What was the vibe at St. Andrew’s? More than white folks doing good. Post-hippie, Thoreauesque, kindhearted white Christians determined to educate the predominately affluent, little black minds with an almost nondenominational Christian framework. John Denver as Black Jesus. It was an open-concept curriculum designed to allow each student to learn at his or her own pace. No more desks. We sat on the floor. No more uniforms. No more Rosaries. And no more fuckin’ paddles. Granola bars and Christian folk songs on acoustic guitar cushioned the academic program at St. Andrew’s. Free to Be . . . You and Me. Roberta Flack and Michael Jackson with Carole King on tambourine. Save the whales and don’t bash the baby seals. Scavenger hunts at Camp Allen. Songs from the Americana songbook. This land is your land. Good morning to you. They’ll know we are Christians by our love. Hippie songs. No gospel. Not at St. Andrew’s.
And when I got out of Mother’s Buick, it didn’t feel like the dreaded first day of school. It felt like vacation.
The principal showed me to my new homeroom, Miss Madison’s room. The kids were sitting on the floor with Miss Madison in a rocking chair reading to the class. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. They stared at me as I found a seat on the floor, then returned their attention to Narnia. Two minutes into Aslan’s Jesus talk, a little, pudgy, light-skinned boy started kicking me in the back and giggling. The kid next to him dared him to do it. He was kinda pudgy too. I turned around quickly and they held their smirks, faces reddening.
“Stop,” I whispered.
“Pussy,” the kicker retorted.
Later, at lunch, the two boys approached with other kids.
“What school you came from?” Mike Braddock, pudgy kid who kicked me, asked.
Mike, the apparent leader, was a bit cocky for a pudgy kid, maybe because his father was running for reelection to city council. He broadcast jokes and insults loud enough for everybody to hear, then looked around to make sure everybody was laughing. A complete asshole.
“St. Philip’s,” I answered.
“Where’s that? I ain’t heard of it.”
“South Park, off MLK.”
“That’s where you live? South Park?”
“Yeah.”
“Damn. That’s the ghetto. You ain’t supposed to be in Third Ward.”
“Why not?”
“ ’Cause you might steal something.”
The kids laughed. I laughed too, even though it was at my expense, which only made them laugh harder. What was “ghetto”?
Five minutes later, Mike had gathered a crowd and was making fun of my clothes, which I didn’t understand because my clothes were clean and pressed. Mother had spent almost thirty minutes ironing my green Toughskins. We didn’t have time nor money to buy new school clothes, so I had to mix and match with my St. Philip’s uniform—green and white. From head to toe, Mike found an insult for every item of clothing, typically referring to it as cheap or stolen from Goodwill. Most of the crowd laughed with Mike, but I just smiled. Figured I’d smile my way out of it; smiling worked before.
But the smile didn’t work this time. Mike continued lampooning me until finally he pushed me and told me to go back to South Park. I couldn’t resist.
“I am going back. After school is over.”
The crowd hushed from my sarcasm. Mike interpreted my answer as a challenge, so he hit me. It didn’t hurt, but I didn’t hit him back. I couldn’t. I didn’t want to get kicked out of another school, and I sort of liked St. Andrew’s. But I wouldn’t fight back. The kids taunted, but I didn’t move. And Mike’s fat ass took great delight in such an easy target. The school bell ended the fight, if you want to call it that, and for the remainder of the day nobody talked to me.
At school’s end, most of the kids lined up near the driveway for their parents to pick them up. This was an opportunity to see who had a nice car or fine sister or sexy mother. I watched most of the luxury cars from the public bus stop near the driveway’s edge. Mike gathered a group of boys to stare and laugh at me for riding the ghetto bus, but Mother had an appointment so I was on Metro. Mercedes, Lincolns, Cadillacs passed me with professional parents at the wheel on the ingress, then returned with their professional kids, some pointing and sticking out their tongues as they passed again on egress. It felt like the whole school got a chance to stare at me one by one in their nice cars with the delightful smell of pine needles all around. A few of them mouthed the word ghetto, and I started to get a hot pain in the back of my neck. These kids had nice things: Levi’s, KangaROOS, Trapper Keepers, and Polo shirts. And half of the boys had small video games in their backpacks.
