Manchild in the Promised Land

by Claude Brown

  I saw him the day after Limpy had stung me in the hallway on 149th Street. I went up to him, and I said, “I got to get me a piece, baby.”

  He said, “Yeah, I heard about it, Sonny, but I want to ask you somethin’, and I mean it from the bottom of my heart.”

  “Sure, Danny, you know, speak your piece, baby.”

  Then Danny said, “Look, Sonny; like, I know you, man, from way back. We came outta the house together, you know?”

  “Yeah. So, what you want to ask me, Danny?”

  “Do you really want to burn this cat, man? I mean, you want to waste Limpy?”

  I said, “Look, man, it’s like you said; we came the street way together, and you know how that shit is. You know if I don’t kill that mother-fucker, I can’t come out on the street any more with any stuff in my pocket talkin’ about I’m gon deal drugs. Niggers will be laughin’, comin’ up in my collar, and sayin’, ‘Give me what you got.’ I mean, if I did that kinda shit, if I let the cat go on livin’, mother-fuckers would be tryin’ to rob me without a gun. That would be the end of it all.”

  He said, “Yeah, I know how that shit is, Sonny. But, like, look, man, you got a whole lot goin’ for you. You got a lot on the ball. I never told you this before, but I think you’re smarter than all these niggers out here, Sonny. And I think if anybody on Eighth Avenue ever makes it, I think it could be you.”

  I said, “Danny, what you talkin’ about?” That shit surprised me. This wasn’t supposed to be coming from Danny. This just wasn’t him, and it wasn’t the stuff we used to talk about. I said, “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Look, Sonny, I got a piece, but I’m not gon let you have it. What I want you to do is forget about Limpy, not just forget about him, but let me take him, man, let me worry about him.”

  Danny had been strung out for about four years. I guess he felt that he didn’t have much going for him. His folks had cut him loose; he couldn’t go home. None of his relatives wanted him coming by. He was ragged all the time. He’d been in and out of jail. He’d been down to Kentucky a couple of times for the cure. He’d been to a place called Brothers Island. He’d been a whole lot of places for a cure. He’d caused everybody a whole lot of trouble. He felt that life was over for him.

  “Look, Sonny; I’m already through. Like, I’m wasted. You got somethin’ to live for, but me, I can’t lose no more. So let me take care-a the nigger for you, and we’ll be squared away. You did a whole lot for me, man. I remember the times I was sick and you gave me some drugs. I couldn’t go anywhere but to you. I feel if there’s one nigger out here on the street who I owe somethin’ to, one nigger I should give my life for, man, it’s you. And, besides, I’m not really givin’ my life. I’m already fucked up. I gave my life the first time I put a little bit-a horse in my nose.”

  “Look, Danny, thanks a lot, man, but we’re not back in the short’ pants days. If somebody stings me out here, it’s not like somebody bigger than me fuckin’ with me in school or some shit like that. We’re out here man for man and playin’ for keeps, baby. Everybody’s gotta be his own man, you know?”

  “Okay, Sonny, like I kinda understand it, but I’m still not gon give you my piece, man, because I don’t want you to do it. And if I see the nigger before you do, I’m gon beat you to him.”

  “Yeah, Danny, like, thanks a lot, baby,” and I walked. I went up to Robby Ohara. Robby Ohara was a stickup artist, and he used to sell all the guns in the neighborhood. He lived in my building. Just about all the criminals lived in my building.

  Robby had heard what happened to me, and when I came up to his crib and said, “Robby, I need a piece right away,” he asked me what kind of piece I wanted. I told him I wanted something small but effective, like a .25 automatic.

  He said, “All right.” He went into another room, came out, and threw me a .25. He said, “You know how to use it?”

  It was a Spanish-make gun, and he showed me some things about it. I took out some money. He said, “Forget it, Sonny, that nigger is suppose to be dead. That’s a gift from me.”

  Robby was a killer, and he understood this sort of thing. I took the piece and left.

