Panther Baby

by Jamal Joseph

  The first two things made sense, but her last piece of advice puzzled me. I thought I was with my own kind: human. It’s not like I was trying to be with a horse or a chicken. Pa Baltimore pulled out a scrapbook and showed me a picture of an ugly, scarred, bloated black boy lying in a coffin. As I stared at the picture in horror, he explained that the boy had been murdered by redneck crackers because he had whistled at a white woman in a store. His name was Emmett Till.

  That night my emotions turned from heartbreak to fear. Would the redneck crackers come and kill me because I had kissed Diane? I crept into the kitchen and got a butter knife and I finally fell asleep clutching the knife under my pillow. The next day when I saw Diane, we barely said hi.

  Now all the names I had heard during my first six years of life started to register: colored boy, dark boy, Negro, nigger. I was a different color, and in a color-conscious society that made me different. My young mind had been jarred, and I soon picked up on other names: coon, shine, porch monkey, black bastard. I learned how to shout back names and fight other children who looked different: white boy, gray boy, cracker, peckerwood, white bastard.

  One Saturday afternoon I sat in the barbershop waiting for my turn in the barber’s chair. Neighborhood barbershops have been called the poor black man’s country club, a place where men gather to play checkers, cards, sip beers, and swap stories. Mr. Fuller and the two other barbers were World War II veterans. They often bragged about how many trades they had learned in the army, including plumbing, auto mechanics, cooking, and barbering. But their army was a racist outfit run by “redneck cracker officers.” Mr. Fuller told the story of having been part of a Negro army unit that liberated a village in France. A French woman told Mr. Fuller, in broken English, that she had heard that Negroes had tails. The whole barbershop laughed as Mr. Fuller related how he dropped his pants to show her that he had no tail—at least not in the front. The story blew my mind and made me wonder if Diane and her family thought that I was a little monkey hiding a tail. And so it was with the five- and six-year-olds of my generation; as it was with generations before, we learned to walk, talk, read, write, and hate from our parents and elders.

  The other black and brown kids around me were also doubtful, if not resentful, about their skin color. In the school yard, the biggest “sound down” (as in diss, dozens, or insult) was how black your mama was. “Your mama is so black she can go to night school and be marked absent.” “Your mama is so black she sweats Bosco [chocolate syrup].” My inherited mulatto looks made me somewhat exempt from the disses, and also favored among teachers, elders, and church people. They told me I had “good hair,” curly instead of nappy, and that I was cute because I had light skin. I would watch, not quite understanding, while my darker-skinned classmates got into much more trouble than I did when we were all making jokes or tossing spitballs in class.

  My looks also got my ass kicked. My dark-skinned classmates would jump me in the school yard for being a “pretty boy” and a “goody-goody.” When I came home with my clothes torn and a bloody nose, Noonie would ask me if the boys who jumped me were bigger than me. When I said no, she told me to go back down to the school yard and fight, because if I didn’t stand up for myself people would always pick on me. And so I learned to punch, kick, wrestle, and fight. I hated the goody-goody label. Even though I was an A student, I would deliberately do things to get in trouble to prove to my roughneck friends that I was cool. The teachers didn’t know what to make of me and Noonie gave me a couple of whippings trying to get my rowdy behavior in sync with my excellent grades.

  The irony is that the boys who were jumping me for having curly hair couldn’t wait to be old enough to burn their scalps with hair creams filled with lye so they could wear their straightened hair in a popular style known as the process. Most of the black girls and women in the neighborhood endured hot combs, chemicals, and skin-bleaching creams to become “American Beauties.”

  Racial slurs; gang-fighting the white boys from Eastchester Avenue; being smacked by white cops; hearing the mantra “Niggers ain’t shit” from friends, parents, and elders all just seemed like a regular part of life growing up in the Bronx. The stories I heard in summer camp from black kids who lived other places, and the stories from guests at Noonie’s dinner table, all led me to believe that this was normal everywhere else in America as well. It seemed like everyone from the barbers, mechanics, social workers, and teachers to even Mr. Battle, the black cop who lived in our neighborhood, felt the same way: black and white people were different, and life would always be a harder struggle because you were black.

