Manchild in the promised land

by Brown, Claude, 1937-

"Yeah, man. I'm around there quite a lot now."

  I knew he had put down the Coptic faith. It seemed that it couldn't hold anybody but for so long.

  I didn't see Billy any more until about a month later. I saw him uptown. He was with Ann, and he introduced me to her. She was a nice-looking girl; she looked like she was everything he had said she was. She might have been a good-doing woman and all-that. Billy looked happy.

  About four months later, I saw him standing on a corner nodding. I didn't know what had happened, but I felt that he should have stayed with the Coptic faith. If nobody else should have, Billy should have. And maybe he should have let his brother keep that good-doing woman.

  That same year that I gave up that business with the Coptic faith, Dunny, Tito, Alley Bush, and Mac got out of jail. They had all changed. Harlem had changed on them a hell of a lot. They didn't know what was going on. I felt a little sorry for them.

  When I had gotten busted with Alley Bush on that last thing, I was glad that I was too young to go to some place Hke Coxsackie. He'd been gone three whole years. Three years was a long time; it was a real long time. I saw that it had done something to these cats' lives. Alley Bush was only about sixteen when he went away, and now he was nineteen. He seemed real backward, as though he hadn't grown any. Dunny seemed to think that the world had waited for him, just stood still while he was in Coxsackie. And Mac, he didn't know exactly what he was going to do. He was lost.

  I asked him, "Mac, what you gon do? You gon get a job or something?"

  He said, "I don't know, man. I guess I'll deal drugs." This was what everyone in the neighborhood was doing. Nobody seemed to know how to do anything else. He said, "All I know is that I'm gon move."

  They all looked up to me because I was on my own. I told them I hadn't been living with my parents for about two years, and they all said, "Damn, Sonny, that's great, man. I want to find me a place too. I want to get me a place somewhere."

  So I said, "Yeah, man, you can do it."

  I figured it would be a good thing if everybody got out of

  Harlem. But most of these guys didn't know anything but Harlem, and they couldn't go anywhere.

  Mac had always been miserable living with his family, but he had never had the nerve to walk before. He could finally admit to himself that his mother was no good and that she had mistreated them all. This was something that was damn hard for him to do. Mac used to always try to defend her. When all the other kids in the family had rebelled, he was still defending her.

  Mac said, "I don't know what I'm gonna do, but I want to get me my own place. I want to have me a refrigerator that's always full of food, you know?"

  I said, "Yeah, man, I know." There was never any food in the refrigerator in his house, and the kids had to fight and scheme on one another to eat up anything they got before anyone else came there, because it was so seldom that his mother ever bought any food. In a way, this was a lot for him to want, just an icebox full of food.

  Tito said he wanted to deal drugs, make some money, and get a job. He said he'd have to find a place. His mother had never cared for him. He was always striving to make his mother like him and want him around. He always wanted to make her proud of him. He'd pull a big score and give her all the money he got from it. But if he got busted, she wouldn't even come to jail to see him. He still tried to hold on to the belief that she cared for him.

  Tito said he didn't know where he was going to stay, and I said, "Look, aren't you going to stay with your moms and your brother?"

  He said, "Man, I don't even know if they alive, and I don't care. I hope they aren't."

  "What you talking about? What kind of shit is that to be saying about your relatives?"

  He said, "Yeah, man, I know it may sound hard to you, but you know somethin'. Sonny? I was up in Woodburn for three years and three months, and I didn't get one letter, man, not even around Christmastime, from my mother or my brother. It would be easier for me to take, fnan. if they were dead or something. I could understand that. But I'd hate to think of them being alive and couldn't even send me a Christmas card. I don't even want to know where they at. nothin'. I don't want to know if they alive or not, 'cause I'm afraid they just might be."

  1 could understand his feelings. He said he was going to get

  into some drugs ©r something. He asked me if I knew somebody, and I tofd him that I'd cut myself loose from all that. I didn't have any connections.

