The son of mr suleman, p.33
The Son of Mr. Suleman, page 33
“How so?”
“You have a bit of a temper.”
“When provoked.”
“I saw that ugly side of you come unbridled in Hancock Park.”
“I was assaulted. You saw me get assaulted.”
“I saw what transpired, had a front-row seat, and to be honest it has left me a bit concerned about a Black man from Memphis.”
“I was minding my own business. He assaulted me. Baited me.”
“Don’t end up being the victim of someone’s rite of passage.”
“Doing my best. Doing my best. But they are making it hard.”
“I was with you. If they killed you for some reason, they would do the same to me. I’ve seen videos of how they treat Black women here. They drag teen Black girls in bikinis across concrete with no remorse. I don’t want to be bloody murdered or shot by a racist because a racist bumped into you and suddenly you forgot how Americans have guns.”
THE SECRET LIFE OF GEMMA BUCKINGHAM
CHAPTER 53
Sammie-Lynn sipped her Coke and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Not saying who said what to whom and when or why it was said, but The Commercial Appeal, Bartlett Express, Collierville Herald, and every blogger in the tristate is trying to find Dr. Stone-Calhoun.”
Professor Quarry whispered back to his excited wife, “Channel 5 and channel 24 reported from outside of the Judge of all Judge’s twelve-bedroom plantation home. He refused to comment.”
“Heard the newspeople are still whistling Dixie and waiting outside his mansion down by Wolf River. She did something. Had to be illegal.”
“They want to know the state of their marriage, if nothing else.”
“Rumor for the morning is she met with a divorce attorney today at Dowden, Worley, Jewell, & Olswing. Met as soon as they opened.”
“Once again the Calhouns are a front-page, pictures-above-the-fold story in the tristate area.”
“She was abruptly fired from UAN and fled to her so-called sick momma’s raggedy house in Brownsville. And now a divorce. I guess that’s her Heartbreak Hotel until she finds gainful employment.”
“The queen of Memphis now qualifies for unemployment.”
“Escorted from campus in front of everybody and their momma.”
“By the chancellor herself.”
“Big fall from grace.”
“She has gone from meeting the president of the United States and pooping in the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House to once again fighting mosquitoes in the crummy bedroom she slept in as a child.”
“Her sick momma lives in a run-down two-story log-and-chink home constructed of white oak on what was once a nice plantation.”
“Dilapidated, from what I heard.”
“It has a nice wraparound porch.”
“She never talked about her Brownsville living.”
“She came to the city and didn’t look back, but I heard she’s been supporting her sick momma since she left and married the judge.”
“When I get the address, I’ll send it so you can drop it in Google.”
“What else we know for certain?”
“She became a ghost before her constituents could question her.”
“The mayor didn’t take her calls.”
“Neither did the senator.”
“Nor the White House.”
“Our chancellor had her blackballed lickety-split.”
“And not a word from the judge.”
“He approved this, then; otherwise, heads would be rolling.”
“Oh, checking my phone and this just in.”
“What now?”
“Rumor is the judge cut off her access to his family money.”
“She’s become a rich pauper too?”
“She’s gone from eating caviar to eating potted meat on saltines.”
They weren’t too far off the mark. I was hanging with the gossipers to get a feel for what the rest of UAN might know so far. Was worried that my name would come up, despite the legal arrangements.
Professor Quarry said, “What-some-ever happened had to be god-awful because the judge couldn’t fix it by threat, by check, or by ringing the mayor, the chief of police, or the governor. She was escorted away like a common criminal. Students posted multiple videos across social. The Aggressive Six approached her first thing in the morning with the president of UAN as their lead. He is never here before ten in the morning. He got out of his bed early, so this is beyond serious. Without a hello to anybody, he ordered the professor thrown off UAN campus immediately. Heard she had quite a hissy fit on the way out the door. She was carrying on like a fool in public. This is the wife of the Judge of all Judges. He had to green-light it as well. He had to have.”
