Free Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher Page B

the football coaches want him around; he was a real monster when he played, and he’s a good guy to introduce psychopathy to the other players. But he also volunteers in PE classes sometimes, which puts him in the halls during the regular school day way more than I’d like. He’s kind of a cross between a kid and an adult, and I mean that in the least flattering terms of either. You see him in the coaches’ room being treated like an assistant, but you also see him hanging out between classes with Barbour and the more arrogant members of the football team. A couple of times I’ve caught him staring at me with the same look he had when I wore my bloody T-shirt to school, and he makes continual references tothe fact that they could sure use me out there on the football field, if I had the heart for it . He also remarked recently on the number of black guys in the swimming hall of fame. Because of the deer incident my freshman year, my parents have offered to raise hell that he’s there at all, but I don’t want that. Hey, when he’s here, at least I know where he is.
    And now he’s popping up in even more corners of my life. I stop by Georgia Brown’s house after workout a few days after my conversation with Simet about the letter jackets, just to see what’s going on. She doesn’t answer the door, but I have walk-in privileges, so I snatch some Gatorade out of the fridge, turn on Sports Center, and make myself comfortable on the couch. Within seconds, big commotion spills down from upstairs, which tells me Georgia’s in the thick of a therapy session, and I sneak a few steps up to see if I can get a glimpse into the playroom. Georgia sees me through the stair railing and motions me on up.
    Play therapy, as practiced by Georgia Brown, is done live and full scale, meaning she will drag in anybody available to play the roles that allow the kids to work out their life traumas. Most times I’m a bad dad they want to tie up and put in prison, so my job is to struggle and struggle and never get loose while still protectingmy nuts. As I said before, I’ve been on the other end of this, so I never refuse.
    Inside the playroom a girl of about four or five, with almost my exact coloring, plays with dolls. Georgia whispers, “This is Heidi. Think we’re gonna need a bad dad here.”
    Heidi has dragged a plastic basket full of dolls to the middle of the room, where she sorts them by color, placing the fair-skinned ones into cradles, tucking them in tenderly, singing bits of lullabies. The darker-skinned dolls don’t fare so well; flung across the room, stuffed behind toy appliances, some beheaded or otherwise dismembered. She looks up.
    “This is T. J.,” Georgia says to her. Heidi looks at me, through me, and turns her attention back to the white dolls. She sings, urges Georgia to do the same. Occasionally she glances at me but quickly turns away, gives the dolls bottles, nurtures them like a nurse.
    Suddenly she stands and marches right to me, grabbing my hand. She says, “You be the bad dad.” I’ve played it frequently, know the role. Interesting that the kids all use the same term.
    I say, “Okay, I’m the bad dad.”
    “Find all the nigger dolls,” she says.
    Georgia nods.
    “You mean the dark-colored ones?”
    “The nigger dolls!” she screams at me.
    Georgia nods again.
    I say, “The nigger dolls.” I retrieve two.
    “Scream,” Heidi orders.
    “What should I scream?”
    “Stupid black bitch!”
    “What?”
    “Stupid bitch!” she yells again. “Black bitch!”
    Again Georgia nods. I don’t like this particular bad dad role.
    I look at a doll, raise my voice, and call it a stupid black bitch.
    “Me!” Heidi screams. “Yell it at me! ” She turns to Georgia. “Make him do it right!”
    In a calm voice Georgia tells me I’m supposed to yell at Heidi for letting the black dolls in the house, and I finally piece together from Heidi that I’m also supposed to find them one by one, scream at