Heathens - David Haynes

 

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      On a Sunday afternoon in April Marcus Gabriel and his son Ali are trapped in the express lane at the Highland Park Country Lane market.  In the middle of preparing a batch of dump cookies as a peace offering to Marcus's mother, Verda, they have run out of sugar.  Marcus hates days like this:  cool, bugless spring days when every Lutheran in St. Paul starts the car only to drive around aimlessly.  The Catholics, too.  Outside the grocery the streets are clotted with traffic -- much worse than State Fair time.  At least at fair time the Lutherans and the Catholics and the farmers stay up by the fairgrounds. Driving the two miles from Tangletown to the supermarket, no less than four drivers courteously yielded the right-of-way to Marcus.  "All that niceness," Marcus said to Ali. "That's what causes accidents."

      There are six customers in front of them in the ten-items-or-less lane.  Marcus has a five pound bag of Domino sugar and six bottles of mandarin orange spring water.  Ali carries the Pringles Light BBQ chips and a cellophane package of cashews.  The cashews are for the dump cookies.

      Marcus nudges Ali.  "Go up there and make sure everybody has ten items or less."

      Ali reports back that the old woman with the blue rinse has eleven, maybe twelve items.

      "Go give her a dirty look." Marcus orders.

      "Do it yourself," Ali says.  He goes back to reading his skateboard magazine.  Ali is twelve.  He has walked up and down every aisle with his face stuck in Freestyle Deluxe magazine.  The potato chips are for him, or at least that is what he would like to believe.

      Five minutes later there are still three people in front of them.  The other lanes are six or seven people deep -- Lutherans with baskets full of nutritious foods.  Ali shifts impatiently from one hip to another, sighing loudly.

      "If you'd roughed up that old lady when I asked you to, we'd be out of here by now," Marcus chides.

      Ali is not amused.  "If we'd gone to a real grocery store, we'd  be home.  But, no. Marcus has to go to the Country Lane.  This fuckin store don't even have scanners."

      "Doesn't," Marcus corrects.  "And this is the only store that has mandarin orange spring water on Sundays."

      "We could have gone to the fuckin SuperAmerica for that."

      Ali uses the word fuckin in every other sentence.  As a sixth grade teacher Marcus sometimes feels the need to extinguish this behavior.  Whenever he remembers to do so, somehow fuckin seems like the correct word.  It also seems too much the sort of thing his mother, Verda, would do.

      So instead Marcus says, "Well I'm not twelve and I don't know everything.  Besides: I always run into my students at SuperAmerica.  Shoplifting."  Marcus bobs his head around like an owl when he says this.  Then he pops the top off the chips and dumps some out to eat, hoping they will make Ali less cranky.  Ali's been cranky ever since LaDonna, Ali's mother and  Marcus' significant other, was sentenced to thirty days in the Shakopee Women's Detention Center for trying to sell a house on Dayton Avenue that she really didn't own to a cartel of Japanese business men.  It would have been fifteen days, but LaDonna waved her arms around claiming to put a hex on the judge. Sometimes LaDonna didn't know when to quit.

      "Oh for pity's sake," says the old man in front of them.  A lot of old people shop at the Country Lane.  Marcus, believes they are old Lutherans who have a fear of scanners. This old man is wearing suspenders and a plaid shirt.  In one hand he's got a twenty pound turkey and in the other hand he's got a bucket of green stuff.

      Ali and Marcus lean around in different directions, nonchalantly trying to get a look at the bucket.  The old man gives them suspicious looks.  They act innocent, Ali by reading the skateboard magazine, Marcus by reading the headlines of the Weekly World News.  Another baby born tattooed.  Once Marcus had a contest for his sixth graders to see who could write the best headlines.  Marcus won by himself anonymously submitting "Storybook Romance Ends as Legless Man Shoots Dwarf Bride".  That was an actual headline.  You could never make them up as good as the real ones.  This was just one of Marcus' many strange assignments.  His students couldn't do any of them.  Like Ali, most young adolescents nowadays suffered from some kind of warped cynicism.  They believed in tattooed babies and in the real love between Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown.  They didn't believe in weather forecasts or in anything that happened before 1974.

      "What do you suppose is in that bucket?" Ali whispers.

      "Irish mashed potatoes," Marcus answers.

