8) After class, tell Diane what happened. Let her know that the baby survived and is doing well, and that he now has a little brother; were I to write a story about my experiences trying to become a parent, I would end it here. I’m not suggesting that stories have to have happy endings to be effective, but the enduring stories are the ones that are in some way affirmative, that can find something instructive to say about how and why to live. Maybe stick with the story a little farther, follow your character until she finds, like I found, a place of redemption, even if the redemption isn’t in the form of a child.
GANG LIFE
Paul and I sat on his porch and drank red wine until the thought of what we were about to do failed to give us shivers. I poked my lobe once, just barely breaking the skin, and then slid the needle back on the spool of thread. I had not drunk enough. I doubted I could. I suggested we get some ice to numb our ears. “That,” Paul said, “is an excellent idea.”
He went into the house. I took another drink, wiping my mouth with the back of my trembling hand as I scanned our expanse of ghetto. Four girls played double Dutch off to my left, their feet eluding the rope with incomprehensible ease, while across the street Mrs. Wheeler knelt in her garden bed, tending to her peonies, pausing now and then to look pitifully in my direction. Balls bounced and children shrieked somewhere out of view. The screen door snapped shut. I turned around. Paul’s hands were empty. “No ice,” he said. I reached for the wine. We passed it back and forth until it was gone. I tossed the bottle behind the bushes and picked up my needle.
Ten minutes later, with black thread looped through our swollen earlobes, we stumbled to the park to proudly show some of the El Ruken generals what we had done. They congratulated us for joining their gang. Someone asked us our ages. We were seventeen. One of them told us to start lifting weights. “Can’t whoop no Disciples,” he warned us, “with skinny-ass arms like those.” They flashed us the gang sign—the left hand cupped on the back of the right—and after Paul and I returned the gesture, we went home and did push-ups until we were sober.
Gang life was good. Girls suddenly dug me, especially once I got the money for an actual earring, and boys respected me who had not before. I was invited to all the right parties; requests for simple favors were not refused. I even enjoyed my first gang fight, although it was only with Jimmy. He had, for some reason, started hanging out with a few Vice Lords, and one night, when we were both high, we showed each other where our loyalties lay. He busted my lip, I blackened his eye, but within a week we were at peace again.
Then some crazy stuff started happening with the Disciples. Carloads of them were seen cruising the neighborhood in search of rival gangs to harm. They found some, too. Stories of broken bones reached me every day. There was talk of a coming turf war. I started keeping a pair of brass knuckles in my back pocket, as well as a container of Mace in case I got in serious trouble. But then guns started being used and I surprised myself: I lacked the courage to either kill or die. I decided that my gang days were over. I tried to explain that to some of the generals when they offered me a .22.
“You kidding,” one of them responded.
I shook my head. “I’m serious. I’m done.”
“No, no, no,” he said. “I wasn’t asking if you were kidding. I was telling you. You can’t quit. There’s a war coming.”
“But, but,” I pleaded, “I’m on probation.”
“Nigger,” he said, “we all on probation!”
I took the gun. But I knew I would not use it. They must have known it, too, because later that night someone shot a bullet through our living room window. And the day after that, when a Chevy screeched to a halt at my side, I was not surprised that the six thugs who jumped out to chase me were from my own gang. The El Rukens had declared open season on me, and on my twin brother, too. We began traveling through alleys or only at night. Sometimes they still found us, though, and the beatings we took were severe. Jimmy got a gun, a .45 that could stop a charging bear, while I started dating a girl who lived on the other side of town. She wasn’t very pretty but she had her own place. She was agreeable to letting me stay.
“You’re running?” Jimmy asked me when I told him.
“Hell no.” I was dumping clothes into a garbage bag.
“I can’t believe you’re letting them punk you like that!”
“I’m …I’m not.”
Jimmy shook his head. We stood toe-to-toe for a few seconds, not speaking. Finally he said, “And you call yourself a gangster.”
“I am,” I insisted. I pointed to my pierced ear, but it was an empty gesture. I’d already shown him my heart.
VISIBLE MAN
A fellow black colleague called me to her office and asked why I had not attended the Kwanzaa celebration. As a recently hired professor, I told her, I was overwhelmed, weighted down with responsibility and pressure, and in addition my two young sons were frequently ill, requiring a great deal of attention. But I was lying.
The truth is that I do not observe Kwanzaa. I recognize that the desire to celebrate customs and traditions is a good one, but Kwanzaa’s emphasis on Africa simply has no personal appeal to me. I am American, not African. I speak English, not Swahili. I wear Western-style clothes intended for commoners, not kente cloth intended for royalty. I have no need to participate in a highly ritualistic holiday in order to feel better about myself; for that, my ancestors gave me Br’er Rabbit and John Henry. These were the remarkable Americans who invented spirituals, blues, and jazz. In no small part, they invented America, too.
I did not have the courage to say that. I had only been an academic for a short while, but I’d followed the profession long enough to know what happened to black faculty labeled “conservative.” And somehow, not celebrating Kwanzaa would earn me that distinction.
