Disgruntled: A Novel Page 14

  “I’m going to bake cookies,” said Dawn, who was easier to hear indoors.

  “My dad rented a bunch of movies just before he left,” said Ned. “This one’s about the Sex Pistols. Might be okay.”

  “Ugh—you know who loves the Sex Pistols?” said Commodore.

  “Dude, you are obsessed with Oliver. Should I be jealous?” Ned said, winking.

  “I’m just saying, what black person in their right mind wears a leather jacket with a swastika on it?”

  “Isn’t that supposed to be a punk thing?” asked Dawn. “Isn’t he in a band called Niggerpunk?”

  Kenya tried not to flinch.

  “Niggerpunk, indeed,” said Commodore, who didn’t seem bothered by a white girl’s voice saying “nigger.”

  Peter began singing “Thin Line Between Love and Hate,” a song whose clunky title made a bad thing much worse.

  Except Kenya, none of them sat particularly still while watching Sid and Nancy. Ned fiddled with a joint; Dawn baked cookies from premade dough; Peter complained about punk music; Commodore worked on his terrible British accent. At first, Kenya, who sat next to him, was distracted by his nearness. But he didn’t appear to notice, and soon she found herself absorbed in the movie, which was very gross and poignant. Though her family had taken three trips to New York, she’d never felt strongly about it, had never caught Zaineb’s zeal. But she was struck by the bombed-out scenes at the end of the film, the purgatory where Sid Vicious danced with chummy black kids, then took a taxi to punk heaven with his dead girlfriend, whom he’d stabbed in a drug-fueled haze. She teared up briefly as the credits rolled. No one seemed to notice.

  “What kind of shit was that?” Peter asked. “That’s the kind of movie your dad watches? What if I made my Jamaican grandma watch that? I can just hear her now. ‘But why de boy don’t take ’im shower?’” he said in a rich, feminine voice.

  “That heroin must be something else,” said Commodore.

  “I’m going to try, like, every drug just before I die,” said Ned. He stared off dreamily into the middle distance.

  “But it wasn’t just the drugs,” said Dawn. “They were addicted to, like, their love. That was what killed them.” She sat on the floor and gazed up at Ned on the couch.

  “Heroin,” said Ned. “I’m trying that first.”

  “What’d you think, Kenya?” asked Commodore.

  “Worst couple in history,” she said, hoping that Dawn wouldn’t feel insulted.

  Commodore laughed.

  Kenya hung out with Commodore and his friends at Ned’s house several times that spring, happiest when it conflicted with some invitation from the girls. She loved to say no to them in order to hang out with high school seniors who went to school in Philly. She was no longer socially desperate.

  When she was with Commodore and his friends, they talked endlessly of the other people at their school. While a lot of it was dull, she listened carefully for hints that he had a girlfriend or anything like it. They smoked pot (except Kenya) and baked cookies, played cards, and after the Sid and Nancy incident and, even more disturbingly, the Blue Velvet incident, only watched movies they’d already seen: Monty Python and the Holy Grail, This Is Spinal Tap, Gremlins, and Nightmare on Elm Street. During comedies, everyone worked hard at laughing, flopping around and gasping for air. They narrated the horror movies using funny voices, calling the characters “douchebag” and “dipshit.”

  It was almost always the five of them, give or take Peter, a tuba player who sometimes had weekend band practice, or Dawn, who was intermittently angry with Ned.

  “She wants a relationship, but it’s just not the time for us,” he once told the others in her absence; this reminded Kenya of speeches she’d heard on The Young and the Restless.

  Kenya waited to hear how Commodore would respond to that, but all he said was “Uh-huh.” He never seemed terribly interested in Ned’s relationship with Dawn.

  * * *

  When her mother asked if she and Commodore were “an item,” Kenya tried to act nonchalant. While it was true that they were alone only when they spoke on the phone, they had begun talking nearly every night. At first they reminisced a lot about the Days and the way it had been with their parents.

