_____
|
 |
_____
|
|
Purple
John Gannet stalks across campus beneath a harsh, gray sky, cataloging all the ways in which his life has failed to measure up to his goals. He was supposed to change the world, meet his future wife and build the sort of academic resume that would have the headhunters ringing his phone off the hook. Only aside from a few op-ed pieces in the student newspaper and the alienation of half a dozen or so eligible females he has done absolutely nothing to accomplish these goals. The cherry on top of his gloom and doom sundae is Shawna Edwards running up to him and shoving some all-important piece of paper in his hand. What he expects to be a jealousy-inducing grad school acceptance letter or notification that the Peace Corps is pleased to have her join their ranks turns out to be something infinitely worse. The letter is from a big international company that recently made the news for manufacturing children’s apparel in a South American sweatshop. Apparently, Shawna made it through the interview without delivering one of her anti-capitalist tirades. “You’re going to bring them down from the inside?” John asks. “They’re paying me big bucks, John. This is legit,” Shawna says. “I thought you said capitalist organizations were nothing but rapists and pillagers.” “I’ve got to start thinking about money. I’ve got to start thinking about the real world. What are your plans?” And it’s this question more than anything, more than the admission of her defection to the other side that sends him into a funk. Why does there have to be an after? Why does all this have to end? Maybe he should go to grad school, or would that just be prolonging the inevitable? At some point he knows he has to leave the world of ideals and enter the real world. “What’s wrong with you?” his roommate wants to know when he collapses on his bed. Geoff Rhinbach has been his roommate since sophomore year. He’s a biochem major, a tall, lanky science nerd with too much hair, a touch of ADD, and glasses that never sit straight on his face. “I don’t want to graduate,” John says. “Then just flunk a couple of classes. Problem solved.” “I just want to stay in school forever. Everything’s perfect here. What am I going to do with my life?” “I told you majoring in English was a big mistake.” “No, it’s not that. I mean as long as we stay here, we're good, but we go out there, and we become our parents. We become bad.” It all seems like some cruel joke. College, the professors, the whole experience, it fires students up, makes them want to change the world, until they get out there, until the world beats them down. “What I think is you need a drink,” Geoff says. “Let’s go.” There, in this bar around the corner a few hours later, the place swarming with the newly legal, the news on the television above the bar is talking about that thing that’s going on in Alabama, the African American neighborhood that was bulldozed for some sort of gentrification, the golf course and luxury townhomes that went in, the African American residents who used to live there saying how they can’t afford to live there, and the white people saying how they’re not racist, how anyone who wants to can live in the community. “That,” John says pointing at the TV, slurring ever so slightly, “that’s what I mean. We go out there, we’re going to start acting like those people in Alabama.” He learned all about racism at the knee of his maternal grandfather, a veritable font of hate. His mother would say, that’s just the way he is, his generation. He called African Americans moolies, and for years John just thought it was one of those random derogatory terms, but then, studying Italian in high school, he learned the Italian word for eggplant was melanzane, his grandfather’s racial slur adopted from the dark color of the vegetable, a way to classify people based on skin pigmentation. “If we were all purple,” John says, “that would solve everything.” “What’s that?” Geoff asks. “If we were all the same color, there would be no racism.” “Purple like fuchsia or like lavender?” “No, dark purple, like an eggplant.” Geoff nods. “Eggplant. You know what I could go for right now?” John shakes his head. “A nice dish of eggplant rollatini. C’mon there’s that Italian place just down the road.” By February, a few more classmates have jobs lined up, futures planned out. In a fit of despair, John visits the career center where he’s promptly disappointed at what’s available. He peruses the classified ads. He sends out some resumes, places he would like to work but doesn’t exactly have the skills for. A non-profit agency that helps the homeless is hiring. They want someone with three to five years experience. He