Manchild in the Promised Land

by Claude Brown

  I walked up to him and said, “Hey, Dad, how you doin’?” I guess he was just as surprised to see me down there, and I thought he was going to ask, “Hey, son, what you doin’ down here?” I was all set to tell him, “I got a friend down here who owes me some money, and I need it tonight, because I got to take this chick out, so I came down to see him.”

  But he didn’t say it. He just asked me if I wanted a drink. He didn’t act too surprised to see me. He was out, and this was Saturday night. He’d been in Harlem a lot of Saturday nights, and he’d gotten that big, nasty-looking scar on his neck on a Saturday night.

  Despite the fact that he didn’t ask me what I was doing there, I said, “I got to get uptown. I got to call somebody to wait for me. I hope this chick don’t stay in that phone booth too long.”

  He said, “No, I don’t think she’ll be in there on the phone too long.”

  I didn’t pay much attention to it. I said, “She looks like one of those who can really talk.”

  He just said, “Yeah,” and kind of smiled.

  I looked at the woman again. She looked as though she might have been about thirty-three, something like that. I would look over there every couple of minutes. She would look over to the bar at me and smile. I just forgot about the phone and started talking to Dad about my job and what I’d done that night, how I was catching hell, how everything I touched just turned to shit, sort of halfway crying.

  It dawned on me that he had been standing there all by himself when I came in, and I’d never known him to do this. I never thought that he would go to a bar by himself, especially some strange bar, just to stand around and drink. He usually brought his liquor home when he wanted a drink.

  I said, “Say, Dad, you waitin’ for somebody down here?” I knew a friend of his who worked with him. Although I hadn’t seen him in a long time, I figured they were still friends. I knew his friend, Eddie, lived down there, so I said, “Dad, you waitin’ for somebody? Is Eddie around?”

  He didn’t answer the first question, but to the second one he said, “No, I haven’t seen Eddie now in about a month.”

  I said, “Yeah? Well, doesn’t he still work on the job with you?”

  He said that Eddie had an injury; some crates fell on him. “It’s not too bad, but he can’t be doing that heavy work around the dock, so he stayed off. He’s collecting compensation for it. He’s taking it easy, the way I hear it.”

  I said, “Oh.” After that, I thought about the first question, but I figured it wouldn’t be too wise to repeat it. I thought, Well, maybe he’s waiting for his woman. And I laughed, because I always thought of Dad as the kind of cat nobody but Mama could take. With her, it was just habit.

  After a while, the woman from the phone booth came up. She said, “Hi.”

  I looked at her and said, “Oh, do I know you?”

  Dad introduced her. He said, “Ruth, meet my oldest son.”

  She smiled and said, “Hello. So you’re Sonny Boy.”

  I said, “Yeah.”

  She said, “I knew it was you the moment I saw you sittin’ there next to your daddy on that stool. You two look so much alike. If he was about ten years younger, he could pass for your older brother.”

  I said, “Yeah, that’s something that people are suppose to tell fathers and sons, huh, that they look like brothers?”

  She threw both of her hands on her hips and looked at me in a sort of defiant way, but jokingly, and said, “Supposin’ it is, young man? That’s beside the point. I’m telling you that you and your daddy look alike, even if this is what people are suppose to tell you. Now, you can believe it if you want to. All I’m interested in is saying it, and I said it. You can take it from there.”

  I looked at her and said, “Okay, I believe it.” I had the funniest feeling that this woman knew what was going on. I knew this was his woman.

  I couldn’t feel anything about it. I guess I’d just never given too much thought to the idea of Dad playing around. I couldn’t imagine anybody else ever wanting him. In the case of Mama, I think, if it had been her, I would have felt good about it. She deserved to get out and get somebody who would treat her like she was something, like she was a person. Because of this feeling about Mama, I suppose I should have felt bad that Dad was being unfaithful, but I didn’t. I didn’t sec any way in the world to dislike this woman. She seemed to be a nice person.

