Entertaining God

Entertaining God Summary | Entertaining God Summary

This short story is divided into three distinct sections. The first section is about John, a black 15-year-old boy, who ultimately comes to his demise under bizarre circumstances. The second section concerns John's father. This section recounts the last moments of John's father's life and what his last thoughts and memories are about. The third section is about John's mother; it gives an account of her life and how she is coping years after her son's death.

Part 1 of the story opens with a statement about John loving the god provided to him. John is climbing a hill and pulling along a drugged gorilla that he has tied to a rope. The zookeepers had given the gorilla some medicine that made him drowsy and John was attempting to cajole the gorilla up the hill before the gorilla fell asleep. John had taken the gorilla out of his cage at the Bronx Zoo.

John is a very black boy with a flattened broad nose. John has a gentleness to his face. When John first saw the caged gorilla, he cried and suffered for days. John can't wait until the morning when the drugs will have worn off and he can attempt to better converse with the gorilla. John views this as his deliverance from believing in the god that his mother has chosen for him.

They come to a big rock buried in the ground and the gorilla refuses to walk any further and falls asleep. John stares at the gorilla in wonder for a while. They are still on the grounds of the Bronx Zoo. John does not intend to take the gorilla any further. John hopes they will not be discovered until he has received what he wants from the gorilla and he will be able to pay proper homage to the gorilla. John pets the gorilla while he sleeps, laughs in joy, and falls asleep beside it.

The next morning John begins his ritual. He first builds a fire. The gorilla awakens and is groggy but watches John. John retrieves the bread he has brought and unwraps it. The gorilla smells the bread and wants some. John unties the gorilla and has him sit by the fire. John proceeds to burn the bread piece by piece, dropping it into the fire. After each piece is burnt, John bows down to the ground in front of the gorilla, fervently speaking some words. The gorilla can smell the burning bread and is getting frustrated that John is not giving him any. John then takes the wine he has brought and opens the bottle. The gorilla smells the wine and finally comes out of his stupor, now fully alert and awake. The gorilla groans in protest when John pours half the wine in the fire. John continues his prayer as he bows down and drags himself to the gorilla's feet. John sees that the gorilla's feet have some similarities to his own: both are black and rough. John presents the burnt offerings and lays them at the feet of the gorilla, his "savage idol." The gorilla, agitated due to his hunger, bashes John's head in with his feet, killing him. The gorilla then reaches for the bread. John's last image is of the gorilla's feet and a blinding light.

The second section begins with the statement that John's father's life is ending. A tornado is leveling the houses on their block, giving John's father and his second wife enough time to grab their baby and their older son, run to the refrigerator, toss the food out, and put the children in, slamming the door. They then hold on to one another. Later, after the destruction the tornado leaves in its wake, the children are found by searchers, cold, injured, and running out of air, but alive, unlike their parents.

In his last moments of life, John's father only thinks fleetingly of God and of his second wife. John's father reflects more on his first wife, a librarian, and his son John. John's father has very black, rough skin. His first wife, in fact, had their wedding pictures touched up so his skin looked lighter and smooth. He married his wife because she was fun and carefree and had long, dyed red hair. Soon after they were married, she stopped dying her hair, wore boring gray suits, and was constantly reading books. She was no longer fun-loving or carefree, but serious, trying to be appear as respectable as possible. She stopped being the person he thought he knew. John's father quit his job at the post office and became a hairdresser. His son John had been too little to hold his interest and so he left.

John's father's second wife was a "sister in the Nation." They moved to the South so she could spread and teach the "Word" where it was needed. John's father changed his last name to an X but always had strong misgivings about this, stemming from knowing his son John would never be able to find him if he did not have a last name. Ten years went by before the father saw John, who was by then 14 years old, about to turn 15. The father was eager to talk with John, to do anything with John. John, on the other hand, was distracted and was more eager to go the Bronx Zoo before it closed. John's father was upset to find himself vying with a zoo for his son's attention. John looked at his father with impatience, pity, and superiority-a look John's father recognized, because John had been looked at like that when he was a baby. John inherited his father's looks; a backward-sloping forehead and too wide of a mouth. John's mother fussed over John, but hated him because he looked like his father. She blamed her husband for John looking as he did, having a physical appearance that is detested in the Western world.

His second wife loved him fiercely for his blackness and claimed him and their children like a badge of honor. John's father knew he was lost to John, but his second wife helped him to see that John was like so many that needed the truth that their religion could bring. John's father finally found peace and acceptance with himself, and it was at this time when the beauty of his own acceptance was realized that John's father's life was coming to an abrupt end.

The third section begins with a phrase concerning John's mother. John's mother has become a popular radical poet who is using the black revolution to find a rapport with the younger generation. In this way, John's mother feels she can right herself of past wrongs. She did not have the same beliefs or experiences as the other radical poets, though she did have a failed marriage to a black man and also blamed her former Southern college for encouraging her "whiteness" to grow and stunting her own revolutionary growth. However, it was not these life experiences that were the driving passion for her popular poetic deliveries, but her son, who no one in her audience knew about.

She had been the assistant librarian in New York when John died. She had pieced together the details of John's death and spent two months in a sanitarium. A year later, she performed a complete overhaul of herself: cut her hair, replaced the high heels for sandals or boots, made African print dresses, wore hoop earrings, threw away her girdle, and made scarification marks down her cheeks.

Three or four years after her son's death, she began to contemplate writing poetry. No one talked to her after her poetic deliveries. She would watch the young students leave feeling beauty and pride about their blackness, and at this she felt sad. It was then she would visualize her son sitting in the back, eager and happy for her teachings. She had renamed him "Jomo" after his death and would call out to him when he came walking toward her. He never answered her, but would wait while she dried her eyes and escort her to the door.