Manchild in the Promised Land

by Claude Brown

  I was demanding, “Now, look, Goldberg, look here, now. You understand this problem because you’ve been here all this time. You’ve been close to me. My mother been buying the pig tails and the neck bones from you as long as I can remember. She’s been paying you the rent, she’s been pawning stuff to you whenever we got up tight. So if anybody should give us some kind of understanding, you should.”

  But Goldberg didn’t owe us anything. If I had said this to him, he probably would have said, “Look, what do you want from me? What do you want? I owe you nothing.” And he would have been right, because he didn’t owe me anything. I had been demanding a whole lot of understanding, but, shit, I didn’t understand him, so why should he understand me?

  One night I stayed uptown, and about six o’clock in the morning I left to go home to get a bath and shave and go look for a job that day. I planned to go to school that evening. I had a little briefcase with me, with my French textbook in it, and a couple of notebooks.

  I was coming up 145th Street toward Eighth Avenue, and I heard somebody call me. It was Jake Snipes. He was coming out of a Japanese restaurant with a takeout order. I said, “Hey, Jake, how you doin’? What you doin’ out so early in the mornin’?”

  He started telling me about his chick who wanted some chop suey. “At five-thirty in the mornin’. Ain’t that just like a bitch, man?”

  “Yeah, man, that’s just like a bitch. You sure she’s all right?”

  “Man, she better be all right. This chick’s got to make me some money.”

  I smiled. Jake was a pimp.

  “Damn, Sonny, you look kind of under the weather, man. What’s it all about?”

  “Man, I got to get out here and find me a gig.”

  “Damn, man, why don’t you stop workin’? All your troubles’d be over.”

  “I’m not like you, Jake. I don’t have any chicks out here hustlin’ for me. I got to get me a job and work. That’s the only way I know, man.”

  “Damn, Sonny, you sure changed a whole lot.”

  “Yeah, well, that sort of thing will happen, and sometimes you can’t do anything about it.”

  “Look, Sonny, why don’t you come on up to my house, man? I got a freak up there. You get in the bed with this chick one time, and I guarantee you that you’ll lose your mind. You’ll probably want to fight me over this woman.”

  I knew he was just trying to cheer me up, so I smiled and said, “Man, I know it before I even go up there. I’m so sure of it, Jake, that I don’t even have to try it.”

  “Look here, Sonny,” and he pulled something out of his pocket. “I want you to taste that.”

  It was a tinfoil, and I knew what was in it. I said, “Coke, huh?”

  “It’s not just coke. Look at it.”

  I opened it, and it was brown cocaine.

  “Sonny, when was the last time you had some brown cocaine? It couldn’t have been recently, because there ain’t been none in the city in the last four months.”

  “No, it hasn’t been recently, Jake. It’s really been a long time, man.”

  “Look, man, forget about that job and come on up to my crib. I’ll turn you on to a freak; she is a stone animal, Sonny. She’ll mess your mind up. You’ll never want to leave there, and behind some of this good cocaine, you just might decide to stop workin’ altogether.”

  “Okay, Jake. Fuck it, man. I’ll just take you up on that.”

  “Good, good,” and we started walking.

  He said, “What you got in the briefcase, man?”

  “Oh, just a textbook and some notebooks. I go to school in the evening.”

  “Oh, yeah? You really sold on that thing, huh?”

  I said, “Well, it’s somethin’ new, man. It’s somethin’ else to do.”

  “Yeah, man, you always were one for books.”

  We were walking toward Eighth Avenue, and as we got near the corner, a little boy was coming up the street walking his dog. I didn’t pay any attention to the little boy and the dog until they stopped right in front of me. Jake walked on and waited a few paces away.

  I looked down at the boy. He was looking at me and smiling. Suddenly he just said, “Hey, what do you do?”

  “Who are you? A member of the police department or somebody?” I said it jokingly.

  He said, “No. I just want to know what you do.”

  “Why do you want to know what I do?”

