Manchild in the Promised Land (15 page)

She put her arm around my shoulder, and we turned the pages together. I smiled at and liked the pictures that seemed to make her happy. But the more pictures we looked at, the more I hated myself for not being older and bigger than I was. And I hated myself for never
having been to all the places she had been to and for missing out on so much of her life. After listening to the songs from
South Pacific
and looking at pictures of Mrs. Meitner's life, I felt kind of silly for having said what I did to her. So I said I was sorry and all. She gave me a sort of pat-on-the-head smile, said we were still friends, and shook my hand, and I left.

Lying in my bed thinking about it that night, I felt that I had done something crazy—I had fallen in love with the nicest lady I knew, and for no reason. I decided that I didn't hate Mrs. Meitner's husband, and I wished that the Germans hadn't killed him. But I still wished that I had been married to her for all those years and that her architect was our architect. I just knew her eyes used to have a brighter light and were even deeper then.… No, I didn't hate her husband. I couldn't, because he had been part of her happiness. I hated Hitler for not letting her stay happy.

I kept thinking about Mrs. Meitner holding the album real tight … just standing there and holding on to the memories of her happy times … real tight. If I had seen those pictures before, I don't think I would have said what I did to her earlier that evening. But I knew I liked her a lot and wanted to be her friend more than before. I decided to do something for her. I knew she liked to paint and make costumes, so I, who had never painted before, spent a whole day watching Floyd Saks paint. That night, I kept going over in my mind what I had seen Floyd do that day. The next day, I painted a portrait of Felix the Cat and a wicked sorcerer and gave them to Mrs. Meitner. That was the first time I had ever painted anything, and it was the last time too. Both paintings were so good that nobody but the guys who saw me painting them believed that I had done it. But Mrs. Meitner knew I had painted them, and she liked them. That was all that mattered.

When I went home for a visit from Wiltwyck, it seemed like the whole city had changed. I had forgotten all about roaches until I went back home. I had been to that nice old rich white lady's house up in Hyde Park, which wasn't too far from Wiltwyck. She had a big old house that seemed like a whole lot of houses bunched together. The cats who had been up there before said that she used to invite all the cats from Wiltwyck to her house every year and that everybody used to eat until he got sick or just tired of eating. This lady had a real big house; and the first time I went into it, I couldn't understand why she didn't
have any roaches in a house that big. I thought they just might have been hiding all the time I was there, but it wasn't like roaches to hide when there were a lot of people around eating food and stuff. That's why Mama didn't like roaches—they were always coming out and showing off when company came.

I had seen this old rich lady hanging around Wiltwyck a couple of times. I spoke to her the first time I saw her, and she said she was a member of some board or something like that. She started asking me a lot of stupid questions like did I like it up there and things like that. After that, I never had anything to say to her. I knew she was a nice lady, but she seemed to be a little crazy or something, and her voice didn't sound real. It sounded like one of those ladies in the movies. But that was all right, because she wasn't around too much, just once in a while.

I knew that her name was Mrs. Roosevelt and that she used to be married to a cat who was President of the United States. It sure seemed funny to me that the President of the United States would have had time to bother with that crazy-acting old lady. I figured that Dad was right about white people. He would read the paper and say, “White people sure do some damned fool things.” I thought that the lady named Mrs. Roosevelt didn't have any roaches in her house because the President used to live there. Roaches didn't want to mess with the President. I said to myself, I bet they come chargin' in here as soon as they find out he's gone.… Yeah, they're just waitin' to git the news. Roaches are slick like that.

On that first visit home, the bus from Wiltwyck stopped at Mt. Olivet Baptist Church on 120th Street and Lenox Avenue. A lot of cats' mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers and foster fathers and foster mothers and aunts and uncles had come to meet them. Most of the people who met the bus were smiling or laughing. A few were crying, but they weren't looking sad.

Carole and Sugar came to meet me. I was glad to see Carole, but I was kind of mad at her for bringing Sugar with her. I decided to get out of there in a hurry before anybody else asked me who Sugar was. Mr. Moore, my social worker, had already asked me if Sugar was my sister. I was real quick to say, “No, she ain't nothin'-a mine.” Then I introduced him to Carole and told him that Sugar was a friend of Carole's. After that, we left in a hurry.