sends his resume anyway. Pluck should count for something. He plays up his idealistic nature in the cover letter. This girl, Becky, in his literary genres class smiles at him one day. It fills him with hope. Suddenly, he thinks it will all work out. The week before spring break, he gets out of bed and stares in horror at his sleeping roommate. Geoff’s skin looks gray, really gray. John can’t tell if he’s sick or dead. He doesn’t know what dead people look like. He’s never seen any except for his Great Aunt Rosie, but that was after the funeral parlor did her up. “Wake up,” John urges. He shakes Geoff’s shoulder, relieved to find it warm. “What?” Geoff asks. “I think you need to go to the hospital.” Geoff jumps out of bed and runs to the mirror on his closet door. “This is horrible!” Geoff cries. “I’m charcoal gray!” John says, “I hope it’s not contagious.” “I’ve got to go to the lab.” It’s the sort of thing not soon forgotten, unless something even more memorable, something like Becky Drehl, happens to come along. The cute girl with an impish smile catches up with him after class. “Well, ah, no,” he says and feels her interest in him waning. So far, there’s been no response to the resumes he sent out, the call for idealistic, but inexperienced employees apparently far less than he had anticipated. “I’ve got this job lined up with the company my father works at,” Becky says. “Nepotism at work. Not exactly my first choice or anything, but the pay’s decent.” “Oh.” He feels like an ass. A cute girl’s practically pouring out her soul to him, and he can’t manage more than monosyllables. “Hey, I could probably get you an interview. I mean, if, you know, you were interested.” “Yeah,” he says. “Ok.” “Well, ok then,” she smiles at him, then begins to walk away. He looks after her, feeling lightheaded. “Becky!” he shouts, and she stops. “Are you doing anything tonight? Do you want to go out?” “Yeah.” “Yeah, you are doing something?” “Yeah, I want to go out.” Becky. Things hadn’t been so good for him in such a long time, but then here’s this girl, a decent girl, and she likes him. Plus, he’s got a real job prospect, an actual interview. He won’t be changing the world at Ferguson Investors, but the salary’s far higher than any of the jobs he sent in his unqualified resume for. Sitting in the reception area, uncomfortable in his suit, the one he wore to Great Aunt Rosie’s funeral, his one and only suit, he imagines how it will go. He’ll be such a talented and brilliant employee, he’ll catch the notice of all the higher-ups including Becky’s dad, who will be thrilled to have such an upstanding young man dating his daughter. Well, and he and Becky will get married of course, get a decent suburban home, have two kids, a son and a daughter and a springer spaniel or maybe a border collie. They’ll go on vacation with her parents in the summer to some seaside type of town. Thinking about it, before his interview, it feels surreal, like it’s already happened. “Mr. Gannett,” a woman says. He likes the sound of it, like he is a Mr. now, a real grown-up. The human resources woman, a tall, chunky woman with frosted hair, leads him into her office. She has on a beige suit. He’ll have to buy more suits if he works here. Two weeks ago, he couldn’t imagine working somewhere where his frayed-at-the-bottom corduroys were not acceptable attire. Now, he’s thinking about suits, about ties. He coasts through the interview, answering questions like he thinks they want him to answer. He’s Mr. Gannett now. He’s Becky’s future husband. He answers the questions like he thinks a man who lives in suburbia with a wife and kids and a dog and lots of suits would answer. He’s a natural. The human resources lady loves him. Becky loves him too. They’re a bona fide item now. He’s excited about the idea of embarking on a whole new life. Then Geoff wakes him up one morning, and everything changes. “What time is it?” John asks, pulling the covers up over his head. “Look at me,” Geoff says, pulling the covers down. John blinks open his eyes, adjusting to the suddenly bright room. Then he screams. He closes his eyes. “I’m purple!” Geoff yells. “Look at me!” John reopens his eyes. Geoff pulls his shirt off. He starts to pull down his pants. “I’m purple,” Geoff repeats. He is. Completely. “What happened?” John asks. “Remember how you were saying, a cure for racism? This is it.” John remembers Alabama on TV. His racist grandfather talking about the damn moolies. It seems like a million years ago. Now, here’s Geoff, purple, eggplant purple. “It’s some sort of dye?” John asks. He reaches out and touches Geoff’s purple arm. “No, it’s like how you said. It’s all a matter of