  He said, “ ‘Cause I want to do it too. I want to be like you.”

  I looked at him, and I was kind of surprised, because I didn’t recall ever seeing him before. I asked him, “Why do you want to be like me? Have you ever seen me before?”

  He said, “Yeah, I saw you a lot of times.”

  I was kind of moved by the whole thing, but at the same time I was a little hurt because I couldn’t say anything to him that might have been inspiring to him or given him something to set his sights on. I said, “Would you do me a favor?”

  He said, “Yeah.” He smiled and looked real anxious, as if he was glad I’d asked him.

  I said, “Would you just go on down the street, keep walking your dog, and don’t want to be like me? I’m just lookin’ for a dog to walk. All my life, I’ve been lookin’ for a dog to walk.”

  He looked kind of sad. He walked around me and pulled his dog.

  I felt different. I’d forgotten about the job and all that sort of thing. I’d forgotten about Jake too. I looked down the street after the little boy had gone. He’d only walked away about a minute before. I looked down the street, and he was gone. I didn’t even remember what his face looked like. All I remembered was the little dog. It was a white dog, the kind they used to have in my first-grade reader, the kind nice little white kids would have, a little white dog with a black patch on his eye. And they would call him Spot.

  I stood there thinking for a while, wondering if there were any other little boys who watched me and wanted to be like me. I was hoping that there weren’t any others, not yet anyway. As I stood there, just thinking, I heard Jake’s voice calling me.

  He said, “Come on, Sonny. You comin’?” I walked up to him. Jake was getting ready to turn the corner, and he asked me, “What was that all about?”

  I said, “That was about what I’ve got to do, man. I got to go.”

  “Where you gon go, man. I thought you’d forgot about the job for now. I thought you were gon come on up and knock off this bitch and get high off this cocaine.”

  “No, Jake, thanks anyway, but I don’t have time for freaks right now, and I don’t have time for any cocaine right now. I’ve got to go and do something, and I’ve got to do it before another little boy with a dog comes up and asks me what I do.”

  He looked at me in that peculiar sort of way I had come to expect, the way the cats on the block looked at me when I first started telling them that I was going to evening high school and that I was going to stop dealing drugs. They all looked at me and said, “Yeah, man,” with a look in their eye that said, “Is this cat crackin’ up?”

  Jake looked at me and smiled and said, “Okay, Sonny. Take it easy, man. I’ll see you around.”

  “Later, Jake, and thanks, man, thanks anyway.”

  I didn’t see any more of Jake after that. I heard about three months later that he’d gotten busted for using drugs. It was the same old story.

  It was good to see Turk. I’d see him and he’d tell me about his upcoming fights. He was doing good. He’d started knocking out some pretty good light heavyweights. It did me good to see him around and know that it could be done. He was living proof that we could make it—the cats who had come our way in Harlem and had thrown the bricks that we had thrown in our youth. We weren’t all cursed or destined to end up in jail.

  I suppose that I was the living proof of it to him too. Whenever I saw him, we talked for a long time. I could tell him my dreams. He was the only one who could accept me as I was, and he wouldn’t say, “Well, damn, Sonny, you’ve changed,” or look at me in that peculi
ar way.

  I could accept his dreams. When he told me that he was going to become heavyweight boxing champion of the world, I believed it. I guess I wanted to believe it, because I wanted him to believe me when I told him what I was going to do.

  It became a thing. Whenever I started feeling sad or that everybody was losing out in Harlem or that all Harlem was going to pot and nobody was making it any more, I’d go to the Uptown Gym, on 125th Street, and I’d watch Turk work out. I’d talk to him afterward. We’d have a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, and we’d talk about our plans. I always felt good afterward.

  The gym was right next to the Apollo Theatre, and one day when I was with Turk, I happened to bump into someone going into the Apollo. As I turned around to apologize, I looked right into Rickets’ face. It was the first time I’d seen him since I’d left Wiltwyck. I grabbed him, and he grabbed me. We were real excited. I introduced him to Turk, and they said hello. I told him we were going over to a restaurant to have a cup of coffee and asked him to come along.

