Authors: Don Lee
The mannequins, she said, they were just a device. The Globe critic saw right through me. You did, too. All the stuff with the 3AC, everything weve been spouting off about since Mac, theyve been a crutch. Its been a way of adding agency to my work when there hasnt been any. Im just a technician with nothing to say, really. Maybe I should have just gone to med school.
You couldnt be more wrong, Jessica.
Am I? Whats it mean, then? Whats the point? Why cant I do something of substance, like you said, something real, something from hereshe jabbed her fist against her gutand not from here?she knocked her fist against the side of her head. From hereshe hit her stomach again, hardernot from hereshe punched her head. From here
I grabbed her wrists. Stop it, Jessica.
She was crying now. All the hoopla, even before it all turned to shit, I ask myself, Did I really want this? Any of it? Because the truth is, if I could take it all back, I would.
Its not too late, I said.
Its too late.
We could drop the complaint.
Even if we did, Barboza would never let it go. Its an election year. He wants a trial. This is the most fun hes ever had.
Maybe hell listen to reason.
I wish it could all go away, Jessica said. I wish it could all just end.
I knew from news reports that Vivaldo Barboza was forty-seven, and that he still lived with his mother. They had emigrated from the Azores when he was nine. His father had already been in the U.S. for two years, working at a glassworks factory near Lechmere, and once reunited, the three of them had settled in the Portuguese community of East Cambridge.
Vivaldo had arrived knowing no English, but eventually managed to earn a bachelor of science degree in business administration from Suffolk University. Nevertheless, other than getting licensed as a justice of the peace, he never pursued a career outside of the family business. From the time he was seventeen, he and his mothera widow since the late sixties, when Vivaldos father had died of a heart attackhad been running a small corner market near Inman Square.
I took Joshuas Peugeot and drove down Broadway. I didnt know the name of the Barbozas store, and I couldnt remember whether it was on Columbia or Windsor Street. I crisscrossed the vicinity known as Area 4, which was largely an African American neighborhood. I stopped at several bodegas and markets, but the merchants were Brazilian, Indian, Syrian. I searched closer to Cambridge Street, and finally spotted Azores Variety on Columbia.
Hello, a woman said when I walked in. Friendly, energetic. She was in her early seventies, perhapsalmost certainly Barbozas mother. The family resemblance was uncanny. A thick body, a wide face with a prominent brow and heavy-lidded eyes, downturned at the corners like the mouth, only Vivaldos wavy hair was dark while hers was white, and she was quite short, the counter she stood behind too high for her.
I browsed the aisles, temporizing. The place was dimly lit, rather dismal. I had been expecting Portuguese staples like salted cod, fava beans, and linguica, but there was none of that here, just sundries that could be found in any store, odds and ends, everything dusty, overpriced, the stamps on many of the products past expiration. There wasnt much of a stock, either, one or two of each item on the sparse shelves, like the one bar of soap or the one package of thumbtacks or the one can of shaving cream. I pulled a gallon of milk from the cooler and set it on the counter.
Anything else? the woman asked.
I picked out some gum from the rack of candy bars.
Bag?
Yes, please. There was a sign on the cash register, written with a Sharpie, that said CASH ONLY. NO CHECK. NO CREDIT CARD.
She slowly counted out my change. She was wearing very thick glasses.
Is Vivaldo home? I asked. I had read in the paper that their apartment was above the store.
She brightened. You friends with Vivaldo?
Is he home?
She pressed a doorbell buzzer screwed to the wall, and I could hear it ringing above us, then the thump of footsteps coming down the stairs a few seconds later.
I was facing the back of the store, assuming he would enter from there, but the stairwell apparently led out to the street. He came in through the front door. Yes, Măe? he said.
A friend has come to visit you! his mother told him, as if it were a very rare occurrence.
Hesitantly, he shook my hand, confused. Im sorry, could you tell me where we know each other from? I cant place you.
Im Eric Cho, I said. When my name didnt register, I added, Jessica Tsais friend. The 3AC.
He recoiled. Lets go outside. We stepped out onto the sidewalk. What do you want? he asked.