  Dad asked her if she wanted a drink.

  She said to me, “What you drinkin’, junior?” I told her I was drinking a bourbon and soda with lemon. She said, “Umph. That sounds like something with a whole lot of sting in it. Maybe I’ll try one.”

  She moved closer to Dad and put her hand around his waist. She looked at me as if to say, “Well, young man, that’s the way it is. So how you gonna take it?”

  Dad never even looked at me. He just picked up his drink, as if to say, “Shit, he’s old enough. If he’s not, fuck him.” He emptied his glass, put it down, and called to the bartender.

  When the bartender came to bring Ruth one, Dad got another whiskey, straight. We sat there for a while and started talking. The woman didn’t seem to be the least bit ill at ease. She seemed completely relaxed, and she looked pretty, in her own way. She was kind of plump, but she looked like she might have been a very nice-looking girl when she was about twenty.

  I guess she was pretty for Dad. He was forty at the time, so I suppose anything under thirty-five would have been real nice for him. They seemed to have something. He had a patience with her that I’d never seen him show with Mama. I didn’t think he was capable of showing this to any woman. She seemed to be able to play with him, and he took more playing from her than I’d seen him take from anybody else.

  It made me wonder just how long had he known her and just what was going on with them. All I could see was that, whatever they had with each other, they were really enjoying it. I decided that was enough. I didn’t feel as though I had the right to judge them or even have an opinion about them. Whatever they were doing, it seemed to me that they weren’t doing it to anybody but themselves. Mama would never be hurt, because there was a good chance that she’d never know. New York was a big city, and they seemed so tight that they must have been tight for a long time, a real long time.

  I asked her, “Pardon me, Ruth. Haven’t I seen you uptown? Do you live up around 145th Street?”

  Dad still never looked at me. He said, “Sonny Boy, I think you better grab that phone there now. The booth is empty. If you don’t get it while it’s empty, you’re liable to be here all night.”

  I got up and went to the phone booth. When I came out, Dad and his lady friend were gone. That was understandable. I guess I really messed up with that question about 145th Street.

  I didn’t feel bad toward Dad. It was just that I had never seen it as being possible for him to pull a chick on the outside, a nice-looking chick like this Ruth. She seemed to be a person with a nice personality, and she didn’t look bad for a woman her age. Maybe she did something for Dad too. He acted like a different person altogether with her. Maybe she was the one who made him relax. He must have been a different person. I’d never seen him act like that with anybody. At home he was always shouting and raising hell, threatening somebody, a real terror.

  I was kind of sorry that I had started prying into the woman’s business. I knew I’d never seen her uptown. I suppose Dad knew it too. I was supposed to act as old as he had treated me. One of the things had been to treat the lady like she was just a friend of Dad’s and to be cool behind it. But then I had just gone on and messed over her. I knew this was something I’d never get a chance to do again. I knew I’d never get a chance to say, “Look, Dad, I’m sorry I said that, and I shouldn’t have,” because I knew that this wasn’t supposed to be mentioned ever, not even to him.

  The next time I saw him, I would just have to speak first, about something that was far removed from the night at the bar and from Ruth. But I hoped that I would get a chance to let her know
somehow that I was sorry that I hadn’t played my part properly.

  I didn’t feel as though he was hurting Mama. I felt she didn’t know about it, and what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. Maybe it was just that she wasn’t missing anything, because I didn’t feel they were in any great love anyway. It just didn’t bother me as I might have thought it would. It just seemed to be one of those Harlem Saturday night surprises.

  I remember the Saturday night when Dad kicked Pimp out of the house and told him not to come back. Pimp had fallen to sleep on the toilet with a needle in his arm. I guess he’d taken a light O.D.

  Mama was telling me about it. According to her, Dad came in and panicked. He opened the bathroom door and saw Pimp halfway on and halfway off the toilet with a needle in his arm. Mama said he just starting calling so loud for her to come there, she thought he was dying. Mama tried to make a joke out of it. She said she thought maybe he’d fallen down in the toilet and was having trouble getting out. I tried to laugh, but all I could get out was a snicker.

