Manchild in the Promised Land (45 page)

She waited there on the corner, and I went over to the pawnshop and pawned my ring. When I came back, we took a cab to Broadway and 145th Street, to the temporary housing-commission office. When I got there, I told one of the girls at the window that I wanted to write out a complaint against a tenement landlord.

She gave me a form to fill out and said I had to make out two copies. I sat down and started writing. It seemed like a whole lot to Mama, because Mama didn't do too much writing. She used a small sheet of paper even when she wrote a letter.

She kept bothering me while I was writing. She said, “Boy, what's all that you puttin' down there? You can't be saying nothin' that ain't the truth. Are you sure you know what you're talking about? Because I'm only complaining about the window, now, and it don't seem like it'd take that much writing to complain about just the one window.”

“Mama, you're complaining about all the windows. Aren't all the windows in the same shape?”

“I don't know.”

“Well, look here, Mama, isn't it cold in the whole house?”

“Yeah.”

“When was the last time the windows were lined?”

“I don't know. Not since we lived in there.”

“And you been livin' there seventeen years. Look, Mama, you got to do something.”

“Okay, just don't put down anything that ain't true.” She kept pulling on my arm.

“Look, Mama, I'm gonna write out this thing. When I finish, I'll let you read it, and if there's anything not true in it, I'll cross it out. Okay?”

“Okay, but it just don't seem like it take all that just to write out one complaint.”

I had to write with one hand and keep Mama from pulling on me with the other hand. When I finished it, I turned in the two complaint forms, and we left. Mama kept acting so scared, it really got on my nerves. I said, “Look, Mama, you ain't got nothin' to be scared of.”

She said she wasn't scared, but she just wanted to stay on the good side of the landlord, because sometimes she got behind in the rent.

“Yeah, Mama, but you can't be freezin' and catching colds just because sometimes you get behind in the rent. Everybody gets behind in the rent, even people who live on Central Park West and Park Avenue. They get behind in the rent. They're not freezin' to death just because they're behind in the rent.”

“Boy, I don't know what's wrong with you, but you're always ready to get yourself into something or start some trouble.”

“Yeah, Mama, if I'm being mistreated, I figure it's time to start some trouble.”

“Boy, I just hope to God that you don't get yourself into something one day that you can't get out of.”

“Mama, everybody grows into manhood, and you don't stop to think about that sort of thing once you become a man. You just do it, even if it's trouble that you can't get out of. You don't stop to think. Look, forget about it, Mama. Just let me worry about the whole thing.”

“Okay, you do the worryin', but the landlord ain't gon come down there in Greenwich Village and put you out. He gon put us out.”

“Mama, he ain't gon put nobody out, don't you believe me?” I pinched her on the cheek, and she got a smile out.

After a couple of days, I came back uptown. I asked Mama, “What about the windows?”

“Nothin' about the windows.”

“What you mean ‘nothin' about the windows'?” I was getting a little annoyed, because she just didn't seem to want to be bothered. I
said, “You mean they didn't fix the windows yet? You didn't hear from the landlord?”

“No, I didn't hear from the landlord.”

“Well, we're going back up to the housing commission.”

“What for?”

“Because we're gon get something done about these windows.”

“But something's already been done.”

“What's been done, if you didn't hear anything from the landlord?”

“Some man came in here yesterday and asked me what windows.”

“What man?”

“I don't know what man.”

“Well, what did he say? Didn't he say where he was from?”

“No, he didn't say anything. He just knocked on the door and asked me if I had some windows that needed relining. I said, ‘Yeah,' and he asked me what windows, so I showed him the three windows in the front.”

“Mama, you didn' show him all the others?”

“No, because that's not so bad, we didn't need them relined.”

“Mama, oh, Lord, why didn't you show him the others?”

“Ain't no sense in trying to take advantage of a good thing.”

“Yeah, Mama. I guess it was a good thing to you.”

