Erasure

3

I arrived back at my hotel to find a death threat scrawled across the back of a bookmark. It said: I’ll kill you, you mimetic Philistine, signed: The Ghost of Wyndham Lewis. I wasn’t worried about the acting out of any such threats, as the clowns who had taken me as their enemy were as unlikely to actually do something as they were to actually write something.

Story idea. A woman gives birth to an egg. She goes in for a normal delivery and what comes out is an egg, a six-pound-three-ounce egg. The doctors don’t know what to do, so they slap a diaper on it and stick in an incubator. Nothing happens. Then they have the mother sit on it. Nothing happens. The egg is given to the mother to hold. She falls in love with the egg, calls it her baby. The egg has no limbs to move, no voice with which to cry. It is an egg and only an egg. The woman takes the egg home, names it, bathes it, worries about it. It is unchanging, ungrowing, but it is her “baby,” she says. Her husband leaves. Her friends don’t come over. She talks to the egg, tells her she loves it. The egg cracks …

Went to my sister’s clinic over in Southeast. Washington hides its poverty better than any city in the world. Just blocks from the mall and Capitol Hill, where thousands of tourists mill about each day, people cover their windows with towels to keep out the rain, and nail boards across their doors when they lock up at night. Though my sister lived up above Adams-Morgan, she practiced in Southeast, “where the people lived.” She was tougher than I could ever be.

I walked in through the front door and ten women’s faces turned to me together, demanding to know what I was doing there. I went to the receptionist’s desk.

“I’m Thelonious Ellison, Dr. Ellison’s brother,” I said.

“You’re kidding me.” The receptionist was not fat, but there was plenty of her. She got up, came around her desk and gave me a squeeze. I sank into her, thinking that was what a hug should feel like. “The writer brother,” she said, stepping back to look at me. “And fine.” She called back down the hall. “Eleanor, Eleanor.”

“What?” Eleanor asked.

“We got us a real writer in here.”

“What?”

“Dr. E’s brother.”

Eleanor came and hugged me too. She was wearing her stethoscope, but that melted into her ample bosom as she crushed me. “Doctor E’s with a patient right now.”

“Yeah, honey,” the receptionist said, beside herself with smiling. “You have a seat and I’ll tell her you’re here. If you need anything, you call my name, Yvonne, okay?”

I sat in an empty, thinly upholstered, orange chair beside a young woman with curling, blue fingernails. She had a little boy with a runny nose sitting on her lap.

“Handsome boy,” I said. “How old is he?”

“Two years,” she said.

I nodded. The chair was more comfortable than I expected a waiting room chair to be and I felt the artificial pressures of my day fading away, trailing off to a whisper in that din of reality.

“So, what are you doing here in Washington?” Yvonne asked me from her desk.

“Came in for a meeting,” I said.

“You must be important to be coming into Washington for a meeting like that,” she said.

I shook my head and laughed. “No, it’s just a meeting of the Nouveau Roman Society. Hardly important. I read a paper this morning and now I’m done.”

Yvonne looked at me as if my words were getting lost in the space between us. She nodded her head without looking directly at me and went back to her work on the desk. I felt awkward, out of place, like I had so much of my life, like I didn’t belong.

“You write books?” the woman with the child asked.

“Yes.”

“What kind of books you write?”

“I write novels,” I said. “Stories.” Already feeling out of place, I now didn’t know how to sound relaxed.

“My cousin gave me Their Eyes Were Watching God. She had it in a class. She goes to UDC. I liked that book.”

“That’s a really fine novel,” I said.

“She gave me Cane, too,” the young woman said, adjusting her son on her lap. “That one’s my favorite.”

“Great book.”

“It ain’t a novel though, is it?” she asked. “I mean, it ain’t just one story and it’s got them poems in it. But it seemed like one thing, know what I mean?”

“I know exactly what you mean.”

“I think about that story ‘Box Seat’ and I think I’m in that theater all the time, watching them midgets fight.” She shook her head as if to come back around, wiped her child’s nose.

“Have you gone to college?” I asked.

The girl laughed.

“Don’t laugh,” I said. “I think you’re really smart. You should at least try.”

“I didn’t even finish high school.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I scratched my head and looked at the other faces in the room. I felt an inch tall because I had expected this young woman with the blue fingernails to be a certain way, to be slow and stupid, but she was neither. I was the stupid one.

