Turning White

“You want to know how I’m doing? Those motherfuckers got my eyeballs. I’ll be tapping around with a white cane while they’re in Bed-Stuy showing ’em off to make an example of my black ass. Some Witness Protection Program they got here. You want to know how I’m doing? You can see how I’m doing, and I can’t see who the fuck wants to know. Ain’t you got more of that morphine?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. White, I don’t have any morphine.” I told him. I didn’t say all I had was some balloon animals, a hundred tired wisecracks, makeup, a red nose, and a wig. Tyrone White, the name on his bracelet, was not in the mood to enjoy a clown, but I wasn’t there for him. I was there to gratify my own curiosity about the man the whole town was talking about since they found him wandering around the parking lot at the hospital with his eyes gouged out. People had little sympathy. They resented him for bringing trouble and notoriety to this small town, even if he was the primary victim of it.

The monitor by his bedside patrolled heart rate and pulse, but there was no data on his state of mind. The nurses warned me not to go in his room. He was combative and non-compliant, but I couldn’t stay away. Whenever I find a life different than mine, I like to make it my own.

“Fuck Mr. White. That fuckin’ name is some mothafuckas’ idea of a bad joke. If you think givin’ me a new name and puttin’ me in this hick town is gunna turn me white and make everything a’right, then you’re a chump. Now they got my eyeballs in the drug dealers’ book of fuckin’ records. I’m tellin’ you I need more of that morphine.”

“Please, Sir,” I said. “There’s nothing I can do to get you more morphine.” Us clowns have no particular pull with the doctors. They keep us around to distract the kids and so someone can be more ridiculous looking than the patients while they’re tangled in IV lines, shitting in their beds. The nurses say we do some good, talking to folks no one else has time for. I say, when I’m putting on my clown face, I’m only painting a happy face on suffering. No one can take all the grief this hospital has to give. It’s just a face. It’s not like I’m curing cancer or anything.

Nevertheless, I have my own reason for playing the clown. I don’t tell anyone this, but one of these days I’ll write a book and all these people I meet are going to be its characters. Tyrone White will be my black guy if I can get him to tell me what it’s like to be black. They say, write what you know; but I don’t know much, so I’ll write what I can find out.

“Shit, where I come from you can get anythin’ you want. Morphine, heroin, weed, crack cocaine, you name it. You don’t think I never done that stuff? Any time I want. I used to sell that shit. If I still be sellin’, I wouldn’t be lyin’ in this bed right now. Oh, no, I’d be havin’ it goin’ on.”

If I wasn’t a clown, I would have thought I had a good start on learning what it’s like to be him, but I knew what he was doing. He was putting on his face, just like I do. I’ve got my funny face, which happens to include gobs of white paint, and he has his angry black, New York City drug dealer face. I do it to cover my emptiness. He might do it to cover fear. Rage and laughter both cover up everything else we don’t want to feel. Everyone’s got their dark parts when you get up close. Then, when you see an other’s darkness, you don’t have to feel your own.

“You were in the Witness Protection Program?”

“Mothafuckin’ Witness Protection Program made me what I am today.”

The darkness always pokes out, like a patient’s ass from his hospital gown.

“I was sick of the city, you see. I had it goin’ on, but I was sick of it. In eighth grade I was wearin’ tailored clothes and buyin’ everyone lunch, but you can’t go out on the street without strappin’ three guns on. I’d wake up and have a piece in my hand before my feet hit the floor. There’s a war goin’ on in Bed-Stuy. I shot at people and people shot at me. There’s plenty more’d like to shoot me. When you’re at the top, everyone wants a piece of you. In Bed-Stuy everythin’s image. You can’t be lettin’ people see you look weak or you’re dead. Well, I was gettin’ weak. Sick of it. So, I was out of there, man.”

When I get up in the morning, I don’t consider myself ready until I put on my red nose. Then I don’t have to worry about being anyone. People already know how to treat me, and I know how to treat them. It’s all about image everywhere, not just at Bed-Stuy. People act surprised when they hear about a sad clown, as if purple hair was a filter protecting against alcoholism, avarice, and molesting little boys with banana shaped balloons. A costume can do none of those things, but it can make you invisible.

