by Bernie Mac
He fell into step beside me. Said he lived not far from there. Wanted to show me his place.
I don’t know why I went—I wasn’t interested, I was my own man now, I didn’t want anything from him—but I guess curiosity got the better of me.
It was a shabby little dump, overlooking an alley. We got inside and he said he’d offer me something to drink, only he didn’t have nothin’. Then he got to talkin’ about Darryl, shaking his head and pretending he was about to cry.
“It’s just the two of us now, son,” he said, and he put his hand on my shoulder. I knocked it away.
“What do you want from me?” I said.
“I don’t want nothin’ from you, boy.”
“Sure.”
“I want to be here for you, son. That’s all. I’m trying to be a father to you.”
I didn’t know what to say. Stuff like that—even when you know it isn’t true—goes through you hard; you feel it strong.
The phone rang. He jumped up like he’d been expecting a call and crossed into the other room and caught it on the second ring. I heard him whispering to some woman—sweet stuff: “Yeah, baby…You know it, girl”—and by the time he came back into the room my strong feelings had passed.
“Friend of mine,” he said. “Calling about a prayer meetin’.”
“Sure,” I said.
“Why you so mad at me, son?” he asked, whining.
“Don’t call me ‘son,’” I said. “I ain’t no son of yours. I never want to see you again.”
And I let myself out.
A few days later, I was on my way home from school with a bunch of kids when they began to pick on this skinny girl, Margaret. They were poking at her. Pulling her hair. Calling her names. She was a tall, lanky thing, built like a twig, and the only reason they were picking on her is because she was smart.
Margaret broke into a run and the kids chased her down the street, hooting and hollering. I found myself running right along with them, caught up in the craziness, part of the gang. Couple of the guys cut her off in an empty lot and knocked her to the ground, and one of them grabbed her by the shirt and ripped it clean off her body.
Margaret tried to cover herself with her bony little arms. She was sobbing something awful, clawing at the dirt, trying to escape—but we had her surrounded. We were like a pack of wild animals, torturing the poor thing, and one of the boys found a stick and was jabbing her between the legs. But suddenly someone shouted at the top of his voice: “STOP IT!”
Everyone froze; turned to look. They were looking at me. It was me that had shouted. I grabbed the stick out of the guy’s hand and slung it across the lot, and Margaret jumped to her feet and reached for her shirt and ran away.
The guys were lookin’ at me like I’d ruined their fun, and they came at me now—came at me hard. Yeah. I got beat the hell up, I ain’t gonna lie to you. But I got in a few good licks of my own.
“Lord Almighty, Bern!” my grandma said when I got home. “What in God’s name happened to your face?”
“Nothing,” I said, and I was smiling. I was smiling because I felt good inside: I had stood up for something that was right.
After that, things started changing for me at school. I became one of the good kids. I remembered what my mother said—how nobody could do it for me but me—and I realized she was right.
I began paying attention to the teachers. Took notes. Started crackin’ the books.
One time a friend saw me reading, said, “Put that book down, nigger! Come on over here and smoke this joint.”
I looked at him and said, “You read this book, I’ll smoke that joint.”
Guy shook his head, went off mumblin’ to himself. “That Bernie Mac—he crazy. Brother reading a book!” Left me to my book.
I was buckling down. I was going to all my classes. I found out I really liked English and history and that I was a pretty good writer, too. If I didn’t know a word, I’d go up to the front of the class and look it up in the dictionary. That’s what it was there for. Learning wasn’t such a bad thing after all.
Before long, I knew the answers. I’d put up my hand and tell it right; tell it like it was. Teacher lookin’ all surprised. “That’s good, Bernie. Real good.” Everybody else lookin’ at me like, S’goin’ on with Bernie? Motherfuckin’ clown smart all of a sudden?
Fools: They think it ain’t cool to be smart. But I’m beginning to figure it out. You’re not smart, you’re going nowhere fast. So got-damn get smart, brother.