Mike drove by in a brown Seville and shot the finger at me. Then it hit me. I’m poor.
Riding on the Metro back home, I saw Mike’s father’s campaign posters everywhere, and dammit if little Mike wasn’t the spitting image of big Mike with that same fucked-up grin. After the fourth sign, I tried avoiding the placards, but no use. Every time I saw one I swear big Mike was saying “ghetto” and laughing at me, continuing the bullshit that his son started. Corner after corner, ghetto. I replayed the day in my head to see where I went wrong. The whole day actually went wrong. Mike saw to it that I was excluded from everything while bragging about some trip to Six Flags that many of the kids had gone on with a group called Jack and Jill. It sounded fun, so I asked Mike if I could join.
“Nope. You gotta be invited and we don’t let no ghetto niggas in.”
More laughter.
The bus stopped at MLK Boulevard and Ricky Street. I got off and found Joe Boy and Curtis sitting under a tree drinking Blue Bull and smoking cigarettes. Fuck. I got my ass beat again. And Joe Boy wasn’t little Mike. His punches hurt.
Minutes later, I trudged into my backyard, nose still bleeding. I jumped into my favorite tree and climbed as high as the branches would allow. I could see my neighbors’ roofs. Nobody would get me up here. I leaned against the trunk and pulled out a notebook to draw.
A bloated, dead wood rat was lying upside down in a water bucket in Father’s rabbit-dog kennel. I started drawing it.
“Hey, Ti’ John!”
“Who’s that?”
“Booger.”
Booger was tromping through the woods behind my house.
“Whatcha doin’?”
“Drawing.”
“I can draw too,” he said, then I could see his big smiling eyes emerging from the brush. He was barefoot and shirtless with a necktie as a headband, carrying a makeshift bow and arrow. He liked to play in the woods by himself about as much as he liked to draw.
• • •
Delano Tiberius Jackson, or Booger, was eleven years old in the third grade; technically, he was supposed to be in the fifth grade. He had become a burden on Houston Independent School District, a squatter. And with each school year, various teachers would check their rosters and gaze at their classes with hope until they realized that Booger was also in attendance. Teacher after teacher made a little place in the lesson plan to keep Booger busy, usually with crayons, construction paper, and pencils. There would be no silent reading or book reports. His elementary education had been reduced to show-and-tell and drawing, year after year. It wasn’t a secret. Booger couldn’t read.
His schizophrenic mother, Louella, walked to house after house, day after day, selling imaginary encyclopedias, while his father was pledging a new urban fraternity, the Order of the Crackhead, so Booger pretty much was raising himself. A state check came to the house at the first of every month; he took that check to his next-door neighbor, Ms. Bunky, ensuring that the lights, water, and gas would continue to run. Next, Ms. Bunky would take him to Rice Food Market, where he could buy candy and junk food as well as other household needs. It only cost a case of Schlitz Malt Liquor Bull for Ms. Bunky. Finally, the remainder of the money was buried in the backyard in a pickle jar so his father, Julius, wouldn’t find it. That was Booger’s routine.
• • •
“I bet Mrs. Randolph got Mr. Randolph’s drawers
hanging on a line. Bet they still got doo-doo stains too. Let’s go see,” said Booger.
Peeking in people’s backyards can be as intrusive as watching them change clothes or use the toilet. People normally treat backyards in one of two ways. Some treat the backyard as an extension of the front yard, an ordered, idyllic presentation with trimmed hedges and manicured lawn complete with sprinklers. Others treat the backyard like a workshop or junkyard suitable for anything that’s been banished from the home, the glorious excommunicated, broken appliances, laundry on lines, card tables, dirty folding chairs, forgotten or outgrown amusements, and anything else that couldn’t fit or shouldn’t fit in the house. From the tree branches, Booger and I had a clear view for half a block.
Booger had been trekking around the woods all day, following cattle paths and deer trails along Sims Bayou, the forgotten little brother of Buffalo Bayou, nearing the prison, or P farm, to Mykawa Road and its moaning tracks.
