Black Boy (22 page)

He stared at me, then left. The principal’s speech was simpler and clearer than mine, but it did not say anything; mine was cloudy, but it said what I wanted to say. What could I do? I had half a mind not to show up at the graduation exercises. I was hating my environment more each day. As soon as school was over, I would get a job, save money, and leave.

Griggs, who had accepted a speech written by the principal, came to my house each day and we went off into the woods to practice orating; day in and day out we spoke to the trees, to the creeks, frightening the birds, making the cows in the pastures stare at us in fear. I memorized my speech so thoroughly that I could have recited it in my sleep.

The news of my clash with the principal had spread through the class and the students became openly critical of me.

“Richard, you’re a fool. You’re throwing away every chance you’ve got. If they had known the kind of fool boy you are, they would never have made you valedictorian,” they said.

I gritted my teeth and kept my mouth shut, but my rage was mounting by the hour. My classmates, motivated by a desire to “save” me, pestered me until I all but reached the breaking point. In the end the principal had to caution them to let me alone, for fear I would throw up the sponge and walk out.

I had one more problem to settle before I could make my speech. I was the only boy in my class wearing short pants and I was grimly determined to leave school in long pants. Was I not going to work? Would I not be on my own? When my desire for long pants became known at home, yet another storm shook the house.

“You’re trying to go too fast,” my mother said.

“You’re nothing but a child,” Uncle Tom pronounced.

“He’s beside himself,” Granny said.

I served notice that I was making my own decisions from then on. I borrowed money from Mrs. Bibbs, my employer, made a down payment on a pearl-gray suit. If I could not pay for it, I would take the damn thing back after graduation.

On the night of graduation I was nervous and tense; I rose and faced the audience and my speech rolled out. When my voice stopped there was some applause. I did not care if they liked it or not; I was through. Immediately, even before I left the platform, I tried to shunt all memory of the event from me. A few of my classmates managed to shake my hand as I pushed toward the door, seeking the street. Somebody invited me to a party and I did not accept. I did not want to see any of them again. I walked home, saying to myself: The hell with it! With almost seventeen years of baffled living behind me, I faced the world in 1925.

My life now depended upon my finding work, and I was so anxious
that I accepted the first offer, a job as a porter in a clothing store selling cheap goods to Negroes on credit. The shop was always crowded with black men and women pawing over cheap suits and dresses. And they paid whatever price the white man asked. The boss, his son, and the clerk treated the Negroes with open contempt, pushing, kicking, or slapping them. No matter how often I witnessed it, I could not get used to it. How can they accept it? I asked myself. I kept on edge, trying to stifle my feelings and never quite succeeding, a prey to guilt and fear because I felt that the boss suspected that I resented what I saw.

One morning, while I was polishing brass out front, the boss and his son drove up in their car. A frightened black woman sat between them. They got out and half dragged and half kicked the woman into the store. White people passed and looked on without expression. A white policeman watched from the corner, twirling his night stick; but he made no move. I watched out of the corner of my eyes, but I never slackened the strokes of my chamois upon the brass. After a moment or two I heard shrill screams coming from the rear room of the store; later the woman stumbled out, bleeding, crying, holding her stomach, her clothing torn. When she reached the sidewalk, the policeman met her, grabbed her, accused her of being drunk, called a patrol wagon and carted her away.

When I went to the rear of the store, the boss and his son were washing their hands at the sink. They looked at me and laughed uneasily. The floor was bloody, strewn with wisps of hair and clothing. My face must have reflected my shock, for the boss slapped me reassuringly on the back.

“Boy, that’s what we do to niggers when they don’t pay their bills,” he said.

His son looked at me and grinned.

“Here, hava cigarette,” he said.

Not knowing what to do, I took it. He lit his and held the match for me. This was a gesture of kindness, indicating that, even if they had beaten the black woman, they would not beat me if I knew enough to keep my mouth shut.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

After they had gone, I sat on the edge of a packing box and stared at the bloody floor until the cigarette went out.

The store owned a bicycle which I used in delivering purchases. One day, while returning from the suburbs, my bicycle tire was punctured. I walked along the hot, dusty road, sweating and leading the bicycle by the handle bars.

A car slowed at my side.

“What’s the matter there, boy?” a white man called.

I told him that my bicycle was broken and that I was walking back to town.

“That’s too bad,” he said. “Hop on the running board.”

He stopped the car. I clutched hard at my bicycle with one hand and clung to the side of the car with the other.

“All set?”

“Yes, sir.”

The car started. It was full of young white men. They were drinking. I watched the flask pass from mouth to mouth.

“Wanna drink, boy?” one asked.

