Manchild in the Promised Land (10 page)

I wondered what would happen if I yelled out, “Ain't nobody scared-a you, you ole bitch!” I had never called a lady a bitch, but I called a big girl a bitch one time and ran real fast. I thought that if I didn't act scared, the mean queen would get real mad and would probably send me to that place called Sing Sing. So I did the best thing—stayed real quiet and acted as if I were scared of her too. I thought, This lady judge couldn't have a husband like Dad and be as mean as she is, ‘cause Dad would beat her ass. Or would he? Maybe this lady is too mean for anybody to beat, even Dad.

From the minute I laid eyes on the mean queen, I knew she wasn't going to send me home, and she didn't. She gave me another day to come back to court and sent me back to the Youth House. Toto was sent there too, but Bulldog had to go to the Children's Center.

Before we left the court, Mama said, “That judge said you aon't come back to court before January 5. Boy, do you know that's next year? You wasn' home for last Chistmas, and you won't be home for this one either. And you won't be home for Carole's birthday party next Sunday. It's just November 14, and you only been back in New York three months and four days. Boy, sometimes I git the feelin' you ain't gon never stay home no more.”

I told Mama that I didn't care so much about not being home and that if Bulldog had stayed awake, I would have brought Carole the biggest and best birthday present she'd ever had. All Mama did was look at me with tears in her eyes, and I knew she was thinking, Lord, what's the matter with my child?

When the bus was all loaded and ready to take us back to the Youth House, one of the boys in the seat behind me tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Hey, shorty, ain't that your mother standin' on the court stoop?”

“Yeah.”

He said, “Man, she's cryin'.”

I said, “So what?” as if I didn't care. But I cared; I had to care: that was the first time I had seen Mama crying like that. She was just standing there by herself, not moving, not making a sound, as if she didn't even know it was cold out there. The sun was shining, but it was cold and there was ice on the ground. The tears just kept rolling down Mama's face as the bus started to pull away from the curb. I had to care. Those tears shining on Mama's face were falling for me. When the bus started down the street, I wanted to run back and say something to Mama. I didn't know what. I thought, maybe I woulda said, “Mama, I didn' mean what I said, ‘cause I really do care.” No, I wouldn'a said that. I woulda said, “Mama, button up your coat. It's cold out here.” Yeah, that's what I forgot to say to Mama.

There was something good about being in the Youth House. It made me feel big, as if I had outgrown the Children's Center. That was for kids. For one thing, you couldn't get out of the Youth House. The windows had iron gates on them, and the doors were always locked. But after a while, I didn't want to go anyway. Being in the Youth House was much better than being down South. In the Youth House, they showed movies twice a week, and you could play pool, basketball, checkers, go swimming, fight, and do a lot of other things. The Youth House was clean too. It wasn't as clean as the Center, but it was cleaner than most of the places I had been to. What I didn't like about the Youth House was that I had to clean my room every other day. Then they gave me a roommate I could beat, and I stopped cleaning it and started learning how to do what Danny used to call “git by.”

Once I learned how to get by, the Youth House became one of the nicest places I had ever been. I really liked it there. I became a member of the Council on my floor. Toto was a member too, and we both were getting by real good. The people in the Youth House trusted the Council members more than they did the rest of the boys. So Toto and I could steal a lot of things and nobody would even think we did it. Sometimes when we took something and thought somebody might find out, we would bully some punky guy and make him say that he did it. And if things really got bad, like everybody on the floor losing play privileges for a while, we would take whatever we stole and put it in somebody else's room. Then when the searching started, either me or
Toto would find it, and the person whose room we found it in would get in trouble. As time went on, the floor supervisor started getting wise to us, but this didn't mean that we had to stop. We just had to find a new way to do what we wanted to do, and we always found one. I was getting by real good, and I didn't care if I never left the Youth House.

