Percival Everett - Erasure

“I love you, Mother,” I said, as if to say of course I’d be there.

“I miss Lisa,” she said.

“Me, too.”

Mother arranged the fabric of her skirt on her lap. “I’m lucky to be able to get around the way I do. I even make it up those stairs without getting winded.”

“That’s terrific.”

“Will Lisa be coming by later today?”

“No, Mother.”

“Because I miss her. Did I say something to hurt her feelings? I know she and Barry broke up.”

“I don’t think so, Mother.”

I called my agent to check on the status of my novel and he had no good news for me. Three more editors had turned it down. “Too dense,” one had said. “Not for us,” a simple reply from another. And, “The market won’t support this kind of thing,” from the third.

“So, what now?” I asked.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Yul said. “If you could just write something like The Second Failure again.” The ice clinked in his glass.

“What are you telling me?” I asked.

“I’m not telling you anything.”

Second Failure: My “realistic” novel. It was received nicely and sold rather well. It’s about a young black man who can’t understand why his white-looking mother is ostracized by the black community. She finally kills herself and he realizes that he must attack the culture and so becomes a terrorist, killing blacks and whites who behave as racists.

I hated writing the novel. I hated reading the novel. I hated thinking about the novel.

I went to what had been my father’s study, and perhaps still was his study, but now it was where I worked. I sat and stared at Juanita Mae Jenkins’ face on Time magazine. The pain started in my feet and coursed through my legs, up my spine and into my brain and I remembered passsages of Native Son and The Color Purple and Amos and Andy and my hands began to shake, the world opening around me, tree roots trembling on the ground outside, people in the street shouting dint, ax, fo, screet and fahvre! and I was screaming inside, complaining that I didn’t sound like that, that my mother didn’t sound like that, that my father didn’t sound like that and I imagined myself sitting on a park bench counting the knives in my switchblade collection and a man came up to me and he asked me what I was doing and my mouth opened and I couldn’t help what came out, ‘Why fo you be axin?”

I put a page in my father’s old manual typewriter. I wrote this novel, a book on which I knew I could never put my name:

Mama look at me and Tardreece and she call us “human slough.” That how it all start up. “Human slough,” she say, “You lil’ muthafuckas ain’t nuffin but human slough.” I looks at her and I’m wonderin what “slough” means and I don’t like the look on her face and so I get up from the chair I been sittin in and I walk across the kitchen and grab a big knife from the counter. She say, “And what you gone do wif that, human slough?” And I stab Mama. I put the knife in her stomach and pull it out red and she look at me like to say why you stab me? And I stab Mama again. Blood be all on the floor and on the table, drip drip drippin down her legs and my baby sister starts screamin and I says, “Why you be screamin, Baby Girl?” And she look at me and she say it because I be stabbin on Mama. I look at my hands and they all covered wif blood and I realize I don’t know what goin on. So, I stab Mama again. I stab her cause I scared. I stab Mama cause I love her. I stab Mama cause I hate her. Cause I love her. Cause I hate her. Cause I ain’t got no daddy. Then I walk out the kitchen and stand outside, leavin Mama crawlin round on the linolum tryin to hold in her guts. I stands out on the sidewalk just drippin blood like a muthafucka. I look up at the sky and I try to see Jesus, but I cain’t. Then I wonder which one of my fo’ babies I’m gone go see.

I wake up and I’m just soaked in sweat, been sweatin like a fuckin pig. I throw them sheets off me and pull on some jeans. I tighten up my belt and then yank my pants down on my ass. The tee shirt I’m wearin be funky as shit, but I don’t give a fuck. The world be stinkin, so why not me? That’s what I says. So, why not me? That’s my motto. So, why not me? It be eleben-thirty in the moanin. I check the kitchen floor fo’ blood on my way through. That was a fucked up dream, real fucked up. I step on outside and look up at the sky and I wonder which one of my fo’ babies I’m gone go see.

Aspireene’s mama be keepin company with some nigger they call Mad Dog, so I don’t need to be sniffin round her crib. I ain’t gonna have some buck pop a cap in my ass. No suh. Tylenola’s mama be a crazy bitch and she done got herself a nine and I know she gone pop a cap in me if I shows my face cause I ain’t give her no money and she been askin fo’ three monfs. My oldest girl, Dexatrina, her mama still be in love wif me. I could go hit it once, but gettin out, man it like gettin coke outta milk. I decide I’m gone go see my boy Rexall. He got Down Sinder, but he okay. In dis fuckin world, he don’t need no brain no way. Better not to have one. He be three now and he was always knocking shit over. I smack him once and his mama say fo me not to, say he cain’t help it. I told her to go fuck herself, little big-head nigger got juice on my good pants. Yeah, I’m gone smack him. I’m gone go see Rexall, cause I’m his daddy. I takes care of my babies.

My name is Van Go Jenkins and I’m nineteen years old and I don’t give a fuck about nobody, not you, not my Mama, not the man. The world don’t give a fuck about nobody, so why should I? And what I’m gone do instead of going to work over at that Jew muthafacka’s warehouse over on Central is go over to the high school and wait for Rexall’s mama. Her name be Cleona. She’s a dreamer, always talkin bout graduatin and goin to the communy college and bein a nurse or some shit. Her dreamin don’t bother me none. I hope she do make herself some real money some day. But she be actin funny a lot, like she think I ain’t good enough fo’ her ass. Fuck her. All I know is I can go over her house when her mama gone and cut me out a piece. She ain’t too good then.

I’m standing outside the school lookin up at the second floor and I see that bastard who got me kicked out way back when. I was just sittin in the back of the class, mindin my own business when the fucka come back talkin shit.

“Is there a problem, Mr. Jenkins?” he ax.

I’m just kicked back, chillin, talkin to Yellow. I look at Yellow like what this fool think he is and what he be sayin, like what language he be talkin and we bust out laughin. Then that muthafucka laugh too, like he makin fun of me. I get real quiet and cut a stare at him.

“What you laughin at, cracker?” I say.

“You, my man,” he say. “I’m laughin at you. You want to be tough, fine, but don’t drag all these other kids down the toilet with you. Right now, you feel good, strong, full of it, but when you get out there in that world, a world that doesn’t know you from a speck of dirt, when you’re twenty-eight, say, and you can’t read a job application and somebody else gets the job, then you won’t be so full of it. You’ll be just another loser with a dick that’s too small.”

He throwin all them words out and then he gets to the part about my dick and I hear a couple of people laugh and I just lose it. Shit. My dick be twice as big as his. I jump up and knee the fucka in his balls. He slump over and I wanna make him suck me off in front of everybody, but I just hit him again, wif my fist this time, across his pasty white face. I cut my knuckle on his tooth and then I gets madder. The police come and pull my ass off him. The ambulance come and get him, sorry son of a bitch, fuck wif me like that, talk bout my dick. He the reason I didn’t graduate. I coulda been out there wif a good job, makin some good money in a office or sumpin, instead of liftin furniture for the man over at that warehouse.