      Finally Marcus and Ali dump their goods on the conveyor belt.  The checkout person hooks a finger over Ali's magazine.  "Get that here?" she asks.

      Ali recoils and squinches up his face.

      "He's deaf and mute," Marcus says.  "No one knows where those magazines come from."

      Declining a paper bag, they carry their purchases to the Bronco.

      "Watch this," Marcus says.  He pulls out onto Snelling Avenue.  He accelerates to forty and weaves in and out of the Sunday drivers, passing Lutherans on the left, Catholics on the right.

      "You drive like a crazy person," Ali says.

      "Lime sherbet," Marcus says.  Ali nods in agreement.  They have already eaten all of the cashews.

    

    

      Marcus tastes a spoonful of dump cookie batter.  He makes Ali taste it too.  They both shrug.  It's hard to say with dump cookies.  A raisin bite tastes sweet, a nut bite doesn't.  Marcus dumps in more sugar.  That's how you make dump cookies -- dump in a little of this, dump in a little of that.

      Dr. Ione Wilson Simpson comes clicking into the kitchen.

      "Hi, neighbors," she chirps.  Ione is the Pentecost lady who lives next door with her husband Mitch and their son Butchie.   The Pentecosts have a lot of rules -- no drinking, no smoking.  No haircuts, at least not on the women.  Marcus wonders how Ione stands up under all those rules.  He wonders how Ione stands up under all that hair.  The dump cookie recipe came from Ione.

      "I was just preparing tomorrow's lesson when I saw you gentlemen come in. Thought I'd check up on you.  Nothing naughty going on, I hope."

      Ione teaches at Mid North Bible College.  She taught Christian Married Life until the state cracked down and made them offer what at least sounded like real courses. Now she's teaching The Christian Tradition in English Literature.  For weeks its been Percy Byshe Shelley this and Percy Byshe Shelley that.  As if this was the first she'd heard of him.  Marcus had asked, "Where'd you get your Ph.D., Ione?  K-Mart?"  He'd warned her she'd better slow up on that Romantic poetry before she and Mitchell started hanging around in Como Park and seeking arousals and desires of the earthly kind.

      "Aren't you a caution," Ione had said.

      Marcus always makes flirtatious, suggestive cracks around Ione.  Ione thinks black men are supposed to do that around white women.  She laughs and giggles, purses her lips.  Marcus doesn't imagine there's too much action next door.  Mitch is sort of a lump.

      Ione gives Ali a pat on the head.  Ali is wearing headphones, reading.  His T shirt says "Afro, Mondo, Skateboard, Death."

      "I see you're making dump cookies," Ione squeals.  "Give Ione a taste."

      "They're for my mother.  She loves Ione's dump cookies."

      "How is sister Gabriel?" Ione asks, concerned.  Ione starts dumping more stuff from the pantries into the dough.

      Marcus' mother is fine, except for the fact she's not speaking to Marcus because of the big fight at last Sunday's dinner.  Marcus and his mother and LaDonna fight every Sunday at dinner.  Last week LaDonna was in prison, Marcus won the fight, and his mother stopped speaking to him.  She calls up every twenty minutes, sighs loudly into the phone and hangs up.

      Marcus hopes Ione's dump cookies will make her feel better.   Ione is spooning the dough onto cookie sheets.

      "I talked to LaDonna this morning," Ione says.  "LaDonna tells me that Christ is by her side helping her through this ordeal."

      Marcus knows that what LaDonna is really doing is setting up a pornographic tape distribution network for the girls in Shakopee.

      "For a little pin money," LaDonna says.  LaDonna is never long between schemes. She fully expects Marcus to smuggle tapes into the prison inside bowls of Jello salad. LaDonna hopes her association with Ione makes her respectable.  She asks Ione to pray for her, presents Ione to Marcus' mother as the sort of upstanding friends she merits.

      Verda Gabriel says LaDonna is a heathen, as is everyone LaDonna knows.

      Ione places the first batch of cookies into the oven.  She is rehearsing a lecture called "The Good Woman of the English Novel".

      "You know," Ione says, "those Bronte heroines were often upstanding models of Christian love."

      Marcus thinks Ione is crazy.  Ione is wearing a long chocolate brown skirt with a slit up the back and also a pink knit top.  She has a great figure.