“I was fucked up all the time. When you’re sellin’ crack cocaine, you’re also smokin’ it and you don’t give a shit. You’ll kill who you want or get killed, you don’t give a shit. I went into rehab a couple times, but when I got out, it’s right back to the same thing. I wasn’t feelin’ myself. Then the man comes and picks me up. He wants me to name names and places where they’d be, almost like they knew I was gettin’ sick of it. So, I think, here’s the man who wants to give me a ticket. I say, yeah, I’ll give you the names you want. Just get me the fuck outta here.”

I’m always looking for the moment when people see who they are and who else they could be. The instant of revelation. It hits like a punchline. Tyrone had his when he heard a noise outside his apartment one day. He went in the hallway and saw about six thugs with baseball bats beating a man, clubbing and kicking him. The man just lay there, like he was already dead. Most of them went away, but one thug stood over him, looking down. He opened up his fly and pissed on the man. After he zipped up, he raised his head and the skin on the back of his neck folded like an accordion. Then he was gone, leaving the man broken and pissed on in the hallway.

The man still made a noise when he breathed, so Tyrone called 911 for the ambulance. The cops asked if he saw who assaulted the man. He said he didn’t see no one.

“I don’t rat on anyone, man. You just don’t do that.”

“The cops kept on comin’ back to my crib to ask if I saw who messed him up. The man was in a coma. I heard about it on the news. So, now I’m thinkin’ about what happened and wonderin’ if I’m doin’ the right thing. I don’t give a shit they beat the man up and put him in a coma. He pro’bly had it comin’. I beat up men, too. I messed them up real bad. I hit them with baseball bats and chains. I shot a man once. I threw a guy three stories off a roof. He landed on his feet, broke a leg, and limped away while I climbed down the stairs and chased him. When I caught him I beat him up some mo’. I did things, but it was business. I never did piss on no one. That’s what I just can’t see.”

If he was going to turn in the guy that pissed, he had to do it so it wouldn’t set himself up. He thought about the Witness Protection Program, but he knew the cops would never put him in it just because he witnessed an assault. So, he sold some drugs to someone he knew was a narc who’d been prowling around for months trying to get something on a big supplier, but no one was selling him nothing. The narc figured Tyrone was all he was going to get, so he arrested him. In the station, Tyrone made his offer. He would tell him who his supplier was if he let him go and put him in the Witness Protection Program. The narc went for it and when he was drawing up the papers Tyrone said, by the way, I know the thugs who beat up the guy in my building. They told him he died already, and they were real happy, getting someone for murder. So, they put Tyrone on a bus here, gave him a new name, and told him to blend in.

“I’m thinkin’, I got off clean. But nobody gets out. It’s like crabs in a barrel, one starts to climb out and the others pull him back in. Nobody gets out, nobody.”

I’ve lived here all my life, it’s not a bad place if you’re not a teenager half mad with boredom or an adult with an ache for big money. Every summer they have a festival in the town square and every Christmas they light up a star on the mountain like the Star of Bethlehem. Someone at Witness Protection probably got off the highway once, looked around, and figured a small, out of the way town like this was ideal to transplant a witness owed a favor. The trouble was no one the complexion of Mr. White was going to blend in. Within four hours, half the town knew an angry, black man had gotten off the bus. They would’ve been less excited if a camel had walked down Liberty Street, stopped at the Wooden Nickel, and ordered a beer. Those who weren’t waiting for him to pull out a gun and rob the Sugar Creek store expected him to break out rapping.

“I got my apartment and stayed up there a couple weeks. I didn’t get out ‘cept to grab a pack of ciggies. I figured if too many people see me, they’ll send the KKK after my black ass. There’s some shit here I ain’t used to. There’s trees. There ain’t no police cars with their sirens on at night and no broken bottles on the sidewalk. I kept lookin’ around, thinkin’ a wolf or bear’s gunna come up the street. Everythin’ so different, but next door is a playground and they got a hoop set up. It’s got a new net strung on to it and no one’s played since I got there. I’m thinkin’, that girl’s got a new, white fishnet skirt and be wantin’ Mr. Spaulding to come party with her. So, I got me a ball and went out to hoop it up.”