Sugar was all right, but she was just too ugly to be introduced to anybody as anybody else's anything. Carole had to go and pay the gas and light bill on 125th Street. Sugar and I rode the bus uptown together. We didn't say anything until it was almost time to get off.

Sugar said, “Why didn' you write?”

I said, “For what?”

She didn't say anything else after that, and I was surprised. But Sugar had changed, just like everything else in Harlem. She was still ugly and all that, but she acted kind of different. She didn't say much; she just kept looking at me like she wanted me to say something to her. Sugar had changed a lot. She was growing up. She was nice—and almost as much fun to be with as some of the cats I knew.

It seemed that everybody I used to hang out with before I went to Wiltwyck was in Warwick or someplace like it. Nobody seemed to be out on the street. Knoxie had moved downtown, and everybody was saying that he had turned “good boy” on us. They said the cat stopped stealing and started going to school and stuff like that. At first, I didn't believe that kind of talk about Knoxie. But after everybody kept saying it, I sure wanted to see that cat and find out for myself. I knew I could make him steal something. But I didn't find out on that visit, because I didn't see Knoxie.

After being in the city for a few days, I started visiting some of the guys from Wiltwyck, and they started coming around the house. Dad didn't go for these cats coming around. He even told me to tell “all them little rogues not to come to the house,” but I never said anything to anybody. Mama used to treat all the cats real nice. She liked to get into everybody's business, and most of the cats didn't have a home or any relatives. Mama used to be a soft touch for cats who didn't have a mother. And even Dad used to feel sorry for guys who didn't have a mother or father. So after a while; I told everybody I brought to the house to say their mother was dead or their father was dead or that everybody they knew was dead. It seemed that having dead mothers and fathers made anybody look less like a rogue to Dad.

For that whole time, I didn't hang out with any of my old running partners. I just went around with cats from Wiltwyck, but we did the same things. We stole things, hitched bus rides, and looked for any kind of trouble to get into. When the two-week home visit was up, I just didn't care too much. Nobody seemed to care … nobody but Sugar, and she didn't matter much. She said I should have spent more
time with her. I told her that the next time I came home, I would spend all my time with her. I don't know why I said that, and after saying it, I was kind of sorry I had. I guess I just wanted to tell her something that would stop her from looking so sad. Sugar smiled when I said it; she even looked happy. It made me feel kind of good.

When I got on the bus, I kept playing with Sugar out the window, and when some cats in back of me started teasing me about how ugly my girl was, it didn't seem to matter, not even a little bit. When the bus started pulling away and Sugar was standing on tiptoe for me to kiss her, I wanted to, but I just couldn't. I wanted to—real, real bad—but her buckteeth might have gotten in the way. Sugar ran beside the bus for a while, and her eyes had a kind of begging look in them. She stopped at the corner where the bus turned; her begging eyes had water in them … and so did mine.

One time I came home to go to court. When I was about four or five years old, I got hit by a bus on Eighth Avenue. Everybody said I kept hollering for my shoe, even after they got me to the hospital. Every time something happened to me, it seemed that I would always lose one shoe. The bus didn't hurt me, but while I was up at Wiltwyck, Mama and Dad were trying to get some money from the bus company. So I had to come down from Wiltwyck to go to court and see about it. That was the first time I had ever been in court with Dad. All the times I went to court for getting into trouble, Mama always went with me. I sure felt funny going to court with Dad.

Mama never acted biggety in court, but she would bow her head only so low. But as soon as I got up that morning, I could tell that Dad was going to be a real drag. He got up with his hat in his hand and was bowing his head before we even got out of the house. He kept telling me how to act and what not to say. I pretended I was listening to him real hard, hoping he would feel kind of smart and maybe act like somebody with some sense when he got in court. But what I really wanted to tell him was, “Shit, man, I been in court before, so you better watch me and let me pull
your
coat about how to act in front of that judge and those other white people.” But if I had said that, he would have kicked my ass.

