The Son of Mr. Suleman

by Eric Jerome Dickey

Genres: African American; African American Romance; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

Named in USA Today's "5 books not to miss," and New York Post's "The best new books to read"

From New York Times bestselling author Eric Jerome Dickey—named one of USA Today’s 100 Black Novelists and Fiction Authors You Should Read—comes his final work: an unflinchingly timely novel about history, hearts, and family.
 
It’s the summer of 2019, and Professor Pi Suleman is a Black man from Memphis with a lot to endure—not only as a Black man in Trump’s America but in his hard-earned career as an adjunct professor. Pi is constantly forced to bite his tongue in the face of one of his tenured colleague’s prejudices and microaggressions. At the same time, he’s being blackmailed by a powerful professor who threatens to claim he has assaulted her, when in fact the truth is just the opposite, trapping him in a he-said-she-said with a white woman that, in this society, Pi knows he will never win.
 
When he meets Gemma Buckingham, a sophisticated entrepreneur who has just moved to Memphis from London to escape a deep heartbreak, things begin to look up. Though Gemma and Pi hail from separate cultures, their differences fuel a fiery and passionate connection that just may consume them both.
 
But Pi’s whirlwind romance is interrupted when his absentee father, a celebrated writer, passes away and Pi is called to Los Angeles to both collect his inheritance and learn about the man who never acknowledged him. With the complicated legacy of his famous father to make sense of, Gemma’s visa expiration date looming, and the threats of his colleague becoming increasingly intense, Pi must figure out who he is and what kind of man he will become in his father’s shadow.
 
In The Son of Mr. Suleman, Eric Jerome Dickey takes readers on a powerful journey exploring racism, colorism, life as a mixed-race person, sexual assault, microaggressions, truth and lies, cultural differences, politics, family legacies, perceptions, the impact of enslavement and Jim Crow, code-switching, the power of death, and the weight of love. It is an extraordinary story, page-turning and intense, and a book only Dickey could write.

Release date: April 20, 2021

Publisher: Dutton

Print pages: 560

Sample

Chapter 1

 

When gods became bored in heaven they walked among mortals.

 

The stranger to my green eyes was dressed in a skirt with stunning embellishments and intricate tailoring that rode her curves like a Chevy cruising Riverside Drive at sunrise on a Sunday morning. Her sleeveless blouse was on the same level. Voluptuous woman, thick hips, rounded backside, small waist-an impeccable figure to die for, an hourglass. About five nine without the five-inch heels, she was akin to a movie star in a room of extras. Under her gravitational pull, a victim to the weight of her presence, I watched her as I engaged in conversation with my colleagues.

 

She stared at this BMFM, this Black man from Memphis, with the same curiosity.

 

I was thirty-one, five eleven, 180 on the scales fully clothed. Hair short on the sides, six inches of trendy pillow-soft kink from forehead to neck, a radical Black man's Mohawk. Skin a light ebony brown, the complexion that said sometime after the mass kidnapping in Africa, my ancestry, the bloodline of the first mathematicians, philosophers, kings, and Moors, had been integrated either voluntarily or by force.

 

We were at an annual repeat of a Cybill Shepherd movie called Being Rose that popped off on Main Street at the state-of-the-art Halloran Centre, an astonishing thirty-nine-thousand-square-foot space big enough for almost four hundred people and open to the public. It had an amazing theater and the night was sponsored by the University Along the Nile. UAN was my alma mater, and where I worked as an adjunct. By someone determined to take control of both my career and my life, I'd been mandated to socialize.

 

When the open event moved to the ultraprivate reception at the Pink Palace Museum and Planetarium, we peeped at each other across the room. The UAN after-party was a high-priced classy affair with plenty of alcohol and finger food, where they played Marc Cohn's hit song "Walking in Memphis" on repeat. I took in her amber skin and cute smile. She had dimples, those beautiful indentations, plus freckles and a pronounced chin cleft that gave her face symmetry. Wide eyes paired perfectly with pillow-soft lips, soup coolers painted dark with mystery. Simply. Gorgeous. Beautiful enough to make it impossible to ignore. Her eyebrows were on point, but her lashes were an omen, two black butterflies confronting me each time I spied her way.

