Till You Hear From Me: A Novel Read Online Free

UBE DEBUT MIGHT BE, IT WAS SO much worse. Within the space of fifteen endless minutes, my father managed to offend or insult Latinos, gays, feminists, black parents, the president of the United States, and the pastor who had succeeded him in the Rock of Faith pulpit, not necessarily in that order. The reporter’s first innocuous question—“Do you think that the election of Barack Obama signals the dawn of a new America?”—set the Rev off like a firecracker on the fourth of July.
    “A new America?” he roared in the grainy video. “Looks like the same old place to me!”
    And he was off. Ranting and raving, charging and countercharging, in a swirl of angry words/words/words that sounded like they ought to make sense, but didn’t. I had never seen him like this and it was all I could do not to turn away, but there was something that wouldn’t let me. Something almost as disturbing as what he was saying and that was the way he was saying it. For as long as I’ve known him, the Rev has moved through the world chin up, chest out, eyesfocused unblinking on whatever lay ahead. But now, sitting on the dark green leather sofa in the new pastor’s study, spitting out the most cynical, simplistic views about the most complex, sensitive issues of the day, he didn’t look strong and focused and certain. He looked sad and saggy and
old
. Even his magnificent voice sounded hollow and lacking in conviction.
    “All I’m saying is this,” the Rev practically spat out the words. “Being black is different from being a member of these other groups you’re talking about. They have their issues. We have ours. The problem is these other groups—the gays, Latinos, women—all of them learned how to organize and confront for change from the African American freedom struggle. They all acknowledge it if you ask them when there’s no cameras on them, but once the media boys get there, they act like they never even heard of Dr. King.”
    I closed my eyes, but I could still hear him, angry and strident. “The gays fighting back at Stonewall? The women marching around and burning their bras?”
    Burning their bras?
Had the Rev slipped through some kind of time warp? Half the women in America these days have probably never even owned a bra!
    “Those Latino kids staging a walkout over immigration issues? They learned all that from us, but do we ever get a thank-you? Not likely.”
    “But didn’t they learn their lessons well?” the reporter asked off camera. “Didn’t those lessons help to put the first African American president in the White House?”
    The Rev leaned toward the unseen reporter and pointed a long, slender finger in his direction. “And so what if they did? Brother Malcolm used to say when white America gets a cold, Black America gets pneumonia. It’s the same today. New paradigm, old paradigm, race is, was, and always will be the dominant force in American life and the sooner Barack
Hussein
Obama realizes it, the better off he’ll be.”
    Then he turned directly to the camera, which up until that point he had ignored so completely, I didn’t think he was even aware of it.
    “You owe Reverend Jeremiah Wright and the whole black community a public apology, Mister President, and until he gets it, I remind you of that old saying,
the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
    He paused for what I guess was supposed to be dramatic effect. “Jeremiah Wright is my friend.”
    What the hell did that mean?
    Was he using the Internet to declare himself an enemy of the president? The same president I was still hoping might offer me a job? There weren’t enough Excedrin Migraine tablets in the world to stop the throb that was now beating in my brain nonstop.
    I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose tightly, which didn’t do anything but make me want to sneeze. I picked up the phone and punched in Miss Iona’s number.

FOUR
Old-School
    “T ELL ME AGAIN WHY YOU NEEDED ALL THIS STUFF SO FAST ON A F RIDAY night?”