Tyrone stood alone, feeling the rubber pebbles on his fingertips as he pushed the ball to the ground. The court, except for a muddy patch under the basket, was grass, and the ball bounced in unpredictable ways. He shot free throws first, running in after he let go of the ball to get it before it splattered in the mud.

“The first were bricks. Then I got my range and made the hoop flounce her skirt. This ain’t no playground with a clanking, chain net and hard bitches shakin’ their brass earrings, fulla attitude. This is gunna be fine. I’m gunna get me some white pussy and it’s gunna be just fine.”

I can see it in my mind. He was magic with the ball. Shot after shot came down with a whispered swoosh. Others teased at the rim like a cunning tongue flicking a snatch. Then he shot some jumpers with a soft kiss off the backboard and three-pointers that reached the basket like a long look across a room. The dribbling pounded like a heartbeat. He drove to the net. Time and time again, he went in, his skin slippery with sweat, till his body called for release. Then he started to slam it in, and the hoop bucked in response. With each slam the ball splattered in the mud, getting wetter and wetter.

Tyrone paused to clean off the ball and saw that a group of teenagers had gathered to watch. His nose caught the smell of marijuana. They wore their jeans low and one had a box, pumping Hip Hop. A girl with long blond hair stared at him as she ran her tongue over her lips. He could fuck her if he wanted.

“Want to run?” said their spokesman, a boy spinning a dark ball worn smooth on his finger.

“They be wantin’ to run with the niggas, but they don’t know the first thing about being a nigga.”

He put up a hook shot that circled the rim one and a half times and went down.

“You got next.”

“I didn’t come all this way to still be a nigga,” he told me, “even head nigga to a bunch of nigga wannabes.”

I was glad he couldn’t see I was some clown, just like those kids, trying to know what it’s like to be black when I don’t even know what it’s like to be white. What is it that you are when you are white, anyway? You’re nothing; except, just, not black. In fact, being white means you’ve got to get your color from someone else. You’re nothing but what you can steal from another.

Witness Protection got him a job at Burger King, but Tyrone hadn’t reported to work when they expected him to. He’d been hiding out from bears and the KKK in his apartment. The day after shooting baskets, he ambled in. They still needed help, so they gave him a uniform on the spot and told him to come back tomorrow.

“The first thing I did when I got me a uniform, I took my picture and sent it off to my mama. I knew she’d be proud I got me a job. They said I shouldn’t do that, but I just had to.”

Burger King is right off the highway. People from all over get off to stop and get a bite to eat. The locals come, too. Old farmers nurse cups of coffee and watch stunned, yuppie tourists in pairs holding maps. On Sundays, tight-lipped people from church eat one booth down from Japanese chattering about the pictures they took. The church ladies in sun dresses stand in line for the same fries as leathered bikers reeking of beer. Truckers with family nearby radio their women to meet them with the kids as they pass through. The children squirm in their seats as the rigs idle outside. “I drive all over,” Tyrone heard one say to his boy, “but, no place is as good as this.” Tyrone agreed. And in Burger King, the front porch of our small town, there was no rich, there was no poor; there was no con, there was no snitch; there wasn’t even any black and white. There were only the workers and customers of Burger King .

Tyrone studied the blacks with new eyes, like a grown man studies old pictures of himself as a child, looking to find someone he recognizes. One day as he mopped the men’s room floor he studied the washboard neck of a big, black man taking a piss. “Hey, blood, how’r you doin’?” said the man. Tyrone identified him as the thug who pissed on the man in the hallway. Their eyes met. All that Tyrone could think about was, I wonder if he’s gunna piss on me. As the thug jiggled the last drop off his dick, Tyrone fled. In the dining room he saw a second one look up from his chicken sandwich. Their eyes met. Tyrone didn’t wait around to find out if they were together. He stuffed his Burger King visor in the trash and pushed out the door.

“Next, I call up Witness Protection and this guy says they couldn’t convict anyone. I tell him they’re carryin’ drugs up and down the highway, get me the fuck out of here. He says, ‘they haven’t threatened you, have they? Call us if they do.’ Motherfucka, I say, and hang up the phone.”

