Tuff

7- A SPOONFUL OF BORSCHT

Rabbi Spencer Throckmorton cajoled his temperamental 1966 Ford Mustang onto East 112th Street. “There it is,” he said aloud, turning down the volume on his eight-track player and leaning across the passenger seat for a closer look at a brick building in the middle of the block. “It” was Congregation Tikvath Israel of Harlem, the last synagogue in Harlem. Six years had passed since Spencer had visited Spanish Harlem, and in the temple’s place was La Iglesia de Santo Augustine.

Spencer double-parked the car. He stood on the sidewalk and stared at the brownstone. The building’s remodeled facade was in excellent shape. A new gutter lined the roof and ran down the sides of the church. The cracks under the second-story windows were filled and smoothed with spackle. The cement Star of David carved in the pediment above the doorway was gone, replaced by a generic etching of the Son of God and two hovering angels in prayer. But to Spencer’s joy, buried under countless coats of paint, a small mezuzah remained nailed inside the doorjamb. In restoring the building, the Catholics, as usual, had done an excellent job of presenting the big picture without paying much attention to detail.

During his last year of rabbinical school Spencer served his internship under Rabbi Abe Zimmerman at Congregation Tikvath Israel of Harlem — or Constipation Tic Bath Unreal of Harlem, as the rabbis liked to refer to it while dusting the holy scrolls. The Jewish population of Harlem, once numbering over 100,000, had long since evaporated. When Spencer interned at Congregation Tikvath, the membership rolls listed twenty worshipers, twelve of whom were ambulatory, the rest attached to life-support systems at Mount Sinai Hospital. Two of the more regular worshipers weren’t even Jewish: Oscar and Rosa Alvarez, a Puerto Rican couple who loved to listen to the cantor, Samuel Levine, sing his solos (“Dios mío, he sounds like Caruso”). Sometimes in the midst of Levine’s chanting “Shema! Adonai elohenu, Adonai echad!” Oscar, moved to the depths of his soul, would wail “Changooo!”—his invocation of the Yoruba god — momentarily bringing the solemn services to a halt. “Lo siento! Lo siento! It won’t happen again.”

On the last Rosh Hashanah Spencer celebrated in the temple, he convinced Rabbi Zimmerman to let him bring in the New Year with a call from the shofar that would rattle the windows. He blew from the diaphragm, as Rabbi Zimmerman had advised, but all he produced was a garbled, flatulent tone. A quarter of the congregation died that year, and Spencer felt as if he were the most undesirable of God’s chosen people.

Spencer started the Mustang’s ignition, then leaned on the horn for a solid minute. Blindly plunging his hand into the mountain of cassettes on the dashboard, he shoved a pink Loggins and Messina tape into the eight-track player and double-checked the address taped to the sun visor: Winston Foshay, 291 East 109th Street, first floor.

Why the media paid so much attention to the crisis of the black family was a mystery to Spencer. His father, a successful mortician, was a constant presence in his life, and the parade of greedy wives had provided Spencer with an overabundance of mothering. Spencer grew up in Palmer Hills, a black upper-class enclave of Detroit. Well-rounded and comfortable as his childhood was, it prepared him for nothing but cocktail-party patter and entry into a prestigious university. When he wasn’t attending weekend classes in classical piano, jazz trombone, ice skating, Chinese calligraphy, or conversational Swahili, he was drag-racing through town in his sixteenth-birthday present, a mint-condition Mustang convertible.

The first family rift occurred over two decades ago, when Spencer spurned legacy status at the alma mater of his father and grandfathers before him, Morehouse College, and chose to attend Theodore College, a small, overpriced New England white liberal-arts school geared toward molding the minds of the wealthy A-minus student. During his freshman year Spencer became what his dad termed “a lapsed Negro” and fell in love with Belgian ales, easy-listening radio, and a ponytailed, athletic redhead named Hadar Nepove.

Hadar and Spencer met in front of the dorm during a late-night fire drill, two sleepy first-year students waiting for the all clear. Hadar’s frisky bosoms were poking out of her cotton nightgown like curious kitten heads. Spencer’s pants bulged like a wind sock in a hurricane. Hadar stuffed her breasts back into her frock and winked at a leering Spencer.

“When opportunity knockers …”

“What?”

“You know, that’s the first time anyone has ever winked at me. It’s very unsettling. I’d rather you grabbed my ass. Then I’ll know I’m not misinterpreting your signals.”

“You wanna get a beer?” Hadar asked, nodding toward the campus pub, the Rathskeller.

Spencer bowed. “After you, m’lady.”

They waited out the remainder of the fire drill dressed in their pajamas, drinking wheat beer and listening to German oompah-pah music. The conversation was brisk, since Spencer had prepared for such a moment by spending most of his free time at the local kiosk reading every magazine and was ready to fake a knowledgeable discussion on any topic from the situation in the Middle East to Victorian antique furniture.

