Assata: An Autobiography (20 page)

Love is my sword
and truth is my compass.
What is left?

The next several years of high school passed uneventfully. Because i was spending weekends with my mother, we became closer. During my seventeenth year, however, i decided to quit school, get a job, and live on my own.

My entrance into the working world was a rude awakening. I didn't even know what most of the want ads meant. Auditor, copywriter, accounts receivable, key punch operator were all foreign words to me. Every day i hit the pavement with my best "office looking" clothes on and a pair of high-heel torture shoes. Every day i came home more frustrated than the day before. I didn't know how to do anything, had no experience, and was Black to boot. Finally, i paid some employment agency one or two weeks' salary for the privilege of getting me one of those dingy, boring, $95-dollar-a-week jobs. I was one of those slaves where you pay a fifth of your salary for taxes, some more for social security, another $5 a month for union dues, and the rest was not even enough to die on.

It seemed that the whole world was made up of things i couldn't afford. After i paid the rent on my furnished room, spent carfare, and bought food, i had just enough money to buy an air sandwich. The only saving grace was that i didn't have too much time to hang out. I was going to night school, so i would leave my boring job and go to boring night school to diagram sentences, memorize garbage, and prepare for a high school diploma that meant nothing in the job market. My life was being spent pushing around meaningless papers that had nothing to do with liv ing. I wasn't doing anything positive. I wasn't making anything, creating anything, or contributing to anything. After a while, i wanted to tell them to take their papers and their job and shove it.

But at first i wasn't like that. After weeks of looking for a job, i was grateful just to have one. I didn't think about low pay, indecent working conditions, no medical benefits, only one week vacation. I was just happy to be working. I identified with the job and talked about "our" company and told people what "we" manufactured. I wasn't making two cents over lunch money and talked like i owned the place. I remember once i was working at some joint where they made trailers. I had a job pushing papers. I told one of my aunt's friends that she should buy one of those trailers if she ever wanted one. She looked at me like i was crazy. "Why?" she asked. "Are they going to give me a discount?" I felt so stupid. It hit me. They wouldn't even give me a discount and i was working there.

The longer i worked at those places, the shorter my patience got. Half the time i didn't even want to hear that rinky-dink stuff they talked about at the office. I got sick of listening to gossip about the bosses and this and that and who was messing with who. After a while, i stayed pretty much to myself, and when i wasn't busy i would stick a book between some pages and read. That was back in the mid-sixties and papers were filled with stories about riots.

At the time, i really didn't know what to think about the riots. The only thing i can remember thinking was that i wanted to see the rioters win. In the office there was a group of secretaries who worked for the president or the vice-presidents. They looked down on those of us who worked in the general office and treated us like we were nothing. One day, i was in the bathroom and one secretary came in. She was spraying hair spray on a puffed-up French roll that was so hard it looked like it had been baked on. She began talking about this and that. I was surprised because she never talked to me. Then she started about the riots, "what a shame it was" that "those people" were so stupid and dumb for rioting because they were just tearing up their own neighborhoods and burning down their own houses. I didn't say anything. She prodded: "I said, isn't it a shame? Isn't it?" I didn't know what to say. It was true that Black people were burning down Black neighborhoods, but i didn't know how to deal with the question. She kept insisting. Finally, i said, "Yes," and walked out.

I was disgusted with myself. I hadn't wanted to agree with her, but i didn't know what else to say. I spent half the night thinking until i felt i had the answer. A few days later, the subject came up again. This time the whole bunch of front-office secretaries, who were friendly with the office manager, came into the general office. Before they had a chance to get any words out after "riot," i was on their case. "What do you mean, they're burning down their houses?

They don't own those houses. They don't own those stores. I'm glad they burned down those stores because those stores were robbing them in the first place!" They stood with their mouths open.

After that, the office manager went out of her way to hassle me. Miscellaneous whites began to ask my opinion about the riots, and i made sure they weren't disappointed. I knew it wouldn't be long before they fired me. The only reason i didn't quit was that i had nowhere to go and nothing else lined up. When i was finally fired, i was relieved.

