Manchild in the Promised Land

by Claude Brown

  “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 tim
es, 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.”

  He’d be preaching this at Pimp as though he were one of them. It bothered Pimp. It would bother anybody. Dad never messed with me with this sort of thing. I was on my own, I was clean, and I was certain that I had as much money in my pocket as he had, if not more. I was his equal, and he couldn’t run down all that nonsense to me.

  Living in that house wasn’t too hard on Carole and Margie, but for a boy it must have been terribly hard. Everybody was far away, way back in the woods. If Mama heard that one of her friends had come home and found her husband in the bed with some other woman, she’d say, “She should’ve poured some lye on her.” If somebody had poured some lye on her, she’d say, “Yeah, that was good for that old heifer, that old no-good whorish hussy.”

  This was the way they felt about it. This was all the stuff that came from the backwoods. I suppose the Harlem tradition, the way of life in Harlem, had come from the backwoods. All that mixing up lye and throwing it in somebody’s face, all that was just as backwoods as working roots. These people just seemed to believe in that, like cutting somebody’s throat. They didn’t seem to be ready for urban life.

  They were going to try to guide us and make us do right and be good, and they didn’t even know what being good was. When I was a little boy, Mama and Dad would beat me and tell me, “You better be good,” but I didn’t know what being good was. To me, it meant that they just wanted me to sit down and fold my hands or something crazy like that. Stay in front of the house, don’t go anyplace, don’t get into trouble. I didn’t know what it meant, and I don’t think they knew what it meant, because they couldn’t ever tell me what they really wanted. The way I saw it, everything I was doing was good. If I stole something and didn’t get caught, I was good. If I got into a fight with somebody, I tried to be good enough to beat him. If I broke into a place, I tried to be quiet and steal as much as I could. I was always trying to be good. They just kept on beating me and talking about being good. And I just kept on doing what I was doing and kept on trying to do it good.

  They needed some help. The way I felt about it, I should have been their parents, because I had been out there on the streets, and I wasn’t as far back in the woods as they were. I could have told them a whole lot of stuff that would have helped them, Mama and Dad and Papa, everybody, if they had only listened to me.

  I remember how Dad thought being a busboy was a real good job. When I was working at Hamburger Heaven, I stayed there for a year, and I don’t know how I did it. I was working for nine hours a day, six days a week, and going to school at night. He still felt that this was a good job, because he’d never made any money. He’d never made more than sixty dollars a week in his life until recently. I suppose when he was my age, he was only making something like thirty dollars a week and thought it was a whole lot of money. He figured if I was making forty-five dollars a week, that was a whole lot of money. The cat was crazy. I would spend forty-five dollars on a pair of shoes. To him it was a good job because when he was nine years old, he’d plowed the fields from sunup to sundown.

  I came in one night and told Mama. I said, “Mama, I’m gon quit this job at Hamburger Heaven, because it’s getting too damn hard on me.”

  Dad was sitting over in the corner in his favorite chair reading the newspaper. He wouldn’t look up, because we could never talk. We just never talked too much after we had our last fight.

  I said I was going to school, and that plus the job was kind of rough on me.

  After Dad couldn’t take any more, he lifted his head out of the paper and said, “Boy, you don’t need all that education. You better keep that job, because that’s a good job.”

  “Yeah, Dad, it’s good as long as you can take it, but if it kills you, there’s nothing good about that.”

  He said, “Hard work ain’t never killed nobody, unless they was so lazy that thinkin’ about it killed ’em.”

  I said, “I know one thing. It’s not gon kill me now, because I already quit it.”

  He said, “Yeah, well, it sure seems funny to me, you quittin’ your job, talkin’ about you can’t do that and go to school. You ought to stop goin’ to school. You didn’t want to go to school when I was sendin’ you there. Your Mama would take you in one door and you’d sneak out the other door. Even the truant officer couldn’t keep you in school. Boy, I think you’re dreamin’. You better stop all that dreamin’ and go out there and get yourself a good job and keep it while you got it.”

  I knew that I couldn’t talk to him and tell him what was really on my mind without going to battle with him, so I just said, “Yeah, Dad,” to end it right there.

  I remember when Pimp was thirteen or fourteen. He was in the eighth grade. He came home one day and said, “Mama, “I think I’m gonna become an Air Force pilot and fly a jet plane.” It seemed a normal thing that any little boy might say to his mother and get some kind of encouragement, but that didn’t happen in Pimp’s case.

  Mama to
ld him, “Boy, don’t you go wantin’ things that ain’t for you. You just go out there and get you a good job.” A good job to Mama was a job making fifty or sixty dollars a week, and that was as much as anybody should have wanted, in Mama’s opinion. Sixty dollars was damn good money. That was enough to retire off, the way they used to talk about it.

  I guess I could understand their feeling this way. Their lives were lived according to the superstitions and fears that they had been taught when they were children coming up in the Carolina cotton fields. It was all right for them down there, in that time, in that place, but it wasn’t worth a damn up in New York. I could understand why Mama couldn’t understand Pimp and his troubles, because Mama had only gone through the fifth grade. Dad had only gone through the fourth grade. How could they understand Pimp when they couldn’t even read his textbooks?

  Mama and Dad and the people who had come to New York from the South about the time they did seemed to think it was wrong to want anything more out of life than some liquor and a good piece of cunt on Saturday night. This was the stuff they did in the South. This was the sort of life they had lived on the plantations. They were trying to bring the down-home life up to Harlem. They had done it. But it just wasn’t working. They couldn’t understand it, and they weren’t about to understand it. Liquor, religion, sex, and violence—this was all that life had been about to them. And a prayer that the right number would come out, that somebody would hit the sweepstakes or get lucky.

  It seemed as though if I had stayed in Harlem all my life, I might have never known that there was anything else to life other than sex, religion, liquor, and violence. Sometimes I would try to tell Mama things in the slang terms. They had their own down-home slang expressions. I couldn’t understand theirs too much, and they couldn’t understand ours. The slang had changed. In this day when somebody would say something about a bad cat, they meant that he was good. Somebody would say, “That was some bad pot,” meaning it was good. You really got high. Or somebody would go to the movie and see Sidney Poitier in a film, and they’d say, “Man, that’s a bad-doin’ nigger.” They didn’t mean that he was running out in the street cutting somebody’s throat, carrying a gun, and cursing. But this was all that a bad nigger meant to Mama and Dad and the people their age. It was the bad-nigger concept from the South, but it didn’t mean that any more.