  Then they talked about other things, arguing about whether rap music would outlive soul, or making lists of their favorite movies. Commodore had snuck into Angel Heart and would never forget Lisa Bonet naked or bloody. Kenya thought The Lost Boys was high art. Sometimes Commodore complained bitterly about Oliver with what Kenya felt was an unhealthy intensity. Kenya spent more time than she wanted to trying to picture this boy. (Based on Commodore’s description, she could picture only a photo she’d once seen of Jean-Michel Basquiat.) Though the bulk of Commodore’s complaints involved Oliver’s terribly named band and his affected British accent, it became clear that Commodore’s rage was a competitive one. Oliver was always garnering a teacher’s compliment for his work or an art prize that Commodore felt he deserved, and then there were confusing stories about Oliver “trying to flirt.” A girl named Pippa figured heavily in these anticlimactic tales.

  “What does Oliver’s flirting have to do with you?” Kenya asked.

  “I just hate seeing that big dork make such a fool of himself. It offends my sensibilities,” Commodore said.

  After getting off the phone Kenya sometimes stayed up late dozing over her homework. The morning after one of these marathons, Kenya slept through her alarm and woke up to Zaineb, who usually drove her to school, outside honking her horn and Teddy knocking on her bedroom door.

  Though Kenya had vowed never to cause Teddy to come near her room, this particular conversation had been worth it.

  “How do you meet guys?” Commodore had asked suddenly. “You know, going to that school?”

  “I don’t meet too many,” said Kenya. Up until that moment, she hadn’t known how she would handle this question. Should she demur and make herself seem normal? Or should she tell the truth, which was that nothing—not a kiss, not a date, and certainly not sex—had ever happened to her.

  Commodore had two ways of talking, even on the phone. Sometimes he was clearly distracted. Now his focus sucked the air out of the space between them. “Do you, ah, date outside the race?” he asked, and Kenya could feel him waiting for her answer.

  “Not really,” she said.

  “Hmph. So you don’t approve of that sort of thing?”

  “Do you?” asked Kenya.

  “Well, you know I love black women,” said Commodore. “I love my black women. But I keep my options open, you know?”

  “Is that how you put it?” said Kenya.

  Commodore gasped in a dramatic fashion. “You would judge me? After I opened up to you? I can’t believe this.”

  “Settle down, Miss Scarlett. So you date white girls?”

  “I didn’t say that!”

  But during the next conversation, she learned about Hannah (two dates), Scout (sophomore dance), and Tessa (they just kicked it sometimes). They’d all been special in their own way, and all white, apparently. But none of them mattered, he said, because thoughts of other girls had gone away when he met Pippa.

  “That jawn almost broke my heart. Bruised it, at least. At least!”

  “You really want to call a white girl a jawn? Just doesn’t seem right,” Kenya said, trying to smooth the edge out of her voice.

  “So mean! I almost lost my mojo over that one. I’m over it now, though.”

  It was hard for Kenya to put together either a picture or a personality for Pippa through Commodore’s description. Mostly “there was just something about her.” Listening to Commodore, she pictured a faceless white female presence. Several months later, when she finally saw Pippa at one of Reggie’s parties, Kenya noted her long, thick blond hair and her large, globe-like breasts.

  “I mean, it seemed like we were getting close for a while, you know. I would walk her to her classes and put these sweet notes in her locker
. I know it sounds corny. But then she just, like, started dodging me. She switched lockers without saying anything. I can’t believe I’m telling you this stuff. I must really feel comfortable with you…” Commodore said, trailing off. Kenya made listening noises, not knowing how else to respond. Later, she kept thinking about it, how she should have acted. Because after that conversation, Commodore didn’t call for several days.

  “Where’s your boyfriend?” asked Teddy Jaffrey.

  Where’s yours? thought Kenya.

  “Don’t tease her,” said Sheila.

  Barrett had let out for the summer and Kenya had a week off before going full-time at Dr. Walton’s office. Commodore would still be in school several more weeks. It had been five days since she’d spoken to him. She told herself that after a conversation like the one they’d had about his love for every other girl in America, she should wait for him to call.

  But she didn’t.

