A Conversation with the Mann (5 page)

“Look here, Jackie. Look at this.” A shaky hand sort of pointed at a picture of a man barely familiar to me—young, strong,
handsome, and smiling. Fifteen years earlier? More?—standing on a beach somewhere tropical.

Pop started to ramble a story to me. He told me how he used to work on a transport, how he used to sail all over the world.
South America, the Caribbean, and the Orient. As he dragged his fingers over picture after picture, literally trying to touch
his past, he told me of all the things he'd seen, all the faraway countries he'd traveled to, each more spectacular or mysterious
than the last. Maybe they'd been that way. Maybe the years, or the drugs, or the oppressiveness of his present life made them
seem better than they ever really were.

He told me of the women he'd had. Sparing little detail, my father told me of the exotic beauties he'd sexed at apparently
every port of call. I did not blush with shame at his stories. I smiled with pride for the man my father used to be.

He turned the page of the photo book. There was a picture of my mother. No matter that it was black and white, aged and faded,
as beautiful as I remembered her, I never recalled seeing her
so
beautiful. I had never seen her so young and alive as she was in the photograph.

My father told me how he met her, and how once he had, all the other women he'd ever known could find no traction in his head
or in his heart. He told me how much he loved my mother.

Love.

Coming from Pop the word sounded as foreign as Chinese.

He spoke it with no difficulty.

And then he told me how he'd promised to give my mother a house, a home, a family, and a decent life. But in those days, for
a black man, making such promises was just telling lies. After he quit the boat to settle down, with what little education
he had, he couldn't find good work. During the Depression he could barely find work at all. After his accident he didn't want
to work, couldn't bring himself to try. That's when he started taking Relief.

I never thought my father as being much of a man, but every man has pride. He took aid, but every time the money crossed his
palm it tore him up inside just a little bit more—the knowing that he had become so much nothing, he couldn't do the one single
thing a man is truly supposed to do: He couldn't provide for his family. The shame made him run to the bottle, and the drinking
made him need his relief all the more. A snake eating its own tail. It wasn't his body that was broken as much as his spirit.
The world had ground and ground and ground him down until a drunk, an addict, and an abuser was all that was left of the young
and smiling man in the pictures in the photo book that were on the coffee table Pop cried over.

For the first time, I understood my father. I didn't forgive him for the things he'd done to himself and to me, or for letting
his wife—my mother—scrape and scrub herself six feet underground. But I understood him.

And I cried for him.

My father gathered me up in his arms, his grip weak. “It's all right, little Jackie,” he told me. “You'll see. You'll see;
everything's gonna be all right.”

We sat, huddled close, until Pop fell asleep. Or passed out. I got up and went to bed but lay awake thinking of what my father
had shown me of his life and of himself.

I woke up the next morning early, believing what Pop had told me: that somehow, from now on, everything for us was going to
be all right. To celebrate that, I made breakfast. I didn't just pour cereal into a bowl. I made up some pancakes as best
I could, scrambled eggs, fried some ham. Imitating Grandma Mae, I did it all up right. The first meal of the first day of
everything being better.

I laid out the food on the table just as my dad walked in.

I looked at him and smiled.

He looked at me and screamed: “What you doin'! What the hell you doin' makin' all that goddamn noise first in the mornin'?”

I had to dodge flying plates and utensils, my father's swinging fists as I cut from the kitchen. I ran from the apartment,
outside, not wearing a coat in the cold, but not wearing any bruises either. At the moment that had become my main, my only
concern.

I went to school and after that I went to work at Sergeant Kolawole's and after that I went around the neighborhood doing
whatever I could to keep myself from going home.

Eventually I had to.

Inside the apartment: Pop on the couch as always. Shaking and moaning. Not from memories this time. This time from whatever
jag he was riding. He didn't notice me when I came in. He just sat and shook and moaned. Whatever was left of that man in
the pictures in the photo album—young and strong and happy—was gone for good.

T
HERE ARE A COUPLE OF TRUTHS
I came to know at an early age and have kept close my entire life. The first I learned one time, one of many times; I was
getting made fun of at school over my clothes, or how poor I was, or about my pop and his drinking, or one of a hundred other
things wrong with my life. Out on the playground, kids crowded around me, forming a wall of snarling and laughing voices as
their fingers pointed in my direction, a group sign in case anyone had any doubts: Yeah, it was me they were mocking. Their
laughing did the double chore of making me feel both hurt and angry. But I was too scared to so much as take a swing at any
of them for the things they were saying. Standing up for myself was liable to get myself beat down. Standing there and taking
what they were giving me was the safe bet.

Li'l Mo stuck close and tried to get the other kids to back off. Unlike me, Li'l Mo never had a problem getting scrappy if
a little scrappiness was required. But Li'l Mo was just one against a whole mob of kids. They ignored him and taunted on.

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.

T
HE 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.