Welcome to Braggsville (29 page)

But after reviewing their son's record of completed courses, and hearing a brief summary of each, they were flabbergasted. Math and science, yes, but [Novel, Nov-ooo, Nove-o, Noo-voo?] Russian Cinema, The People's History, Introduction to Ethnic Studies: The Native Today? It was as if these classes existed only to prove that they could. His father rose from the kitchen table, bearing his weight with his knuckles, leaning over Daron. These are like gonzo porn.

At least they get paid for that, don't they? asked his mom.

With a hairy, calloused hand, his father picked a syllabus out of the pile and read a course description: This class will prepare students to recognize and become knowledgeable of people's biases based on
race, ethnicity, culture, political ideology, sexual orientation, age, religion, social and economic status, and disability. Students will also learn to recognize how dominant culture influences marginalized groups. She-it. God-der-damn-it. What about hair and eye color? Or foot size? I could have saved you, no, me, a bunch of money. At least for what this class costs.

It's not all critical theory. We learn about the world differently now. You didn't . . . you know.

His father stood behind him and placed a hand on Daron's shoulder. His mom following suit, Honey, please.

His father took several deep breaths, squeezing Daron's shoulders tight enough to send a warning to his neck. Critical theory, you say? Named assly, all right.

Can you explain that better, dear?

School's different now. (Daron stands at the free-throw line, gathering his energy. No bouncing, no lead-in, folks, he just shoots and . . .) I know it might seem strange, but I'm honored that you share your feelings with me. ( . . . brick.)

Frowning, his mother blinked as though momentarily blinded.

Are you going to feel honored when I knock you into next week? I will. His father cracked his knuckles as he picked up another syllabus. Listen to this one. He snapped the paper in the air. Don't believe everything you think. His father pondered that a moment. Ain't that the truth. That professor's a real genius. I don't need to go to college for this stuff. I woulda told you this, son: People generally aren't too fond of people who are different. No one can warm to everybody. That ain't never gonna change. Only thing'll change is what counts as different, from time to time. So, try to take 'em as individuals. Know you can't fix the world. Get rid of niggers, you got coloreds. Get rid of coloreds, you got blacks. Get rid of blacks, you got African-Americans. It's all the same if you don't like 'em. See, 'cause if you don't like 'em, you'll make some new shit that's too
clever for them to know all fuck what's happening. Like Ed down in purchasing, he calls 'em Mondays. You think that changes what's in the man's heart? You think a different word confuses his emotions? No. Why Mondays? Why? Why? Nobody likes Mondays. Do I agree with Ed? No. He's funny, a real cut, but I don't agree with him. I woulda guessed you didn't either and that I didn't have to pay for my son D'aron Little May Davenport to take a class to tell him to act right and treat people goddamned fairly. It's a damned insult to your mother and me. It would be like if we went out and rented ourselves a kid to come live here on the holidays. Analyze stable and dynamic inequities? Analyze heterogeneous interactions? Analyze class markers in language? Professor, there is another word in analyze that oughta put you on the scent of how this smells to me. He turned away from Daron, skimming the rest of the list as he paced, Diversity and Social Justice, Urban Fieldwork, the New Democracy.

What the hell are those, he demanded to know, besides the titles of angry speeches? And what the hell, both parents demanded to know as they left the kitchen, did he have any right to be angry about?

For one, Daron was angry about the review board. When he e-mailed his professor to inquire about it, the professor promptly replied, and when Daron wrote him again, he again promptly replied, and so the exchanges proliferated without ever clarifying, to Daron's satisfaction, the particulars of the Faculty and Student Review Board:

Dear Daron,

                    
Again, let me share how saddened I was to hear about the tragedy that occurred in the wake of your heartfelt attempt to cast light on the gross hypocrisies of reenactments as a commemoration of states' rights. Most distressing is the ensuing media windstorm and the events you experienced in town following Louis Chang's passing.

                    
The most anyone can hope for in this country, whether they
know it or not, is to never be made aware, to never know—definitively, undeniably, with religious certainty—how the accident of race has charted their life, for better or for worse. Though realizations of that sort, facing that monster, are good for the soul, they rob us of the illusion of autonomy, liberty, free will, agency, and replace those oft noble, always necessary hallucinations with fate, chance, and providence, reminding us of the effect that others, capricious or willful, may have on our lives. The enormity of this realization can be crushing, especially to a sensitive soul.

