by Claude Brown
I couldn’t get it over to Mama that things were changing. The bad nigger to my generation was a cat like Paul Robeson. To Mama, that was a nigger who was crazy, who would go out and marry some white woman. Mama and Dad would associate a nigger like this with the ones they saw hanging from a pine tree down in the Carolina woods with blood on his pants. They’d say this wasn’t a bad nigger to them, this was a crazy nigger, one that was going to get himself hanged.
I could sense the fear in Mama’s voice when I told her once that I wanted to be a psychologist.
She said, “Boy, you better stop that dreamin’ and get all those crazy notions outta your head.” She was scared. She had the idea that colored people weren’t supposed to want anything like that. You were supposed to just want to work in fields or be happy to be a janitor.
I remember something she told Pimp. I think she thought she was giving Pimp something that he needed, and she felt big about it. “Now if you just get a job as a janitor, I’ll be happy and satisfied,” she said.
I jumped up when she said this, and I said, “Doesn’t it matter whether he’s satisfied or how he feels about it?”
Mama and Dad looked at me as if in two minutes time I’d be ready for Bellevue, or maybe they’d better call right away. They’d always look at me and say, “You better stop talkin’ all that foolishness, boy. What’s wrong with you? You better get all that stuff out of your head.”
I remember the times I tried to explain these things to Mama, just what was happening in Harlem, just what was happening between my generation and hers. I would tell her, “Look, Mama, don’t you remember when I use to play hookey from school, steal things, and stay out all night? Do you know why I was doin’ that?”
She would look at me and ask, “Yeah, why?” sarcastically, as if I couldn’t possibly tell her anything. I didn’t understand anything that she couldn’t understand.
I’d tell her about rebellion, and she’d say, “Look, don’t be tellin’ me about no rebellions and all that kind of business. You might know some big words, but you don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. I know a whole lot of people go around using them old big words, and they don’t know a damn thing what it’s all about.”
I’d say, “Look, Mama, when people start ruling people and they rule ’em wrong, in a way that’s harmful to them, they have to stop them. They’ve got to rebel; they’ve got to get out from under their rule. Sometimes it requires a fight, but it’s always going to require a little bit of commotion, a little bit of anger, and sometimes violence.
“You’ve got to stop them before they destroy you. That’s all that’s going on around here. Everybody is rebelling. You see all the young boys going around here using drugs. They’re rebelling, that’s all it is. They’re rebelling against their parents. If there were any drugs around here when I was a little boy, I would’ve been using ’em too. I had to rebel. I had to get away from all that old down-home nonsense you been talking.”
She’d say, “Boy, you don’t know anything about that, and you ain’t got no business calling it nonsense.”
“Yeah, uh-huh. That’s okay, Mama. Look, I’m trying to explain to you how this is. You gon listen?”
“I am listening, but I ain’t hearing nothin’ but a whole lot of foolishness.”
I’d say something like, “Mama, you know and I know, these parents are talking about being good and doing right, but they’re not being good. You know everybody is screwin’ somebody’s wife or screw-in’ somebody’s husband around here.”
“You must know more about what’s goin’ on around here than I do, ‘cause I don’t know no such thing.”
“Look, Mama, don’t you realize that whenever anybody starts talkin’ some nonsense about ‘be good, be good’ and you can see that they’re not bein’ good, you’re not gon pay too much attention to it? Right?”
She knew I was right, but she just didn’t want to hear it. She’d say something like, “Boy, what you talkin’ about?”
And I’d have to shout and say, “I’m talking about how you gon tell kids to be good when the kids arc too hip not to see that the parents aren’t being so good their damn selves!”
She’d say, “Now, you wait a minute here, nigger. Don’t you be gettin’ so smart with me!” This was the way the discussion always went.
After I stopped and looked real disgusted, Mama would be ready to listen then. She would try to smooth my ruffled feathers. She’d say, “You mean to tell me that the only reason these kids is going around here messin’ up, killin’ themselves, and causin’ their families a whole lotta trouble is that everybody’s preachin’ one thing and doin’ another?”