“Thank you,” I said to the girl.

She didn’t respond to that and, luckily, was called back to an examination room at that moment.

Lisa came out in her white jacket and her stethoscope slung around her neck. I’d never seen her in her element before. She seemed so calm, at ease, in charge. I was proud of her, in awe of her. I got up and though her half of the hug was stiff, mine was not and it worked to soften the whole thing. She was taken by surprise and even blushed a little.

“I’ve got to see two more patients and then we can go,” she said. “You’re lucky, no picketers today. They must be in church or at a coven meeting. You’re okay out here?”

“Yes, Yvonne is taking care of me,” I said, but the receptionist had cooled to me. She offered a mechanical smile and wagged the eraser of her pencil in the air. “I’ll be waiting.”

When I was fifteen, my friend Doug Glass, that really was his name, asked me if I wanted to ride over to a party with him. This was during the summer in Annapolis. He was a year older and had his own car. I was excited to go. When we got there the music was loud and unfamiliar, the bass thumping. The air was full of male voices trying to dig down another octave and girls’ giggles. We stood out on the lawn first and I held onto a beer in a plastic cup until it was warm. I hadn’t acquired a taste for it yet and, to tell the truth, I was afraid it might make me throw up. We were in a part of Annapolis I’d never visited before, but I could see the spire of the capitol building, so I knew about where I was.

“Yo, brother, what’s yo name?” a tall boy asked me, blowing cigarette smoke not quite in my face. “I’m Clevon.”

“Monk,” I said.

“Monk?” he laughed. “What the fuck kind of name is Monk?”

Right at that second I didn’t want to tell him my real name was Thelonious.

Another guy came up and the tall one said, “Hey, Reggie, this here is, now get this, Monk.”

“Kinda looks like a monkey, don’t he?” Reggie said.

“What’s your real name?” Clevon asked.

“Ellison,” I said.

“That your first name or your last name?”

“Last.”

“What’s your first name?”

“Theo,” I lied.

Clevon and Reggie looked at each other and shrugged, as if to say Theo was an okay name not worthy of ridicule.

“Why they call you Monk, little brother?” Reggie asked.

I didn’t like the way “little brother” sounded. “Just a nickname,” I said.

Doug came back over to me and said, “Come on, Monksie, let’s go inside.”

“Monksie,” Clevon and Reggie repeated into their cupped hands as they chuckled.

“Let’s go back to the beach,” I said to Doug, following him toward the house. “This is boring.”

“Let’s go inside first. Don’t you want to see some girls?”

As a matter of fact, I did want to see girls, more than anything. But what I was going to do when I saw them was anybody’s guess. I just hoped none of them would call me little brother or ask me my name.

The lights were dim inside and the center of the floor, of what I took to be the living room, was studded with gyrating dancers. Doug started bopping and pointing at people as we moved across to the other side. I didn’t know Doug all that well, but still I was amazed that he was familiar with so many people. He stopped beside a couple of girls. They had to nearly shout to be heard over the music.

“Some party!” Doug said.

“Yeah,” the girl said.

“This your sister?” Doug asked.

“Yeah.”

Then they watched the dance floor for a while. Doug was now my hero, the way he had talked to that girl was amazing to me. Then he turned to her when a slow song came on and said, “Dance?”

“Yeah.”

I was left with the sister. She was pretty, wearing a skimpy sundress which showed her shoulders. There was a turning light somewhere and every few seconds her neck and thighs became clear to my view. Her skin was beautiful. She caught me looking and I apologized.

“I’m Tina,” she said.

“Ellison,” I said.

“Dance?”

“Okay.”

I worried about more things in the following three minutes than I ever had in my life. Had I put on deodorant? Had I brushed my teeth? Were my hands too dry? Were my hands too moist? Was I moving too fast? Was I actually leading? Was my head on the correct side of hers? I held her loosely, but she pulled me close, pressing into me. Her breasts were alarmingly noticeable. Her thighs brushed my thighs and as it was summer I was wearing shorts and could feel her skin against mine and it was just slightly too much for my hormonal balancing act. My penis grew steadily larger through the song until I knew that it was peeking out the bottom edge of the left leg of my pants. Tina became aware of it and said something which I couldn’t make out, but included the words “baby” and “all right.” Then someone switched on the lights and I heard the voices of Clevon and Reggie saying, “Look at Monkey’s monkey.” I ran out of the house and down the street toward the Capitol.