                    
In truth, we earn little of what we take.

                    
You have wavered between pride and prejudice on the South. Do not idolize California, we have our share of problems and have become a prison state in the last twenty years. Our institutions eerily resemble post-Reconstruction chain gangs, but without the chains. The machinery of this cephalopod operates a three-card monte, but the chips always end up in jail, which here means being thrown in solitary for even possessing ethnic literature.

                    
I hope that you will return to UC Berkeley next fall. You would find the distance invigorating, and should you choose to continue this project as a reflective essay, a documentary, or, as I suggested at our meeting, a novel, consider my full support extended.

Yours in truth and freedom

until justice rolls and freedom rains,

Professor P.

For kicks, Daron replied, Can it be a graphic novel? To which the professor replied, Certainly, still with no mention of the review board.

He was also angry about Candice. Just that morning he found a black footie with orange piping and an orange toe box, and imagined sorting it into her pile while she hummed along elsewhere in the house, tickled to have a boyfriend who embraced housework in that clumsy puppy way, but that was not to be.

For reasons inarticulate he knew it could not happen, not with Candice's professor parents, originally from New York, oh the mysteries of that city—Woody Allen; mafiosi; bearded Jewish diamond dealers;
Warriors,
come out to play—could not happen any more than a cop could say, Sorry, could not happen any more than D'aron could wing a Gull. In fact, back in high school, when Jean, a Gull, asked D'aron to prom with his sister, D'aron said he'd be out of town, or rather, he agreed as such when Jean suggested it. He wasn't lying. Jean said it first. No. Nothing was as it seemed.

N
O
. N
OTHING WAS (EXACTLY) AS IT SEEMED
. But neither was it always the opposite.

When Jean asked D-nice to prom with his sister, D-nice said he'd be out of town, or rather, he agreed as such when Jean suggested it. He wasn't exactly lying. Jean said it first. And, boy was D-nice relieved when Jean suggested it. Hell, D-nice pocketed that idea quicker than found money. Jean was more Jo-Jo's friend anyway. Like everyone else who made varsity by their sophomore year, Jo-Jo had a friend in the Gully. D-nice knew they practiced together or worked out sometimes, but he didn't know how good of friends Jean and Jo-Jo were—or how good of friends Jean thought they were—until Jean asked Jo-Jo to prom with his sister. Jo-Jo claimed he'd be on front counter that night. None of them said anything for a moment. Just stood there behind the visitors' bleachers taking long draws on the Pall Malls Jo-Jo stole from Mrs. Lee's General & Feed.

When Jo-Jo said, Front counter, D-nice didn't ask how Jo-Jo knew his schedule that far in advance when he couldn't remember
which jersey to wear on game day. After Jo-Jo said, Front counter, Jean turned to D-nice, cocking his own coffee bean as he did so, offered more than asked, Bet you got work or something going on out of town, too, don't you, D-nice? Elseways you could stand for Jo-Jo. D-nice nodded. What else was D-nice to do? What else was D-nice to say if Jean didn't comprende that some white people earned points for attending the Gully's Bruiser prom, and others anted them up, and among his friends were only anteers, could only be anteers? Among his friends were the muscle in the big brick hotbox, not the shirtsleeves in the rib. Later, when D-nice mentioned this, and winked like he knew Jo-Jo wasn't really working, Jo-Jo tossed him a thrashing glance the likes of which he'd never before given him.

When prom night pranced up, the one night when cummerbunds were as plentiful as belly button rings, Jean straight vultured Main Street slow as cold butter, times three he did, before squeaking sneaker into Mrs. Lee's General & Feed, first pacing around his Ford LTD a few times like to get his horns sharpened, his shoulders winged out like he was rearing for confrontation. D-nice watched the whole thing from across the street, stayed safely inside Lou Davis's—waiting, waiting, waiting, it felt—waiting so long that Rheanne accepted a date he didn't offer, waiting for Jean to come out grinning like a crow just how he did not five minutes later, nipping at a cone he most certainly didn't break a bill on.