For a few weeks he never left his apartment. He opened 40’s of beer and listened to the drumming of basketballs outside his window. A letter came back from his mama scolding him for writing to her. His brother was going to prison. A cousin had been shot. If you write again, send money. I miss you. I love you very much. The kids outside in the playground continued acting like niggas as if they knew what that was.

“I hurt people bad just to get outta the city. Then, when I got out, I wasn’t nowhere at all. I ain’t got no business getting out, not that way I ain’t. Someone’s gunna have to get hurt to get everythin’ right again. That someone might be me.”

He heard that a farmer wanted help with his chickens. Tyrone went to see him in the morning and two semi’s were idling in the driveway, loaded with boxes. They pulled the boxes off the truck and brought them into the chicken coop. Inside, forty thousand white hens were screaming like Barclay’s before a Net’s game. Eggs paraded on conveyors in front of the cages, each holding seven birds worn out from laying and waiting to die. When the last of the eggs were collected, they pulled the birds out of the cages, squawking and wings flapping, and stuffed them in the boxes. In a few cages, where there was a bird dead already, they’d pry the body out of the cage and throw it in the shit below.

“The farmer told me, if a bird gets weak, the others‘ll peck it till it dies.

“We be done loadin’ boxes of birds and the farmer says he wants me tomorrow. He likes the way I work, he says. Like my life depends on it. The next day I come in and he straps an engine on my back and puts somethin’ like a vacuum cleaner hose in my hand, only it doesn’t suck the air, it blows it out. He tells me to blow out the cages. When they got so many hens living in cages, their feathers rub together, makin’ feather dust that gots to be cleaned out. Next, I’m goin’ down the rows of cages holdin’ the vacuum cleaner hose like I’m fuckin’ Scarface. There ain’t no cages no mo’. I’m mowin’ down every mothafucka I know. There ain’t police to stretch tape. There ain’t no one gawkin’ at bodies, ’cause there ain’t no bodies to gawk at, they all be explodin’ into dust. There’s me, cleanin’ house. Nothing’s going to be the same no mo’.

“I get the job done and the farmer comes up to me grinnin’. I say, what you lookin’ at? He says, I’m lookin’ at you, you’re as white as I am. I look down and, shit, I got feather dust all over me.

“I go home, wash up, and stop by Burger King to get my last paycheck. I don’t have to tell you the thugs were there. I’m in the back talkin’ to the manager when I see them waitin’ in line at the register. I know they know who I am and there ain’t no gettin’ away. I go up to the counter and say, like I still work there, can I help you?”

Accordion Neck says, “Why’d you do me dat way?”

Burger King might just as well have closed down right then. The whole store just stopped. The church ladies in their flowered dresses patted their lips dry with napkins and looked up. The old men shook their heads. The yuppie tourists folded their maps. The bikers rose up and glanced at their bikes like they were saying it’s gunna get too rough for me.

“The whole store is starin’ at us like no one ever seen so many niggas in one place. I ain’t gettin’ away this time. I be like those chickens waiting in their cages. They snatched me up outta there and stuffed me in their car. They drove out in the countryside and stopped. Accordion Neck went out to the woods to take a piss. I’m thinking that nigga got some kinda bladder infection, but he comes back with a stick.

“‘Yo’ trouble is yo’ see too much, and yo’ talk too much. So, I’m going to stop yo’ seein’.’

“Then he shoves the stick in my eye while the other nigga holds me by the hair.”

“I been jabbed in the eye on the ball court and I knew that a thug messin’ up my eyeballs was gunna hurt, but it didn’t hurt at first. I was mixed up, thinkin’ a water balloon busted all over my face.

“Then I heard, ‘Shit, fucken nigga’s got his eye juice all over me.’ He takes the stick, raps me up the side of my head, and pokes out my other eye. Now it hurts like a mothafucka.”

“Did everything go black?” I asked.

“Black? Shit, no,” he said. “I thought when you go blind, you see black; but everythin‘s white. The whole world’s turned fuckin’ white.”

I realized I was blind, too. I was seeing only in white; which is to say, I can’t see anything at all.