pigmentation.” “Reversible?” John asks. “Well, yeah, but this isn’t the sort of thing you would want to reverse. You become purple, it says you don’t care what color your skin is, right?” John organizes an “End Racism” rally that culminates in a bunch of attendees getting purple shots. Other kids are curious. By week’s end, half the campus is purple, even some of the professors. “Do you still like me?” John asks Becky over dinner Friday night. She’s not purple. “What, you mean ‘cause you’re purple? That would be pretty racist of me, wouldn’t it?” Geoff’s overwhelmed. He teaches some of his fellow biochem classmates how to prepare the injection. They give shots wherever, in the cafeteria, in the hallway. A freshman, an African-American kid, pounds on their dorm room door one night. “Can you make me black?” the kid wants to know. “You are black,” Geoff says. “No, I mean black black, black like asphalt, black like the night sky.” “This ain’t the Gap,” Geoff says. “It’s purple or nothing.” “Yeah, well then do it. Purple me up.” Ferguson Investors calls John and tells him the job is his. June 15 is his start date. Geoff puts the purple recipe on the web. News spreads, and purple becomes a movement. Across the country kids and some adults are turning purple in an idealistic gesture. There’s talk of the FDA trying to track the source of the whole thing, but either it’s just a rumor or the FDA has their heads up their collective asses because no one ever shows up to put a stop to their operation. The last weeks of college are crazy. John’s mom and stepfather see him right before graduation. His mother cries. His stepfather calls him an idiot. It’s upsetting, but it isn’t as if he expected them to understand. “How are you going to get a job?” his stepfather asks. “I already have one,” he says. “Like that?” his stepfather says. “Looking like a freak?” It’s a good point, and one he hasn’t really thought about. He accepted the Ferguson job, but they didn’t know about his being purple. He even considers reversing the purple before he starts work, but then that defeats the whole purpose of going purple in the first place. People not comfortable with his skin color, well, that was their problem. He doesn’t buy a new suit, but he buys a purple tie and wears it on his first day. He thinks it looks sharp, but the human resources lady probably doesn’t notice it. She meets him at reception, her lips curling into a sort of snarling grimace as she beholds him. “Hi,” he says, playing it cool. “Is this your idea of a joke?” she says. “Is what my idea of a joke?” “John,” she says. He’s not Mr. Gannett anymore. “You can’t work with clients in your condition.” “Are you saying my skin color isn’t good enough for Ferguson Investors? If you fire me, it’s discrimination. What if I was wearing peach-colored face paint at my interview? What if I showed up here and was African American?” “That’s different. This is not a natural color. You are purple by choice. It’s like tattooing your hand or piercing your eyebrow, such bodily modifications are not tolerated of an employee who is working with the public.” “You’re firing me because my skin’s the wrong color.” “Nobody said anything about firing. You were hired by Ferguson Investors. If you don’t undo this however, we may be forced to move you to a position that has no contact with our clients.” He stays purple, and they put him in the mailroom where his pay is significantly less, but where he can wear his frayed corduroys. Most of the administrative types at Ferguson are white. The mailroom is where all the diversity winds up. Black, brown, yellow, and now, purple. “You can’t end racism,” Tyrell, an African-American guy says. “Money’s the new race,” Pedro says. “Nobody’s racist anymore. They just look down on you because you don’t drive the right car, don’t have the money to live in the finest neighborhoods.” John likes the mailroom. These are just a bunch of decent people trying to get by. His stepfather says he’s a joke, working in a mailroom with a college degree. More than one college classmate thinks he has to be doing it to try and organize the workers and admires him for his ideals. Gloria, the mailroom’s token female, a white single mother, big, blonde, gives off the impression she doesn’t take crap from anyone, she walks in one day and says what they should all do is go purple, just to piss off the boys upstairs. The other guys go for it, and next thing John knows, he’s got Geoff giving injections on lunch break. It gives him hope, like maybe this whole purple thing isn’t so crazy. Not everyone stays purple. Pedro goes back. His wife doesn’t care for the purple thing. Another guy goes back because people at his church