Student of the Month September2014
Featuring: Matt Homer
University of Hawai’i at MÄ noa
A Note on the Series Our Student of the Month series features on our website stellar student writing and visual art from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, the institution where our roots dig deep. In print for more than 40 years, our journal has been an established voice in the Pacific and beyond for decades, featuring work from emerging writers alongside literary heavyweights. The Student of the Month series is our latest effort to expand Hawai‘i Review’s reach in local and far-reaching literary communities.
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Introduction
I enjoyed this piece because it uses humor and misdirection to mask the really important and devastating critiques until it’s too late to avoid them. When we come to the end of the story, everything that came before--the fish bones yanked from the Atlantic, the old trumpet (or was that triumph?), even the chicken they don’t get a chance to eat--it’s all assumed a new weight, a new meaning, and we’re left there, in a dining room with two men who came up together and mostly can’t see that the division they imagine is actually unity. —Dave Scrivner, Hawai‘i Review Fiction Editor
Matt Homer is in his last semester at UH pursuing his undergraduate degree in English. He was born and raised on O‘ahu. He has been told that he only cares about dinosaurs, basketball, and Ryan Adams; however he disputes this. He also has interests in “American” music and literature, popular culture theory, and Kate Bush. He looks forward to one day being able to decide for himself what to read.
Bourgeois Blues Now, mama, mama, mama, why do you treat me so? Ah, mama, mama, mama, why do you treat me so? I know why you treat me so bad You treat me mean, baby, just because I’m gully low I held a case, which contained nothing more than a trumpet. The limousine drove off. I told the driver to drop me off where the street started so I could walk the rest the way to the house. I stood among the street lamps that guided my way when I was young. Their light looked the same, still a bleached yellow. Earlier, when I got to town, I came across the skeletal remains of a fish that had been pushed aside against the curb of the streets. It made me laugh; it looked just as it might in a cartoon being served on a plate to a stray cat with a fork and knife in its paws and a napkin tucked into its collar. The head remained whole, still covered with scales. In the sockets were eyes that I knew were dead before the fish was ever uprooted from the sea. Between the head and the tail, which also remained whole, was nothing but four crescent moons that waned from origin to ruin, connected by a spine. It had been all used up. Then I remembered where I was, home again, and wondered how it came to be that this anonymous fish came to have its remains disregarded in Kansas City, of all places. Ain’t no big bodies of water around here. It sure didn’t accidentally flop out of the sea onto this here pavement to die next to a wall with graffiti that said “Go Chiefs.” I couldn’t tell what kind of fish it was or whether it came from the Atlantic Ocean or the Pacific. They probably took it from the Atlantic, from way across. They took it just cause they could. “Let’s import the fuckers,” they said. “Lets take fish from across the Atlantic into the middle of the country. They’ll be bought up like crazy. They need fish in Kansas City, too.” I traced its trip, from being ripped from the ocean by sailors just doing their jobs and then into a port, probably in New York, being sold at market price and then finally being trucked into town by squalid drivers. I sympathized with the fish as I walked on past it. Now I’m back in the old hood. Frank, my childhood friend, called me up the other day wondering if I had an old trumpet he could have. He knew I was back in town. He wanted to teach his sons how to play and he knew I had better trumpets laying around not in use than he could afford to buy. I didn’t want to give him any, but I couldn’t come up with an excuse not to. We made plans for me to bring the trumpet over and have dinner with his family. I looked up into the street lamps and then down along the street ahead. Frank’s house was at the end of the street. Well, Frank’s mom’s house, that is. Half my growing up was in that house. Frank’s mom always offering me some leftover chicken or something or other to eat. Asking how I was getting along at school and making sure me and Frank stayed out of trouble. I haven’t seen her since I left six years ago. “Hello, Ms. Walters, how you doing?” I said. “Michael Bibb! How are you doing?” she replied. “It’s been so long, child. Come on in.” I entered the living room and everything was exactly as I tried to forget it. The same tables, chairs, and desks from so long ago still took up the same spaces. The bleach from the streetlights filtered in through the windows and was intensified by the exhausted lamps inside, barely capable of keeping the dark away. “Where’s Frank?” I asked. “Behind you.” I instantly recognized his voice. It hadn’t changed since we were sixteen. “Hey baby, what’s happening?” I turned to face him and couldn’t help but crack a smile. I saw the same smile on his face.