  I looked for Limpy for about a week or more, and I couldn’t find him. After a while, I heard that he had gotten busted trying to stick up a doctor in his office. Somebody said he’d gotten shot about four times. This took me off the hook and saved my face, but I still had the piece. I knew that the next time somebody stung me, I was going to have to kill him. I started thinking about it. It didn’t seem right for me to be killing a junkie, because these cats were usually harmless. And when they weren’t harmless, it wasn’t really them, it was smack that was at fault.

  I started talking to Tony. I said, “Look, Tony, I’m gonna give up dealin’ pot.”

  He said, “Yeah, I’m gon give it up too,” but I knew he couldn’t, because he didn’t have a job.

  I told my customers I was going out of business, and I started sending them to Tony and other people who were dealing. A lot of cats who were dealing stuff would ask me, “Look, Sonny, you need some money? You can’t get any good stuff?” I guess they just didn’t want to see me stop dealing. I told them I didn’t need anything and didn’t want anything.

  I started going to night school. I went to Washington Irving, because that was the first one I had heard about. When I’d come uptown, I’d see the cats on the corner at night. They were still making that money, teasing me, and laughing. They called me Schoolboy and said that I must be dealing pot downtown someplace, that I was pulling everybody’s leg about school. Some of the cats I knew said I wouldn’t go to school even when I had the truant officer after me, so why should I be going now.

  But after a while, they saw that I was serious, and everybody stopped teasing me about it. I hadn’t felt too bad when they were teasing me, because I knew they couldn’t call me square or lame. Most of the cats who were out there on the corners dealing stuff now were the newcomers. Most of the cats I came up with were in jail or dead or strung out on drugs. I’d been out in street life long before these cats ever knew how to roll a reefer. I could do what I wanted. I could turn square now, even straighten up if I wanted too, and not worry about anybody naming me a lame. I’d been through the street-life thing. At seventeen, I was ready to retire from it. I’d already had ten or eleven years at it.

  After the cats saw I was serious about what I was doing, a lot of them starting coming along with it and trying to find out about it. They’d say, “Sonny, I’m goin’ back to school, too, man.”

  I’d say, “Sure, man, it’s a lot to it. You can do a whole lot of stuff. Like, if you want to come out in the street and be a hustler, if you gon be a good hustler, man, you got to know somethin’ about arithmetic and business. You got to know how to read. You could be a better hustler if you knew how to read and if you knew a little bit-a math.”

  A lot of cats came down there with me, but most of them couldn’t stay for more than a week or two, because that math was whipping their asses. They didn’t know what they were going for. I didn’t know what I was going for either, but I knew I wanted to go. I suppose that was more than any of the other cats who’d gone down there knew.

  They all dropped out in two to five weeks. Tony stayed the longest He was determined. I had put him into a whole lot of things, and he just wanted to stick with me. He felt that if he stuck with me, he couldn’t go but so wrong. We two started this school thing, and we stayed in there.

  I was having a rough time in school. I was taking an academic course, and the only thing that I knew anything about was English, and I only knew a little bit about that. Geometry and algebra were kicking my ass. When I was going to high school during the day, I told them I wanted to take an academic course, but they said I couldn’t take that because my math wasn’t strong enough. They put me in a commercial course. I didn’t know anything about algebra and geometry. So when I went to Washington Irving High School at night, I was starting right from the beginnin
g. The people at Commerce were right. My math gave me twice the hell because I’d had a weak math background. But I stuck with it. I had to take intermediate algebra over, and I had to take geometry over twice. But when I did pass them, I got something like ninety or ninety-five.

  I’d had a big disappointment in my love life when I came out of Warwick the third time. I wasn’t in love with anybody; I hadn’t been in love with anybody since I was in love with Grace, as far as I knew. And that was when I was nine years old. When I came out, I saw Sugar, and Sugar was something beautiful. She had gotten a shape on her that was the finest shape on Eighth Avenue, maybe even in Harlem or New York City. She had always had a beautiful complexion, and she always was a sweet girl. She still had her beautiful ways, and she wasn’t ugly any more.