  He said, no, he was going into the Apollo, but give him my address and he’d come around. He asked me if I was working, and I told him that I wasn’t. I told him that I was just up there visiting and watching some people.

  He asked me what was I doing, and I told him, “Nothing, just knocking about.” I had gotten out of the habit of telling people I hadn’t seen in years that I was going to school. I just didn’t think any of them took it seriously enough. Most of the cats would laugh at it, and then the word would get around. I couldn’t tell anybody that any more.

  I told him that I just wasn’t doing anything, and I asked him where he had been. He looked at Turk, and I guess he figured he was all right, so he said, “Man, I just got out of Sing Sing. I did three years on a one-to-five bid. Damn, man, everybody is up there, and all the cats are lookin’ for you, man, askin’ about you.”

  When he said this, Turk sort of laughed, and he said, “Yeah, Sonny, I guess you’re missed, man.”

  “Yeah, well, tell them not to give up hope, Rickets, when you go back, because I may get there yet.”

  “Yeah, man, cats put out stories about you were doin’ time in another state. Somebody said you’d gotten killed. They had a whole lot of stories about you going around up there.”

  He told me that K.B. was up there, that there were a lot of my friends up there. While he was talking, I said, “Stop it, man, you tryin’ to make me homesick or somethin’?”

  “It’s pretty nice up at Sing Sing.”

  “Damn, how nice can it be?”

  “I mean, you know, just about every cat is up there.”

  He went on into the Apollo, and Turk and I walked on down the street. Turk said, “You know, Sonny, sometimes when I think about all the other cats, like Dunny and Tito and Mac and Alley Bush and Bucky, it’s like, man, I feel as though I’m one of the luckiest people in the world. I know that somewhere in my life I must have done something good for somebody, because if I hadn’t … I’m walkin’ around here free, and all those cats, they didn’t raise any more hell than I did. … I don’t think anybody cared any more for me than they cared for them, but I’m here, man, so it had to be only by luck.”

  I said, “Yeah, man, I can understand that. You know I can, because I’m alive by luck.”

  Turk looked at me and smiled. He knew. We had a whole lot in common that I didn’t have with other cats. The one time in my life when I was most afraid of dying, Turk was with me. Perhaps it was the most dramatic moment in my life, and maybe it had had a great impact on him too. We had this experience together, and it was a bond.

  I remember when I first came back from the hospital, most of the other cats thought that Turk and I wouldn’t like each other any more because I had squealed on him that he was with me when I got shot. And I was pissed off at him because when I got shot, he’d just asked me if I was going to tell the law that he was with me. But for some reason or another, I just wasn’t mad at Turk, and he wasn’t mad at me.

  The first time I saw him after I got back, he was down in the cellar of 2754. Everybody used to go down there and get high. This was our hangout. I walked in there, and all the fellows greeted me with, “Hey, Sonny.” Everybody but Turk started rushing to me. He stayed back in the crowd. He looked at me as if he didn’t know if he should speak to me or if I was going to speak to him or what. I didn’t know exactly how I felt about it either, but after a while, when everybody else came around and started greeting me as if I were a celebrity, I felt as though I had to go over and say something to Turk and let him know how I felt about it, that it could have been me or it could have been him.

  If he had gotten shot, I might have taken the same attitude that he took about me. I suppose it was just the thing to do. He might have told on me; maybe he wouldn’t have. But I didn’t have any hard feelings about it. I just walked over to him, and I stuck out my hand. He said, “Hi, Sonny.” And we smiled.

  After that, Turk and I were tighter than anybody.

  12

  I SAW Danny a few nights after that. We talked and had a drink. As I was getting ready to go, Danny said, “Have another one on me, Sonny.”

  “No, thanks, Danny. I got to make it. I’m still a workin’ man.”

