Rooibos

We left Adele in a precarious circumstance. Trapped in a tangle of chairs, she has to answer Mercy’s invitation to come up to her apt and have a cuppa.

Oh boy! Or, I should say, Oh girl. This is tough. It would be consorting with the enemy. But hadn’t she already done that by coming here? Her very presence gave the opponent points. Her side lost points just by being interested.

She hesitated. Then she decided to make the most of it. Isn’t this what she wanted? To find out who Mercy Alexander is? She put on her glowing smile, and said, “Sure, why not?”

Usually there are a lot of good answers to that question, but nobody’s listening. The query goes unanswered.

The two women left together. Nobody saw them leave; everyone had already gone. They looked quite a sight, the queen in her golden gown and her lady’s maid in the grey uniform of the sweating class.

Mercy lived right there in town. A very nice town, full of sophisticated stores with quaint slogans. One of the dentists, an openly gay man, had a sign hung out his window that said, “The Tooth Fairy.” The optometrists were “The Eyes Guys”.

Mercy had walked through the streets on her way to the meeting. People stepped out of the stores to see her and say hello. Now they drove in Adele’s car past an Indian, a Chinese, an Italian, a Greek and a Thai restaurant, each decked out in its cultural symbols.

There were music stores, candle shops, antique sellers, book nooks, coffee houses, bars, clothing boutiques, chocolatiers, wine merchants… it appeared to be a town totally devoted to pleasure.

There was a small apartment house at the end of one of the blocks. Small for an apartment house. Big for this scenic town. A block of bricks, six stories high.

“The Artists’ Hive,” Mercy says as she puts her key in the main door. “An endowment of the arts. And I, who am totally against such things, take advantage of it. You can report me to your people if you choose to. It’s disgraceful of me.”

There’s a small lobby with an elevator, and apartment doors on corridors leading to the left and right. Like a hotel.

“It’s not much,” Mercy says as she punches 6, “but it’s home.”

They get out and are facing a pitch black door. “Darkest Africa,” Mercy says pointing to it. “Be prepared.”

She opens the door. Adele was not prepared. A black face with red and white curving lines painted around its perimeter, lunged out at them, then jumped back into the vestibule. This was lined with fabric renditions of large-leafed plants, primary-colored parrots, twining snakes and had a huge elephant trunk descending from the ceiling.

“Sorry, Sweetie. I hope it didn’t scare you. You’ve probably never been to darkest Africa.”

No, she hadn’t. A few of her friends went on a safari five years ago, but she was involved with a doctor who was afraid of the shots.

“I haven’t been back in years,” Mercy said, waving her into the room at the end of the hallway. Adele walked suspiciously through the arch, and into a glisening red heart. At least she thought it was a heart. Maybe it was something else. The walls formed an irregular red cave.

“Plaster of Paris”, Mercy said. “It’s all built up on chicken wire, then painted. Sculptor down the hall did it. This is just a regular room – don’t be alarmed.”

The floor looked like hard-packed dried blood. Like the oxblood floor of a South African native hut – a color not unlike that of Phoenix Wagman’s hair. Thrown down on it was a huge zebra rug.

“Faux fur,” Mercy said. “Everything here is artificial. No animals have been harmed in this production.”

She faced Adele. “I’m the only real thing,” she said. “I like it that way. No lover, no pets, no friend. No competition.”

There was a glass table on the zebra rug, and little black leather stools on the oxblood floor. Mercy waved her to one of them, and disappeared behind a curtain of big black feathers. Adele heard another door close farther along in the apartment.

The room was hypnotic. The walls seemed to hug her in, and the top of the cave felt very far away. Mercy came back with two big tea cups. Aromatic steam poured from them. “Tea,” she said. “The coffee offer was just a come-on. I don’t keep coffee.”

“What kind of tea?” asked Adele, coming alert.

“Just tea. There’s only one kind of tea where I came from.”

“Where is that?” Adele woke up. Here comes information.

“Deepest Africa.” Adele thinks she has found out something, but Mercy continues. “As did we all. Not just black people either. All the other colors. They all started in Africa. Africa is the birthplace of humanity.”

The steam wafted up Adele’s nostrils. She couldn’t quite put words to its sweet yet pungent nose. She took a sip. Flower-like. And another.

Mercy continued talking. She’s an entertainer, after all. This is her art. It is for this that she is subsidized by you and me. Let’s let her ply her trade.

“We are the mother of all races. Our rambunctious children think they have grown wiser than we. We must show them they are wrong. But we don’t want to hurt them in the process; they are our offspring.”

Adele wanted to ask her if she had any offspring of her own. But it seemed rude to interrupt.

“We all have offspring,” Mercy continued, as if reading her mind, a talent of most good performers. “All God’s children are our offspring. We are responsible for making them all the best that they can be. Surely you agree?”

Of course she did.

But Adele wanted to take care of everyone at once, while Mercy thought the focus should be on each child. Mercy thought individuals, loosely bound by laws, made the society. Adele thought the society came first and molded its members to fit. Adele liked fitting in first and being herself within the framework.

Mercy presented herself as an African, Adele as an American. They couldn’t have been less alike. Yet they got along fabulously together.

Adele slid off her stool and sat on the zebra rug. Finally, she stretched out there and Mercy put on some music. African, of course. Drums. Adele could see tall, dark, angular half-naked people dancing. What with being tired, drinking the exotic tea, and looking up at into the deep red heart of the cave, it took her a few moments to realize that Mercy was caressing her.

Gently, lovingly, moving her big hands down Adele’s sides, cuddling her sweat suit close to her skin, making her feel dreamy and relaxed. It was more like a massage, than an amorous prelude. Hard to tell whether she should object. It was ambiguous. Not worth making an inter-party scene over. Besides, she knew Mercy was gay. Everybody did.

Adele rolled over, thinking that by changing her position and presenting her back, she would convey the message that she was not interested in anything further.

It had the opposite effect. Mercy’s hands went down to her hips, and then each one cupped a buttock and began to knead it. Adele was instantly aroused, though she didn’t want to be. She was adventurous, yes, but she was definitely heterosexual. Hanging out with the boys was her thing, but she did not want to be one of them.

She fought down the desire to open her legs and welcome someone in. She wasn’t sure what could happen, but she didn’t want to find out.

Adele extricated herself from a surprisingly strong grasp and squirmed away. She scrambled up, said, “Thank you very much for the tea. I enjoyed the evening,” and rushed out of the heart, through the fabricated leaves, past the mask, and back to her car.

She raced home, wondering how responsible she was for what had happened, and trying to figure out why she felt elated rather than violated. She’d had a good time with Mercy Alexander, and it certainly wasn’t because of her ideas.

Cleaning House

It’s mother-daughter showdown time. Brenda must confront her daughter. On two counts. Number one, she’s losing her. Number two, she’s lost her pot, and her daughter’s the only one who knows where it is.

But first things first. It’s no good to have your daughter looking at you all the time as if you’re a criminal, as if you’re exactly what you shouldn’t be, as if you’ve disappointed her. No good at all.

Even in the few short meals the family has time to take together, Sheba manages to get in her digs. “Oh, you’ll do all right. You know how to make people believe you, even if you don’t believe yourself.” “Ms. Marshall thinks you’re great because you’re going to fight against vouchers, and keep kids in the schools where they belong.” “I’m so glad we’re not going to Wal-mart anymore. It’s such a tacky place, and we used to spend so much time there. Remember when everything we bought came from Wal-mart?”

So here we are, the inevitable knock on the door, if the parent has a conscience and the child has pricked it. “May I come in?”

Sheba’s blue and yellow room is a shrine to daughterdom. There are no posters here, no wisecracks on the wall, no questionable objects on the dresser tops, and nothing hidden in the drawers. Sheba is perfectly happy having the maid clean her room.

The maid’s name is Cara, and she’s an old Irish woman. Wagman refused to allow Brenda to hire an African-American, or any other currently significant ethnic. Nobody will care if an ancient Irish lady named Cara is on her hands and knees in Brenda’s bathroom scrubbing tiles. That’s the way Cara works. No fancy gadgetry. A bucket and a brush. “Soap and water,” she says. “It was good enough in the old country, it’s good enough here.” Not that Cara ever saw the old country, but she learned her profession at her grandmother’s knee. Her mother was lost at sea. Ran off with a sailor.

Brenda is no longer so happy having what’s known in domestic circles as “a treasure.” She’s afraid the treasure might conscientiously get down to the level of hidden stashes in her determination to rid the Shapiro home of dirt.

She sits down on the plump chair across from the bed where Sheba’s is sprawled in her pajamas, doing homework, though it’s only seven, and still light out. Brenda is determined to be everything Wagman won’t allow her to be on the campaign trail. Honest, forthright, frank – high-sounding words that fall glibly from the tongues of politicians.

Sheba looks up with a bored expression. She’s perfected the art of silence. She waits, a giant trap for all who break their word.

Brenda is not going to waste time playing games. “You’re unhappy with me,” she says. Sheba is taken aback. She’s expecting her mother’s version of the “only a child” lecture her father delivered after the concert. She says not a word, but her face is full of interest.

“You think I’m a hypocrite.” Sheba’s not about to contradict this, so she still has nothing to say,

“Well, dear daughter, you’re worse. You’re a liar. ”

“I am not.” (Indignantly.)

“Oh, yes you are. You lied your way into that concert.”

“I never told a lie.”

“You said Phil was Rowena’s cousin.”

“He is.”

“What makes you think that?”

Sheba searches her memory. She’s young and still has one. The professor hadn’t said Phil was her cousin. The two girls hadn’t talked. Phoenix had arranged it all, and spoken to both of them. He told them to stay out of touch, so as not to confuse things, and they had obeyed.

“Who is he then?”

“I see you haven’t looked at the webpage.”

“Webpage? What Webpage?”

“Phoenix Rising,” I believe he calls it now, clever boy.

“You read his webpage?” Sheba is aghast. She feels like she’s been hiding naked in a cave and someone has been looking in a back window all along. You’re right, caves don’t have back windows. That’s how sure she was that no one from the adult world would penetrate the privacy of their kid communication system.

“We all do. It’s public property. Anybody can. Anybody does. A good thing to remember.”

