Out of the Madness (13 page)

Perhaps compelled by this desperation, she took her efforts farther than I had imagined she would. She came home from church
one day and shook up the shack house on Denley. “Wayne,” she said, “I can no longer continue in this adulterous relationship
with you. I’ll be moving out soon. I’m getting married.”

T
he city bus maneuvered its way through the rush-hour traffic of downtown as I sat on the backseat, holding the trash bag filled
with my clothes. Normally passengers were required to transfer to another bus to reach their destination. But this one was
going straight through town and into south Dallas, where my mother and her new husband lived. So I remained on the 44 Oakland
route, on my way to my new home.

I had thought I would remain with Wayne and begin my adult life from there. After his heart-wrenching separation from my mother,
he had deemed me a good kid, told me I could stay with him as long as I wanted. But my mother moved in with her aunt-in-law
until she was married and called two weeks later to tell me I could come and live with her; evidently, even while she was
at the church, she and her new husband had been planning. With the passion of Romeo and Juliet, my mother and the deacon of
the church had eloped, I was told. They had attended church more than usual, sitting there eyeing each other.

The church, if it could be called a church, had only four members: a preacher up and coming, who had just begun to build his
flock, his wife, and the deacon, the preacher’s friend. My mother’s choices were rather narrow. The minister’s wife was my
mother’s aunt-in-law, the sister of her father, information I didn’t learn about until after the marriage. She had been picking
my mother up sometimes from the Denley house; the deacon had come, too.

Given the circumstances, I can see why they waited only two months after they met to get married. He was fifty, had three
children, and was divorced from a nearly two-decade marriage. And he was another man compelled by the beauty of a fine woman,
as so many men are, and insanely jealous. Having worked for over thirty years on the same job with a respectable salary, he
could offer her everything she needed. He wrapped her up before some other older man did.

At this stage of her life, my mother was at the climax of her battle with the heroin demon. Wayne, the man we had just lived
with, didn’t have the resources to support my mother and her children. Furthermore, he didn’t attend church as much as was
necessary for her. Alvin* was the best choice.

As I sat thinking, the loud, crowded, dirty bus continued through town, then onto the overpass over Interstate 30, and finally
to the Oakland bridge. I was nervous.

What made my mother and her husband choose a house in south Dallas, I don’t know. Its notorious reputation as the toughest
section of the city had even reached west Dallas—it was rumored that the men who had come for Shortleg Lee were from here.
Surely it wasn’t the safest neighborhood they could have chosen. As the bus began descending, the dangerous beauty of south
Dallas was laid out.

Oakland stretched straight ahead to where its end could not be seen. It was busy, like a Hollywood boulevard. A liquor store
and a club were on the right, where about thirty men were conversing. Across the short street, another ten or fifteen persons
had gathered around a barrel in which a fire kindled. They lounged on thrown-away couches, among deserted clothes, bottles,
hypodermic needles, and car tires. Farther down Oakland, the bus continued, passed Good Luck’s Hamburgers, the Martin Luther
King Community Center, dance clubs, and endless rows of slum apartments, where small families and single mothers lived. Kids
stayed out late at night around here—running, playing, looking. Liquor stores and pawnshops were as plentiful as grass and
trees. Some of the pawnshops had “Open Twenty-four Hours” signs on them, as if a law-abiding person would wake up at three
A.M.
and say, “Oh, I guess I’ll go pawn my TV.”

I hopped off the bus at Oakland and Twyman, then walked swiftly down Twyman until it changed to Lenway. Finally, on a brown
sign beneath the mailbox, I spotted the right address. In surprise, I double-checked the numbers. It looked more like an unoccupied
church—it had glass, double doors, and monoliths upholding the front porch. But a small door with an air-conditioner unit
was at the adjacent corner of the rectangle. I knocked on the door.

I was beckoned in by my excited sister, whom I had not seen for nearly two years.

“Hey, Jerrold!” she screamed out. “Come in, boy…. Look at how skinny you are. I thought you would have grown by now. I see
you still got that thick hair, with your black self.”

