The Punany Experience Read online

  Korea was more surprised that her mother had conjured up her father’s memory than at the fact that they met directly across the street from where she and her mother now stood. When she was younger, she used to ask about him, but it always seemed to upset her mother. They hadn’t discussed him in years. All that Korea thought she knew about him, she had heard in the streets. And what they said in the streets was that he was a drug dealer that had gotten himself killed. Korea hadn’t been interested enough to know much more than that.

  Suddenly Gladys stopped walking. She watched the little building as a man wheeled a dolly stacked with boxes of liquor to the door. When the door was open, she could see that the place had become a liquor warehouse. She shook her head and asked her daughter, “When did you say that liquor store got there?”

  “Oh, he just opened a few weeks ago. He’s pretty cool. His name is Hasaan.”

  “That’s Mr. Hasaan to you.”

  “Mr. Hasaan,” Korea repeated. “Anyway, he and his brother own it. They’re Egyptian. I didn’t know Egyptians had nappy hair, did you?”

  “You’ve been inside that liquor store, Korea?”

  “Yes, Momma; all the kids go there. They sell pickles and candy and chips and stuff,” Korea answered defensively.

  “Listen, I don’t want you inside that store or any other liquor store. Do you hear me?”

  “Yes,” Korea answered.

  “You don’t know what that shit can do to you. Those men aren’t selling candy and pickles. They’re a couple of ghetto farmers, cultivating a crop of future clientele.”

  Gladys was getting that look in her eyes that always made Korea nervous. She was sensing her mother was getting ready to have one of her anger or sadness episodes. Korea changed the subject.

  “Let me guess, Momma. My father had on one of those polyester shirts with a collar out to here?” Korea touched her mother’s shoulder, snapping her out of the glazy gaze she had fixated on the building. “Momma, your ice cream is going to melt.”

  “Huh?” Gladys replied. “Oh yeah, I was just thinking.” Gladys took her eyes off the building and put them in front of her and walked with her daughter.

  “Oh, oh wait, I know,” Korea said. “He had on some platform shoes and bellbottoms!” Korea made her mother laugh. It was nice to see her mother laugh. It didn’t happen a lot. “I bet he had a big ol’ Afro, too…with a fist in it.”

  “Well, even though it was 1966, your father never dressed like a clown,” Gladys said. “The day I first saw him he was looking real fine, dressed in all black. Everything was black; beret, turtleneck, pants, belt, all the way down to his jump boots.”

  “What are jump boots?”

  “A special kind of military boots. He said they were for jumping out of helicopters or planes.”

  “Was he in the Army?”

  “Only in his mind,” Gladys said. Korea laughed at that. “And for your information,” her mother continued, “your father had a very small, very neat Afro.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “And…What about the fist? You know the Afro pick with the fist on the end.”

  “Oh, that.”

  “Yes, that.”

  Gladys burst into laughter. “Korea, child, I’m telling you…if it wasn’t stuck in his head, it was in his back pocket. I was passing by the place, and he was standing outside handing me some papers. He asked me if I was ready for the revolution. Well, I giggled a little, because he was so cute, but I wasn’t about to join up with some Black Panthers or any other color panther. I told him that my daddy would kill us both. Then, he would march down there and burn the building down. My father was like a one-man army. He had strong principles that weren’t available for compromise. You remind me of him, Korea.”

  “My father was a Black Panther?”

  Gladys didn’t answer; she kept talking and walking with that glazed look in her eyes. “I don’t guess I cared anything at all about police brutality in Oakland, or the war in Vietnam. Except for the free lunch program, I didn’t personally get involved in much of it. I was like a lot of the women. We were there for the men. I got involved because it was so nice to see Black men standing up for themselves. Actually, it was nice to see them standing up for anything. It was attractive. And they were dedicated. I got a few turtlenecks and a really nice black leather jacket. I even rocked an Afro for a couple of years, but I never did really join or anything. I went to enough meetings and read enough literature to understand what it was all about. The deeper I fell in love, the more I defended the organization to my father. I tried a few times to explain to my folks that the work they were doing was important.

