by Omar Tyree
Troy smiled. “Them drug dealers understand it.”
Lance hunched his brow concertedly. “Yeah, well you name me a black drug dealer who’s been in the business for ten years or more without bein’ arrested, killed, or strung out on the shit himself, and I’ll shake the nigga’s hand and ask him for a job.” Troy started to chuckle. Lance, however, remained serious. “Let me tell you something, Troy. This life is much longer than a few strings of gold, a fast car, and a cute young girl driving you crazy.”
Lance finally smiled again as he shook Troy’s hand. He had said his piece and was up the stairs and off to work.
Troy had enjoyed the brief, frank chat. He realized that Lance had children to feed, bills to pay, and hours to work. Nevertheless, Troy figured if Lance had his own business, then he could give his nephew-in-law a job.
Troy then thought about his uncles. Mark, Tim, and Ronald Potter were all out trying to make ends meet. Troy never thought about having man-to-man talks with them before. What advice could they give him?
They don’t own shit either, he contemplated. His conclusions all seemed to point fingers at the Black race for every downfall. As Simon had told Troy before, on one of their nights of debating, “There is no kingdom without the peasants to keep it going.”
“Troy, you been layin’ around here on that couch every day. Aren’t you bored? Don’t you have something to do?” Aunt Judy asked.
“Naw. I’m aw’ight. All I need is some food, and I’m cool,” Troy answered, grinning.
“Well, Jamey and Chucky are going to New York this Saturday on a camp trip. And I need you to cut their heads.”
Troy raised to attention. “They’re going to New York? Dag, I never even been to New York. And they’re only nine and six. Man, that ain’t even fair.”
“Well, if Lance doesn’t want to go, you can take his place. I haven’t been to New York before myself. I’ve been working since I was eighteen,” his aunt commented.
Troy cut his cousins’ heads for the trip, giving them two different hairstyles. Chucky had curly, fluffy hair like Doc, up at school. Jamey, the youngest, had woolly hair. Troy gave Chucky a high haircut, capturing the full essence of the curls with fancy parts. He cut Jamey’s hair down low, with one part.
“Aw, Mom, he didn’t cut my hair like Chucky’s. I wanted a block, too,” Jamey whined.
Judy smoothed over her son’s head and frowned. “Yeah, Troy, why did you cut his hair so low? He usually gets a high cut, too. Didn’t you see how thick it was?”
Troy was embarrassed by the mishap. “Yeah, well, it was easier to cut Chucky’s head like that, since his hair is so much higher,” he responded eerily. He began to sense that maybe the issues hit upon in college had affected him more than he had thought. Fortunately, his aunt said nothing more of the incident. Jamey stopped whining and returned outside to play.
Lance was too tired after working overtime to travel to New York Saturday morning. Troy happily filled in. Children waited joyfully for the buses outside their summer camp building. For most of the kids, it would be their first trip out of the city. The Philadelphia city government afforded the West Philadelphia Community Center the opportunity. It would be a cultural trip to the Statue of Liberty. The youths and their participating parents were scheduled to go south to the Baltimore harbor in the next two weeks. Troy hoped he could tag along on that trip as well.
Two buses finally arrived to greet fifty happy kids and parents. Troy, his aunt, and his cousins decided to board the second bus, which was nearest them. And as they sat and waited for the buses to depart, Troy read thePhiladelphia Tribune , a Black-owned newspaper.
As he flipped through the pages, he glanced at several commentaries discussing the Dukakis and Bush presidential campaigns. Looking up momentarily, he was happy to see a Black bus driver and a Black coordinator for the trip. He then dropped his head to finish reading, only to be rudely interrupted. A gray-haired White woman, wearing the same blue T-shirt as the Black coordinator, was handed the microphone.
“Hello, boys and girls and parents. My name is Martha Simpson, and I will be your tour guide for the day. I have organized this trip to fit in as many sights as possible out of the little time that we will have. It is now ten after eight. We will be arriving in New York no later than eleven. On arrival, I will get the tickets and distribute them to you and your kids. We will remain in a group, and all kids must be taken care of, because I am much too-old to keep after them,” she announced humorously. Parents laughed at her too-old joke. Troy frowned and thought that she was arrogant. She was White, the only White person on the trip. And she ran the show.