And that’s when it hit me: They were right all along. Principal. Coach. Minister. Got-damn janitor, even. I go look for these people. Tell them thanks. Tell them I’m sorry I didn’t listen earlier. Tell them things is turning around.
Wish my mother was still around so I could tell her thanks, too; tell her I was sorry for all the pain I’d caused her.
In no time flat, things really did turn around. Got an A in English class one day. Only three kids in the whole class got an A, and the teacher was reading out the names. She was about to read my name when she looked up and saw me shaking my head, shimmying low in my chair, ashamed. So she didn’t read my name.
But afterward, she called me aside and waited for the class to empty out.
“Why didn’t you want me to read your name, Bernie?” she asked. “You earned it.”
“Don’t know,” I said. I was mumbling. Couldn’t look her in the eye.
“You think everybody liked you better when you were a clown?”
“I’m not sure. I guess maybe.” I was confused. I’d been wearing my ignorance like a badge of honor.
“Think it’s cool to be a fool?” she was asking me now.
“No, ma’am.”
“You are so talented, Bernie Mac. But you’re scared of success. You’d rather belong. You’d rather be one of the gang.”
I didn’t say anything. I hung my head.
“Life ain’t about cool, son. Cool changes every day, but smart is forever.”
Woman was right. Woman knew what she was talkin’ about.
There were seven hundred kids in my class, and I was always right near the bottom of the heap. But by the end of the year I’d made it almost halfway to the top. I still had a long way to go, sure, but I’d come a long way—and it felt good, brother. I ain’t lyin’.
Had good friends, too.
Senior year, I hooked up with Geri Duncan. She was a fine-looking girl, and I really liked her, but I got to make a confession here: Sports came first, followed by comedy. Girls were a distant third.
Every day after school, if I didn’t have to work, I’d be on the courts. First-draft pick, motherfucker. Never say die. Havlicek, Clemente, Reggie Jackson, Pete Rose. Stand up and be counted, brother. That’s one thing I learned from those men: You don’t give up. You never give up.
After that, it was TV. And sure, I probably watched too much TV. But I wasn’t neglecting my schoolwork anymore. And that was a good thing. Because doing well was changing me. I had more self-respect. I was feeling more confident.
Weekends, I’d hook up with Geri and the gang and party. And you know those stories I used to tell in Friday class? Well, I was telling them now. Only I was telling them at parties, at friends’ houses; I was telling them waiting in line at White Castle. I was the got-damn entertainment.
“You the funniest guy I know,” Billy Staples told me.
Getting up in front of people, it was nothing to me. I liked it. I liked the attention. I liked the spotlight. I liked it going all the way back to the day I got my ear pulled at the Burning Bush Baptist Church. I liked making myself heard at choir. I liked people watching me on the basketball court. I liked standing up in front of the class, every eye on me.
Most of all, though, I liked making people laugh.
“You think you a clown or something?” Geri said to me one weekend. We were at a friend’s house, eating pizza, and I’d just done one of my crazy riffs.
“Not a clown,” I said. “A comedian.�
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“That don’t pay the bills, Bernie.”
“Tell it to Richard Pryor,” I said.
“Ha!” She laughed at me. “Ha!” Just like that. Then turned her back to show just what she thought of that.
Geri was a serious girl. Where I come from, the serious girls try to find serious men fast. They want to build something and get the hell out of the ghetto. I felt like Geri was always watching me, maybe trying to figure out if I was the type of serious man she wanted for herself. She had a habit of seeing things that weren’t there.
“What you lookin’ at Rhonda for, then?” she asked me one day.
“Rhonda?”
“Don’t act all innocent with me, Bernie Mac! I saw you looking at her!”
She meant Rhonda Gore. Rhonda was a year younger than us, a junior, and—now that Geri had pointed her out—pretty damn cute. But until that moment I hadn’t really noticed her. Honest. I wasn’t like that. Never have been.
“I ain’t lookin’ at Rhonda.”
“You think she’s pretty?”
Man, that’s like a woman asking if you think her ass looks big. “Pretty? Rhonda? What you talkin’ about?”