I was hoping we could talk, I said. Maybe calm things down a bit. Everythings gotten a little out of control, dont you think?
You guys started it. I didnt do a thing.
I think weve all said a few thingswithout really meaning toto stoke the fire.
Im not going to apologize, Barboza said. Im standing by my principles. Im just doing what I believe and whats in the best interests of my constituents.
Dont you think itd be mutually beneficial, I asked, if we could take a step back and, you know, discuss this rationally?
I am being rational, he said. I ask again: What do you want?
Well drop our complaint if youll drop yours.
He smirked. Pressure gotten too much for you and your friends? he said.
I admit, we didnt anticipate this level of hysteria, I said, willing to bend a little.
Well, you asked for it, Barboza said. Im not going to drop the complaint.
The show will be over in a week. Youve already made your point.
Not going to happen.
We listened to bad advice, okay? I said. We shouldnt have brought the courts into it. We see that now. So wouldnt it be better for the taxpayers if we both pulled back?
If I dropped it, itd look like I caved in to you.
What about this, then? I said, encouraged by the small opening. Lets agree to both withdraw the complaints at the end of the month, when the exhibits over. That way, it wont look like anyone compromised. In the meantime, how about we impose a gag order on ourselves and not talk to the media anymore?
Barboza was wearing a short-sleeved white dress shirt. He tugged on the knot of his tieit was a clip-onand removed it. He rolled the tie into a compact spool, stuffed it into his front pocket, and loosened the top button of his shirt. You see this street? he said. Look how brightly lit it is, every streetlight working, the reflectors in the road in front of the crosswalks. Before I took office, this was a pedestrian hazard. Two kids got hit in one summer. One of them died. You think Im uncultured and stupid. What makes you think youre so much better than everyone else, just because youre an artist? What do you contribute to society? At least Ive made the streets safer, at least Ive gotten foot patrols increased and put bike paths in and reduced the rodent population. Maybe these are small things to you, things that dont matter, but theyre not to the people who live here. Ive worked hard to make their lives a little better. What have you done?
The street was, in fact, impressively well lit. I could see the crease marks on his neck from his shirt collar, a mole in the notch of his jugular. Were trying to improve the lives of Asian Americans, I said.
Im an immigrant just like you. You think I wasnt made fun of, being Portuguese? You think I didnt get teased as a kid?
Briefly, I wondered if Barboza ever experienced saudade. What did he yearn for? I knew he had never been married, did not have children. I doubted very much he had a girlfriend. A part of me wanted to feel sorry for him.
Whyd you say that thing on TV? he asked. Whyd you have to bring race into it?
He thought I was Joshua. We didnt. You did. Remember? Little egg rolls? Bonsai bush?
One of the hosts on the talk show, Louie, he fed me that line. I regret it. But I ask you, should it have been such a big deal? Now people think Im a bigot. Yeah, it was colorful language, but thats talk radio. You get caught up in the hyped-up energy of the show. There wasnt any harm intended. It was just creative license.
The milk was getting heavy, the handles of the plastic bag cutting into my fingers. Whats that mean, creative license?
Theyre just words, he told me. Whats it matter? Race has nothing to do with this. Its about decency. Its about whether government agencies should be sanctioning perversion. So to say what you did, using the race card, that was a cheap shot. I would have reacted the same way if the artist was white.
Dont you see? I said. It makes all the difference that the artist isnt white. The context is what separates her exhibit from pornography.
Just because youre Asian American, you get a free pass?
You dont understand the cultural references.
Explain them to me, then.
The whole exhibit is about caricatures, the stereotypes that Asian Americans are saddled with.
Uh-huh, Barboza said.
Its a satirical treatise on
Listen, he said, you guys always say how you dont want to be treated any different.
We dont.
But anything happens, you automatically say its racist.
A lot of times, it is. You think your comment was innocent, but these things are never innocent, its never just a joke, theyre never just words. If you really think about it, youll realize what you said was racist.
Oh, yeah? Barboza said. Tell me, who made you Martin Luther Kim?