  He said that was okay, because as soon as he had some money he knew where to go. He had cut into some people in jail who could turn him on to some nice weight. I gave him some money, and he gave it back to me. He said that he'd make it on his own, that all he wanted to do was get high. I took him to get high.

  After that, it seemed that Tito, Dunny, Mac, and Alley Bush all went their separate ways. We were too old to hang out any more, and the Harlem we'd known had gone. In three years, it had all gone. Everybody had changed so much, and we didn't need one another any more. There was nothing else for us to do but say good-bye to the old way of life that we had known and to try to find something new.

  Dunny seemed to have matured less than all the other guys. I guess jail didn't make much impression on Dunny because Dunny was hip, and he knew how to get along. He said it was hard. But if it was hard for him, it was probably twice as hard for everybody else.

  Dunny told me once, "Sonny, don't ever go to jail in New York State, because the jaUs, man, are all run by Northern crackers. You might as well be down in Alabama someplace if you're gonna go to jail." He had been in Coxsackie and Woodburn, and he said that in both of them it was the same thing.

  He told me a whole lot of things. The guards—the hacks, as they called them—were hillbillies. These hillbillies disliked anybody who came there and acted too suave or had handkerchiefs that were expensive, anj^hing like that. According to Dunny, a Negro who was too suave had a hell of a hard time to go. The hacks were always kicking his ass for no good reason.

  He told me about one cat he had met in Coxsackie. He said he was a young cat, about eighteen or nineteen, who had hoboed his way to New York from Texas. Dunny said that this cat's name was Moe and that he had a whole lot of scars on him. Every time they'd catch him hoboing on trains or hitchhiking in some Southern town, they'd beat his ass. The sheriff or some of those cracker cops would beat him just for kicks. A lot of times, they put him in the hospital. He said it took Moe three months to get up here from Texas, because

  they were always kicking his ass and putting him in the hospital. In Alabama, they broke his leg and put him in jail for two days before anything was done for him. When Moe was at Coxsackie, he told Dunny that the jails in New York were no better, and maybe a little worse, than some of those he'd been in in the South.

  Dunny said, "Yeah, Sonny, don't ever go to jail in this state, because they even have segregated jails."

  I didn't know this about New York State, but I believed he was telling the truth.

  He said, "Yeah, they put the white boys in one place and they put the niggers in another section. The niggers get all the shitty jobs, and the white boys . . . man, they live good. It's just like it is out here."

  "Danm, man. It can't be that bad. In jail, everybody's doing time."

  "Yeah, man, but everybody isn't doing the same kind of time. There's white time in jail, and there's nigger time in jail. And the worst kind of time you can do is nigger time. They've got more niggers up there than anything else, but niggers ain't got no business in jail. They gon get fucked over worse than anybody."

  "Yeah, Dunny, I'm really gon do my damnedest to stay outta jail." I told him I was going to evening high school, trying to get a diploma, and he said he was thinking about that too, "because there's not much money out here."

  First of all, he had to get a job. He said as soon as he got a contact, he was going to deal drugs and make a little money. Then he could go to school. I told him it wasn't such a good idea to put it off. He said, "Look, Sonny, I need some money
, man. Can you give me eight hundred dollars right now?"

  "No, man, I can't."

  "I've got to have the money." He said he wanted to get married to Trixie.

  I said, "Okay, man, you go on and you get married and you deal drugs. But I think that if you gon deal drugs, and plan on gettin' married behind that, you're -liable to get busted." I told him that it was hot out there and that cats were getting busted right and left for dealing drugs. I told him it didn't make sense. I said, "If you gon deal drugs, man, deal some cocaine or some pot, because you don't have to be dealing with the junkies. The junkies are gonna start crowdin' around your house and all that sort of business. If you deal

  drugs, they point ihe way for the police to go and bust you." He said that he* had a way that he was going to avoid all that. He wasn't going to have them coming to him. He would be at a certain place at certain hours; they'd come and cop there. He was going to have a new place every day or every week or something like that.

