by Bernie Mac
There was this one old building at 67th and Morgan where my friends and I liked to hang. People lived upstairs, but the basement was abandoned. Landlord’d be puttin’ locks on the door, and we just jimmied them till he gave up—me and my friend Morris Fraser. Big Nigger, we called him. He was on his way to six-four and 275 pounds, with not an ounce of fat on him. He and Almon Vanado and Billy Staples and Morris Allen were my best friends growin’ up. Billy didn’t make it—that’s a whole ’nother story—but Big Nigger and A.V. are my best friends to this day. Two of a kind. Lions with hearts of gold. Self-made men.
We dragged a couple of couches into that there basement. Old, broken-down chairs. One time, we found a TV that still got a couple of channels. Used to bring girls down, too. We played spin the bottle, truth or dare—stuff like that. But we kept it clean. No drugs, neither. I only tried drugs once in my life. I ain’t lyin’. Somebody gave me a hit of marijuana that must’ve been laced with angel dust. I thought my heart was going to pop the fuck out of my chest. Never touched that shit again.
Plus I’d seen what wrong living could do to people. Crack-addled losers nodding off in alleyways. Dead junkies getting wheeled into waiting ambulances. Brothers knifing each other over nothing.
Man, all those wasted lives! Was a winehead on our street, Zachary. Couple of drinks, he’d get up and sing—voice so sweet it’d bring tears to your eyes. Couple more drinks, he couldn’t even stand. He’d be sitting there, mumbling, drooling, talkin’ to the ghost beside him: “Give it back, nigger! Let’s see that bottle! Don’t drink all of it, got-damn you!”
My mother would see things like that, she’d always find the lesson in it. “What a shame,” she would say. “We know where that man’s going to end up, don’t we, Beanie?”
Spitting venom, I called it. These stories she told. It was her way of educating me. Any little thing, she’d run with it. The couple across the street, fightin’: “That’s no way to treat someone you love.” The girl down the block, dressed like a whore: “We know she gonna make a big success of her life for sure!” Men going at each other with broken beer bottles: “Let your emotions get the best of you, Bean, and you might find yourself doing something you’ll regret for the rest of your days.”
Everything was fodder. She was going to educate me if it killed her.
“Don’t want you going to the park after dark no more,” she’d say. “Bad element takin’ over the park.”
“Everybody else goin’,” I’d say.
POP! She’d whack me up the side of the head. There were no excuses in that house. No blame, neither. You took responsibility. Three people livin’ there, busy shapin’ me: Mary McCullough, Lorraine McCullough, Thurman McCullough.
“You think that makes it right? That everybody else goin’?”
“No, ma’am.”
“It don’t make it right. And if you took a moment to think about it, you’d see how it don’t.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I mumbled.
“Think before you speak, son. Don’t just say every little thing that pops into your head. You got to learn to go down in the dark and be alone with your thoughts.”
“Uh-huh.”
“What? You feeling sorry for yourself now?”
“No,” I’d say, but I was.
“Well, stop it. Self-pity is self–brought on.”
I didn’t always like this shapin’ Beanie business. I’d pout and look away and smack my lips like there was something sour in my mouth.
“Don’t you smack at me, boy!” she’d say, and I’d hang my head. “And you look at me when I talk to you.” I’d look up, takin’ my sweet-ass time. And even when I was angry, I’d think, My mother is a beautiful woman.
“Are you listenin’, son?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What you been listenin’ to?”
“You.”
“Well, that’s good,” she said. “For now. But pretty soon I’m gonna want you to start listenin’, to you.”
“Huh?”
“You’ll figure it out.”
I did figure it out. But it was a long time comin’.
When I think back on it, I think about all the good things I had, not the hardships. I had the luxury of being a little boy, and that’s really something. Lots of kids today don’t have that luxury. Grow up too fast. Don’t have time to have their kid thoughts and dream their kid dreams and use their imagination. Everything is hurry hurry hurry.
But in our house they knew what they was doing. There was rules and regulations, and you best followed them if you didn’t want your ass whupped. You in charge of the garbage, well, you better damn sure be in charge of it. You had homework to finish, get it finished, child.
At our house, dinners was important, too. We had dinner as a family whenever possible. Everyone together, heads bowed, saying grace. Adults served first.
After, maybe you could do a little visitin’ nearby, but you had to be back by eight o’clock, when the streetlights came on, and in the bath by nine. And don’t use up all the hot water, either!
Ten o’clock, lights out. With maybe an extra hour on weekends.
Sundays there was church, and no ball playing or music afterward. Sundays was a day of giving, a day to think of others. Sundays you went out and was a good Christian neighbor, whether you felt like it or not. You delivered food to those that needed it. Ran errands when errands needed running. Checked to see how the old lady down the street was getting along.
There was order in our house. Direction. Discipline. But a kid was still a kid, and they respected that. When a kid was around, you didn’t discuss no adult business. A kid didn’t have to know that the bills weren’t getting paid, or that someone was having trouble at work. Life was going to creep up on that kid soon enough, with all its hardships, and there was no need to hurry it along.
That’s what I remember when I think about my childhood. That I grew up at the right pace. That my family allowed me to be a little boy and then a teenager, and made sure I became a proper man.