tell him it’s the mark of the devil. Still, most of them do stay with it, and one guy, he gets a couple of his relatives who do cleaning at the building to go for it as well. As for the boys upstairs, they don’t seem to notice, proof that the disadvantaged really are invisible. He hears Becky’s started dating some guy in sales, some guy who will never be purple. He doesn’t get as upset as he thinks he will. It’s more like relief. He doesn’t really want anything to do with a girl like that, a girl who judges people by skin color, by job title. John hangs out with Geoff after work one night. Over beers they discuss the state of their homegrown movement. “Our attrition rate’s pretty high,” Geoff says. He’s still purple and he has a respectable job. He works in research at some pharmaceutical company. They regard him as an insane genius. He's doing good things, curing the illnesses of the world, but it’s all in the service of a capitalist enterprise. It’s not as if he’s going to be posting any of these recipes on the web. “It was a noble idea,” Geoff says, “but without full participation, it doesn’t work. Then there was that story about that kid out in Kansas or whatever who died from a purple shot. Kid’s an idiot. Turns out he hit a vein and took an airball to the heart. Still the papers played it up as death by purple.” “If we’d been rich,” John says, “had a big marketing campaign, it would have worked.” “We didn’t do half bad without a marketing campaign, but it’s become a fad now. You know clubbers have latched onto the whole thing. They’re going all different colors. Remember that guy who wanted to be asphalt black? Now he can be.” “It wasn’t a bad idea while it lasted,” John says. “It was a brilliant idea,” Geoff says. “I don’t regret it. We really tried.” During the fall, John goes with his mom and stepfather to visit his grandfather at the nursing home. “I can’t believe you’re going in there like that,” his stepfather says. “You’re gonna give the old man a heart attack.” “It’s who I am,” John says. “The hell it is,” his stepfather says. His grandfather is senile and has no idea who John’s mother is. John stands in the doorway of his grandfather’s room while his mother tells him again and again she’s his daughter. Without succeeding she says, “John’s here.” She waves him in. “Who let that moolie in?” his grandfather says when he steps in the room. “Jesus, if that ain’t the ugliest moolie I ever saw.” “This place is full of moolie orderlies, but I’ve got standards. I want white nurses only. You get out of here, you dirty bastard!” This last part is directed at John. He glares at his mother whose idea it was for him to come here. “He’s an old man,” she whispers to him as if this justifies everything. “What did I tell you,” his stepfather says. John leaves, walks down the hall where there’s a sitting area and a turquoise blue girl. She’s got on a bright yellow dress and matching sneakers that look nice against the blue-green skin. “Hey,” she says to him. “Hey,” he says back to this girl who doesn’t know the first thing about alternative skin color, this trendy little poseur. “My grandma thought I was some kind of space alien or gnome or something that comes into her room when she’s sleeping and steals her underwear. You?” “Racist grandfather,” he says. “Purple looks good on you.” So, he tells her the whole story, about his idea, about Geoff, about the kids lining up in the cafeteria to get their injections. He tells her how for a moment it felt like it was all going to happen, that something really good was going to come of their efforts. “Me and my friend we had this idea that if everyone was purple it would fix everything,” he says. “Then people like you gotta go and change your skin color to match your shoes.” She shrugs. “I’ve got a niece. She’s pretty young. She’s gonna grow up thinking skin color’s something you choose like socks or how you cut your hair. That sounds like the end of racism to me.” “It’ll take years,” he says. “You were hoping to change the world overnight?” She had him there. Maybe not everyone needed to be purple. “You and me, we could have beautiful fuchsia babies,” she says. He starts to say that’s not how it works, but he sees her smirk. Then he starts thinking about the future. Screw the seaside vacations and the border collies. He never really wanted them anyway, but he thinks about the beautiful turquoise girl, about the life they could make, about the children they would have, whatever color they turned out, whatever color they chose to be.
Some say that you can never have too many pets or too many books, but
Alissa Grosso is working very hard at proving them wrong. Her short |
______
|
 |
______
|