At that sight D-nice felt a deliberate relief slip right up next to him close as a crowded pocket. Jo-Jo and Jean hadn't shared a word between them or practiced passing for even a handful of the three weeks and five days until prom night. Jo-Jo would act himself again, as he had not done for the three weeks and five days he and Jean were incommunicado, twenty-six days Jo-Jo had enumerated with dramatic gnashing, counting them off like a prisoner, bellyaching until a grist-biting envy grabbed piercing hold of D-nice's left ear and nearly drove him to find Jean and tell him something Nana did say:
Just for a reverend is in the Lord's house don't make it his sermon, or his sheep. Was it true? In sooth, D-nice didn't know.

But he knew that he wanted to scream those three-and-some-odd weeks Jo-Jo was off his squash, punch something and scream, yell about it all, the two proms, the anteers and the antees. Punch the proms, the anteers, the antees, kick them all in the ben-was. Then the next year come 'round, Jo-Jo surprised them all and went to the Bruiser prom with Jean's sister.

A
LL
J
O
-J
O
SAID WAS
, It ain't free, D, it ain't free. And it ain't what it looks, either.

When Jo-Jo was in fifth grade, his parents worked the night shift, leaving him in the care of his fat-cracklin' half sister, whom Quint was stuck on sticky as blackstrap molasses. Whenever he four-wheeled out to see Jo-Jo's sister, Quint dragged D'aron along, his rationale being that it was lonely pups most likely to piss on the sofa. While Quint and Jo-Jo's sister made cow sounds in the back room, Jo-Jo and D'aron played
Madden NFL
on Xbox, camped on the couch, slouching, the one football position at which D'aron excelled.

However he meant it, Jo-Jo was right when he insisted, It ain't free. After Jo-Jo, who never missed a day of school or work, took off for Bruiser prom, he was fired, and coach benched him for a month, even though it cost the team three games, and Jo-Jo missed playing for the scouts. He didn't complain a minute. Just smiled and said he was always running late and it finally caught up with him. D'aron nodded, wanting to believe him, all the while thinking everything was exactly as it fucking seemed, people just preferred to pretend otherwise.

N
othing fires up the disco balls like sexual assault. When you want to get the cops out quickly, lights all the way, you don't report a murder. Fun's over. You don't report a mugging unless you're witnessing it. After a mugging, they'll take a report over the phone if you let them. And burglary? Depending on where you live, those barely get house calls these days. If you want the police to come out quickly, ASAP, you report a rape. They fly to a rape, some for the wrong reasons, but they fly. They go code blue-and-white all the way. They might get to be a hero. And unlike bank robberies, no officer has ever died investigating a rape or been shot after walking in on a rape. The other thing about reporting a rape is that it involves lots of people. Needs cops, counselors, investigators, an ambulance, rape kits, EMTs, emergency room doctors. It's more than just taking a report and driving off. You only got two EMTs. So that's your message to me. I'm still not sure what you're trying to say. But you called for help and no one came. I'm here now. You can tell me. 'Cause the thing is, D'aron, I think you knew all this already.

Daron mouthed a noncommittal O.

They were in the crowded lot of the big cold box, where even the parking spaces were bigger than in Berzerkeley. Daron had taken to frequenting stores that allowed him anonymous interactions, not
that he needed to shop. His parents bought everything, but there were some items he didn't want to ask them for, purchases that he'd rather make himself. With their money, of course. He didn't need his mother commenting on his penchant for gourmet chips or his father hawking about him spending five burritos on a teakettle catalogue, as he called fashion magazines. Not that his father didn't have a point about the cost, but since coming home, Daron sought out
Details
or
Esquire
or
GQ,
one per week, an exercise in secrecy he now understood to be rivaled only by his clandestine acquisition of dick slappers during his younger years. The exhilaration of those moonlit sorties to the trash bin had withered not one bit the winter night he ventured into the backyard too early and found his father carefully wrapping three girlie mags in a plastic bag before tossing them.
GQ
and
Esquire
and
Details
? How could he explain that he read these like they held the key to his future as surely as those
Playboy
s? And so he snuck out, but apparently wasn't sneaky enough because today Denver's shadow had fallen over him before he could unlock the trunk, and the agent launched into his speech on rape without so much as a hello.