  After that, I didn't see Dunny too often. I wanted to tell him that I didn't think it was a good idea for him to marry Trixie. But if a cat wants to do that, it's kind of hard to tell him not to. Then again, I thought Trixie might have been in love with Dunny. They might have been the perfect match.

  I didn't see too much of any of the guys after that. I was going on my way. These cats were out there searching for themselves, not knowing how they were going to make it, trying a whole lot of ways. The most I could do was wish them good luck.

  I'd see one of the old cats occasionally. The first one I heard had gotten busted and was back in jail was Tito. I think Turk told me that Tito had gotten busted for drugs, and he was doing something like one to five in a Federal prison at Danbury, Connecticut. I knew that Tito didn't mind. He didn't have anything out on the street. He wasn't in love with anybody. He had a couple of chicks, but they weren't the kind of women that made a cat serious about not going to jail or that made a guy want to get a job and straighten out his life. He didn't care about his family, and they didn't care about him, so, actually, there was nothing to keep him out on the street.

  I figured that Alley Bush would be the first to get busted, because Alley Bush was a little crazy. He used to do a lot of stupid things. He might have gotten busted for something silly like stealing apples or breaking a window in the police station. But Tito was the first one.

  Mac was second. Mac got busted for dealing drugs too. These guys had made a little bit of money, but none of them stayed out there long. Everybody got busted within six months after they started dealing drugs. That's how it was. These cats didn't know what was really going on when they came out. All they knew was that they had to make some money, and since the money was in drugs, they were going to try to make money that way.

  I felt sorry for them, but I knew that I couldn't tell them

  anything. One reason was that we weren't as tight as we used to be. We weren't tight at all. I'd see Turk. He said he was going to become a professional fighter. I remember seeing Dunny and telling him that Turk was going to turn pro after he got out of the Air Force. Dunny laughed at it. He said, "Yeah, man, can you imagine that?" like it was a big joke. Turk had always had a lot of heart. I think the reason Dunny laughed was that Turk wasn't that good with his hands. He always figured that Turk couldn't even get started good with him, so how could he be a professional?

  But Turk had knocked out a lot of cats in the Air Force, and he was making a name for himself. He had a lot of people wanting to manage him when he came out. When he came out of the Air Force, Turk was a completely changed cat. He didn't have any of the old larceny in his heart. He didn't want to do any of the old things. He wasn't so childish any more. He was more social. He knew how to hang out with people, how to socialize with a lot of different people. He used to bring gray boys around. His fight trainer was an Irish cat. He used to bring him up to Harlem; he'd bring him to a bar, and he'd fit the cat right in with everybody.

  Turk had grown a hell of a lot. He had gotten real big, and he was ready to do things. I didn't know whether he would be good as a professional fighter; as a matter of fact, I had some doubts about it untU he came out and started fighting. Everybody in the neighborhood kept going to see him fight, but nobody paid it much serious attention at first. I suppose most of the older cats who knew him kept laughing, but this is the way it goes sometimes.

  I kept coming uptown, and I kept going to school and working. I ran into a cat I hadn't seen for about three years. This was a cat I had gotten tight with up at Warwick. We called him T. He was using drugs, but he wasn't strung out, and he said that he wasn't going to get strung out, because all he did was snort. He said he would stop using drugs altogether rather than start skin-popping. He knew he would never get strung out because he would never be putting stuff in his veins. He had this method for not getting hooked.

  T. was a pimp now. Not any real big-time pimp; he just had some funky little girls turning tricks for him down on 125th Street in the bars in that neighborhood. It was enough

  to pay for a dumpy hotel room, keep him in cocaine and support the chicks' habits.

  He had some cocaine one night and wanted to turn me on. He said he had some fine girls. "Like come on, and we'll party." I told him no. He said, "What's wrong, Sonny, you scared-a some good cocaine?"

  I laughed at it. I said, "No, man, I'm not scared." The truth of it was that I was more afraid of those chicks he had than the cocaine, because they were funky girls. They used to call those kind of girls skunks because they were so dirty.

