while I was right there emptying ashtrays or just in the next room with the door open, making a bed. Oh, he
hated blacks, all right, but it wasn’t just us – he hated just about everyone the same. When it came to hate, the
man was an equal opportunity employer. When John Kennedy died, Jefferies happened to be in the city and
he threw a party. All of his friends were there, and it went on into the next day. I could barely stand to be in
there, the things they were saying – about how things would be perfect if only someone would get that brother
of his who wouldn’t be happy until every decent white kid in the country was fucking while the Beatles
played on the TV and the stereo and the fucking jigaboos were running wild through the streets with a TV
under each arm.
“It got so bad that I knew I was going to scream at him. I just kept telling myself to be quiet and do my job
and get out as fast as I could; I kept telling myself to remember the man was my Pete’s natural father if I
couldn’t remember anything else; I kept telling myself that Pete was only three years old and I needed this job
and I would lose it if I couldn’t keep my mouth shut.
“Then one of em said, ‘And after we get Bobby, let’s go get that fucking candy-ass younger brother!’ and one
of the others said, ‘Then we’ll get all the male children and really have a party!’
“‘That’s right!’ Mr Jefferies said. ‘And when we’ve got the last head up on the castle wall we’re going to have
a party so big I’m going to hire Madison Fucking Square Garden!’
“I had to leave then. I had a headache and bellycramps from trying so hard to keep my mouth shut. I left the
room half-cleaned, which is something I never did before or have done since, but sometimes being black has
its advantages; he didn’t even know I was gone. Wasn’t none of them knew I was gone.”
That bitter derisive smile was on her lips again.
12
“I don’t see how you can call a man like that quality,” Delores said, “or call him the natural father of your unborn child, whatever the circumstances might have been. To me he sounds like he wasn’t no more than a
beast.”
“No – he wasn’t a beast. He was a man. In some ways – in most ways – he was a bad man, but a man he was.
And he did have that something that I mean by quality. It come across in his books, too, only even clearer.”
“You read one?”
“Honey, I read them all,” Martha said. “He’d only written three by the time I went to Mama Delorme’s with that white powder in late 1959, but I’d read two of them. In time I got caught up, because he wrote even
slower than I read.” She grinned. “And that’s pretty slow, you better believe it.”
‘I Delores looked doubtfully toward Martha’s bookcase.
There were books there by Alice Walker, Rita Mae Brown, Yellowback Radio Broke Down by Ishmael
Reed, a couple by Kurt Vonnegut – but the three shelves were pretty dominated by paperback romances and
Agatha Christie mystery stories.
“Stories about war don’t hardly seem like your pick an’ glory, Martha, if you know what I mean. ”
“Of couse I know,” Martha said. She got up and brought them each a fresh beer. “And I’ll tell you an ironical thing, Delores Williams: if he’d been a nice man, I never would have read them at all, not even one of them.
And I’ll tell you another ironical thing: if he’d been a nice man, I don’t think they would have been as good as
they were.”
“Oh, I don’t believe that.”
“Ain’t asking you to! All I’m doing is saying what happened to me and what I believe. Now do you want me
to go on?”
“Yes, of couse I do,” Delores said.
“Well, it didn’t take me until ~ and the Kennedy assassination to figure out what kind of man he was. I knew