Ishmael Reed - Reckless Eyeballing

“It’s okay, Martha, it’s a cowboy hat. Many American men wear them and sometimes won’t remove them even when they’re going to bed. They sleep and die with their boots on.” He removed his hat.

“Thank you,” his mother said, squinting her eyes with annoyance. The two women began some small talk. Where there were bargains in downtown New Oyo, where there were some sales going on. They spent time at the beaches and on the tennis courts. That is, when Martha wasn’t giving advice to the high and mighty, running events of the country through the president. He wondered were they sleeping together. And Johnnie Kranshaw. She went to lectures and to museums. Had become almost a student of the indigenous dance.

Ball skipped the dessert. Down here they put sugar and rum into everything. It was still a sugar plantation economy. Sure the lavish estates had become tourist restaurants. They were operated by the original plantation owners. They still kept it all in the family, but the president had a black face, and so they didn’t fear the uprisings of the former ages, led by men possessed by Orishas.

“Now this is coffee. This is one thing about New Oyo I missed,” he said, taking a sip of the coffee from a tiny cup.

“You see, I told you that they’ve made him into…into…an American,” his mother said, nearly in tears.

“Look, Ma, I didn’t mean it that way.”

“The Tribune said that Tremonisha was the first director of your play. What happened to her?” Johnnie asked.

“She was getting hassled in New York. Seems that she couldn’t please anybody, catching it from all sides, the brothers and the sisters, and then she had a fight with Becky; and Randy Shank — he tied her up and shaved off her hair. Didn’t you hear down here? He was going around shaving off the hair of feminists whom, he felt, were smearing the reputations of black men.”

“He what?”

“Didn’t you hear in the newspapers? He pulled a gun on a cop and was killed after trying to assault Becky French.”

“I can’t believe it,” Johnnie said, her mouth open.

“Sure, he got to twelve women before they caught him.”

“His greatest role,” Johnnie said.

“Who is this man you’re talking about? He sounds crazy to me. Why hadn’t they locked him up? If we would have caught him down here we would have given him the African treatment,” Martha said.

“He was actually harmless. A brilliant playwright. Some have called him the first modern black playwright,” said Johnnie.

“He would dress in a leather coat and matching beret. He wore a mask. Said that he was using a method that the Resistance used after World War Two. Shaving the heads of those who collaborated with the Nazis.” Martha started to laugh and wouldn’t stop until Johnnie reprimanded her.

“It’s not funny, Martha. You don’t know how hard it is to be a black person of consciousness in the United States.”

“After lecturing his victims, he’d gather up their hair and place it into a black plastic bag,” Ball said sadly, shaking his head. He’d begun to admire Randy Shank on the sly.

“Poor Randy,” Johnnie said. His mother burst out laughing again; Johnnie glared at her. She stopped.

“Anyway, Tre relocated in Yuba City, California, which according to the Rand McNally Encyclopedia is the worst city in the United States. She’s begun a theater group out there.

“Old yellow squeaky bitch. They brought her in to take my place because she wouldn’t stand up to them. You know how weak those yellow bitches are. They worse than white women.”

“You’re right about that,” Martha said. She was reddish brown.

Good grief, Ball thought. Not only did the black and brown ones hate the white ones, but the yellow ones and each other as well.

“Well, she was asking for it. Writing all of those things, putting down the brothers.” Ball looked at her. He started to say what the fellas said. That Johnnie Kranshaw had started the whole thing. The fellas had accused Kranshaw of being the first to dredge up the old black beast image that had horrified and titillated southerners in the 1890s. Johnnie Kranshaw, Tremonisha, and the rest were accused of teasing the public with the old “a fate worse than death.” Dangling the gorilla, as the practice is called. Ball changed the subject.

“What are you working on now?”

“Whatever it is, it’s hard to drag her away from that hotel, she’s so much into it. The woman types day and night,” Martha said.

“I never discuss my projects,” Johnnie answered. “Let’s just say that I’m writing plays from now on that I wouldn’t be ashamed to read before a black Baptist Sunday morning worshiping service at Fort Sumter, South Carolina. I’m not going to be used any more by the likes of Becky French.” That’s it, blame it all on the white woman, Ball thought. “Wasn’t enough that we raised their children, cleaned their houses, gave them counsel, and sometimes shared their husbands, now these old crazy white women want us to be pimps for them. After they finished with No Good Man , it became nothing but a recruitment poster for lesbianism.” Why didn’t you stand up to them, Ball thought. Why weren’t you as hard on them as you were on the fellas.

“Now that Tre has left, I wonder who Becky’s whore is now.”

Ball dropped his cup. The coffee left a big spot on the rug.

“Must be jet lag,” he said, smiling weakly. His mother called the maid, making awful comments about the maid’s color in the Mother Tongue. Ian was glad that Johnnie Kranshaw didn’t get a translation. The maid rushed in like a scared rabbit and began to clean up the spilled coffee. His mother finally rose from the table.

“Ian, I’m going upstairs to begin unpacking your clothes. I’ll leave you and Johnnie to your playwriting talk.”

She left them, lifted her skirts and climbed the stairs toward his bedroom. It had remained the same since he’d left the Island of New Oyo for the States in the mid-seventies. There was a huge photo on the wall of Ball in his rugby shirt and shorts playing soccer. A framed degree in drama from New Oyo University, his books. She’d always scolded him for living in a fantasy world, for being ethereal, but now he had put his fantasies to work. Fantasies can’t earn a dime if they only exist in your mind, was her philosophy. That was a nice write-up of Reckless Eyeballing in the international edition of the Herald Tribune . She laughed. He was just like his father. Crazy. He had his father’s Olmec face, his adobe-colored skin, and his gray eyes. One day after the political passions — the violent style of New Oyo’s politics — had cooled, she would tell him. She would tell him that she had lied when she said that his father was a shark fisherman who died when his fishing boat capsized. It was one elaborate and entertaining lie. She even said that they’d found his father’s undigested parts inside the stomachs of several sharks a few days after his father’s death. She looked into his mirror. She turned around and placed her hands on her waist. It was a little thick but in good shape for someone her age. Muscles firm. Superb bone structure, clean jaw line. Her hair streaked with black and red and resembling a large furry hat worn in Siberia. Yakish. Pupils, eight-ball black surrounded by white that resembled the unpolluted clouds above the Atlantic. Large white teeth, the lower lip heavier than the upper one. Huge bosom like Celia Cruz. Yes, indeed, Tina Turner had inspired the women of her age. She walked toward his luggage, which lay at the foot of his bed where the boy had placed it. She opened the first piece. It was his toilet bag and it was full of American products. Aspirin, Ban roll-on, Crest toothpaste, Aqua Velva aftershave. She removed the cap and smelled it. It stank. A toothbrush that had the word Gum written on it. Its fibers were soft.