Mark Phillips' Pages: Workbook: 12/3/04: "He's trying to sound like a Negro."

Romare Bearden, "Mother and Child," 1977 — Romare Bearden, *Mother and Child* (1977)

December 3, 2004:

"He's trying to sound like a Negro."

Scary-thin boy with Buddy Holly glasses and Paul McCartney hair. Dark-haired woman with that Jackie Kennedy flip. Living room, faux-Scandinavian furniture, mostly of cheap particle board and stain, grouped around a Sears Silvertone one-piece hi-fi with detachable four-inch speakers.

She's shocked by the suggestion.

"No he isn't," she insists, firmly and parentally, with that peculiar mid-1960s tremor in her voice betraying inner acknowledgement that she could well be losing control.

"Yes," the boy says firmly. The woman's evident lack of conviction has settled his certainty. "He is." And that's that.

On the turntable spins the vinyl LP Beatles VI, an America-only release. The song they're disagreeing over is called "Bad Boy", written and originally recorded in 1959 by American Negro singer Larry Williams, heard now for the first time by millions of white Americans in a version sung by John Lennon, of Our Four Sweet Boys.