by John Ridley
I wanted to run and hide, but the way the kids were pressing in on me I had nowhere to run to. I wanted to cry, but crying would only give the crowd fuel. Not knowing what else to do, I did the only thing I could. I said, and I said loud for all the kids to hear: “Yeah, that's right. I'm poor. Know how poor I am? I'm so poor I can't hardly afford to pay attention.”
They shut up. For a second every one of them was too surprised by my outburst to do anything but be quiet.
I kept on. “Hell, I'm so poor I can't even afford to change my mind. You know how poor I am? My shadow's got a hole in it.”
I was doing bits I'd heard from the comics on Toast of the Town. I was doing them in their style with their timing. I was doing a stand-up routine.
None of the kids knew what to do, what to say. How were they going to make fun of me when I was making fun of myself?
“Y'all want to know why my pants is so short? 'Cause it'll be long before I get a new pair.”
And just like that, the little verbal lynch mob went from being quiet, back to laughing. Only, their laughter had changed. They were laughing when I wanted them to, when I said so. It was me who was controlling the situation: You want to make fun? I'll show you how to make fun. You want to laugh? I'll give you something to laugh at.
“You know my pop is thinking about getting married again. He don't even love the girl. He just wants to keep die rice people throw. And you all talking about my pop, sayin' how he's got a drinking problem. That ain't true. He drinks, he gets drunk, he passes out. No problem.”
The bell rang. Time for class. The kids ran off, but unlike most times they weren't chasing me down the hall trying to get their last few jibes in. This time they kept calling to me: “One more, Jackie! Just tell us one more joke! Please, Jackie!”
They said please to me.
What made it all good was that when die crowd of kids broke up, there among them was pretty Nadine Russell giving me a warm, wonderful smile.
THE OTHER TRUTH I LEARNED, I learned on a Saturday in July. Summers were long and hot in New York City. Hot in the way the sunlight kicked off all the windows, reflected down to the sidewalks, where it would congregate and turn the hard streets to a hot goo. They were long in the way the heat was dodgeless. It lingered across the drawn-out day until sundown and the night that was only somewhat cooler than the day before it and the hellish morning ahead.
Indoors was just as sweltering as out. Apartments were converted into walk-in ovens, and the little old General Electric fan with the frayed cord that everyone seemed to own put up a poor, losing battle against the still, stifling air.
There wasn't much in the way of public swimming pools. Public pools, at least, that were friendly toward coloreds. Sometimes someone would take a wrench to a fire hydrant, jam a crate up to its nozzle, turning the whole of it into a fountain for us kids to splosh around and play in. For me the sound of summer will always be the sound of water spilling over concrete and laughing children. It was a sound that could be heard on any uptown street between June and August. Who needed a heated indoor pool, a water slide? Not us Harlem kids. Us Harlem kids had a city hydrant.
Sometimes we had it.
Other times the pounders would come 'round, kick away the crate, take a wrench back to the hydrant and shut it down. They would say it was city property and we didn't have a right to mess with city property and it was a waste of water and there might be a fire and there wouldn't be any water to fight the fire with.
That's what they said.
What it translated to was: “Knock it off, niggers.”
It was that kind of Saturday, full of heat and lacking in things to do. Me and Li'l Mo and a couple of other kids from the neighborhood were sitting on a stoop, hot, getting hotter, trying to figure a way to get cool.
“Aw, hell,” I said, never having been schooled at home not to swear. “Let's just go to the movies.” In the day, the movies weren't just a movie. The movies were some cartoons and a short and the coming attractions and then the movie. Maybe a double bill. The movies were an all-day indoor event. All day, indoors and with, as the kicker, air-conditioning. Icy-cool, man-made, fan-blown, refrigerated air.
“How we 'posed to do that?” one of the kids asked.
“How do you go to the movies?” I asked back. “You get a ticket and you go.”
Li'l Mo said for the group: “I ain't got no movie-ticket money.”