  Mama said she tried to slap Pimp out of it. She thought for a while he was dead when she saw him. She just refused to accept that her child was dead from using dope. She ran into the bathroom and started slapping him and calling his name real loud, as though, even if he was dead, he would hear her and come back.

  She started hollering for the doctor, and she started hollering about an ambulance. Dad said, “No, don’t be callin’ no ambulance or no doctors around here. We ain’t gon have no police coming in here.”

  Mama started hollering, “The boy might be dead! The boy might be dead!”

  Dad said, “Huh?” He’d stop and say, “He ain’t dead. He ain’t dead. It’s just that old dope.” They both panicked.

  When Mama finally got Pimp to wake up, after so much slapping and calling his name, Dad was convinced that it was time for Pimp to go. I guess he should have been convinced. It must have been a pretty frightening thing, even for him, though he wouldn’t admit it, to come into the bathroom and see his son slumped over a toilet with a needle in his arm, after having heard so much about the junkies dying from using dope, after having been to so many funerals, after having asked so many times about this kid and that kid who came up with his older son and being told that he’d died from dope—it must have been a pretty frightening thing.

  Pimp had deceived just about everybody in the family for a long time. After a while, we all knew, but I knew before anybody else that Pimp was dabbling. I was the first one to say, “Come on, man. You got to do something.”

  I guess Pimp sort of knew that I suspected him of using stuff. The first time after I saw him high that night in the Low Hat, I took him to a bar. He didn’t know that I had seen him nodding. I said, “Come on, let’s have a drink. I want to talk to you. Let’s sit down and have a drink.”

  I asked him what he’d like to drink. I remembered that he used to like rum. I think he just took a rum and Coke because he knew I remembered it and thought I might get suspicious if he didn’t.

  When he took his first sip of the rum and Coke, he grimaced. He said, “Man, it’s, like, I’m so tired. I’m so tired, Sonny, this stuff almost knocks me out.”

  I looked at him and said, “Yeah, man. It can do that to you.”

  Then he looked down and started fumbling with his glass, as if he knew I was suspicious of him. The next thing he said was, “Man, you know, I ain’t had no good rum in a long time.”

  When he said this, I paid it no attention. I knew he was going to try to bullshit me. I looked straight at him as he went on talking. I said, “Pimp.” I sort of quietly shouted it at him.

  “Yeah, Sonny?”

  “How long have you been dabblin’ in stuff?”

  He looked at me for a long time. He got kind of quiet, and he dropped his head. He said, “Oh, about four months, man.”

  “How far are you? How much stuff are you usin’ a day?”

  “Oh, man, I buy a bag about every other day, but I don’t get high every day.”

  “Are you snortin’ or skin poppin’?”

  “Man, I’m just startin’, and I can keep a bag two or three days.”

  “Uh-huh. That is good, because now is the time for you to stop. You got to stop now, before you really get yourself into some trouble.

  “Yeah, yeah.” He was glad to hear this. It seemed as though he had heard something that he had been waiting to hear, he had been given some kind of signal. He seemed to feel that all he had to do now was agree with everything I said and everything would be okay. He was going to prevent any violence from taking place by just being agreeable.

  “Look, Pimp, you got a job, and you’re still working. You’re doing good now. Now is the time when you can quit, because if you keep on dabblin’, man, you’re gon actually go to the dogs. After a while, you won’t be able to quit, and you won’t have anything to quit for, because once you blow your job, your clothes, and everything you’ve got, it just won’t matter that much. You got a nice girl, man. And maybe you’ll want to get married or something. But what you’re doin’, man, you’re gon blow everything.”