Sherrie had dropped out of school while living with my aunt Cheryl but had gotten her GED, or equivalency diploma. Afterward
she had worked several jobs, paying our aunty Cheryl a monthly fee.

Since my mother and her husband were not there, Sherrie showed me around the pleasantly decorated duplex. She, twenty, had
matured into a young woman. We exchanged hugs, and she showed me where to place my trash bag. I had not expected to see her.
She said our mother had told her all about Alvin, and she had known about the wedding plans from the beginning.

Sherrie happily showed me the house, starting with the living room, which was in the front. It was decorated with two small
couches, a lounge chair, and plenty of rugs, lamps, and pictures. In the middle of the room, a small door led to the next
room, which had two beds on either side of the wall. Another small door led to my mother’s bedroom. The kitchen, bathroom,
and back porch were beyond another door. It all felt very homey.

My mother soon returned with her new husband. “Hey, baby,” she said as she grabbed and hugged me. I immediately noticed that
she had gained weight and her worry had eased. She smiled broadly. I could tell she was no longer using drugs. She introduced
her new husband, who also gave me a pleasant smile from his round head and fleshy face. He was short, his eyes small and his
head bald. He stood back and looked at me, appearing humble, with his hands clasped together in front of him. Together, and
with the impression of the house, they looked like two Quakers.

In the beginning of my days on Lenway, I was left alone, encouraged to look around the neighborhood and help myself to the
plethora of food in the two refrigerators. Two refrigerators! My mother warned me, though, that I was expected to enroll in
the local high school, James Madison. I was sixteen and had been missing many days of school, attending about one-quarter
of each school year.

Over the next few weeks, I explored south Dallas on the several buses assigned to this section of town. The 44 Oakland route
continued past Lincoln High School, down Bexar Street to the rough Bonton projects. I rode the 14 Lagow and 12 Second routes,
which both passed by the state fair of Texas, the east Dallas projects, the Dixon Circle hood and active Hatcher and Second
streets. I saw Lincoln High School, from where the young students would walk down Bexar, Hatcher, and Oakland, curiously watching
their people.

South Dallas was a paradox to me, far from my expectations. It was where I would be forced past normal restraints, with my
efforts for survival, where I would mature into a man.

Among other things, south Dallas had a diverse mixture of people: neighborhoods full of elders who wanted nothing more than
meager survival; young men who were a breed tougher, more violent, less tolerant; young ladies with children who desired only
a basic, poverty-level home. South Dallas also had the others, the ones who were less satisfied, who were persistent in their
attempts for the white American way of life, the security. They desired to live comparative with technology at that time.
They felt swindled out of happiness, forced into lifetimes of sickening poverty. Their missions were those of redemption,
extrication, using whatever tactics they saw fit—robbery, drug dealing, schemes. Unlike the ones who performed these acts
for survival only, these people did so for other reasons. I would come to know many of them personally.

I enrolled into school and into the job program, so I could leave school early and look for work. Although my mother had some
excess money now, she still wouldn’t buy me school supplies. She felt I was old enough now to get things like that for myself—I
kept my simple clothes washed and pressed.

The routine at the house was fairly straightforward. Alvin would work all day, then spend the evening in his room with my
mother or at the church. My sister worked all day doing housekeeping for a hotel and spent her leisure time visiting friends,
her new boyfriend, Marcus Greer, and going to church also. And I mostly went to school and, afterward, would engage in teenage
interests.

On my first ventures into the neighborhood I met Eric, who attended Lincoln High School, where he played on the basketball
team. He lived several streets away in a crowded apartment with his many brothers and sisters. He was about my age, sixteen,
and still learning the streets like me.

Eric piqued my interest in basketball. We would go to the Martin Luther King Center, or to Wheatley Park, to shoot hoops.
Often, people from the neighborhood would have big jam festivals down at the park, loud stereo systems: the lusty young girls
and the hardened young men, who would be relaxing and cooling in their reefer and forty-ounce high. Everyone played the emerging
rap music. Tempers stayed short; tension stayed high.