“Nothing much baby. I’ve been gettin’ on just fine, but I know you been doing well. Ain’t that right? “Yeah, I’ve been doing alright.” “Well dinner’s waiting, come sit down. Let’s talk about you and celebrate. It’s been too long.” We gathered at the round dinner table. Frank on the right of me, Ms. Walters on my left. Frank’s wife, Carol, directly across from me while Frank’s two kids, John and Rufus, who were not Frank’s but Carol’s, completed the circle. A single candle was lit in the middle of the table even though the two lamps in the room provided enough light. Ms. Walters was the first to open up. “Mickey, we’re all very excited you’ve come back to visit us. We’re so proud of you, of what you’ve become. It’s so exciting!” “Yeah, you’ve come pretty far, huh?” Frank asked. “You a New Yorker now!” “Yeah, well, you know, I’m just doing what I do, trying to make it in this world.” “Well you sure are makin’ it,” Frank said, the consonants sounding harsh. “Yeah, I guess so.” Frank rolled his eyes and then smiled right at me. “We tried to get you steak. Figured you were more use to it now. I couldn’t afford it for all of us though. Figured you wouldn’t wanna be the only one with steak neither. So we’re all eatin’ chicken tonight.” The chicken looked burnt and crispy but smelt familiar. I was about to say it was alright when Ms. Walters spoke up first. “Frankie, stop it, you know Mickey don’t mind none.” “Naw ma’m. This looks great,” I responded. I couldn’t help but look down at the table straight in front of me. I felt ashamed, guilty. I knew Frank thought I was better off than him, but I wasn’t. The silence got heavy, and I felt I had to break it. “I yam what I yam,” I said, trying to make a joke. No one got it. In a more normal conversation between old friends, this would be where I’d probably ask how Frank was getting along, how work at the post office was going, and he’d respond that it was steady and that he couldn’t complain. But I didn’t want to display the distance that had grown between us. Between the chicken and the collards I could feel how far apart we were. So I just waited for one of them to ask me another question. Carol filled the void. “We heard you went to Germany, played for them folks over there. How was that? Must’a been mighty fancy.” “Yeah, pretty fancy,” I replied. I noticed both kids grinned wide-eyed at me, never moving their eyes from me. “Well, tell us about it son!” Ms. Walters chimed in. “Nothin’ to really say about it Ma’am. Played in front’ a bunch of white bloodthirsty maniacs. Nothin’ different than any gig down home.” The kids laughed, but Ms. Walters momentarily looked down and Carol gave both of them kids a stern look. The table took a moment to re-group. “Tell me Mickey, have you ever met Louis Armstrong?” Carol asked. “Don’t bring up Satchmo,” said Frank. “They got a problem with each other.” This was only kind of true. I was drunk at the bar once after a show when some white poseur came up to me tryin’ to drum up some cache for himself in the scene. He told me how “hip” I was and how much of Armstrong he heard in my playin’. In an attempt to end the conversation as quickly and harshly as I could, I told him that if any one single note that I played ever came out sounding like “The Ambassador Satch” that I would immediately throw my own ass off stage, melt down my trumpet, and never play again. I would go home, dump all my records and get a job as a doorman in the morning.