“What do you think about Dukakis?” Troy asked his aunt, who was seated to his right. The bus had begun its three-hour journey to Staten Island, New York.
“Well, Dukakis supports more jobs and everything,” she responded.
“I’m talkin’ ’bout what he did to Jesse Jackson,” Troy alluded.
“Well, Jesse had lost, so it wasn’t much he could do.”
“Dukakis still could have chosen Jesse for vice president. Jesse Jackson was the best candidate,” Troy commented. “Matter of fact, if Jesse was White, he would have won everything. Easily!”
His aunt Judy smiled and nodded. “Yeah, well you know how this country is. People didn’t think Jesse could get as far as he did. But I’ve voted for and supported Jesse ever since he started. And I’ll always vote for him.”
Troy nodded back to her. “Dukakis thinks we got no choice but to vote for him, even after he dissed Jesse. He’s taking us for granted because we always vote Democratic. So we need to show him that we can no longer be tricked by that kind of wheelin’ and dealin’. I would vote for Bush.”
Troy waited to see if his aunt would respond. When she didn’t, he continued. “All these Blacks talkin’ about what Dukakis will give us is only gon’ make people more lazy and dependent. What we need is to start working hard to get our own, ’cause White people own everything already. Look at this trip today, Aunt Judy. There’s only one White person here, and she’s in charge. That’s exactly what I’m talking about.”
Judy remained silent, nodding, as if Troy’s views were veritable.
The buses had arrived late. Parents and children were rushed to save time. The older White woman yelled at the top of her lungs for everyone to get a move on and to stay together. Their orange “West Philly Community Center” T-shirts made it all manageable. They could be easily identified as a group.
As the tour guide continued to shout for them to move faster, Troy felt that she was overplaying her hand of cards. And he didn’t like it.
“Aunt Judy, I’m getting tired of this White lady screaming and whatnot. She act like we can’t hear,” he mentioned. They stood in a long line, waiting to take the ferry to Liberty Island.
“Yeah, well, that’s just her job. She knows what she’s doing,” Judy told him.
“Parents!Hold on to your children and move to the right to get your tickets!” the White woman shouted. Troy felt ashamed, like a twentieth-century slave boy. He was glad he wasn’t wearing an orange shirt like the rest of them.
While the line moved, he watched numerous Puerto Ricans flooding the park, waiting as well to aboard the ferry. Outside the long line, a group of Jamaican acrobats entertained the crowds.
“Gather around, folks. We ’bout to do an amazing show for you here, today! My mon Victor here and the rest of de boys are ready to entertain you. Japanese, get out your cameras! White ladies, hold your pocketbooks tightly! Nah, I’m just jokin’, madam,” said a short, brown Jamaican wearing biker shorts. The many tourists laughed and eyed him as his taller Jamaican brothers performed their tumbling stunts. They received loud applause while their short ringreader collected a red, green, and black hat full of money, steadily cracking his ethnic jokes.
On Liberty Island, Troy noticed Latinos behind the refreshment line cash registers. Others cleaned the small island grounds, emptying trash and collecti
ng ferry tickets, while their visible White managers served as the overseers. Latinos were being used in New York the same as Blacks were used in Philadelphia and in Marsh County. This reflected the annual economic reports that Troy had observed. Blacks and Latinos remained at the bottom of the totem poll of American society.
The tour guide began another shouting spree. Time was up on the island and she was ready to go. Troy tried his best to ignore her.
“Gather your kids and line up next to the wall so I can take a count!” she shouted. It was more than Troy could stand! She spoke with a harshness that equated the parents and kids as one and the same, as if they were all unruly juveniles.
Troy decided that her military-style demands would fall on deaf ears, as far ashe was concerned. She’s not going to count me next to a wall like some damn slave, he thought declaratively. He sensed an increasing urge, in fact, to tell her off. Who in the hell does she think she’s talking to?
“Hey, young man, aren’t you with our group? Now get over here so I can take count!”she shouted in Troy’s direction.