  When I was twelve years old, I was walking home from a family friend’s house in Mt. Vernon, an “uburb” (urban/suburban area) that bordered the Bronx. It was Sunday night and I decided to walk home instead of taking the bus like I was supposed to. These streets had more trees, wooded lots, and dark turns than my neighborhood. Walking them alone at night felt like a jungle expedition. I saw an owl perching on a tree in someone’s front yard. He spun his head around and took off. I dived to the ground like I was being strafed by an enemy plane. The fact that the walk was scary made it even more fun. I loaded up my pockets with rocks in case I was attacked by the owl or another wild animal.

  As I was crossing a small intersection two cars collided. The sound effects were worse than the actual impact. A loose bumper and a dented fender seemed to be the extent of the damage. Two white guys in their twenties got out of one car; a slightly older black guy got out of the other car. The men started looking around for a nonexistent stop sign, arguing about who had the right of way. No one seemed to notice that their cars had almost hit me. I stepped back on the curb and watched the argument heat up. One of the white guys was holding a beer can. He threw the can against the black guy’s car. “Come on, we don’t have to do all this,” the black guy protested.

  This seemed to annoy the white guys even more. They pounced on the black guy and slammed him into his own car. He lay across the hood, trying to fend off punches and kicks. “Stop,” he yelled. “Help, somebody help me.” Then he rolled over and looked directly at me with pleading eyes. “Help me!” he screamed.

  “Don’t do that,” I yelled, and then I stepped off the curb and took three steps in the direction of the white guys.

  One of them saw me coming and slurred, “You want some of this, nigger?” He took a drunken step toward me. I stepped back. He took another step toward me and I ran. I didn’t look back for fear that the white guy would be behind me. I didn’t stop running until I got home. Then I sat on the front steps of my building with tears of both fear and shame running down my face. I should have tried to fight those guys. I should have thrown a rock. I should have run for the cops. Instead I just ran. I was lame, a coward, a punk.

  I listened to the AM news station on my little transistor radio that night, trying to see if there was a report on a black man who had been beaten to death by two drunk white guys. I heard nothing. The next day after school I rode by the intersection on the bus to see if there would be a chalk outline of his body on the street, like the one you see on TV cop shows. But the street was clear. I never told anyone how I ran: not Noonie, not my best friends Roy and John—no one. My shame turned into anger against white people, white men in particular. I began to truly hate my light skin and curly hair.

  About the same time black men in suits and bow ties started selling papers near the train station. They called themselves Black Muslims and said that the white man was the devil. Noonie and Pastor Lloyd, from our church, were horrified. “The devil is not white,” they said. “He’s invisible and he’s everywhere.” But I wasn’t so sure. Despite the warning, I bought copies of Muhammad Speaks and delighted in looking at the cartoons that depicted Uncle Sam, the police, and other important white men with horns and a tail.

  Sometimes the comfort of the devil image wasn’t enough; I would need the soul-cleansing ritual of a good fight. The problem is that I would often pick the wrong white boy t
o swing on. Like Carmelo, Mr. Carlo’s (the Italian numbers guy) nephew. He ran home with a bloody nose after I picked a fight with him over whether Spider-Man could beat Batman. Twenty minutes later a Thunderbird with Carmelo and his two older brothers drove up. They shoved me a couple of times and threatened to kick my ass up and down the street. I was scared but also mad, wishing I had older brothers who would come running to my rescue and beat up these guys. Finally they let me go and drove off. I always wanted to fight Carmelo, to get him back for telling, but every time I saw him near his uncle’s candy store I would just nod and he would nod back.

  The next summer, when I was thirteen, Noonie sent me to visit some of her relatives in Marshall, Virginia. It was my first time around horses and tractors—and outhouses. Imagine my surprise having to poop in an outhouse, that stinky wooden shack in the back of the house. There was running water inside and a water heater that could be turned on a few minutes before you took a bath, but there was no toilet. A two-lane paved road divided the black and white parts of Marshall. The whites weren’t rich but had slightly bigger and nicer houses with indoor toilets. As far as I could tell, everybody in town made a living by working on one of the farms or one of the factories. Aunt Cleo and Aunt Mae, the ladies I stayed with, were retired from bookkeeping and domestic work.