Hadar was not as eager to please. Though Spencer’s Motor City swarthiness was of some primal appeal, she didn’t quite trust him. He seemed too comfortable. Here they were, Jew and black, in a loud faux-Bavarian beer hall, drinking from steins served by Rubenesque barmaids clad in dirndls, and Spencer was saying how relaxed and at home he felt: “It’s like I’m really Lutheran.” Spencer never questioned whether he fit in; if he was there, he belonged. A southern Jew surrounded by New England bluebloods, Hadar put up a brave front. She felt obliged to throw herself into the bastions of Gentile superiority — Theodore College, the Rathskeller, the crew and rugby teams — not sure whether she was being self-affirming or self-hating. Sometimes when Hadar phoned her family in Nashville, she’d say “regatta” and her grandmother would cry.

Spencer was agendaless, and his cultural neutrality made Hadar uncomfortable, yet envious of his unwillingness to be labeled. “Hadar, the only time I feel black is when I look at my hands,” Spencer said, spreading his fingers out in front of him.

“How do you feel when you aren’t looking at your hands?” Hadar asked.

“Normal.”

For three years Spencer loved Hadar from afar, happy to lend her his notes and cheer on her scull from the riverbank. Late one night, after a regatta victory party, a drunk Hadar asked Spencer to walk her home. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, he flipped through her music collection. “Hadar, we’ve got identical taste in music. Every album you have, I have — well, not the album, but the eight-track.”

“No way! Nobody listens to my music — my friends won’t let me near a radio,” she said, packing the bowl of her bong with a soggy clump of black hash.

“Then your friends don’t have any taste. This is real music. Music that puts you in touch with your feelings. Man, you can’t hide from Barry Manilow, Dan Fogelberg, Art Garfunkel, Karla Bonoff, Jackson Browne. And this Leo Kottke album is — dare I say it? — nonpareil.”

“Hold this.” Hadar passed Spencer the bong and pulled a top-of-the-line Ovation acoustic guitar from under her bed. She placed the guitar on her lap and expertly plucked a few familiar chords. She began to sing, “All we are is dust in the wind.…” Spencer lifted his thumb from the bong’s air valve, carbing the thick column of smoke into his lungs. He exhaled just as Hadar was fading out of the last chorus as if a sound man were hidden away in the closet. When the d in “wind” melted away like a snowflake on her tongue, Spencer proposed.

Spencer and Hadar moved out of their respective dorms and scheduled the marriage for a year hence, the day after graduation. They took turns announcing the impending nuptials to their parents. Spencer went first. “Hello, Dad, I’ve got a new girlfriend, her name is—”

“That’s great news, son, but I’ve got something to tell you. You’ve got a new mother, Niecee Walters. Say hello to the boy, you fine, foxy thing, you.” Spencer squeezed Hadar’s hand, swearing lifelong allegiance, no matter the sacrifice.

The call to the Nepove household went somewhat smoother than the one to Spencer’s father. “Hello, Mom, Dad, Grandma — can you hear me? Everyone all there?” Hadar’s mother answered in an exaggerated southern accent: “We’s all assembled, darlin’, like kittens in a basket. What is it you is so giddy about? Vandy’s playing Georgia in two minutes — got a new running back this year, Clovis Buckminster. Boy big as the sultan’s house, so be quick about it.”

“Mom, I’d like to introduce my fiancé, Spencer Throckmorton.”

“Hello,” greeted Spencer from the extension phone, exuding confidence, “Mom, Dad, Nana.” From the other end came the sound of something tumbling to the ground.

Hadar gasped, “Mommy, what happened?”

“Uh, nothing, bubeleh. Everything’s fine.” Mr. Nepove responded, “That’s, er, good news,” then to the hired help, “Melba, prop Grandma’s head up with a book or something and get her some water.”

“What’s wrong with Nana?”

“Nothing — she had an attack. Hadar, this Throckmorton isn’t a member of the tribe, is he?”

“Nothing to fear, Mr. Nepove, I’m very sympathetic to the plight of Jewish people around the world. You’ve heard of Jews for Jesus, well, consider me a—” Spencer racked his brain for an appropriate alternative alliteration. “Consider me a Zairian for Zionism.”

“Spencer, you’re black?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, you know what they say: ‘If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.’ ”

“Mom?”

“That’s wonderful news, Hadar. And don’t worry about Nana, she’ll come around. Christ, our kick-return coverage is pitiful this year! Someone tackle that boy!”

Grandma did come around, on the condition that Spencer convert to Judaism. During that last semester before graduation, Spencer began his conversion by meeting with the Hillel House’s clergyman, Rabbi Eisenstadt, on alternate Thursdays. Together they studied the tenets of the Jewish faith, reciting passages and prayers applicable to the conversion. One Thursday, Rabbi Eisenstadt asked Spencer how he, as a Jew, would spend Christmas Day. Spencer said he’d go to the movies like everyone else, and Rabbi Eisenstadt pronounced him fit to be an American Jew. Mikveh, the ceremonial cleansing, was held in a stagnant pond on the college’s south campus. Spencer exited the waters, sopping wet, dripping with algae, silt, and soggy underbrush, physically dirtier than when he went in, but spiritually purified. “Congratulations, Spencer,” Rabbi Eisenstadt said proudly. “I’ve forgotten to ask you one thing, Spencer, but it shouldn’t be a problem. You’re circumcised, aren’t you?” Spencer blanched, slowly shook his head no, and was handed the business card of a Mr. Epstein, emergency mohel.

