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Real Black

The University of Chicago Press

Contents

1 Real Fictions.......................12 Real Harlemites.....................353 Real Bodies.........................634 Real Jews...........................895 Real Publics........................1256 Real Natives........................1517 Real Emcees.........................1738 Real Names..........................1979 Real Loves..........................225Notes.................................231Index.................................281

Chapter One

We have entered a realm of all-performance-all-the-time. This is not to say that "the real" has disappeared, but it is to acknowledge that it is impossible to recognize "the real" without a concept of performance in view. Peggy Phelan

Sincerity is key. If you can fake that, you've got it made. George Burns

Welcome to the desert of the real. Morpheus/Slavoj Zizek

* * *

Working with Watermelons

"Look here, let me tell you something," Bill says, wiping down the counter in front of him with a frayed and dirty white towel. In another uncanny example of those sometimes short-circuited differences between people and their things, the towel matches his own gray-bearded scraggliness. It is a resemblance that I jokingly point out to him just about every chance I get. Bill even laughs occasionally, grudgingly, almost agreeing with my not-so-innocent comparison. But he also blames me for his tattered, rag-like state-me and people just like me. "And I'm serious about this," he continues, "serious as cancer about this here. So you listen to me. Listen good to what I'm saying. You think you have all those degrees and letters behind your name; people make you think you're a big shot. I don't care about any of that, none of it. It don't mean nothing to me. Nothing! Absolutely nothing!"

"What makes you say that?"

"W-w-w-what m-m-makes you s-s-say that?" he mocks inexplicably, as though I had just stuttered, which I had not. So I simply furrow my brows, smile with nervous politeness, and continue watching his handiwork. My eyes cannot help but follow Bill's machete blade-sharp, silver strokes back and forth against lush, wet redness. He is cutting whole watermelon into halves, those halves into quarters, each quarter into smaller cubes, and those same cubes into even tinier bite-size chunks-all to be packaged for sale in 20 oz., Saran-wrapped plastic containers. When the cutting is done, he will march the chopped watermelon pieces upstairs to the sidewalk and arrange them atop a metal foldout table that one of his daughters, Margaret, should already have draped in kente cloth. Bill is running late and has missed the morning rush of commuters and pedestrians, but he is working on several different kinds of projects this day, which means that he slows his chopping down even more just to lecture me:

"You are like all these other black people running around here who refuse, absolutely refuse, to follow their own destiny. Refuse to do it. You'd rather follow someone else around. They can't teach you what I can teach you. They can't teach you your destiny. They can't teach you that. They can't teach you how to stand up like a man and control your own resources. Control your destiny. Raise your family. These black women here, the worst thing they have are African American men like you. That's why they go after everybody else-West Indians, West Africans, Panamanians-anybody but you. Because they're raising you instead of you raising them, instead of you taking care of them and showing them how to take care of themselves. You know who I respect? You know who? Palestinian women. They raise warriors. Warriors! They raise warriors, while we send people to Duke University. It's a damned shame."

As Bill cuts, sweats, and scolds, he braces himself against the rusting metal countertop inside the leaky kitchen basement of a small Pentecostal storefront church. The church is letting him temporarily use its building, along with a portion of the sidewalk out front, as a base for his family's vending operation. He will sell watermelons and health books here for the next few months-either as long as they let him, or until he finally does what he has been threatening to do since the very first day I met him: "give up on these ungrateful black people once and for all" and "let go of the ghost."

This morning, however, Bill simply continues to work, cutting up watermelons in his brand new location, a spot that seems to be doing minor wonders for his vending business's productivity. The church, conveniently located right on 125th Street, Harlem's key commercial drag, is only a couple of blocks from the supermarket where he buys his melons, on a good morning, for $5.99 apiece. It is also across the street from Harlem's only commuter rail stop, just forty more yards from the bustling IRT subway line, and a mere five traffic lights down from the one-room, second-story loft where he stores his thousands upon thousands of book titles, collected over some fifty years of bookselling-once as a storeowner, now as a street vendor. Bill's books clutter just about every square inch of his wood-paneled loft space, precarious hard-covered towers that peak at the paint-chipped ceiling above and leave only the thinnest, snaking footpath from the front door to the back window. With Harlem's housing stock rising rapidly these days, and everyone trying to cash in on the changes, Bill's landlord has already officially started the eviction process. If he can get Bill evicted and "flip the apartment," he can charge more than triple the current amount in rent. Deciphering the proverbial "writing on the wall," Bill has already begun to search out alternative storage spaces, even as he simultaneously contemplates walking away from the books and the loft and the watermelon altogether, part of his threatened attempt to "let go of the ghost." Today, however, Bill is not talking about any of that. He just keeps cutting up those melons as he simultaneously reproaches me for my misguided life choices.

The first morning I catch Bill's daily watermelon-chopping routine in its newly Pentecostalized location, he makes sure to introduce me to the pastor's mother, an elderly matriarch who spends about as much time milling around the basement most mornings as Bill does-sweeping floors, dusting cabinets, scavenger-hunting for something or other that a church member might need, silently leaving Bill alone to do his watermelon work. That day, the first chance he gets, Bill stops her briefly to let her know that I am writing a book and will be following him around as part of my research. "If you want to write a book about Harlem," he says to both of us, "you gotta start with a place like this one. This is a real black church. Working for the community. Open every day. Every day. And lovely people. How many other churches around here would let me do what I'm trying to do here? Let me set up like this here? Full access to everything, whatever I want. I just try to keep the place clean. Make sure that when I leave, it's just the way I found it. Respect their building."

By the time I make my first visit, Bill has not been working out of the church for more than a couple of weeks; so everything is still relatively new to him, even ad hoc. He is only beginning to figure out his...