Sammie-Lynn leaned in, chuckled. “Heard she took those big ma-chest-ic boobs over to U of M seeking employment. That betrayal is far worse than the judge becoming a Yankee.”
“Ten times worse in my book.”
“The Tigers wouldn’t let her in the front door. Our fallen pharaoh did something bad. She has been ostracized. Persona non grata.”
“Don’t worry. Give it time. The truth always come out in the wash. Might take some time, but I always find the truth.”
Sammie-Lynn rolled her eyes. “Sick mother in Brownsville, my behind. This is too much drama for a sick momma.”
Then the lovebirds noticed me sitting there, eating and checking social media and texting Gemma Buckingham about hooking up later, head down as if I wasn’t paying them any attention. I became relevant.
Professor Quarry leaned in and spoke to me in a hushed whisper. “You act like you’re not excited to hear the news about our dear sweet Dr. Stone-Calhoun. While we were in New York and you were in California, her office was being cleaned out.”
“I’ve been too busy to check the rumor mill. What’s going on?”
“Professor Pi Suleman, didn’t you hear what we just said? Or have you been too busy playing on your phone to listen up?”
“Not playing, multitasking. My father’s death, people are still messaging me, and I was a bit preoccupied with work issues.”
“They say she suddenly resigned, claimed she needed to suddenly move back to Brownsville so she could take care of her sick mother. Hogwash. If her sweet little mother is that ill, common sense says she would’ve brought her up here to her plantation house, not move back to that dilapidated home she grew up in. To top it off, she claims she’s thinking about moving up north. I know for a fact it’s true.”
“How so, Professor?”
“Sammie-Lynn is her real estate agent. Her people contacted my wife regarding finding long-term accommodations for Dr. Stone-Calhoun up there with the Yanks, near Ithaca, where nobody will know her name.”
Sammie-Lynn pondered. “Tenured professors are fired for one of four reasons.”
“True.”
“One is incompetence.”
Professor Quarry shook his head. “Which she wasn’t.”
“Refusal to do their job.”
“Which she did.”
“Now, the third is moral turpitude.”
“Fraud? Perjury? Hit and run? Domestic violence?”
Sammie-Lynn slurped her Coke. “I’m betting on embezzlement.”
Professor Quarry disagreed. “UAN is paying millions to make it go away.”
“The only thing left is hanky-panky.”
“It has to be something to do with sex.”
“Dr. Stone-Calhoun . . . and sex.”
The newlyweds laughed like it was the punch line to end all punch lines. My cellular rang, and I excused myself from the circulators of news unproven by raising a finger like I was in church, stepped away.
Soon as I answered, Four Ds’ panicked voice rolled out as fast as Eminem doing a high-speed rap. “Mane, she knows you’re back. Said after today if you don’t come be my arbitrator, she’s going to take the video to UAN and send copies to my wife late tonight.”
“Let me minimize the damage. I can be there in a couple of hours.”
“Can you meet a nucca a couple of hours sooner?”
“Got shit to do. Text me the meet spot. Two hours.”
Taking hypocritical breaths, I ended the call and went back to my seat, my cold onion rings, my warm coke.
They had no idea why the UAN had settled a lawsuit that would’ve rocked M-Town like a 10.0 earthquake. Even if they had heard what had happened, they’d never believe it was with a Black man from Memphis.
Sammie-Lynn asked me, “Well, what do you think of all this mess between the prestigious Calhouns and the UAN, Professor Suleman?”
“Well, I have no idea what to think, but it sounds like she blew this job.”
“It has been verified she can’t get another. At least not at U of M. She might have to go teach high school in Ithaca, New York, if they can tolerate her nasty better-than-you attitude for more than fifteen minutes.”
I said, “She was definitely a credit to her people. God bless her.”
