2.(65-66) A Story of the South

Slim Novel 2 - http://adventuresofkimi.blogspot.com - See Homepage


65. Southward Ho

In bed at the Robert E. Lee Motel, I see Ali reading a pulp magazine and laughing over something. I ask, What? and she shows me an advertisement for Mammoth Catalog. What catches my eye is a perfect gift for the white U.S. Southerner, a “jackass” cigarette dispenser. A jackass for a jackass! Interesting how the White Southerner is proud of the southern Confederacy Rebellion leaders like General Robert E. Lee. Considering these leaders were so wrong and bad to start a war to keep their black slaves and, by doing it, they caused so many soldiers and noncombatants men, women and children to be killed or wounded in order to preserve what by all standards was the crime of centuries, it would seem that an intelligent southerner should be ashamed of them, like a family skeleton one prefers not to mention.

     “Hon, I’m ho-ongry,” Ali whines.

     “I have a headache,” I reply.

     “I don’ mean that! I got enuf a that last night. I mean food. It’s 10 PM. We could go out but let’s eat here in the room. Y’know whut I want right now? Swee’ Kentucky ham! Down south here it’s a delicacy. Lemme see,” she ruffles the pages of a menu booklet and finds the room-service number.

A white-suited waiter wheels in a table that has on its crisp tablecloth two large plates with highly curved shiny metal top-handle covers still warm from cooking; also fresh-squeezed orange juice in high thin glasses, and browned fragrant toast with iced butter squares, and a metal pot of freshly steeped coffee heated by can gas over flame, and two cherry tarts.  The waiter is completely black African.

   I have studied so-called miscegenation of white southern slaveholders and their women slaves, which more accurately is rape of a helpless woman by a brute, so I know southern persons of color come in shades from tan to brown-black. Our waiter is very dark-skinned. The white racist emphasizes the black-white racial mixture as affecting only the colored citizen but what he never mentions is that southern whites have an intermix of African heredity from their mixed light-skin offspring that pass for white. The worst racism comes from a mixed race person passing for the favored race and trying to outdo its racism to prove his favored race status.

   After pausing to accept my one-dollar tip, the waiter says, “Thank you, sir! Very generous of you, sir! Would you and the lady perhaps like wine, cocktail, whiskey-soda, compliments of Chef?” Ali kicks me under the table to say Yes. Noting the educated manner of the waiter, I say, after ordering, “By the way! Undoubtedly you notice I am from the Orient. I am a journalist doing a story on America’s south, and I wonder, since it is 10 PM and you may be off from work soon, if you might join us then, uh, Mr. ….?"

   “Godfrey Lovelace. Well, sir, I’ll be happy to join you.”

We turn attentions to the Sweet Kentucky Ham. The waiter, before leaving, removes the shiny metal covers and Ali starts eating with a vigor I can only blame on youth. At center of white porcelain plates is the star of the piece – a ten-inch diameter, one-inch thick slab of steamy hot pink ham that is covered lightly with candied pineapple sauce and beside it on left, mashed potato, crater-shape, within which is still hot melted butter, and on right, cooked carrots and stringed beans. Its fragrance – especially for one who has not eaten in twelve hours – is ecstatic and only with difficulty can I sit and contemplate.   
   Ali, noting me noting her, gives a grunt out of the side of her munching mouth “Wassamatta, Kim – ya sick or sumpin? Swee’ Kentucky ham ‘s’wunnerful, ‘s’marvelous, ‘s’made fer me! C’mon, dig in!”

   And I do and it is a memory I shall cherish even remaining committed to my Animal Rights belief and to a future where Sweet Ham will be a Never Am.

66. A Man Called Godfrey

At 11:34, soft knock at door and Ali, who tonight has not stripped naked as usual, runs to open and there is Godfrey Lovelace, dressed in light brown summer suit with gray slouch hat; and in hand, a tray with snacks, fresh pot coffee, macaroons and fruit; all compliments, His Truly. After seating him I say I am sharply aware of distinctions that go with name and he gives OK to use ‘Godfrey’ and we request he feel free using ‘Ken’ and ‘Ali’. I see it is right because he noticeably relaxes. ‘Lovelace’ was the surname of Godfrey's ancestress's ‘Massa,’ who was a courtier who ran to Virginia when the Stuart king, James II, lost his throne. Commenting on the purity of his African inheritance, Godfrey chuckles. “From what my Grandma told me when I was a kid, our ancestress was the god-awfullest ugly lady the Massa ever laid eyes on so he decided not to lay anything else on her.”