I thought about it. I thought about the way Mama would go down to the meat market sometimes, and the man would sell her some meat that was spoiled, some old neck bones or some pig tails. Things that weren't too good even when they weren't spoiled. And sometimes she would say, “Oh, those things aren't too bad.” She was scared to take them back, scared to complain until somebody said, “That tastes bad.” Then she'd go down there crying and mad at him, wanting to curse the man out. She had all that Southern upbringing in her, that business of being scared of Mr. Charlie. Everybody white she saw was Mr. Charlie.

Pimp was still in this thing, and I was afraid for him. I knew it was a hard thing for him to fight. I suppose when I was younger, I fought it by stealing, by not being at home, by getting into trouble. But I felt that Pimp was at a loss as to what to do about it. It might have been a greater problem for him.

It seemed as though the folks, Mama and Dad, had never heard
anything about Lincoln or the Emancipation Proclamation. They were going to bring the South up to Harlem with them. I knew they had had it with them all the time. Mama would be telling Carole and Margie about the root workers down there, about somebody who had made a woman leave her husband, all kinds of nonsense like that.

I wanted to say, “Mama, why don't you stop tellin' those girls all that crazy shit?” But I couldn't say anything, because they wouldn't believe me, and Mama figured she was right. It seemed as though Mama and Dad were never going to get out of the woods until we made them get out.

Many times when I was there, Mama would be talking all that nonsense about the woods and about some dead person who had come back. Her favorite story was the time her mother came back to her and told her everything was going to be all right and that she was going to get married in about three or four months. I wanted to say, “Look, Mama, we're in New York. Stop all that foolishness.”

She and Dad had been in New York since 1935. They were in New York, but it seemed like their minds were still down there in the South Carolina cotton fields. Pimp, Carole, and Margie had to suffer for it. I had to suffer for it too, but because I wasn't at home as much as the others, I had suffered less than anybody else.

I could understand Pimp's anxieties about having to listen to Grandpapa, who was now living with Mama and Dad, talk that old nonsense about how good it was on the chain gang. He'd tell us about the time he ran away from the chain gang. He stayed on some farm in Georgia for about two or three weeks, but he got lonesome for his family. He knew if he went home, they would be waiting for him, so he went back to the chain gang. The white man who was in charge of the chain gang gave him his old job back and said something like, “Hello there, Brock. Glad to see you back.” He said they'd treated him nice. I couldn't imagine them treating him nice, because I didn't know anybody in the South who was treated nice, let alone on a chain gang. Still, Papa said the chain gang was good. I wanted to smack him. If he weren't my grandfather, I would have.

I felt sorry for Pimp, and I wished I were making a whole lot of money and could say, “Come on, man. Live with me and get away from that Harlem scene, and perhaps you can do something.” But before he made the move from Harlem, he'd have to know where he was going, every step of the way, all by himself.

He was lost in that house. Nobody there even really knew he was alive. Mama and Dad were only concerned about the numbers coming out. Papa, since he was so old, would just sit around and look for the number in Ching Chow's ear in the newspaper comic section. When the number came out, he'd say, “I knew that number was comin'. I could've told you before.”

I used to watch Pimp sometimes when I'd go up there. Papa would be talking this stuff about the number, and it seemed to be just paining Pimp. It hadn't bothered me that much. But I suppose it couldn't have. I used to be kind of glad that they were involved in this stuff. I guess I had an arrogant attitude toward the family. I saw them all as farmers. It made me feel good that they were involved in this stuff, because then they couldn't be aware of what I was doing and what was going down. The more they got involved in that old voodoo, the farther they got away from me and what I was doing out in the street.

Papa used to make me mad with, “Who was that old boy you was with today, that old tar-black boy?” Mama used to say things like that about people too, but I never felt that she was really color struck. Sometimes I used to get mad when she'd say things about people and their complexion, but she always treated all the people we brought up to the house real nice, regardless of whether they were dark- or light-skinned.

I knew that Pimp was at an age when he'd be bringing his friends around, and Papa would be talking that same stuff about, “Who's that black so-and-so?” If you brought somebody to the house who was real light-skinned, Papa would say, “They're nice,” or “They're nice lookin'.” All he meant was that the people were light-skinned.

