Paris

Paris

 

"Micheal!"

Somehow when she calls me "Micheal," it is as smooth and soft as, well, a Southern Belle would say the word. It is like she's singing a song, and want to add the emphasis that I am no ordinary "Mike".

Barbara -- my Barbie -- is the only person now who calls me by that name and not suffer any consequence from it.  No stares. No grimace. No "huh?" as in "try it again, bud?"  Just a smile.

She was calling me from the kitchen, where the sound of rushing water and clanking dishes was coming from. We have a dishwasher -- one of those GE spacesaver scrubber super squirter things -- but Barbie washes her own dishes. Has since she was eleven, she brags.

I was sitting on the couch in the living room. Okay, that was a lie; I was sprawled out on the couch, with my head resting on one arm and my feet and legs draped across the top edge of the couch.  The cat was resting on the far end of the couch and rather to wake her, I just moved my own body around the couch to accommodate her.

After all, she views the couch as hers and would probably do something stupid like scratch or bite her owner if I placed my legs onto the cushions beside her.

 

"Barbie?"  I responded back to her, grabbing the remote to mute the television set. It is hard to hear a soft voice through three walls, which were the number of walls separating the kitchen area from the living area of the house; and through the rushing water as I observed with my ears the rinsing action of Barbara's hands as she moved dish or utensil through the vortex of warm water.

"When was the last time you heard from Paris?"

"France, Hilton, Berry, or DeMarco?" I answered, grinning from ear to ear.

The water turned off. Uh-oh... I heard steps. I could not maneuver my body off the couch in time.

The woman turned the corner to bust me. 

"Okay. Are you re-living your childhood or forgot how to lay on a couch?"

I pointed to the still-sleeping cat occupying a small but important section of the couch below my S-shaped body.

"Oh..." she said, walking into the living room and promptly scooping up the cat, then turning and placing her on the floor, "she thinks this couch is hers...I bought it with my ex's money long before SHE came around -- and YOU!"

  

I finally moved my body off the top edge of the couch and laid prone on the couch.  Barbara found my panted legs and rubbed them.  I could still feel the dampness from her hands -- a side effect of dishwashing.

"Paris BERRY, hon... when was the last time you heard from him?"

"I didn't think you really liked the guy, Barbie..."

"I don't. I think he's the most sexist, racist, bag of wind in the universe.  But you like him, and I just wondered if you've heard from him."

She's correct on all counts. Paris Berry was the man truly everyone could find a reason to hate. At close to Barbara's age -- 53 -- he was still living in that year. Blacks were "Negroes", women were "dames" or "chicks" or "dolls", the government were "crossed eyed fools and crooks", and old people like him -- of Scottish descent -- were the "salt of the Earth."

She was also correct that despite all of his shortcomings, misspoken words and outright "tell-it-like-it-is" ness, he was perhaps the best volunteer we had in town. I liked the man. You need something done -- give it to Paris. You need to organize an event, raise money, or help out a cause -- give it to Paris and let it go. He was able to move past the fact that he still thought that computers and technology is evil. 

Walk past the fact that racial relations in our town is at an all-time high. Constantly, both Republicans and Democrats found Paris and wanted him to raise money for their campaigns and every time he would proclaim "I'm not a Democrat nor Republican -- I'm an American!" as if to say that neither party would get his time.

Paris Berry was an old man who clearly knew where all of the bones were buried and all of the secrets kept. I enjoyed hearing his stories even if they were peppered with swear words and talks about racial groups -- including my own -- in less than a good light.

"The last time I heard from the man," I said, shifting my left leg a bit, "he was working on some kind of school project. But that was before I came back home."

"You should go uptown and go visit the old coot," Barbie said, moving herself off the couch. She bent over and planted a kiss on my nose, then on my lips.  I returned the kiss smack before she straightened up and walked back toward the kitchen. "You know you'll enjoy the visit!" 

"And," she said, reaching back to the sink area and starting the water going again, 

"You curl up on that couch again like that and you'll be sleeping there overnight!"

