Paul Beatty - Tuff

“I’m qualified to represent District 8 because I am a mother.…” Margo Tellos was at the microphone, giving her opening remarks. Tuffy studied the other candidates seated on either side of him. Two seats to his left, Wilfredo Cienfuegos, dressed like he was going ballroom dancing, was softly rehearsing his speech. “Buenas noches to the barrio. Mi barrio, su barrio, nuestro barrio …” Next to Cienfuegos sat Collette Cox. She had her head in her lap, faking a meditative pose, but was clandestinely scratching an instant-win lottery ticket, praying for a third dollar sign. Coming up empty, she ripped the ticket in half and adjusted her campaign button. On Winston’s immediate right was Tellos’s empty seat. Beyond it, a sharp, conservatively dressed middle-aged man he’d never seen before, taking notes on a yellow legal pad. Who this nigger? Leaning forward, he tried to read the man’s paper nameplate. Just then Margo Tellos took her seat to polite applause, forcing Winston to sit back in his chair and join in. She scooted her chair under the table, condescendingly smiling at him as if she were Kennedy looking down his nose at Nixon in 1960.

“And now our most accomplished candidate …” The unknown man stood up. “German Jordan is a noted philosophical, political, and critical thinker. He’s written a number of scholarly works, his most recent being Setting My Sights Low: Why I Chose to Be a City Councilman Instead of President . Ladies and gentlemen, just back from a space-shuttle mission to resume his campaign, I give you professor, theologian, astronaut, renaissance man, and the Eighth District’s incumbent councilman, German Jordan.”

“Astronaut?” Winston said, embarrassingly covering his mouth when he realized his bafflement was audible. Winston looked up at the ceiling. It was still riddled with shotgun holes from his father’s poetry reading. What the fuck am I doing up here?

Jordan addressed the audience in the bold, clear voice of an old-fashioned orator, his Hitlerian stare and backwater Baptist inflections holding them spellbound. “What we as a community need to do is start imagining ourselves beyond race.…”

Winston gazed into the crowd. Inez sat in the front row, her angry face trembling with hatred, reddening with Jordan’s every word. She knew that despite his representing the district, Jordan’s only real connections to his constituency were a couple of second cousins he saw once a year at the family reunion and a post-office box he didn’t have the key to. Two rows behind her, Spencer sat on his hands. He’d seen German Jordan speak before, and once counted himself a devout Jordanite. Two years ago they even shared the podium at a conference on identity held in Minneapolis. Jointly chairing a workshop on multifarious identity, they succeeded in affirming the oxymoronic confab of black Jews, hermaphrodites, white niggers, and the walking dead. It was at the conference he first became disenchanted with Jordan. It wasn’t the rampant rumors of a white mistress salted away in a New England log cabin or the cocaine habit that led to his disillusionment; it was the realization that no matter the topic, if there was an African-American subtext (and isn’t there always?), Jordan gave the same speech. Every aspect of black culture from art to athletics had its roots in the church. Louis Armstrong was the trope for all things black. The ills faced by America’s impoverished could be righted by embracing radical Christianity and never wearing anything less dressy than a cardigan sweater. To Spencer’s way of thinking, Jordan’s regimented cures for colored America amounted to tweed-jacketed fascism. I know Stephen Jay Gould , Spencer thought, and you’re no Stephen Jay Gould . Most of the audience vigorously applauded Jordan’s every point, and occasionally, shouts of “Amen!” rang throughout the hall.

Where’s my peoples at? Winston asked himself, scanning the rear of the auditorium, where his friends and family were seated. They weren’t listening to German Jordan; they were fixated on Winston, their pride evident even through their efforts to make him laugh with hand signals and distorted faces. Winston shyly waved at them, like a child playing an elf in the school Christmas play.

“Though for the past four years I’ve represented the concerns of this district to the fullest extent of my abilities, I am ashamed to say that to this day I am afraid to park my Mercedes-Benz in this neighborhood. We must do something about …” Inez caught Winston’s eye and made the yap-yap-yap sign with her hands. Winston rolled his eyes in agreement. When they centered, he saw his father, arms folded, standing underneath the Emergency Exit sign. His left eyelid twitched as he recalled the times his father had embarrassed him from this very same stage.

“I have traveled in space, seen the stars, and know that they are within our grasp if only we …”

How this fool get to space? Why him? How does he get to do the one thing I really want to do? What a nigger got to do to get to the stars? Unable to hold off the jealousy, Winston covered his ears with his hands. German Jordan’s mouth was moving, but no words were coming out. His silent podium pounding and stiff oratorical gestures were reminiscent of a nineteenth-century wooden whirligig toy come to life. Tuffy’s eyes closed. He hummed an impromptu tune to himself, pretending the pastel flashes dancing on the insides of his eyelids were novas and nebulas beckoning him onto the dance floor like house-party trip lights.

Margo Tellos tapped Winston’s shoulder. Awakened from his disco daze, he moved his hands away from his ears and the audience’s laughter replaced his daydream. The moderator beckoned him to the microphone. “Next up is one of our young charges, who’s following in the activist footsteps of his father, ex-Panther Clifford Foshay, who’s standing over there in the back of the room. Please welcome Winston Foshay.” Tuffy sheepishly approached the mike, unsure what portion of the applause was for him and what belonged to his father. From the back of the auditorium Clifford slapped palms with his boys, then pumped a black-power salute in his son’s direction. Winston answered the encouragement with a subtle middle-finger scratch of his temple. Nigger, I’m fixing to embarrass you, so that you ashamed to be my father like I’m ashamed to be your son .

“Like Ms. Tellos over there, I too am a mother … a motherfucker.”

The foul language thrust the audience back into their seats as if they were fighter pilots pulling g’s in a steep climb.

“I don’t know why you looking so shocked. Most of y’all know me and know it’s true. I know you motherfuckers too. I see you goin’ to church Sunday morning, walking your kids home from school. Y’all the normal nine-to-five people. Don’t think I don’t be hearing what you say at your block association meetings. Ms. Nomura tells me what y’all be whining about. Nothin’ different from what everybody has said so far. ‘We have to support our youth. We have to find ways of reaching these kids.’ Well, here standing in front of you is a nigger who been reached. And the question is, now that you have a brother like me by the scruff of the neck, what you going to do with him? If you think me standing up here in slacks and a tie means that me and other thug niggers like me is going to settle for the drab life y’all niggers livin’, well, you got another think coming. ‘Support the youth. Support our youth.’ That’s all I ever hear, and here before you is a youth asking for your support — y’all goin’ to give it to me? I doubt it. Most of you already set on votin’ for that slick nigger over there, German Jordan, the renaissance man, whatever the fuck that is. A motherfucker you can tell wasn’t even born and raised in the neighborhood. Because if he was, he’d be a lazy bitch-ass pimp nigger runnin’ prostitutes on Mount Pleasant Avenue.”