I just had a real bad feeling that I was going to get fucked over in that court worse than ever before. This was the first time I was going to court and didn't have to worry about the judge sending me away. I
would have felt that I owned the court that day if Dad hadn't acted so goddamn scarey. He kept saying we were going to get a lot of money from the bus company if I said the right things and acted the way he told me to. Dad said we were bound to get a lot of money—we had a good Jewish lawyer from way downtown. But I knew damn well we were going to need a lot more than a good Jewish lawyer that morning.

When we got to court, the lawyer was already there. He spoke to Dad, and Dad yes-sirred him all over the place, kept looking kind of scared, and tried to make the man think he knew what he was talking about. When the lawyer came over to me and said, “Hello, Claude; how are you?” and shook my hand and smiled, I had the feeling that God had been kicked right out of heaven and the meek were lost. And when he started talking to me—not really talking to me, just saying the stupid things that white people say to little colored boys with a smile on their faces, and the little colored boys are supposed to smile too—nothing in the world could have made me believe that cat was on our side. We weren't even people to him, so how the hell was he going to fight our fight? I wanted to ask Dad why he went and got this guy, but I knew why. He thought all Jews were smart. I could have gotten all that shit right out of his head. Anybody could see that this cat wasn't so smart. No, he was just lucky—lucky that the world had dumb niggers like Dad in it.

When we went into the courtroom, the lawyer went up to where the judge was sitting and started talking to him. They seemed to be friends or something. Almost everybody there seemed to be friends—the bus driver, the other lawyer, the people from the bus company. The only ones who didn't seem to be friends with anybody was me and Dad. I wanted to act real tight with Dad and show those people that we didn't need to be friends with them. But Dad was too scared to do anything but sit there with his hat in his hand and say yes sir. I sure hated him for that.

The lawyer told us to sit down “over there” for a while. Dad almost ran to the seat, and I wanted to grab him by his coat, kick him in his ass real hard, and say, “Look here, you simple-actin' nigger, you better try to be cool, ‘cause you wit me.” But I couldn't do that and go on living, so I just went over and sat down.

While Dad and I were sitting there waiting for something to happen, I kept thinking about the time I saw a big black man take a little pig out of his pen at hog-killing time down South. He took the
pig and tied him to a post, patted him on the back a couple of times, then picked up his ax and hit the pig in the head and killed him. The pig died without giving anybody any trouble, and the big black pig killer was happy. In fact, everybody was happy, because we were all friends and part of the family. The only one there who didn't have a friend was the pig.

I had a feeling that something like what happened to the pig was going to happen in the courtroom and that Dad and I had already been patted on the back. I looked at the big, fat-faced judge sitting up there on the bench. He didn't look mean or anything like that, but he didn't look like he was a right-doing cat either. I even wished it was that old evil-looking lady judge who sent me to Wiltwyck sitting up there. She looked mean as hell, but I don't think I would have felt so much like that pig if she had been up there. I knew she wouldn't have been a friend of those lawyers and the people from the bus company. She looked like nobody could be her friend. And that was how it seemed that a judge should be. And she was colored too; maybe we would have been real people to her.

When the lawyer called us up to the bench and the big, fat-faced judge looked at us like it was his first time seeing pigs like these, I had the feeling that this fool in the black gown was all set to kill something before he was sure of what it was. I couldn't understand what the judge and the lawyers were talking about; the words they were using were too big. When I heard the judge say something about a hundred dollars, I grabbed my head and looked at Dad. He was still looking at the judge and nodding his head up and down. He didn't even know that he had been hit in the head with an ax. I bet Mama would have known. The lawyer told Dad something about his fifty dollars, and Dad just kept nodding his head. And I used to think he was a real bad nigger. But not after that. I knew now that he was just a head nodder, and nobody could tell me any different. For a long time after that, I hated to see anybody nod his head. I sure was mad when we left that courtroom. I promised myself that when I got big enough, the first time I saw Dad nod his head at any white man, I was going to kick him dead in his ass.