   I ask Godfrey about his excellent English since it breaks stereotype and right off he goes into his vernacular: “Now ahs gwyne tell yuz, bohss,” then switches to his normal Ivy League “We educated persons of color find it easiest to get by if we speak like the white person’s nigger. But when I saw you two I knew it would not be too-too, to speak well. It gets to my history: I was born in this vicinity, of parents who were ex-slaves speaking only vernacular – as I did until higher education changed me. My dad was a sharecropper and I’d be like him still if Kaiser Bill had not sunk the Lusitania.  I was 19 then, what the whites called ‘buck nigger’ and I was drafted in 1917 when war declared. All us draftees took the new IQ test under a young Jewish boy, also a draftee, name of David Wechsler, and to the embarrassment of nearly everyone I achieved a score of 130, which ‘Dave’ (that’s how he liked to be spoken of) said was only ‘slightly brilliant.’ Dave also explained that the test had a built-in bias against unlettered rural folk especially us Negroes. If I could score 130, my actual intelligence had to be higher. Today, my opinion is that a single test should not be used to judge one’s worth; but then, Wechsler, by pulling strings, prevented my being sent to the trenches as cannon fodder and arranged for admission to Princeton on a scholarship in order to become one of the few negro commissioned officers. Well, the war ended in my first year and the Army happily allowed its nigger officer candidate to shift to civilian status, and Princeton continued the scholarship. I majored in chemistry and wanted to be a medical doctor but all doors shut there. You see, when they gave us Negroes a chance back in the 1920's they wanted what racists call ‘token nigger,’ the kind they could point to as ‘a credit to his race’ and smugly refer to as the exception to the rule that most Negroes were congenital racial retards. But, to qualify, it took a certain humble-pie approach to whites I lack. I do not imply I was in any way openly contemptuous or a radical but in meeting with white southerners as an educated Negro I inadvertently revealed a superiority and that frightened them: they saw me as another Nat Turner. So in the sweepstakes for the one medical school entry position they offered a black, I came in last.” Godfrey chuckles and continues. “Well, I was disappointed but actually it came out all for the best. I returned here to my country in rural Virginia and am a teacher of science in the local Negro high school, trying to do for the folk here what Dave Wechsler did for me – to bring out the latent talent and intelligence, and to work for a future where we all have an equal chance at life.”

That was interesting but what he said next was astounding!  It started about his family life. He is silent a moment then characteristically he chuckles. Godfrey has a sense of dramatic timing that confirms his high intelligence. He now inserts his wife into the narrative.

“Jane is Caucasian, her English forbears came on the Mayflower or the Junebug,” he says, pausing for laughs. “But here no one knows it, because she passes for Negro. We met at a dance at the Ivy League sister school she was attending. I was just earning extra money there as black busboy. Even the liberal school atmosphere would not have tolerated a black buck like me touching a white girl but it was body chemistry at first sight and we found a way and really fell in love then.
   Both of us being smart, we kept figuring: What future? But then Jane missed her menstruation and we had to start thinking about the child so we decided one of us must cross the line. My pure African look could never pass for white; on the other hand, by the peculiar conventions of America, where even a touch of Negro makes one a nigger, her passing was a possibility. Problem was she is naturally fair with straight hair, thin lips and nose to match; not features to excite suspicion of being colored. But all that proved amenable to cosmetics, dyes and perms, which Jane learned to do at home. Nose and lips, however, required plastic surgery to increase fullness. So when I brought my pregnant wife home and let out the rumor she is a Louisiana octoroon nobody raised an eyebrow.”

Godfrey leaves at 1 AM. His story will make an interesting chapter in my book on America. 

At 5 AM on the road again, Ali at wheel, now in simple white pullover polo shirt and blue jeans. Southward ho, away we go!
To read next, click 2.67 Everybody's Sex Pardner

•