Paul Beatty - Tuff

“The phone?”

Winston was ushering Spencer outside, saying his thank-yous, when Yolanda asked Spencer to sit and told Fariq to bring him something to drink from the kitchen. Spencer returned to the rocking chair. “We were never properly introduced. I’m Yolanda, Winston’s wife; this is our son, Jordy; and the anti-Semitic motherfucker who’ll be carrying a six-pack in his teeth is Fariq.” Fariq exited the kitchen with the beer balanced on his head, sashaying his ass in the limited range of motion that his calcified bone structure allowed. “Check me out, toting the brew African-style. Baba laaay. Ta daa laay boo buubuu . That means, ‘I ain’t carrying nothin’ in my teeth like some fucking dog.’ I’m Afro-centric to the core. Y’all better take some African lessons from me, because I’m the epicenter of Afro-centricism.”

Yolanda snatched a beer from Fariq’s head, opened it on the edge of his crutch, then handed it to Spencer.

“Damn, girl, you don’t have to do that — the fucking bottles are twist-off.”

“I know.”

The stale malt liquor wasn’t one of the Trappist ales Spencer preferred, but he thanked everyone just the same. As Fariq and Yolanda continued to bicker, Spencer drank his beverage, his face reddening and growing warmer with each sip. His rising body temperature combined with the blast-furnace effect of the unventilated apartment made him feel like Pliny the Elder running headlong toward the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. In the Foshays, Spencer saw the story of a lifetime. He encouraged Yolanda to continue her tale. “So you two got married over the phone?”

“Yeah, the fool—”

“Come on, Landa, he don’t want to know this.”

“Winston married me while he was in jail. He’d lost his visitation privileges and called me at work one day. I’m eight months pregnant, he’s lonely, talking all lovey-dovey, ‘Let’s get married, Boo.’ When? ‘Now. Some friends hipped me to this reverend who does quickie marriages for inmates. Your phone got three-way? Call this 900 number.’ Boom, we gettin’ married for one ninety-five a minute. And you know what this idiot said instead of ‘I do’?”

“No, tell me.”

“After the reverend said the ‘Do you take this lawful wedded bride to have and to hold’ and all, he said, ‘Well, she’s the first woman I’ve been with for more than two menstrual periods, so fuck it.’ ”

“ ‘So fuck it’?”

“Next thing I know, I’m married and this nigger making kissing noises into the receiver.”

“That’s beautiful.”

“You got a wifey, Rabbi?” Winston asked. “You mean wife? No.”

“I’m saying, you got a girl?”

“Yes, I do.”

“She black?”

“Of course,” Spencer confidently answered, not mentioning that his girlfriend, Natalie, wasn’t exactly what the T-shirted boys outside would call a “real nigga.” She chewed gum like an understudy for a college production of Grease , and ended every sentence with the exclamation “Fuck, yeah!” “Cool!” or “Excellent!” Natalie had recently confided in Spencer that she dated him only because his Caucasian sensibilities were muted by his black skin. She’d grown tired of unadulterated white boys making tanning jokes, buying her leopard-skin panties for her birthday, and asking why her pubic hairs weren’t as straight as the hair on her head. “Hey, it’s hard dating a sister. Give me some skin on that one,” said Spencer, thrusting his palm toward Winston, waiting for him to acknowledge the black man’s covenant. Winston remained still, looking at Spencer warily out of the corner of his eye. “You going to leave me hanging? Aw, man, that’s cold-blooded.” Winston reluctantly pounded a fist on Spencer’s upturned palm.

Tuffy sensed that Spencer was trying too hard to be accepted. The man didn’t even know brothers don’t give one another five anymore. Yolanda, meanwhile, was beginning to be swayed by his genteel dreadlock manner. She patted a spot on the sofa between herself and Winston. “Spencer, come on over here. Smush, bring in some more beer!” Spencer sat down on the couch, trying to hide his apprehension, with a long pull at his bottle. “You know, after the first few sips this malt liquor isn’t so bad.” Yolanda reached over to finger his cowrie-shell necklace. She tucked a couple of loose dreads behind his ear, and imagined herself as the love-starved protagonist in one of her sisterhood novels. “I’m beginning to think it might do Winston some good to have a Big Brother. Are you big? I mean, Spencer, are you a big brother?”

Winston looked at the amount of beer remaining in Spencer’s bottle. It was about half full. Ten more minutes and Spencer Jefferson would be out of his life forever. Winston had an ergonomic chess move of his own. Like a gracious host Winston scooted away from Spencer, so his guest could make himself comfortable. As soon as Spencer’s back touched the sofa cushions, Winston leaned in on the rabbi until he heard Spencer’s ribs creak under his weight. He spread his legs until Spencer’s knees were cinched together like a schoolgirl’s on her first date. Lifting the remote, Winston shut off the television, which slapped Jordy from his cathode funk and sent him waddling to his mother in tears.

“Sensory deprivation,” commented Yolanda.

Fariq set the beers down on the coffee table.

“Fariq,” said Winston, grabbing a beer.

“What up?”

“This stringy-headed nigger a Jew.”

“No doubt.”

Using his crutches like gondola poles, Fariq rolled his chair over to the sofa. “I thought the motherfucker smelled like new money when he walked in.”

“Speak on the Jew, God.”

“The Jew is the black man’s unnatural enemy.”

“Unnatural?” asked Spencer, gasping for air, fighting for elbow room. “How can you can say a people who have been systematically hunted are the ‘unnatural enemy’?”

Feigning camaraderie, Winston placed his arm on Spencer’s shoulder, then quickly bulldozed his forearm into the rabbi’s neck, cutting off his oxygen flow and hence his rebuttal. Fariq, thinking his opposition had been humbled into silence by the irrefutable logic of his statement, pressed his advantage.

“The Jew isn’t a hunter in the spear-throwing sense, but an opportunist, a circling vulture, an egg-stealing muskrat, a germ-infested, night-crawling parasite. Tuffy, I’m telling you, don’t let this Hebrew motherfucker in your life. He’ll use you up and spit you out. The Jew always got an ulterior motive. Why you really here, Rabbi, spying among the enemy?”

When he tired of Fariq’s vitriol, Winston eased off the rabbi just enough so Spencer could fill his lungs with air and free one hand. Spencer inhaled greedily in short quick breaths. He restored the circulation in his numb hand by clapping it against his thigh. After a few moments, Spencer spoke. “There’s a saying in the Talmud, ‘If two men claim your help and one is your enemy, help him first.’ ”

“So that’s why you here? Your presence is an admission that the black man, the original man, is your enemy.”

“Look — Fariq, is it? I don’t know what you have against me and my people, but if you want, I can send you some ADL pamphlets chronicling the commonalities and historical parallels of Jews and blacks.”

Fariq grew excited, rubbing his ankh with one hand and pointing in Spencer’s face with the other. “ADL? Oh, you playing the acronym game? JDL and JDO. We got some initials too. I-S-L-A-M — I Self Lord and Master. F-O-I — Fruit of Islam, but when the jihad starts, F-O-I going to stand for Fariq Obliterating Infidels.”

Fariq’s inchoate ranting became impossible to distinguish from the baby’s wails. It wasn’t often Spencer found himself confronted with rabid anti-Semitism, and he didn’t know how to respond. He regretted that rabbinical school offered no course on effective conflict resolution with the Jew hater. With his free hand he managed to remove his copy of the Tiny Tome of Jewish Enlightenment from his shirt pocket. He began reading aloud. “The Talmud says, ‘A guilty man who denies his guilt doubles it.’ ”