The Terrible Twos. Ishmael Reed
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mustaches. He could have been a member of Queen Elizabeth’s guard with that mustache, a reader of Kipling and an imbiber of gin from a bottle with Queen Victoria’s picture on it. You couldn’t read his face because he had a dark face and this disturbed people. What was really disturbing was his eyes from Kung-Fu-Tse. They didn’t call him Nance for nothing. He didn’t have to go out and get it; it usually came to him.
“Where you living, Nance?”
“I have an apartment in Chelsea.”
“Did you marry?”
“Yeah, for a year or so. I don’t blame her for leaving. She wanted to be independent. She felt that she was drawn into my orbit. The funny thing is that we can’t seem to get around to obtaining a divorce. She says she can’t seem to get out of my pull. You might know her—Virginia, Virginia Saturday—you might have seen her on television.”
“I think I have. She does that interview show on Channel seven, doesn’t she? My wife and I watch it every night. Swell-looking gal. Her interview with Giscard D’Estaing was super.
“We live out in Staten Island now. I have a law office down in the Village. You know, Nance, never did understand why you didn’t finish law school. You were at the top of the class. Why did you drop out?”
“There’s no law in this country. Only power and class—”
“Too bad about this Reagan fellow. It’s going to be bad on black people, huh?”
“The perfect phony.”
“Well, I’ve heard that he’s pretty tough, but nobody ever said anything about the guy being a phony. Sounds like a lot of inflammatory Mau Mau rhetoric to me. Look, Nance, black people aren’t interesting any more. They’ve become dull and are not as exciting as they used to be. There are just too many other things for us to be concerned with than helping them all the time. A lot of people see it Reagan’s way. Things have got to change in this country, Nance. Reagan’s the man.”
“Well spoken, Eliot Ness. But his name is not Reagan, it’s O’Regan. He’s Irish, yet he’s always calling himself Anglo. I don’t trust a man who identifies with the people who’ve kept the Irish in bondage for eight hundred years. He’s passing for white.”
“Yeah, well, look, Nance, it’s nice seeing you. Come down for a drink sometime. Here’s my card.” You give him your card. Hey, where’s the kid? The waitress smiles and points to the private banquet facilities in the rear. But you can see the spots of ice cream on the carpet that lead to that room. You see flakes of the cone which have already been crushed under someone’s heel. You open the door and are confronted with rows of what appear to be white cabbages underneath chandeliers. These turn out to be hair styles. Some elderly women are seated, having a big Thanksgiving spread, and in the middle of the setting, like he owned the place, is your son, chocolate pudding all over his chin and mouth. Somebody has given him a Spiderman comic. The women smile. A lady turns to you. “Is this your child? He’s so sweet. So well-mannered. So delightful. You must be a good father.” And the child gives you such a look of innocence, you can’t imagine what got into him. Things get into two-year-olds. Sour one second, sweet the next. Demanding. You don’t have to live with him twenty-four hours a day, lady, you start to say, but instead you smile and reach for his hand and lead him out of the restaurant. Two-year-olds.
In mankind’s mirific misty past they were sacrificed to the winter gods. Maybe that’s why some gods act so young. Ogun, so childish that he slays both the slavemaster and the slave.
Two-year-olds are what the id would look like if the id could ride a tricycle. That’s the innocent side of two, but the terrible side as well. A terrible world the world of two-year-olds. The world of the witch’s door you knock on when your mother told you not to go near the forest in the first place. Pigs building houses of straw. Vain and egotistic gingerbread men who end up riding on the nose of a fox. Nightmares in the closet. Someone is constantly trying to eat them up. The gods of winter crave them—the gods of winter who, some say, are represented by the white horse that Saint Nicholas, or Saint Nick, rides as he enters Amsterdam, his blackamoor servant, Peter, following with his bag of switches and candy. Two-year-olds are constantly looking over their shoulders for the man in the shadows carrying the bag. Black Peter used to carry them across the border into Spain.
Fred King took his son’s hand and walked out of the restaurant. He glanced back and caught Nance Saturday, drinking coffee and examining some maps that were spread out on the table in front of him.
5
Oswald Zumwalt lifted the pot’s lid and dipped the ladle into the steaming hot pea soup. He opened the oven door and examined the turkey which was beginning to turn brown. The rice was becoming fluffy. He was about to prepare a salad when Jane walked in. She was what they called in the old days “a diminutive brunette.” She removed her coat, opened the refrigerator door, and poured herself a tall glass of grapefruit juice.
“Smells good.”
“O, hi, dear.” Zumwalt looked up and then returned to his chores. She noticed the third plate.
“Are we having someone for dinner?” she asked.
“The boss,” he said. “You know, since his wife died he’s been a lonely man.” She made a face. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“You know how I feel about your boss. I’m with the Alternative Christmas group. You’ve read our pamphlets. Schneider Brothers’ department store has a long history of discrimination against women and minorities. They hustle those awful war toys. We threw up a boycott there last Christmas. Don’t you remember?” He placed her hand on his shoulder. She brushed it off. He smelled something burning. The rolls. He rushed to the oven and removed some of them. He forgot to use a potholder and burned his hand. He shook his hand and then ran into the living room where Jane sat on the couch tapping her foot and pouting. The other furniture included a butterfly chair, a blue director’s chair, and book shelves. Three books lay on the coffee table: Abbie Hoffman’s Soon to be a Major Motion Picture; The Third Wave, by Alvin Toffler; and Richard Brautigan’s Dreaming of Babylon. A roach from a marijuana cigarette lay in an ashtray. Zumwalt noticed it and removed it before pleading with his wife.
“I thought we were going to have this Christmas alone,” she said. Her Levi’s fitted well, and she wore a blouse which was royally laced. Smith, ’76.
“We have enough. Look, it’s not every day that the boss takes a fellow’s offer for dinner.” Zumwalt had the head of a baby chick, especially around the nose. “Hey, what happened to your hair?”
“Thought I’d get a haircut.” She notices the small, gray Christmas tree.
“Cheerful, isn’t it,” he says, noticing her eyes glancing in that direction.
“What the fuck is going on?” she said. “We’ve never had a tree.”
“I bought it because—well, I haven’t had one in the house for years. I guess I’m becoming nostalgic.”
“Nostalgic, my ass; you’re trying to impress the boss. You’ve gotten hung up on that fucking job. This was supposed to be a stop on the way to Montana. We were going to save some money and then go to Montana. You promised. You took that stupid job at the department store and I went to work as a copy editor for Hour-Glass.”
He sat down next to her and took her hand. “But don’t you see how unrealistic that is? Montana. What would I do in Montana? Break horses? It was just one of our silly dreams.”
“Silly dreams, he calls them. So that’s what our relationship has been, silly dreams. You’ve changed, Ziggie. Monopoly capitalism is still on the march. Wasting the world. Oppressing the underclass. Remember we were going to take the fight to the West, all of our friends.”
“I’m thirty-two years old; I can’t go around playing at rebellion.” The kitchen. He rose and dashed into the kitchen. The rice was sticking to a burnt pan. It had turned brown. She