I’d say, “It’s something like that, but not all. Listen, what you mean is they’re causin’ their parents a lot of trouble. This is the way that most parents look at it. I don’t think any parents look at the situation as if they could be causin’ the kids some trouble and causin’ them some embarrassment because they’re going out doing the things that they’re not suppose to do. But this is just what’s happenin’.”
Mama would say, “Ain’t no kids got no business judgin’ their parents.”
“Mama, a lot of ’em aren’t judgin’ ’em. They’re just going out and doing what they want to do too. They’re not judgin’ them; they’re just gettin’ revenge.”
“Well, they ain’t got no business tryin’ to get revenge, because parents are grown, and they ain’t got to answer to nobody’s children.” Then Mama would get all wound up, and she wouldn’t listen to anything.
The attempts at discussion always ended with me feeling more de pressed about Pimp. I wondered if Pimp was going to be able to get a job in about a year, because he kept talking about quitting school and making some money. I didn’t think he was ready to go downtown. But he had to, because there wasn’t any money to be made uptown, not honestly. If he quit school, there was nothing for him to do but go down to the garment center and push one of those trucks, like every body else who quit school.
I wondered if he’d been listening to the cats on the street when they talked against going downtown. If he had, it would be twice as hard, because the stuff that those cats used to talk about that downtown thing was strong stuff for a young boy’s mind, a young colored boy.
I remember Reno used to say, “Man, I’ll never come out of jail owin’ any time. They’ll just have to keep me until I can walk away clean, not owin’ nothin’ to nobody, ‘cause I don’t want to go downtown. Goldberg is never gonna get over me with the whip.”
This was the first time I’d ever heard “Goldberg” used this way. I said, “Who’s Goldberg?”
“You know. Mr. Jew. That’s the cat who runs the garment center.”
“Oh, yeah.” But I didn’t get the connection right away.
“Goldberg ain’t gon ever get up off any money. Goldberg’s just as bad as Mr. Charlie. He’s got all the money in the world, Sonny, believe it or not. Look across the street. He owns the liquor store, he owns the bar, he owns the restaurant across there, the grocery there. He owns all the liquor stores in Harlem, ‘cause that’s where all the niggers’ money goes, and he’s gon get all that.”
“Yeah, man. You may have a point there.”
“I know I got a point, man.” He really got excited. He said, “The only time I’m goin’ downtown, man, I’m goin’ to steal me some money from Goldberg, not to beg him for it. That’s just what you’re doin’, man. That cat’s got all the money in the world, and what he’ll give you is carfare back downtown for another day’s slavery.”
“The only way you gon get some-a that real money from him is to get you a gun, go down there and put it to that mother-fucker’s head, and take it. That’s the only way you gon get any of that dough from Goldberg.”
I used to listen to Reno sometimes, and I’d get scared behind the way he use to get all excited. I’d say, “Cool it, man. This stuff is not to be told too loud, because the kids might hear it.”
If Reno was in a
bad mood—if he didn’t have any money and he wasn’t high—he’d say, “Man, Sonny, they ain’t got no kids in Harlem. I ain’t never seen any. I’ve seen some real small people actin’ like kids. They were too small to be grown, and they might’ve looked like kids, but they don’t have any kids in Harlem, because nobody has time for a childhood. Man, do you ever remember bein’ a kid ? Not me. Shit, kids are happy, kids laugh, kids are secure. They ain’t scared-a nothin’. You ever been a kid, Sonny ? Damn, you lucky. I ain’t never been a kid, man. I don’t ever remember bein’ happy and not scared. I don’t know what happened, man, but I think I missed out on that childhood thing, because I don’t ever recall bein’ a kid.”
The only way I could stop Reno when he got wound up like this was to say, “Come on, man. Let’s go get a drink,” or “Let’s go get high.” That would take him down off his soapbox.
Reno was only one. There were a whole lot of other cats out there who felt the same way that Reno felt about going downtown, about working for Goldberg.
I remember when I was down in the garment center and used to see George Baxter down there. He used to tell me, and the cat would be almost crying, “Man, a cat got to take a whole lotta shit for fifty dollars a week.” Just about every time I saw him, he’d say, “Man, I don’t think the stuff that a man has to take down here is worth fifty dollars a week; it’s worth a lot more, at least ten times more.”