I smiled. She can even make a threat sweet.

------------------------

 

The old school in our town became the community center. Classrooms became offices for a wide variety of social and community services.  The larger classrooms retained their nature as classrooms for art and history, social studies and health and first aid course.  And the public library assumed control of the old school library and built a multimedia room beside it, full of computers with DVD and CD-ROM drives and ran by spiked-haired boys and girls with more body jewelry than fingers.

I walked back into the multimedia room and found Paris. He had a pair of headphones strapped to his balding head -- he had less hair than me -- and a pencil and pad of paper beside him.  He hit a key on the computer keyboard and then wrote something down before he looked up and saw me coming.

"Mike!! Hey buddy -- long time no see!!"  We embraced each other -- as far as embraces go among men -- and once again I smelled the Old Spice he always wore no matter what.

One of the spiked-haired boys looked up from his computer at the two old men.  He shook his head and returned back to whatever he was doing.

"Come on over here, let me tell you what I'm doing..." he said in a lowered tone.

I walked over to his computer and as I found a chair with my hands, I was stunned at what I was looking at on his computer screen.  It was Martin Luther King, Jr., being interviewed. The logo on the bottom right told me it came from some PBS product of some sort.

"Right after you left to go overseas," Paris started in that same lowered tone -- something different for the man who I thought could never whisper -- "I got into a big fight."

"I remember reading about it in the paper. Barbie sent them to me" I said, not letting on that I was very amused at the entire situation.

The local NAACP chapter was raising money for a set of scholarships to give to white youth graduating from high school.  This was the first time that the civil-rights organization decided that they would spread their resources in town to assist all youth. They already give two scholarships to black youth and two to Hispanic youth...they chose Paris to help them to raise the money.

In the process, Paris referred to the organization as the "Colored Peoples Club", got the letters all mixed up and called it on one occasion the "NAPPC" and when someone asked him what was that...he proudly made up what he thought it meant:  The National Associated Nappy head Persons Club"!

The regional newspapers had a regular field day; Jesse Jackson was threatening to force a revocation of the local chapter’s charter unless they fired Paris; and the female Chapter president called Paris a "kook and a stupid old man" to which Paris responded by calling her a "spook", a not-so-nice reference to her racial heritage. 

Everything was smoothed over when Paris, the day before he was  fired as their fund raiser, presented a check for $18 thousand dollars to the organization.

As his fee for his work, he normally receives ten percent of whatever was raised.  He felt so bad about the controversy that he gave his ten percent to the organization as well.

"I've been sitting here watching these shows, but my butt's getting pretty tired. You think they might let me slide these discs home and I can find someone's computer to put them in?"  He was pointing to the stack of discs neatly arranged on the side of the computer.

"You went through all of those?" I asked, picking up the stack and looking through them, glancing at the old man before reviewing what he has been watching.

" "Roots?", "The Story of Malcolm X", "Ray" -- that's a movie, Paris!!" 

"Look. You don't know what damage I did to myself after all of the NACCP stuff," he said.

I corrected his initials.

"Why can't you folk just call the group something else?" he asked. Then in an almost whisper he added, "I got sued."

 

 "Oh my God! Paris, who sued you?"  I knew already -- I read about it in the paper, but I didn't know how far the city would go.

"The city. They said that while I was a good fund raiser and community activist -- they called me an activist! -- that I would no longer be allowed to raise a dime for any organization unless I took some sort of racial and sexual awareness course. 

The college didn't have such a course, so I had one of those Jew professors to put something together for me."

I grimaced at the name calling reference.

"So I have to complete all of these questions -- by the end of the month -- and then they'll give me a new permit to raise money."  He handed me a sheet with his name, address and the seventeen or so questions he is to answer. 

"Hey!! I've got an idea -- you're a neg...black person.  You can answer these for me. We can work on these together. I've already got some of the answers already!!"

"I can see that," I said, trying my best to keep in a laugh. "You know, Aunt Jemina and Uncle Ben are NOT related..." reading down the list of questions.