The bris had all the backroom horrors of a 1950 Mexican-border-town abortion: the mailed instructions, code words to be exchanged at the rendezvous point in front of a corner pharmacy. Spencer and Hadar climbed into a minivan already seating two other blindfolded goy/Jew couples. During the long, meandering ride to the clandestine medical offices, Spencer tried to memorize auditory landmarks, just in case.

“The mohel will see you now,” the nurse said, guiding Spencer down a dim corridor lit with buzzing and blinking fluorescent tubes.

“Relax, my friend. I’m Mr. Epstein.” Mr. Epstein’s breath smelled of gin and lime, and to Spencer’s disappointment, he was clean-shaven. Spencer had pictured a man with an Eastern European accent and a full beard. With a callous, ungloved hand Mohel Epstein tugged on Spencer’s penis as if he were ringing a church bell. “Oww!”

“You’re penile sensitive — we’ll use the anesthesia.” Mohel Epstein peeled back Spencer’s foreskin and took a sip of his drink. “A bit of smegma buildup — Nurse Lacey, the novocaine.” Mohel Epstein plunged the needle into the tip of Spencer’s penis, and the last thing Spencer felt was Epstein stenciling a very crooked line around what he called the “turtleneck” of his penis.

As a blindfolded Spencer groped his way into the van for the return trip, he felt Epstein place a hand on top of his head. “Hold up a second, son, you need a name. Henceforth, you shall be known by the Hebrew name of Yitzhak.” Spencer was disappointed, having hoped for a short, sporty three- or four-letter name: Ari, Zev, Seth. He’d never known a Seth who wasn’t cool.

For the next two weeks, Hadar treated Spencer like a wounded war veteran come home. She cooked, sang, and teased him into painful erections. One night she drew a pair of dark sunglasses on the white gauze bandage that covered his dick head, playfully addressing Spencer as “Yitzhak, the invisible penis.” On unveiling day, Hadar unwrapped the bandages. Instead of saying “ta-dah” and welcoming Spencer’s new penis into the world with a little fellatio, Hadar covered her mouth to stifle a scream and ran out of the bedroom sobbing. Spencer examined his new member. His dick looked as if it had been mutilated by a broken grade-school sharpener. He vainly tried to blow and brush away the corkscrew bits of scar tissue from his penis as if they were wood shavings. “Not to worry, honey — it’s just a little bruised, is all.”

Despite the newfound carnal pleasures she received from Spencer’s penile mangling, Hadar left him at the end of the summer. “You’re too Jewish,” she explained, leaving him to a pile of law-school rejection letters.

As a result of his conversion efforts, Spencer’s grades had dropped so dramatically that despite his skin color and his ability to pay for three years of graduate education without financial assistance, he couldn’t get admitted to even the chintziest law schools. Spencer thought of appealing the decisions but knew no admissions board in the country would be willing to acknowledge the mind-numbing rigors of a black male in an interracial relationship. “But you don’t understand, dating a white girl is an extracurricular activity!”

Not wanting to waste his conversion, Spencer moved to New York and enrolled in Hebrew Union’s rabbinical program. Four years later he graduated, second-to-last in his class, and with one job prospect—“kosherizing” the steers in a slaughterhouse in Ames, Iowa. Turning down the offer, Rabbi Throckmorton supplemented his modest trust fund by guest-lecturing at the more liberal synagogues. His most popular address was entitled “The Ignored Indispensability of Jewish Support for African-American Politics and Art Forms: Without the Observers of Shabbat There’d Be No Martin Luther King Mountaintop, Bebop, Hip-hop, or Bad Shakespeare Productions.” Soon word of the existence of a hip young rabbi “who just happens to be black” spread. Spencer obtained notoriety as a freelance rabbi, speaker, and journalist, and New York City’s leading Jewish and secular publications, mistaking his innocuousness for intelligence, competed for his services. Spencer was the only black friend of many of the city’s political organizations. And since there was only one degree of separation between him and the Manhattan activists, but an immeasurable distance between them and the rest of mysterious black America, officers of various organizations would ask Spencer to recommend like-minded and like-tempered black folks for those high-paying display-window positions for which qualified black candidates were invariably hard to find. “Rabbi Throckmorton, do you know any black people qualified to head up our financial department in Milwaukee? Remember, they must be smart as a whip.” No one ever called Spencer looking for qualified white candidates who were smart as a whip, or even fellow Jews who were dumb as a doorknob; but he didn’t mind so long as they called.

Spencer’s junket to East Harlem was no altruistic act. The trust fund was petering out, and Spencer was on assignment, as one of the few black writers who, as his African-American editor at a local paper put it, “possess a command of the language that most of us don’t have. Can describe the perverse ghetto mentality in a vernacular familiar to our readers. Doesn’t write in music-magazine expletive.” Spencer had been shocked by his editor’s elitist banter, but the banknote on the condominium was due, and with a gracious smile he played along. “I’m just keeping it real, homeboy.”