  He introduced me to one of his girls. He said she was his main woman. We were sitting in a bar on 125th Street, and the chick came up to him and slid onto a stool next to him. He said, "Sonny, I want you to meet the woman I love, the woman who's going to be my wife as soon as I can get her to go down to Kentucky and come back. She's got a slight habit."

  I said, "Hello, woman T. loves."

  Her name was Gloria. She looked like she might have been nice looking at one time, but she was played out. The average chick who's been using drugs for some time looks like a played-out old prostitute, even though she may be young and may have been tricking for just a few months or so. It's the drugs that make them look so wasted, more so than the night life or going around hooking.

  She had to go to work, so she left. He kept on talking to me after she was gone. At first I didn't pay too much attention to what he was saying about marrying her, because I figured nobody in his right mind would do that, go out and marry some chick who was a hooker. This didn't make sense.

  T. and I were still good friends even though I hadn't seen him in a long time. So I said, "Look, T., you can't be serious, man."

  "Why not?"

  "Well, because the chick is ... I mean, you know why not. man. If you gon marry her, you must not intend to live in Harlem. Look at all the shit you'd have to go through. All the cats who've jugged her, and that sort of thing. You just can't."

  We sat there for a long time arguing about it. Then he just said, "Look, Sonny, the chick may be a whore, but she's

  my whore, and I love her, and I'm gon marry her." I saw ' that he was mad. He raised his voice when he said this.

  "Yeah, man. Well, that's okay. You go on, man. And when you walk down the street and everybody points, what you gonna do? Fight all the niggers in Harlem about her?"

  "Look, man, I don't care about anybody pointin'. I don't know, but my mother could have been a whore and I would have loved her. You can't tell me I'm not gon love a woman because she's a whore. That's just her work, man. It doesn't mean a danm thing to me. Maybe it means she's gone to bed with a whole lot of cats, but they didn't take it with them. It's still there, and I want it. She's my whore, and I love her."

  This stopped me. I said, "Yeah, man." Suddenly it made a whole lot of sense. "Yeah, you're right. You can't stop lovin' a woman because she's a whore." I believed it; it seemed like the most sensible thing in the world. If he had said that two hours before, I wouldn't
have had any argument. It made a hell of a lot of sense for somebody to love their mother even if she was a whore. This was what it was all about. I didn't try to stop him any more. We finished our drink and left.

  I thought about Dunny and Trixie, and I thought that these people were really mature; I felt childish, the way I'd been thinking about people not loving whores and all that kind of nonsense. It seemed stupid to me. I realized that even though I had been out there in the streets and had met all kinds of people, I hadn't learned to accept people, not really accept them. I had still thought of a whore as being something unlovable. It was as though T. had been pinning diapers on me when we sat there at the bar and he told me about the mother and the whore thing. I was kind of grateful to him for that.

  It seemed that every time I came uptown, I learned something. The best way to look at Harlem was to be on the outside and have some kind of in. I'd come nf occasionally, look at it, see the changes and the stuff that everybody was going through, and be able to feel it. The only way you could feel it was to have had the chance—I don't know whether it was good or a misfortune—to experience it and to know what the people were feeling.

  The more I learned, the more beautiful it was. The more

  I came up, the mo^e I had the feeling that I wanted to come back and stay and give it something. I didn't know what. I didn't feel as though I had that much to offer, but I just knew I wanted to give it something. The more I came up and the more I saw of the people ... I just felt closer. People would do things and say things that made me like them more and more.

  One day I was walking on 143rd Street. I was remembering a lot of things about the block. I was with Tony, walking up the street. I met somebody I hadn't seen in seven or eight years. It was Hildy. Hildy was a lady who used to keep us when Mama worked. She used to keep me and Carole and Margie and Pimp. She lived on 145th Street then, and she drank a lot. She used to drink wine. A lot of people would call her a wino, I guess, but I just couldn't think of Hildy as a wino, because she was always a nice person, real nice. That's the only way I could think of her.