 

I went to her, but not too fast, not with thirst, introduced myself. "Professor Pi Suleman, UAN."

 

"I'm Gemma Buckingham, from Brixton."

 

She walked slowly, an invitation, and I moved with her at a snail's pace.

 

Without preface she said, "Meghan really is beautiful, innit?"

 

"Thee Stallion?"

 

"Meghan Markle."

 

"Everyone is beautiful to someone."

 

"Even a stallion."

 

British humor touched American hip-hop humor and we laughed.

 

I asked, "Big fan of the duchess?"

 

She beamed. "I'm in America. Her America. I get to see how she lived. I get to see her world."

 

There were murals and displays on Native American pottery, which spoke to us as we strolled with the crowd. She nodded in approval at pre-Columbian relics, the same with Clyde Parke's Miniature Circus, then became interested in the fossils and dinosaurs, mounted animals. She took in our past in silence. For thirty minutes she became a student. She wasn't interested in the displays on World War I and II, had no idea who the significant Black Memphians were, but she read the identifiers for the history exhibitions that focused on the roles of song and cotton in my city on the Nile, tuned in on the exhibit regarding the changing roles of women.

 

We paused in a living room with adornments from the 1920s.

 

I continued talking as if we'd never paused the conversation, said, "Brixton?"

 

"London, where American Meghan Markle moved, only to be ridiculed and treated harshly."

 

"Ridiculed?"

 

"For being mixed race. As if that means subhuman. They've attacked her mother as well."

 

I nodded. "For being gifted with melanin."

 

"Incessantly. By the tabloids. Battered on Twitter by racists. Waves of abuse and harassment."

 

"Racism that bad over there?"

 

"Not as blatant as here, but yeah. The West End is hostile. My sisters get charged twice as much to enter a bloody club. Some have had to change names to get jobs. I swear to you, it's unending. A cesspool of racism. Worse for Meghan than anyone. Being American has exacerbated the issue."

 

"I bet she regrets that choice, same as Princess Di did."

 

"What should be a fairy tale has become a nightmare. I feel her pain and depression."

 

"Had no idea." I stroked my soft beard. "The nasty Thames is your muddy Mississippi."

 

The transition was awkward, but her body language told me it was appreciated.

 

"Pretty much. You're landlocked here. You have the river, but that's not like having a real beach. Only a fool would get in those nasty waters. So sad you have to drive six hours to Dauphin Beach."

 

We stopped moving and I smiled a little more, fascinated. "You grew up on a beach?"

 

"No, but I could get a train from London Victoria to Brighton Beach in an hour."

 

"Still, we both grew up in port cities."

 

"Mine has over thirty bridges connecting East and West End; yours has only has two."

 

"Yeah. The Memphis-Arkansas Bridge and the New Bridge, the Hernando de Soto Bridge."

 

"So, tell me about the University Along the Nile."

 

Wearing my best smile, I told her what made the UAN Pharaohs stand out was the main building, which cost three hundred million dollars and was a duplicate of the defunct glass pyramid that sat on the Mississippi. We had fifteen- to thirty-foot-high statues of Egypt's pharaohs across the yard.

 

"How large is UAN? Sounds massive."

 

"UAN has about twenty-two thousand people, seventy countries represented, three hundred areas of study, one hundred seventy buildings. There are sixty statues of pharaohs, mini-pyramids, and Egyptian hieroglyphics placed over a thousand acres, which makes the campus a museum from end to end. It takes twenty minutes to walk the yard."

 

She said, "Wasn't there a terrifying incident at UAN a few days ago?"

 

"Almost. We had word some racist was on the way. He'd posted his intentions on social media. He made it on campus. The active-shooter alarm sounded, and UAN was put on lockdown for a few hours. Our security had the racist cornered by the Little Pyramid until he surrendered."

