Ginni and Clarence

In a suburban home’s family room, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is watching a DVD. Hearing the garage door grind open, he jumps up, ejects a Long Dong Silver cassette, quickly places it in a case, titled “Recount,” and shoves it behind the Bible in the built-in bookcase. Ginni Thomas enters through the kitchen and walks into the family room seconds after Thomas has zipped his fly.

Ginni: Please, before you say anything, I . . .

Clarence: What were you thinking?

Ginni: I . . .

Clarence: I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something? I would love you to consider an apology sometime and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband? So give it some thought and certainly pray about this and come to understand why you did what you did? Okay, have a good day?????

Ginni: I, uh . . .

Clarence: People had forgotten this. Don’t you understand? It’s been years and, now, it’s everywhere. Do you remember what I said in my defense? Let me remind you:

This is a circus. It’s a national disgrace. And from my standpoint, as a black American, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the US Senate rather than hung from a tree.
You’ve resurrected the past, opened a floodgate that was closed almost two decades ago.

Ginni: Oh, Clarie, I fell in love with you all over again that day. Your eloquence, your fury . . .

Clarence: Don’t. Don’t try to use psychological flattery. I could be impeached. You might as well go outside, choose a tree, and put my name on it. Because that’s what this feels like, another lynching.

Ginni: Look, I’m the one who’s being lynched.

Clarence: Whoa, don’t even go there. No Caucasian could comprehend lynching. Don’t even go there.

Ginni: Go there? I think someone’s feeling Christ-like. Again.

Clarence: And why shouldn’t I? It was persecution. I was nailed to a cross, plain and simple, but it was forgotten, and you’ve . . .

Ginni: Look, I’ve been criticized for Tea Partying. You know, conflict of interest because of your position. Your position. What about my position? What about me? If 15 gazillion women came forward today and each one said you asked her who put pubes on your Coke, you’d still wear the robe. Suppose you WERE obsessed with porn, WHICH I don’t believe for one second, but all you’d have to do is have a David Vitter moment and say you’d asked forgiveness from God and me. Anyway, Clarie, I don’t mean to whine but I do have a law degree. I want to be somebody. And this is it for me, my time among the Mama Grizzlies. If I resurrected . . .

Clarence: Baby, I love the way you say ‘resurrected.’ You’re right. It’s okay. If they didn’t impeach Bush, they won’t impeach me. Even the latest WikiLeaks documents won’t shock anyone. The public doesn’t care. C’mere and place your Liberty Central smack dab on my resurrection. Tell me your breasts are bigger than Sarah’s, than Christine’s. You happen to know their bra size? And call me Justice.

MISSY BEATTIE lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Her email address is missybeat@gmail.com.

Missy Beattie has written for National Public Radio and Nashville Life Magazine. She was an instructor of memoirs writing at Johns Hopkins’ Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in BaltimoreEmail: missybeat@gmail.com