My colleague leaned back in her chair, a frown thinning her lips as she looked toward the ceiling. I glanced up, expecting to see something perilous, a protrusion of water-stained plaster, perhaps, or a light fixture teetering from a single screw, but there was nothing of the sort, just a few harmless cobwebs wafting in a draft. “Racism in academe,” she began, “is rampant. It’s a disease. A cancer. An epidemic. As a person of color, I’ve had my share of battles.” She shook her head sadly and said, “I tell you, there are some seriously misguided white folks around here. Black ones, too.” She rested her elbows on the arms of her chair. “But there are also some good people in academe, there are some good people here at this college. It’s important that these people—and they’re good people, really, they are—see you at campus events, especially those that celebrate our culture.”
I nodded. “Well, you know, I’d like to attend more events, all sorts of events, but I’m just so overwhelmed right now. It’s difficult to stay afloat.”
“I understand that. But you’re one of a small number of black faculty on this campus, and, well, there are certain expectations there.” She leaned forward. “It’s in your best interest, particularly at this early stage of your career, to be more visible.”
“I’ll do what I can,” I said.
“Don’t be a disappointment.”
“Of course not.”
“Then you and Brenda will be at the Martin Luther King breakfast?”
I decided not to tell her I had already purchased tickets. “Yes,” I said. “I’ll make arrangements immediately.”
“Good!” she responded, now smiling, and yet, somehow, still managing to look troubled.
The breakfast crowd was overflowing. It was easily the largest gathering of minorities I’d seen since we’d relocated to this overwhelmingly white town, and I wondered if, in the true spirit of King, they’d been bused in. There was a strong showing of the administration, including our black president, but there were at best only two dozen white faculty and staff. The rest of the attendees were hundreds of extremely well-dressed blacks, many of them surveying the room and smiling, pleased, in a way that only blacks can be pleased, to be at a
large gathering of successful peers.
Breakfast was served buffet-style. Brenda and I were joined at our table by an elderly black couple, both of whom were retired faculty of a local college, and together we enjoyed a wide-ranging menu that included asparagus quiche and grits. After breakfast, the president said a few words, and then the keynote speaker took the podium. I do not recall exactly what was said, but I remember somber references to the lack of advances minorities have made since King’s ultimate sacrifice. By the time the speaker finished, a palpable anger filled the room, for which he was given a rousing ovation. I applauded, too, even though I knew blacks had accomplished more in the last forty years than in the previous four hundred. I told myself that had King been alive, he would have preached this message instead, and I raised my guava juice to him in silent tribute.
In January, Brenda and I attended a few more high-profile events, and a couple of low-profile ones for good measure. February, Black History Month, kept us in high demand, and then things were quiet until early May, when I received an e-mail from the black colleague who had chastised me about not attending Kwanzaa, reminding me of the approaching Kente Cloth Ceremony, aka “Black Commencement.” I knew that it, like Kwanzaa, would be largely African-themed, but that was not what concerned me most. What concerned me most was that, after so recently celebrating our country’s staunchest promoter of integration, I was being asked to celebrate segregation, to teach our students, in essence, to derive meaning from their race, which King preached was our most meaningless trait of all. This is what I was thinking as I typed my RSVP, saying, cowardly, that I would be delighted to attend.
The next Saturday morning Brenda and I sat with the families and friends of students of color as they marched across a stage to receive the kente cloth they would wear during graduation. Candles were lit at various points of the ceremony to symbolize universal values, here described as “African,” such as the importance of family, community, and faith. Poems were read. Libations were poured. Women wearing spandex beneath thatched skirts danced to the rhythm of beating drums, summoning ancestral spirits from across the Atlantic.
Later, after breakfast, the guest speaker, a black American, though with an African-sounding name, was introduced. He wore a wrinkled, double-breasted white suit, and dragged an enormous duffel bag to the stage. He had the longest dreadlocks I’d ever seen and, perhaps following some little-known custom, had buttoned them inside the front of his suit jacket so that they emerged beneath the hem, continued past his knees, and swept the tops of his white shoes as he moved. His lecture included references to ancient Egypt, Allah, mathematics, Imhotep, slavery, reparations, and cloning. He laughed, he cried, he sang; he removed large homemade instruments from his duffel bag and played songs designed to amuse children, though few were there. At some point I glanced at Brenda, whose mouth and eyes were wide open, and then I scanned the room and saw similar expressions of disbelief, including on the faces of the event organizers and the colleague who had invited me. It was a truly bizarre performance, the product of a madman, it seemed, and I decided, while watching him, to be a madman, too.
I would attend no more kente cloth breakfasts. I would not attend Kwanzaa celebrations. Never again would I applaud speeches that celebrated the myth of black defeat, and I would not participate in events simply because of the color of my skin. And if people questioned my absence, I would not tell them a lie. I intend to be visible, I would tell them, but only in ways I wish to be seen.
NAKED
I was waiting for the bus when a car drove past, the driver bobbing his head to his radio, his thumbs keeping time against the steering wheel, his body as naked as the day he was born. The two other people standing near me—a man with a bulky metal leg brace, and a teenage boy who was smoking one of my cigarettes—either hadn’t noticed or weren’t letting on that they had. I tossed the butt of my Newport to the curb and watched the car until it was out of view, wondering what would make a person do such a thing.