  “’A lot of them are real smart,’ I told my daddy. Some were college students; some already had degrees from schools like UC Berkeley and UCLA. They were organizing the community to unite together to complain about the way the cops were beating on people and things. They were preaching all about a ten-point plan. They even started their own newspaper. But my parents, especially my father, didn’t want me to have anything to do with those troublemakers. That’s what he called them, troublemakers. My father said they were the reason the drugs came in to pacify the Blacks and that they chased all the White folks out of East Oakland. When the White folks packed up, property value went down, so he always blamed the Black Panthers for his house not being worth more. Daddy whipped me when he found out I was going to bed with your father. He put me out the house and cut me off entirely when he found out I was pregnant by him. But I’ve never regretted a thing. I miss your father. No other man could ever replace him. I’m still married to him.”

  “So, my father was a Black Panther. I never realized that.”

  “Oh, I thought you knew.”

  “How could I, if you never told me?”

  “Didn’t I?”

  “I thought he was a drug dealer,” Korea said. “That’s what they say.”

  “I don’t talk about him much; it makes me sad, I guess. But, he sure was, for a little while. But, being in that group is the least of what the man was. The fact is that messing with the Panthers is probably what got him killed. I mean, maybe dealing drugs was how he got his start. I really don’t know. I never asked, though people do say that he was peddling. But when I met him, when I was married to him, he wasn’t doing any such thing.”

  “Damn,” Korea said in awe.

  “Hey, young lady?”

  “I mean, dang, Momma, dang. I’m sorry. I can’t believe it; my father was a Black Panther!”

  “Words like that come slipping out of your mouth and I can assume you use them often.”

  “No, I don’t really. But you know how it is out here. You need to know how to cuss or you’ll get punked.”

  “Well, there’s no arguing with that. Do you want to know what your father really was? He was a numbers man; very smart with his money and charming to talk to. He could buy a loaf of bread from a baker, slice it, and sell it back to the same man at a profit. He was a brilliant businessman. There isn’t one thing in his pedigree that should shame you. He helped to establish that free breakfast program over at St. Augustine’s Church.

  “He was smart; too smart sometimes. But he underestimated the corruption in people. Right after you were born, he started working on business arrangements with food suppliers for the lunch program. I think that may be how he got himself killed; trusting the wrong folks.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t so smart after all,” Korea said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “There couldn’t have been much room for capitalism in a socialist program.”

  “Listen to you! Did they teach you about them in school?”

  “Only that they were radicals and communists and reformists… the usual brainwashing stuff. I read between the lines, Momma.”

  “You make sure you’re smarter than he was. Use the system instead of working against it. You can’t win, working against it.”

  “So somebody shot my father? W
as it somebody from the Black Panthers?”

  “No. One day I opened the front door and there he was, dead in the hallway with his throat cut. The police told me a cut throat probably meant he was killed by somebody he knew. But who can really say? I didn’t have the time to think about it. I had you to care for by then. And your father was a prideful man so welfare wasn’t an option for me. I buried the man with the savings we had and got me a second job. I disappeared from the scene altogether and focused on being a mother to you and keeping a low profile so I wouldn’t get noticed by the pimps and players. I’ve learned that some questions are better left unanswered.”

  “Momma?”

  “Yes, baby?”

  “Why didn’t you marry another man, instead of working so hard?”

  “Baby, men are work. Besides, I never loved another man.”

  “Oh.”

  AFTER THEIR TALK, KOREA FELT LIKE A SOLDIER IN A WAR FOR HUMAN RIGHTS. It was her human right and female obligation to bring Keith to justice. When she heard a woman’s voice on Keith’s phone, she figured that he must be a pimp or something like a player. She wasn’t a girl from the projects with nothing to look forward to but babies and government aide and she didn’t like fucking enough to be anybody’s whore. If that was what he was thinking, he had another thing coming, she thought. Korea was a businesswoman in the making. She would use the system to attain the tools she needed to make magic happen in the hood. But first she was going to get her revenge on the last hood niggah she’d ever allow to enter her body.