I was learning to shoot pool real good. Before I came to the Youth House, I never had a chance to learn. I wasn't big enough to go in the poolroom on 145th Street. Mama came to visit me every Saturday or Sunday, so it was just like being out on the street, only better, because I could do everything I wanted to do—steal, fight, curse, play, and nobody could take me and put me anywhere. I was already in the only place they could put me. I had found a way to get away with everything I wanted to do. When I got out, I was going to tell Knoxie and Bucky and everybody what a good time you could have in the Youth House. And I was going to find Danny and tell him that I had found out how to do all the things we wanted to do and get away with it. The only thing you had to do was go to the Youth House first, then you didn't have to worry about anything after that.

Around Christmas time, Toto started saying that I was changing and that he wasn't going to hang out with me any more when we got out of the Youth House. He said that I was bullying everybody and that sooner or later somebody was going to kick my ass. So I got mad and kicked his. Before that time, I had never been in a fight with Toto; but I always knew I could beat him, and he knew it too, so there was nothing for us to fight about. We wouldn't have had that fight if I hadn't said something about his mother. He had to fight after that, because a guy who won't fight when somebody talks about his mother is the worst kind of punk.

Toto was right in what he said. I guess that's why I got mad. Just about everybody on the third floor of the Youth House was scared of me, and I liked it. This was the first time I had ever been anyplace where nearly everybody was scared of me, and before I knew anything, I was liking it. And I didn't care what anybody said or how right what they were saying was. I was having more fun than I'd ever had in my whole life. I knew I was doing things to people that I never would have done out on the street, but I didn't care. It didn't make sense to be in the Youth House if you were only going to do the things you did out on the street.

One Sunday, Mama and Dad came to visit me, and while we was sitting in the visiting room talking, a boy came over to us with his mother, pointed at me, and said, “He's the one who's always hittin' on me.” I jumped up, swung at him, and missed, and while Dad was holding me, I called him a lying faggot. Dad slapped me in the mouth. It didn't hurt much, but I got mad and I cried. I wanted to kill him for hitting me in front of all those people—and in front of some of the guys I was bullying too.

I said to myself, That's all right, ‘cause when I git big enough to kill him, I'll jis have one more thing to kill him for. So I stopped crying. Dad was going to make me kill him. Sometimes I was only going to kick his ass real good when I got big, but then he would do something like that, and I would start planning to kill him again.

Mama was looking scared about something, and she said, “Boy, where you heard that word at?”

I knew what word she was talking about, but still I said, “What word?”

Mama said, “That word you called that little white boy; that's what word.”

“Oh, you mean ‘liar'?”

Dad slapped me and promised to beat my ass right there in that visiting room if I kept on playing dumb. So I told Mama that everybody called him that.

“Do everybody know what it means?” Mama asked me.

I thought I saw a way out with this question. So I said, “Yeah, it means he can't fight and lets everybody pick on him. That's what it means.”

Dad said, “Oh,” and started to say something else, but Mama beat him to it, like most of the time.

“What does everybody pick on him for?”

I said, “ ‘Cause he won't fight, that's why. Anyway, I don't pick on him. He was lyin' when he said that.”

Mama said, “Look, nigger, you know that boy didn't bring his mother over here and point you out just to tell lies on you.” Mama looked over me and started talking to Dad.

After Dad had slapped me, Mama went over and talked to the other boy's mother. Mama came back and told Dad that the white lady had said that her son was a meek boy and wasn't “aggressive or some-thin' another like that.” Mama couldn't understand white people too
well anyway, and when they used those big words she couldn't understand them at all.

Mama could understand Jewish people pretty well because she had worked for them for years. That's how she could tell if a white person was Jewish or not, I guess, by whether or not she could understand them.

Dad said, “Maybe the little boy is got girlish ways, and if he is, ain't nothin' nobody can do about it, especially if he won't fight.”

