Paul Beatty - The Sellout

I found Hominy in the lobby signing memorabilia, much of it having nothing to with the Little Rascals. But old movie posters, Uncle Remus collectibles, and Jackie Robinson memorabilia, anything dating to before 1960, would do. Sometimes I forget how funny Hominy is. Back in the day, to avoid the succession of booby traps laid by the white man, black people had to constantly be thinking on their feet. You had to be ready with an impromptu quip or a down-home bromide that would disarm and humble a white provocateur. Maybe if your sense of humor reminded him there was a semblance of humanity underneath that burrhead, you might avoid a beating, get some of that back pay you were owed. Shit, one day of being black in the forties was equal to three hundred years of improv training with the Groundlings and Second City. All it takes is fifteen minutes of Saturday-night television to see that there aren’t many funny black people left and that overt racism ain’t what it used to be.

Hominy posed for a group photo with the blackfaced women of Nu Iota Gamma. “Do the curtains match the naps?” Hominy said dryly, before delivering a wide smile. Only the real darkie in the group got the joke, and try as she might, she couldn’t stop smiling. I sidled up to her. She answered my questions before I could ask them.

“I’m pre-med. And why? Because these white bitches got the hookup, that’s why. The old girls’ network exists, too, now, and it’s no fucking joke. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. That’s what my mama says, because racism’s everywhere.”

“It can’t be everywhere,” I insisted.

The future Dr. Topsy thought a moment, twisting a runaway plait around her finger. “You know the only place where there’s no racism?” She looked around to make sure her sorority sisters weren’t within earshot and whispered, “Remember those photos of the black president and his family walking across the White House lawn arm-in-arm. Within those fucking frames at that instant, and in only that instant, there’s no fucking racism.”

But there was more than enough racism in the theater lobby to go around. A stoop-shouldered white cat flipped the bill of his baseball cap over his right ear, and then slung his arm around Hominy, bussed him on the cheek, and exchanged skin. The two did everything but call each other Tambo and Bones.

“I just want to say, all those rappers running off at the mouth about being ‘last of the real niggers,’ don’t have jack shit on you, because you, my man, are more than the last Little Rascal, you’re the last real nigger. And I mean ‘nigger’ with the hard r .”

“Why, thank you, white man.”

“And do you know why there aren’t any more niggers?”

“No, sir. I don’t.”

“Because white people are the new niggers. We’re just too full of ourselves to realize it.”

“The ‘new niggers,’ you say?”

“That’s right, both me and you — niggers to the last. Disenfranchised equals ready to fight back against the motherfucking system.”

“Except that you’ll get half the jail time.”

Topsy was waiting for us out in the Nuart parking lot, still in costume and blackface, but wearing a pair of designer sunglasses and excitedly digging through her book bag. I tried to rush Hominy into the truck before he could see her, but she cut us off.

“Mr. Jenkins, I want to show you something.” She took out an oversized three-ring binder and opened it on the hood of the pickup. “These are copies I made of the ledgers for all the Our Gang and Little Rascals movies shot at Hal Roach Studios and MGM.”

“Holy shit.”

Before Hominy could look at them, I snatched the notebook and scanned the columned entries. It was all there. The titles, dates of principal photography, cast and crew, shooting days and total production costs, the profits and losses for all 227 films. Wait, 227?

“I thought there were only 221 movies?”

Topsy smiled and flipped to the second-to-last page. Six consecutive entries for films shot in late 1944 were completely blacked out. Which meant that two hours of prepubescent hijinks that I’d never seen might still exist somewhere. I felt like I was looking at some top-secret FBI report about the Kennedy assassination. I yanked open the binder and held the sheet up to the sun, trying to see through the redaction’s blackness and back into time.

“Who do you think did this?” I asked her.

From her book bag Topsy took out another photocopy. This one listed everyone who’d checked out the ledger since 1963. There were four names on it: Mason Reese, Leonard Maltin, Foy Cheshire, and Butterfly Davis, which I presumed was Topsy’s real name. Before I lifted my eyes from the paper, Hominy and Butterfly were sitting in the cab. He had one arm around her and was leaning on the horn.

“That nigger got my movies! Let’s be out!”

From West L.A. the drive to Foy’s Hollywood Hills abode took longer than it should have. When my father used to force me to accompany him to his black brainiac confabs with Foy, no one knew about the north — south shortcuts from the basin into the hills. Back then Crescent Heights and Rossmore used to be side streets and smooth sailing; now they’re two-lane, bumper-to-bumper major thoroughfares. Man, I used to swim in Foy’s pool while they talked politics and race. Not once did my father ever show any bitterness toward the fact that Foy had paid for that estate with money he earned from “The Black Cats ’n’ Jammin Kids,” the original storyboards of which still hang on my bedroom wall. “Dry off, motherfucker!” Dad would say. “You’re dripping water on the man’s Brazilian cherrywood floors!”

Most of the ride up, Butterfly and Hominy bonded over photos of her and her sorority sisters celebrating the joys of multiculturalism. Denigrating the city of Los Angeles ethnicity by ethnicity, neighborhood by neighborhood. In violation of every traffic law and social taboo, she sat in his lap, their seat belts unbuckled. “This is me at the Compton Cookout … I’m the third ‘ghetto chick’ from the right.” I stole a glance at the snapshot. The women and their dates blackened and Afro-wigged, toting forties and basketballs, smoking blunts. Their mouths filled with gold teeth and chicken drumsticks. It wasn’t so much the racist ridicule as the lack of imagination that I found insulting. Where were the zip coons? The hep cats? The mammies? The bucks? The janitors? The dual-threat quarterbacks? The weekend weather forecasters? The front-desk receptionists that greet you at every single movie studio and talent agency in the city? Mr. Witherspoon will be down in a minute. Can I get you a water? That’s the problem with this generation; they don’t know their history.

“This was the Bingo sin Gringos night we held for Cinco de Mayo…” As opposed to the Compton Cookout, it wasn’t hard to spot Butterfly in that one: this time she sat next to an Asian woman, the two of them, like the other sisters, wearing gigantic sombreros, ponchos, bandoleras , and droopy foot-long Pancho Villa mustaches, while drinking tequila and daubing their cards. Be-ocho … ¡Bingo! Butterfly flicked through her photos. The titles of each bash a dress code unto itself: Das Bunker: The Pure Gene Pool Pool Party. The Shabu Shabu Sleepover! The Trail of Beers — Hiking and Peyote Trip.

Sitting just off Mulholland Drive, on the crest overlooking the San Fernando Valley, Foy’s house was bigger than I remembered. A massive Tudor estate with a circular driveway, it looked more like an English finishing school than a home, despite the giant foreclosure sign bolted to the entrance gate. We piled out of the car. The mountain air was brisk and clean. I took in a deep breath and held it, while Hominy and Butterfly sauntered up to the gate.