Sheba’s excellent memory is making her blush, now that she reads over in her mind what her mother has been reading. Her mother has been spying on her. On them.

“Go ahead.” She nods towards Sheba’s laptop. “Take a look.”

Sheba doesn’t want to show any interest, but this goes beyond interest. She’s compelled. She squiggles down to the end of her bed, grabs her laptop from the bench at the bottom where it’s plugged in for the night, and calls up the site.

Scrolls down past the opening splash – a big, dark-red bird flying out of a fiery sun, and next up, a picture of Phil. But he looks different. He’s wearing a suit and tie and getting an award from the Free Marijuana Party, which is not an invitation to a dope-smoking gathering, but an organization dedicated to legalizing it.

Phil looks damned good, and a lot older, thinks Sheba. Wow! She went out with him. He wasn’t the professor’s cousin. He really was her date. Wow!

Wow! Wow! Wow! “Only a child”, huh? Would “only a child” be going to a concert with a man who won an award? Phil was a man. She thought about it. No, Phil was a kid, suit or no suit. A kid who got an award for promoting pot.

But her mother was still talking. “And I have another surprise for you. But first, answer me this: Do you really want me to be honest? Do you want to know the truth, no matter what it is?”

Sheba was repelled by the way it was put. It sounded threatening. It was threatening. But she had to say yes. It was the only answer.

“Yes.”

“That stash you found. It isn’t your father’s. It’s mine.”

A discombobulated daughter reassesses her mom.

There ensued a mother-daughter conversation in which mother did all the talking about her younger days and how everybody did it, it was no big deal, even the teachers did it, some of them before school – one of them in an abandoned janitorial supply closet, people drove down the street smoking, lit up at concerts, whole clouds of smoke would envelope the audience, you didn’t even have to take a toke, department stores sold bongs.

For once in the history of mother monologues, daughter was all ears, as her elder rolled out a world she could hardly imagine.

“But now,” Brenda said when she was through, “we have to get rid of it.”

“We?”

“Yes, ‘we’. I don’t remember where it is.”

For a second or so, Sheba stares at her mother. She bursts out laughing.

Then she whispers, “It’s in back of Dad’s closet.”

Brenda looks off into space, her mouth slightly agape.

“Oooh, yes. I remember!” Such a good hiding place. No one would think of looking behind all those old shoes. Not good enough, obviously. “Well, my partner in crime – it will be worse for me than for you if we get caught with it – we have to get rid of it.”

“We could flush it.”

“No, no. I don’t want to do anything like that. It will turn up someday. Maybe someday soon. The septic system could go… no. I want it out of here.”

“We could bury it.”

“For God sakes no. Dogs love the stuff. I knew someone who buried a pound of homegrown in his backyard. His dog dug it up and ate as much as he could, then he dragged the rest around to the front steps, and fell asleep on it. No. We have to get it off the property.”

The two ladies sit thinking.

“We could give it to Phoenix,” Sheba offers as a joke.

Brenda laughs. Then she says, “We can. He’s the only person I know who would burn it up, no questions asked. And if he were asked, he’d never tell the truth. You can count on that.”

Sheba thinks her mother has lost her mind, but it’s such a cool move.

Preparations for the potlatch begin. They open the door quietly and tiptoe into Brenda and Jason’s room, go to Jason’s closet, and Sheba, going way to the back of the wall-long construction, retrieves the little box.

They don’t open it. They scurry back to Sheba’s room. Sheba quickly throws on jeans and a sweatshirt. They breeze past the living room where their men are shouting at a sporting event. “Have to pick up some things,” Brenda says. “I’m taking Sheba with me.”

Jason doesn’t take his eyes off the TV, but an arm comes up and waves her away. He’s good at this. He doesn’t even say, “Be home by twelve.” He isn’t quite aware they’re leaving. He’s no problem.

They get into the Smart Car. On this ride together, they’re all jabber. Sheba is telling her mother about the concert. Brenda is telling killer stories of her own. They’re having fun. They’ve forgotten all about the pot Sheba has stashed – we won’t say where; that would be snooping.

Then “Ohmigod!” Our Brenda is back in the here and now. In her rear view mirror is a police car!

She automatically slows to precisely the 30 mile speed limit. The police car is definitely following her. It slows when she slows, speeds up when she speeds up. After what must be nearly a minute, the flashing lights go on and there’s one loud digital bark. She pulls over. The police car pulls in behind her.

The lights are still flashing. There’s a spotlight in her back window. In her mirror, she sees the officer get out. He’s coming toward her, gradually getting bigger in the mirror. With each step, there’s less of him there, and all of a sudden there’s nothing but a gun belt filling up the window.

Her heart is beating so hard she can’t hear. Her fingers are grasping the leather steering wheel.

A young, good-looking face replaces the gun belt in the window.

“Hey ma’am, I recognized you! You’re the Democratic candidate for congress. And that’s your daughter Sheba next to you. Pleased to meet you.

But mostly ma’am, I’ve got to admit, I wanted to see the inside of this cute little car. Never saw the inside of one before.” He bends way down to peer in. His face is so close to Brenda’s she could kiss it, or slap it. But he isn’t looking at her. He’s scanning the car. Then he stands up.

“Very nice, ma’am. Very nice. I’m thinking of getting one.”

Once again, only the gun belt is visible. Then a hand with a wallet appears, and the other hand takes out a fifty dollar bill and hands it to Brenda.

The head comes back down. “I’ll bet this is the first time money ever went in this direction on the highway,” he says. “Please take this. My contribution to the campaign. And thanks for the peek at your interior.”

“Ohmigod,” Brenda sighs when he leaves. “A human policeman.” She turns on the key.

Suddenly the officer is back. Is he going to search the car? Was he looking for something after all?

The head comes into the window. “Say, where are you two going, anyway?”

Brenda is speechless. Sheba leans across her mother and says, “I’m delivering something personal to a friend.” Phoenix has been alerted that something is coming – he doesn’t know what, but he’s meeting them down at the end of the semi-circular drive.

The police officer says, “Well, ladies, I just got an idea. How would you like a police escort?” He’s grinning ear to ear. He’s thrilled with the thought of escorting the candidate.

Brenda finds her voice. “Oh, no, thank you. Thank you very much, but we’ll be fine. We don’t need a police escort.”

“Come on, now,” the officer cajoles. He’s a pretty boy, used to getting his way with women. And he’s a cop. “Just tell me where you’re going, and I’ll have you there in a jiffy.”

The ladies are clams.

“What’s the matter? Don’t you want to tell me where you’re going?” He knows he’s scaring them now. They both blurt out the address.

“Well now, that’s better.” He’s back to the grin again. That always gets them. “Here we go now. Just follow me, as fast as you can in that little tub of yours.”

And now you know the true story of why the Democratic candidate and her daughter wailed up to the Wagman compound and how Phoenix Wagman received two ounces of weak, old-timey marijuana, not only in full view of, but aided and abetted by one of America’s finest.

And in case you’re interested in such things, I should report that when she got home, Sheba had a text message from the cop. We won’t read it; that too would be snooping.

Conflicted

Brenda has no time at all to think. Certainly not about her personal life. Nat has been getting on Brenda’s case. It’s as if he has nothing to do, there in his one-room shrine to masculinity, than to phone a woman and harangue her about international affairs.

“We’re going to war again,” he screams at her. “Now it’s Afghanistan! This bastard’s no better than Bush. He’s a war-monger. They’re all war-mongers!” Nat was a Kucinich man.

She tries to calm him with information she got from his very own lips. “Last week you told me he was bringing peace to the world by not building Bush’s missile shield. He’s so pro-peace, the Republicans are calling him an appeaser. They say this is surrender; that he’s endangering the world by believing in diplomacy. What more could you want?”

“To stop fighting. Especially wars we can’t win. We can’t win a war in Afghanistan. Nobody can. Doesn’t anybody read history? It’s impossible. Thousands of lives will be lost. For nothing. The enemy is a ghost. We can’t touch it. Why try? It just makes everyone angry.”

He wants her to use her candidacy to send the message to Washington that Afghanistan is no more responsible for blowing up the twin towers than Iraq is. We should pull out of both places, come home, and take care of the mess we’ve got here.

Wagman tells her not to listen to him. Wagman has her topics all mapped out. She’s to stick to education and health. Actually, two of the messes.

“Woman’s business,” she interpreted for him.

“And what’s wrong with that? You’re a woman.” He leered at her just for practice; he’s given up trying to be friendly. She’s lost her appeal for him. Always trying to express herself at the expense of winning. She had a chance for only one reason, and that reason was Obama. The safe thing was for her to stand in his shadow and follow wherever he went.

On Sunday, Obama was hammered by George Stephanopoulos who insisted, to the point of rudeness, that fining people for not having health insurance is a tax.

Wagman watched the President do a rather disgusting dance around the words, but he smarted when Stephanopoulos kept knocking him down. Let the man say what he has to, to get this thing passed. The party needs it. Obama is the face of the party, and if he goes down, Mitchell is going down with him, and he knows it. He wants Brenda to come to his aid. But Brenda is a still, in her heart, devoted to Hillary. She remembers the days when the young, black upstart, Barack, sucked away all Hillary’s glory. It’s easy for her to identify with his critics. She once was one, and a vociferous one, indeed. “We need an experienced woman in the white house, not a punk kid from Chicago with fancy duds and a good voice.” Yes, that was our Brenda speaking.

Everyone knows what she should do. Adele wants her to tackle Mercy head on, and accuse of her hard-heartedness. Adele is having her own problems. There’s all this racism crap surfacing, and she hates it. Adele, who doesn’t see her color as any more than a popular, cosmetic twist, feels incriminated in something she has nothing to do with. She knows a lot of damn fools of all colors. Stupidity, if nothing else, seems to be color-blind, and evenly distributed.

But when Adele puts on her Party hat, she knows perfectly well that the first thing people notice about her is her race. Even though, in point of fact, she is many more parts Caucasian than she is – dare we say the word – Negro. Only Obama is pure half and half, and that she admires – it’s so – fair. Perhaps that is a poor choice of word, but it is, also, fair.

Adele does not like Kwanza. She does not like having to choose between being a plain old American and an African-American.

Mercy is playing the race card all over the place. Using it in the most unpredictable ways. “Let my people go.” Really. Though it was hard to justify keeping kids in bad schools.

