Manchild in the Promised Land (6 page)

After the second round of eggs, Dixie sent Debbie downstairs to play. When Debbie had gone into the street, Dixie asked me if I wanted to play house, and I said okay. We got up from the milk crates that we had been sitting on in the kitchen. There were no chairs there. In fact, the only chair in the house was the one in the front room by the window. There had to be a chair in that spot. When Miss Jamie had money, she played numbers and waited all day long to hear what the first figure was. Mr. Bob, the number man, would come by and signal up to the window to let her know what each figure was as it came out. When he gave the signal, Miss Jamie would either say something about the Lord and send one of the kids down for her money or say, “Oh-h-h, shit!” and send somebody down with some money to put on another figure … if she had any more money.

By the time Dixie and I reached the front room, we were old friends. She took off her bloomers without giving it a thought. She didn't want to lie down on the bed because it was wet from her little brothers sleeping there the night before. It didn't even bother her that her drawers were dirty and ragged. They looked as if she had been wearing them for months, but still she didn't ask me to turn around or close my eyes while she took them off. This meant we were real good friends now.

As I was leaving, I told Dixie that I would bring her something nice when I came back. She tried to get me to say what it was, and when she had failed at this, she said she didn't believe me anyway. But I knew she did and that she would be waiting for me to come back.

After she had finished telling me what a liar I was, I slapped her playfully and ran down the stairs. When I reached the street, I looked up and down the avenue for Bucky, but he wasn't around. So, I decided to wait in front of his house and let him find me.

Mr. Mitchell, the man who owned the fruit store next to Bucky's house, was afraid to go to the back of the store after seeing me sitting on the running board of a car in front of his store. Mr. Mitchell was a West Indian, and I didn't like him. I didn't like any West Indians. They couldn't talk, they were stingy, and most of them were as mean
as could be. I like Butch, but I didn't believe that he was really a West Indian.

Mr. Mitchell was looking at me as if he thought I would jump up at any time and run away with his whole store. But I just sat there and looked right back at him. I thought about Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Law-son. Mr. Mitchell didn't seem to be a West Indian all the time, and he wasn't mean like Mr. Lawson. Mr. Lawson, who was the super of our house, was the meanest man on the Avenue. He was said to have killed half a dozen men. Dad had killed a man too, but that was for saying something nasty to Mama. I would have killed that bastard too. I think anybody would have killed him. Killing all those people wasn't what made Mr. Lawson mean. He was mean because he was a West Indian.

As I was sitting there on the running board of that car, I heard a voice that had always been pleasing to my ear as long as I could remember. It was little Pimp saying, “Sonny, Mama want you.” Pimp was my favorite person in the whole family. Maybe that was because he was my only brother. Or maybe it was just because. Whenever I stayed away from home for days I missed him, and sometimes I would even go to the house of the lady who kept him, Margie, and Carole while Mama was working. I missed Margie and Carole too, but not as much as I missed Pimp. He was my brother, and that was different. I would always bring him something that I had stolen, like a cap gun or a water pistol. I was waiting for Pimp to grow up; then we could have a lot of fun together. Right now, all I could do was tell him about all the fun I was having outrunning the police, stealing everything I wanted, and sleeping in a different place every night. Man, I couldn't wait to teach him these things. That little nigger sure was lucky to have me for a brother. I threw my arm around Pimp and started choking him playfully as we started toward the house to see what Mama wanted me for.

When we got to the door, I stopped and told Pimp to be quiet. It was a habit of mine by now to listen at the door before going in. Whenever I heard a strange voice, I usually made a detour. But this day I was going in in spite of the strange voice. I knew it was safe even though it was strange, because it was a lady's voice. That meant that it couldn't be the cops or a truant officer, and I hadn't stolen anything from a lady that day, so it had to be just a visitor.

Mama was sitting in the living room on the studio cot drinking beer, and a light-skinned pretty lady was sitting in the big chair across from Mama, drinking beer too. I walked into the middle of the living
room and stopped, staring at the lady who shouted out, “Is this Sonny Boy?”

When Mama answered, “Yeah, that's Sonny Boy,” this woman just reached up and grabbed me with both hands, saying, “Boy, come here and kiss your aunt.”

