by Robert Ward
Try living with that picture in history books in twenty, thirty, or forty years.
“Yes, son, that’s your daddy acting like a complete and total asshole, beating up on a black guy just because he wanted to eat some lunch. Hey, don’t it make you feel proud?”
Outside Murray and I said good-bye to Ray and Johnny, who were heading over to Memorial Stadium—only two blocks away—to try to hustle up some end-zone Colt tickets for next Sunday’s game, and there was steam coming out of our mouths, and smiles and punches on the arm, and I could tell nobody really wanted to go, because without saying anything about it, everybody knew that in our own little way we’d done something very cool. And Ray Lane said, “Hey, Howard, bring your big brother Billy over next week. I want to block his shot.” And Howard laughed and said, “Hell, I do that every day,” and we all laughed again and then went our separate ways.
On the way home that evening I felt like Superman. We’d done something great, and I promised myself that this was only the beginning, that I was going to be part of the movement, and I was so happy I wanted to yell, and jump in the air. I was going to read Martin Luther King’s speeches and study Gandhi and get in touch with the Reverend Gibson and maybe help the Negroes in Grace’s church, too, whether she did or not. Even so, I was still determined to find out what was holding her back. There had to be something, something related to those spells, and I vowed to deal with that, too, as soon as Sue got back.
All these thoughts were racing through my mind as I headed home … still flying from what Howard and my friends and I had pulled off at the Rec Center. Nobody would write about it in the paper, nobody would show it on TV, but it was one more place that would never be all white. I had finally done something real.
Then I came to Rado’s Drugstore, the great old store on old York Road, with its green awning, white tile floor, black wire chairs, and real old-fashioned soda fountain, the place where each month I bought my sacred copy of Mad Magazine. As I walked past the door, Mouse, Butch Harper, and Buddy Watkins came out onto the sidewalk and blocked my path.
“Hey, hey,” Buddy said. “Look who we got here, it’s Martin Luther Coon.”
I felt my mouth get dry, and my heart raced furiously. “That’s not funny,” I said. But my voice was weak, squeaky. “No?” Watkins said. “I thought it was funny. Didn’t you, Mouse?”
“Yeah,” Mouse Harper said in his paper-thin voice. “I thought it was real funny.”
Buddy pushed me backward with both hands, and I fell over something and cracked the back of my head on the ground.
I groaned and looked up and saw Mouse Harper getting up from where he had kneeled down behind me. The oldest trick in the book … one that didn’t hurt my head so much as my pride.
Buddy stood over me, his legs spraddled, and spat down in my face.
“You think it’s cool to bring niggers to our rec? Do you?”
I was terrified now. I wanted to say something brave, something hard, something unforgettable like Bogart, or Alan Ladd in Shane, but I was close to whimpering.
“We were just playing basketball,” I said weakly. And hated myself instantly for betraying my real intentions and all we had accomplished.
“Oh, they were just playing basketball?” Buddy said.
He kicked me in the leg hard. I let out a cowardly whimper.
“Come on, cut it out,” I said. I hated my whining, gutless voice.
“Ooooh, stop it, you’re hurting her,” Mouse said.
“I’m going to hurt her ass a lot more,” Buddy said, curling up his lip, “if you ever bring any niggers to that playground again. You understand? You don’t even live in this neighborhood. So why doncha go back and live in Northwood with the rest of the fags?”
I said nothing but knew that he was right. I was weak—completely, depressingly weak.
“Kick his ass,” Mouse Harper said.
“Nah,” Buddy said. “He’ll go tell his grandmother, the nigger lover, and she’ll call the cops. One of these days we’ll take care of her, too.”
I said nothing to that either. I only wanted to scurry away, have them leave me alone.
“Remember, any more niggers and you’re going to get a serious ass whipping,” Buddy said.
He kicked me again in the right shin, just to emphasize his point. Then the three of them laughed at me and went back inside the drugstore.
I pulled myself up slowly. My leg was bruised and my head ached, but neither of those injuries hurt half as bad as my spirit. I began to cry, not in pain, but because of the huge disappointment I felt with myself.
Who was I to try to help the Negroes? I was worthless, not even fit to help myself.
What a sorry joke I was. I was going to help Negroes free themselves, but any couple of redneck jerks could scare me into denying everything I stood for.
I pulled myself up the steps to my grandmother’s, feeling a bolt of shame tearing through me. I wished God would strike me dead. I wanted to rip my own skin from my face …
When my grandfather came out of the kitchen, the intensity of the shame reached an unbearable pitch. God, if he knew what I really was. He was a real man, afraid of no one. He took ships all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, he was famous for bar fights, no quarter asked and none given, he’d helped start the union. Taken beatings to do it … lost his best friends.
And due to some freak of nature I was his flesh and blood.
But how could that be? I was a coward, yellow. I was nothing … nothing at all. All talk, all bullshit.
I ignored his friendly greeting, went upstairs, shut the door, and lay in bed, curled in the fetal position, tears of self-hatred running down my face.