  I tried to get tight with her again. I didn’t beg her or anything like that. I asked her to be my girl, but Sugar said she didn’t feel the way she used to feel about me. She didn’t think she could be going through what she went through before. She was a big girl now, she was older, and she felt it would be silly to go back into her childhood thing with me.

  I felt sort of bad when she reminded me how I had mistreated her. I didn’t feel bad about having mistreated her. I felt bad about her remembering this and not wanting to go with me, as fine as she was. I just said, “Hell wit it,” but I sure wanted her to be my girl. When she told me no, it was a big letdown. I felt that she wasn’t supposed to say this. She was supposed to be mine. I guess this was one of the hardest things I ever had to accept. Sugar had declared her independence and become a person.

  She dug this lame, some cat who worked in a grocery store. That’s the way she was. She dug him, and nobody could change her mind. All the older hustlers in the neighborhood were offering her money, like a hundred dollars for one night. It just didn’t bother her. I hated that nigger, even though I’d never seen him, because I didn’t think any cat who was working in a grocery store deserved a girl like this. She was something wonderful. If she was yours, she was all yours. She was sensitive; she would do anything for you. But I guess I didn’t deserve her either. I had had her and had let her slip right through my fingertips by mistreating her. I just said, “Fuck it; that’s the way the cards fall.”

  I met an older girl at Washington Irving. She was about nineteen. She was married. She was hip. She had a couple of kids, and I told her I liked her. When I first met her, I thought she was younger than she was. I approached her the way I would have approached any other young girl. I stopped her in the hall one day and said, “Hey, you, young lady, hold it right there!”

  She stopped and looked around as if something had happened, as if she was afraid to move. I came up to her looking pretty serious, so when I spoke, I guess she expected me to say something serious. I just walked up to her and solemnly asked, “Where in the world did you get that lovely ass on you?”

  She just looked at me and dropped her eyes as if to say, “This crazy-actin’ nigger! And here I am, standin’ here and waitin’ for it too.” She smiled, turned around, and walked away.

  This chick looked like an animal, a natural-born freak. She was short, a little shorter than I was. She had a beautiful shape, jet-black skin, long, jet-black hair, and slanted eyes. Her skin was real smooth. She looked like a beautiful black Chinese. The next time I saw her, I just waved and smiled. Every time I’d see her, I’d talk to her and say something that she wouldn’t forget.

  I came out of school one night about ten o’clock. This gray boy was trying to talk to her. He was a little older than me, but I couldn’t imagine him ever getting anywhere, so I just went on up and started talking to her like he wasn’t even there. She excused herself from the cat and started talking to me. I asked her if she was going my way. She said she was, so we just left him standing there looking.

  We started walking toward the corner, and I asked her if I could take her out.

  She said, “Yeah, but I’m married, you know.”

  I said, “Well, like, that’s okay.” I’d never played around with any married women before. It should have bothered me, I guess, but it didn’t. I said, “I won’t hold it against you if you don’t.” I took her out on that weekend, and we partied.

  She was married to some cat I didn’t know, so it didn’t make any difference to me. She had a couple of kids, but that didn’t bother me either. I just couldn’t believe I was getting anything as beautiful as this girl. She had a whole lot of nature. I’d gotten high when I took her out. I had smoked some pot, and we’d drunk some liquor. I didn’t think she smoked pot or used cocaine, so I just started her off drinking.

  I took her down to Basin Street and to a movie, then took her to my room and knocked her off. I was ready to go after I’d knocked her off one time. But the chick was really something—she couldn’t see anybody just knocking her off one time. I was young and had a lot of energy. I used to box and this sort of thing. I thought I was in good shape, but I had never busted my nuts more than three times in one night without any cocaine or stuff like that. But this chick just wouldn’t let me go. She wouldn’t stop. I thought, Shit, I’ll probably die behind this. It was a whole lot of work, but she knew something. She knew how to keep me stimulated, and even though I was tired as hell, I could never lose that erection, and she just kept forcing me and forcing me. She was a beautiful girl, so I just kept going at it.