A car drove by, going much too fast, the windows tinted black, hip-hop thumping from inside, the bass concussive enough so we could feel it out on the sidewalk. Hey, hey, slow down! Barboza yelled. He stared after the car until it had sped out of sight. Fucking … , he began to mutter, then caught himself. He turned to me with a sheen of embarrassment.
I know what you were about to say, I told him.
You dont know shit.
By the way, Im not an immigrant, and it wasnt me on TV. That was my friend Joshua. I realize we all look alike to you.
Were done here, Barboza said.
Forget the offer, I said. Were not going to back down. Were not going to drop the complaint.
Neither am I.
Go give your mother a break, Vivaldo. You shouldnt make her work so much.
Fuck you.
Here, dump this. Its expireda public safety hazard, I said, and left the milk on the sidewalk.
We received another anonymous letter, this one written in crayon on a page torn from a spiral notebook. Its because of sodamight motherfuckers like you this country is going to Hell. Enoughs enough. Im coming after you. Prepare to meet the reeper and be delivered to pain. Prepare to die you crepes.
The misspellings, punctuation errors, and childlike handwriting aside, we were chilled by the threat, more so because it did not include any racial epithets. Rather, the envelope contained hundreds of tiny pieces of sheet metal, methodically snipped into razor-sharp triangles.
I dont know why, Joshua said, but its the green crayon that puts it over the top. It makes it feel truly deranged.
Keep the front door locked, I told him. Youre always forgetting.
Glumly, Jessica nudged pieces of sheet metal across the dining table with her finger. You said it couldnt get any worse.
I gave the envelope to the police, along with the rest of the hate mail and the microcassette of hate messages from the answering machine, but they didnt seem overly concerned. Instead, they chose to investigate the 3AC.
I was dealing with a crisis at work. Our list broker had screwed up, and I realized we would be woefully short of addresses for our direct-mail campaign. Then I stumbled upon another snafu. The lettershop had neglected to apply for an additional mailing office in Vermont, and the process usually took thirty days. I phoned the General Mail Facility in Boston to plead for an exception, but was told that they had just canceled our bulk-mailing permit, claiming we had not used it in over fifteen months.
In the midst of all of this, Joshua called me. Dude, he said, Jimmy and Noklek are in jail.
The police had set up a sting operation on Pink Whistle, sending two undercover detectives to the salon the day before, both requesting massages. The first cop told Jimmy that he was in a hurry. You want the fifteen-minute, then, for fifty, Jimmy told him. According to the police report, the cop gave Jimmy a twenty and three tens (marked bills) and was led into the back office, which was furnished with a massage table, towels, assorted body oils, a low-lit lamp with a red shade, and mirrors framed by tassels and black lace. Noklek entered the room, wearing a tube top and hot pants, and she offered him a menu of Extras: Topless, Nude, Doctor, Foot Fetish, Domination, Russian Ending, and Pop the Cork, priced between $25 and $150. The detective chose Topless, and Noklek, after taking a twenty and a five from him (also marked), removed her tube top, massaged his chest and stomach, fondled his testicles, and gave him a hand job until the timer rang. Three hours later, a second detective stepped into Pink Whistle for the same services, whereupon they arrested Jimmy and Noklek. They had been held overnight and were being arraigned this morning.
Joshua picked me up at the office and drove us to the courthouse. Whyd they have to spend the night in jail? I asked. Couldnt they get bail?
I dont know. Jimmy called me less than an hour ago.
Why didnt they let him call earlier?
I dont know, okay? Ive been scrambling around, trying to find Margolies and Grace. Im still fucking half asleep. I was up all night writing. I finally got on a roll, man.
In court, Jimmy was charged with keeping a house of ill fame, Chapter 272, Section 24, and deriving support from prostitution, Chapter 272, Section 7. The penalty for the first charge was no more than two years, but for the second charge it was no less than two years in state prison, with no chance of early release, probation, or a reduced sentence. Noklek was charged with engaging in sexual conduct for a fee, Chapter 272, Section 53A, punishable by up to one year or a fine of $500. I discovered that Chapter 272 of the Massachusetts General Lawsthe same classification under which the counter-complaint against Jessica, dissemination of obscene materials, had been filedwas entitled Crimes Against Chastity, Morality, Decency, and Good Order.