Having schmoozed up the editor, he pitched an idea for a Sunday feature, using the tried-and-true derisive-article-about-minorities-written-by-a-minority approach. “Let’s capitalize on the city’s decreasing crime rate,” he said, straightening his tie to convey his seriousness and urbanity. “My sense is that your readership wants reassurance that this drop is more than just a lull. They’re seeking a guarantee that the criminal element — and let’s be frank, I mean the feral African-American and Hispanic youth, and one or two Italian boys — isn’t in hibernation like locusts awaiting nature’s signal. Who’s to say that one day without warning the hatchlings won’t swarm and devour the city?”

The editor tilted back in his chair, thumbs linked under his suspenders. “A CAT scan of the sleeping giant. It’s a bit alarmist — where’s the human interest angle?”

“A sidebar on the history of African-American paedogenesis.”

“Big-bellied black girls — always good fodder for the editorial page. But what makes you think you’ll be able to mingle with the nitty-gitty element? Blend in and become one of the gang?”

Spencer hunched his shoulders, folded his arms tightly across his chest, and delivered a line of classic hip-hop meter, laying out the verse as if he were a tap dancer challenging another hoofer to match a complicated step:

I’ll take seven MCs

Put ’em in a line

Add seven more brothers

Who think they can rhyme.…

The editor, taking his cue like a pro, finished the verse off like a Japanese court poet exchanging haiku with Bashō.

Well it’ll take seven more

Before I go for mine.

Now that’s twenty-one MCs

Ate up at the same time.

“You’re good, Throckmorton. You’re very good.”

Two stern-faced teenage boys flanked the entrance to 291 East 109th Street. Studies in asymmetry, each lad sported a single pant leg hiked up to knicker height, exposing a thin calf lotioned to a mahogany sheen, one earring, one nose ring, and one shaved eyebrow. To further the sense of fashion imbalance, the taller kid’s T-shirt read, I AIN’T GOT TIME FOR NO FAKE NIGGAS, and the other’s shirt said, I LOVE BLACK PEOPLE, BUT I HATE NIGGAS.

Spencer felt his world listing. “Hello, boys.” He raised his arms like a shaky gymnast on a balance beam and the wooziness abated. “Your shirts bespeak a bit of a familiar paradox. The quest for the real nigger within us, and the simultaneous hatred for that selfsame nigger as other. As in ’I’m a real nigger, but I hate all other niggers who aren’t like me in ways that fit my idiosyncratic perception of essentialist niggertude.”

“ ‘Boys’?” said the short one. The other kid stared past Spencer, eyes fixed on the Mustang’s vintage hubcaps.

“Not ‘boy’ in the pejorative sense of the word — I meant like ‘homey,’ ‘brother man,’ ‘compadre,’ ‘nigger’ even. Do you know where I can find the Foshay family?”

The young man turned to his partner and began speaking as if Spencer weren’t there. “You hear this nigger, brother man. How much you think them rims is worth?”

Feeling somewhat anxious about the future of his automobile, Spencer pulled out his Tiny Tome of Jewish Enlightenment and comforted himself with a passage from the Talmud: “God detests a man who rushes to accuse a neighbor.” Squeezing between the two boys, he entered the building.

The lobby was an atomic cyclotron: kids flocked about the hallways, black and brown molecules sliding along the linoleum, bouncing off the walls, reacting to boredom, the summer catalyst. “Anyone know Winston Foshay?” At the sound of Spencer’s voice every child froze, instantly inert. Spencer tried another tack. “Winston Foshay? Buenas tardes, muchachos. Yo buscando para el niño negro, Weeenston Foshay?” Nothing. At the end of the hallway a door opened. “In here,” said a faceless voice. The children didn’t move until the door shut tightly behind him.

Spencer didn’t receive the fanfare he’d expected. He’d prepped for his mentorship by rereading his collection of pauper literature — Steinbeck, Bukowski, Hansberry, Hurston — hoping to gain some insight into the lives of the working poor. Spencer thought he’d walk into a welcoming party atmosphere — balloons and a paper banner hanging over a representative sampling of the dignified poor. The sturdy matron would offer him a party favor, a one-candle cupcake, and, after a bosomy hug, introduce her ragamuffin bastard.

He followed the voices down the hallway and into the cramped living room. There was a chesty black woman inside but this one took one look at Spencer and muttered, “Oh, hell no,” and plopped down onto the couch, shaking her head in disgust. An obviously physically handicapped gentleman held up the magnifying glass he was using to examine some counterfeit twenty-dollar bills, and cast one enlarged eye toward the rabbi. “Tuffy, they sent you one of them alternative-hippie-goofball niggers.”

“I tried to find the apartment, but the kids in the hall wouldn’t tell me where Winston lived.”

The black behemoth in baggy jeans and tank top motioned for Spencer to sit in the lawn chair next to the bookshelf. “They probably thought you was a cop. If you’d have asked for Tuffy, they’d have told you which door to knock.”

Spencer carefully sat in the creaky chair and faced what he guessed by the stoic look on his hosts’ faces would be his tribunal. “I’m Spencer Throckmorton. You folks must be Winston’s siblings. And where is the lucky protégé?” Spencer pointed to the child, who was doing the suspect lean against the television screen, hands on the tube, legs apart, eye-to-eye with an R&B diva, shaking his diapered behind to the beat. “Surely that tyke isn’t little Winston?” he asked. No one answered him. He looked about the stuffy, windowless, stiflingly hot room, feeling, for one of the few times in his life, out of place. “This motherfucker got dreadlocks!” yelled the woman.