Movie-ticket money, back then, ran maybe a quarter. To a poor black kid, it might as well have been fifty dollars. But to a kid who spent six days of seven slaving away at any job he could find, a meter of that hard-earned cash was a small price to pay for being cool and seeing a movie to boot. Maybe two movies.
“Shoot.” I was already up and moving. “I'll buy the tickets. Let's just go.”
I got to the corner, was waiting for the light to change, when I noticed I was waiting alone. Li'l Mo and them were still sitting on the stoop.
I walked back.
I asked: “What?”
“You was going to the movies.”
“Yeah. Let's go.”
“But how we 'posed to—”
“I told you” —I cut the boy off—“I'm buying the tickets.”
With a cautious disbelief, Li'l Mo wanted to know but asked like he was afraid to find out: “You buying … for all of us?”
Four of us. A buck in tickets. I knew for a fact I'd put three dollars in my pocket when I went out that morning. Three dollars to eat with, and get a Coke or ice cream with. Three dollars to ride the subway with. Three dollars to escape staying home with Pop, who may or may not be getting high in one of a dozen different ways.
To the boys: “Yeah, all of you. Now, you coming, or you Negroes just going to sit on that stoop?” I'd heard some of the older men in the neighborhood calling each other Negroes when they were irritated with another's behavior or lack of smarts. Using the word in that way made me feel like I was a little better or sharper than the other kids. It was a feeling rare to me. I liked it.
Let me tell you: You've never seen so much collective joy in your life as what Li'l Mo and the others displayed. They were all laughs and cheers and good nature, and I had to race to catch up to them as they hightailed it to the theater. I bought them all tickets. Candy, too. What's another fifty cents total among boys? We sat and watched the cartoons and a short and the coming attractions and the feature. And the second feature. That we sat for hours and the only black faces projected on the screen belonged to subservient mammies and backward natives who were no match for the Great White Hunters didn't matter. All that mattered was that the temperature was low.
The next day, Sunday, was like most: me staying out of Pop's way until it was time to go to Mae's. A good meal, good stories, Toast of the Town, then home again.
Monday was a whole new thing. As soon as I got to school, kids, kids I barely knew or kids who only days prior were having at me for being the poor boy with the addict dad, where giving me: “Hey there, Jackie.” “How you doin', Jackie.” “Need any help with your homework, you let me know, Jackie.” Very quickly it had gotten around that I'd sprung for movie tickets and candy without so much as flinching, like I was Charlie Bigbucks. And just as quickly everybody and their brother were angling to be the next to get some of my goodwill. It was nice, regardless of the reason, the sudden and heavy attention I found coming my way. What made it nicer was that the smiles Nadine gave started going from warm to hot.
That—that right there—was the other truth I learned: You can't make people love you, but there isn't anybody who doesn't like a man with money.
Almost nobody.
One afternoon, after school, Nadine had smiled her way into getting me to take her for ice cream. Late for the date, I came rushing into the apartment to load up on cash. I went for my room, opened the door, started to make for my money jar.
I got stopped by the sight of Pop sitting on my bed.
The room was dark, his head was hung low, but from wha
t I could see, Pop was in rough shape. Going dry and deep into the DTs, he was desperate for a drink but beat back the need in favor of waiting for me. The effort so great it made his muscles jerk and sopped him with his own sweat.
But he just sat there.
No matter how much he ached for a brace to get himself right, Pop just sat with his eyes locked on what he held in his hands: my little jar full of money.
In a heartbeat a story told itself: Pop wakes up from a bender that he tries to dope himself back into, but the house is drug-free and his pockets are empty. He goes scavenging through my room, looking for bills or change, looking for whatever I've got that spends, anything that'll get him so much as a nickel closer to a fresh shot of liquor. But what he finds …
What he finds …
Pop raised his head slow, as if the rage it contained almost made it too heavy to lift. And that same dry-drunk anger boiling inside him distorted his face, made my own father almost unrecognizable.
“What dis?”
“Pop—”
“WHAT DIS!” His voice was summer thunder.
“… It's money.”
