Out of the Madness (14 page)

Vernon’s family was among the elite among the tough blacks of south Dallas. His father was feared at the prominent prison
he was held in. Both his two uncles—one small, one average-size, both in their early thirties—had been to prison several times,
yet not for some hothead crime, the kind young, ignorant people committed. They were the kind of men who could put a gun into
a man’s mouth and blow his brains out without the slightest remorse; men who had wrestled police officers about to murder
one of them; men who were way above average intelligence, who understood this system and society better than most people.
They were the type who would lay down their lives at the drop of a hat for what they believed in and who would remain loyal
to a true friend until death. They reminded me of my older friend in the projects, the cool brother, in that they had a hidden
knowledge and lore. Vernon had learned much from their settled, unflaunted wisdom. I would learn from them also.

In another way, they reminded me of other people I knew. For Vernon’s uncles were both on dope real bad. One was an expert
thief. He would go downtown and come home with sacks of clothes. His other uncle had been in prison over half his life. He
also stole and sold, or traded, the merchandise for dope. For all their wisdom and common sense, they didn’t have the power
to implement one thing. They had been silenced and snuffed out so thoroughly.

I was spending all my time away from home, either with Lisa or with Vernon. Eric had become more occupied than I with his
love of basketball. Things were looking up. I had buckled down at school, was gradually improving. My mother was doing fine.
And my sister was working at a day care center.

Lisa had begun to come over to my house. My mother realized I wasn’t very sexually active, so she would try to keep an eye
on Lisa and me. But we managed to be alone several times when my mother was at church. Because of her responsibilities at
home, though, Lisa and I spent more time at her house.

In December 1986, the winter weather was still around, and everybody stayed bundled up. Lisa invited me to a Christmas party
her family intended to throw. Word was around the neighborhood that she was my girl, with my always being on her street and
all. And Lisa and I were growing closer, sharing deep secrets.

For example, she had a very masculine uncle who really approved of me. He often wanted to take me aside for small conversations,
which never aroused my suspicion. “Jerrold,” Lisa said, “I want you to be careful around him. I’m not going to tell you why.
Just trust me.” I immediately figured he was gay, and Lisa admitted this. But he’s not exactly that, she said. He likes both
men and women and, sometimes, children, she told me.

Although I was too ashamed to let Lisa see, finding out he possibly had violated a child evoked the sad incident from my past.
After Lisa’s revelation, I became uncomfortable when I visited her. So we would sit on her porch more, instead of inside the
house. She was content with this, being the understanding person she was, but she made me promise to come inside during the
Christmas party. She was all excited about some of her distant female cousins, whom she wanted to introduce to me during the
party.

The way a lot of blacks celebrated Christmas in the poorest, toughest sections was not how one might expect. Christmas carols
were not sung, mistletoe was not hung. Instead, everybody would glow from strong liquor. Strong black tunes would be played,
Johnnie Taylor, Bobby Bland, Latimore, and so on. In a smoke-filled dim room, the old heads (elders) would get on the floor,
grinding each other with those old dance steps; the younger ones, in their early twenties, would be just as laid back and
settled. A couple whispering to one another in a corner. A fat lady working her hips and big behind, dancing with somebody’s
drunk daddy. Liquor bottles everywhere.

On the night of the party, Lisa came to my house, looking all pretty in her makeup and tight jeans. I was looking forward
to drinking with the older folks and maybe doing a rap for them. I had not been to many house parties, so I had that youthful
excitement. I was so anxious to get rolling that I didn’t pay much attention to what was going on at my house. I had been
staying away too much to notice the settled changes; yet when I left, my mother was sitting in the living room reading her
Bible. Like an omen, her twisted worried look had returned. That was odd, I thought. There was no need to worry; everything
was fine for her. I made a point to ask her about that later.

At the party, Lisa’s family was cooling all the way when she and I arrived. She introduced me to her female cousins and their
older boyfriends. Then she introduced me to her male cousins, who had brought their dates along also. After a short conversation
with them, Lisa grabbed my hand and led me through the haze to meet one of her special cousins, who was sitting in a corner
with his girl. At first I thought something was very familiar about his girl, her posture, her slim figure. But I could hardly
see her in the dark, until she turned to greet us.

It wasn’t too difficult. Some residue of her still remained. She was still kind and gentle, still greeted me with her soft,
compassionate voice. But the rest of her was in terrible shape. She was filthy. Her hair was wild, her clothes dirty. Now
on heroin, she had drug marks on her arms. And her eyes had changed, now had that same reflection of betrayal, the way she
looked on the day I blackened her eye. Why had this happened to her, to the first girl I had ever kissed, who had shared my
first small flame?