The big man placed his chin in his hand, “Man, I hate niggers with dreads. A coconut motherfucker, all right, but an American nigger? They too stuck-up.”

“Think they playboys.”

“But if they didn’t have dreads they’d look like plain old mailman niggers from around the way.”

“Wouldn’t be so special.”

“So fucking spiritual.”

“So fucking revolutionary.”

“So together.”

“Self-actualized.”

“Bracelet-, bangle-wearing, bitch-ass niggers.”

“Don’t even listen to reggae music.”

“Most of all you can’t trust ’em.”

“True.”

The baby stopped dancing, climbed onto Spencer’s lap, and tugged violently at one of his knotted strands of hair, dislodging the yarmulke from his head. The crippled kid dropped his magnifying glass and sounded the alarm:

“Je-e-e-w!”

Everyone looked at Spencer and waited for him to explode like a terrorist grenade rolled into the midst of a gathering of innocents. Jordy scooped up the knit cap and waddled over to his father. “What up with this?” asked Winston, flipping the yarmulke back to Spencer.

“The nigger is a Jew,” said Fariq.

“I can speak for myself,” Spencer said, popping the inside-out cap back into position. “Obviously, I’m a member of the Jewish faith. Not so evident is that I’m also a rabbi. But how does my religion bear on my ability to provide guidance to a troubled teen?”

“Teen?” Winston shouted.

“Winston Foshay.” Spencer was growing impatient, waving the referral paper in the air. “The boy I’m to be a Big Brother to.”

“I’m Winston.”

Spencer leaned forward in his chair. “Come again?”

“You heard, Jewboy, he’s Winston Foshay, your Little Brother.”

“Relax, Fariq. Look, Rabbi, I know you didn’t expect no big, three-hundred-pound-plus nigger like me, but I called the Big Brother program because my thing, my shit, is confused. I saw the commercial and I thought I needed a Big Brother, a father figure. You know, try to do something with my life.”

“ ‘I need a father figure,’ ” Fariq cackled.

“Shut up, Smush!” Yolanda scolded, flinging her hairbrush at Fariq, which he deftly knocked out of the air with his crutch.

Spencer began to see the gravity of the task he’d undertaken. Here in front of him was a young, uneducated black man over twice his size looking to forge his way in the closed society that somewhere along the way he’d decided to join.

His rabbinical duties were a cinch compared to this. You give a thirteen-year-old a phonetically transcribed script, he makes his bar mitzvah speech, counts the cash, and skips into young adulthood. Spencer wasn’t sure he wanted the responsibility of showing someone how to be responsible for himself. Jordy, still in front of the television, squatted and jabbed his hands in the air, furiously imitating the rapper in the video.

“That’s all right, Mr. Throckmorton. You can go now.” Winston was at the front door, door handle in hand. “Sorry for the inconvenience, but I’ve decided I don’t need you. It’s been almost two weeks since I called Big Brothers of America and now I’ve changed my … changed my mind about this Big Brother stuff.”

Spencer gathered his belongings and made his way to the door, seeing his Pulitzer disappear and feeling somewhat offended that a person in Winston’s position didn’t want his help. “What do you mean, you don’t need me?”

“We don’t have anything in common.”

“How do you know?”

“That was you driving up, car stereo blasting some song about Winnie-the-Pooh? Some shit about counting bees and chasing clouds?”

“Loggins and Messina, ‘The House at Pooh Corner.’ ”

Winston rubbed the back of his neck. “We from two different worlds, Rabbi. Plus, I think I’m more mature than you.”

“Excuse me?”

“Look, you might have few years on me, but compared to you, my game is trump tight. I mean, I got a wife and kid, a goldfish.”

“I thought these people were your sister and brother. You two are married? Where are the rings?”

“We ain’t got no rings because this cheap, flabby motherfucker says he don’t believe in wedding rings.”

“That’s right — wedding rings are signs of materialistic something or other.”

“I swear, sometimes I could kill Ms. Nomura,” said Yolanda, rubbing the tension from her temples. “Wasn’t much of a wedding — we got married over the phone.”

“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.’ ”

“The Talmud.” Fariq rubbed his palms together and said, “Let’s break down that word, ‘Talmud.’ ‘Tal’ from the Dutch taal, or to talk. ‘Mud,’ a filthy, slimy substance. ‘Tal-mud,’ talking in a muddled way. Talk that confuses, abuses, and ruses the black man. ‘Hebrew’: He brew. He who brews. Brews, stirs. Wherever he goes, the Jew be stirring up trouble. I know my lessons, son. ‘Mint Julep’: Mint equals money. Jew lip. Lip, kiss. Jews kiss money. Kiss, love. Jews love money. ‘Ed-jew-cate’: Teach the ways of the Jew. ‘Jewlius Caesar’ …”

Using one hand as best he could, Spencer hurriedly flipped through his small book, searching for a calming aphorism that would also refute Fariq’s slander. “ ‘Accept your afflictions with love and joy’—Eleazar ben Judah of Worms.”