“Bernie Mac, don’t give me that shit. You know what I’m talkin’ about.”
But she was wrong. I kept telling her she was imagining the whole thing; I’d never said more than a few words to Rhonda.
She gave me a look. “Don’t try to be funny with me, Bernie Mac.”
“Funny? That’s what I am, woman. Funny.”
This was back in the fall of 1975. And the reason I remember, see, is because that’s the year Saturday Night Live came on TV. I remember sitting in front of that TV at Geri’s house, glued to it, and promising myself I’d never miss a show. Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, Garrett Morris, Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin, Laraine Newman, Bill Murray. These were some seriously funny people.
And I remember thinking, This is what I want to do with my life. What they’re doing. This is who I am.
And it was, brother. But it was a long time comin’.
“BUT BROTHER, I COULDN’T GET THE LAUGHTER OUT OF MY HEAD. I KNEW IT WAS A SOUND I WANTED TO HEAR FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE. COMEDY WASN’T A CAREER. IT WASN’T EVEN A CHOICE. COMEDY WAS A CALLING.”
05
COME BACK WHEN YOU’RE FUNNY, KID’
I never did understand the senior prom. Seems like a lot of fuss about nothing. But Geri took it very seriously. And she wanted me to take it just as seriously; wanted to talk about the limo, and the kind of dress she was wearing, and would I buy her this and that, and when the hell was I going to get fitted for a tux?
I got tired of hearing about it. What’d she want from me? I was working at Hillman’s Grocery, making two bucks an hour. I could only do so much.
“You don’t take nothin’ seriously, Bernard!” Geri snapped. “The prom is important to me.”
“I know, baby.”
“Then act like you know.”
“I’m tryin’. Can’t we just relax about it? You gotta learn to relax, woman. You too nervous. Let’s go have a beer.”
Man, she just lost it. Said all I ever wanted to do was hang out and make people laugh and be the life of the party. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with that, but she saw it different. And—just like that—she broke things off with me.
I didn’t see it comin’. I ain’t lying. And I wasn’t happy about it. And when I thought about it later I figured maybe she never meant to be with me from the start. I wasn’t serious enough for her. She kept raggin’ me all the time about the future. Like, what did I think I was going to amount to, anyway?
Richard Pryor? Ha!
Not long afterward, it’s Saturday night, and I don’t have a date. And I see how they’re doing open mike at the Regal. So I went up by myself and waited in line with everyone else. Some of those people ahead of me were funny, but most were painful to watch.
My turn was coming up. Emcee looked at me—sees a big-eyed kid with an edge on him, cocky—and he wasn’t impressed.
“Who think you funny?” he said. “Your mama?”
“Yeah,” I said. “She used to.”
I got up onstage and did my Michael Jackson impression. “I’m leaving this got-damn family! I’m the only one with any talent. Sick of you hangers-on.”
Didn’t exactly knock them dead.
“Come back when you’re funny, kid,” the emcee said.
“Okay,” I said. “Maybe I will. Surprise the hell out of you.”
I felt bad inside, but I didn’t let it show. On the bus on my way home, I remembered another of my mother’s Mac-isms: Sometimes when you lose, you win, son. Failure is just life’s way of preparing you for success.
A few weeks later, I got another chance to fail. It was a Tuesday. I heard they were doing Amateur Night at this place called the High Chaparral, on Stony Island Avenue. I went on my own.
Guys were getting up there, most of them a lot older than me, and giving it a shot. Nothin’ but tired-ass jokes. Nobody in the audience even cracked a smile. They were just sitting there, slouched in their seats, arms crossed, angry-ass looks on their faces—challenging you to entertain them.
Emcee said, “Anyone makes a person laugh gets fifty bucks.”
So I went up; told the emcee I’d like a shot.
“Nah,” the man said. “You’re just a kid. You can’t go up there.”
But an old fella was sitting nearby, nursing a beer, and he started hasslin’ the man. “Let the boy up!” he’s hollering. “Ain’t nobody making anybody laugh anyway.”