  I wasn’t too anxious to see her again, but we’d started something. I used to take her out just about every weekend. Sometimes we’d cut a class or two; we’d go by my place first, and I’d knock her off. But she was killing me. I felt that this was a whole lot of hard work.

  She wasn’t like the average young girl I’d been jugging. She was oversexed or something. It was okay at first, because she was so beautiful and it was something new, but I just couldn’t see doing that thing every night. I’d turned her on to some pot. She liked pot, and we used to get high just about all the time. When she got high, all she wanted to do was screw and screw and screw some more. I just couldn’t take all that.

  I was supposed to meet her one night, but I was tired, so I just went to school. She was waiting for me when I came out of my last class. We always used to greet each other with a “Hey, buddy.” So when I came out of my last class and I heard somebody say, “Hey, buddy,” I knew who it was without turning around. She said, “What happened to you tonight? I waited for you.”

  I told her that I had forgotten all about it, that it had just slipped my mind.

  She said jokingly, “That’s a bad sign.”

  We went to an Italian restaurant and had some sausages and spaghetti. Then we went on up to my place and started playing some sides and smoking pot. I went to bed with her, but it had become a chore. Right in the midst of everything, I just jumped up and said, “I’m sorry, baby, but the party is over.”

  She looked kind of stunned. She said, “Look, Sonny, what have I done? What have I said or what didn’t I do or what didn’t I say?”

  I said, “It’s nothin’ that you’ve done, baby. It’s just that I’m tired, and, you know, I just can’t fight it any more. I’m tired of this thing, and I’m tired of you.”

  She got kind of mad, and she started screaming, “Okay, nigger, but your day’ll come. I believed everything you said. I love you, and I believed you when you said you loved me. I became a tramp for you. I made my kids’ mother a tramp because of you.”

  I just said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, baby. You just needed somebody else and somethin’ new, and I just happened to be there.” That was the way I felt about it.

  She just walked. She called me a couple of times and wrote me some letters, but I just never paid any attention.

  I learned something in school that wasn’t on the program. I learned that you just can’t go and try to get some body from every chick that looks nice, because you’ll get yourself involved in a whole lot of stuff that you wouldn’t want to walk with. I decided that I wasn’t going to get involved with any more married chicks,
not right now anyway.

  I started concentrating on the books. I guess I started learning a little bit. People didn’t take it too seriously, my family and all the other people I knew. They just saw that, as usual, I was doing something new. Just about everything I’d done, the reason I had tried it in the first place was that it was something new. School was this way too.

  The next time I saw Papanek, I was in school. He said he had known I was going to do something like that. I didn’t take him too seriously. I was just there, and all there was to do there was learn. I started feeling torn between two things, the street life and the school life. After a while, I just didn’t know where I was going. I didn’t feel a part of Harlem any more. I had the same slang as the cats on the street, but I wasn’t out there on the avenues. I wasn’t in the bars any more, and I didn’t do a lot of things that the other cats did. I was way behind in just about most of the happenings in the neighborhood. After a while, I thought it might be a good idea for me to move out of the neighborhood and see some other sides of life.

  I’d been doing a lot of changing in less than a year. I had gotten out of the garment center, and that was the place where everybody worked. Cats used to call it a “slave.” A guy who worked in the garment center wouldn’t say he had a job; he’d say, “Man, like, I got a slave.” That was what it amounted to. It was a real drag. I had seen old men down there, old colored cats, pushing those trucks and sweating. They looked like they were about sixty years old, but they were still pushing trucks through the snow. I knew I didn’t want to be doing that kind of shit. I’d rather be in jail or someplace. Someplace where it was warm in the winter.

  Since I had gotten out of Warwick, I had left the garment center, gotten a job at Hamburger Heaven, and started school. I’d done a whole lot of things. But I was still looking for something new.