When I arrived at work, I didn’t immediately tell anyone about what I had seen because, being one of only three blacks in my department, I tried to keep to myself. The other two blacks were my boss and a woman with bluish hair who hadn’t spoken to me during the year I had been there. She was one of the hematologists—that was a new word for me when I started at the medical center, and the Department of Hematology was a new place: a large room full of rectangular tables covered with microscopes. All day and night hematologists stared into these microscopes, and sometimes I wondered what it was that they saw. I could have asked them this if I’d wanted to, because the hematologists were nice people, which is to say they smiled or said hello whenever we met, except for the black woman, who looked the other way.
My job was to clean the test tubes and beakers. I’d scrub them with a wire brush before putting them in the washer, and then wheel my cart to the ten small labs on the ward to collect some more. Most of the beakers contained human waste, so it was important that I wore my thick rubber gloves. I also wore a white knee-length smock, just like the hematologists, but I worked alone in a small back room that was so cold I had to wear long underwear beneath my clothes. There was a door that led to the back stairs, so I could sneak in and out when I didn’t feel like dealing with any of the hematologists, which was pretty much every day. I just didn’t have much to say to them, and they liked to ask questions about my personal life, things I didn’t want to answer.
Three hours into my shift I went to see my boss. When I walked into his office he smiled and said, “Hey, what’s happening, young man?”
“Good morning, Doc,” I said. “How are you doing?”
“I’m making it, my man. I’m making it.” He motioned for me to sit in a wingback leather chair that was as comfortable as stone and made me wonder if rich black people knew what to do with their money. “So,” he said, “how can I help you?”
I started telling him about the naked man but the phone rang before I got very far. He excused himself and began a conversation with someone about spleens. I sat there for several minutes looking at all the books and journals that bowed the wall-to-wall shelves, and suddenly I remembered that I used to like to read. Another moment passed, and then another, until I’d sat there for five minutes. As I rose to leave, I decided to come back later, maybe during my lunch break.
But I didn’t go back later. When my lunch break came I got my sandwich from my locker and went to the men’s room. I sat in the stall farthest from the entrance and ate quickly because there’s nothing worse than having some hematologist shitting next to you when you’re trying to enjoy your tuna.
After I finished eating there were still fifty minutes to kill. I used them searching for Stan. Stan worked for the Food Services Department. All day he delivered meals to the units and dope to many of the employees. I found him on the oncology floor unloading plates of turkey and dressing. After I whispered what I wanted, he told me to give him half a minute, so I waited for him by the nurses’ station near a unit clerk who was laughing into her phone. There was a wad of chocolate cake in front of her, and every few seconds she pinched off a clump and pushed it between her lips. This was the job I hoped to get someday. I had done a little research and learned that, of all the nonprofessional positions, unit clerk paid the most. Besides, the clerks had access to the prescription pads and doctors’ narcotics numbers. I was looking forward to getting my hands on those.
Stan came out a few minutes later. We took the stairs to the first floor before leaving the building through the emergency room exit. It was late August. A strong humid breeze tried to keep us from crossing the street and entering the park. The trees had already started losing their leaves, and the ones we were walking through were wet, even though it hadn’t rained.
We stopped near a bronze sculpture of an Indian on horseback. Stan handed me a gram of coke wrapped in a small scrap of newspaper. I handed him five twenties. As he was putting the money in his wallet, I told him about the naked man. H
e told me he would have kicked his ass.
“For what?” I asked.
“For being naked.”
“What do you care?”
“I don’t like seeing naked people driving cars. But I guess you do.”
I denied this. “I’m just curious, you know, about his motive. I mean, what’s the point?”
“The point,” Stan said, “is to get his ass kicked.”
I walked away knowing he was wrong. This wasn’t about ass-kicking, or really even about nudity. This had something to do with confidence and nerve. This, it occurred to me, was about not working alone in a small back room, or eating your tuna sandwich in a bathroom stall.
GAME
After expressing concern that his puppies would develop racist tendencies for lack of exposure to minorities, a faculty colleague asked if he could bring the dogs to my house to play with Dorian and Adrian, who were, at the time, one and three years old. I declined the request. “My boys are afraid of dogs,” I explained. If he knew of any racially deprived felines, I told him, he should let me know.
When I casually mentioned this exchange to minority faculty, some of them retold it to me, only now with themselves in my shoes performing a number of aggressive acts against my colleague. The white faculty I told did not put themselves in my shoes. Many accused me of lying. That’s because the puppies’ owner decided to deny—vehemently—that our conversation had ever taken place. To remind him that it had, I taped to my office door a photograph from the 1960s civil rights movement: a black male leaning just beyond the reach of a German shepherd that’s being restrained by a white police officer. Right beneath the photograph I’d written: “Don’t let this happen to you. Teach your dogs racial sensitivity.”
“Was that necessary?” an administrator asked me.
Street Shadows Page 17