Adele is feeling restless tonight. She feels she should do something for the cause, but damned if she knows what. She keeps track of the opposition’s movements, and tonight Mercy is having one of her little racist gatherings. It’s with a group calling themselves “Young Afmerican Mamas” and though Adele is neither a Mama nor, to tell the truth, which she doesn’t, not all that young anymore, she feels included by virtue of – yes, folks – her color. Adele feels entitled to attend. If we can play it both ways, most of us will.

She perceives Brenda’s territory is being encroached upon. These mamas are going to talk about children, and children are the Democratic candidate’s profession. Adele decides to go to the meeting to sense the mood of the people and to discover a place where Brenda can stick in a shiv.

There’s a large turn-out. Not for the topic, but for the speaker. Not for education, but for entertainment. It’s in a big, hired hall. The Afmerican Mamas are a group of savvy, black, businesswomen, but they’ve drawn out their lower-class sisters, simply by showing them Mercy, an important cult figure with an amorphous, nameless fan club.

Not enough chairs have been set up, and the only men in the room, representatives of the building, scurry to bring more, as the ladies, dressed up to show off their new fall wardrobes, arrive. The economically challenged are wearing the same styles as the well-to-do, thanks to Wal-mart.

Most of the audience has come in little groups, and are babbling to each other. Then there is a stirring near the front of the stage, and the news is passed back that Mercy has arrived and will be out momentarily.

The place is electrified, as if everyone’s had four cups of coffee. These women are excited, and they’ve been talking their excitement up for fifteen minutes, as the hall has filled with more and more of them. This is big. They’re surprised. They feel powerful.

Mercy glides out onto the raised platform that usually serves as a stage for wedding bands. She’s wrapped in a metallic gold sheath, over which falls a veil of orange. The cone has been replaced by a many-times-coiled golden snake. Her hair goes in at the bottom and comes out the top, spraying from the snake’s mouth.

Adele experiences a momentary pang for persuading Brenda to stick to black and white. Then she realizes it will be a great contrast. Everyone will be in fall colors. Brenda will stand out. She relaxes.

Mercy croons in her lowest voice, “Good evening, Mamas.” It’s sexy. The women cheer. For themselves.

“Mamas.” This one’s even sexier, with a big, toothy smile.

The women are laughing now. They’ve already got what they came for, and they’re happy. Happy to be here. Happy to be included. Happy to be with Mercy.

“We’re a sexy bunch, aren’t we?” They all look around. Adele looks around too. With very few exceptions, the women are done up like killer courtesans. All kinds of hair, all of it “done.” All kinds of make-up, all of it done well. Everybody in tight-fitting duds, even the heavies. Bosoms all over the place. Adele didn’t think to dress. She thought it was going to be quiet gathering of sad, oppressed women, and she didn’t want to look conspicuous. She’s wearing a grey sweat suit. She looks conspicuous. She’s received a few chastising stares.

“But we’re not here to talk about sex, ladies. We’re here to talk about a side-effect of sex. Children.” It takes a while to sink in, then a giggle goes around the room.

“Your children.” She gives them time to recall their kids.

“Some of your children are in good schools. They can read. They have nice buildings and good teachers. School makes them feel good.” A smattering of applause as some women, some of them teachers themselves, acknowledge their good fortune.

“But others of you,” she says, “have children who can’t read, who go to school in falling-down buildings that don’t make anyone feel good, and can’t attract good teachers. The good principals don’t choose these schools. These schools don’t have Parent Associations with a lot of money to spend. Maybe you don’t have a lot of money to spend. But America does.

“America has trillions and trillions to spend. Ask Barack Obama. But it doesn’t have anything to spend on your children if you’re poor, and you live in a poor neighborhood with problems.

“Maybe you can’t get out. But your child can. Your child can get out tomorrow, simply by getting on a school bus and going to a different school. It might be a public school, it might be a private school, but it will be a good school, because you, Mama, will pick it. You will choose your child’s teachers, and your child’s friends. In doing so, you will help choose your child’s occupation, spouse, future social and economic status – the whole schmear.

Tremendous applause. The women are standing! Adele remains seated. She can’t stand this. It’s so Un-American. So Self-ish. My child. What about the ones who are left behind? The ones who nobody cares about, including their parents. Are we going to abandon them? The ones nobody speaks for. The ones even Mercy shows no mercy for.

No. She’s not going to take it. She feels herself getting hot. Ready to fight, and raring to go. If she doesn’t say something, she’s going to burst. She stands.

“For how many kids would vouchers be good?” she yells, above the congratulatory applause. Though she had sat down in the last row, many more chairs have been added, and now she’s right in the middle of the crowd. The applause stops almost abruptly. A few dazed stragglers not following the action, clap on.

Adele comes to her senses, and realizes she has their complete attention. Now is her chance.

Standing there in the center, in her sweat suit, she borrows lines from a speech she had written for Brenda, who hasn’t used it yet.

“If people start slipping away, the public school system that our great country was founded upon, will disappear. The very system that made Americans the smartest people in the world, the system that taught generations what it is to be an American, that instilled our pride and gave us our common outlook, even though we came from so many different places.

“Do we want to go back to the days of Babel, where everybody spoke a different language, or do we want to know each other, to have the same background? Do we want our children to be divided up into cults and belief systems antagonistic to each other? No. We want America the way it’s always been. One nation, indivisible.

“Go back to your schools and tell them you want service. Sit in the principal’s office until you get it. Make a scene. Come on, people. You know how to demonstrate. If you’ve never done it, you’ve seen it on TV. Don’t let them throw you out of public school because they’re too lazy to do it right!”

Them’s fightin’ words, and the women stand for Adele and give her as big a round of applause as they had Mercy. They couldn’t even tell she was from the opposition. Hell, most of them are registered Democrats, they voted for Obama, and are going to vote Democrat this year too. Brenda’s will get their votes. They’re here because Mercy is the local Oprah.

Adele stays for the rest of the presentation. She would appear arrogant if she left. Mercy answers people’s personal questions, as is her style.

Adele had been keeping a sharp eye out for a chink in the gold armor, but Mercy has left politics and is talking girl-talk. Adele doesn’t do girl-talk, and she’s exhausted from her exhibition. She keeps fading in and out.

At last it’s over. She’s too tired to stand, so she lets the lines of ladies snail out the door. There are only a few people left when she gets up and starts to push her way though the grid of chairs, some of which have been jostled around. It’s slow going.

“Wait!” someone calls. It’s a big voice. Commanding.

She turns around. Mercy Alexander is coming toward her from the stage. She calls over the chairs, “I know you. You’re from the Democratic campaign.”

Is she going to call the cops? It’s perfectly legal for her to be here.

“That’s right,” Adele says.

“Well! You did a fine job here tonight. I want to thank you. That’s exactly what they should do. Make a stink they can smell in Washington.”

“I – I didn’t say that,” Adele corrected.

“Yes, you did, Honey, I heard it. Now how about coming up to my place for a cup of coffee? You look all tuckered out, Girl.”

Door Surprises

We are going to slice right through the top of that car racing along the highway.

It holds two couples. In front is a young man with a mop of light brown hair wearing a white sweat shirt and khaki pants. He looks very much like a college student. Next to him in the passenger seat is a nicely rounded girl with dark curly hair and a good tan.

In back is a sturdily-built girl with big, kinky hair, and a boy with… you guessed it folks, blood-red hair and a very wild look indeed. It’s the boy whose brain is always churning, looking for new ways out. Phoenix Wagman.

They are coming from a WondeRock concert.

It was a great concert. Outside in the college stadium. Four guys and a pumped up girl in a Wonder Woman costume. A lot of the kids in the audience don’t know that the Amazon princess being portrayed is collecting social security. They think she’s new.

Diana Prince, in her sprayed-on star-spangled shorts and red and gold corset, does a fantastic job of waving those bullet-bouncing bracelets, and once in every show, she lassoes some guy and brings him up on stage, with the golden rope pinning his arms to his sides, and makes him tell the truth.

The music’s not bad either. Heavy rock with an abundance of harmony. Almost sweet at times. Something for everyone. A guitarist wearing rotting jeans and a holey T-shirt, with a triangle of shoulder-width curly hair, and a bass player in a tuxedo. The keyboard player’s a gnarly old man who was their music teacher in high school. You laugh until you hear him play.

On drums – Keith Howler, seven feet tall, gawky, shaved head, expression like a Munster. Towering over his drum set. Everybody loves to love him. “Keeeeith! Keeeeith!” erupts periodically at every concert.

And Diana Prince. What does Diana play? Diana plays Wonder Woman, for all it’s worth, and it’s worth a lot.

This group is the professor’s absolutely favorite music in the entire world, which is why Phoenix put all his ingenuity to work to get her to this concert. She is not here with Phoenix, and his friend, Phil. She is here with Sheba, and if you’ll excuse us, Sheba’s cousin Phil, obviously highly trusted by Sheba’s parents. Sheba is here with the professor and the professor’s cousin Phil, obviously highly trusted by the professor’s parents.

And so would he be. He’s a nice kid, a geek who had a lot to do with the electronic side of putting together this concert. He’s a friend of Phoenix’ from an on-line computer game, Halo 3. The two only met tonight. They arranged all this on-line.

Brenda is busy with a firehouse buffet. Zeke is staying at a classmate’s. Jason sees his chance for a night out, something he and Danielle have never had. That’s what gets into people in their position. They want their lust to encompass the world. They want it to have everything everybody else has. (Plus what they have.)

So he doesn’t pay too much attention when Sheba tells him Brenda said she could go to a concert with Rowena (the professor’s real name), who was coming by with her cousin Phil to pick her up. Phil’s a college student, no it isn’t a date, silly, but he can drive and the girls can’t, and he volunteered to take them. He’s involved with the concert, so they’re all getting in free. How can he say no? Easy. Who the hell is this guy? Drive? Where? What concert? The correct answer to any of these questions would elicit from a sane father, “You’re not going.”

But Sheba doesn’t have a sane father. Sheba has a mentally ill father. His evening, his surprise for his lady love, dominates his brain. It absorbs and uses all the input Sheba is outputting. “Be home by twelve,” he says.

Sheba runs out to the car when it comes. Jason is up in the bathroom preparing to rush right over to Danielle’s, as soon as the coast is clear. When he emerges, Sheba is gone.