 

"So you're famous."

 

"We were mentioned on CNN."

 

Gemma Buckingham said, "Everyone I passed seemed to be in little groups, whispering like it's a bloody secret. They talk so loudly, then whisper concerning certain topics, but they are bloody whispering louder than their regular speaking voices. Almost everyone in here uses their outside voices."

 

"UAN is a proud uni, so of course we talk about the attack by a lone-wolf, southern-fried terrorist in whispers, the way southerners do all of their families' dirty laundry."

 

She said, "Also overheard campus police here are like the military in Israel."

 

"With all the campus shootings in the USA, and with a couple threats directed at UAN for some unknown reason, the university thought it was a good idea to let the security company they had contracted go and hire the Aggressive Six to protect the students. They're a team made up of steroid-chomping men built like Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Cena, the Rock, Rambo, Lou Ferrigno as Hercules, and Popeye the Sailor. They are some mean motherfuckers, no doubt paid to be that way."

 

She laughed at my descriptions, then mocked me, "Motherfuckers."

 

"Pardon my French."

 

"In French motherfucker would be enculŽs or enculŽes, perhaps connard, couillon, or conasse."

 

"Lots of ways to call someone a motherfucker in France."

 

"Because there are a lot of motherfuckers in Paris."

 

We laughed together.

 

Her scent was erotic, the kind that made a mortal fall in love with a deity.

 

She grinned. "By the way, love your Memphis accent."

 

"I thought you had the Brixton accent. My bad."

 

"Southern, wise, deep, intellectual. You're an African American Matthew McConaughey."

 

"He wishes he had my swag."

 

"If only you were the rule and not the exception."

 

"Something happen?"

 

She chuckled. "I took an Uber to Graceland, had the ultimate VIP tour to see your royalty. Not exactly Kensington Palace or Windsor Castle. Interesting dŽcor, to say the least. I paid two hundred US and saw Elvis's collection of over-the-top jumpsuits, his famous pink Cadillac, the gold records, jets."

 

"That whole strip, Elvis Presley Boulevard, is dedicated to the King from end to end."

 

"Noticed that. I realized I was in what is called Whitehaven, saw a mall nearby, thought it would be akin to Knightsbridge."

 

"Oh boy."

 

"I thought the circus was in town. One fellow talked so loudly, bragged about how much he spent for his forty-six-inch rims. Must one have rims so ginormous it makes your car look like a bloody clown car?"

 

We laughed at her snark.

 

She asked, "What's your name again?"

 

"Professor Pi Suleman."

 

"Professor."

 

"Pi. Call me Pi."

 

"Pie? My weakness, especially a meat pie, a good posh pie. What's yours?"

 

"Not the food, the number 3.14."

 

"The mathematical constant."

 

"Been called worse by my own skinfolk."

 

"Curious. Why did your mother name you Pi, Pi?"

 

I paused. "Because I was born on March fourteenth."

 

"You were born on Pi Day. This is truly odd. Talk about odd birthdays."

 

"Yours?"

 

"April twentieth."

 

I laughed. "For real? You're a four-twenty baby?"

 

"It seems to be a big deal here in this part of America, not so much where I'm from."

 

"You were born on Colorado's get-high day. A day to celebrate marijuana."

 

"If I'd been an American, I would've been called Marijuana and teased all my bloody life."

 

I said, "You're a Taurus."

 

"And you?"

 

"Pisces."

 

"I used to be all into Zodiac signs when I was a teenager."

 

I asked, "What you remember?"

 

"Taurus needs a physical connection; Pisces are emotional. But are supposed to have amaze-balls sex."

 

"Gemma."

 

"Gemma Buckingham, if that is not too much to ask. Hate to bother, but I'm particular."

 

As we stood to the side, Blacks chatting among whites who occasionally spied our way with suspicious eyes, as if we needed to integrate for their comfort, I asked, "What's your IG?"

 

"Instagram? Oh, my love, I don't do social media."