I made my way to the city dock where I found my older brother with the family boat and some of his friends. He asked if I was okay and I told him I was and asked if I could hang out with him. He looked at the other guys and grudgingly, he said yes. They were awkward with me there and didn’t say much and one by one they peeled away and left us.

“Climb out there and untie us,” Bill said. “How’d you get over here?” He started the motor and got us moving.

“Doug drove me. Took me to a party. We got separated.”

“Oh.”

“Did I mess up your party?” I asked.

“No, don’t worry about it.” I listened to the familiar thumping of the Evinrude and began to relax. The water of the bay seemed so peaceful to me. I looked at the sky.

Lisa and I drove over to the Capitol Grill and found a booth under an elk’s head. “Why do you like to eat here?” I asked her.

“I don’t know, something about all these boys making decisions.” She sipped her tea. “Okay, I’ve got one for you. You’re in a boat and your motor cuts out, but you’re in shallow water, but you’re wearing two-hundred-dollar trousers, but your ride to the airport is just about to drive away from the beach. Why is this a legal issue?”

I shook my head.

“Because it’s a matter of Row versus Wade.” She smiled a smile I hadn’t seen in many years. “Lame, eh?”

“Did you make that up?”

“I stay up late, what can I say.” Lisa looked about the room, then back at me. “It’s good to see you, little brother.”

“Thanks. It’s good to see you, too. You know, I’m really proud of you. Dad would be proud of you as well. That clinic.”

“It’s not very glamorous.”

“I don’t know what that has to do with anything.” I noticed a man at the bar staring at us. “Do you know him?” I asked.

Lisa turned to see and the man looked away. “Nope. Why?”

“He just seemed interested in you for some reason.”

“That would be nice.”

“I’m sorry about what happened with Barry. I always thought he was a joke.”

“You said as much way back when.” Lisa laughed. “Remember how mad I got at you?”

The waiter came and took our orders. He smiled at Lisa as he put away his pad. “How’s it going, Doc?”

“Fine, Chick, what about with you? Chick, this is my brother, Monk. He’s visiting from California.”

I shook the man’s hand. “Chick.” I watched him walk away and smiled at my sister. “He likes you.”

“Maybe, but I think he used to date Bill.”

“Oh.” We sat there thinking about Bill for a while until I felt I’d thought about him long enough and said, “I had a rather nice conversation with one of your patients. I didn’t get her name. She had a little boy with her and blue nails.”

“I know who you’re talking about. That’s Tamika Jones. Tamika Jones actually has two children. The little boy with her today is named Mystery.”

“Mystery?”

“That’s right. And her daughter’s name is Fantasy.”

“Mystery and Fantasy.”

“Named after their fathers. One was a mystery and the other a fantasy.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“I wish.”

“I make up shit for a living and I couldn’t have come up with that.” The man from the bar was staring again, but when I caught him he got up, left the bar and headed for the door. “Sometimes I feel like I’m so removed from everything, like I don’t even know how to talk to people.”

“You don’t,” Lisa said. “You never have. It’s not a bad thing. You’re just different.”

“Different from whom?”

“Don’t get defensive. It’s not a bad thing. Actually, it’s a good thing. I’ve always wanted to be like you.”

It used to be that I would look for the deeper meaning in everything, thinking that I was some kind of hermeneutic sleuth moving through the world, but I stopped that when I was twelve. Though I would have been unable to articulate it then, I have since come to recognize that I was abandoning any search for elucidation of what might be called subjective or thematic meaning schemes and replacing it with a mere delineation of specific case descriptions, from which I, at least, could make inferences, however unconscious, that would allow me to understand the world as it affected me. In other words, I learned to take the world as it came. In other words still, I just didn’t care.

When I was thirteen and my sister was sixteen, she caught me masturbating with a magazine in the front basement. When she asked me what I was doing, I said, “Masturbating.”

My response was so casual that it gave her pause. As I was fastening my belt, she said, “You’re a pervert.”

“I might be,” I said. “I don’t know what a pervert is.”

“Well, you’d better not let Mother and Father catch you doing that. That’s all I have to say.”

“I hadn’t planned on it. And what if they did? Would they take it away from me?” My point made, I turned my attention back to the centerfold of my magazine.

“Where did you get that?” she asked. She glanced up the stairs at the closed basement door.