Before I could defend myself, she was smothering me to death between two gigantic breasts. I was let up for some air, but before I had taken two breaths, the lady was washing my face with sloppy kisses that stank from beer. I was getting mad and thinking that maybe I'd better tell her I didn't go for all that baby shit and that I didn't mean to have any more of it, aunt or no aunt. But when my long-lost aunt regained her senses and let me out of her bear hug, I wasn't mad any more. I had realized that this was just another one of those old crazy-acting, funny-dressing, no-talking people from down South. As I stood on the other side of the room looking at her, I was wondering if all the people down South were crazy like that. I knew one thing—I had never seen anybody from down there who looked or acted as if they had some sense. Damn, that was one place I never wanted to go to. It was probably eating corn bread and biscuits all the time that made those people act like that.

Mama started telling Aunt Bea how Pimp got his name, because Aunt Bea had said, “That sho don't sound like nothin' to be callin' no child.” When Mama started getting labor pains while she was carrying Pimp, there was nobody around to get an ambulance but Minnie, the neighborhood prostitute. Minnie called an ambulance, but it was a long time coming, and Mama's pains were getting worse. Minnie got scared and ran out and got a cab and took Mama to the hospital.

All the way to the hospital, Minnie kept saying, “It better be a girl, ‘cause I'm spending my last dollar on this cab, and I never gave a man no money in my life.” Minnie was real proud to tell people that she had never had a pimp and would never give a nigger a dime. Well, when Mama came out of the operating room, Minnie was still out there with her fingers crossed and praying for it to be a girl. Minnie left the hospital cursing, but not before she had become a godmother and had named her godson Pimp. Mama told Minnie that she was sorry but that it must have been the Lord's will.

Minnie said, “That's all right, ‘cause the cab fare was only seventy cents. And, anyway, he's such a cute little nigger, maybe he was born to be a pimp, and maybe it was in the cards for me to be the first one to
spend some money on him.” Minnie began teasing Mama about Pimp's complexion, saying, “Girl, you know you ain't got no business with no baby that light; it looks like it's a white baby.… I know one thing—that baby better start looking colored before your husband see him.” Mama said all her children were born looking almost white. And that Carole was even lighter than that when she was born, but, that by the time she was five years old, she was the cutest little plump, dimple-cheeked black gal on Eighth Avenue. This was probably because my grandfather is more white than he is colored.

After Mama finished telling Aunt Bea how Pimp got his name, she started telling me and Pimp that Aunt Bea had a real nice farm down South. When she had told us all there was to tell about that real nice farm, Mama asked us if we wanted to go home with Aunt Bea when she left in a couple of weeks. Pimp said no because he knew that was what Mama wanted to hear. I said I wanted to go right away, because I had just heard about all those watermelon patches down South.

“In a couple of weeks, all you chillun goin' home with your Aunt Bea for the rest of the summer,” Mama said.

I asked if I could have the beer bottle that was nearly empty. After I turned it up to my mouth and finished emptying it, I asked Pimp if he wanted to go to the show. We went into the kitchen to collect some more bottles to cash them in for show fare.

We could hear Mama and Aunt Bea talking in the living room. Mama was telling Aunt Bea how bad I was and that sometimes she thought I had the devil in me. Aunt Bea said that was probably true “ ‘cause his granddaddy and his great-granddaddy on his daddy's side both had it.” Next Aunt Bea was telling Mama how my great-grandfather, Perry Brown, had tied his wife to a tree and beat her with a branch until his arm got tired. Then she told Mama about what my grandfather, Mr. Son Brown, did to a jackleg preacher from Silver when he caught him stealing liquor from his still down in the Black Swamp. She said Grandpa circled around that old jackleg preacher and started shooting over his head with a shotgun and made the preacher run smack into a bear trap that he had set for whoever was stealing his liquor. After that the jackleg preacher only had one foot, and everybody said Mr. Son Brown shouldn't have done that to the preacher just for taking a little bit of whiskey.

I thought, Yeah, I guess there is a whole lotta devil in the Brown family and especially in Dad, ‘cause he sure is mean.

Then I heard Aunt Bea ask Mama a familiar-sounding question: “Do you think somebody done work some roots on the po child?”