Because my girlfriend Bonnie and i read a lot of fiction and poetry, we thought we were intellectuals. Neither of us had finished high school, but we used to go to this place on Broadway called the West End, dressed in what we believed to be our scholastic finery. It was one of those real college-type places, with pastrami sandwiches and pitchers of dark beer. We sat around trying to look "deep" until someone sat down and talked to us. After a while, we made friends with some African students who were studying at Columbia.

I loved to listen to the Africans. They were intense, serious, and had so much dignity. I was introduced to African customs, and they spent hours explaining the various aspects of their cultures. Bonnie asked about their marriage ceremonies because she was dying to get married. I asked about the food because i loved it: curried chicken, groundnut stew (chicken in peanut sauce), and corn bread that you cook over the stove. You would break off a little piece, roll it into a ball, dip your thumb in the middle and make a spoon that you would fill with gravy and eat. It really made me think about how bad they've done us. We know everything about spaghetti and egg rolls and crepes suzette, but we don't know the first thing about our own food. When i was a little kid, if you had asked me what Africans ate, i would have answered, "People!"

One day, Vietnam came up. It was around 1964 and the movement against the war had not yet blown up in full force. Someone asked me what i thought. I didn't have the faintest idea. Back then, the only thing i read in the papers was the headlines, crime stories, comics, or the horoscope. I said, "It's ll right, i guess." All of a sudden there was complete silence. "Would you mind explaining, sister, what you mean by 'it's all right, i guess'?" The brother's voice was mocking. I said something like "You know, the war we're fighting over there, you know, for democracy." It was clear, from the expressions around me, that i had said the wrong thing. The brother i had come with looked like he wanted to crawl under the floor. "Who's fighting for democracy?" somebody asked. "We are. The United States." And then, as an afterthought, i added, "You know, they're over there fighting communism. Fighting for democracy." The brother held his head in his hands as if he had a headache. I knew i had said something wrong, but i couldn't figure out what. Thinking i had failed to state my case strongly enough, i continued repeating everything i had heard on television. Babbling. Which only made matters worse.

When i finished, the brother asked me if i knew anything about the history of Vietnam. I didn't. He told me. He explained French colonialization, exploitation, brutalization, the starvation and illiteracy; the long fight waged and won in the North and the u.s. involvement in propping up a phony government after the French got their butts kicked.

The brother was talking about names, places, and events just like he was from Vietnam or something. I sat there with my mouth hanging open. He knew all this stuff and he wasn't even studying history. I couldn't believe that this African, who didn't even live in the u.s. or in Asia, could know more than me who had friends and neighbors who were fighting over there.

Then he defined the u.s. government's role, that it was fighting for money, to defend the interests of u.s. corporations and to establish military bases. I didn't know whether to believe him or not. I had never heard of such a thing. "What about democracy?" i asked him. "Don't you believe in democracy?" Yes, he said, but the government the u.s. was supporting was not a democracy but a bloodthirsty dictatorship. He started running all kinds of names and dates on me and there was no way i could respond. There he was, talking about the u.s. government just like somebody would talk about a criminal. I just couldn't relate to it. But my mind was blown.

Despite that, i continued saying the first thing that came into my head: that the u.s. was fighting communists because they wanted to take over everything. When someone asked me what communism was, i opened my mouth to answer, then realized i didn't have the faintest idea. My image of a communist came from a cartoon. It was a spy with a black trench coat and a black hat pulled down over his face, slinking around corners. In school, we were taught that communists worked in salt mines, that they weren't free, that everybody wore the same clothes, and that no one owned anything. The Africans rolled with laughter.

I felt like a bona fide clown. One of them explained that communism was a political-economic system, but i wasn't listening. I was just digging on myself. I had been hooping and hollering about something that i didn't even understand. I knew i didn't know what the hell communism was, and yet i'd been dead set against it. Just like when you're a little kid and they get you to believe in the bogeyman. You don't know what the hell the bogeyman is, but you hate him and you're scared of him.

I never forgot that day. We're taught at such an early age to be against the communists, yet most of us don't have the faintest idea what communism is. Only a fool lets somebody else tell him who his enemy is. I started remembering all the stupid stuff people told me when i was little. "Don't trust West Indians because they'll stab you in the back." "Don't trust Africans because they think they are better than we are." "Don't hang out with Puerto Ricans because they all stick together and will gang up on you."

