Paul Beatty - Tuff

… Bullet with my name on it

Knife with my bloodstain on it

Coffee table with my brain on it

Pallbearer grab a coffin latch

Another nigger snatched

In the ghetto it’s Catch-

22 slug to the mug …

Inez winced. It wasn’t hard to envision a bullet-riddled Winston sprawled underneath the White Park monkey bars, gargling his blood, his head lolling in her lap, while his friends tried to coax his soul back into his body. She was determined not to be too late to save Tuffy, like she was too late to save Malcolm.

Winston slowly lifted his head and opened his eyes. “I ain’t serious with this election bullshit. I’m not running for a damn thing. Fuck it.”

Inez raised an index finger in the air like a committeeperson making a point of order. “Fifteen thousand dollars, Winston,” she said. “I’ll pay you fifteen thousand dollars if you run. Maybe a little more after I look into how much it costs for posters and things. It doesn’t matter if you win or lose. It’ll be like a summer job.” Winston immediately flashed to the restitution check hanging on Inez’s bedroom wall. “Come on, Ms. Nomura, don’t joke.”

“Inez, don’t encourage the boy,” pleaded Clifford. “He’s going to think you mean it.”

“The election is a little over three months away. Let’s see — that’s five thousand dollars a month.”

Inez’s eyes locked with his. She was serious. “It might be fun.” Winston stole a glance at Yolanda. She looked skeptical. She don’t like Ms. Nomura nohow . He shifted his gaze to Fariq. Smush would eventually come up with some nefarious plan to make money this summer. It depended upon the riskiness of the venture, but at best Winston’s end would be between four and five thousand a month. Ain’t that a bitch, crime and politics pay about the same . “Ms. Nomura, I want all the money up front.”

“Done.”

Inez sighed. No one else said anything as they waited for her to come to her senses and renege on the offer. The phone rang. Winston pressed the Speaker button and snapped, “Who this?”

“Winston, is that how you answer the phone?”

“No ma’am.”

“Okay, then. What did you decide to do?”

“I’m running for Congress.”

“City Council,” hissed Yolanda.

“That’s nice, son, you have my blessing. Take care.”

“Thanks, Mama, you always there for a nigger. I mean, you wasn’t really there for me, but yeah, thanks. I’ll call you soon. Bye. Love you.” Winston picked Jordy up off the floor and dangled him over the phone with one hand and tickled his stomach with the other. “Say goodbye to Grams, Jordy.” Jordy purred a slobbering gurgle into the phone.

Clifford backed away from the table. “Inez, is the auditorium ready?”

“Ms. Dunleavy is taking care of everything, but we should get going. I’ll be there in a minute.” While Clifford gathered his books and strode into the hall, Inez walked up to Winston and gave him a long hug. “You know what we haven’t done lately?”

“Naw.”

“Gone to the top of the Empire State Building. Let’s meet next Sunday. Spencer, you come too.”

“Sure.”

“Winston, you mind?”

“Naw.”

“Coming to listen to your father read?”

“Maybe.”

Winston rose from the table, began cleaning up his mess. He crumpled Collette Cox’s campaign flyer and tossed it with the food scraps into a wastebasket. “Ms. Nomura?”

“What?”

“You think my pops would’ve come to this meeting if he didn’t have this reading scheduled for today?”

“I don’t know.”

“You better vote for me.”

“You have to earn votes, Winston. You can’t strong-arm folks into voting for you,” Inez said, scooting out into the corridor.

As he buckled Jordy into his stroller, Yolanda eased up to him and rolled his T-shirt over his beach-ball paunch. “You look hot, baby. You bring an extra shirt?”

“I forgot.”

Yolanda hiked the shirt to Winston’s underarms, exposing his chest. “I don’t like how Ms. Nomura looks at you.”

“Now who paranoid? You notice my father didn’t even say goodbye?”

“I noticed.”

With two fingers Yolanda skied a path down Tuffy’s breastbone, jumping moguls of fat, slaloming in and out of his carbuncles and assorted battle scars, leaving wavy tracks on his sweaty skin. Winston’s stomach quivered as her fingers schussed around the rim of his navel. “What did you mean when you said I don’t have a choice — that I have to support you if you run for office?”

“You my girl — if I do something, you follow. And vicey-versey.”

“It’s much easier following a nigger who got fifteen grand, I know that much.”

“Ain’t that a bitch. But no te preocupes , I’m just going to take the money and run.”

“Thought you said you wasn’t going to run?”

“You know what I mean. Ms. Nomura wanna play social worker, I don’t care.”

Fariq grabbed Spencer by the elbow and guided him out of the room. “We be right out here, all right?”

“All right,” answered Winston.

Yolanda cleared the layer of perspiration off Tuffy’s chest with her hands, then blow-dried each nipple, watching his skin fill with goose bumps. “Yolanda, what are you doing?”

“You ever think we married too young?” she asked, driving an index finger into the abyss that was his navel. Her finger two knuckles deep into his belly button, she probed for the pressure points in her husband’s soul. She wanted to arouse the real nigger within, hear him scream, and beg her, and only her, for mercy. Winston clenched his abdominal muscles, causing the walls of his belly button to clamp down on her finger like a set of fleshy Chinese handcuffs. “Landa, you not going nowhere, so stop fronting.” Yolanda tugged violently, trying to extract her finger from Winston’s suction hold. “Tuffy, stop playing!” Winston exhaled and released her finger. It was moist. She smelled it before wiping it dry on Winston’s pants. Yolanda lifted her shirt and they hugged, their sweaty bellies stuck together like wet tissue paper.

Outside, Spencer turned to Fariq. “Are Winston and Inez serious?”

“Jewboy, I don’t know about Ms. Nomura, and I doubt Tuff will be out there campaigning and shit, but I know when he was talking about who he know in the neighborhood and all, he was coming from the heart. He only has two emotions: serious and serious as fuck, straight up. Only time I ever heard the nigger tell a joke was when we was working in Brooklyn, that shit was just a freak thing. Even when Tuffy jokin’, he bein’ dead real. He a sensitive nigger. You know how niggers be snappin’ on each other, ‘You so ugly,’ ‘so black,’ ‘so stupid’? Don’t no one get into it with Tuffy. Not since him and Carter got into it. One day we was comin’ from the beach and Carter was all over Tuffy, ‘Nigger, you so fat, you jumped into the sky and got stuck. Motherfucker, you so big, you wear pillow cases for socks. You so big, you shit cannonballs. You so fat the only things on earth the astronauts can see from space is the Great Wall of China and the crack of yo’ ass.’ This wasn’t no when-you-sit-around-the-house, you-sit-around-the-house, seafood-diet bullshit; this session was heated. Carter was rockin’ that nigger, and all Tuffy could do was take the blows. But Tuffy can’t play the dozens, ’cause he can’t lie. If he ever say to a nigger, ‘I’m going to kill you,’ that boy will have fewer friends than Israel. So Carter breaking on Tuffy so hard he has to stop and catch his breath. Tuffy, tired of Carter fucking him up, right out of the blue says, ‘Yeah, nigger, like I fucked yo’ mama.’ Now normally when a nigger go into the ‘I fucked your mother’ bag, the other niggers start groaning, saying, ‘That shit’s a dud.’ But in this case they start laughin’, fallin’ off the stairs, runnin’ into traffic, giving each other pounds — niggers is straight dyin’.”