The “woods,” as we called it, was curtained by MLK to Telephone Road and Bellfort Street and south, well past Adair Park, all of which hosted spotty housing developments randomly placed along main roads in parcels of land used for cattle, junkyards, city dumps, juke joints, cheap motels, brick churches with gravel parking lots, with no design whatsoever. But in between all of that, there was the woods. Some went hunting in it. Some got booty in it. Some grew marijuana or dumped their large trash in it even if the dump was across the street. It didn’t matter because the woods carried the inherent authority of absolution, a duty-free wasteland that served whatever clandestine purpose sought by those fearless enough to set foot in its indeterminate bowels.
Rampant wildlife roamed these unknowns, prompting unspoken fear in the community. Possums and coons raided garbage cans. Wild, rabid dogs infected squirrels and domesticated canines, leaving them frothy-mouthed and delirious until wiser trigger fingers unloaded shotgun shells into their sick heads. Cottontails and wood rats held court to decide who would offer the sacrifice to the hawks and occasional owls that soared above looking for a good country dinner. Henry Taub’s cows and bulls kept the grass low enough to make out trees, brush, and clearings. Rumor spoke of a reclusive family who lived in a shack far away from everybody in the woods. Rumor also spoke of escaped prisoners from the nearby P farm who stole clothes off laundry lines and raped children who were reckless enough to venture into the woods. And generally nobody ventured into the woods unless they were in trouble or up to no good. But despite all of the known and unknown dangers of the woods, Booger always played in there. He didn’t give a damn, and it wasn’t like his parents were going to caution him against it.
I followed him along a cattle trail that reached a small brook. We sat on a fungus-covered log and threw spear grass at frogs.
“Are you poor?” I asked Booger.
He shrugged.
“You?” he asked.
“I don’t know. How do you know if you poor?”
“Poor people don’t have that much stuff.”
Well, that made sense. Those kids at St. Andrew’s had a lot of stuff, expensive stuff.
Tadpoles wiggled in brown murky murk knowing that soon enough their tails would be a memory. We don’t stay the same. I threw a chinaberry in the water. The tadpoles scattered.
“I think my daddy’s crazy,” I posited.
“ ’Cause he be talkin’ to hisself? My momma be doin’ that all the time,” Booger offered.
“Yeah, but you already know your momma crazy,” I responded.
“I know,” Booger said, a bit sullen. I didn’t mean to embarrass him, but it wasn’t a secret.
“It’s okay, dawg. It ain’t your fault. But my daddy might be crazy ’cause he be talkin’ to hisself when nobody lookin’ but I be peekin’ at him.”
“You better not get caught or he gonna beat your ass,” Booger advised.
“I’ll tell you a secret. My daddy can heal people. Like Jesus,” I said.
“Ti’ John, you be lyin’ too much,” Booger said.
“I ain’t lyin’,” I said.
“Then how come your daddy don’t work at the hospital?” Booger asked.
I didn’t have an answer, but Booger was right about peeking at Father. Those moments were private, not meant to be shared with the child, like seeing your parent naked—absolutely taboo. Why else would he go to some secluded area for the conversations? Was he talking to God? People did that in church in front of everybody. But Father never went to church, not even on Easter or midnight Mass. When I made First Communion, he was smoking a cigarette outside on the church steps and having his own Communion with Albert Thibodeaux’s daddy and a pint of Crown Royal.
We looked in Mr. Cardell’s backyard. An aluminum toolshed. A pristine flower bed underneath the kitchen window. African violets and gazanias.
“How much stuff you supposed ta have if you ain’t poor?” I asked. Booger shrugged.
We could see Mrs. Cardell. She always wore rollers and a colorful head scarf, just like the talking fat woman on the syrup bottle.
Booger wasn’t interested in the conversation. I looked at his dirty, bare feet. Chicken pox marks, scratched mosquito bites, and dried snot. He reminded me of a cross between Chewbacca and Benji. Today he was Krofft’s Bigfoot, roaming the forest and fighting crime while evading capture with his trusty, articulate sidekick, Wildboy.
Later, when I returned home, I counted everything in my room while my parents argued. Mother absolutely refused to wash a shirt with lipstick on it; it was mostly a one-sided argument, and I didn’t listen much, more concerned with my inventory. I had to know if I was poor or if Mike was just being mean.