  The Greyhound bus dropped me near Aunt Cleo’s two-story wooden house. It was morning and I had been riding all night. Aunt Cleo and her grandson, Roger, who was thirteen, met me at the bus stop. Roger showed me where to put my stuff and took me to the outhouse. When I was inside trying to do my business, he told me that snakes would sometimes crawl in there and bite people on the ass. He fell out laughing when I ran out with my dungarees half off. I was ready to fight, but he made me laugh when he drawled, “Aw, come on. Can’t y’all take a joke?” We washed up and went inside for a breakfast of chicken-fried apples and grits. It was a weird breakfast, but man was it good.

  I spent the next few days exploring the woods with Roger, swimming naked with four other boys in a lake, and eating peanut butter sandwiches in a secret cave. I was a regular Huck Finn. A skinny, thirteen-year-old girl named Betty, with a pretty face, would always smile at me when Roger and I walked by her front porch.

  “She likes you,” Roger said. “She used to like me, but I got me another girlfriend now.”

  “No, she don’t,” I said, blushing. I was still real shy when it came to girls.

  “She likes you,” Roger insisted. “Maybe she wants to give you some.”

  I looked back at the porch and she smiled again. I blushed and kept on walking.

  The next day Roger and I were on Aunt Cleo’s porch when Betty walked by and waved. I waved back.

  “Wanna walk me to the store?” she asked.

  “Me and Roger?” I yelled back.

  “No, silly, just you.”

  “She gonna give you some,” Roger teased.

  “Shut up,” I snapped.

  “Well, go ahead. What? Are you scared?” Roger persisted.

  “Hell, no,” I insisted, but I was shaking like I was freezing. I hopped off of the porch and walked with Betty down the road.

  On the way back from the store, Betty pulled me into the woods and kissed me. I was tight-lipped, nervous. “Relax,” she said. “Open your mouth a little.” She kissed me again and used her tongue to play with my tongue. Fireworks went off inside of me. If she was giving me “some,” I wanted more. After a few minutes Betty led me out of the woods and back to my aunt’s house. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said. “Don’t tell nobody.” I could hardly sleep that night, thinking about Betty and the woods.

  The next day the black kids and the white kids played softball in the field across the road from my aunt’s house. It was on the white side of the road. A twelve-year-old white kid named Dale bossed everybody around, especially the black kids. Dale called kids names like “stupid” and “blind” when they would miss a hit or drop a ball, and his arrogance and southern drawl really annoyed me. When it was my turn at bat, I swung at the ball and missed. Strike one. Another ball was pitched to me. Strike two. Dale was standing by first base. “Hit the ball, stupid,” he said. “Don’t just stand there like a beanpole.” That’s all it took for me to run over and sock him in the nose. I balled my fist, ready for a good fight, but Dale got up, cupped his hand over his bloody nose, and ran across the field to his house.

  My cousin Roger came over to me. “Whatcha do that for?” he asked.

  “Cuz he came out his mouth wrong,” I replied with my tough New York attitude.

  Nobody wanted to play after that. So Roger and I walked across the road to my auntie’s house. I hung around the porch, hoping to see Betty, until my aunt called us in for lunch. As we were eating sandwiches, a car and a pickup truck pulled up in front of the house and six tough-looking white men got out. My aunt went out to meet them. The white men seemed angry; my aunt seemed nervous. Roger and I peeked through the front door. Aunt Cleo saw me and called for me to come out of the house. As I walked to Aunt Cleo I saw Dale standing with the white men. “You hit this boy while y’all was playing ball?” Aunt Cleo said angrily. “Apologize right now!”

  “But he called me names,” I protested.

  Aunt Cleo grabbed my arm and shook me. “Apologize or I’ll beat the tan off you.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said to Dale. “I didn’t mean it.” Dale nodded. The other white men looked stern.