I didn't see the jar coming, much less have time to juke out of the way. For a jittery drunk marking time with the shakes, Pop had some speed to him. Speed and accuracy. The jar caught me between the eyes dead, solid perfect. My father, the Cy Young of boozers. When I came to I was lying down, looking up at my room that was slouched over at a funny angle and was newly decorated with fuzzy edges. My hands sort of moved around by themselves, and my mouth did its own talking in a language that to this day I've never heard again.
And into all that stepped my pop, towering above me Japanese monster movie-style done over in an angry black.
“Don't you never,” Pop said—said as best he could through his struggle with sobriety, “don't you never let me find you was holdin' out on me. You'll be sorry, boy. Tell you that. You hearin' me?”
I responded some way or other in my new tongue.
“You be damn for sure sorry.”
No more sorry than I already was.
Blood from a gush where the jar smacked my forehead ran down into my right eye, made it flutter.
Pop left me like that: stretched out and bleeding. First he took the money; then he left.
THERE, AND GONE. Onstage, then off. They were a good act. They were a flash-dance act; two middle-aged guys and a younger one tap stepping at lickety-split speed. Race onstage, then race right off. There and gone in a flash. Between the racing they filled their show lime with a few numbers clone yowsah style, working up a big sweat that rolled down over their bigger smiles—do you likes me now, massa, do you likes me? Buff-shined patent leathers sliding over parquet. The screech of metal, then tickety-tac, tickety-tac. Some hand claps thrown in. Beat-bobbing heads to go with the shining ivory. A hesitation step when you think you can second-guess the rhythm, a tease, then the screech of metal again. Tickety-tac, tickety-tac. Strictly vaudeville by way of minstrel show. Strictly opening fare. How about a nice hand for the Will Mastin Trio? Now bring on the headliner.
Still, they were a good act. They were on Toast of the Town, so they must have been good. Good but not great, the same way Teresa Brewer was good but not great. The same way Al Hirt—trumpet-blowing, New Orleans jazz Al Hirt—was good but not great. The same way David Frye was good but thoroughly unrememberable. Anonymity was waiting to collect them all.
Except, the trio wasn't completely forgettable. Will might have been. So was his partner, Sammy Davis. But the young one was pretty much like something you'd never seen before. Standing center stage between the two older men, Sammy Davis, Jr. was black lightning; human energy. A little man, he was concentrated entertainment. Put a spotlight on him and stand back. Song came busting out of him. Dance came bursting out, steps that were impossibly good and impossibly fast. Steps that made the other two of the trio look like they were standing still if moving at all. Legs, feet twisting, sliding, gliding in ways that made you say: “He can't, he can't do that.” Then he'd do it again just to prove you wrong. I watched with the same breath-held viewing I gave to high-wire acts. Sammy Davis, Jr. had that kind of abandon. He worked without a net.
Ta-da!
Orchestra up.
Sammy and the rest of the trio bowed within the confines of the picture tube. The speaker of Mae's Philco pulsated real-time as the audience exploded with applause for them. As the audience applauded for him. For Sammy. And they applauded in the same vigorous way they did for the white performers. Ed stepped over, shook hands with them. Shook hands with him. Same as he did with the white performers. Adulation without distinction, that's what black entertainers got on TV. Sammy got it. The rest of the trio got it just for being around. Pearl Bailey got it. Got a sponsor-be-damned hug, too. Billy Eckstine and Sarah Vaughan got it. Ed wouldn't think of not giving some to Nat King Cole. “Always a pleasure to have you on the shew.”
“Thank you, Ed. The pleasure is mine.” “It's always such a thrill to be able to perform for you and the audience, Ed.” “Ed, I'd just like to take a moment to thank my many fans across America for their support.” They were articulate. The black entertainers on the show were always articulate and well spoken.
Well spoken. You would hear that from whites sometimes: “I saw Nat King Cole on Toast of the Town, and he was so well spoken.” It was clubhouse talk for acceptable. They were well spoken.
