Percival Everett - I Am Not Sidney Poitier

The principal was dumbfounded. “I don’t know,” he muttered. “It’s disruptive,” he haltingly said.

“Disruptive of what? Show me the rule in the governance.”

“I can’t say there is a rule, per se.”

“Then my son will be allowed to continue his business?”

“What will I get out of this?” he asked.

“A percentage,” she said. “How does 5 percent sound?”

The principal looked at me. “If he can answer a question.”

“Shoot,” my mother said.

“Explain supply-side economics,” the principal said.

My mother laughed.

I looked at his face and then hers.

“Tell me, honey,” she said. “And don’t forget to talk about the proper indicators and about inflation.”

I of course said nothing.

“Tell him!” my mother shouted.

“Tell me!” the principal shouted.

I started to cry.

“Is that sweater made of wool?” the principal asked. He touched my shoulder and cocked his head oddly to the side.

“It is,” my mother said.

“Doesn’t it itch?” he asked.

“Yes, it does,” my mother said. “But it itches him, not me.”

“And so that makes it all right?” he said.

“Yes, it does,” she said.

I began to itch and then to scratch and that made me itch even more. I scratched until I knew I was bleeding under the sweater.

“Don’t worry,” my mother said to me. And then she said nothing else, but sat in a chair against the wall.

The principal opened my wrinkled paper sack of gum balls and began to toss them, underhanded, to my mother, who clapped her hands like a seal and barked. She caught them in her mouth and seemed to swallow them. I shook my head, concerned about my mother swallowing the big purple, red, and yellow balls, but what came out when I opened my mouth was, “My profits!” I stood straight, looked left and right, wondered where those words had come from. I watched my mother swallow another yellow ball. I wanted her to stop, and again I opened my mouth and out came, “My inventory!” I slapped a hand over my mouth.

“Not Sidney,” the principal said.

“You must build,” my mother said, as if finishing the principal’s sentence. “Build is what … ”

“You must do,” the man said.

“Not Sidney?” my mother said, the voice more my mother’s than it ever had been in life.

“Yes?” I said.

“Wake up.”

And so I awoke to find myself sweating and frightened and unsure why. It had not been a terribly scary dream as dreams go, and yet I was terrified. But I had scratched my arm raw in a place.

Everett was doing push-ups in his office when he called for me to come in. He stopped and faced me while sitting cross-legged on the floor. “I used to be able to do seventy of those.”

“How many can you do now?”

“Six.”

“That’s not very good,” I said.

“It beats none. Why are you in my office?”

“May I ask you a question?”

“You just did, and I might point out that you did so without asking. What does that tell you?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re troubled, Mr. Poitier.”

“No so much troubled as confused.”

“Then you’re not troubled at all. And if you’re confused, then I’ve done my job and so I don’t have a problem. Yet here we sit, me on the floor with my leg going to sleep and you in a chair.”

“Is this whole course some kind of object lesson?”

“That’s good. I’d never considered that. You’re a lot smarter than me. I have no problem with that. Some people are thinner than me, some taller, some uglier, cuter, faster, and many smarter. That’s the way it all shakes out.”

“I don’t feel very smart,” I said.

“What does smart feel like? If it feels like an orgasm, then I’m going to start studying right now. Me, I’m only slightly above average. It fits me.”

“Some of the students think you’re brilliant.”

“Yeah, well, like I said.”

“What did you say?”

“How many push-ups can you do?”

“I don’t know. Fifty maybe.”

“Probably more,” he said. “Have you had lunch?”

“No.”

“Well, you had better go grab some before they run out of whatever it is you eat. And close my door on your way out.” He said as I was halfway out, “Oh, and one more thing, don’t imagine that you have limitations.”

“Don’t I?”

“I’m sure you do, but don’t imagine it. Good day.”

At the next class meeting, Everett informed us that we would be taking an essay examination that day.

“You said ‘no tests,’ ” one of the women said.

“This is an examination,” Everett said.

“That doesn’t make sense,” she said.

“Well, be that as it may.” He passed around the exam. “There are three questions, and I urge you to divide your time unevenly on them, as they are of equal value. Since one hundred is not divisible by three, there is no way for you to achieve a perfect score. Unless of course we decide that ninety-nine is a perfect score, and I wouldn’t mind that at all.”

The examination:

1) Imagine a radical and formidable contextualism that derives from a hypostatization of language and that it anticipates a liquefied language, a language that exists only in its mode of streaming. How is a speaker to avoid the pull into the whirl of this nonoriented stream of language?

2) Is the I one’s body? Is fantasy the specular image? And what does this have to do with the Borromean knot? In other words, why is there no symptom too big for its britches?

3) How might it feel to burn with missionary zeal? Don’t be shy in your answer.

We students looked at each other with varying degrees of confusion, panic, and anger. And like idiots, we set to work. At least they did. I read the questions over and over and after the numbers 1 and 2 on my paper I wrote, I don’t know. After the number 3 I wrote, Awful, then added, damn it.

Podgy Patel was tapping my desk with the eraser of his pencil. He looked around the dorm room, then at me sitting on my narrow mattress. He said in his lilting singsong accent, “You know you don’t have to live like this.”

“I choose to live like this.” I looked at his chinos and red sweater. “Thanks for not wearing a suit.”

“Casual Friday,” he said.

“It’s Thursday.”

“At home it is Friday. Or Wednesday maybe. I cannot remember which way it goes.”

“What’s up, Podgy?”

“Your money continues to grow, but it would be growing much faster if you made an investment.”

“Why should it grow faster?” I asked.

This agitated him slightly. “Mr. Not Sidney, money should be allowed to grow as fast as it can. This is my business. I am your advisor, and your money wants to grow faster.”

“I don’t know anything about investing.”

“Of course you don’t. That is why you have me, Podgy Patel. That is why I am here.”

“Thank you. So, what do you want me to do? Buy stocks or something like that? I trust you. Just buy whatever.”

“No stocks. Stocks are no good. Chimp change.”

“Chump change.”

“That, too. No, I don’t like stocks. I think you should buy a television network. A cable network.”

“Excuse me?”

“A television network.”

“I heard you, but I don’t understand you, or at least I think you’re nuts. You mean like Ted’s network?”