  Korea had been waiting all night for her mother to fall asleep. After their walk, Gladys had left the house on three separate occasions, to go to the store, before settling down in her room for the night. Korea could hear the life improvement tape playing through the walls.

  “Envision what you want…a new car, a new house, Caribbean vacations. Imagine yourself, living debt-free or simply enjoying a well-deserved vacation on the beach in the Bahamas or on the French Riviera…”

  Korea wondered if the woman on the tape had ever lived the life she was describing. If she was recording tapes about it, she was probably an actress who could never afford the things she was describing.

  Gladys was finally asleep and probably dreaming of a better life when Korea walked into the kitchen. Whatever she was getting at the store, it sure wasn’t groceries, Korea thought as she stood in the light of the open, empty refrigerator.

  Korea put a small pot on the stove and poured a half-cup of water in it. From the pantry, she pulled a package of instant noodles. She opened the wrapper and pulled out the seasoning packet and ripped it open with her teeth.

  “That bastard is mine,” she said as she dumped the seasoning and the dry block of noodles into the boiling water. When the noodles were soft, she put them into a bowl and sat in front of the TV, with little but revenge on her mind.

  Korea picked up the phone.

  “It’s about time you came to your senses,” Keith said. “Don’t you know it’s disrespectful not to call a man back?”

  “I’m sorry, Keith. I didn’t mean to be rude or to disrespect you.” Keith was talking fast. “What’s up with you? Do you think I meant for that shit to happen? What, you hate me now?”

  “I know you didn’t mean to give it to me. I don’t hate you. I love you, baby. How could I not? You’ve been so good to me. You know, Keith, I never got a chance to thank you for the new Air Jordans you got me. Even the players on the boys team are jealous.” Korea was as sweet as candy as she spun her sugary web. “You really need to come over to let me thank you.”

  Keith grinned like a Cheshire cat. He was so happy to hear her voice, begging and pleading for his forgiveness. He never thought to read between the lines.

  “Is your mother sleeping?”

  “Yeah, she’s asleep. You know my back door squeaks. I don’t want to wake her up, so come to my window.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  “I can’t wait to wrap my lips around your big dick, Daddy,” Korea added, licking her lips in the phone, making sure he could hear her naughty slurp.

  Daddy! Keith liked the way that sounded coming from Korea. He was sure he had her where he wanted her now. He’d have her packing her bags before the end of the school year.

  He took a quick shower and dressed anxiously. He laughed at himself for having been worried that Korea wouldn’t call him back.

  “Bitches,” he said out loud as he jumped into his tricked-out Mustang convertible, and drove across the bridge, headed for her place. He drove down the 580 Freeway at lightning speed and pulled off on Edwards Avenue, and then shot down the hill past the Eastmont Mall. He was making good time until he got to East 14th Street, where police and firemen had roadblocks set up around a three-alarm blaze.

  Keith took the back road by the BART Station. From the street, he could see the light in her window; His light. Keith had been at that same window three times since they had met at her ball game. She had sized him up during the game. He could see her from the stand, eyeballing him as she ran up and down the court, hitting basket after basket, showing off. But he didn’t really think about getting at the teenager until half-time, when she raised her jersey to cool her body. She had deeply defined abs, like those you only find on late-night infomercials. Her oblique muscles were as sculpted as his own, and what she lacked in feminine hips, she made up for with a rounded, muscular ass and long strong thighs. During the second half of the game he was fixated on her, carefully watching her every move—deltoids and biceps effortlessly dropping in shot after shot as sweat pushed through her smooth, chocolate skin. She could’ve played the game alone.

  “Eighteen points in a forty-point game,” he said, as she walked out of the locker room. Keith was leaning against the wall, handing her a Gatorade.