CHAPTER 54
The same way a student had stalked me, after I had finished lunch with the gossipmongers, I got comfortable and chilled in the shade in front of the sculpture of Rameses the Second. I waited for his stale lecture to end to set this straight. Professor Thor came out of the UAN music building thirty minutes later than I had anticipated. My problem smirked when he saw me, then changed his course so he could pass by me and look me in the face with a smile made by the devil.
“Well, if it ain’t Shaun DeRay Malcolm X King Smith Mckesson with nappy hair by Angela Davis.”
He chuckled like he had come up with the most mashed-up millennial insult ever.
I smiled but wanted to slap the taste out of his mouth and make him kneel before Zod. That was the straw to topple a lazy man’s load.
I trailed my rabbit at a fast pace, then turned and stood in his face. That move startled him. Professor Thor tried to go around me and I moved with him. We did that dance over and over like a comedy routine. He chuckled, thought I was putting on a minstrel show and trying to get him to laugh.
I bumped into him head-on and his blue eyes went wide, reacted like he’d been shot.
He asked, “What was that?”
Perplexed, getting mad, he tried to walk around me again.
Where he moved, I moved. I kept getting in front of him.
“Ain’t you the Jesse Lewis Carl Jackson today, rushing like there is a BOGO at Popeyes. Why y’all love that Popeyes so much? Ain’t as good as Chick-fil-A, but you people lined up like you were trying to get on a ride at Libertyland to get ahold of that Popeyes chicken sammich. The way your people were acting like fools, you’d think the people were seasoning their dead birds with menthol.”
Every pejorative, every insult, the way he said them, you knew it wasn’t the first time. These were his scripted lines, lines he had practiced in the mirror while working on his Don Rickles delivery and innocent smile. This was what made him feel empowered. But today was not going to be his day.
White men gave Black folks a lot of bad days, but it was a worse day for a white man when a Black man was fed up. This Suleman was the son of another Suleman who took no prisoners.
I let him stroll a little while; the next thing the old man knew I was back in front of him.
“Why you meddling? Your nearabout tripped me up. Stop larking. I need to air up my car tire before my long trip home. Behave that way again and you might find yourself in a heap of trouble.”
I Hancock Parked him again.
He tried to stroll faster and get away, but I stayed on him like I was tailgating, driving in LA, switched lanes and cut him off, gave him some more Hancock Parking, a lazy man’s load being unpacked.
He asked, “Is there a problem?”
“Is there?”
I was smiling, so in his mind this melanized dog was wagging its tail, couldn’t be angry. A kicked dog was gonna holla, and that was what I was here to do, holla about being kicked, tail wagging with a smile. I Hancock Parked him one more time, the ultimate Hancock Park, and he toppled to the ground.
He was terrified. “Professor Suleman.”
“So you do know my given name. Thought you had me confused with somebody else.”
“Of course I know your gosh-darn name.”
“You have called me out of my name forty-fuckin-eleven times, but that’s not a problem, right? If I knew your name, knew how hard you had worked to get a little respect and still called you out of your name every time I saw you, if I called you David Duke, Strom Thurmond, or Theophilus Eugene Connor with a chuckle and a knee slap, if I did redneck jokes, old white man–cracker–potted meat–man from Mississippi jokes while I pointed out white-on-white crime, I reckon that would be called a problem.”
It was in his wide, unblinking eyes that he knew what he had been doing. This had been his safe place, where he was allowed to get away with his microaggressions, insults he had probably done year after year unpunished, but all of a sudden, when called out, he reverted to being a terrified country boy.
“It was some harmless teasing. A little harmless fun.”
“A rope is harmless until it’s around a man’s neck. Your insults have strangled me.”
He was an aged soldier with no army, too scared to get to his feet.
He sat humiliated as his crotch grew wet as rain.
