The Nigger Factory by Gil Scott Heron Page B

on the edge of the bed with her as he usually did. ‘I mean, your speech was good. Everybody said so.’
    ‘Thanks.’
    ‘Are you all right?’
    ‘I’m okay. It’s raining.’
    ‘I was listening to it. It put me to sleep.’
    ‘Yeah? Well, I got me some work to do, you know. I got a lotta things I got to tighten up befo’ tuhmaruh.’
    ‘Can I make you some coffee or something?’ Sheila asked getting up. She slipped into her robe and lifted the arm of the record player that sat next to her bed. She lifted the stack of records that had played through and started them over again.
    ‘Where’s Bucky Beaver?’ Baker asked, referring to Sheila’s two-hundred-pound roommate who was a dead ringer for the animated character of the Ipana commercials in the fifties.
    ‘She moved,’ Sheila said absently.
    ‘She moved?’
    ‘Monday. She took her things an’ changed her room down the hall.’ The Temptations came on doing ‘Psychedelic Shack,’ and Sheila turned the record player down. She pulled a hot plate from under her bed and then went out into the hall. When she came back she had a coffee pot full of water in her hands. She filled up the top with coffee from a two-pound canister and lit the hot plate, putting the pot over one of the burners. Baker sat hunched over a pile of papers with his back to her. She started to speak and then stopped, busying herself with coffee cups and saucers from her dresser.
    ‘She couldn’ dig me, huh?’ Baker asked disconnectedly.
    ‘Huh? . . . oh, I guess not. She and I didn’ really get along. She’s got problems.’
    ‘Yeah. About three or fo’ hundred of ‘um.’
    ‘Ralph,’ Sheila giggled, warming a bit. ‘She’s not that fat.’
    Baker lapsed into silence. He was thinking about Victor Johnson, the skinny, bespectacled editor from The Statesman. He had left the MJUMBE meeting and gone directly to The Statesman office. Along with Johnson he had put together the issue that would greet the community when the sun rose. He had felt that he had done a good job in pointing out the things that had to be done at Sutton. He had even tempered his words to appeal to the lackeys and eggheads that he despised. He didn’t particularly care for political diplomacy, but he knew that he had lost the election because there were so many soft-hearted Toms on Sutton’s campus who daily sold their asses for a diploma and that he didn’t dare do otherwise. Now, in Sheila’s room, with copies of the paper being run off in the basement of the Trade Building, he wondered if he had done the right thing. Maybe Speedy Cotton had been right when he pointed out what kind of spot Baker’s article was going to put MJUMBE in. Baker had snorted that it was time for some people to get on the spot. Now he wasn’t sure if a Victor Johnson editorial and the pictures of Thomas in onecorner and the MJUMBE meeting in the other wouldn’t have been enough.
    Sheila interrupted his thoughts by coming up behind him and wrapping her arms around his neck.
    ‘Look! I’m bizzy. All right?’ Baker snapped.
    Sheila looked as if she had been kicked. She was turned off.
    ‘Look, I didn’t mean it like that . . . I’m uptight. Okay?’
    ‘That’s what I thought I was for . . . I mean, when things were bothering you and like that.’
    ‘There ain’ nothin’ an’ nobody who can do anything ‘bout this. It’ll all be taken care of tuhmaruh.’
    ‘Will it?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    Sheila turned the flame down under the coffee and poured two steaming cups from the pot. She poured a little milk and sugar in her cup and handed Baker his black. They drank for a second in silence.
    ‘What’s going to happen?’ Sheila asked suddenly.
    ‘I wish I knew,’ Baker said rubbing his bald head. ‘Things went all right today except for a few things.’
    ‘Like what?’
    ‘Well, we called Thomas to take the things to Calhoun, but his line was busy. So we decided to carry the ball ourselves and Calhoun wasn’t home.