He slips out and into the car. He’s all revved up. He’s going to be a normal man out on a date with his woman.

He rings the bell. It takes a while for it to buzz back and let him in. She’s on the top floor of the two-story garden apartment house. He’s never had to do that before. He’s come here only with her, and only in the afternoon.

Finally, it buzzes. He opens the door, and takes the stairs two at a time, ready for her to thrust herself out her door and into his arms.

The door is open, but only a crack. He sees her face through it. A very serious face. The lips come to the crack. She whispers, “Not now.”

Jason has trouble registering the words. Not now? What can that mean? “Not now,” she says again, this time with a warning in her voice. He stands there, not knowing how to respond. “Go home,” she says. Then the door closes. But not before he hears the water turn on in the kitchen sink.

There’s someone here! He is shocked. Mortified. Humiliated. She’s cheating on him. Disbelief turns to anger. It’s either bang down the door, or get the hell out of there.

He pounds down the stairs, flies back to his car, gets in, starts it and squeals off. He’s pulled over for speeding on the way home, but is let go with a warning.

Like he’s so anxious to get home to his empty house. Once there, he’s miserably, monstrously jealous. He loves her ten times more than he ever did. And he hates her besides. She’s a devil. A bitch. A fucking whore.

He spends the evening alternately fuming and trying to keep from crying. He will not sink that low. Because folks, he doesn’t love her that much; it’s something else that’s been aroused. His manly pride, God bless it. How could she do this to him?

When Brenda comes home at 10:30, he’s fast asleep on the couch. She’s exhausted, goes upstairs and flops down on the bed with her clothes on.

For two days, everywhere she goes, a group of young conservatives has been following her with signs that say, “Stop Missiles, Not Babies.” They wear white shirts and black pants, embarrassing for her; she looks like part of their act. They are very well-behaved. They just stand there, with that one sign, replicated over and over and over.

She falls asleep and dreams she’s being chased down an alley by ghouls, waving scalpels, knives, and other medical paraphernalia she’s seen on PBS. In the background, bombs are going off. They look like firecrackers.

She wakes up when one of the ghouls reaches her and starts screams in her ear, “None of your business!”

It’s Sheba and Jason, yelling at each other downstairs.

Let me tell you what happened, folks. It’s what usually happens. Things go right up to a point, you relax, and they explode in your face. The four young people had an excellent and innocent evening together. Talked all the way home, about the band, the concert, school, parents… And when they reached Sheba’s house, Phoenix, who was in the back seat with the professor, suddenly remembering that his father had taught him to do this, popped out and opened the front door for Sheba. Once there, it seemed natural to walk her to her door.

But the car pulling up had awakened Poppa. When Sheba opened the door with her key, Phoenix was standing right behind her.

All the fury Jason felt for Danielle and her other man, was forced into one word. “YOU!” as he looked – up, actually – at the tall boy with the blood-red hair.

Phoenix ran. Not a very chivalrous way to treat a lady, but her father looked like he wanted to kill him.

Sheba brushed past Jason, into the house, and stood in the middle of the living room waiting for the axe to fall.

It did. He ranted. He raved. He revisited the party, and the pot. He finally said his say about the mall. She stood there and let it pour over her. At last, it stopped.

“What have you got to say for yourself, young lady?” Right out of the Book of Fathers.

“I found your stash,” she says.

Desperate times. She’s playing her trump card.

It falls flat. “Stash?” he says. “What are you talking about?”

“I found it. You’re a hypocrite, just like Mom.”

“I don’t know what you found,” he says, “but I don’t have a stash.”

Let’s go around that corner, so we can see the lady on the stairs. A bit disheveled, she’s recently up from sleeping on the bed in her clothes, and has come out to see what the commotion is. But she is now wide awake and horrified.

She knows Jason doesn’t have a stash. He never liked pot. You might say she gave it up for him. She remembers that she put some away, just in case, someday, maybe… But she does not remember where she put it. It’s sitting in her house, and she’s in politics. A bad, bad, bad combination. The only way she can get rid of it is to ask her daughter where it is.

The Clap

Ms. Marshall has decided to follow Brenda’s campaign in the Honors Social Studies class because Sheba Shapiro must know so much about it, she can provide inside information for their discussions. It’s an opportunity the opportunistic Ms. Marshall would not want to miss. Ms. Marshall thinks Brenda is a wonderful candidate.

Ms. Marshall has invited the candidate to address the class. The candidate can’t say no. Her daughter can’t say no. They would both like to.

“It’s good exposure,” said Wagman. “Mother-daughter team, honors student – help clear Sheba’s name – you’ll get good press.”

“I’ll get press,” she said. “It might not be good.”

“It will be good. Mary Steele loves you – you saved the swans.”

So, “Yes” it was. And today is the day. Wednesday, right smack in the middle of the week, surrounded by nothing on all sides.

Jason has been driving the kids to school, since Brenda no longer has a compatible schedule. There is nothing at all compatible about Brenda. She is not even compatible with herself, inwardly arguing all the time, trying to shape her conflicts into compromises.

But this morning Brenda and Sheba leave the house together, as Wagman suggested, mother and daughter, both in their new fall wardrobes. Brenda has dropped the fairy princess line. The two Shapiro girls are wearing back-to-the-fifties skirts. Sheba’s is black and red buffalo plaid. Her mother’s is black and white striped. Brenda has vowed to wear nothing but black and white – Adele’s idea – to signify, if anyone asks, that she is the candidate of both races.

They go out to the garage and get into Brenda’s new car. The old one needed a new starter, but that was just an indication of how old it was getting. Yes, folks, Brenda’s got a Smart Car. Not the one Zeke wanted. Not the convertible. The smallest, cheapest one there is. It’s black. Goes with the new wardrobe.

Zeke’s not in it, though. He figured there was plenty of room for him, he could squeeze in, he’s little. But Jason’s is taking him to school. Brenda’s car has now become a couple’s car. She can carry people only one at a time. Makes her very cozy company.

The ride’s a little bumpy once it picks up speed, but the interior of the car is cute and curvy. The ladies don’t speak. Each is nursing her unspeakable fears – Sheba that her mother will not pass muster with her classmates, and Brenda that her daughter is going to betray her.

While they park, let’s go directly to the classroom. The school has shifted its schedule – put fifth period first and first period fifth, to accommodate the candidate. A school is powerful enough to shift time, and the exercise of this power was suggested by the high school principal, Wagman, on behalf of the campaign manager, Mitch, who wanted them to arrive together.

The room is bright and cheery. All the windows are open. The desks are arranged in a semi-circle, so everybody can see everybody else. The teacher’s desk is at the front.

A collection of fashionably-dressed children are puttering around, talking to their classmates, getting their notebooks ready. A few of them have laptops open. Ms. Marshall is sitting at her desk looking at notes. She is more than a little anxious about this. It’s her chance to shine, but she’s afraid of Brenda, whom she knows not only from the campaign, but from parent-teacher conferences.

She knows how exacting Mrs. Shapiro is when it comes to following the rules yet not betraying the children. Brenda walks a fine line herself, and she wants her own children’s teachers to do the same. Truth matters, but so does obedience.

Brenda is big on obedience because without it, she would run amuck. She has urges and opportunities, same as everyone, but she clings to the straight and narrow. Very much like Clyde Waters. These people must be devious to get anywhere in life. Chief of all, they have to evade themselves.

But stop that talk. Can’t you see we’re in school? Brenda and Sheba are just getting out of the car, so we have time to look around. It cannot escape the eye that the room is dominated by large patches of big red and black checks. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the red and black buffalo plaid of which half the children’s clothing in America was made this year. There are three shirts, one skirt, a charming little coat-dress, one pair of jeans, and one pair of leggings. When Sheba enters, it will add another skirt.

The boys all look some version of cool: rock star, athlete, drug dealer, rapper, homeless kid...

Every student has a back-pack the size of a small dog-house. Some are on the desks, some leaning against them, others still on the backs of kids sitting sideways. Here and there are things you would recognize as backpacks. Khaki or green or neon, thinner than they are wide. But the rest, the new ones, are covered with minute flowers, slashed with stripes, dibbled with doodles, and some look more like mail-boxes than book-bags.

At the head of the class, Ms. Marshall looks like an anchor-woman, in a black pencil-skirt with a tight, lacey blue blouse. Blue, she has noticed, looks best on television.

And indeed, the cameras are there, ready to roll, as soon as Brenda walks in the door. It’s not live, they’ll pick want they want to, but they want to get it all. Mary Steele, minus the baseball cap, is sitting at one of the student desks.

Okay, folks, they’re here. We’re starting. The class has been rehearsed. They stand, and not quite as a chorus, welcome Mrs. Shapiro. Sheba slinks in behind her and goes to her desk. One of the two camera eyes follows her.

Ms. Marshall, in her long skirt and tied-back dark brown hair, stands and escorts Brenda to the teacher’s desk. Ms. Marshall of the long, lovely torso will stand, and in fact, walk to and fro in back of Brenda, calling on students and exhibiting her wares; Ms. Marshall longs to become a Mrs. and end her addiction to abortions.

We get right down to business. “I know some of you have questions for Mrs. Shapiro, and we’re going to start immediately so we can get as many in as possible in the short time we have. (Pause.) Emily P.”

One of the few girls not wearing the red and black costume-du-jour stands in her purple velour dress that looks exactly like a hooded sweatshirt with a drawstring, and asks, “Mrs. Shapiro, do you think we should have a Wal-mart?”

One of the cameramen chokes on a laugh, but when everyone looks, his face is expressionless.

“Well, Emily,” Brenda says, “do you want one?”

Emily was not prepared to have the tables turned. She hesitated. Her mother told her to ask that question. Her mother doesn’t want the Wal-mart because they don’t have a union, and they just pay their people whatever they want. But half of Emily’s clothes come from Wal-Mart. And half their kitchen, and all the sheets and towels. Their house is full of things from Wal-mart.

“I… I like Wal-mart,” she says, because it is the only truth she can find in her head at the moment. The rest is confusion.

“So do we all,” says Brenda. “But Wal-mart is just like a boy you might like who does bad things. You may be his friend, but unless he shapes up and does good things, you shouldn’t marry him. Wal-Mart has to change its ways. Otherwise we can not let Wal-mart come and live with us, no matter how cute it is.”