Mama said, “Lord, I sho hope nobody ain't work no roots on my child.” Mama was quiet for a while, then she said, “They got some West Indian people around here who is evil enough to do anything to anybody, and they always ‘fixing' somebody. I always tell that boy to stop playin' and fightin' with those West Indian chillun, but he just won't listen. Who knows? Maybe he done did sumpin to one-a those kids and they people found out about it and worked some roots on him. Anything might happen to that little nigger, ‘cause he so damn bad. Lord, I ain't never seen a child in my life that bad. I know one thing—if I don't git that boy outta New York soon, my hair gonna be gray before I get thirty years old. Sumpin gotta be wrong with the boy, ‘cause nobody in my family steal and lie the way he do, and none-a his daddy people ain't never been no rogues and liars like he is. I don't know who he coulda took all that roguishness at.

“Seem like nobody can't make him understand. I talk to him, I yell at him, I whip his ass, but it don't do no good. His daddy preach to him, he yell at him, he beat him so bad sometimes, I gotta run in the kitchen and git that big knife at him to stop him from killin' that boy. You think that might break him outta those devilish ways he got? Child, that scamp'll look Jesus dead in the eye when he standin' on a mountain of Bibles and swear to God in heaven he ain't gon do it no more. The next day, or even the next minute, that little lyin' Negro done gone and did it again—and got a mouthful-a lies when he git caught.

“And talk about sumpin mannish! I had to go to school with him one mornin' to see his teacher. I got the postcard on a Friday, and all that weekend I was askin' him what the teacher wanted to see me about, and all that weekend he was swearin' to some Gods and Jesuses I ain't never heard of before that he didn' know why in the world his teacher wanted to see me, unless somebody was tellin' lies on him again. And I told him, I said, ‘Mind, now, my little slick nigger, you know I know you, and a lotta those lies people was tellin' on you was as true as what Christ told his disciples. Now, don't you let me go to that school and find out these lies they tellin' on you now got as much Gospel in 'em as those other lies had. ‘Cause if I do, so help me, boy, I'm gonna take down your pants right there in that classroom and beat your ass until the Lord stop me.' He still kept sayin' he didn't dc nothin' and had the
nerve to poke out his lips and git mad at me for always blamin' him for sumpin he ain't did. You know that little scamp had me huggin' and kissin' him and apologizin' for what I said to him?

“So, Monday mornin' rolled around, and I went to school with him. I had to watch him close, had hold his hand from the minute he got up that mornin', ‘cause I could tell by the look in his eye that if I took my eye offa him, that would be the last time I'd see him for the whole week. When I got to the school and talked to the teacher, I came to find out this Negro done took some little high-yaller girl in the closet one day when the teacher went outta the room. After he done gone and got mannish with this little yaller girl, he's gonna go and throw the little girl's drawers out the window. I almost killed that nigger in that classroom. As hard as people gotta work to get they kids clothes, he gon take somebody's drawers and throw 'em out the window. I bet you a fat man he never throwed nobody else clothes out no window. Ain't nothin' I kin do ‘bout that high-yaller-woman weakness he got, ‘cause he take that at his daddy. But I sho am glad they ain't got no little white girls in these schools in Harlem, ‘cause my poor child woulda done been lynched, right up here in New York.

“They had him down there in one of those crazy wards in Bellevue Hospital, but they let him come home, so I guess it ain't nothin' wrong with his head. I think one-a dem doctors did think Sonny Boy was a little crazy though, ‘cause he kept talkin' to me with all those big words, like he didn' want me to know what he was tellin' me. I don' know, maybe he didn' say Sonny Boy was crazy. It mighta been that he just don' know how to talk to regular people. You know, mosta those white doctors don' know how to talk to colored people anyway.

“Some of his teachers even said he was smart in doing his school-work and when he wasn't botherin' nobody. The trouble is that he's always botherin' somebody. He had one teacher, a little Jew-lady teacher, she was just as sweet as she could be. And she liked Sonny Boy and was always tryin' to be nice to him. She use to buy his lunch for him when he went lyin' to her about bein' hungry, after he done spend his lunch money on some ole foolishness. Well, one day she caught him lookin' up her dress, and she smacked him. Do you know that crazy boy hit her back' Yeah, I mean punch her dead in her face and made the poor lady cry. When I heard about it, I beat him for what seem like days, and I was scared to tell his daddy ‘bout it, ‘cause I know Cecil woulda killed him for doin' sumpin as crazy as that. And when I finished
beating him, I told that nigger if I ever heard of him hitting or even talkin' back to that nice little Jew-lady again, I was gonna break his natural-born ass. Well, they throwed him outta that school right after that, so I guess he didn't git a chance to do that again.