Whitehead Colson - Sag Harbor

“Exactly!” Nick said.

“But that's Little John,” NP said dismissively

“Martine keeps his hair short because it's kinky as hell,” Nick said. “You know that.”

“He's not no black Dominican.”

“They got Dominicans walking round blacker than all of us.”

“But if you called them black they'd punch you in your face.”

“That's true,” Nick had to concede.

NP looked at me. “What do you think, Benji?”

“I don't know.” I shrugged. “You never know.”

It was Nick versus NP in this quarrel, which went on for weeks, with each side coming back with their new evidence to bolster their cases.

“Why do you think he hired so many of us?” Nick demanded one evening when the last of the rush trickled out. “You know these white people out here don't want to have black people behind the counter.”

“Because he pays minimum wage?”

One shift, Nick had been on edge. Messing up more than usual. Giving the incorrect change, confusing Chocolate Banana with Chocolate Banana Hazelnut, peeling mealy waffles off the grill — rookie stuff like that. Martine was in the store that day, in the back making a lot of calls. I noticed that Nick kept eyeballing him. When Martine said good-bye and walked out of the store, Nick summoned us excitedly to the window.

“You see! You see!” Nick said.

“What?”

“Martine walking to his car.”

“What about it?”

“You can't tell me that's not a black walk!”

“I don't see it.”

“His arms! His hips!”

A couple of days after that, Smokey Robinson came over Nick's radio and Martine started in on a lumbering shuffle while talking to a distributor on the phone. He was a bit stiff, but well within the range of Middle-Aged Black Man Getting His Groove On. Nick elbowed me in the stomach and I heard a crack — in surprise, I'd fractured the Two Scoops Raspberry Swirl in a Waffle Cone that I'd been packing. Nick tipped his head toward Martine and glared. You see? You see?

See indeed. We'd strayed into deep eye-of-the-beholder terrain. And you know we weren't going to ask. If he wasn't, he'd fire us for thinking that he was, and if he was, he'd fire us for it not being obvious. The question would have remained academic if not for the Head-Patting Incident, which raised the stakes. Drawing me in, actually, even though I'd tried to stay on the sidelines.

THE DAY OUR ELECTRICITY WENT OUT, NP sauntered in late, wearing a fresh Jonni Waffle shirt his mother had washed for him. His mother was no weekend parent. She was a teacher by profession, and dashed out to Sag, packed for the summer, as soon as the final school bell of the year started ringing. He said hi to Nick, slapped my hand, and then looked at my hair and, with a glance at Martine, said, “You sure you want to leave it all exposed like that? You want a hat?”

I said, “Shut up, bitch.” I'd been experimenting with “bitch,” trying it out every couple of days. Going well so far, from the response.

Nick flicked NP's arm with his finger. “Why you got to instigate something all the time?” he asked.

NP headed straight for the soda machine and shouted out, “Martine, you get enough Pistachio this time?” winking at us over his fake diligence.

The Head-Patting Incident had occurred the week before, after a post-lunch rush. It was a hot day, steaming, riling the natives. The waffle-cone supply was low when the rush hit, and of everybody on shift, I was known as a clutch waffle-roller, knocking them out at an enviable rate when the pressure was on, not that such a skill was worthy of envy, but you get the point, I got the job done without sacrificing quality and with few rejects. The rush ended on a brutal note when a family of six, mom and dad and their nattering brood in every species of khaki shorts — Sansabelt, pleated, hip-hugging elastic — decided it would be neat if they all had banana splits. Which were our absolute bane because everyone thought the banana split was very exotic and so they eyeballed every step of the construction process and traded notes afterward, with one of the group inevitably complaining when their split had a smidgen less fudge than their companions'.

Eventually, the family beat it out the door. The guys behind the counter, and me in my waffle perch, began to relax. Martine emerged from the back and, observing my accomplishment, the stack of cones, said, “Great job, Benji, those are some real cones you got there,” and he patted me on the head. Two bounces.

I stiffened. I think I heard NP's jaw drop. Martine was out the door with his briefcase.

“What the,” I said.

NP came around the counter. “Yo, Martine just patted you on the head like you were a pickaninny.”

“I'm not his—” I started.

“White man patted me on the head like a pickaninny, I'd kick his ass, shit.”

“Martine is black,” Nick said. “He was just saying, ‘Good job, brotherman.’”

“That's some racist shit right there,” NP said. “Pat a black man on the head.”

There has been far too little research done in the area of what drives white people to touch black hair. What are the origins of the strange compulsion that forces them to reach out to smooth, squeeze, pet, pat, bounce their fingers in the soft, resilient exuberance of an Afro, a natural, a just-doin'-its-own-thing jumble of black hair? It's only hair — but try telling that to that specimen eyeing a seductive bonbon of black locks, as the sweat beads on their forehead and they tremble with the intensity of restraint, their fingers locked in a fist in their pocket: I cannot touch it, but I must. A black-hair fondler has a few favorite questions that they like to ask when they fondle. “How do you comb it?” “How do you make it do that?” “How do you wash it?” With a pick; just does it; shampoo. Jerkoff.

A good starting point for such a study might be a metropolitan preschool, where the races are forced to mix with each other . Let the camera roll. The hours of footage, capturing the white schoolteacher's pats of her charges' nappy heads — good-morning hello, after-recess howdy, end-of-day farewell — will be a fruitful avenue of research. It's an ancient curiosity, no doubt, one that finds its first full expression during slavery. The contact of the two races on a daily basis, on New World soil, as they breathe its strange air. Picture the slaveholder as he surveys his property, both animate and inanimate, walking between the rows of the slave shacks, the field niggers standing at attention. He passes a young boy with bright eyes, round cheeks … and an irresistible 'Fro, untamed, almost flirtatious. Is it … can it be … winking at him? He will pet his property and pet is the correct verb, for these are animals before him.

I had punched a white classmate or two or three, some boys and a girl, in the stomach or the eye, during my early elementary-school years for inappropriate 'Fro-touching. “I just wanted to see what it felt like.” I punched them according to my father's lessons. In each case, the principal called our house that evening, my mother answered, my father listened to one side of the conversation, came to a boil, asked for the phone, and then schooled Mr. Aletta in the finer points of black history, patiently, inexorably. That was a long time ago.

NP started a campaign. In slow moments he'd whisper, “It's like lamb's wool,” with a tone of wonder in his voice.

When I returned from my ten-minute break, he'd squeak excitedly, “I love its kinky texture.”

And also, “It springs back so fast.”

And merely “Nappy!” if he was feeling pithy.

Nick said, “He's black, I'm telling you,” and that's how things went for a time. What had been Martine's intent? Caught between NP's indictment that I'd been punked, and Nick's vision of racial solidarity. I was in the middle, bending as usual in the direction of whatever breeze was blowing through me that day. The day our electricity went out, I inclined toward NP and his vision of eternal, unending race warfare.