I was with Eric when I drank my first beer, more out of curiosity than anything else; I hated the taste. The drinking age
was still eighteen, and we both looked eighteen, so he and I would buy forty-ounces in the morning before school and after
we had played a hard afternoon of basketball. This was all too common among most of us young naive boys, who were venturing
more, becoming more streetwise.

Around then, too, my interest in girls was growing. I especially admired the dark girl with shoulder-length hair who walked
past my house each evening after school. I would make sure I was in the front yard, raking leaves or trimming the bush near
the window when school let out. She was really developed for her age, narrow waistline and shapely thighs and hips. She seemed
shy, would swiftly walk down my street while being escorted by a young man.

One day, my courage strong, I stopped her. I told her I had been watching her and wondering if she lived nearby. She said
yeah, and that she had been watching me, too. She said she, as she passed with her brother, would ask him if I was watching
her. We exchanged phone numbers, agreeing to call one another.

We began to talk on the phone or in person after school, sometimes for several hours. Her name was Lisa*; and she and I had
a lot in common. We both were quiet and not interested in more than one relationship. Neither of us had had any serious social
experience. She was still a virgin.

She lived with her aunt, one street over, who had a lot of relatives living there, because her mother had some psychological
problems; and her dad didn’t come around. Lisa was required to do a lot of house chores, since her aunt was letting her and
her brother stay there. This was common among black families, that a relative would be treated as a subordinate or constantly
intimidated if he or she had nowhere else to live. The relative either took the unfair treatment or moved.

Lisa was so sweet, flashing her beautiful, sincere smile all the time, humbly putting up with her problems. I visited her
at her house all the time. Her family—cousins, uncles, and all—liked me, thought that she had made a good pick. So Lisa and
I began a relationship.

I met another person then, too, who, unknown to me, would become a close friend. We met after my reputation as a pretty fair
rapper had spread through the neighborhood. I had begun doing things like that in my spare time, writing rap lyrics and poetry.
I recited my lyrics one day at the park before a crowd of about fifty people. And the people really liked it.

Vernon*, eighteen, also wrote prolific rap lyrics. He was a very serious person and also dangerous—he had shot people. He
was so surprised that a new guy in town was impeding upon his unblemished rap fame that he came to my house and asked to hear
my lyrics. Standing about my five feet ten, he listened, evaluated my lyrics, then recited some of his own. He was good. Later
he told me he was forming a rap group, and once more details developed, he would get back with me. I liked him, so I told
him to keep in touch. Who knew, maybe we could attract some serious attention.

But one night Vernon came to my house nearly in tears. Men in Grand Prairie had shot his young female cousin to death, and
he was trying to gather his friends to get revenge. I thought about going with him, was flattered he considered me his friend.
But we were not that close, not yet, anyway.

News of death poured in after I heard about Vernon’s cousin. First we received word about the tragedy of Ms. Ruthy Mae, the
old junk lady from the projects. Her daughter, Sweet Baby*, had been bringing tricks over. After Sweet Baby ran off with one’s
money, he bashed in Ms. Ruthy Mae’s head with a hammer while her granddaughter witnessed the whole horrible thing. The killer
took and tied the little girl to a tree. After several hours, some guys noticed and untied her. She ran home screaming for
her grandmother. Relatives later came and took her away.

A week later we got the news of my uncle James’s death. He and his wife had separated but were living in the same neighborhood
with each other. I was told that she had been dating a white man who also lived nearby. Uncle James, who was short and stocky,
got into a scuffle with this man. When he slipped, the white man pounced on Uncle James and stabbed him once in the heart
as he lay on the ground. I felt for my three little cousins, who now would be split up among the family.

As Vernon and I grew closer, I visited him at his house more often. I soon found out that as a youth he had lived in the projects—the
sections in the projects were so big that people could live there for years and never know each other. This gave Vernon and
me a deep familiarity and respect for each other, even though he had spent most of his teenage developing years in south Dallas.
Around his duplex house, I was surprised by how much his family shouted at one another, Vernon especially. They constantly,
angrily debated everything. Even Vernon’s little sister, Yolanda*, a straight-A student and a pretty little girl about nine
years old, would scream her lungs out.