"They aren't?"  I shook my head from side to side.  Paris grabbed his pad, flipped back two or three pages and lined out his detailed answer.

"Wait a minute! Let me read that..." Paris finished lining his responses and then handed the pad to me. I read it aloud:

"Aunt Jemina and Uncle Ben are popular names for foods. The firms which named them took their names from the names of slaves which worked in a milling town in Mississippi.  In the Old South white people commonly called old black men as "Uncle" and old black women as "Aunt" even though they were not even distantly related to the white family.

Aunt Jemina was later purchased by the Quaker Oats Company and continues to this day to be an extremely popular set of products fronted by a ..."  He lined out "Negress" and placed "black"...

"...woman. Uncle Ben, on the other hand, featured an old man dressed in a bowtie, like the male version of Aunt Jemina. They were married and continue to show people that colored people can become famous."

"Where did you get this information from?"  I handed the paper back. "And by the way, there's no such thing as a "negress", okay?

"I know. I showed this to someone else and they laughed at that word. You people wanted to be called "negroes," then "colored", "Afro-Americans" and then "African-Americans".  Why can't I just call all of you "black"?

 

I looked at the old man. I knew that no matter how I explained it, he would get it screwed around somehow.

"The safest thing to do is call us "black". Nothing else.  No "hyphen-American," no "colored", and definitely not that word that starts with an "N", okay?"

"But that's what you are...that's what the state says...." I looked again at Paris, trying to give him the "Are you really that stupid" look.

It worked.

"No, I'm not stupid. You can see that I've answered most of the other questions okay..."

He did, even if he "colored" the answers in his own old, this-is-what-I-know style and made up some of the details. 

All except for the last question, which he had no answer for.

"Is this where you're stuck?"

The question was "Where did the march on Washington take place at?" 

The smart-aleck wrote "In Washington, DC."

"I've been watching this over and over...I don't know. They don't say."

"At the Mall, Paris. The Mall is where they held the march at, in Washington."

"It was outside...I can see that...there's no mall there..."  He turned and looked back at the computer screen.  It was showing people with posters, standing and sitting and yelling. He stifled a little yawn. "They couldn't get that many thousands of people in a Mall, anyway."

"The place is called the Mall. Don't ask me why... but that's what it's called. Don't ask me why. I've got to go… I was just wondering where you were, and Darlene Allen told me where I could find you.

Darlene Allen was the NAACP chapter president.

I stood up and moved the chair back under the desk where I grabbed it from. I patted the man on his shoulder.  "Sorry to hear you got into a little trouble, but I'm sure you'll get yourself out of it.  Barbie was asking about you and that's what got me trying to find you."

"Glad you're home, Mike. And tell your doll..." then he corrected himself, "Please tell Barbara I said "hello" and I'm looking forward to her cooking again someday."

"I'll tell the doll that..." I grinned. We shook hands and he hugged me again.

"You're one of the few col...black people in this town who will still talk with me. I'm hoping to change that. I'm trying....it's just hard to fix years of the way I was raised..."

 

I nodded. "I know. That's why I try not to give you a hard time about it.  If you were younger, I would say or do more...but you're lived your life and for the most part nobody's shot at you yet. I can't say that for a lot of black men who grew up like you...and who couldn't change."

------------------

 

I returned home and caught Barbara on the phone, talking with one of her friends.

I half-kissed her -- phone was in the way a bit -- and walked to the living room.  I overheard her telling whomever it was that I just came in the door and that she'll talk with her later.

She walked into the living room and sat down beside me while I flipped through the channels on the TV set, settling on a comedy show recorded in black and white.

“Did you catch up with Paris?"  I nodded my head up and down.

"He said "Hi doll!" I smiled.  I then related to her the afternoon's conversation and his discovery.

"Oh my...he's actually using a computer and everything... I thought he hated those machines!"

"He does...but he's adjusting to change like the rest of us..."

"Only thing, change for him takes a long, long time in happening." Barbie hugged me.