  “Go back in the house,” Aunt Cleo ordered.

  I went inside and picked at the remainder of my lunch. Through the kitchen window I saw the white men’s car and pickup truck pull away. Aunt Cleo was in the kitchen a moment later. “I’m putting you on the bus today. You’re about to get yourself killed down here. Them were the Ku Klux Klan,” she said, wringing her hands. “Dale is the Grand Dragon’s son.”

  Within two hours my suitcase was packed and I was standing by the roadside Greyhound bus stop near my auntie’s house. The bus came. My aunt and my cousins hugged me and I got on. As the bus pulled off I saw Betty walking down the road. I knocked on the window. She smiled and waved. Damn, I thought as the bus headed up the highway, the South is crazy.

  3

  Finding the Panther Lair

  I walked into a Panther office in Brooklyn in September 1968. Dr. King had been assassinated in April of that year. Riots and anger flared in ghettos around the country. The feeling on the street was that the shit was about to hit the fan. “Black power” was the phrase of the day, and hating “whitey” was the hip thing to do. From street corner speeches to campus rallies, whitey had gone from being “the Man” to being “the Beast.” Young black students were trading in their feel-good Motown Records for the recorded speeches of Malcolm X and the angry jazz recordings of Ornette Coleman.

  I went down to 125th Street in Harlem the night that Dr. King was assassinated. Protesters and rioters swarmed the streets, clashing with cops, overturning cars, setting trash can fires, and hurling bricks at white-owned businesses. One of the storefront windows was shattered by an airborne trash can. Looters ran into the store and started taking clothes, appliances, and whatever else they could carry.

  Not everyone looted—in fact, most of the crowd continued to chant “The king is dead” and “Black power”—but it was enough for the cops to start swinging clubs, shooting their pistols, and making arrests. A cop grabbed me and threw me against the wall. Before he could handcuff me and put me in the paddy wagon, a group of rioters across the street turned a police car over. The cop told me to stay put and ran toward the rioters.

  I was scared, but I wasn’t stupid. I took off running in the opposite direction. I blended in with a group of rioters and tried to figure out which way to go. A group of cops headed toward us. Some of the rioters ran into a clothing store that was being looted. I followed. The cops entered the store swinging clubs and making arrests. My heart pounded as I ran into the back of the store and found a back door leading to an alley. I gasped for air as I ran
down the alley and was stopped by a wooden fence. The cops came into the alley. “Halt,” they yelled. “Put your hands up.” In my mind I froze, put my hands in the air, and turned around to face the cops with tears in my eyes. But my body kept hauling ass. I grabbed the fence and scurried over the top like a scared alley cat. Two shots rang out. One splintered the wood on the fence near my butt. This gave me the fear/adrenaline push I needed to flip over the fence, pick myself up off the ground, and scramble out of the alley.

  When I turned out on the street, I kept running, right past two other cops who tried to grab me, but I jerked away. Turning the corner, I almost collided with a group of twenty or so black men in leather coats and army fatigue jackets, wearing Afros and berets, standing on the corner in a military-like formation. “Stop running, young brother,” one of the men with a beard and tinted glasses said. “Don’t give these pigs an excuse to gun you down.” I doubled over, heaving, trying to catch my breath. I didn’t know this man, but his voice sounded like a life raft of confidence in a sea of chaos.

  Moments later two cops ran around the corner. They stopped in their tracks when they saw the militant men. The men closed ranks around me. “What are you doing here?” one of the cops demanded. “Move aside.”

  The black man with the tinted glasses didn’t flinch. “We’re exercising our constitutional right to free assembly. Making sure no innocent people get killed out here tonight.”

  “We’re chasing looters,” the cop retorted.

  “No looters here. As you can see, we’re a disciplined community patrol.”

  “You have guns?” the cop asked, a tinge of fear in his voice.

  “That’s what you said,” the man with tinted glasses replied. “I said we’re exercising our constitutional rights.” The cops took in the size and discipline of the group for a moment and walked away.