  “Yeah, I know that. I think it’s kind of nice too.” He smiled. “Wait a minute, Sonny. Have one more drink.”

  When Danny did that, I had the feeling that I was supposed to stay, that there might have been somebody waiting for me outside or something and he was trying to keep me from it. I said, “Yeah, man. I got about another fifteen minutes to blow.” I sat down, back at the bar with him. I had another drink, and Danny kept looking in the mirror, watching everything behind him.

  When the bartender poured another two, Danny thanked the cat and looked down at his glass. Then he said, “Sonny, how’s Pimp doin’?”

  When Danny asked that, I got scared. I had a feeling why he asked me to sit down, and I had a feeling that he’d been wanting to say something about this all night. I said, “He’s doin’ fine, man, as far as I know. I haven’t seen him in a good little while, but I know he’s still got a nice job.”

  Danny said, “Yeah, I’ve seen him sometimes, and he seems to be dressin’ nice, so he must be into things.”

  I said, “Yeah, I’m a little disappointed in the cat, though, because he wouldn’t finish school. I tried to get him to go back to school in the evening, but he says he’s not ready to do that yet. He keeps talkin’ that talk about he might go back later on and that kind of shit. You know how that is.”

  “Yeah, Sonny. I know how that is,” and he looked back down at his glass.

  “Why, Danny? Have you seen him lately?”

  “Oh, yeah. I see him around most of the time, Sonny. He seems to be lookin’ good to me, man; he’s takin’ care of himself, you know, stayin’ clean.”

  “Yeah, uh-huh, that’s what I thought, man. I hope he is.”

  “Yeah, how old is he now, anyway, Sonny?”

  “Pimp’s about seventeen.”

  Danny said, “That’s a bad age, you know, Sonny. That’s a real bad age, man, for a young cat to be at in Harlem, you know. You come out of your house and you’re seventeen years old, you come out on Eighth Avenue, you feel like you’re a stud on trial, man, on trial by the world.”

  “Yeah, Danny, I guess any age that’s young is bad in Harlem. What makes seventeen such a bad age for Pimp, Danny?” I kept looking straight at Danny, trying to look at Danny’s eyes. They never came up. He kept avoiding my stare. I said, “Danny, you know, I expect, man, if you got anything on your mind, I expect you to tell me. If you didn’t, I’d be kind of pissed off. You know how we’ve always been, man. If I was ever in a joint and somebody ever fucked with my family, like my sisters or Pimp, you know, if you didn’t take up for them, when I came out I would’ve been lookin’ for you. I know it would’ve been the same thing in my case, because that’s what we expected from one another. In the same way, I always expecte
d you to pull my coat if somebody in my family was in danger, you know.”

  “Yeah, Sonny, but I know how you’ve always felt about Pimp, man. It’s just that I never knew how to mention it to you.”

  I got kind of mad. I said, “Danny, why don’t you stop fuckin’ with me and say what’s on your mind, nigger.” I got kind of loud, and people turned around and looked at us.

  Danny kept looking in the mirror. He just said slowly, softly a couple of times, “Cool it, Sonny. Sonny, baby, cool it.”

  I looked in the mirror at his eyes, and I said, “I’m sorry, Danny.” I’ve always had a lot of respect for Danny, and I guess it was mutual, because we had thrown a lot of bricks together. I had even more respect for him after he had kicked his habit.

  After I quieted down, and the conversation got back to normal, Danny said, “Sonny, I was up to Ruby’s house a few nights ago, and I saw Pimp there. He was there with some little girl on 144th Street.”

  I said, “So what, man? I’ve been up to Ruby’s house, and that doesn’t mean a mother-fuckin’ thing. Anybody can go up there.” I started getting loud again. I saw that I was getting excited.

  “Yeah, Sonny. Forget it, man. But now you see what I meant when I said I didn’t know how to say anything. And now you see how you would take somebody’s pulling your coat.”

  “No, man. That’s not it. That’s not it at all. Was he doin’ anything?”