Other people picked it up. “Give the kid a got-damn chance already!”
So the emcee shrugged, gestured. Go ahead, boy. Hang yourself.
I got up there and did James Brown as a mailman. “YOU GOT MAIL! Whoa-oa-oa! Lots of mail. You got mail like I knew you would.”
Some guy in the back row laughed. I kept going. I did Michael Jackson again—“See if you can get a got-damn record deal without me!”—and the crowd ate it up.
I did The Dick Van Dyke Show, only Rob and Laura was black.
“What you say, bitch?”
Then I talked about old people. “When you see white folks retire, they truly retire. They go someplace warm and get them a nice house and fish and play golf just about every day. And they smile a lot. But us black people, we get old, we don’t go nowhere. When black folks retire, they hang out at the barbershop. Some of them even get another job. I knew this sumbitch had a job at the plant. Got old. Got sent home. A week later he’s working as a janitor at the bus depot.”
By the time I got off the stage, the place was rocking. It was a rush, brother. Like high-octane fuel. But I kept real cool. I was smoof.
Emcee was waiting for me in the wings. He didn’t even crack a smile. He pulled out a wad of bills and peeled off two twenties and a ten. “Not bad, kid,” he said. “Not bad at all.”
“Thanks,” I said. I took the money and walked out the back door, into the alley—I could still hear them laughing—and made my way down the street, toward the El. I was feeling good inside, but I was calm. I was sitting inside my own self, like my mama had taught me, sitting in the dark with my thoughts.
But brother, I couldn’t get the laughter out of my head. I knew it was a sound I wanted to hear for the rest of my life. Comedy wasn’t a career. It wasn’t even a choice. Comedy was a calling.
When I got home, I found my grandma at the kitchen table, with her magnifying glass, figuring out which bills needed payin’ first. “Where you been, son?” she asked.
“Nowhere,” I said. I wanted to go upstairs and sit quietly with my thoughts.
“Nowhere?” my grandma repeated.
In our house, you couldn’t get away with that type of answer.
“Sit down, Bernard.”
I did as I was told. She put the magnifying glass down and looked at me with those cloudy eyes.
“I hear tell you ain’t got a date for the senior prom,” she said
.
My grandma, she knew everything. Couldn’t keep a secret from her. “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Looks like I’m going to miss the prom.”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “What about that nice girl used to take a class with Geri?”
“What nice girl?”
“The one that got her jealous that one time.”
“Rhonda?” I said.
“Yes. That’s her. Rhonda.”
“I don’t hardly know her, Grandma.”
“Well, that don’t matter. I think you should call her.”
“Why would she go with me, Grandma? She don’t know me, neither.”
“Boy, you’re graduatin’ high school,” my grandma said. “This is important. You’re going to the prom.”
I didn’t want to call Rhonda. Made me nervous. I thought for sure she’d find the whole thing as strange as I did. So I called Geri instead; gave her another chance. She turned me down flat. Said she’d already asked her cousin. Then she hung up. Girl was mad.
I got Rhonda’s number and phoned over. “Rhonda,” I said, “this is Bernie. Bernard Mac. Can I come by and talk?”
“Sure,” she said. She said it like it was the most natural thing in the world.
I went over to her place.
“You know Geri broke up with me, right?” I said.
“I know.”
“Well,” I said, “prom’s next week, and I got no one to go with, and I thought maybe you’d like to go with me.”
Rhonda didn’t say anything for a minute, then she shook her head. “I can’t go, Bernard,” she said. “I don’t have a dress.”
Well, I guess her mother, Mary, was in the other room listenin’, because right quick she came out and said, “Honey, the dress is no problem. Don’t you worry about the dress. I’ll take care of the dress.”
Rhonda looked at her mother, then she looked at me. What’s she gonna say now? No?
And Mary said, “As long as you’re going to the prom, Rhonda, you ought to go to Bernard’s graduation, too. It’s this Saturday.”