  An angry male voice answered the phone: Alfred. Though he hadn’t talked much in the old days, a wave of nostalgia nearly knocked the phone from Kenya’s hand. Then Commodore was on the phone, sounding as if he had a cold.

  “I have to call you back,” he said. As he hung up Kenya heard angry voices in the background.

  Kenya wanted desperately to know what was going on. She had scribbled Ned’s number down somewhere once. She thought of calling him to get the story. But soon enough the phone rang.

  “Wait till you hear this bullshit,” Commodore said. “I have to be quick. I’m not even supposed to be on the phone, but they went out to get something to eat and left me here.”

  “What happened?” exhaled Kenya.

  “What happened is that you can’t trust white bitches.”

  That afternoon Commodore had been called into the principal’s office—incidentally, another white bitch. Pippa had been there, “looking like someone had strangled her dog.” Her tight-lipped mother and Alfred were there also. Also there: a large folder of the notes Commodore had slipped into Pippa’s locker. Words like harassment were used by the principal, particularly in reference to the notes, which quoted both Henry Miller and Amiri Baraka extensively, and which had been found by Pippa’s mother, who kept lamenting that something had to be done, since she couldn’t afford to transfer Pippa to private school.

  “Oh my God,” said Kenya, who felt the shame of being alive on Commodore’s behalf. “Did you know any of this was going to happen?”

  Commodore laughed bitterly. “What kind of question is that? I guess I should have known when she started acting funny. But, I mean, if she didn’t want me, fine. I don’t know why she had to get school administration involved. That’s the white girl part of it.”

  “I thought you were over her. That’s what you said last time.”

  “Well, if I wasn’t then, I sure as fuck am now! So I’m grounded, but when I get off punishment, can I see you? Like, just us? I haven’t really felt like hanging out with Ned and them since this went down. Those cats are cool, but they don’t really know what’s up.”

  “What about Peter?”

  “Peter is black and everything, but he grew up in the Northeast and he basically discovered he was black in sophomore year. He’s not like us,” he said.

  “Not like us,” Kenya repeated.

  “He’s new to this,” said Commodore. “We’re true to this.”

  * * *

  After his two-week punishment ended, Commodore suggested they meet at the art museum, where Kenya had not been in years. It was an unnaturally warm Sunday, the day before Memorial Day. She tried to dress alluringly without revealing that she’d tried. She wore old jean shorts with a new silky peach-colored blouse about which Sheila had been especially enthusiastic. Walking from the train station that afternoon, she realized it was a poor choice for a hot day. She beat Commodore to the museum, so she ran to the bathroom and did her best to towel away the visible wet spots under her arms. When she emerged into the grand entrance hall, she saw him and smiled, her arms locked tight to her sides.

  “Hey, you look good,” he said. “Stop trying to make me look like poor relations.”

  “What’s wrong with what you’re wearing? It’s Bohemian.” His red polo shirt and loose jeans were both perfectly nice, if paint stained, and he smelled good. Kenya wondered if he was wearing some kind of man perfume, but the smell was gone almost as soon as she detected it. She thought maybe it was just her fevered imagination.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” he said, “but that’s a blouse you’re wearing. You’re wearing a blouse.”

  “Please stop saying blouse. It sounds like slacks.” Kenya shuddered.

  The museum was cool and empty. They made it through a couple of floors, pausing to look at paintings that especially interested Commodore. He particularly liked ones with a hint of a horror story. He and Kenya stood forever in front of a huge canvas on which a bunch of white men in dark clothes, whose old-time look registered as “slaveowner” to Kenya, performed a bloody operation. It did not look as if they were helping the patient. The painting was aptly titled, Kenya thought: The Gross Clinic.

  “I don’t think she’s going to make it,” said Kenya.

  “I think that’s a dude they’re operating on,” said Commodore.

  Kenya wasn’t so sure. “What am I supposed to think is good about this?”

  “It’s like there’s so much going on. Look at the mother there, and that guy in the back. And it’s just so fucking real.”

