Heads of the Colored People(2)
By the time Brother Man said, “Uppity, gay-looking nigga,” Riley had bypassed logic and forgotten that he held none of the privileges of his costume.
There ensued then what Riley, in his costume, might have called fisticuffs, though in everyday life he would have simply said they got to scrappin, right on Figueroa Street.
The people who watched and filmed and circulated the scene from inside one of the lobbies of the convention center said it was just like Naruto v. Pain, only with two black guys, so you couldn’t tell if either one was the hero.
2.
In truth Brother Man was burly but not violent and rather liked to regard himself as an intellectual in a misleading package. If he could have made a wish before the end of that day, it would have been that he, too, had worn a costume to soften the effects of his image.
When he put his hand on Riley’s shoulder, it was only because he disliked the sight of someone, especially one of his own, turning his back to him without hearing him out. It was also because he needed to promote Brother’s Spawn and had thus far convinced a meager four passersby to buy a $4 copy that day, and because Brother Man felt, unapologetically, that black people should stick together and that the blue-eyed, wig-wearing brother in the purple suit should have at least acknowledged him with a nod, if not a handshake or a howyoudoin.
Though in the aftermath, people would call his papers religious tracts, indoctrination materials, and “some kind of gang documents,” Brother’s Spawn was Brother Man’s self-published dystopian comic series set at Pasadena City College, where he first learned of Octavia Butler and her work. The comics were hand-drawn with the dimensions of a postcard, though he also hoped to sell broadsides featuring a poem he had written.
Brother Man—aliases Kyle Barker, Cole Brown, Overton Wakefield Jones, Tommy Strawn, and pen name Brother Hotep—was selling the postcard comics illegally (he preferred the term “without official city permits”) between a food truck and a juice cart that day. On other days he sold them near the Century City Mall, in Ladera Heights, in Little Ethiopia, and as far as Inglewood.
That day, he banked on the convention center’s Comic-Love traffic and the potential readers it might attract, boasting to his girlfriend earlier in the morning that he would probably sell out, “even without one of those official tables in the convention center, watch.”
And though he would say he was not usually the type to call Riley a sellout or an Uncle Tom, that day, Brother Man (real name Richard Simmons, yes, Richard Simmons) could not handle Riley’s refusal to acknowledge him or his art. He could find reasons to dismiss the hundred or so people in costumes, some speaking English, some other languages, who shook their hands no at the laminated mock-ups he tried to show them, but he could not abide a black refusal, especially one from a black guy in a Japanese prep-schoolboy costume, the very kind of audience Brother Man hoped to cultivate.
Thus, when he put his hand on Riley’s shoulder, he never meant to hit him, and if he could, Brother Man, hereafter Richard, would have imagined that Riley didn’t plan to fight him either. And neither man ever would have thought that amateur karate (pronounced in the authentic Japanese accent) would be involved, their arms flailing and legs kicking out in poorly choreographed mortal combat.
3.
On his way to a meeting, Kevan stopped at the SweetArt Bakeshop in Saint Louis to purchase a vegan brownie for himself and a purple cupcake with tiny candy hearts for his daughter Penny, who was with him for the weekend. The whole shop was lined with canvases of varying sizes, painted by the owners and sold from the bakery, which served as a gallery and community meeting space. Tiny vases holding local flowers adorned each table. Kevan wore a black T-shirt that said in white letters, “Eff Your Respectability Politics.” He liked the irony of the word “eff” instead of the F-word, but he still debated whether it was better to change “your” to “yo.” He wasn’t sure if anyone understood the stakes in these decisions or in any of his other art, which he sold online, from his car, and occasionally from a small suitcase in the barbershop on Washington Avenue.
He had one hour left with Penny before her mother would pick her up so Kevan could meet a potential business partner and pitch an idea that he couldn’t shake.
He chose a table in the middle of the nearly empty shop, with yellow-and-green flowers in the vase. “She’s a superhero,” Penny said, pointing to the largest canvas on the wall adjacent to the bakery case, and inhaling another glob of frosting. The frosting accumulated at the corners of Penny’s smile, but her tongue missed those spots each time it swept her mouth.
“She’s cute. Daddy can teach you to paint like this,” Kevan said, passing Penny a napkin across the table.
Kevan wasn’t a vegan, but he supported black business and black art, and regarded SweetArt as a place where his own work might one day be represented. The T-shirt sales provided him a stash of petty cash, but Kevan had sold only three paintings, and that grieved him. He supported his daughter Penny with a court order and a “real job” as a UPS deliveryman, but he “always took care of my responsibilities,” even before Penny’s mother, whom he alternately called a gold digger, that whore, and my queen, demanded official monthly payments.
“My superhero name is gonna be”—Penny paused to pull back the wrapper and expose the last quarter of the cupcake, its frosting smooshed and all the candy hearts gone—“my name’s gonna be Purple. Purple Penny Powers. I will make things purple like this,” Penny said, zapping something with her arm.