  “Yeah, Sonny, I know what you mean, man. I’ve been tellin’ myself. I’ve been planning on stopping this stuff for the last two weeks. As a matter of fact, last week …”

  I just knew he was lying. He was saying all this so relaxed, and he seemed so pleased with the way he was telling it. But I could tell he was lying. I knew. He didn’t know how to lie, not to me anyway.

  He said that he had bought some Dorphine tablets and that he had taken his first two today. He was going to keep taking the Dorphine tablets and start cutting down on other drugs from day to day, and in a couple of weeks or so, he’d be ready to sign himself into someplace.

  I asked him if he’d ever heard of Norman Eddie, in the East Harlem Protestant Parish. He said no, he hadn’t. I said, “Well, he’s doin’ a lot of good work with drug addicts, and if you’re really interested, I think I could get him to work with you, man. You could kick it now, before it really gets a strong hold on you.”

  Pimp went right on bullshitting me. He said, “Yeah, Sonny, that’s what I want to do. You go ahead and see this cat and let me know what’s happening.”

  I was crushed. He didn’t understand it at all. He just seemed to look at me as if I were someone who was trying to deprive him of something. And he wasn’t even going to pretend to defend it, even though he wanted it terribly. He was just going to sit there and say, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, uh-huh. I’ll go along with you. You’re right; that’s so right. I’m going to be doing it, so there’s nothing else to talk about when you stop trying to sell me on it.”

  Even though I could see this, I still felt I had to try. He was my brother, and I could make him kick it. He couldn’t help but kick it if I was in his corner, if I really wanted him to. I was going to put everything I had into it.

  When Mama called me that Saturday night and told me what Dad had said to Pimp, how he couldn’t come back in the house any more, and how afraid she was for him, I said, “Look, Mama, he’ll be coming back.”

  She said, “No, he ain’t gon come back, because he was really hurt. I think he’s just gon go some place and try and take enough of that stuff to kill himself or something.”

  I said, “No, Mama, junkies don’t kill themselves. They’ve goc something to live for. They got to live for another high, for the next one. He’ll probably come down here.” I knew he wasn’t coming, but that’s what I told her. “Mama, he’ll probably come down here, and when he does come down, I’ll put him up for the night and call you and let you know.”

  Mama said, “He just might go someplace and get himself into some trouble in the meantime, before he gets down there. Why don’t you go out and look for him for a little while. He’s probably around there on 144th Street. And let me know if you can’t find him. Call me and keep in touch with me, because he ain’t had a bath all week, and he got on those old dirty pants. That shirt he has on, he put it on day be
fore yesterday, and it was white. It looks like it’s black from the dirt and grime. He ain’t had nothin’ to eat in a long time. I don’t know if he even had anything to eat yesterday, and he’s probably hungry.”

  I wanted to tell her, “Look, Mama, junkies don’t care about eating. They don’t care about clothes. They don’t care about baths and stuff like that. It just don’t matter to them. All they care about is some heroin, and this is the only thing that’s gon do them any good, Mama. You got to face the fact that he’s at that state where soap and water’s not gon do him any good. Clothes ain’t gon do him any good. Food ain’t gon do him any good. He’s just dead, and maybe the thing that’ll do him the most good is the O.D., the O.D. that he’s waitin’ for.” But I couldn’t tell her that. I just couldn’t seem to bring it out.

  I knew it was no use, but she got me to promise that I’d look for him. She was a woman, and that was her child. I couldn’t tell her that many other women had sons and daughters out there dying too. It wouldn’t have meant anything to her, because this was the first child that she had out there who was a drug addict. This was the only one out there she was concerned about, the only one that mattered.

  I went uptown to start looking for Pimp. I looked everywhere. I went to all the places where junkies might go, looked in all the dope dens, in all the backyards where the junkies might sleep. Nobody had seen him or heard about him. Some people hadn’t seen him in days. I kept on looking and hoping. When Mama called me, it had been about eight-thirty or nine o’clock. When I hadn’t found Pimp or anybody who had seen Pimp by three-thirty, I became a little worried.