Silently, Fariq drained his beer. He removed the bottle from his lips with an audible pop. “Afflictions? How dare you say that to a handicapped motherfucker like me? That’s some typical patronizing Jew chicanery.”

“ ‘Chicanery.’ ” Spencer was momentarily taken aback, impressed by the vocabulary. Fariq continued, ignoring an obvious example of exactly the haughtiness he was speaking of, “Everybody got they little book — the Jews, the Communists. Well, niggers got a little book too.” From his back pocket Fariq pulled out a tattered, photocopied, and shoddily stapled book the size of a travel postcard. He shoved the book so close to Spencer’s face, Spencer could taste the grit of pocket lint and copy-machine toner on his lips. “I can’t read the title,” Spencer announced. Fariq pulled the treatise away from his nose until the title came into sharp focus—The Little Black Book of Sophism: Fucked Up Things Jews Say About Black Folk. Like warlocks practicing ancient witchcrafts, Spencer and Fariq held their tiny books to their chests, taking turns hurling their spells back and forth.

“ ‘I saw the best white minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the filthy, cum-stained, loud, over-sexed, Negro streets at dawn like Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzans looking for an angry fix.’—Allen Ginsberg.”

“ ‘If you truly are a Jew, you will be respected because of it, not in spite of it.’—Samson Raphael Hirsch.”

“ ‘Fee, fie, foo, fum. I smell the blood of a nigger!’—Andrew Dice Clay.”

“ ‘I am a Jew. When the ancestors of the right honorable gentleman [Daniel O’Connell, member of the British Parliament] were living as savages on an unknown island, mine were priests in the Temple of Solomon.’—Benjamin Disraeli.”

“Hold up a minute — that ‘My people were doing shit while your people lived in caves’ is our line! ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger …’—Lenny Bruce.”

“ ‘I am a Jew because in every place suffering weeps, the Jew weeps.’—Edmund Fleg.”

“ ‘Shvartze, shvartze, shvartze …’—Jackie Mason.”

“ ‘Man’s good deeds are single acts in the long drama of redemption.’—Abraham Joshua Heschel.”

“ ‘Every prostitute the Muslims convert to a model of Calvinist virtue is replaced by the ghetto with two more. Dedicated as they are to maintenance of the ghetto, the Muslims are powerless to effect substantial moral reform.’—Bayard Rustin.”

“Fariq, Bayard Rustin wasn’t Jewish, he was black!”

“So what? He was probably working for the Jews when he wrote it. Besides, there’s a triangle by his name, which means he’s a homosexual — just as bad as being a Jew. Rabbi Kahane! Rabbi Kahane! Rabbi Kahane!”

Winston could see his plan to let Fariq badger the rabbi into leaving was backfiring. “Rabbi!” he yelled, rising up from the sofa and flicking on the television. “Fariq! That’s enough with the ‘Jew,’ ‘Muslim,’ ‘he say,’ ‘she say.’ Y’all giving me a headache.”

Fariq stuffed his book into his back pocket like a victorious boom-town gunfighter. “C’mon, Winston, you can’t tell me you never felt the Jew’s foot in your ass. Let that shit out, my brother. Ease your burdens.”

Winston thought a moment. “Naw, man, I ain’t got Jews on the brain like your ass. Really I never have no dealings with Jewish people.”

“Because the Jew is an invisible threat. I’m going to hip you to something called the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Lays the Jew master plan thing out.”

“I don’t have to take this crap!” Spencer shouted, but he made no effort to leave.

“And you’ve had some Jews in your life.”

“Who?”

“The judge who sent you up on that shit that went down on Twenty-fourth Street.”

“Berman?”

“There you go.”

“And the one who tried get me on parole violation, when my public defender didn’t show, was he Jewish?”

“Judge Arthur Katz.”

“Damn, that’s two cases and two Jews. Smush, you better hurry up and tell them motherfuckers down at Muslim headquarters you’ve uncovered a new conspiracy.”

“You think I won’t tell the Minister.”

“That’s right, run to your leader,” wisecracked Spencer, seeing that Winston wasn’t entirely on Fariq’s side.

“This nigger ain’t even Muslim,” said Winston, pointing to Fariq’s crutches. “The Muslims don’t want this motherfucker. He too crippled. Neither Muslim headquarters or Mecca has handicapped parking.”

“Fuck you, Tuff!”

Winston turned to Spencer. “But Smush do raise a good point. Why are you here, Rabbi, for reals?”

Spencer looked shamefully down at the floor and confessed, “I became a Big Brother so I could write a feature article on ghetto youth for the newspaper. I didn’t know any ghetto youth, so …”

His honesty was welcomed with palpable resentment. Yolanda no longer felt the need to use Spencer as a sounding board for her problems with her husband. Under his breath Fariq spoke of a consortium of Jews controlling the world’s media.

“I’m sorry,” Winston and Spencer mumbled simultaneously.

“Winston, what are you sorry for?” Yolanda snapped. “Don’t apologize when you haven’t done anything wrong.”

“I know. But I just feel sorry.”

Yolanda and Fariq waited for him to ask the clergyman to leave. After all, Spencer was his guest. Winston stayed on the couch, hands clasped behind his head, lips pursed, eyes closed. Spencer’s deceit left a bitter taste in everyone’s mouth, and Jordy ran around the room in circles, a cherubic ladle stirring the soup of bitterness, disillusionment, and summer heat.