He used to say that he was going to leave, that he was going to get up off of this thing. But I didn’t think he was going to leave the garment center, because Baxter was sort of a nice guy. But he did. He was one of the guys I knew who tried it and gave it up to come back uptown and deal drugs. There was more money in it. Cats used to say it made them feel better than being down there, being messed over by Goldberg all the time.
I remember Baxter used to say all the time, when I’d meet him uptown after he’d give up the garment-center gig, “Man, if you keep goin’ downtown every day, you’ll be a boy all your life. I use to be afraid, Sonny, I use to be deathly afraid of bein’ a boy all my life. I use to have nightmares, man, about me bein’ old, about sixty years old and almost bent, knockin’ around there, sweeping the floors for Goldberg in that dress house of his. He’s comin’ in there pattin’ me on my back and callin’ me boy,’ sayin’, ‘Come over here with your broom and sweep up this thing for me, boy.’ It use to get to me. I use to jump up out of bed screamin’, ‘Mr. Goldberg, please, Mr. Goldberg, don’t call me boy. Please, Mr. Goldberg, don’t pat me on my back.’
“Sonny, I think if I had stayed down there in that garment center much longer, man, and continued to be Goldberg’s boy, I might’ve lost my mind. I had to get outta there.”
Before he got busted, he used to say, “Man, I might not be out here on the streets for long. I’m gamblin’ and I know I’m gamblin’. Every time I come out of my house, I got to look around for the Man. Before I go in my house, I got to look around to see if any junkies are waitin’ to sting me. I got to be careful about everybody who comes up to me and asks me for a sale. I’m livin’ on pins and needles, man, but I can stand up a whole lot straighter. Nobody calls me a boy, and I know even when the Man walks up on me and busts me out here, he’s gon do it in a fashion that I can appreciate.
“If they take me downtown and put me in the lineup, they’re not gonna say ‘boy.’ They’re gonna say, ‘Stand there.’ If a cat ever runs up on me in a hallway and says, ‘Freeze, nigger,’ he’s not gonna say, ‘Freeze, nigger boy.’ Man, the nigger thing is all right, but the boy thing, that’s too goddamn hard to live with, Sonny. It was almost killin’ me, man; it was almost killin’ me.
“You go down there into this thing—I guess I had a boss as nice as anybody—and Goldberg would say, ‘George, do you know where I might find some nice honest colored girl who could come in and help my wife clean up the house?’ He didn’t mean help, man, he meant somebody who would come in and actually clean up the house for his wife. It was a drag, man. He said the other girl had to leave because her daughter was having a baby. He said, ‘You saw the girl who was here. She was a very nice girl, and she’d been with us for a long time, for three or four years.’
“Man, you should’ve seen this girl. This girl was about sixty years old. Her hair was gray, but she was colored, so she was still a girl. She was twice the age of Goldberg’s wife. It hurt me, man, when I saw her. This colored girl was sixty years old, and she was cleanin’ this house for his wife. I felt like, damn, if that was my wife, I’d beat her ass and make her help that woman clean up that house, man. But I knew, after I saw that woman and he’d asked me if I knew some girl who could help his wife, I wanted to say, ‘Hell, no!’ But I needed the job, so all I could say was, ‘No, man, I don’t know any girls. I don’t know nothin’. I don’t know anything about that.’ I felt like I was gon lose my mind if I had stayed in that stuff.
“I don’t remember my father too well. He use to work on the docks, and he died in the chair, man. I guess you knew; everybody in the neighborhood heard about it. He died behind some gray cat tryin’ to fuck over him, tryin’ to make him look like a Tom. It’s somethin’ I’ve always had a big thing about, man. And my brothers, they can’t stand to be around gray people. That’s why they all stand around 143rd Street and take numbers. I guess we couldn’t make it outside of some Harlem somewhere. We weren’t cut out to play that boy role. I suppose there’re a lot of people who aren’t.”
As I used to listen to George, I’d think I had fallen in there and played that role without giving it much thought. But then I became aware of what I knew about the garment center and about Goldberg and his relationship to the Negro, the “boy” who worked for him. I had the feeling that he never saw us. He never saw our generation. He saw us only through the impressions that the older folks had made.