Tears started sneaking down Mama's face. The first tear stopped for a little while on the rough spot on her cheek, then it went on down and stopped between her lips, and her lipstick started shining. I didn't watch it any more. Dad got up and went over on the other side of Mama and put his arm around her. I reached into the bag of fruit that Mama and Dad had brought me, took out a pear, and started eating it; I liked pears. Dad started telling Mama that it wasn't so bad, since I was only ten years old; and, anyway, it wasn't as if I was the one who couldn't fight. I had a feeling that Dad was only going to make Mama cry louder and more, because he never knew what to say to her.

And that was just what happened. Mama started crying more and saying, “He'll be eleven years old soon, and he gittin' into that shit already.”

Dad said, “Can't nothin' real bad happen before he gits thirteen or fourteen.”

“Lord knows I want that boy to be around some girls when he git that age.”

And Dad said, “No, Sugar, he'll be home then if he ever learn to stay outta trouble.”

Mama just kept on crying, and Dad couldn't do anything about it. I could have told Dad what to say to make Mama stop crying. I could even have told him something to tell her to make her smile. It would have been a lie, but it would have made Mama feel real good. But I didn't say anything. It wasn't my place to say anything. And Dad kept on holding her and saying stupid things to her and Mama kept on crying and I kept on eating the pear.

I didn't know it then, but at the Youth House I met a lot of guys I was going to see again and live with again in a lot of places, white guys, Spanish guys, colored guys, all kinds of guys. The Youth House had more guys in it than Bellevue did, and it didn't have any girls.
Some of the guys in the Youth House were a little crazy, but it was only when somebody made them mad, not that real crazy kind of crazy or the all-the-time kind of crazy like the guys in Bellevue. Most of the guys in the Youth House were all right; some of them just couldn't fight. But even the ones who couldn't fight were going to be with me again in other places and for more time than in the Youth House. Some of the guys I didn't like there I was going to like someplace else, and some other time we were going to be friends and fight for each other.

On January 5, Toto and I went to court, and when the mean queen said she was going to place me in some kind of school for boys, it didn't bother me. I don't know why, but I just didn't care. Then she said she was going to send me home for a while first, till they had room for me. She was talking to Mama, and I could hear her, but I couldn't understand what the mean queen was saying. I knew it wasn't anything bad—Mama didn't look like she was about to cry like she did when the queen sent me to the Youth House. I kept watching Mama, and Mama kept looking up at the queen from the bottom of her eyes and nodding her head faster and faster to let the queen know that she understood her. It seemed like Mama was trying to make that mean lady judge stop talking and let us leave before the queen changed her mind and sent me back to the Youth House.

Mrs. Jones, Toto's mother, was standing right next to Toto and me. And Toto was watching her and trying to look pitiful, just like I was. Mama and Mrs. Jones sure did look crazy with their heads going up and down faster and faster as they peeped up at the mean queen from the bottom of their eyes and tried to look as if they knew what she was saying to them. All I knew was that I was supposed to look sorry for what I had done. Toto knew this too, so we were both looking real sorry while our mothers nodded their heads. All the time, I was wishing that I had gotten caught with somebody else, because Toto was too good at looking pitiful. He was so good that he even made me feel sorry for him. After a while, I stopped trying to look sorry and just tried to look like Toto. I sure was glad that Bulldog wasn't there, because he could look more pitiful than anybody I knew without even trying. When he started looking pitiful, he might have made the mean queen think that Toto and I were laughing. Mama said that they had sent Bulldog to Bellevue from the Children's Center and that he was still there.

All the head nodding stopped, and Mama and Mrs. Jones were thanking the mean queen. On the way home, we walked over to Lexington Avenue, and Mama bought me a hot dog and a glass of soda. It was kind of good being outside in the street again. Mrs. Jones bought a hot dog for Toto too, and then Mama and Mrs. Jones started telling us that we were in a lot of trouble and that we were going to be sent away to a school for bad boys until we were twenty-one. Mama asked me if I was ever going to be good or if I was just planning to spend my whole life in jail, die in the electric chair, or let somebody kill me for stealing something.