On his fourth circuit he picked up his See ’n Say, pulling the string on the plastic toy designed to teach toddlers the rudiments of farm-animal communication. “The cow says, ‘Mooooo!’ This is how a dog sounds—‘Woof! Woof!’ This is how a turkey sounds: ‘Gobble! Gobble!’ ” After each bark or bellow Jordy would stop in front of his father and try to reproduce the animal’s characteristic call. His quacks and meows were a welcome distraction. For a moment Winston forgot about the dreadlocked rabbi’s duplicity. “The rooster says, ‘Cock-a-doodle-doo!’ What’s the rooster say, Jordy?”

“Thabba-thubba-ooo,” mimicked Jordy, yanking on the string.

Winston wondered, if the machine imitated a person, what would be the human equivalent for cock-a-doodle-doo?

Spencer, hoping to make one final stab at a partnership, broke the silence. “Anyone seen any good movies lately?” And Winston had an answer to his question.

“Jewboy, don’t you know when to be quiet,” Fariq said, his patience run dry. “Better yet, leave.”

Tuffy opened another beer. “Ain’t no such thing as a good movie. At least not since the price of a ticket went past seven dollars.”

“Oh, God, now the nigger going to start talking about ‘the film.’ ” Fariq said “the film” in one long wispy breath, as if enunciated by a Public Television cinéaste. Then he returned to passing his magnifying glass over the counterfeit money, occasionally scissoring slivers from spools of blue and red thread, arranging them haphazardly on a bill, and dusting the money with a coat of spray-on polyurethane. “ ‘The film.’ ”

Yolanda whisked Jordy from his aimless rounds and sniffed his diaper.

Spencer could see in the sparkle in Winston’s eye and the wry smile a subtle erosion in the rocky landscape that separated them. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“Why do most people go to the movies? To be entertained, right? Maybe to learn something. But most motherfuckers go to guess who the fucking killer is. And it’s always the same person.”

“Who?”

“The motherfucker you least expect, of course.”

“So why do you go? Why waste your money?”

“I don’t even know. I knew when I was little. I went to the show to see some famous movie star’s titties. Now movies is so bad they’ve even ruined that simple pleasure.”

“How?”

“You sit down, popcorn in one hand, soda pop in the other. You wait a bit, look at your watch, and say, ‘Forty-five minutes, and this bitch ain’t showed no titty? This flick sucks.’ If she flash her chichis before forty-five minutes, then the movie really sucks.”

“So any film with a female lead is a bad film?”

“Except for La Femme Nikita. Some of them old Natalie Wood shits is all right too. That bitch was fine.”

“And if the lead is played by a man?”

“If it’s a man, especially if it’s a white man — and it usually is, even if a nigger is the star — then the film has to be about right and wrong. And whiteys is the last motherfuckers on earth to be teaching me about right and wrong. Much less charging me for the lesson.”

“But why do you go?”

“I go for the disappointment, I guess. I’m used to being disappointed, and I know I’ll find it in the movie theater.”

Spencer reached for a unopened beer. Winston didn’t mind.

“Winston, can I ask you something else?”

“Yeah.”

“Why did you call Big Brothers of America?”

“Suppose I knew I’d be disappointed.”

“Maybe subconsciously you did, but that’s not the reason you made the call.”

“True. I guess I really called because I’m looking for someone to explain shit. I don’t understand nothing about life, me — nothing.”

“Kind of like someone to say, ‘Meanwhile, back at the ranch …’ ”

“Yeah.”

“You know, when the Japanese used to show silent films the theater owners paid someone to stand next to the screen and explain the action.”

“For reals? Didn’t they have those cards?”

“Intertitles. I supposed they did, but, you know, sometimes those aren’t enough.”

“That’s true. Whenever I go see one of those silent jammies, Charlie Chaplin or something, I be trying to read the lips. Figure out what’s really going on. So they had a motherfucker lip-reading or some shit?”

“The guy was called a benshi. They’d show Battleship Potemkin and he’d say, ’Note Eisenstein’s simple yet masterful contrapuntal statements in this scene. The rectangular lines of sailors and officers standing on the quarterdeck, bisected by the battleship’s guns — the state’s guns, if you will.”

“I seen that. ‘All for a spoonful of borscht.’ Baby carriage going down the stairs. Good fucking movie. Benshi. That’s deep.” Winston was stalling for time. He was enjoying the conversation. Here in front of him was the only person he’d ever spoken to who’d also seen Battleship Potemkin and was willing to discuss it in detail. But that was no reason to let a dreadlocked Yankee into his life. He asked Spencer why he knew so much about film. The rabbi told him the role of Jews in Hollywood was one of his lecture subjects. He then proceeded to assert that the recent independent film explosion was a Gentile assault on the perceived Jewish domination of Hollywood. This proclamation was followed by a thin segue into the argument that the popularity of the remake was more than a function of the dearth of Tinseltown originality; it was the movie industry’s veiled attempt to recapture its image as art. Moviemaking, once a highbrow craft associated with the creative goyishe genius of Tennessee Williams, Nabokov, Dalí, and Faulkner, was now painting by numbers, dependent on the guile of moguls, computer geniuses erasing the distinction between actor and animation, and a slew of out-of-work nephews.