I had learned, through experience, that they were all lies told by stupid people, but i never thought i could be so easily tricked into being against something i didn't understand. It's got to be one of the most basic principles of living: always decide who your enemies are for yourself, and never let your enemies choose your enemies for you.

After that, i began to read about what was happening in Vietnam. What the Africans had said was true. There were also articles about the u.s. army in Vietnam, their involvement in torture and forcing Vietnamese women to sell their bodies just to survive.

I was so confused. It just didn't make any sense to me. "Our government couldn't do anything that bad," i told Bonnie. There had to be some other information. I couldn't even understand what "we" were doing there in the first place. Some kind of treaty, they said, but it didn't make any sense. I got so disgusted at one point that i said i wasn't going to read the news anymore.

"Ignorance is bliss," Bonnie said.

"The hell it is," i answered. I damn sure didn't want to be as ignorant as i had been. When you don't know what's going on in the world you're at a definite disadvantage. I decided i'd keep trying to follow what was happening, but i still couldn't believe the u.s. was doing all the foul things i was reading in the newspapers.

"What do you mean, you don't believe it?" Bonnie asked. "Just take a look at what they're doing to you."

The difference between the Africans and the other friends i hung out with that summer was startling. I remember one day at the beach. Everybody is hee-hee happy. It's party time. A multi-colored umbrella stands defiantly against the breeze. Blankets and silly-looking beach towels color the beach, along with soda cans and bottles of Bacardi and Johnnie Walker Black. Healthy-looking Black men, wearing turned-down sailor hats and college sweat shirts with cutoff sleeves, lug ice chests and other stuff back and forth. An improvised outdoor sound system has been hooked up and Martha and the Vandellas are wailing in the background.

I am insisting on reading James Baldwin even though the wind keeps flapping the pages. Anguished voices scream and moan from the pages. Compressed ghettos threaten to explode. Poverty and fire and brimstone boil over into a deadly stew, but the "beautiful" people refuse to let me read in peace. My girlfriend has insisted on "fixing me up" with "Mr. Wonderful," who turns out to be an egomaniac decked out in monogrammed swimming trunks, a matching terrycloth robe, and a monogrammed towel to boot. Mr. Wonderful consents to grace me with his presence. His looks and manner tell me that i should be grateful because he is definitely what's happening. His ride is a red MG convertible, his crib is in Esplanade Gardens, and his gig is an assistant manager for some bank downtown. He is kool from his reel-to-reel tapedeck to his color TV, right down to his shaggy "bachelor rug," which he leeringly tells me about.

He drinks Remy Martin cognac and Harvey's Bristol Cream, uses a cologne i can't pronounce, and i wait, expectantly, for him to tell me his brand of toothpaste. He goes on and on about his trinkets and status symbols. "Look at this monogrammed mother fucker," i think to myself. He is smug and insinuating. A Black version of "Bachelor Knows Best," or some such thing. I want to go back to James Baldwin, but i am surrounded by a group of people that talk too loud, looking and thinking somewhat like Mr. Wonderful. They are talking about Karmann Ghias, Porsches, Corvettes, and other cars that are deemed "in."

The conversation drifts on to co-ops and high-rise apartment complexes. A young man, who has mentioned more than once that he is an accountant, tells us the benefits of buying "property" on the Island. An insurance salesman says that he sells insurance out on the Island and pulls some business cards out of a little silver colored case which he "just happens to have handy" in his beach bag. A redheaded schoolteacher who has eyes for the accountant says that she has always wanted a house on the Island with a big kitchen. After talk about the Island has exhausted itself, the conversation turns to places to go. French and Mexican restaurants are definitely "in," with a restaurant that sells fifty different kinds of crepes winning hands down. One of the men, who is a poverty pimp, says that he has moved his offices to the Red Rooster bar and restaurant. Somebody laughingly asks if he isn't afraid to go into Harlem "with all them niggas." Everybody has some favorite restaurant on top of some building downtown. They don't talk about the food, just the scenery. Mr. Wonderful says he has a Playboy key and often eats at the Playboy Club.