Adrenalin-filled blood raced through his veins with the speed of a missile. His heart seemed to turn into a fireball within his chest. He had never experienced such humiliation in his life.
“I don’t know you, lady, and I’m not with that group,” he said calmly. But his piercing-eyed look could kill. He was determined that the old White woman would not make a fool out of him. He was appalled, filled with incensed anger toward the White woman who shouted and the Black parents who listened and obeyed. The tour guide realized, of course, that he was with the group, yet she decided not to bother him (a good decision).
After returning to the bus, the group of West Philadelphia kids and their parents headed through Manhattan for the next spot on their tour list. The east side of Manhattan, New York, seemed to be filled with Latin graffiti artwork. The parks, recreation centers, and residential walls all exposed the zesty, colorful Latin culture and its inhabitants. Latinos flooded the New York streets as their peppy Latin music flowed inside the visiting buses from their towering project buildings. The buses moved slowly through the usual midtown traffic, trapped inside a Latin carnival of cultivation.
The buses then rumbled through Chinatown, stretching for nearly twenty blocks of commercial business. Asian shops, markets, centers, and banks stamped with Asian inscriptions blinded their Philadelphian eyes. Plowing through heavy traffic, it seemed as though they would never leave Chinatown, as they headed toward Forty-second Street for a New York dinner reservation, the old White woman’s choice.
When they had arrived at the small, dark restaurant, Troy failed to regard its elegance. Anyone could own something so … so … ordinary. Yet it was owned by dark-complexioned Greeks.
The tour guide slipped inside first, to inform the management of their group’s size before they all entered. Immediately, some of the children had dirtied up the bathrooms before they got a chance to eat, making Troy feel worse (especially after noticing a Black janitor going in to straighten things).
“Troy, what was your problem today?” his aunt Judy asked him.
He became defensive. “Naw, Aunt Judy, I didn’t like how that lady was talking to us, like we was retarded or something.”
“Yeah, boy, you never did like being told what to do,” she commented with a grin. “I remember you used to spend the night when I lived in Southwest Philly. And you would run back to your mother when I told you you couldn’t stay out all day. I used to be scared to death, thinking that your mother would kill me. But you always found your way home.”
Scooter called and asked Troy to go to the movies. Troy had gotten back from New York around seven o’clock. He, Scooter, Raheem, and Blue all went to a distant theater in the suburbs. All the inner-city theaters were too crowded and hectic. They would have gone to Center City, but the suburban theater in Yeadon didn’t cost as much.
The theater employees were mostly White, except for a few Black ushers. The White employees collected the cash for the tickets as well as for the refreshments. Troy reasoned that Blacks were seldom allowed near the money since they wore the stereotype badge of thief. Yet and still, he and Scooter decided to sneak in using tickets stubs from a previous showing.
“These White people should never get any money from us. They owe us the world, cuz,” Troy said to Scooter, as they snickered about the get-over.
Scooter looked over his shoulder to make sure they were clear. “Dig, cuz. Fuck payin’.”
They took a seat in the back to wait for Raheem and Blue.
“Them ushers are stupid anyway,” Troy added. “And you notice how it’s always Black ushers at the movies?” he asked Scooter.
Scooter smiled. “Yeah, you right. ’Cause even when we was kids, it was always Black ushers that threw us out. All the White people do is stay at the counters and count the money. See. That’s why I don’t like Black people. We do stupid shit. We care more about protecting their shit than they do.”
Raheem and Blue finally joined them inside the theater.
“Y’all niggas a trip, man. I got too much money to be sneaking in the movies,” Raheem said.
“Yeah, yeah. Give all your drug money back to the White man,” Troy told him.
Raheem grinned with self-assurance. “Yup, and I’ll keep doing it, too. As long as I’m happy, I’on give a fuck.”
“Well maybe you need to stop being so damn happy, then,” Troy snapped. Raheem looked at him, smiled, and shook his head.
Floods of viewers entered just before the movie began. All throughout the film, Troy flinched at the raw portrayals of Los Angeles Blacks and Mexicans who lived and died for gang love. Nevertheless, all four of the Philly friends agreed that the depictions were indeed close to factual. But watching White heroes in the end made their stomachs turn.
