Ishmael Reed - The Terrible Threes

One day they had it out. It was late morning, and Mr. Longsfellow had been up all night with some friends, discussing Great Books, and the Crawfords were preparing breakfast. Beechiko was already upset. She had an early morning conference with her editor, and had returned to the Village on the subway. There was a handsome couple sitting across from her. The man looked like Martin Sheen; the woman resembled Christie Brinkley; the child was the most beautiful kid you’d ever want to see, and she started playing with the child. The couple wouldn’t give her the time of day. Wouldn’t even look in her direction. She had been so hurt.

“I told you that Mr. Longsfellow wouldn’t be eating that sort of breakfast anymore.”

“Don’t tell me, Beechiko, or whatever your name is. Mr. Longsfellow has been drinking coffee for thirty years. He loves bacon and eggs. Everything was fine till you come here, you old two-dollar whore,” Samantha said, slamming the utensils on the table.

“You ain’t doing nothing but gettin’ in the way. I have a good mind to take my fist and jam it in your jaw,” her husband threatened.

“That’s it. Resort to violence. I’ve read a lot of books about your type. Besides, I’m looking after Mr. Longsfellow’s welfare. He is a man who, as you know, has very high standards. You call this breakfast?” She picked up the bacon and held it close to her face. “Look at this grease.” She turned up her nose.

Beechiko took the plate and started to dump the eggs, hash browns, ham, and bacon into the trash can. Crawford grabbed her while Samantha took over the plate. Beechiko flipped Crawford’s 230 pounds over her shoulder and then, using the bacon, began a pulling contest with Samantha. That’s how Longsfellow found them, yelling and screaming at the top of their lungs. He was dressed in a kimono that she’d bought for him. He wore fur-lined slippers whose exquisite leather bore a brilliant sheen. How handsome he looks, Beechiko thought.

“Here, here what’s the matter?” Mr. Longsfellow said, looking from one to the other.

“She come in here giving orders. Samantha and I have been serving you for thirty years now, Mr. Longsfellow. We served your wife. I sho do miss her,” Crawford said. Mr. Longsfellow lowered his head.

“Me too,” Samantha said. “Sweet as she could be. Long blonde hair,” Samantha said, looking toward Beechiko with an evil grin.

“She whatun nothin’ like this old yellow bitch. Who ever named her Beechiko named her right, cause she ain’t nothin’ but a bitch, old skinny evil thing.”

“That’s not called for, Samantha. Crawford. We’ll be civil in my house, and I don’t want to ever hear you call Beechiko that name again, do you hear?” Beechiko folded her arms and smiled.

“Yes, Mr. Longsfellow,” the Crawfords said, unanimously.

“Now my bedroom needs straightening up. Get to it.”

“Yes, Mr. Longsfellow.” The Crawfords exited, glancing over their shoulders at Beechiko, who was enjoying herself. Longsfellow lowered his white-haired head again and hobbled toward the breakfast table. He sat down, and Beechiko began serving him tea.

“I’m just looking out for your welfare, Mr. Longsfellow. The bacon is full of sodium nitrite.”

“Thanks for all you’ve done for me, Beechiko; what is this?” he said, staring at a bowl that Beechiko placed before him containing miso soup.

“This is your new breakfast, Mr. Longsfellow.”

“What would I do without you,” Mr. Longsfellow said. He held her hand for a long while. She winked to herself.

With Mr. Longsfellow’s vote of confidence, Beechiko ruled the roost. She made the Crawfords’ lives miserable, being constantly on their case, prying into their cleaning schedule, going after them for every particle of dust they overlooked, for every faint ring in the bathtub. She personally supervised Mr. Longsfellow’s meals, and the laundering of his clothes. Soon, however, her glory would end. Mr. Longsfellow had warned her not to enter the room that had been shut ever since his wife’s death. She couldn’t resist, and in the course of prying through his wife’s belongings came upon her blonde chemotherapy wigs. She was sitting in front of a mirror trying one on when she saw the reflection of her adversary. Samantha was standing in the doorway, leaning against one of its sides, her arms folded and that wicked glint in her eye.

“UUUUUUU. Immon tell. Immon tell, Mr. Longsfellow, he gave orders to everybody not to enter this room, and here you is in here trying on Mrs. Longsfellow’s blonde wig. Only me and Mrs. Longsfellow knew about those wigs. You robbing the secrets from Mrs. Longsfellow’s grave.” Before Beechiko could say anything, Samantha snapped a photo with her Polaroid.

Samantha turned and headed toward Mr. Longsfellow’s study where he had fallen asleep on top of some Great Book. He’d left the television set on. Beechiko started after her.

“Please, please don’t tell. I’ll do anything. Please don’t.”

“You’ll do anything?” Samantha asked.

“Anything, I don’t want Mr. Longsfellow to know.”

Samantha let go with a grin. She pointed to a closet at the end of the hall. “Go get that vacuum cleaner and follow me.”

The Crawfords supervised her now. They made her do all of their chores, and sometimes they wouldn’t even come to work and she’d have to cover for them. It got so that they’d show up only for meals that she had to serve them, in between going to the matinees or the track. One weekend while Mr. Longsfellow attended a conference upstate about the wasteland of American culture, they invited all of their friends over, and made her do all of the cooking, and when they finished eating they made her entertain them on the koto, and ridiculed and laughed at her.

She’d bought the mystical hokiness promoted by black feminist writers which held that black women were sort of like Christ figures who were abused by black men, Herods, Satans, and even the best among them, Pontius Pilates, but in the humiliating scene that she’d just endured, the women laughed louder than the men, and had no sense of the sisterhood that bonded her with them. They were different from the black women she met in publishing circles and at literary parties. Elegant matrons. They were drinking up all of Mr. Longsfellow’s scotch, and they said motherfucker more than the men. She was in bed now, and she could hear the refrains from the tune “Honkey Tonk,” made popular by Bill Doggett. She hated its bass line. Da doom Da doom Da doom Da doom Da. The low-down chicken-pecking vulgar solo made her feel strange in her viscera. She felt a presence in the room. Yes. There before her stood a small figure. The figure began to glow. She recognized him from the newspapers. His face was appearing in all of the Xmas ads. Black Peter. (Black Peter had transformed himself into the image of the post-yuppie Black Peter that the toy makers had designed.)

“I could feel your distress, far away,” he said.

“What, I,” she wanted to scream, but she couldn’t.

“I’m going to grant you the wish that you desire.”

“But.”

“It may relieve your torment, or it may bring additional problems,” he said. Before she could say anything, he disappeared.

Tommy awoke, springing up on his pillow. He’d had the same dream. That President Jesse Hatch was wringing his father’s neck and his father was protesting by flapping about and jumping up and down on one leg. “What’s the matter, Tommy,” his aunt said, coming into his room and turning on the lights. She sat down on his bed and embraced him. He cried on her peacock’s breast.

“It was that dream again, Auntie. The President, Jesse Hatch, was wringing my father’s neck, and then, then a man, he all covered with blood, and my father was hopping about and his neck was gone, and blood was spurting out of his — O Auntie, it was awful.”