There’s a racist in my closet.
I keep him there because the people at the carnival might pay big bucks to see him one day.
I am able to sleep over the jib-jabbling of his lips as he makes those motor boat sounds that only the mind-numbed make to pass the time.
I don’t argue with him. His brain isn’t that strong any more. And like he said, he’s really just a laboratory experiment who will prove his usefulness whenever political momentum or distraction is required.
He asked me once to remind him what a racist was.
I patted him on the head, made sure he was looking at me while I spoke.
“Don’t worry about anything but what I’m telling you,” I said. “A racist is whatever I tell you one is.”
He shook his head and sung a song in his mind, twitching as he thought about it.
“But you did tell me once”, he whined a little. “Can’t you tell me one more time. It’s cotton picking hard to remember these things.”
“A racist is someone who hates,” I remind him. “Someone who’s cruel, someone who has antiquated ideas. Please try to remember.”
He scratched his neck, rubbed the back of his legs, rocked a little bit. “That’s good. That’s real good,” he sort of cooed to himself. But then he looked a little…