Winston was having some difficulty following Spencer’s argument — not because he didn’t understand the artistic references or failed to see what Jewishness had to do with what Spencer was saying, but because he was having an epiphany. He interrupted Spencer’s speech. “Hey, Rabbi. Meanwhile, back at the ranch …”

“What?”

“You remember when I told you I was looking for understanding?”

Spencer nodded.

“I now understand that understanding is not something you look for, it’s something that finds you. You understand?”

“What made you think of that?”

“You was talking and for some reason I thought of Fugitive from a Chain Gang. You ever seen it? Paul Moody.”

“Paul Muni.”

“So you seen it?”

“No.”

“Paul Muni down South, running from the police for a murder he didn’t commit. Gets caught and put in prison. Right there, you know I can relate. But one scene fucks me up. It’s late at night, he’s on a wagon with a bunch of white boys coming back from breaking rocks or picking cotton, and as he comes back to the jail, there’s a wagonload of black niggers about to go out to pick cotton, break rocks. And Muni and this pitch black motherfucker catch eyes for about two seconds. Oh, the shit is deep.”

“That’s it?”

“Hell, yeah, that’s it. Muni give that nigger a look like ‘Damn, now I understand the bullshit you black motherfuckers go through. People falsely accusing you of shit you ain’t done. Forced to pick cotton.’ But he don’t start crying. He don’t call nobody ‘brother’ or wish him luck, try to shake his hand, or talk about how they’ve got to unite. He don’t say not one word. Just gives Money a look that says, ‘I feel you, homey, but I gots to get mines.’ That’s real. That’s how it be in jail or in life. Sometimes you catch yourself feeling close to motherfuckers you not supposed to feel close to, but you can’t afford to play the humanitarian role. But I realized I’m waiting for someone to look at me like that or for me to look at someone else like that. I’m not sure which.”

“Didn’t I look at you that way when I came in?”

“No, Rabbi, you looked at me like you felt sorry for me.”

“And what’s wrong with that? I do feel sorry for you.”

“You need to also feel sorry for yourself.”

“You’re saying I’m hollow, shallow, like today’s movies.”

“Nothing wrong with being shallow, just shouldn’t be shallow when you trying act like you about something.”

Spencer felt shamed, but there was no lingering anguish pressing on his shoulders, forcing him to his knees to beg for forgiveness or spiritual guidance. He begged his religion for a sign of contriteness. And his heart began to pound, the hairs on his arms to stand on end, his knees start to shake. “Did you feel that?” Spencer asked.

“Feel what?”

“A buzz, an ethereal presence in the room, like something was passing through.”

“That’s the malt liquor talking to you. You getting fuzzy-faced. Take a piss, you’ll feel better.”

“Shit, I was hoping God was about to say something to me.”

“God ain’t never spoke to you?”

“I don’t believe in God.”

“You’re a rabbi, how can you not believe in God?”

“It’s what’s so great about being Jewish. You don’t have to believe in a God per se, just in being Jewish.”

Winston had a strange, slanted smile on his face. He threw his arm around Spencer’s shoulders and escorted him to the door like a kind bouncer saying good night to the village drunk. “Rabbi, let’s start next week. I’ll put you on six months’ probation, but I ain’t making no promises.” Here would be the monk Winston needed. He had dreadlocks, but so what? He’d have a person in his life to whom he wasn’t emotionally attached. Who knows, Spencer could be an impartial voice-over that would cut through the white noise of Yolanda’s bickering, Fariq’s proselytizing, and Ms. Nomura’s good intentions. “Can I ask one thing before you go?”

“Sure.”

“What’s borscht?”

“Borscht is beet soup.”

After shutting the door behind Spencer, Winston sat down on the couch, took out his marker, and drew a circle on his palm. Inside the circle he wrote his name. Yolanda stopped scouring Jordy’s anus and was about to place a fresh diaper, then the baby, on Winston’s lap, when he shot up and ran to the door. Spencer was ten paces past the threshold, trying to figure out how a young man with a child to support, living in an apartment with bedsheets for drapery and mayonnaise jars for glassware, could afford to see so many films. Maybe he walks in backwards, he thought, like Cacus stealing the cattle from Hercules.

“Yo, Rabbi!” Winston’s head was sticking out of the door. “Since you thought you were going to be a Big Brother to an eight-year-old, what were you planning to do with me this afternoon? Take me to the zoo?”

Spencer reached into his haversack and whipped out a glow-in-the-dark Frisbee, which he expertly flung at Winston at warp speed. Winston laughed, and swiftly slammed the door. The disk bounced off the metal door frame with a thud and skidded to a wobbly stop at the feet of a young boy. The boy picked it up and offered it back to Spencer. “Keep it.”

Spencer Jefferson walked to his car feeling as if he’d just interviewed for, and landed, a job as an urban mahout. He’d walk alongside the elephantine Winston Foshay, beating on his rib cage with a bamboo cane, steering him past life’s pitfalls, prodding him into performing the tricks required by respectable society.