The memory of my six-year-old drinking came back and filled me with caution. But I laughed, the wind whipping my face.

“Oh, no!” I said.

The words were barely out of my mouth before I felt some
thing hard and cold smash me between the eyes. It was an empty whisky bottle. I saw stars, and fell backwards from the speeding car into the dust of the road, my feet becoming entangled in the steel spokes of the bicycle. The car stopped and the white men piled out and stood over me.

“Nigger, ain’t you learned no better sense’n that yet?” asked the man who hit me. “Ain’t you learned to say
sir
to a white man yet?”

Dazed, I pulled to my feet. My elbows and legs were bleeding. Fists doubled, the white man advanced, kicking the bicycle out of the way.

“Aw, leave the bastard alone. He’s got enough,” said one.

They stood looking at me. I rubbed my shins, trying to stop the flow of blood. No doubt they felt a sort of contemptuous pity, for one asked:

“You wanna ride to town now, nigger? You reckon you know enough to ride now?”

“I wanna walk,” I said simply.

Maybe I sounded funny. They laughed.

“Well, walk, you black sonofabitch!”

Before they got back into their car, they comforted me with:

“Nigger, you sure ought to be glad it was us you talked to that way. You’re a lucky bastard, ’cause if you’d said that to some other white man, you might’ve been a dead nigger now.”

I was learning rapidly how to watch white people, to observe their every move, every fleeting expression, how to interpret what was said and what left unsaid.

Late one Saturday night I made some deliveries in a white neighborhood. I was pedaling my bicycle back to the store as fast as I could when a police car, swerving toward me, jammed me into the curbing.

“Get down, nigger, and put up your hands!” they ordered.

I did. They climbed out of the car, guns drawn, faces set, and advanced slowly.

“Keep still!” they ordered.

I reached my hands higher. They searched my pockets and
packages. They seemed dissatisfied when they could find nothing incriminating. Finally, one of them said:

“Boy, tell your boss not to send you out in white neighborhoods at this time of night.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

I rode off, feeling that they might shoot at me, feeling that the pavement might disappear. It was like living in a dream, the reality of which might change at any moment.

Each day in the store I watched the brutality with growing hate, yet trying to keep my feelings from registering in my face. When the boss looked at me I would avoid his eyes. Finally the boss’s son cornered me one morning.

“Say, nigger, look here,” he began.

“Yes, sir.”

“What’s on your mind?”

“Nothing, sir,” I said, trying to look amazed, trying to fool him.

“Why don’t you laugh and talk like the other niggers?” he asked.

“Well, sir, there’s nothing much to say or smile about,” I said, smiling.

His face was hard, baffled; I knew that I had not convinced him. He whirled from me and went to the front of the store; he came back a moment later, his face red. He tossed a few green bills at me.

“I don’t like your looks, nigger. Now, get!” he snapped.

I picked up the money and did not count it. I grabbed my hat and left.

I held a series of petty jobs for short periods, quitting some to work elsewhere, being driven off others because of my attitude, my speech, the look in my eyes. I was no nearer than ever to my goal of saving enough money to leave. At times I doubted if I could ever do it.

One jobless morning I went to my old classmate, Griggs, who worked for a Capitol Street jeweler. He was washing the windows of the store when I came upon him.

“Do you know where I can find a job?” I asked.

He looked at me with scorn.

“Yes, I know where you can find a job,” he said, laughing.

“Where?”

“But I wonder if you can hold it,” he said.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Where’s the job?”

“Take your time,” he said. “You know, Dick, I know you. You’ve been trying to hold a job all summer, and you can’t. Why? Because you’re impatient. That’s your big fault.”

I said nothing, because he was repeating what I had already heard him say. He lit a cigarette and blew out smoke leisurely.

“Well,” I said, egging him on to speak.

“I wish to hell I could talk to you,” he said.

“I think I know what you want to tell me,” I said.

He clapped me on the shoulder; his face was full of fear, hate, concern for me.

“Do you want to get killed?” he asked me.

“Hell, no!”

“Then, for God’s sake, learn how to live in the South!”

“What do you mean?” I demanded. “Let white people tell me that. Why should you?”

“See?” he said triumphantly, pointing his finger at me. “There it is,
now
! It’s in your face. You won’t let people tell you things. You rush too much. I’m trying to help you and you won’t let me.” He paused and looked about; the streets were filled with white people. He spoke to me in a low, full tone. “Dick, look, you’re black, black,
black
, see? Can’t you understand that?”

“Sure. I understand it,” I said.

“You don’t act a damn bit like it,” he spat.

He then reeled off an account of my actions on every job I had held that summer.

“How did you know that?” I asked.

