, Daron was angry about the review board. When he e-mailed his professor to inquire about it, the professor promptly replied, and when Daron wrote him again, he again promptly replied, and so the exchanges proliferated without ever clarifying, to Daron’s satisfaction, the particulars of the Faculty and Student Review Board:

Dear Daron,

Again, let me share how saddened I was to hear about the tragedy that occurred in the wake of your heartfelt attempt to cast light on the gross hypocrisies of reenactments as a commemoration of states’ rights. Most distressing is the ensuing media windstorm and the events you experienced in town following Louis Chang’s passing.

The most anyone can hope for in this country, whether they know it or not, is to never be made aware, to never know — definitively, undeniably, with religious certainty — how the accident of race has charted their life, for better or for worse. Though realizations of that sort, facing that monster, are good for the soul, they rob us of the illusion of autonomy, liberty, free will, agency, and replace those oft noble, always necessary hallucinations with fate, chance, and providence, reminding us of the effect that others, capricious or willful, may have on our lives. The enormity of this realization can be crushing, especially to a sensitive soul.

In truth, we earn little of what we take.

You have wavered between pride and prejudice on the South. Do not idolize California, we have our share of problems and have become a prison state in the last twenty years. Our institutions eerily resemble post-Reconstruction chain gangs, but without the chains. The machinery of this cephalopod operates a three-card monte, but the chips always end up in jail, which here means being thrown in solitary for even possessing ethnic literature.

I hope that you will return to UC Berkeley next fall. You would find the distance invigorating, and should you choose to continue this project as a reflective essay, a documentary, or, as I suggested at our meeting, a novel, consider my full support extended.

Yours in truth and freedom

until justice rolls and freedom rains,

Professor P.

For kicks, Daron replied, Can it be a graphic novel? To which the professor replied, Certainly, still with no mention of the review board.

He was also angry about Candice. Just that morning he found a black footie with orange piping and an orange toe box, and imagined sorting it into her pile while she hummed along elsewhere in the house, tickled to have a boyfriend who embraced housework in that clumsy puppy way, but that was not to be.

For reasons inarticulate he knew it could not happen, not with Candice’s professor parents, originally from New York, oh the mysteries of that city — Woody Allen; mafiosi; bearded Jewish diamond dealers; Warriors, come out to play — could not happen any more than a cop could say, Sorry, could not happen any more than D’aron could wing a Gull. In fact, back in high school, when Jean, a Gull, asked D’aron to prom with his sister, D’aron said he’d be out of town, or rather, he agreed as such when Jean suggested it. He wasn’t lying. Jean said it first. No. Nothing was as it seemed.

NO. NOTHING WAS (EXACTLY) AS IT SEEMED. But neither was it always the opposite.

When Jean asked D-nice to prom with his sister, D-nice said he’d be out of town, or rather, he agreed as such when Jean suggested it. He wasn’t exactly lying. Jean said it first. And, boy was D-nice relieved when Jean suggested it. Hell, D-nice pocketed that idea quicker than found money. Jean was more Jo-Jo’s friend anyway. Like everyone else who made varsity by their sophomore year, Jo-Jo had a friend in the Gully. D-nice knew they practiced together or worked out sometimes, but he didn’t know how good of friends Jean and Jo-Jo were — or how good of friends Jean thought they were — until Jean asked Jo-Jo to prom with his sister. Jo-Jo claimed he’d be on front counter that night. None of them said anything for a moment. Just stood there behind the visitors’ bleachers taking long draws on the Pall Malls Jo-Jo stole from Mrs. Lee’s General & Feed.

When Jo-Jo said, Front counter, D-nice didn’t ask how Jo-Jo knew his schedule that far in advance when he couldn’t remember which jersey to wear on game day. After Jo-Jo said, Front counter, Jean turned to D-nice, cocking his own coffee bean as he did so, offered more than asked, Bet you got work or something going on out of town, too, don’t you, D-nice? Elseways you could stand for Jo-Jo. D-nice nodded. What else was D-nice to do? What else was D-nice to say if Jean didn’t comprende that some white people earned points for attending the Gully’s Bruiser prom, and others anted them up, and among his friends were only anteers, could only be anteers? Among his friends were the muscle in the big brick hotbox, not the shirtsleeves in the rib. Later, when D-nice mentioned this, and winked like he knew Jo-Jo wasn’t really working, Jo-Jo tossed him a thrashing glance the likes of which he’d never before given him.

When prom night pranced up, the one night when cummerbunds were as plentiful as belly button rings, Jean straight vultured Main Street slow as cold butter, times three he did, before squeaking sneaker into Mrs. Lee’s General & Feed, first pacing around his Ford LTD a few times like to get his horns sharpened, his shoulders winged out like he was rearing for confrontation. D-nice watched the whole thing from across the street, stayed safely inside Lou Davis’s — waiting, waiting, waiting, it felt — waiting so long that Rheanne accepted a date he didn’t offer, waiting for Jean to come out grinning like a crow just how he did not five minutes later, nipping at a cone he most certainly didn’t break a bill on.

At that sight D-nice felt a deliberate relief slip right up next to him close as a crowded pocket. Jo-Jo and Jean hadn’t shared a word between them or practiced passing for even a handful of the three weeks and five days until prom night. Jo-Jo would act himself again, as he had not done for the three weeks and five days he and Jean were incommunicado, twenty-six days Jo-Jo had enumerated with dramatic gnashing, counting them off like a prisoner, bellyaching until a grist-biting envy grabbed piercing hold of D-nice’s left ear and nearly drove him to find Jean and tell him something Nana did say: Just for a reverend is in the Lord’s house don’t make it his sermon, or his sheep. Was it true? In sooth, D-nice didn’t know.

But he knew that he wanted to scream those three-and-some-odd weeks Jo-Jo was off his squash, punch something and scream, yell about it all, the two proms, the anteers and the antees. Punch the proms, the anteers, the antees, kick them all in the ben-was. Then the next year come ’round, Jo-Jo surprised them all and went to the Bruiser prom with Jean’s sister.

ALL JO-JO SAID WAS, It ain’t free, D, it ain’t free. And it ain’t what it looks, either.

When Jo-Jo was in fifth grade, his parents worked the night shift, leaving him in the care of his fat-cracklin’ half sister, whom Quint was stuck on sticky as blackstrap molasses. Whenever he four-wheeled out to see Jo-Jo’s sister, Quint dragged D’aron along, his rationale being that it was lonely pups most likely to piss on the sofa. While Quint and Jo-Jo’s sister made cow sounds in the back room, Jo-Jo and D’aron played Madden NFL on Xbox, camped on the couch, slouching, the one football position at which D’aron excelled.

However he meant it, Jo-Jo was right when he insisted, It ain’t free. After Jo-Jo, who never missed a day of school or work, took off for Bruiser prom, he was fired, and coach benched him for a month, even though it cost the team three games, and Jo-Jo missed playing for the scouts. He didn’t complain a minute. Just smiled and said he was always running late and it finally caught up with him. D’aron nodded, wanting to believe him, all the while thinking everything was exactly as it fucking seemed, people just preferred to pretend otherwise.