      "Ione, did anyone ever tell you you dress like a waitress at a Mexican cock fight?"

      Ione cackles hysterically.  "I've got these cookies started," she says.  "Switch pans every twenty minutes and ya'll will be ready just in time for Mother Gabriel's dinner. Four P.M., right?"

      Marcus' mother has had dinner at four o'clock every Sunday probably for forty years.  Roast meat, baked potatoes, green beans, rolls.  Last week she made a leg of lamb in honor of LaDonna's imprisonment.

      "I best see to my own dinner," Ione says.  She opens the headphones away from Ali's ears.  "You haven't been over to play with my Butchie lately."

      "Been busy," Ali says, snapping the phones back into place.

      Butchie is nine.  Ali says he is sadistic, bizarre and retarded.  Says Butchie claims his G.I. Joe's are "bad boys" and gives them swirly shampoos in the toilet.  Ali says that all their little uniforms have blue rings around the collar.

      "So, Ione, what fabulous meal are you making for the little man today?" Marcus asks.

      "Lipton orange chicken," Ione says.  "It's a whole fryer, two packages of onion soup mix, and a can of frozen orange juice concentrate."

      Ione will write that down for Marcus and put it in the three-by-five card box on the counter.  It is a yellow box with orange daisies on it and it says "Ione's recipes" in Kroy type.

      Ione will probably also make a dump cake.  That's a can of fruit cocktail dumped over a package of yellow cake mix.  Much easier than dump cookies, but Marcus' mother won't eat fruit cocktail because maraschino cherries change the color of her stool.

      "My best to your momma," Ione says.

      "One more thing," Marcus stalls her.  "Why is it you Pentecostal gals have such nice behinds."

      Ione giggles, says "Have a nice supper" and goes running out the back door.

      "That whole family is retarded," Ali says, not bothering to either look up from the magazine or switch off the Walkman.

    

      Ali announces that if supper with grandma is to be anything like last week he'd as soon stay home and eat chicken with Ione.  Ali often walks into Ione's dining room unannounced to sit down and eat.  He wears his headphones so he won't have to listen to their chatter.

      Marcus hands Ali the shaving cream, streamers, and balloons and orders him to get busy on the Bronco.

       Marcus doesn't think last week's dinner was so bad.  It was about a six on a scale of one to ten, with a one being the times that no one says anything, and a ten being the time LaDonna and his own mother had circled the dining room table with carving knives, each threatening to show the other how the big girls play.

      Last week Marcus' mother met them at the door in a black dress, dabbing at her eyes with a white linen hanky.

      "Somebody die, ma?" Marcus asked.

      All the shades were drawn in the house.  Mrs. Gabriel waved her hand as if she couldn't speak.

      Ali said, "What's up Verda?"

      She grabbed Ali and hugged him and kissed him and said that everything would be all right and not ever to call her by her given name again.

      "What's her problem?" mouthed Ali.

      "Are you feeling all right, Verda?  I mean mother."

      Verda straightened her back, shook her head, and said dinner was getting cold.

      At Sunday dinner Mrs. Gabriel sits at the head of the table in her late husband's place.  With big puppy dog eyes she offered the lamb, the potatoes, the rolls.

      "Now I'll say grace," she said.  "Lord help us," she prayed, and then burst into tears. Ali mumbled "Jesus Christ" under his breath.

      "What's wrong, mother?  Did they cancel "The Wheel of Fortune"?  Is Oprah on vacation?"

      Mrs. Gabriel composed herself.  She bravely picked at her lamb roast.  Finally she could no longer hold back the stream of tears.

      "A terrible thing has happened.  Do you remember Mrs. Coles' son, Terrance?"

      "Oh yeah, old Terry, went to the U."

      Mrs. Gabriel sniffled a few times.  "Well . . . he's joined the homosexuals."  She said that and burst into a crying fit.

      Ali fell off his chair, laughing.  Marcus put down his fork, disgusted.

      "Really, mother," he'd said.  "First of all: the homosexuals is not a club you join like the Elks."

      Mrs. Gabriel cried louder.

      "Furthermore:  everybody knew that Terry gave twenty-five cent blow-jobs in the alley all through junior high school."

      Marcus' mother turned off the tears instantly, stood at her place dry-eyed, ordered Ali to get up.  "Go upstairs and get me an aspirin.  Move it."