In bed that night, listening to the mouse, I thought about poverty. What constituted being poor? Those African babies on TV with flies on their faces were surely poor, but I never met anyone living like that, although Booger was pulling a close second. Was the mouse poor? Gnawing holes everywhere, no bathroom, stealing. Stealing! Yes, stealing. Poor people steal so they won’t appear poor. Yes, I figured it out. If you steal, then you’re poor. I wasn’t totally sure, but I’d ask Mother the next day.
Next morning, driving to school—
“Are we poor?”
“No,” Mother said forcefully. “Who told you that?”
“Nobody.”
She was still pissed off from last night.
“Can I join Jack and Jill?”
“Why don’t you join Junior Knights at church? I’m sure Father Jerome would like that.”
“Not the same thing. I wanna join Jack and Jill. Mike says they go on trips and have parties and stuff.”
She was quiet. She knew something.
“Is it ’cause we poor?” I asked.
“We’re not poor, Ti’ John.”
“Then why can’t I join?”
“There are different kinds of black people, Ti’ John. You know how your cousins in Louisiana are kind of different?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, it’s the same thing with the black folks in Jack and Jill. They’re not like us. We don’t celebrate Juneteenth. We from Louisiana.”
“What’s Juneteenth?”
“Some foolishness these black folks in Texas celebrate. They were freed from slavery for two years and didn’t know. And you know them rednecks weren’t gonna tell them. Then somebody in Galveston told them and they made it a holiday.”
“They were just happy they was free,” I posited, noticing Mother’s snide manner.
“They were just ignorant, Ti’ John. Don’t be ignorant ’cause you won’t get anywhere. You understand Momma?” she asked, eyes still on the road while we passed the large homes on North MacGregor. These were homes owned by black Texans. Ignorance wasn’t holding them back much.
“Momma? Is Daddy crazy? ’Cause he be talkin’ to hisself?”
“Don’t talk about your father like that.”
Later that day when I got off the bus, I saw Arthur Duncan’s pickup truck on the corner. He was waiting fo
r me.
Father was in the ICU.
thirteen
penance
Arthur Duncan’s truck smelled like candy or maybe it was the air freshener with the naked brunette dangling from the rearview mirror. We drove directly to St. Joseph Hospital. Father’s left leg had been crushed when his beautiful, loyal, cream steed, TJ, fell over while he was practicing at a roping pen in Hitchcock, Texas. Arthur assured me that Father would be all right. I mean, that’s what you tell a kid, right? He didn’t prepare me for what I was about to see, so I focused on the air freshener, naturally.
“She got some big titties, huh, Lil’ Frenchy?” said Arthur with a gold-tooth grin.
“Yeah,” I said coyly. I wasn’t supposed to talk about titties with an adult. I knew that. I looked away, watching wet streets pass like slow-motion butterfly wings drunk off Crown Royal. Ten minutes ago, God cried. But He didn’t cry long. Instead, He showed His own gold-tooth grin on the cavity-filled streets and bayous of Houston. Steam rose from the cement, shortening the breath of damp angels, then rays of light cut through gray clouds. Sunshine again. No more tears. Just slow-motion butterfly wings with tipsy syncopation.
A ray of sunshine found its way between the windshield wipers on Arthur Duncan’s truck and landed smack-dab on the brunette’s breasts. God likes titties too, I thought, particularly titties that smell like candy.
I didn’t like hospitals. They smelled dirty, and I feared that I would catch some unknown disease in them. The waiting rooms were always filled with anxious or distraught faces, praying for good news but somehow expecting bad, reading magazines they didn’t like, watching TV shows they weren’t interested in, waiting for death or a bandage. Mortality as truth onstage, real time, in your face. If you gotta believe in something, why not believe in me? I heard something. Dis-moi. I looked around. Nothing. Sharp pains prickled my feet, slowing my steps toward the room where Father was tended.
Arthur thought it would be a good idea if I brought Father a pinkie string to cheer him up, but he also gave me a long red string at Father’s request. I put the red string in my pocket.
Red Now And Laters Page 13