“White people make it their business to watch niggers,” he explained. “And they pass the word around. Now, my boss is a Yankee and he tells me things. You’re marked already.”

Could I believe him? Was it true? How could I ever learn this strange world of white people?

“Then tell me how must I act?” I asked humbly. “I just want to make enough money to leave.”

“Wait and I’ll tell you,” he said.

At that moment a woman and two men stepped from the jewelry store; I moved to one side to let them pass, my mind intent upon Grigg’s words. Suddenly Griggs reached for my arm and jerked me violently, sending me stumbling three or four feet across the pavement. I whirled.

“What’s the matter with you?” I asked.

Griggs glared at me, then laughed.

“I’m teaching you how to get out of white people’s way,” he said.

I looked at the people who had come out of the store; yes, they were
white
, but I had not noticed it.

“Do you see what I mean?” he asked. “White people want you out of their way.” He pronounced the words slowly so that they would sink into my mind.

“I know what you mean,” I breathed.

“Dick, I’m treating you like a brother,” he said. “You act around white people as if you didn’t know that they were white. And they
see
it.”

“Oh, Christ, I can’t be a slave,” I said hopelessly.

“But you’ve got to eat,” he said.

“Yes, I got to eat.”

“Then start acting like it,” he hammered at me, pounding his fist in his palm. “When you’re in front of white people,
think
before you act,
think
before you speak. Your way of doing things is all right among
our
people, but not for
white
people. They won’t stand for it.”

I stared bleakly into the morning sun. I was nearing my seventeenth birthday and I was wondering if I would ever be free of this plague. What Griggs was saying was true, but it was simply utterly impossible for me to calculate, to scheme, to act, to plot all the time. I would remember to dissemble for short periods, then I would forget and act straight and human again, not with the desire
to harm anybody, but merely forgetting the artificial status of race and class. It was the same with whites as with blacks; it was my way with everybody. I sighed, looking at the glittering diamonds in the store window, the rings and the neat rows of golden watches.

“I guess you’re right,” I said at last. “I’ve got to watch myself, break myself…”

“No,” he said quickly, feeling guilty now. Someone—a white man—went into the store and we paused in our talk. “You know, Dick, you may think I’m an Uncle Tom, but I’m not. I hate these white people, hate ’em with all my heart. But I can’t show it; if I did, they’d kill me.” He paused and looked around to see if there were any white people within hearing distance. “Once I heard an old drunk nigger say:

I laughed uneasily, looking at the white faces that passed me. But Griggs, when he laughed, covered his mouth with his hand and bent at the knees, a gesture which was unconsciously meant to conceal his excessive joy in the presence of whites.

“That’s how I feel about ’em,” he said proudly after he had finished his spasm of glee. He grew sober. “There’s an optical company upstairs and the boss is a Yankee from Illinois. Now, he wants a boy to work all day in summer, mornings and evenings in winter. He wants to break a colored boy into the optical trade. You know algebra and you’re just cut out for the work. I’ll tell Mr. Crane about you and I’ll get in touch with you.”

“Do you suppose I could see him now?” I asked.

“For God’s sake, take your
timer
!” he thundered at me.

“Maybe that’s what’s wrong with Negroes,” I said. “They take too much time.”

I laughed, but he was disturbed. I thanked him and left. For a week I did not hear from him and I gave up hope. Then one afternoon Griggs came to my house.

“It looks like you’ve got a job,” he said. “You’re going to have a chance to learn a trade. But remember to keep your head. Remember you’re black. You start tomorrow.”

“What will I get?”

“Five dollars a week to start with; they’ll raise you if they like you,” he explained.

My hopes soared. Things were not quite so bad, after all. I would have a chance to learn a trade. And I need not give up school. I told him that I would take the job, that I would be humble.

“You’ll be working for a Yankee and you ought to get along,” he said.

The next morning I was outside the office of the optical company long before it opened. I was reminding myself that I must be polite, must think before I spoke, must think before I acted, must say “yes sir, no sir,” that I must so conduct myself that white people would not think that I thought I was as good as they. Suddenly a white man came up to me.

“What do you want?” he asked me.

“I’m reporting for a job, sir,” I said.

“O.K. Come on.”

I followed him up a flight of steps and he unlocked the door of the office. I was a little tense, but the young white man’s manner put me at ease and I sat and held my hat in my hand. A white girl came and began punching the typewriter. Soon another white man, thin and gray, entered and went into the rear room. Finally a tall, red-faced white man arrived, shot me a quick glance and sat at his desk. His brisk manner branded him a Yankee.

“You’re the new boy, eh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let me get my mail out of the way and I’ll talk with you,” he said pleasantly.