I remember one time when Papa was telling his favorite story about how he could have passed for white when he first came to New York and moved down on the Lower East Side. He became a janitor of a building there. He said everybody thought he was white until they saw Uncle McKay, Mama's brother and Papa's son. He was about my complexion or a little lighter than I was, but anybody could tell he was colored. Papa said if it wasn't for McKay, he could have passed for white. This story used to get on my nerves, and I thought it was probably bothering Pimp now too. Sometimes I wanted to tell him, “Shit, man, why don't you just go on some place where you can pass for white, if that's the way you feel about it? And stop sitting here with
all us real colored niggers and talkin' about it.” But if I'd ever said that, Mama would have been mad at me for the rest of my life.

I wondered if it was good for him to be around all that old crazy talk, because I imagined that all my uncles who were dark-skinned—Uncle McKay, Uncle Ted, Uncle Brother—felt that Papa didn't care too much for them because they were dark-skinned, and I supposed that Pimp might have gotten that feeling too. I had the feeling that this wasn't anyplace for kids to be around, with some crazy old man talking all that stuff about light skin and how he could have passed for white and calling people black.

Many times, Mama and I talked about Pimp. She'd say, “I don't know what's gon happen to that boy.” She'd always be telling him he was going to get into trouble.

I wanted to say, “Why don't you leave him alone and stop talking that?”

She'd say, “That boy's gon be up in Warwick just as sure as I'm livin'.”

I said, “Mama, look, don't be puttin' the bad mouth on him.” I could tell her about the bad mouth, because this was something she knew, and she'd get mad. This was the only way to stop her from talking that stuff sometimes.

She'd say, “Boy, what's wrong with you? You think I'd put some bad mouth on my children?” She'd get real excited about it.

I'd say, “Look, Mama, that's just what you're doin'. The police ain't sayin' he's goin' to Warwick; the judge ain't said he's goin' to Warwick; nobody's sayin' he's goin' to Warwick but you.”

She'd say, “I'm trying to stop him from goin' out of here gettin' into some trouble.”

I said, “Mama, ain't nobody talkin' about him goin' out of here gettin' into some trouble. Ain't nobody talkin' about him doin' nothin' but you. You're the only one who says he's gonna get in trouble. You're the only one who says the police gon get him soon and that he's gonna go to Warwick. Nobody's sayin' it but you; and all that amounts to is the bad mouth, because you're saying it before anything's happening.”

Tears would come to her eyes, and she'd stop talking about it. That was good, because all I wanted to do was stop her from talking that nonsense about Pimp getting in trouble and going to Warwick and all that kind of foolishness. I knew that talking about the bad mouth would bother her. I didn't like to be mean to Mama, but this was something
she understood. I knew she had all these boogeyman ideas in her head.

With Dad, I suppose it was just as bad at home. He would never read anything but the
Daily News,
and he always read about somebody cutting up somebody or killing somebody. He liked to read about the people in the neighborhood, and he'd point the finger at them. He'd say, “There goes another one.” Just let it be one of my friends and, oh, man, he'd ride Pimp about it.

He'd say, “You remember that old no-good boy Sonny use to hang out with? He went to the chair last night,” or “He got killed in a stickup someplace.” He'd tell him, “You remember that old boy Sonny Boy use to bring up here years ago?” Pimp would never answer. “Well, they found him around there in the backyard on 146th Street dead, with a needle in his arm, last night. All of 'em just killin' theirselves. They ain't no damn good, and they ain't never had no sense. They didn't have enough sense to go out there and get a job, like somebody who knows something, and act halfway decent. They just gon hang out around here and rob the decent people, and break into people's houses. Somebody had to kill them, if they didn't kill theirselves. So I suppose they just might as well go ahead and use too much of that stuff and kill theirselves, no-good damn bums, old triflin', roguish dope addicts. They all ought to kill theirselves.”