Everyone in the class laughs, except Emily P. who is caught up thinking about the boyfriend Brenda gave her.

From behind the desk, Ms. Marshall moves things along. “Thank you Emily P. (Pause. Smile. Twinkle.) Jacob?”

A boy in a track suit stands and asks a question that was not the one Ms. Marshall had approved. “Do you think that women make better judges than men, like Ms. Sotomayor says?”

Ms. Marshall steps forward, pointing warningly at the boy, but Brenda raises her hand. “No, Jacob, I don’t. But neither does Judge Sotomayor. Sometimes we say things when we mean something else. All she meant was that women make just as good judges as men do. You know, Jacob, people didn’t always believe that. People used to believe that men could think better than women. They didn’t even let women vote. So we’ve come a long way, and you have to let Judge Sotomayor be happy about that.”

Jacob sits down, wondering if his question was answered.

Next is Emily M. There are three Emilies in the class. Emily M wants to know if Brenda believes in God, or Darwin. Brenda looks quizzically at Ms. Marshall. Is this Social Studies? But Ms. Marshall is smiling, so she has to answer.

“Emily, what do you like: Chocolate ice cream or going to the movies?”

This buys her a moment while everyone laughs.

“Emily, I don’t think that’s a fair choice. Darwin is one of God’s children, just like all the rest of us. He may be right, and he may be wrong, but only God knows for sure. The rest of us are entitled to our opinions, and I believe he is right. And by the way, I like chocolate ice cream AND going to the movies.”

Joshua (Biblical names were popular the year Sheba was born – there’s a Joseph, a Matthew, and a Daniel here), a tall boy in tight black jeans and a T-shirt featuring a Gorilla playing drums, wants to know if she thinks we should take money from the rich and give it to the poor. Simple question. Not a simple answer.

“That’s what government is for, Joshua, to take care of all the people. One of the ways we do it is to ask those more fortunate to help those in trouble.”

Joshua interrupts. “But my Dad says if you don’t let rich people keep their money, they’ll stop making it, and then there won’t be any money for anybody.”

Another boy adds, “My Dad says you’ll kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.”

Ms. Marshall is not smiling now. In this class, except for Sheba, and one of the Emilies, the children have been raised by Republicans, and have very bad ideas. That’s why she feels she has to make a big show of the correct way to think, and talk about her abortions, and in other ways bring them in tune with the modern world.

Brenda is on top of this one. “There is no such thing as a goose that lays golden eggs.”

Well, that’s the end of that, I guess. But it is not the end of the session. The children have suddenly become disruptive. These are honor students after all. They have something to say. Now they’re all talking at once, shouting questions.

“Do you think we should bomb Iran before they get the bomb?”

“Is North Korea going to kill us?”

“Why doesn’t President Obama want poor people to go to his daughters’ school?”

“Does President Obama (they are always respectful) want to own everything in America?”

“Why do the Democrats want my grandmother to die?”

The cameras are rolling. Mary Steele’s pen is flying. Brenda is flabbergasted at the misinformation, the absurd fears, the awful images that have been put into these children’s heads by their mean-spirited, selfish, divisive parents.

She’s a teacher. She takes control. To hell with Ms. Marshall, a neophyte who knows nothing.

She stands and claps her hands. Once. A loud, cracking sound that she perfected in her second year of teaching and has used every since. All voices stop.

“That will be enough,” she says in a stern, unyielding voice. “This is not how people behave. This is how puppies behave, yapping for food. People wait for their turn. They don’t go barking up to restaurants or kitchen tables begging for attention. These are serious questions. They all have answers. But an answer is only as good as the question that’s asked.”

She does not look at Ms. Marshall. “I’m going to give you homework. I want you to go home and think about your question, and think about what made you ask it. Then ask it again, in writing, in your own words. Bring it to school. Give it to Ms. Marshall, who will get it to me. I will answer each one. Thank you for inviting me.”

She comes out from behind the desk, nods at Ms. Marshall, and leaves the room, the cameras still rolling.

She goes back out to her new little car, unlocks it, gets in, sits down, and cries. Just the way she did after her first day of teaching.

This time we’ll let her have her cry. She’s entitled to it. After all, she’s the Democratic candidate for congress in a Republican district. How would you like to be in her shoes? (High-heeled, black and strappy, exactly what she once vowed she’d never wear. Adele insists. Mercy is so damn tall.)

She had not imagined that children could be like that. Her daughter is in a school full of Republican monsters. Maybe she should take her out and put her in a private school where people have the right ideas about the important things in life.

However, Brenda made it to national TV again. The clip they took was of her crowd-quieting clap, and so in a way, Wagman had been right. It was good press. She was in charge. We like that in people we’re sending to Washington.

First Base

It’s Sunday. The family’s at home having breakfast. An early breakfast, because Brenda has four appearances – this is the first Sunday after Labor Day – the first Sunday of the school term. The first day a lot of working parents will have the energy to pay attention to their kids.

Brenda has not gone to school yet. She didn’t look good enough after her table-surfing, to go outside. But today, without seeing her, Mitch has decided she’s good to go, and can begin keeping her scheduled appointments again.

Brenda isn’t exactly going back to school. The Party has been deemed more needy than her students. The greater good was invoked. Brenda still has a chance. She’s still popular. It’s only that her opponent is more popular than she is.

Fortunately, our lady is a dedicated teacher who did not like to miss school. Over the years, she has accrued enough sick days and personal days to stay out until November, when she will either be a congressman-elect or a teacher, but not both.

She has secured a real mathematician to take over her class. A woman (it had to be a woman for the women’s vote) with a PhD in Mathematics rather than Education, who has become a high school teacher because the pay is better than college wages. She had to go back to school for the equivalent of a master’s in Education, but it was worth it.

Elenora Stapleton. A horsey face with buck teeth and a laugh like a hyena. Brenda doesn’t think she will distract her mentor. So conscientious is the Democratic candidate for congress, that even though she does not have to, she will show up at her school three times a week to confer with the new teacher, and while she is there, even meet with her old principal.

Who just happens to be her new campaign manager. This allows Wagman to discharge his political obligations on school time.

But it’s Sunday, and there’s no school today. Jason has made pancakes for breakfast, while Brenda dressed for her power brunch at the Holiday Inn, with the pharmacists.

He is feeling dutiful. He took a long lunch hour on Friday. So did Danielle. They’re not behaving well. The pheromones are flowing, and now they can’t keep their hands off each other, even in public.

Once he leaned into her from behind, in the elevator, inserting himself between her buttocks. If it weren’t for his pants and her skirt, it would have been a home run. Jason was employing a skill he’d learned in his tantric yoga lesson.

Another time, when she walked past his desk to go into Clyde’s office, Jason reached out and grabbed a boob through the naked slit in her jacket. Jason knew Clyde wasn’t in his office. But he didn’t know that he had come down the hall in back of Danielle, and catching sight of what was going on, just continued down the hallway and came back later.

They think nobody notices. Everybody does. The whispering has begun.

Inwardly, Jason knows he is living dangerously. He’s glad of this chance to do something for his family.

Sheba and Zeke are talking non-stop about school. Their parents are listening to them take turns. Zeke is in fourth grade. He has a man for a teacher. This has never happened to him before. His teacher likes to hear him talk about cars. His teacher says he’s going to show them a Smart Car. His teacher has a friend who has one, and they are all going down to the parking lot to meet him and see what it’s like. His teacher says no rides – the school’s insurance doesn’t cover that. But they’re going to be able to sit in it.

Sheba is in her last year in Middle School. She’s in an honor’s program in Social Studies, and so has the fertile Ms. Marshall once again. She’s full of information about high birth rates, the planet running out of food, the life expectancy of women who have too many children … on and on she rattles, a good student absorbing the psyche of a charismatic teacher.

Sheba’s school, like Brenda’s, was speechless on opening day. But Ms. Marshall had obtained a copy of Barack’s talk to the children, and since it was an honor’s class in Social Studies, read it to the class. Then they discussed why anybody would not want their child to hear it.

“Because they’re Republicans,” said one little girl. “Republicans don’t want their children to worship President Obama.”

“Why not?” asked the teacher.

“Because then they’ll keep electing Democrats.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Then the Republicans won’t have any jobs,” she explained.

Sheba raised her hand. “It’s not good to worship anybody but God.”

“Why not?” Teacher is having a ball.

Sheba shrugged. “Maybe it’s because God isn’t here.”

Social Studies does not include religion until you get to college, so that part of the discussion ended there, as it looked to become dangerous. Sheba has new ideas. She gets a lot of them from Phoenix. She hasn’t seen him, but have you forgotten the web page?

Phoenix has been thinking a lot about his rights. He’s tired of being a kid. He doesn’t like being told what to do. He doesn’t like the idea of having to watch the same thing as every other kid in the country, and at the exact same time. There was something creepy about that.

He took a serious tone on the website and wrote a poem:

Don’t tell me who to love and hate
Let me figure it out for myself
Don’t fashion my mind
I’m one of a kind
A psychedelic red-haired elf

He might have liked what Obama said, but he didn’t want to find out by obeying. He opted out in his school, where there was a choice, and cleaned library shelves instead. At least it wasn’t the toilets.

Jason knows nothing of the boy’s influence, and he feels proud of his daughter for challenging what he sees as a power grab on the part of the Obama administration, if not Obama himself. To go for the children, behind closed doors, without their parents present, seems like a dirty trick. To distribute lesson plans asking children to ask themselves how they can serve – not their country, but their president, smacks of despotism. A leader is one thing. A master is another. Jason doesn’t take to masters any more than Phoenix does.

Even Brenda thinks it was a bit over the top, making such a federal case out of it. There was something very pushy about those lesson plans. But her line is, “The President can’t help himself. He’s a teacher at heart. He wants to raise everybody up the way he was raised up, and that was by doing well in school.”

She often wonders what kind of a president Hillary would have been, but she knows Obama is better than a Republican. Mercy Alexander embodies Republicans for Brenda. The party of the individual doesn’t seem to give a hoot about individuals. Some will make it, some won’t. There is no compassion for the ones who don’t. The Republican Party is for superheroes. As long as you’re strong and on top, it’s fine, but as soon as you slip, and everybody does, you’re trampled to death by the uncaring strivers.