      Ali got up; Marcus knew he would stand outside the door listening.

      "This is a small community, Marcus.  How is a black woman supposed to be able to hold her head high."

      "I figured we'd get around to LaDonna," Marcus said.

      "She's gone too far this time," Mrs. Gabriel said.

      "Mother, you know full well LaDonna's been in jail before."

      Mrs. Gabriel cringed.  Marcus jumped to LaDonna's defense.

      "She's gone straight, you know that.  If the loan check had cleared the bank LaDonna would have owned the deed outright.   She'd be ten thousand dollars richer today."

      "A thieving little shrew," Verda seethed.

      "It's called no-down-payment real estate.  People do it all the time."

      "And go to jail for it."

      "You're blowing this out of proportion:  she wrote a bad check."

      "For five thousand dollars, Marcus.  You're married to the biggest bunko artist west of Chicago."

      "You know we're not married.  And don't talk about LaDonna that way.  She's gone straight.  For good this time."

      This Marcus feels is true.  From prison LaDonna has announced plans for Madame LaDonna's Herbal Beauty Care.

      "I won't have that woman in this family."

      "She's not in your family:  she's in mine."

      Mother Gabriel clasped the sides of her head.  "There it is again.  Shame heaped on top of disgrace."  She collapsed in her chair and let her head loll to the side.

      Which is when Marcus broke the rules.  Usually the big blow up came after desert, when Mrs. Gabriel would announce she'd heard enough and show them to the door.  She and ,LaDonna would pass each other and go, "Humph."  Last week Marcus had reached his limit.  Was it not enough the miserable hours he spent deprived of the magical LaDonna, the long evenings, the lonely nights.  But to have this, his own mother, be so insensitive.  Marcus called Ali in from his listening post.

      "I won't give you the satisfaction of throwing me out of this dump.  Let's go to McDonald's, son.  Get a decent Sunday dinner for a change."

      They strutted out that door and down the walk just like pimps.  Marcus blew the horn all the way down Portland to the corner of Lexington Avenue.

    

    

      Marcus takes the last batch of dump cookies from the oven.  He has placed the already cool cookies into a Famolare shoebox for his mother.  He will take the others to LaDonna out at Shakopee, maybe with a hot film, maybe not.  LaDonna says to wear something sexy so she can show him off to the girls.

      Ali comes in and stuffs a dump cookie in his mouth.

      "Got that car ready?"

      "Ready to roll," Ali snuffles.  Ali has hung streamers and balloons from every place they could be tied.  With shaving cream he has drawn an anarchy symbol on the hood, and written "Verda's Boys" on the side doors and windows.

      "Sunglasses up and ready," Marcus orders.  They give each other Elvis Presley sneers, burn rubber as they pull away from the curb.  Marcus puts an old Santana cassette in the tape player.  They cruise down Grand Avenue ten miles over the speed limit.  Carlos' wild guitar screams from the windows.

      "Wanna go to Mount Rushmore next week?" Marcus asks.

      "Don't we have to visit LaDonna?"

      "LaDonna's busy mixing Noxema with oregano.  Ione will look after her."

      "Let's do it," Ali says.

      They stop the Bronco in front of Marcus' mother's large frame house.  The house with the steep green lawn is stately, even elegant in the afternoon sun.  Neighbors point, smile and wave at them.

      Marcus takes the cookies and a bullhorn from behind the seat.  They pose on the boulevard, hands on their hips.

      "May I have your attention, please:" Marcus says into the bullhorn.  The words echo in the wide screen porch which covers the front of Verda Gabriel's house.  "Attention, Verda.  You are surrounded:  open the door at once.  Your boys are here and they've bought dump cookies."

      There, the two of them stand, grinning in their big dark glasses.  Behind his father's head Ali makes bunny ears with his fingers.  They can see her in there, in the picture window, peeking out, checking for Mormons and homosexuals.  Her hands first cover her mouth and then are on her hips in defiance.

      They know where she's gone, stomping out of her formal parlor.  She's clenching her fists, checking herself in the mirror, cursing at them under her breath.  She's setting the table, checking the roast, smiling as she decides how, after a desert of dump cookies a-la-mode, she will make those two heathens pay for this little stunt.