They did not “sound” black, so black entertainers were acceptable. To a point. A point much further than other blacks of the day could ever hope to reach. To see that, to be a young boy and watch blacks on coast-to-coast coaxial broadcast television being treated as equals, being treated better than most, it was like bearing witness to a miracle. To be a young man and watch that on TV made me want. I wanted to not “sound” like a black. I wanted to be acceptable. I wanted to be well spoken. Well spoken. Spoken white. I got a dictionary from Mae. I read it and I learned words. Big, long, white-sounding words. I took a master class in talking white. Television taught me. Droll Jack Benny taught me. Dry Jack Webb taught me. Smooth and cool Steve Allen taught me. My final consisted of me standing before a mirror practicing all I had learned.
Ready? Begin
Ed, I must tell you what a distinct pleasure it's been appearing on your program this evening. I can only hope that at some point in the future I can look forward to returning to your stage. And, if I may, a sincere thank-you to all my fans wherever they may be viewing.
Pass? Fail? Didn't matter. I had no idea what do with my new skill. No matter how I sounded, no matter how my new voice made me feel, I was what I had always been: a poor black boy from Harlem. But then, so had Sammy Davis, Jr. once. And now he was so well spoken.
THE SCHOOL YEAR was a day from ending. I was twenty-four hours from completing the eleventh grade and the start of the summer vacation. My plans for the next three months centered around working six of seven days just as I had for each week of the six years that had passed both too quickly and too slowly since my mother had died. I planned on staying out of my father's way the best I could. I planned on spending whatever free time I had spending whatever extra money I had on Nadine Russell.
Li'l Mo changed my plans.
He showed me an ad in the New York Post.
I read it.
I said to Mo: “You must be out of your mind.”
“Twenty-five dollars a week,” Mo said back. “That sound crazy to you?”
No. That wasn't crazy. Twenty-five dollars a week back then was good money Rockefeller-style. It was the rest of the ad that made me think Li'l Mo was suffering a spell.
Wanted: Men 18+ to work logging camp in the Pacific Northwest. Earn $25 a wk and up.
The ad gave an address where, and a time from when to when you could apply if you were out of your mind enough to apply in the first place.
Mo pointed to the part where it said $25 a wk and up.
I pointed to the part that said men eighteen and older. “You and me are
seventeen.”
“Twenty-five dollars a week.” Mo echoed the ad by way of argument. “And up.”
“And the Pacific Northwest? That's up in …” I wasn't sure where it was exactly, but my ignorance just confirmed it was way far away from anywhere I'd even been close to before. “That's way the hell far away,” I went on. “We're supposed to just pick up and go off to wherever?”
“Okay, so this here camp is way off somewhere, an' we gotta fake how we eighteen an' all. But why shouldn't we try an' go out to there? You got somethin' better to do for the summer?”
I had other things to do, but they weren't much better.
Mo saw me starting to hesitate my way from no to yes, and his selling went into high gear. “How long till school start up again? Three months? Twelve weeks. That's …” Mo did some math, taking a little time with it. Math and Mo were never very friendly with each other. I would've helped out but got along with numbers no better than Mo did.
“That's near about three hundred dollars. Now, I been your friend too long an' too good not to know what three hundred dollars means to Jackie Mann.”
Money meant a lot to Jackie Mann. But … “Eighteen? We're not—”
“We tell 'em we eighteen. Them loggin' people don't care how old we are long as we can cut wood.”
“And what do we know about cutting wood?”
Li'l Mo waved his hands clearing the air of my bad ideas. “The ad said they want-men. Didn't say nothin' about being no log-cuttin' expert.”
“You telling me your folks are just going to let you go?”
“My folks could use some of that three hundred.” Li'l Mo was getting annoyed. The bother of talking me into something so obvious was, objection by objection, wearing him to the core. “My family knows I ain't no little boy no more.”
“I'm no little boy either.”
“Not sayin' you are. But I got a sister an' a little brother that need takin' care of. I ain't afraid to do what I gotta to help out.”