After her drug meeting, Brenda is going to a Health Care rally of people who want single payer health care, the sole payer being the government. Brenda is going so she can put into the ears, and hopefully the mouths, of the people, the notion that any health care plan must cover abortions.

You may wonder how a teacher of children can be so anxious to prevent them from coming into the world. Brenda would say that unwanted children have a lower quality of life, and in addition, lower it for the wanted ones. The unwanted are usually poor, and even if they aren’t, they are often problem children, psychologically damaged before birth.

Clyde has been looking forward to seeing Brenda again. He feels involved with her through her husband. He enjoyed that hug outside the diner, and feels Brenda is entitled to some consolation for Jason’s bad behavior, even though she doesn’t know about it.

He’s a bachelor. An old-fashioned bachelor. Never had much to do with women. He’s a shy man, who does what he’s supposed to, and not much else. But something has clicked inside him, and he now has the mentality of a thirteen-year-old boy. He plans to do about this the same thing most thirteen-year-olds do, and that is, nothing. But remember, folks, the little head. Clyde never had to reckon with it before, and he doesn’t know how to control it, bargain with it, make deals with it.

It’s not Brenda who has put nasty thoughts in his head. It is, in fact, Danielle. He found himself embarrassingly aroused when she punched her finger at his picture and called him a murderer. He has not been able to forget it. Or her.

The last woman he held in his arms was the candidate. Outside the diner. Under the influence of caffeine. He’s primed, people. He thinks he’s arranged this breakfast for his business. And he has. But it’s the little head that spurred him on.

There is good food at the power brunch – eggs, sausage, bacon, hash browns, pancakes, butter, syrup …. Mmm. Another good meal shared by Brenda and Clyde, albeit in the company of three men from pharmaceutical giants farther afield, all of them with the same hope – that the government will include their reproductive products on their good list.

A large community of these products is represented – condoms, birth control pills, sponges, IUDs, all known methods of preventing the taking up of space, time and money, by people who can be stopped dead in their tracks before they start. It is Clyde’s hope that by bringing all these birth control methods together, he can slip in his morning-after pill, which does not prevent the coming together of a sperm and an egg, but terminates a life already embarked upon. An individual, you might say.

At the single-payer rally after the drug brunch, Brenda feels very much alone. The people gathered outside the medical concession near the supermarket, are not receptive to her message. They are single minded about single-payer. They’re afraid the issue is a wedge that will doom the entire plan.

“Leave us alone with this abortion crap,” one fat lady in Spandex called out. “Take care of your own damn brats!” A non sequitur, for sure, but it went over big with the crowd, who cheered her, and jeered Brenda when she tried to reply.

But she is once again full of coffee and good food. She fights back. “Who do you think is going to pay for the education and health care of all these extra people? You are! Where do you think the government gets its money? It gets it from you! One small procedure and society saves hundreds of thousands of dollars. Dollars wasted on the unwanted.”

Whoa, Brenda. Your enthusiasm is causing you to say terrible things. Things you might regret when you hear them on the evening news or read them in the local paper. In fact, Mary Steele is here. The baseball cap can be seen bent over her pad, at the side of the make-shift stage, little bigger than a soap box. Her head comes up with a frown at that last remark.

Brenda catches her eye and winds up her appearance. She wants to get out of here. “Vote Democrat!” she yells. She knows how to raise her voice without being shrill, a skill she developed on the way to becoming a good teacher.

Even Mary Steele doesn’t get a shot at her. She’s outta there. Moving quickly to her car. She gets in. Turns the key.

Nothing.

Turns it again.

Nothing.

Again.

Oh, no! Not in the parking lot behind all those hostile people. If they turn around, they can still see her.

She puts her head down on the steering wheel, preparing to weep. Just a little.

There is a rap on the window. Her head flies up. She’s looking into a pale face with wispy hair and big, sorry-looking eyes. Why, it’s Clyde! Clyde Waters to the rescue!

Is she happy to see him! She opens the door, pushing him aside, and gets out.

“Oh, thank God, thank God!” (Have you ever noticed that people who don’t believe in God invoke him all the time?)

The knight in shining armor (he’s dressed for the drug meeting) escorts her to his car and the happy couple takes off. The little head is resting quietly. He’s done good work.

Stoned

School has begun. Jason has driven Sheba and Zeke to their respective institutions. Only Brenda is home, recovering from injuries received on Labor Day. She’ll be all right, but she shouldn’t have gone to the picnic in the State Park.

You left her suffering at the hands, or rather, the mouth of Mitch Wagman, so you could go off to your own celebrations of the day.

The State Park is an old institution in these parts. It’s the traditional hang-out of the old-fashionedly patriotic. The men either labor or administer in the local factories. The women still stay home if they can. They bring picnics in baskets, they play baseball, they explode fire-crackers on the Fourth of July. The women talk babies and old times. The men make fires and cook the food.

When she selected it as the site for her major public appearance on this very important day, she was thinking of the swans in the lake. How graceful they always are, floating there together. A pair. Unlike humans, swans are naturally monogamous. They look so contented.

A nice, pleasant place to be, especially after the visit to the hospital, where she would address an assemblage of people who’d been injured at work. She’d assure them that she would fight for the on-going health care that covered them, tell them they would not be dropped from their plan because they were unable to work, that it was not true that disability insurance was going over the cliff with the Pontiac. And, incidentally, for the older among them, Medicare was not going to be cut to pay for the new government health plan.

Brenda has been diverted from talking about education, to defending the President.

Let’s drop in on her at the hospital.

It turns out to be a hard sell. One man wants to know why he should believe anything Obama says, when he’s doing everything he said he wouldn’t do, and not doing anything he said he would. She answers that she is not here to defend the President, who doesn’t need defending – he can’t do everything at once, nor can he quickly abandon all the mistaken projects of the previous administration. She never mentions the previous president by name. She can’t say his name without her ire automatically rising.

She is here to say that she will fight for them, that she believes everyone should be secure in the knowledge that if they are unable to work, their lives and the lives of their families will continue as usual. “We are past the days when suffering is tolerable. We have standards. We take care of our citizens when they’re in need.”

She does not receive the applause she expects. Instead, a woman in bandages yells from her mummied mouth, “How do we know you’re not lying, just like him?”

Brenda is supplied with facts, excuses, evasions, and quotes, but no magic. “I am not a liar,” she lies, because, indeed, that’s what she feels she’s become. She shares their fears. There is nothing anyone can count on. She knows. She’s got to follow Obama’s lead, and she’s found it means contradicting herself day after day and hoping no one puts the pieces together.

So just as she had hoped, when she finally got to the park, and the trees, and the picnic tables and baseball field and kids running around, and the smell of grilling meat, she was happy to be there.

There was a small grandstand used for concerts, looking out over the picnic area dotted with tables and blankets, kids’ toys and hampers of food, tubs of bottled drinks, and strollers.

She was escorted by Chauncey, who’d jumped at the chance to be at a picnic, maybe get to throw a few.

He introduced himself. Some people remembered his glory days, and he received first a smattering, then, after a few whispers, a real round of applause, which broadened the smile on his big face and put an extra wallop into his presentation of the candidate.

Brenda looked around at the people taking some time out from their enjoyment to listen to her. She was about to begin, when she saw, over their heads and beyond the picnic tables, the two swans floating on the lake and…

What was that? Some children. Big children, standing on the shore. What were they doing? She saw a swan twist its neck, as if to get out of the way of… The children were throwing stones at the swans!

There were three boys tormenting the big birds. “Stop that!” she yelled over the microphone. “You boys at the lake! Stop throwing stones at the swans!”

In reply, the biggest boy picks up another, throws it, and hits one of the swans. She goes down, but comes up again yards away. Her mate has become distressed and is flapping his wings in alarm.

All heads are now turned toward where she is looking, but they can’t see over the bushes and the picnic paraphernalia the way she can. Nobody does anything.

Brenda is enraged. Zeke was right. She loves animals. Animals are helpless. More helpless than children. They can’t talk. Can’t plead for themselves. In the case of the swans, can’t even call for help.

She turns into a flame. She’s burning, red hot. She’s not going to tolerate those hooligans brutalizing the birds. She sweeps off the stage in her white-for-Labor Day clothes, almost trips down the stairs, but rights herself, and flashes through the crowd. She heads for the lake, to put an end to the torture of animals.

And trips over a baseball bat lying in the grass. Trips and falls, ladies and gentlemen. Onto a table she’d intended to skirt – an oversized aluminum table holding dishes of food. It goes down under her unexpected weight. She goes down with it. The table has collapsed in the center, and the dishes from either end, some of them heavy, roll down on her. Brenda is buried under food. Covered with baked beans, potato salad, tomatoes. Last, but not least, a pie slides down from the end of the table and throws itself right in her face.

Now the crowd comes to life. There is a rush toward the table. Chauncey, the athlete, the only one here who knows her personally, has flown off the podium and gets there first. He starts flinging off the heavy items.

Someone else puts his hands in her armpits and tries to raise her up, but Chauncey yells, “No! Something might be broken!” The hands drop her back in the baked beans. The jolt hurts. She cannot move. She’s afraid she’s paralyzed. Then suddenly, feeling comes back. She opens her eyes and looks up into a sky full of faces staring down at her.

“She’s okay,” someone shouts. “She’s okay.” Brenda sees arms waving over a turned head.

“Are you all right, Mrs. Shapiro?” It’s a woman in a baseball cap. Mary Steele, the local reporter, who happens to love the swans, and now loves Brenda. She’s trained to observe. She saw the whole scene shaping up. If she were less of a reporter, she would have gone down to the water’s edge herself, and stopped the assault as soon as Brenda pointed it out. But now she’s got her story.

The other people of the press are not at this picnic covering the Democratic candidate, because Mercy Alexander is giving a concert five miles away, featuring not some black group nobody in the neighborhood gives a damn about, but Peter, Paul and Mary, an old trio who made it big way back when a large segment of this boomer-dominated district were in their teens.

Everybody loved Peter, Paul and Mary. By the way, Dad tells me Peter went to Cornell when he did. That should give you kids an idea how old these performers are, and should explain why Mary doesn’t really sing anymore.

