It was a little plastic statuette he had bought at some flea market. A sideways naked white woman with outrageously huge breasts hanging down in perfect half-globes ending in little red-painted nipples. Arms extended forward, wearing a mask and kick-ass high-heeled boots, long blond hair whipping over her, ending over her trim bare butt. Underneath, holding the naked lady up on top of the little pedestal, the Stars and Bars and the words, “NakedGirl: Pride of the South”.
“You know you can’t put that out here,” Jamal said. “Plus, you know how I feel about that flag.” He had seen this thing sold around town recently and had been half expecting this.
“Jesus, it’s not what y’all think,” Billy Gibbs said, then launched into his usual complaint. “Us mountain folk never owned slaves. Now those fat cats at the statehouse who want to wipe the stars and bars off every T-shirt, they’re the ones whose great-great-great granddaddies used the whip in the cotton fields. Not us!”
Dareen, sitting with her coffee at the table in the little kitchenette, looked at the plastic naked superheroine with feigned amusement and secret horror. She had taken to wearing a kerchief and long skirt, bulking up with loose-fitting blouse and blazer as always. Fortunately the air conditioning was back on line, though coming to work was a sweaty ordeal.
Then Billy flicked on a little switch underneath and the naked girl’s boobs lit up and then started blinking. Even Jamal had to snort. “Energizers,” Billy said proudly. Blink . . . blink . . . blink . . .
Ms. Hom came in for a refill. She looked quickly at the scene and there was a trace of rolling her eyes. Billy knew he couldn’t leave NakedGirl out on display but it was good for a laugh.
When she had gone, Billy said, “So who is this girl? That’s what I want to know.”
Jamal was half tired of this speculation, but it was unavoidable. It was the buzz of Atlanta, in fact of the nation. “She has unique powers. Maybe she got them through a government experiment. No, that’s stupid.”
“Not any more stupid than any other theory,” Billy said. “The other question is, why does she go around naked? Does she have to be an exhibitionist about it?” Blink . . . blink . . . blink . . .
“I don’t know, maybe she’s a stripper,” Jamal said offhandedly. In fact that was a common theory. The cable news was on it 24/7. Dareen and Elly kept watching it with mixed amusement and disgust, though with Dareen there was the extra cringe factor. A parade of psychologists opined that the girl had a messed-up childhood, was screaming for attention yet wanted to hide, and what did she do during the day anyway? She only came out at night. Then there were the crazies who said she was an alien being. “But apparently doing a very good job of looking like an earth woman,” one newscaster smirked. It was a standard joke by now, that the people who reported her were so distracted by her large breasts that they couldn’t describe her face. Then there was the FBI guy who said only, “We are looking into this. She might be a foreign agent.”
There had been attempts to fake robberies so as to draw NakedGirl onto the scene where she could be photographed. But she never showed up; and real crimes happen only by surprise. As far as the real crime rate, it had gone down, but only slightly. Almost anyone who would commit a crime knew about the new superheroine, of course. They would get to see a naked girl, but just as surely, they would be apprehended. One former mugger who appeared as an “expert guest” on TV said, “I wouldn’t do it, man. I just wouldn’t. You could see a naked girl any time, go to a gentleman’s club, but it’s not worth the extra five to fifteen, even with parole.”
“Are you NakedGirl?” was becoming a standard line in bars. “Under These Clothes I’m a Superheroine!” was a new T-shirt message, popular on young women’s tank tops. As well as, “Secretary by Day ???? by Night,” “No You CAN’T See Me in My Super Costume”, and “Excuse Me, I’ve Got to Strip and Save People”.
“She does good things,” Dareen ventured weakly. Which is what she said the last time she was home, her parents being distracted by the conversation and forgetting about her new bulky clothes. “I’ve put on a little weight”, is how she explained it to Uncle Rakhman, the only one who noticed. Her parents meanwhile were in a foul mood of disapproval as to the superheroine. “That girl is just shameful, going around like that,” her father said. “She could just as easily do that with clothes on,” her mother said. Her older brother Kes wasn’t so offended. “It’s kind of nice,” he said with a mischievous smile.
Back at the kitchenette, Billy said, “Well good for her. Catching bad guys is always O.K.” Blink . . . blink . . . blink . . .
Jamal exhaled. “African-American bad guys.” Which was another thing. Every time the mystery woman caught someone, the Cobb News Network put his mug shot up next to their computer-generated white face of NakedGirl -- the contrast was as obvious as it was unspoken. She had caught a couple of white guys, but they were the exceptions. Last night Dareen and Elly were horrified to see a local civil rights leader talk about NakedGirl as “a new version of white-sheeted vigilantism. With no clothes. She makes racism sexy. A naked woman -- the best marketing racism ever had.” At the end of the clip, Elly said, “This is starting not to be funny any more.” They had sat through the media circus, the call-in strippers claiming to be the girl, the send-up clips of a local comedienne as a bumbling NakedGirl, with breasts and crotch fuzzified by computer of course, being offended when the people she was trying to rescue looked over and said, “You really must do something about that bubble butt.” But with the racism accusation things were getting a little unsettling.
Not that it ever had been much fun for Dareen. Every night after supper she went to her room, took off her clothes, and sat on her bed as it got dark. Some nights, she got the call. So far, she hadn’t sensed being needed during the day when she was at work and clothed and powerless. Thank Allah for that.
“I hate to say it, but she catches black guys because they’re the ones who are committing the crimes,” Billy said. Blink . . . blink . . . blink . . . “If you’re going to look for muggers in downtown, what do you expect?”
Jamal said, “That’s the problem with superheroes. You never see them catch white collar criminals. The big time crooks.” Blink . . . blink . . . “Will you turn that thing off?!”
Billy took the plastic NakedGirl off the table and they all went back to their offices. Dareen adjusted her kerchief and looked down to her modest cover-all shoes, her stockings, and her long skirt.
Flying through the driving rain, she had to keep wiping her eyes to see clear, though maybe she didn’t need to do that and it was just habit. She kind of knew the way anyway, like always. She descended along the row of telephone poles on the highway just outside of town, past the stadium, and saw the problem. This time it wasn’t a crime, but people were in big trouble nonetheless.