He never even tried to see us, and he tried to treat us the way he had treated them. Most of the older folks were used to it. They didn’t know Goldberg from Massa Charlie; to them, Goldberg was Massa Charlie. I suppose the tradition had been perpetuated when the folks moved to the North and took the image of Massa Charlie and put it into Goldberg. Perhaps Goldberg was unaware of it.
When I worked at the watch repair shop, if I said anything that would indicate that I thought a little of myself, or if I didn’t seem damn grateful when somebody said, “I’m gonna give you a five-dollar bonus for Christmas,” they all seemed to think that I was being arrogant in some way or another. They all seemed to feel, What is wrong with this nigger? They all seemed to have the impression that niggers weren’t supposed to act like that. They’d think, This nigger’s crazy. What kind of Negro is he ? Doesn’t he know his place ?
In the evening, I’d run out of the shop with my books in my hand and say I was going to school, and they would crack jokes about it, as if to say, “This Negro must be dreaming. Doesn’t he know that Negroes are supposed to just be porters?”
It wasn’t just our parents and Goldberg who weren’t ready for my generation. Our parents’ coming to Harlem produced a generation of new niggers. Not only Goldberg and our parents didn’t understand this new nigger, but this new nigger was something that nobody understood and that nobody was ready for.
There was trouble everywhere, every time. Everyplace I looked, I wasn’t understood. I felt like a misfit on just about every job I went to. Everyplace I went, it was like a first time. It was always a new thing. I always had to establish a new relationship with everyone. I always had to find out where I was and what things were like. I always wanted to run. It was so difficult. There was nothing that was old. I really didn’t have any familiar ground. I guess, in a way, my generation was like the first Africans coming over on the boat. There was still the language problem. The Harlem dialect was something that I was a little afraid to use. When I first went down to the gym on Broadway in mid-Manhattan, I was very self-conscious about it.
I knew that these were gray boys, and I felt I had to be careful around them or else I might
frighten them. Sometimes I was made to feel silly. I was careful to pronounce my r’s and say “you are” and “you’re not.” I’d say, “Hello. How are you?” very properly. Occasionally somebody would say, “Hi, How you doin’?” and I’d feel ridiculous. There was always this uncertainty, this thing of feeling your way through. I became aware that I was a new thing. The average cat who ventured out of Harlem would be afraid and run back. It was safer dealing drugs or doing something like that. And there was much less embarrassment.
I couldn’t take my job in the watch repair shop after a while. Everybody was reading the papers about the Emmett Till case, and they’d say, “Gee, that’s terrible.” But I knew that if I went out to the Flatbush section of Brooklyn or Brighton Beach, where all these cats lived, they’d probably lynch the landlord if he rented me an apartment. This was the relationship between the Jew and the descendants of Ham. We were all right. We were supposed to work for them; we were good enough for this, good enough to clean their houses. They were supposed to sympathize with us. I think sometimes the sympathy used to bother me more than anything else, this attempt at being liberal-minded.
I just got tired of it one day. I felt I was going to crack up, just blow up. I said, “Look, I’m tired. You take this job; you just take it and shove it,” and I walked out of the shop. I didn’t know where I was going. I didn’t have any money; I didn’t have anything, but I couldn’t feel too bad about it or the least bit frightened. I was aware that I hadn’t had anything all my life. I’d had jobs, money, and expensive clothes, but I still hadn’t had anything.
I didn’t even have a slight understanding of what it was all about, what I was trying to accomplish, what I was supposed to accomplish. I had no idea of where I was going. I went to Central Park and started walking around. I didn’t understand anything about me. It was crazy to expect Goldberg to understand. I couldn’t feel any kind of animosity toward anybody, toward anybody in the world. I’d hoped that one day I could go back and say, “I’m sorry if I offended you people,” and that they would forgive me. I realized that I had said some pretty nasty things to them. They were all little people, and I was demanding that they suddenly become big, tremendous, and understand this gigantic problem that the entire nation was trying to resolve and had been struggling with for years.