 

"So, Black woman from London, you're not keeping up with Black Twitter?"

 

She turned her body away, suddenly annoyed, then tendered a UK smile that made clear being pushed irritated her. She had left the conversation, her way of telling me the gotdamn answer she gave was her final answer and to not ask her the same fucking question over and over in different ways.

 

The room of socialites rumbled and began to applaud.

 

Judge Zachary Beauregard Calhoun and Dr. Helen Stone-Calhoun came in like potentates. A squad of twelve followed like disciples.

 

Gemma Buckingham whispered, "I take it these are important people here."

 

"In the tristate area."

 

"Tristate?"

 

"Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi."

 

"One would think King George and Queen Elizabeth had arrived on a magic carpet."

 

"Yeah. One would think."

 

Chapter 2

 

The oversize judge was the UAN man The Commercial Appeal dubbed Memphis's "Judge of all Judges." He was six six, taller than President Lincoln. He was a fat fucker, bigger than the largest man the USA ever had elected. President Taft had clocked in at 380. Judge Calhoun weighed more than 400 pounds.

 

The giant among men rocked his standard seersucker suit and worn oxfords.

 

The judge came from a legacy of southerners who took their sheets from their beds and wore them on their heads for the delight of terrifying Black folks in the thick of the night. If a Black man walked into that judge's courtroom accused of stealing half a honeybun to feed his starved child as his first offense, he could end up gone for two decades plus ten.

 

Judge had married a beauty queen from Brownsville, Tennessee, where once upon a time the denizens fought tooth and nail against the freedom of African Americans and were willing to die trying to kill the battle-weary wishes of Blacks being freed on paper by President Abraham Lincoln.

 

Dr. Stone-Calhoun saw me, gave me an authoritative stare; then it looked like a powerful feeling of joy rocked her, but only for as long as it took to blink twice. She saw me with a beautiful Black woman and her eyes turned greener than mine, that lasting three blinks. My jaw tightened. She had given me the invite and told me that it was mandatory that I attend this social event or there might be a problem with my coins somewhere down the line. She had me in a trick bag, demanding I kowtow to her every demand, and it was worsening. Not for meeting Gemma Buckingham, an act of rebellion, I'd be gone, would be at Love Club, partying with the Fastest Swimmers, on my second scotch, getting turnt.

 

I scowled at that Bitch from Brownsville and thought of the ending of Of Mice and Men.

 

Dr. Stone-Calhoun was probably the most beautiful woman of a certain age on campus, her beauty accentuated by wealth and boosted by power. The power-hungry woman who lorded over me and stole my joy always wore upscale swag from Lori James boutique and was rarely seen in the same outfit twice in the same season. She was known for having her precious, luxurious blond hair movie-star fresh every day. Rumor was she was up in her personal wing in her southern-fried former slave mansion getting her locks done in her beauty salon by a professional each sunrise while the rooster crowed.

 

They moved on.

 

Ass-kissers and bootlickers followed them, trying to become a part of that powerful clique.

 

In the same breath, one of my students entered the room.

 

Had to do a triple take.

 

She usually rocked dark braids and ripped jeans.

 

Tonight she was a diva. Lavender hair with glam waves cascaded down her back.

 

She saw me with Gemma Buckingham, slowed her stroll, sipped her drink, did a hair toss, and resumed her march, hips on fire, lips pursed, looking ready to tell me ten things she hated about me.

 

When the devil was bored, she put on her fuck-me pumps and went to destroy mortals.

 

Chapter 3

 

The diva ignored Gemma Buckingham, squared off with me. "Professor Suleman. Good evening."

 

"Jennifer."

 

"Komorebi DaShiarra Regina Devin Jackson. I'm in one of your intro classes."

 

"How may I help you, Miss Komorebi Jackson?"

 

"Professor Four Ds said you'd be here. May I speak with you regarding my paper?"

 

"This is beyond my office hours."

 

"Your office hours conflict with my schedule. I have eighteen units and two jobs."