“I bought it.” Then to make her relax, “Father’s at the office and Mother won’t come down here because of the spiders.”

“It’s normal,” Lisa said, as if suddenly concerned about my scarring psychically.

“What’s normal?”

“Masturbation.”

“Do you do it?”

“No,” she said and turned red, leaned to start up the stairs.

“Thanks,” I said.

“For what?”

“For telling me it’s normal.”

“Okay,” she said.

“It’s normal if you don’t do it, too,” I said.

I gave a long look at Lisa’s cheeseburger as she pulled off the onions with her fork and set them at the side of her plate.

“Still not eating meat?” she asked.

“I eat it occasionally,” I said.

“One burger won’t kill you.”

I poured the oil and vinegar on my salad and nodded. “I appreciate that you have to do everything here with Mother,” I said. “I know it’s not fair.”

“The way it worked out.”

“Can I help in any way?”

“Yeah, you can move to D.C.” She looked me in the eye and then smiled. “If I need you, I’ll call you. There is one thing.” When I looked at her, she put down her fork and remembered cigarettes. “Mother’s running out of money.”

“But I thought—”

“So did I, but it’s running out anyway.”

“I don’t have much. I don’t make anything on my books.”

“Don’t sweat it,” she said. “I was just letting you know.”

Now, I was feeling awful, like a failure, letting both my sister and my mother down. Living in my own little bubble I had never thought about these things. I felt myself sinking.

After lunch, my sister asked if I’d stop at a bookstore with her, said she wanted to pick up something for one of her staff who had just had a baby. I asked if she wanted to give her one of my books and Lisa said that she’d prefer to give the woman something she could read. Then she laughed and I guess I laughed with her.

While Lisa wandered off to the garden book section, I stood in the middle of Border’s thinking how much I hated the chain and chains like it. I’d talked to too many owners of little, real bookstores who were being driven to the poorhouse by what they called the WalMart of books. I decided to see if the store had any of my books, firm in my belief that even if they did, my opinion about them would be unchanged. I went to Literature and did not see me. I went to Contemporary Fiction and did not find me, but when I fell back a couple of steps I found a section called African American Studies and there, arranged alphabetically and neatly, read undisturbed, were four of my books including my Persians of which the only thing ostensibly African American was my jacket photograph. I became quickly irate, my pulse speeding up, my brow furrowing. Someone interested in African American Studies would have little interest in my books and would be confused by their presence in the section. Someone looking for an obscure reworking of a Greek tragedy would not consider looking in that section any more than the gardening section. The result in either case, no sale. That fucking store was taking food from my table.

Saying something to the poor clone of a manager was not going to fix anything, so I resigned to keep quiet. Then I saw a poster advertising the coming reading of Juanita Mae Jenkins, author of the runaway bestseller, We’s Lives In Da Ghetto. I picked up a copy of the book from the display and read the opening paragraph: My fahvre be gone since time I’s borned and it be just me an’ my momma an’ my baby brover Juneboy. In da mornin’ Juneboy never do brushes his teefus, so I gots to remind him. Because dat, Momma says I be the ‘sponsible one and tell me that I gots to holds things togever while she be at work clean dem white people’s house.

I closed the book and thought I was going to throw up. My sister came up behind me.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said, dropping the book back onto the stack.

“What do you think of that book?” she asked. “I read it’s going to be a movie. She got something like three million dollars for it.”

“Really.”

The reality of popular culture was nothing new. The truth of the world landing on me daily, or hourly, was nothing I did not expect. But this book was a real slap in the face. It was like strolling through an antique mall, feeling good, liking the sunny day and then turning the corner to find a display of watermelon-eating, banjo-playing darkie carvings and a pyramid of Mammy cookie jars. 3 million dollars.

My sister offered me the loan of her car for the afternoon if I’d pick her up from work. I dropped her off in front. The picketers were back. They spotted Lisa and began to shout at her. “Murderer! Murderer!” they said. I got out and walked with her through the line and to the door, realizing as I did so that she did it alone everyday, that I wasn’t there to be the protective brother, that she didn’t need me. Still, she accepted my escort graciously and told me she’d see me later. I started back to the car, catching good looks at the wild, sick, raging faces. One man held a huge poster with the picture of a mutilated fetus. He shook his fist at me. For a second, I thought I saw the face of the man who had been staring at us from the bar in the restaurant, but then he was gone.