  Nearby, an older white couple with unkempt curling gray hair and matching sandals stood smiling at them.

  “Let’s get out of here before they try to adopt us,” Commodore murmured.

  “Or sponsor us,” Kenya said.

  “I could use a sponsor,” said Commodore. “A patron.”

  For lunch they bought hot dogs off of the cart out front, agreeing that even though these were beef—not pork—meat from a cart violated an unofficial Seven Days–type dietary restriction. They sat eating at the top of the steps, where people took snapshots of each other posing like Rocky.

  “Maybe your art will be in there one day,” said Kenya.

  “What are you, my grandmother?”

  “Okay, maybe you’ll die broke and unknown. How’s that?”

  “What are you, my parents?”

  “Is that really the kind of stuff they say to you?”

  “Not in those words, but they’re pretty pissed about next year.”

  “But you have a full ride to a good school!” protested Kenya. Commodore, who had not gone to private school, and consequently had not been held back a year like Kenya, had gotten a scholarship to Tyler, Temple University’s art school. “And it’s not far away, so they can’t complain about that.”

  “Well, I don’t think they would have minded me moving to Jupiter, actually. And they wanted me to go to a black college. They’re not big fans of the company I keep, especially these days, with the shit happening at school. But mainly, they’re just scared. It’s like they made up this whole way to be, them and their crew. And they raised us with it, but since they made it up, they don’t really know where it goes next. Like, they don’t want me to be some kind of blue-collar grunt, or city bureaucrat like them. But they know I’m never going to study law, and since I barely passed ninth-grade science, med school is out. Of course they would never fix their lips to say ‘Corporate America.’ It’s too late for that.”

  “My mom would fix her lips to say that.”

  “Yeah, your mom went another way,” Commodore said, smiling. “I think mine is a little jealous, tell you the truth.”

  “Yeah, well, my baba went another way, too. Is she jealous of that?”

  “Well, see, that’s another reason they’re scared. He was their Fearless Leader.”

  “And he was a nut.”

  Commodore looked thoughtful in the pause.

  “I think about him sometimes,” he said.

  “My father?” Kenya squeaked.

  �
��Yeah, he was kind of like an artist. I mean, he was an activist, or whatever they all thought they were, but he had a kind of thing to him like an artist.”

  Kenya thought about The Key and rolled her eyes. “He didn’t make any art.”

  “No, but he was trying to do more than just make things better for black people.”

  “Wait, is it a bad thing to ‘just make things better’?”

  “No, not at all.” Commodore laughed. “That’s not what I meant. Making things better for black people is the only reason a chickenshit like me can even, like, exist. If it was the fifties, I would have just opened my eyes and died right there after being born.”

  Kenya laughed. “I think I would have made it home from the hospital maybe…”

  “But your dad—excuse me, your baba—he had what they call a vision. He had a vision of another world. That’s why he was always fighting with them.”

  “How do you know that? I don’t remember you being there when they got into fights.”

  “I would hear about it later, though, mainly from my dad. He was not the biggest Johnbrown Curtis fan.”

  “Alfred talks?”

  Commodore laughed again. Then he looked at her as if they’d just met.

  “You feel like hanging out some more?” he asked.

  Despite what Commodore had said about not wanting to see his school friends, they wound up at Ned’s in the late afternoon. Ned answered the door in what looked like pajamas.

  “Ned?” Kenya asked. “Do you actually have parents?”

  “Unfortunately,” he said. “Make yourselves at home. I think Dawn might be over later. Or not. I’ll go shower,” he said, yawning.

  “And brush your teeth,” said Commodore. “Please!”

  “Please,” Ned mimicked in a high voice. Then he said, “Commie, why don’t you make yourself useful and roll us up something? Shit is in that drawer,” he said, pointing to a heavy wooden chest. “And don’t be makin’ it all baggy like you usually do. Respect the herb like you paid for it.” With that, he peeled off his shirt and padded into the bathroom. Kenya observed that his chest and back were muscular.

  “What are you looking at?” asked Commodore with exaggerated petulance after the bathroom door had closed.