Dad went up to his 50th reunion. Went to the old fraternity house and saw some of the brothers in his pledge class. Sneaked in over the back side of the hill and managed to avoid seeing anybody else, including Peter, Paul and Mary, though I know – he’s told me a few hundred times – that he took the course Peter taught as a student. A gut course: Romp and Stomp. Sittin’ around singin’ songs with Yarrow the Sparrow, as he was affectionately called.

These are sacred relics, and the press corps is all here to hear Peter tell the crowd that “Puff the Magic Dragon” is not about marijuana. That’s what they want to hear, now that they’ve got children of their own.

“What about Jackie Paper?” someone yells. Another wise guy bellows, “‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ isn’t about LSD!” The audience is getting into it. They’re all laughing now, including Peter. “Alice B Toklas brownies don’t got pot.” And finally, “Acapulco Gold is jewelry!” Peter strums a huge chord on his guitar to put an end to the impromptu exhibition.

The crowd is huge, gathered near a different body of water, a municipal swimming pool. A bandstand has been erected at the shallow end; the press is around the pool, behind the chain-link fence, with some VIPs sitting on chairs on the cement. The rest of the audience is on blankets covering the large green lawn surrounding the pool, where people are allowed to eat, but not have fires. There are plenty of plastic containers and tubs of drinks and patrolling municipal police. Neither Jackie nor Puff has made a public appearance the way they once did, but over beyond the bushes there, behind a grungy shed covered with vines, some of them poison ivy, two boys and a girl are hunkered down honoring those two heroes of songdom, and getting Jackie and Puff back together again.

Mercy has arranged this gig (she does not have a campaign manager; he or she would be superfluous) so that she is part of the act. Between songs she comes out, and she and Peter do a routine. He plays the straight man and asks her questions. “Mercy, why is the Democratic Party thought of as the party of the people?”

“Because at the Democratic party, you get candy. But we know you shouldn’t take candy from strangers, because it may be a trick to kidnap you. Barack Obama says he wants your children from cradle to career. Wasn’t that supposed to be when you had them? Aren’t you supposed to raise your children as you see fit? Obama wants to raise them for you, then auction them off to the highest bidder. Sound familiar? Like family life on the plantation. Massa takes the kids, trains them and sells them.”

Maybe you wonder why PP and M would let themselves be used by the Republican Party. Well, they aren’t. They’re letting themselves be used by a gay black woman. What were once three strikes are now three home runs.

And her message resonates. She simply wants people to be free. That’s what these people used to want when they were young. “When freedom is lost, slavery follows,” she says.

To another question, Mercy voices her anger at the press. At a rally in Phoenix (the city), at which Obama was present, there was a man with a gun. He was reported as being dressed like a commando on patrol, and carrying a machine gun. He was not. He was dressed in a white shirt and tie, and carrying a one-shot-at-time rifle of the kind the press confuses with a military weapon, because of its appearance. It was ugly or beautiful, depending upon whether you looked at it from the left or the right, and was slung over his shoulder. In Arizona, it is legal to carry, but not conceal, this weapon. The man was reported to belong to white supremacist organizations. What the press neglected to tell us was that the man carrying the gun was black.

“Black, baby, black. It’s the pass, and we don’t want this guy to get a pass, because he’s carrying a gun, and we don’t like guns. But he’s black. This is so confusing. Let’s just not mention that the man is black.

They misprepresented on three counts – what he was wearing, what he was carrying, and what color he was.”

Brenda, the candidate for the party of labor, does not get to deliver her message on Labor Day, but her opponent, putative proponent of the industrial masters, does.

In her closing salvo, Mercy takes a shot of her own.

“Freedom,” she says. “It’s the basis of happiness. ‘Freedom with responsibility.’ Peter, you remember that, don’t you? It was Cornell’s motto. ‘Freedom with responsibility’. What does it mean?

“It means people shooting off their mouths, instead of the guns they are legally carrying. That’s the number one and number two freedoms guaranteed by our nation’s Bill of Rights, written right there, into the Constitution. In America, people with guns and people with big mouths are protected. In other countries, they’re the ones who are shot.”

A good shot, that one. But it didn’t make it to the media. The press did not take kindly to being called out for less than accurate reporting.

But, as we part, I don’t want to leave you worrying about injuries sustained during the ruckus at Swan Lake. Let me put your minds at rest. She’s all right, and the next stone missed. Her swain, the male swan, perhaps emboldened by hearing Brenda crash onto the table, stood up on the water, and ran, wings outstretched, onto the shore. Straight to the miscreant who had thrown the stones, and wings flapping from head to toe, pecked him repeatedly, as the press, Mary Steele, gleefully wrote, “in his privy stones”, which her editor changed to “in the groin area.”

Getting it Straight

It’s Labor Day. The official holiday of the Democratic party’s working-class base.

Adele should be enjoying the morning. Instead, she’s all wee-wee’d up. It was so nice when she was the only African-American around. And the only woman in her small game. Whatever she said was okay, whatever she wanted, she got. Everything she asked for was presumed to be good for blacks and good for women. That worked well, but now, by some horrible twist, a cosmic joke, she is up against someone with the same credentials – a black woman – with a plus: she’s gay.

Let me tell you about Adele. She’s a lovely girl. She’s always been a lovely girl, and everyone has always loved her. She can wheedle her way into anything. The world has treated her well, and she doesn’t have the hang-ups (the only word, folks) some of the rest of us have. She’s willing to go far, down a wide variety of paths.

And so she wonders, now, how can she lessen this advantage their opponent has? Either Brenda can soar past her, or Mercy can be stopped. It seems easier to stop Mercy that to promote Brenda.

It seems as though it is her job. Who else can talk about Bill Cosby without infuriating Whites, Blacks, Democrats and Republicans alike? Besides, she wants to. She’s not proud of her illustrious brother, going for race over ideas, supporting a black woman because she’s black, which is how Adele sees it, because she can’t believe that he really thinks the Republicans care about educating poor people. To them it’s just a way to tear down the teacher’s union. The fewer kids choose public school, the fewer union teachers there will be, and they’d like all unions to disappear so they can run the show with their moneyed power – selfishly.

Yes, Adele is a truly giving girl who feels sorry for all those who have not made it as far as she has. But she has, so she knows it can be done. She’s post-racist, you might say. She’s not very proud of Obama, jumping for all the race bait, sticking up for that stupid professor. A professor who makes his living keeping racism alive. But she likes his sartorial style, and she loved Michelle’s one-shouldered white inauguration dress. She has a picture of it hanging over her bed.

She’s sitting on that bed right now, wearing a frilly camisole and hip-hugging shorts. On her legs, crossed in half-lotus position, is her laptop. She’s googling Mercy Alexander.

She’s found out a lot, and yet, nothing. Mercy seems to have come to town full blown, ten years ago, at the age of 34, a lay minister, ordained by no one, with no following. She went to work for various charities and community drives, moved up the ladder until she was managing many of them, and built up a flock with no fold.

She wrote little articles for local newspapers on every topic under the Sun. She has a big mouth, concludes Adele. Mercy Alexander is for everything obscene and nothing wholesome. No federal funding for abortions, no affirmative action for minorities, no education or health care for illegals. She is for lower taxes on the rich, vouchers to funnel money from public schools to private schools, and war. Some minister! A woman who is working against her own people.

You may wonder how all this jibes with Adele’s post-racialism. It doesn’t. But loyalty is important to her, and she is a loyal Democrat. Like any good party member, she can make any case. Two at a time if she has to, as she is doing now – sitting pretty on her pretty bed, in a fancy rooming house in a fancy neighborhood, nurturing magnanimous feelings toward her less fortunate brothers and sisters.

But she hasn’t found what she was at first casually, then seriously, searching for, and that is the past. Where did this woman come from? Nothing says. No one mentions.

Adele is bolstered by the possibility of finding something she can use. It’s her job to take down this Black Republican vixen.

But let’s leave Adele to her scheming. The whole hive is buzzing like it’s under attack. Some of the busy bees have turned on each other. Brenda is fighting with Wagman. She doesn’t want to say what he wants her to say. She doesn’t like being the dragon keeping children locked up in bad schools. It’s against her private, personal religion, which is, remember, humanism.

“It’s against everything Democrats stand for – the people, the downtrodden, justice, equality. How can they say they believe it’s better for children to keep them in abysmal schools?”

“Oh, don’t worry,” he says, “they don’t believe it. But they have to say it. Just like you. They have to say it or they lose the big union bucks, the Republicans get back in, and the world is back on track to Hell again. It’s the greater good, Brenda; it’s always the greater good.”

He has given up trying to put an arm around her, touch her hand, or in any other way try to physically calm her. Better to let her sputter out there by herself than get in the way.

She’s about fizzled out now. Dejected, but she’ll get over it. She keeps trying to escape from her cage, but he won’t let her. She’s their organ-grinder’s monkey on a leash.

This conversation is taking place in Brenda’s house. A surprise visit from Wagman, to rein her in. He’s been feeling her slipping. She wants to say what she believes – not the party line. But she’s not allowed to do that. He’s not allowed to do that. He’s got plenty of complaints his own self. But he keeps his mouth shut and so will she.

He called her from two blocks away, and would have rung the doorbell if he had to, just like the last time. She can’t escape from him just by turning off her phone.

But she was there, she answered, and she was alone. He knew she would be, because Nina had told him that Jason was coming for his tantric yoga lesson.

Imagine Jason. The bombshell on one hand, tantric yoga on the other. Not that they used their hands. No sir. I told you Nina is an accomplished practitioner of the fine art of yoga. She has further refined, and has developed her own brand of, tantric sex.

But what’s with Jason? How can he justify being there? You didn’t think he would be, did you? He didn’t either.

Remember the little head? The little head doesn’t have a lot of extra memory. From one time to another, it forgets the bombshell. It’s always up for something – something more, something new, something promising. Lover boys are used to thinking with the little head. That’s why they’re lover boys.

Jason would not deprive one lady because of another, except for fear of punishment. He thinks he’s got Danielle where he wants her. She’s so exuberant, so needy, it seems to him, always offering more, and more often, it seems. It’s tiring him out being brutally rocked and rolled. It would be nice, he thinks, to have completely stationary sex. All pleasure, no pain.

