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BLISS WASN’T a polite little drug. It was some nasty shit. It took you on a journey into your subconscious, each drop warping your soul a little more. It was OK to dance with it once in a while, but you couldn’t do bliss consistently. It was so new that no one was sure just what would happen to you. There were whispers that if you did a lot of it, your ear would fall off. No one had ever seen that happen, but bliss hadn’t been around very long.
Precious knew they could usually find her dealer, Kilimanjaro, in the Raggamuffin Projects over in Niggatown. The Raggamuffin Projects were four tall, thin buildings that curved into one another at the top as if they were in the middle of a hug-a-long. It was originally intended to be a visual reminder of the power of teamwork or something, but the arrangement managed to block off all the sunlight, casting ominous shadows over everyone and everything inside the Raggamuffin Projects. The buildings were so old that they were in the midst of crumbling, and without warning a brick could shake loose from the top of the hug-a-long and come flying down, as if the sky were falling, one brick at a time.
Precious led Mahogany and Cadillac quickly through a tricky maze of darkened project hallways. She navigated as assuredly as a mouse through a maze that it has already learned. She knocked on a door and said, “It’s me.”
“You’re back already?” Kilimanjaro said with an alarmed tone. If your dealer thinks you’re buying too much, you have a drug problem. He knew bliss wasn’t built for the constant use that Precious had fallen into. And he knew selling drugs to the daughter of the legendary Fulcrum Negro was dangerous. He gave her a look like he wasn’t sure if he should sell to her or not. Then he let her and her friends in. He was a drug dealer. He couldn’t help himself.
Precious paid for two bottles and asked for credit on a third. Mahogany pulled her aside and said, “Your ear’s gonna wither up like a leaf in the fall.”
“That’s bullshit,” Precious said. But her ear had already begun to look a little more brown than normal.
They got back in the Billiemobile and eased down Freedom Ave until they came to a green light and stopped. As they waited for the red light, Fulcrum Negro pulled up beside them in his Mahaliamobile. Precious waved to her father. Fulcrum wore long, flowing white robes. His dark, cracked, ancient skin was thick like burlap from Jesus’s day and he seemed to have angels floating behind him, singing hymns. Fulcrum was a founding member of Soul City and still a central figure in town. Emperor Jones was the mayor, the one the people voted for, but Fulcrum Negro was Da Mayor, the one the people listened to.
Mahogany and Fulcrum turned down their stereos. “I’m off to a meeting with Dizzy Gillespie,” Fulcrum said. “I’ll be back in a few days. Go by the store, your mother wants to talk to you. And what’s wrong with your ear? It looks infected.”
Wait, Cadillac thought, Dizzy Gillespie is dead.
When they turned onto Funky Boulevard, Cadillac saw the sign: FULCRUM NEGRO’S CERTIFIED AUTHENTIC NEGRIFIED ARTIFACTS. Beneath it was a smaller sign saying, DREAM NEGRO’S DESIRE OBLITERATING WEAVES. BY APPOINTMENT ONLY. Inside was a large, dusty, dimmed warehouse filled with glass cases. Cadillac walked around the room, and as he read the gold plaques beneath each case, he realized this was no ordinary warehouse. There was Charlie Parker’s saxophone, Langston Hughes’s notebook, Biggie Smalls’s rhyme book, Arthur Ashe’s racquets, Jacob Lawrence’s brushes, Robert Johnson’s guitar, Jackie Robinson’s glove, Sugar Ray Robinson’s gloves, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson’s dancing shoes, Harriet Tubman’s running shoes, Marcus Garvey’s plumed officer’s helmet, James Van Der Zee’s camera, James Baldwin’s typewriter, Malcolm X’s AK-47, Huey P. Newton’s leather jacket, Frederick Douglass’s comb, Ralph Ellison’s pen, Daddy Grace’s throne, Stephen Biko’s death shirt, Bob Marley’s ganja pipe, and Richard Pryor’s freebase pipe.
Fulcrum never sold any of the things he stocked. He knew all the things had a magic residue left over by the gods and goddesses who’d wielded them. Putting prices on such sacred nostalgia was unthinkable. Fulcrum had traveled long and hard to acquire the items and had gotten all of them directly from whoever had given them life. In every case he’d promised never to sell. And Fulcrum was a man who kept his word. That was essential for someone with friends in Heaven and Hell.
Dream Negro had never been to Heaven or Hell. She was just a hairdresser from Niggatown with a big-time husband, but she was essential to the well-being of Soul City. Her Desire Obliterating Weaves were the best weaves in the city. She told everyone, “Girl, my weaves be so good they bring you inner peace. After I finish with yo weave you won’t want for nothing else in life!” She made so many women so happy on a daily basis that she was like a one-woman army beating back depression, low self-esteem, and poor self-image.
Cadillac and Mahogany were admiring Nat Turner’s machete when Hueynewton rumbled up, his Tupacmobile audible long before he pulled into view. He slammed the door and strutted inside Fulcrum Negro’s, his Tupacmobile idling outside, the music still blaring. Everyone knew he’d never once committed a crime in Soul City, but still, most people crossed the street when they saw Hueynewton coming. They were so ashamed that they wanted to spit when they saw him but so scared that they didn’t dare swallow. He strutted into Fulcrum Negro’s and called out, “Did y’all see me on TV?!” He was wearing a Soul City T-shirt and looking to have a few rough moments alone with Precious before he ran off to the big Negritude University football game. Soul City may have been disgusted by him, but he sure loved Soul City.
Outside there was a commotion. People were pouring from shops and stores to watch twenty men marching slowly up the street, chained together at the neck and ankles by thick rusty links. They were shirtless, shoeless, and wearing nothing but dirty burlap shorts, their skin sweaty and coarse, their faces weary and blank, their feet callused and cracked, their chains clinking in a garish rhythm, their backs crisscrossed by whiplashes. A fat man in a seersucker suit followed close behind holding a bullwhip. As the men trudged by, people cheered with the pride usually reserved for the military. Hueynewton ran outside and saluted them.
This, Mahogany told Cadillac, was the Slavery Experience, a yearlong odyssey that men volunteered for as a way of showing reverence for their slave ancestors. Neo-Slaves lived in shacks out in the fields at the edge of the city, picking cotton and getting whipped from dawn to dusk.
“I always wanted to do that,” Hueynewton said.
“What?” Precious said, incredulous.
“Ever wonder if you’re tough enough to have made it as a slave?”
“No,” she snapped, her voice cold enough to slap the idea out of the air.
Then he and Precious rumbled back into Fulcrum’s and found a closet. Five minutes later, clearly recharged, Hueynewton jumped in the Tupacmobile and roared off toward the game.
Cadillac suddenly found himself feeling guilty considering the bourgeois comforts of his world and the lifelong degradation of his slave ancestors. The privation and suffering you’d feel in the Slavery Experience could be like paying tribute to their ordeal. A sort of libation where you gave not your liquor but your pain, and you gave not a little but a lot. It could assuage the guilt, the slavery-survivor guilt he sometimes felt slithering through his spine. Then, Cadillac tried to imagine Mahogany as a slave, standing in the field in her Jimmy Choos, smoking with postcoital aplomb despite the heat. “No,” she says to Massa while rolling her neck, “I will not be picking any fucking cotton.”