When it was all said and done, Scooter tagged along and went back to Troy’s aunt’s house. Blue split to his girlfriend’s in North Philly. And Raheem went back to selling drugs in West Philly.
“Man, that was a dumb-ass movie, cuz. They always giving us some stupid-ass parts,” Scooter said to Troy inside the basement that Troy began to call his shop. “They never show the reason why we sell drugs.”
Troy threw his feet up on his aunt’s basement coffee table. “Dig, man. But why do we sell drugs, Scooter?”
“Man, them White people made life hard as shit for us. Niggas are tryin’ be to somebody. It’s real messed up, but sellin’ drugs gives us that status. You all of a sudden have all the girls; you can spend all kinds of money; plus you’re popular as hell when you sell drugs. Raheem got plenty of honeys now,” Scooter answered.
Troy shook his head with a grin. “A person gets popular for beating somebody, up, shooting somebody and selling drugs. We don’t make an inch of sense, man. People shouldn’t have been praising me when I was doing all my crazy shit. We sit up here and reinforce it. Like when teenage girls call their children ‘bad,’ all they doin’ is mappin’ out a criminal lifestyle for ’em.”
“I know, cuz. But you can’t even get a girlfriend now without having big-time dough. And the only way you can do that at our age is from selling drugs,” Scooter said.
Troy clicked on the television with the remote control. Then he laughed to himself. “Look at this. I’ve been watching all these White shows about a White world, and every once in a while they’ll throw a Black person in there to act stupid.”
Scooter joined in with him. “Dig, cuz. We always get dem roles where we a crook, or we get killed or somethin’. I mean, we just plain nuts, man,” Scooter declared. “White people got all the money and we got nothin.’ Like Raheem, wearing that African piece around his neck with the green, red, and black shit on it. And he out here selling drugs. He probably don’t even know what that green, black, and red shit means.”
“Yeah, and then we always wanna brag about what kingdoms and shit we had,” Troy added. “We ain’t got shit now, so why talk about ten thousand fuckin�
�� years ago, you know? The Egyptians never looked like us any damn way.”
“I know, cuz. The encyclopedia says that the Egyptians were brown Caucasians,” Scooter said. “But you look like one of ’em, Troy. All you need is that wavy-type hair. ’Cause you already got dem sharp eyebrows and the skinny nose. You even brown like some of ’em.” Scooter then looked at his bare hands. “Man, I’m so light I can’t fit nowhere in Africa. They would send me back and shit.”
They chuckled as Scooter continued. “Damn, we dumb, Troy! I’m yellow, but the White people got me calling myself Black. And it’s people lighter than me, calling themselves Black. See, we just plain stupid, man.”
“Yeah, well anyway, getting back to Egypt,” Troy said, redirecting the subject, “I don’t see why Blacks brag about that shit. Egyptians had slaves. And the pharaohs had all the power. And that’s just what we don’t need. We in that kind of system now, talkin’ ’bout kingdoms and shit. The Egyptians had peasants and serfs and all that dumb shit that makes people miserable, but yet we brag about them ’cause they were scientific. What does science do for you if you have to pay for it and you’re poor? I mean, what if we would have been peasants in Egypt? I guess that would of made us happy, hunh?”
Troy’s intensity increased as he began to present information that had outdone Scooter’s input. Scooter decided then to just sit and listen.
“See, man, that’s the same kind of shit that White people lived under in Europe. Feudalism. And they never broke away from it,” Troy said. “They had White people havin’ all these kids, dirty, stinking peasants that worked in the fields all day for the king, who didn’t do shit! Now who the hell is to say that a person shall be born into royalty? That shit is crazy! Then they had the lords who got their shit from fightin’ in land wars. Peasants were at the bottom with slaves, poor as hell. But yet we brag about Egypt. I mean, we had it good when we were just hunters and gatherers, sharing everything. That’s when people were really equal. But see, the White man got us running around looking for systems that are close to theirs. So we end up being hypocrites.