“Professor Thor. Professor William Archibald Spooner Thor the Third, of German blood, a man who acts like he owns the day Thursday and is the god of thunder. You. Ain’t. Shit. This has been a waste of time. You’re nothing. Here I am thinking you have me at a disadvantage. But you know what? I won against you a long time ago when I conquered every obstacle all the George Wallace–and–Bull Connor–praising honkies like you created to hold me back. I graduated from UAN, a Black man from Memphis educated in an underfunded public school in a neglected zip code, became a professor at a school that was forced to integrate my skinfolk during civil rights, when cotton was no longer king because they couldn’t force us to pick it for you, and you can’t stand it because you couldn’t stop us from rising up beyond your level. What’s hilarious is that you lost that battle a long time ago, but you still think you can win. Losing is beyond your way of thinking, especially since your ilk thinks the Old South will rise up again. Loser, you lost. Hear ye! Hear ye! Your childish Don Rickles insults are impotent to me from here on out. You ain’t shit to me. Bruh, I’m moving on and leaving your and your pappy’s ways behind, because people like you never change, even when learned a lesson by mouth or a good ass kicking. You’re old, set in your ways, and won’t change, but you will do this one favor because it will be good for your health. Next time you see me coming, run the other way. You’re not bred to run like Usain Bolt, but you see me smiling and whistling your way with my tail wagging, you better run like Forrest Gump. Hope you see me before I see you. I’m done being nice. Next to what I might do next, this right here will feel like I’m tap-dancing and singing ‘Oh Happy Day.’ Even if I smile at you, don’t mistake my Martin for Malcolm the way I did your Fox News for CNN. I know you’re probably a black shoe polish Justin Pierre James Trudeau copycat after dark; that’s okay, long as it’s done cowardly, behind my back, and not during the hours of the sun, inside your home. I can’t control you and won’t waste my time trying. But I got friends and they got friends. We be watching. One more thing. Be a good Christian and call everybody you come in contact with by our given Christian or Muslim or East Indian name. Stop crying. There is no crying in racism. This is me being as nice as I’ll ever be with you moving forward. Stop crying. Man up, dust off your britches, go find some good lemonade, and enjoy the rest of the gotdamn day.”
My bodacious shit talking came to a screeching halt when I saw the Aggressive Six storming my way. They saw me Hancocking and were coming this way fast to break my glasses and stomp my plates. Not another brother or sister was in sight to hold up a phone and record me becoming the latest hashtag.
CHAPTER 55
The Aggressive Six surrounded us.
They asked him, the white man, not me, if everything was okay.
We waited for his response. He was sitting in urine, thinking.
“Lost my daggone footing and this gentleman, my coworker, came along and out of the goodness of his heart took the time to help a fallen man back to his feet. Due to his assistance I believe I am able to walk straight now and will be careful how I walk from here on out.”
Professor Thor was a leaf shaking in a storm. He regarded security, then pouted down at the river he’d made in fear, put his wide eyes on the wet spot on his suit pants, struggled to his feet and skedaddled.
I turned to walk the other way, but two of the campus police blocked me, extended their hands out palms first, the police move that told my Black ass to stay the fuck where I was, because it wasn’t over for the Motherfucker who had stood his ground.
Schwarzenegger mean-mugged me, hand on his holster, same as the rest of his cronies.
“We saw what happened. We saw it all from the beginning. You pushed him to the ground.”
He looked toward the professor’s retreat until he was sure he was out of sight. When Schwarzenegger faced me again, his face was red with so much anger the pain made his eyes fill with tears. Barely able to speak, he stepped inside my personal space. He extended his right hand. Palm open. Confused, I did the same, knowing he was going to do a move that twisted my arm until pain took me to the ground. He surprised me, gave me a firm handshake, shook my hand vigorously as he choked up.
He said, “Auschwitz-Birkenau. Belzec. Bergen-Belsen. Buchenwald. Chelmno. Dachau.”
Confusion owned me until I read his name tag. Surname Rosenthal. Jewish. Then I understood. Thor was German.