I was becoming a champion at self-loathing, which I now feel is probably a greater sin than physical cowardice. But back then, in my emotional whacked-out teens, every feeling I had was like a bombshell exploding inside my heart. For the next few days, when I wasn’t lost in my studies, I experienced a gnawing agony that not only had I been a coward again with Buddy but that I might be one forever. In my mind he loomed larger and larger. I shut my eyes and imagined him standing over me, huge, muscled, unmovable in his wrath and stupidity and taste for violence. What chance did I have against him?
In school, Howard Murray wanted to relive our great day at the Waverly Rec, but I dodged him when he approached me, fearful that he’d find out how I’d chickened out as soon as my little bodyguard of friends had left me.
I lost myself in my studies and told myself I was now officially a wimp. I’d get a pocket protector and start collecting colored pencils. Maybe I’d get a slide rule … change my name to Norbert.
Because I was a Norbert in my soul. Norbert Weasel … the wimp … and not as good as an actual Norbert, because whoever he was, he was probably a genius, and I was just an average, everyday, garden-variety hypocritical coward.
I went on like that in my head for three or four days.
Then gradually, I began to talk to myself quietly. I said to myself in the calmest way I knew how that I would never chicken out with Buddy or Nelson or any of their friends again. That the next opportunity, no matter what it was, no matter how outnumbered I was, no matter if they had knives or weapons, I would fight back.
That was it. That was all there was to it. The next time.
I swore to myself I’d be brave the next time I encountered my enemies from across the street. All well and good. But what I faced next at my grandmother’s was even more baffling, something that I can’t fully explain even now, and something that no amount of steely resolve could prepare me for.
It was late at night, and I was sleeping fitfully in my aunt’s bed when I heard something in the hallway. At first I assumed it was either my grandmother or Cap heading down the narrow hallway to the bathroom. I shut my heavy lids and started back to sleep.
But there was a small crack in the doorway—in that old crooked house none of the doors ever completely shut—and I peered through it and saw …
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br /> Even now I’m not at all certain what it was I did see.
A light, a bright white light, but definitely not a light from the old yellow bulbs that hung from the ceiling. No, the light seem translucent, liquid, as if it were flowing down the narrow hallway.
I blinked my eyes and shook my head. This wasn’t possible.
When I looked again, it was gone.
Quickly, I jumped from my bed and eased out into the hall.
It occurred to me that maybe it was one of the Watkins boys, Buddy or Nelson. They’d gotten into the house and were up to something.
I felt myself shiver as I went out in the hallway. Two feet away from my bedroom door it was as though the temperature had suddenly dropped thirty degrees. I wrapped my arms around my body as I looked into my grandmother’s room.
She was sound asleep. I could see her body rising and falling.
I turned the corner and looked into my grandfather’s room. He was snoring contentedly, probably dreaming of ships on the Chesapeake.
I looked down the hallway at the bathroom door.
It was open slightly …
There was the light.
“Hey,” I said. “Who is that?”
The light darted and became much more intense. It nearly blinded me. I threw my hands over my face—
And then, whatever it was, was gone.
I stood there in the dark, cold hallway, freezing.
My grandmother was suddenly at the door. Her long gray hair hung down her back, and she suddenly looked like a witch.
“What was it, honey?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Some kind of light.”
“From the street?”
“No … This was something else.”
She looked at me for a second, then turned away, and I thought I could see shame and fear in her eyes.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought I’d seen a ghost,” I said, half-laughing.
“Go to bed,” she said. “You’re overtired. You’ve been through a lot lately.”
“Yeah, okay,” I said. “I just can’t believe it. I wonder what it could have been—”
“It’s late,” she said sharply. “Now go to bed. And let’s have no more talk of ghosts.”
She turned and headed back into her room.
I looked down the hallway, but there was no sign that anything had been amiss.
But I felt the coldness still and wished I’d asked my grandmother why she had been shivering … though I doubt she would have answered me.
Two days later, Sue Retalliata called me at home.
“Hi, honey,” she said, “Are you coming over today?”
“Yes,” I said. Still dazed by what I had or hadn’t seen in the hallway that night, I barely remembered talking to her.
“Meet me at my studio, will you?” she said. “I’ve got some orders to fill.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “It must be really exciting to be getting all this attention. Was it fun up in Cumberland?”
“Oh, yes, sweetie,” Sue said. “But it was hard walking up there with this leg of mine. Those are real mountains they’ve got up there, let me tell you. I’ve got to run now. See you at one.”
“Fine,” I said. “See you then.”
Sue’s studio was in an old warehouse, behind Read’s Drugstore on 27th Street in Waverly. She shared it with a tailor named Abe Epstein, an old man with a shock of blond-white hair that fell over his ghostly face. I saw him inside, working on a buttonhole in a pool of yellow light. I waved, and he nodded back as I walked through his shop and rang the doorbell.
She hobbled down the steps, dressed in her paint-spattered smock, and then led me back upstairs to her loft. The place was cheaply furnished but she had an eye for detail that always struck me as unique. The old couch was gracefully designed and covered with a quilt she’d made herself. There was a settee and a footstool, covered in satin. The table lamps were from the ‘20s, and they had yellowed parchment shades.