In 1973, when I was fifteen years old, my mama said we were going visiting. It was a Saturday. I didn’t feel like going. “Who we visitin’?” I asked.
“Never you mind,” she said. “Just hurry up and get dressed.”
We left the house, and she was breathing hard by the time we got to the corner. She was real sickly by then, and thin as a rake.
“You all right?” I asked. She was leaning against me for support.
“Never better,” she said.
She took me to 105th and Eberhardt, still not telling me what she was up to. When we got there, she walked me down the block, slowly, and stopped in front of a real nice house. “Now ain’t that a lovely house?” she said.
It sure was. It had two stories, a front yard, a backyard, and a wooden fence, fresh-painted. It looked like something from Leave It to Beaver.
“Real nice,” I said.
“Well,” she said. “It’s ours.” She said it matter-of-fact, no emotion, nothing.
“Say what?”
“This is our new home, Bean. We move in next week.”
I couldn’t believe it. She hadn’t said a word about this to any of us. It had been Mama’s little secret. Even as she was fading away, Mama had been working overtime to take care of her family. And even now she didn’t want to make a fuss.
We moved in a week later. We felt rich. We felt like landed gentry.
We got a real house here, motherfucker. We like regular people. We somebody.
’Course, it took a while to get used to the quiet. I missed the ruckus on the street, the loud voices and the fighting and the gunfire. This was like the suburbs. I could hear the got-damn crickets, and the stars were so bright they kept me up at night.
I was at CVS at the time, Chicago Vocational High School, over on 87th and Jeffrey. That’s another thing my mother had arranged. She didn’t want me going to Parker, and I couldn’t get into CVS without taking a test. So I took the test and p
assed. That’s what they told me, anyway. But to this day I know I couldn’t have passed. I didn’t even finish the test. I gave up in the middle. So it’s clear my mama pulled some strings to get me in.
After school and on weekends I usually hung with Billy Staples. He lived one block over, and he was so good looking that the girls were always following us around. We’d play sports, mostly, with the girls watching Billy from the sidelines, and maybe go to the lake for a soda after. From time to time Billy would pull out a joint, but he knew I didn’t like it. We used to fight about that shit, but we fought with love. Billy was like a brother to me, a real brother.
We had another friend back then, James Spann, couple of years older, liked living on the edge. He was slick and smooth, kind of pimpy, and he kept me around because I was solid: six feet and almost 180. You didn’t want to be messing with Bernie Mac, believe me.
Spann knew people. He’d take us to parties and stuff. We’d swing by Billy’s place and pick him up and off we’d go. And the minute we walked in the door, the women were all over Billy. It’s like Spann planned it that way. I’d be standing there with my drink and Spann would come over and tell me that he had to run an errand, and we’d leave Billy to his women and go off for a short ride. I was pretty naïve back then, a gullible kid, but I knew Spann was dealing drugs; I knew he was only dragging me along because I was big and scary looking, and because I could look mean if I had to.
Still, I started getting uncomfortable with these little side trips.
“I ain’t getting out of the car,” I’d say. “This is bullshit.”
“That’s cool,” he said. “I know you’ll come if I holler.”
“Don’t be so sure,” I said.
He was slick, that Spann. It was always “a little stop on the way to Billy’s”—only the little stop was three miles in the wrong direction.
One night we pulled up outside this badass building. I told Spann he shouldn’t go in. “I have a bad feeling about this place,” I said.
“You one of those people can see into the future now?” he said. He was grinning his big grin.
“No,” I said. “I just don’t like it.”
Spann ignored me. He reached under the seat and handed me a gun.
“What the fuck you givin’ me that for?” I asked.
“Just hold it,” he said. “And if there’s any trouble, use it.”
“I ain’t using that got-damn gun, Spann,” I said. But he was already out of the car and heading for the building. I picked up the gun. Felt its weight in my hand.
A moment later, WHOOSH! Spann’s coming out of the building, running for his got-damn life. He jumps behind the wheel and starts the car and pulls out, and two guys burst onto the sidewalk, shooting. POP POP, POP POP POP.
Spann’s yelling at me to shoot back, and I didn’t want to. But I turned in my seat and fired twice into the air. I didn’t hit no one, of course. I wasn’t aiming. If I’d hit anyone, I probably wouldn’t be here today.
“Motherfuckers!” Spann was saying. “Can’t trust nobody nowadays!”
I looked over at Spann and didn’t say nothing. But at that moment I knew something for damn sure: It was over between us.
Takes a strong man to find the right path and follow it.
I was going down the wrong path. I didn’t need friends like Spann. No hard feelings, brother. But it was time to move on.
My mama was always tired in those days, but she never cranked or whined. We’d have dinner and sit in front of the TV after. Sometimes she’d nod off, and we’d cover her up and let her lie there, and we’d watch shows well into the night. I couldn’t get enough TV. I watched everything. Lost in Space. Gunsmoke. Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. The Fugitive. Marcus Welby. Perry Mason. The Twilight Zone.
