The Terrible Twos. Ishmael Reed
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to see what has happened. Outside the building, he looks up and down for his limousine; it is nowhere in sight. He buttons his sports jacket and turns to the black doorman who stands in front of the building. The doorman was examining Stuart’s white slacks and white shoes. “Your driver went to the airport,” the man says, stroking his chin.
“He what?” Krantz’s attacker says.
“He had to pick up the guy they flew in from New York to take your place. Your driver said you wouldn’t be needing him anymore,” the doorman says, smirking.
“Well, call me a cab.”
“Call one yourself. There’s a pay phone in the lobby.” The former star of “Sorrows and Trials” turns around. He looks up. The curious are staring at him from their windows. He reaches into his pockets for a dime and goes into the lobby.
4
Only children and Mr. Dean Clift could get by on their good looks. You watched as in the distance, sirens screaming, Dean Clift, the model, who stopped the parade, was whisked away but not even this took your attention away from the little black man with rough-looking red hair and his dummy. Your two-year-old was watching the man with intense fascination. The little black devil even stared at your little Freddie Jr. The little man wore black glasses, flawless white suit and white shoes. He had set up an elegant little stand covered with cloth upon which had been sewn a portrait of the late Emperor Haile Selassie. He was telling the crowd that he could do an imitation of any famous world leader they knew. While he was working the crowd, drawing attention away from the parade, his little dummy was also making a pitch. The little dummy was black, owned red lips, and wore a sinister fixed smile. The ventriloquist kept referring to the dummy as baldhead. He even called the crowd baldheads though most of them possessed hair. There was quite a bit of cash atop the ventriloquist’s stand. The little dummy was waging some card bets in a game of three-card monte. It held three cards, two red and one black. Every time you hit black the dummy paid you, but when you hit red, you paid the dummy. The dummy kept saying red you win, black you lose, and as he slapped the cards on the table, he’d say red, black, red, black, and then in reverse, black, red, black, red, black, red. Then, as if this scene weren’t outrageous enough, the little dummy’s goat was up on its hind legs dancing to a Reggae version of “Santa Claus is coming tonight,” but the lyrics had been changed, and instead of saying “Santa,” they sang what sounded like “Santy.” Santy Claus. In a minor, mournful key. Your child doesn’t want to leave but the tinny, shrill music, coming from the little man’s primitive sound system aided by two egg crates, was becoming annoying.
The two-year-old was screaming, and some of the adults in the parade crowd cast suspicious glances your way. He was screaming so loud it seems that he drowns out the trombones. You decide to slip into a restaurant on the parade route to buy him some ice cream. This usually shuts him up. He throws tantrums until he gets what he wants. You’d like to whack him good across his bottom but your wife is reading childrearing books which advise against this. They counsel patience.
As the child grows he tells you things. He tells you about nations and individuals. About how civilizations come into being. You’re glad that two-year-olds don’t have access to ICBMs the way the responsible leaders in your government do.
You’re forty years old and a third-class citizen in your own home. Everything he wants he gets. You fight in court all day and when you come home you want a gin fizz. You want to relax with the New York Post. You read the Times in the morning. Sometimes the pages are torn and scattered about the room. The two-year-old has something against the newspapers because when people are concentrating on long white sheets nobody pays any attention to him. He says no to everything. Take a bath. No. Eat dinner. No. Go to bed. No. The terrible twos are twins to the terrible nos. When you go out with your wife, she insists on taking him with you. You still remember the night in the French restaurant when he threw the veal and sauce to the floor, and set fire to the waitress’s hair with the lit candle. You settled with the waitress out of court. And every time the serenaders sang their French country songs, he’d scream and ask to go to the bathroom and when you got into the bathroom he didn’t have to go.
Human beings at two harbor cravings that have to be immediately quenched, demand things, and if another human being of their size and age enters the picture, there’s war. Human beings at two have to be read to, pampered, and assisted in their toilet. Every two-year-old is an emperor or an empress. Walking with him on the parade route has its advantages. The little tot liked the clowns. He smiled his most engaging smile when he saw the float of Bullwinkle the Moose and Rocky the Flying Squirrel pass by. Some women commented on how cute he looks. He gets his hair mussed, and you get phone numbers. The woman who said she’d come to your Greenwich Village office next week says she’ll bring quiche and wine. It’s a two-story building with a spiraling staircase. It looks like a French publishing house on Rue Jacob: Count, Earl, and King.
You’re making progress. You’re moving up in the world. One day, you’ll have an office on Park Avenue. One day. Before the kid finally breaks down, you were able to catch some scenes from Broadway shows. The Pirates of Penzance. Barnum. One Mo’ Time. The Jamaican dancers are great. You wish you could take the wife and the kid to Jamaica, but you’ve heard that things have gotten very racial down there. That whites like you have been molested and there have even been a couple of machete murders.
You can’t even get to the beach these days without wading through politics. Politics. God, if anyone told you ten years ago that you’d be voting for Reagan you would have doubled over in laughter. He used to be funny like his friend the 1930s peach picker, Roy Rogers. Hilarious. What did he say? When Trigger died he had them stuff Trigger and mount Trigger, and when he dies he wants them to stuff him and put him on Trigger. The waitress scowls at you as she takes the order for three scoops of ice cream. Americans are edgy these days. Dissatisfied. Carter talked about a malaise, French for “the blues.” The kid points out the scoops he wants. Yuk. “Boola Boola Moola Marble,” “Goodbye Mr. Chips,” and “Manila Vanilla.” Another thing about two-year-olds. They have very bad taste. They make Liberace seem subdued. He’s quiet now, busily licking the ice cream which will soon melt on his sticky hands, if a scoop or two doesn’t fall to the floor first. But wait. The fellow sitting there at the counter. Nance Saturday. He was the brightest guy in law school class. Then, he shocked everybody by dropping out. Looks like he’s been out playing tennis. The seaman’s hat, calf-length white socks with red and blue stripes at the top, sneakers, shorts, and windbreaker. Still has that thick mustache and is wearing those glasses. He used to get a lot of kidding about those glasses. He looks up from the newspaper and notices you. He smiles. You take the kid in tow and approach him. “Hey, Nance Saturday.” He looks up. “Don’t you recognize me?”
“Yeah, I recognize you. We were in the same class at Rutgers.” He doesn’t seem to be very thrilled. “Your kid?”
“Yeah, did I just have a scare! There was this fellow, a little black fellow down the street who looked as if he had a red lion’s mane covering his head, and he was smoking a marijuana cigarette that was as huge as a morning glory.”
“I think they call them locks.”
“The fellow was a ventriloquist. He could talk at the same time as his little dummy who was engaging the crowd in a game of three-card monte. He said that he was a descendant of a slave named Pompey, a master ventriloquist of the Old South who escaped from slavery by throwing his voice. I’ve never seen anything like it. He could talk and puff on a marijuana cigarette, imitating President Eisenhower, Winston Churchill, and other famous world leaders. He said that although he was an ordinary, insignificant, and barely literate speaker, he was fortunate that someone named Jah made it possible for the Emperor to speak through him.”
“Risto Rasta.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, with all of this Reggae music and carrying on, every con artist on Forty-second Street is trying to use the Reggae scam to get over.”
“O, is that it? The fellow was drawing quite a crowd. He was diverting attention from the Macy’s parade, which takes some doing.