The room had big square windows, and I suddenly saw Sue Retalliatta in a different light, not just as a friend of my grandmother’s but as an artist, and a person in her own right.
Laid out on sawhorses throughout the room were screen paintings in various stages of completion, one of a white horse in a blue meadow, another of a peasant and a boy walking along a railroad. Another in the corner was unique. It depicted a woman standing on a street corner. There was a toughness to it that all the others lacked. The woman looked hard, ill-used, cheap.
“I like that one,” I said, walking over to it.
“Really honey?” she said. “It’s something new I’m trying. But I don’t think it’ll sell too well. People want these nineteenth-century nature scenes, but I got to thinking, why just paint escapist stuff? Why not paint something a little grittier? So I went outside and I looked around. That’s a streetwalker a few blocks down the road. She’s there every day.”
“A hooker,” I said, trying out a word I’d just learned on the playground.
“Oooh, you shouldn’t call her that,” Sue said. I laughed, slightly embarrassed.
“What difference does it make?” I said. “I mean, we both know what she is.”
“I don’t know,” Sue said. “I think streetwalker sounds kinder. That’s all. Anyway, I doubt if anyone would want to put it in their window. So I’m just painting these for myself.”
“Well, I like it,” I said. “I like it a lot. It looks real. Like the city.”
“Good,” she said. And there was pride in her voice. “I sometimes get tired of pleasing people.”
I was pleasantly surprised. I’d always thought of Sue as living to please others. But, of course, she got tired of it.
We sat down in one of her old quilt-covered chairs, and I accepted a glass of lemonade.
Her cat, Tommy, immediately jumped into my lap. I stroked him and he purred gratefully.
“Sweet old Tom,” I said.
Sue smiled bashfully.
“He knows a nice person when he sees one,” she said.
I smiled … and said nothing. I really didn’t know how to begin.
“Well,” Sue finally said, “I’ll bet you didn’t come over here to find out about screen painting.”
“Not exactly,” I mumbled. “This has been a crazy time for me.”
“Oh, dear,” she said, putting her hand to her breast. She was reverting back to her old-maid persona.
“But not all bad,” I said. “I’m just finding out a lot of things … about my family. For example, I found out from my grandfather that he helped start the Seamen’s Union in Baltimore and that both he and Gracie marched in the strike.”
“You didn’t know that?” Sue said. “Well, my-oh-my. I thought everyone knew that old story.”
I smiled, and stroked Tommy again.
“I guess everyone did but me,” I said. “And I seem to remember that my mother told me once, when I was a kid, that Grace and you took part in a strike, too.”
“Oh, you don’t really want to go into all that,” Sue said, her hand flying nervously to her throat. “That’s such ancient history now.”
“Yeah, but I really want to know about it. And your part in it. You know, looking around here, Sue, I’m starting to see you in a new way, too. You’re a very complicated person.”
She blushed and shook her head.
“Oh, sweetie, I am not,” she said.
“Right,” I said. “And I’m just J. Average Teenager. Come on, I bet you could teach me a lot about the past.” She looked shy, flustered.
“I don’t know if I should talk about all this, Bobby. I’m not sure I remember it all that well.”
“Please,” I said.
She cleared her throat and sat down on her rose-covered couch. The streetlight shone around her head.
“Well, this was way back in 1936. Grace and I worked at the Sonnenborn Plant on Paca Street. We did piecework, and, frankly, we were killing ourselves making dresses, shirts,
and pajamas, all for fifty dollars a week. Those places stunk. The air was so bad in them you could hardly breathe. And the owner, old man Sonnenborn, he didn’t care if we lived or died. He had a big house over in Guilford and he had three children who went to Gilman, and his wife, Elizabeth, had her horses. Meanwhile, we were all working in pure misery. Finally, there was talk about starting a union … a couple of organizers came in from out of town and talked to us. Well, I didn’t know what I thought, but Grace was for it right away. But not long after, our management heard about the meetings, oh, yes, sirree, they did…. They told us the organizers were all Communists, of course, which frankly scared me to death … but not Grace. She went to the meetings and she read up on all the tactics that management used and she wrote pamphlets, and she and some of the other leaders defied the bosses by getting all the seamstresses to use slow-down tactics. She was terrific, I’ll say. In the beginning Grace was one of the people who got our union started.”
In spite of the heroic details she was relating, there was doubt and confusion in Sue’s voice.
“You say Grace got you started,” I said. “That makes it sound as though she dropped out.”
Sue took a deep breath and got out of her chair. She limped over to the window and tapped nervously on the glass.
“Sue,” I said impatiently, “what happened?”
“Grace got sick,” she said. “I really can’t talk about this. It’s not right. There is no finer woman in the world than your grandmother and—”
“Sue,” I said, “I know that. We all know that. But what kind of sick? Mentally sick?”
Now Sue looked sick.
“Well, it’s not for me …”
“Come on. You don’t have to cover for her.”
“I know that,” Sue said. “Don’t you speak harshly to me, Bobby Ward.”
She turned away, and I could see she was torn.
“I’m sorry. Really sorry. But she’s my grandmother and I want to understand her. To tell you the truth, she’s been having her spells again and I’m scared. Please tell me what really happened.”
