Read Online Tuff by Paul Beatty - Free Book Online

okay?”
    “Just don’t read Jordy that Pippi Longstocking—turn the boy into a white-girl lover.” Yolanda scratched the back of her head. “I can trust you with him tomorrow?”
    “Of course.”
    “No drinking, no reefer. Jordy is your son, not some nigger you know from your program.”
    “It only happened once, go to sleep. One damn tattoo.”
    As she turned to leave, Winston grabbed her by the sash, reeled her in like a yo-yo, and puckered up for a good-night kiss. Yolanda obliged. Winston’s lips mole-hopped from Yolanda’s mouth to her breasts with soggy pecks. Flicking a crusty nipple with the tip of his tongue, he covered the spigot with his mouth and took a long pull. A streamlet of milk coated his tongue. Yolanda moaned in soreness and pleasure. Winston sat back, a globule of milk pooled in the corner of his mouth. “You had arroz y abichuela con pulpo from Dalia’s for dinner, didn’t you?” Yolanda shookher head in disbelief and boxed his ear with a solid smack. Winston raised his arms, basking in self-adoration. “I know my breast milk. I should be on TV. I could suck women’s titties and say what they ate for breakfast. Now that would be a good-ass job. ‘Scrambled eggs with cheese and onions, blueberry pancakes, lightly buttered.’ ”
    “Be careful with him tomorrow.”
    “One tattoo.”
    Yawning, Yolanda disappeared into the darkness of the hallway. “Good night, Tuffy.”
    “Don’t be dreaming about Giorgio Johnson.”
    Winston adjusted Jordy on his pelvis and pointed the remote control at the dark television set. The screen lit up with a satisfying instantaneous pop. A frail-looking white boy was playing catch with an offscreen partner. The camera zoomed in for a close-up. Two features dominated the boy’s sullen face: a set of knobby cheekbones and a pair of fly-wing-thin varicose eyelids. His shriveled head was covered with a baseball cap five sizes too big. The camera zoomed out and someone lobbed the kid a baseball, which, using two hands, he clumsily caught in the palm of his brand-new mitt. After tossing the ball back, the boy turned to the camera to make his plea. “Hello, my name is Kenny Mendelsson. I’m ten years old, but I have the brittle hips of an eighty-seven-year-old woman and the hairline of a chemotherapy patient.”
    “You got a sense of humor too,” Winston said, turning to Jordy. “That nigger got—what’s that disease called? Geezeritis or some shit.” Winston gingerly lifted each of Jordy’s limbs, checking behind the joints, in the concave pits, for skin blemishes or irritations that might be a sign of some such congenital malady. “I feel you, G,” Winston said to the television. “Believe me, I know what it’s like to get old before your time.” He ran his hand over his son’s back, reading the ridges and fatty folds in his soft skin like a familiar braille. Winston stopped at the right clavicle, where the lizard-green block letters embossed on Jordy’s Kahlua-brown skin read, DA’ BOMB . He sighed.
Da’ Bomb. Man, nobody don’t even say ‘Da’ Bomb’ no more
. Hopefully, it’ll fade as he gets older. And anyway, these light-skinned babies get darker when they get to be about five or so.
    The next public-service announcement was for the Big Brothers program. A bald-headed black actor Winston was familiar with from some bit parts in a long-canceled television show walked down a tenement row in measured, authoritative strides. Speaking in a dinner-theater baritone,the actor strode up to a young black boy in a striped polo shirt. He clamped his hands on the boy’s shoulders. “Providing guidance in an environment bereft of direction is the moral mandate, nay, the incumbent duty of African-American men. Isn’t that right, Clarence?” Clarence looked up at the man’s chin and smiled. “Yes, sir!”
    “Show them what I taught you.”
    “Now?”
    “Yes, now.”
    “Once upon a midnight dreary,” Young Clarence began reciting an