I only partially had meant it. Word got round to Louis; though he didn’t seem to care, I still regretted saying it. Others cared more, made it into something it never was. Me and Louis never mixed socially before, but now it surely was never gonna happen. “Naw, it’s alright. Me and Louis don’t got a problem. Was just dumb rumors that got blown up.” “Yeah, but those records of yours began to sell a whole lot more after them rumors.” I looked at Frank and smiled. I glanced at the candle and wondered if they lit it just for me thinking it made this affair more suitable or if they always eat dinner by candlelight. It seemed like all the lights in the world were on in this room and they still lit that damn candle. I hadn’t really come far as Ms. Walter was tellin’ me. Couldn’t they see what was killin’ me was killin’ them too? I was just as stuck as I ever was, as this whole family was too, but they didn’t, no, they couldn’t realize it. We were both confined, not able to stretch out our arms. But I s’pose they figured I could breathe a bit easier, and that’s all they wanted too. “You brought your triumph with you? In the case?” Frank asked. “Let the kids see it.” Both kids nodded in anticipation. “The trumpet?” “Yeah.” I reached under the table and pulled out the case. I opened it up and pulled out the trumpet. The kids seemed in awe. “Is that…” Frank’s voice trailed off. “Yeah, it’s the same one. I still had it. Took me a while to find it but I did. It was in my Aunt’s closet. She kept it for me because she thought it might be useful for me again someday. Maybe won’t be useful for me no more but it might be for your kids.” It was the trumpet me and Frank shared as kids. Ms. Walters had bought it for both of us. The kids simultaneously pushed their chairs out from under the table, creating a loud sound effect of the wood rubbing against the floor in stereo. They rushed over to me and immediately began arguing over who would get to play first. “John! Rufus! Stop that right now. You’s all better behave while Mr. Bibb is here.” Carol told her kids. Frank was up, out of his seat in a flash. “Mr. Bibb. Michael Bibb? Yeah right. This ain’t Michael Bibb. This here Lester! Lester Swift! Quickest, hippest trumpet player this country seen yet! Or any country for that matter! He’s played all over. Got the house to prove it, though he so busy traveling all over the damn place, playin’ to kings and queens he ain’t ever home long enough to live in it. Might as well let us live in there. I got most yo records baby, way I see it, I contributed to your loot. You learned from me too dammit.” “I didn’t learn from you. We learned together. Not my fault I was better. That I am better. Just the way things played out.” Now Frank was pacing on his side of the table, striking out at the air with his hands. “But I started playing first! You wouldn’t ever have started playin’ if it wasn’t for me!” I tried to remember if that was true or not and couldn’t. All I could think of in that moment was how damn silly Frank was. That old beaten down trumpet wasn’t gonna save him, or the kids he took in. It hadn’t ever saved me. Yeah, I got outta Kansas City, went to New York, played in Chicago, traveled across the Atlantic, but was that all Frank wanted? Was that all he wanted for his kids? Leaving Kansas City meant nothin’. I played in gaudy baroque theaters, but I still had to enter through the negro door just like Frank and his kids had to here. Didn’t they know it’s not worth entering at all if you gotta go through the negro door? I wiped my mouth and dropped my folded napkin on the table. “I ain’t got it no better than you.
I’m just an Uncle Tom, that’s all baby. You don’t wanna be jealous of me at all,” I said, rising from my chair. The kids had stopped playing now, were watching us, looking for the cues, for some way to know how to react to this scene in their dining room. “I just play for them white people when they pay me to, when they allow me to. I could be blowin’ nonsense drivel for all they know. They don’t listen to me, they just pay me to fancy them, to butter them up. I ain’t nothing to toot a horn at. And in a couple years when I stop being so hot to those cats I’m just gonna be singing Tin Pan Alley tunes, I know it. And I ain’t gonna have a choice about it. You, Frank, baby, at least you’re real. I’m just some built up fetish to them. Yeah, they applaud for me when I bow, but I hear them laughing among themselves when I play. If you knew any better you’d let me pack that trumpet back up and just get on out of here. You don’t want this for them kids.” I stepped out from around the table, and Frank and I faced each other. His hands fell to his sides like he was a balloon leaking air. “I don’t want them at the post office, I know that. And I for sure don’t want them in the streets.” The kids were still looking between me, Frank, and the trumpet. “Don’t you see, we’re both struggling. I ain’t better off than you. They got me trapped just as much as they got you trapped.” I stood up knocking the trumpet to the floor. My knees had banged the table. Frank looked down at the trumpet, making sure it was still ok. I wondered if he cared more for the trumpet than he did for me. His lips curled, and his hands found his pockets. He rocked back and looked me directly in the eyes. “You sure about that? You sure do seem better off to me.” “I know it.” I shook my head and glanced from face to face, quickly. “Ms. Walters, thanks for the chicken though I didn’t touch it. Thanks for not cooking steak. I wouldn’t of been able to stand the smell. The chicken would have tasted so good, just like the old days, would of made me wanna cry. I gotta be leaving, got a gig in St. Louis tomorrow night. Thank you for the evening.” I nodded towards John and Rufus. “Maybe I’ll see you kids around some day.” I glanced at the old trumpet, still laying on the floor in the open case. “Good luck kids.” Now mama, if you listen baby, I’ll tell you something you don’t know If you listen to me honey, I’ll tell you something you don’t know If you just give me a break and take me back, I won’t be gully no mo’ Gully no mo’
www.hawaiireview.org Hawai‘i Review Staff, 2013-2015 Anjoli Roy, Editor in Chief Kelsey Amos, Managing Editor Donovan Kūhiō Colleps, Design Editor No‘ukahau‘oli Revilla, Poetry Editor David Scrivner, Fiction Editor
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