  “No thanks,” Korea said. “I never touch the stuff.”

  KOREA WAS HESITANT ABOUT TAKING A RIDE FROM HIM, but when she saw his ice blue drop-top Mustang, she had to ride. Keith told her that he was twenty-one and that he worked as a long-shoreman. Korea knew better. She figured him for a baller and he had to be at least twenty-five. But she didn’t mind at all. She hadn’t met a dude in her short life that didn’t make his money selling drugs, religion, or pussy.

  “Where are you headed?” Keith asked when she was strapped into his passenger seat.

  When she directed him to the notorious projects Felix Mitchell had made famous when he was killed, Keith figured he could keep her impressed simply by keeping her fitted.

  She’s a real dime, he thought as he drove, sneaking glances at her. He figured she was impressed with him and his car, but she didn’t let it show the way the majority of women did. Instead of cooing and giggling, she was asking him what he had under the hood. He had never met a girl who seemed as strong as a man. It turned him on.

  He dropped her off and remained a gentleman that afternoon. But it only took a few weeks of conversation and a single date to get into her panties. She told him that she was a virgin, and as tight as her pussy had been, he believed her. But the way she worked her body told him she knew her pussy very well.

  Like most of the girls he met in East Oakland where he had picked up young chicks before, Korea had never been to San Francisco. Keith planned a fast and immediate seduction with a topless trip over the Bay Bridge.

  “Are we riding with the top down?” Korea asked when he picked her up for their first date.

  “It’s the only way to fly,” Keith said in his most charming voice, as he shut the door behind her.

  “Yeah, maybe, but I just did my hair, and I don’t want it flying,” Korea said.

  “I got you; open the glove compartment,” Keith said, starting the engine.

  Korea opened the glove compartment. Inside she found a comb, a brush, a mirror, Vaseline, and something that looked like a curling iron with no plug. She picked it up.

  “Is this a curling iron?” She turned it in her hand, opening and closing the lip. “How does it plug
in?”

  “It doesn’t,” he beamed, pulling away from the curb. “It runs on butane.”

  “Lighter fluid?” Korea asked.

  “Yep. Pretty cool, huh?”

  “It’s really something. In fact, you’re really something. You got all the tricks, huh? Pull over for a second.”

  “You aren’t going to jump out of the car, are you?”

  “That depends on your answer to my question.”

  Reluctantly, Keith pulled over and turned the car off. “What’s up?”

  “What’s all this stuff in here for? Are you a pimp or is this car a chick trap?” Korea looked serious, and directly into his eyes, searching for even a hint of a lie.

  “No, I told you. I have a good, honest job.” Reading the disbelief on her face, Keith reached into his wallet and flipped it open. “Here is my ID, and here is my union card.” He handed her the wallet. Korea examined the cards. He flashed a smile that would have made Billy Dee Williams proud and smoothed his neatly groomed mustache. “Open the billfold, and you’ll find my pay stub.”

  Korea closed his wallet and handed it back to him. “Okay. I don’t need to be all in your bank account like that. I’m going to let you know right now; I bite.”

  “Your point is taken, little lady.” Keith started the car up and headed toward the 880 Freeway. “It’s called a Clicker,” he said, nodding at the creative curler in her hand. “Keep pushing the button until it starts. It’ll spark like a lighter.”

  Korea put the gadget inside the glove compartment and closed it. “I’m cool,” she said, pulling a scarf from her coat pocket. “I don’t put heat on my hair. I wrap it.” With that, she tied the scarf on her head and sat back.

  The engine of the Mustang roared across the bridge at eighty miles per hour while Too Short paced the cross-water escapade with gut-wrenching bass that lay the cadence for his “Freaky Tails.” It was the kind of song that you couldn’t help but rap along to. Korea let her version of the rhyme spill from her Wet & Wild glossed lips.

  “I met this girl, her name Korea. Korea was so vicious, she could eat cha.”