For public consumption, or in case of being caught, he is at the house on the pretext of talking about their two children. However, they have agreed not to discuss them at all, but to proceed like two strangers involved in a business transaction – a tutorial.

He rings. She answers. She’s wearing a long, purple robe with a hood, and holding in her hand, a single white flower that looks like a lotus blossom, but for any of you who care, is actually a “dinner-plate dahlia” from the garden.

She looks into his eyes. Not in any provocative way, more in the way of an open pool. They are grey-green. Gauzy, like her hair.

“Welcome,” she says, with a slight bow. “Please follow me to my studio.” She turns and drifts up the large stairway that he not-so-long-ago bumbled up to find her son and his daughter in bed. (We know they were not “in bed,” but “on the bed,” an entirely different matter, but by now Jason has erased the difference.)

She turns right at the top, just as he had, goes down the hall and opens the door to a room with a white carpet, and white couches with colored pillows. He knows this room, and he doesn’t like it. It reminds him of the party, though he only glanced in for a moment.

He feels annoyed. What’s he doing here? He’s not going to go through with this – not with the mother of the lying pothead seducer of his daughter. He’s been brought back to the lair – the den. The den of iniquity. He turns around to tell her he’s changed his mind.

She’s standing against the door. Naked. Her hair is poufed out around her head, and she looks all eyes. Below that, she is like a garden nymph – smooth and small with all the body parts of a human woman.

At this point, what kind of cad would tell a lady he’s leaving? She looks so small and vulnerable. Quite alluring, actually.

He says nothing. He’s fixed to the spot. She moves around and past him, and when he’s turned back, there are two pillows, a flat blue one and a fat green one, sitting opposite each other on the white rug, touching.

“Please take off your clothes,” she says, in a low, sweet voice he has never heard before.

He does nothing. The grey-green eyes bore into his, obliterating his body. He feels his hands removing his shirt, then his pants. He’s standing there in his briefs.

“All of them,” she says. “Don’t be bashful.” He pushes the briefs down, stands on one foot and takes them off with a toe. When they depart, the little head rises. He’s embarrassed, standing there in full swing, aiming toward a woman he has never even touched.

“Please sit,” she says, in a sweet voice he has never heard before. She indicates the low blue pillow. She takes the high green one, swirling down into lotus – but not quite. Her legs are not crossed. They are outstretched and recurved, making an ellipse for him to fill. She holds her arms upward toward him, beckoning.

Not altogether clumsily, he sits, putting forth his own elliptical legs, with the third one down the middle.

She wiggles slightly toward him, arms raised, walking on her buttocks to bridge the gap, until they are touching, down there. A sharp thrill goes through him.

She adjusts herself so that the little head, blind as it is, feels the heat, senses the moisture, and activating its guiding mechanism, dives straight in.

Ohhhhhhh.

The big head lifts, and with a big grin, finds itself staring straight into Nina Wagman’s grey-green eyes, at this moment more powerful and more profound than the turquoise splendor of Danielle Dubois’ shockers. He can’t move. He doesn’t want to. A soft pleasure is coursing through him; if he jiggles, it could disappear. He closes his eyes.

“Keep them open, please,” she says. “It is important to remain aware.”

That, he hadn’t counted on. He had thought that whatever it was, he could lose himself in its ecstasy, but that was not to be. He couldn’t lose himself. Instead, he found peace – the kind of peace that kings would give their kingdom for – peace grounded not in the absence of pain, but in the presence of pleasure.

Two fucking hours worth of peace, people. While Brenda is harassed and bullied into shape by her trainer.

Top Billing

Mercy Alexander is stepping out. To trod on Brenda’s toes. No more Ms Nice Gal, she has picked up the cudgel, and on it is written, Education. She has grabbed Brenda’s original topic and to make matters worse, added her new one.

Why, she asks, are the Democrats so hot for choice when it comes to abortion, and so cold when it comes to school choice? Could it be that the Democrats don’t really care about children?

In a long, curvy dress covered with flowers, under a cone studded with black-eyed-susans, she is at a garden club on a famous old estate. It doesn’t matter where she is, the cameras are there, if only to record her fashion statement of the day. Rarely do her words air, but today they do, because it has been promised that there will be a dignitary present, and the press needs some words to go with the face.

Our local Democrats know this is happening. They have not been invited and wouldn’t have gone – the parties must show disdain for each other. Neither have they headed to Mitch’s. This one they endure in the bosoms of their own families.

The Shapiros are having a late dinner in front of the telly, to the tune of the evening news.

They sit through cuts of Obama. He is backing away from the educational propaganda package slated to go with the Tuesday speech to a joint session of congress and the schoolchildren of America. There is no intent to establish a presidential cult following, only to encourage our kids to work hard and stay in school.

Then the cone-head flashes on, and Mercy is saying, “Black children can’t get a break. Even with a black man in the oval office, they’re still sitting in the back of the educational bus. They are not allowed to escape the past. If they live in bad neighborhoods, they must stay in bad schools. If they’re in bad schools, they can’t move up.

“Come on, America, heed their cry. Let my people go. Let them go to the schools that make presidents, not penny-ante criminals. Don’t hold their parents’ lack of funds against them. It takes no more tax-payer money to send a child to a private school than it does to send him to a public school. The only difference is that union teachers get the money if the kids go to public school, and they don’t get it if they go to private school.

“That’s it, ladies. The teachers unions that claim to care for the child won’t let him get a decent education because they want those union dues. They want the public school to be as big as possible so their revenue is as big as possible, and their power is as big as possible. In exchange for this, teachers deliver the federal message – think Dem.

“I’m here to try to try to buy your votes and give them to the next generation so they can walk away from their overcrowded, crumbling, stuck-in-the-past institutions, and come out into the bright white world. Let’s get these kids an education!”

The crowd erupts in loud applause.

Brenda groans. “She’s stealing my themes and twisting them around.”

“Then twist back,” Jason advises. “Don’t let her get away with it.”

But as we already know, deep down in Brenda’s heart, she agrees with Mercy. She teaches in a good public school, but she knows what the other ones are like. Her student teachers tell her. Parents with relatives in other districts tell her. Even the media tells her when they can’t help themselves.

But the word has come down from on high that she is against vouchers, which would allow the children to escape. The most she can support is charter schools, because they’re part of the public system. Same guys setting up shop in a different building, and sometimes, not even that. Sometimes right under the nose, and therefore under the thumb, of the public system.

The cameras have been panning back and forth between Mercy and a man whose face is hidden by the hood of a sweatshirt.

“A friend of mine is here today, to talk to you about something near to his heart. My dear, will you please join me up here?”

The man in the hood stands, a bit bulkily, and creaks his way out of his row. When he hits the aisle, he straightens and, almost jauntily, makes his way to the stairs and up onto the stage. He turns and faces the audience and, his mouth slightly open, his eyes laughing, pushes down the hood.

In his dark loafers and college sweat suit, he stand up there twinkling his innocent little sweet-boy smile. The audience goes crazy.

“Oh, no!” Brenda is up on her feet. “No. No. No.”

“What’s the matter Mommy?” Zeke asks.

“It’s not fair. Not FAIR!”

“Who is that man, Mommy? Why are they yelling?”

“It’s Bill Cosby, you fool,” Sheba says. “Don’t you know anything?”

“Who’s that?”

“A very famous person, honey,” his mother says.

Yes, indeed, it’s America’s black darling – of the previous generation. The Black generation, not the African American generation. Actually, Bill Cosby came of age in the Negro generation, but we don’t talk about that anymore.

He’s grizzled, but game.

The lips curl in a naughty curve. “I’m usually speaking to men,” he says. “Not nearly so pleasant.”

The ladies titter.

“I’m usually bawling them out. About being bad daddies. Now, I look around at this crowd; I know there are no bad daddies here. No daddies of any kind. It’s a pity that the poppas don’t take to flowers the way the mommas do. Gardens keep people at home.

“But I’m not here to yell at anybody today. I’m here to tell you pretty ladies you’re doing a fine job, and I want you to keep it up. Keep on raggin’ those men. Make ’em take out the de garbage, keep de lawn mowed. It’s good for them. Good for their souls.

“My message isn’t about men, or women, it’s about people. It’s about persons. It’s about personal responsibility. That means more than keeping your hair combed and your nails in polish.” He smiles. It warms the cockles of their hearts.

“It means taking care of your portion of the world. Now I don’t see too many black ladies here – a few, but not many. And maybe that’s because not many black people have a portion of the world.

“Black people have settled for something else. Being taken care of by the government. How different is that from being taken care of by the plantation owner?

“Black people have to get over the notion they’ve got a free ride. They’ve got to take their place in society. Take personal responsibility for the feeding, the clothing and the sheltering of themselves and their children.

“So why am I bothering you about it? You made your donation to the NAACP. You voted for Obama. You gave the black man a leg up. Well, ladies, now you’ve got to give him something to stand on.

“An education. An education like you had. Like your own kids had. An education that leads to where your kids are going.

“Personal responsibility goes further than taking care of your family. And here’s why. The outside world affects you, affects your family.

“I know you ladies are Democrats. You’re here because the Republicans are the ones who own the big estates, who give jobs to gardeners, who grow beautiful flowers. Liberal ladies love flowers, and I love liberal ladies. Because they not only have hearts, they have heads. It’s time to vote for somebody who wants the same things you do, and is going to try to get them for you.

“My friend Mercy believes all God’s children should have the same opportunities. After that, it’s up to them. She wants them to be able to pick the school that will help them become the best that they can be. If they say that’s public school, so be it. But if they say it’s not, I repeat what this fine lady said, ‘Let my people go.’”

At first there is silence. Have they been reprimanded? Is this just the other end of the stick he’s using to beat up on black men?

But he’s still standing there, beaming out at them, his cheeks puffed with affection for his audience. This is Bill Cosby, who used to tell jokes about his family. They were always funny, never mean.

They remember Fat Albert. The applause starts low, undecided. Then it bursts from the women – a high, clacking clapping of little hands.

These are the women who Brenda counted as her sure votes. Women with gardens who go to garden clubs. Women who want to preserve the environment, who eat organic food, who send their children to the best schools. Women who take personal responsibility. They’re giving a standing ovation to a man they love, who is telling them to vote for the other candidate.