I saw television as a form of higher education. I learned all about structure from those shows. Structure and pacing and plot. I learned the difference between suspense and surprise. I learned how to make stories unfold. I tried to beat Perry Mason at his own game, and a lot of times I did pretty well.
But comedy and comedians had a special place in my heart. I used to study Bill Cosby, check out his moves, practice them in front of the mirror. Man was smooth. Even white people liked him. He had what they called “crossover appeal.” Of course, back then, I had no idea what that meant. My world was black. Hell, I didn’t even know any white people.
Flip Wilson had a show, too, starting back in 1970. And Redd Foxx got his show in ’72, after thirty years of standup. Redd had a real edge to him. I liked him more than either Cosby or Flip. Redd was raw. Redd told it like it was, took chances.
Many years later, I actually met Redd Foxx, and he gave me a piece of advice that helped put my career on the right track. But I’m getting ahead of myself; let’s get back to my mother.
Like I said, she was sick. Within a year of moving into the new house, she got too sick to work. One day I happened to be coming down the street just as she was getting home with my aunt Evelyn, and I saw from afar the way Aunt Evelyn had to help her out of the car. She was so weak she couldn’t lift her own legs. I ran over to see if I could help, but she was on her feet by now, leaning on Aunt Evelyn for support, and she acted like it was nothing and disappeared into the house. Aunt Evelyn gave me a sorrowful look, then followed after her, and that’s when it finally hit me. I walked off, thinking terrible thoughts, and by the time I reached the park I was in tears.
Billy Staples saw me and hurried over. “Bernie,” he said, “what the hell’s wrong with you, man?”
“I think my mother’s dying,” I said.
In a matter of weeks, my mother had turned into a skeleton. I don’t think she weighed more than ninety pounds. But still she didn’t crank or moan. Weak as she was, she tried to make herself useful. She’d putter around the kitchen, getting dinner together. Or tidy up. Or catch up on the bills.
When the weather was good, she’d sit in the backyard and try to get a little sun.
One day, as she was crossing toward the deck chair, the bathrobe slipped from her shoulders. She had a huge bandage on her back, and the robe caught an edge and pulled it down. I just about died on the spot. Her skin was like paper. It was so thin I could see clear through it, to her beating heart.
She readjusted the tape with one thin arm and lifted the robe back onto her bony shoulders. That’s when she saw me standing there, watching her. She looked at me with terrible sorrow. “Go back in the house, son,” she said. “Fetch me some water.”
I did as I was told. I went and got her a glass of water and took it outside and set it next to her. She had a terrible smell about her in those days. The cancer was eating her up. To this day, I can see her lyin’ there, the sun on her thin little shoulders, and I can smell that haunting smell.
“Don’t stand there lookin’ at me like that, boy,” she said. She was weak, but she said it hard and hurt my feelings.
I went inside. My grandpa was just getting off the phone. “That was your father,” he said.
“My father? What does he want?”
“He heard how sick your mama is. He wants to see her.”
“Why? He think he gonna get something out of her?”
My grandpa didn’t answer. I was still hurt, and now I was getting angry.
“That man weren’t no father to me,” I said.
“Well, that’s true,” my grandpa said.
“What do you mean?”
“He and your mother, they was never married.”
Jesus. I can’t even begin to tell you how bad that felt. My parents had never married. I was crushed.
“I don’t believe you,” I said.
“Go ask your mother,” he said.
I was angry-hot inside, but I didn’t want to show it. I couldn’t ask my mother, the condition she was in. And if it was true, you’d think the old bastard would have found a nicer way to tell me.
My father came over later that day, and he spent a few minutes outside, talking to
my mama. I watched them from the kitchen window. When he came inside, he smiled at me like he was happy to see me or something.
“How you doin’, son?” he said.
I felt like punching him. “How you think?” I said. I didn’t even try to hide my anger.
“Why don’t you walk me to the bus stop?” he said. “We’ll talk.”
I nodded. Sure. Fine. Suddenly I wanted to go. Suddenly we had something to talk about.
We left the house and made our way down to 103rd Street, and before we’d gone a hundred yards I cut in front of him and made him stop. “I got to ask you something,” I said, “and I want you to give it to me straight. Are you married to my mother or not?”
He tilted his head to the side, like he was carrying some terrible burden. “Did she say that?” he asked.
“Never mind what she said,” I snapped. “I’m asking you.”
“Ask your mother,” he said.
“What the fuck you tellin’ me to ask my mother for? She’s so weak she can hardly talk. I’m asking you.”
He saw the bus in the distance, approaching, and kept walking. I fell into step beside him, shaking with anger. “You gonna tell me or what?”
“Son, that’s not important.”
“The fuck it isn’t! It’s important to me.”
He turned and grabbed my arm and I pulled away from him. I had to stop myself from hitting him, and it wasn’t easy.
“Listen to me,” he said, “no matter what you hear tell, I’m still your father, and my blood runs through your veins.”
“Get the hell out of here,” I said.
He looked at me hard, like I’d hurt his feelings, then turned and hurried off to meet the bus. I watched him go. I saw my father for the punk he was—a no-good coward. But it didn’t make me feel any better.
I went back home and my grandfather looked up as I came in.
“What’d he say, son?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I said.