Gloria recognized me but was too ashamed to keep looking, although she did murmur a wry hello and offer a spiritless smile.
I spoke to her, wanted to pull her to the side and find out what had happened. But I didn’t because of her jealous boyfriend.
I left the party early that night.

Few things in life have shocked me more than seeing Gloria destroyed. During my stay on Lenway Street, I never shook the ill
feeling, the dread, she gave me. She had been so sweet and wanted so badly to make it out, but, once again, she lacked self-reliance.
So she had been forged and pounded into a dope addict by the circumstances of her life. Gloria had followed in the footsteps
of her mother. A normal, natural thing to do.

W
hen she began to leave the house at odd times, I knew my mother was back on drugs, that the snare of her past was reeling
her in, by the same gradual pace in which it had freed her. Alvin was ignorant about this, and neither my sister nor I told
him, thinking it was just a temporary setback. Why was she doing this? Alvin was treating her well, and everything had been
going okay. As well as I knew my mother, the cause avoided me, until I came from outside one day and Big Mary was sitting
in our living room.

“Hey, there’s my handsome nephew,” she slithered.

I stopped dead in my tracks and looked at her intensely for several moments. But there was nothing I could do. I knew my mother
would defend her with a dope fiend’s loyalty. So Big Mary was the reason. She had moved to south Dallas and sniffed my mother
out. She had hunted her down and caught her during her weak stages.

And once everything was in the open, Big Mary kept coming around; so my mother kept slipping away. She was desperate now,
praying all night, fasting for weeks at a time. But nothing worked for her. She had been on heroin so long that the slightest
disruption threw her life in disarray. And Big Mary was a strange woman.

I just stopped seeing Lisa. I couldn’t let her know what I was going through. I wanted and needed her kind support. But I
wouldn’t return her phone calls and letters. She had enough problems. After several weeks she stopped inquiring, and later
she moved away. Within two years Lisa married a young man, joined the minimum-wage work force, and had a son.

Soon my sister moved away. Then the skeletons came out of the closet and chased my mother around the house. She sold everything
except the kitchen sink. Alvin just couldn’t understand. Saddened, he would ask me what was going wrong, why my mother was
in need for so much money. But I couldn’t tell him, couldn’t do that to her.

He put things together and got my mother to confess her shortcomings. Now, I had been sympathetic of Alvin up to this point—after
all, my mother had hid her past from him—but what he did next hurt her more than anything. He abandoned her, just packed his
bags and moved away while she and I were gone. My mother must have known that this was coming because she didn’t miss a step,
getting back on dope after his departure. If he had given her some real support, I believe she could have pulled through.
But he left and took all the resources with him.

Sherrie had found a new job working at a day care center and was getting more serious with her new boyfriend. She knew, as
I did, what my mother was up to, and she was also very disappointed. After Alvin left, my mother charged my sister rent and
tried to squeeze all the money she could from her. As loyal as my sister was to our mother, she eventually became fed up and
moved in with her good friend Pam.

I left school again and returned to the industrial, factory streets of cheap labor. I had, after a week or so, luckily stumbled
on a maintenance position for a carpet cleaning company, minimum wage, of course. It was two hours away on the city bus.

I worked about twelve hours a day, then another four hours catching the bus, in the beginning. I would get up about four A.M.
to get there around six-thirty. The company only had about ten employees. I had many responsibilities. I worked in the warehouse,
cleaning and sorting the equipment, stacking big barrels of chemicals. In the offices, I cleaned, vacuumed, dusted, and took
out trash. I also cleaned the four bathrooms, their all-around handyman.

Yet there was no way to pay for all the bills—lights, water, rent, phone, food—in a house while making minimum wage. So I
begged a foreman to let me try cleaning carpets. After I received several days’ training, I would work in the evenings after
I had completed my day shift. We cleaned carpets at night, when most businesses were closed. I would go with the white men
and let them assign me the undesired chores, scrubbing on my hands and knees for hours. I stayed quiet, never complaining.
Sometimes I worked until after midnight and even later. The buses stopped running after midnight, so usually one of the employees
would give me a ride as far as downtown, from where I would drag myself home. Later, the sympathetic owner gave me a key to
the building and let me spend the night whenever I worked late. I would curl up near one of the desks and try to keep warm—they
didn’t run the heat after hours.

My mother was doing all she could to support me besides leaving heroin alone. She would cook my supper and wash my clothes.
Even if she was out on a heroin adventure, there would be several pots on the stove when I got home from work. I had taken
up the position as man of the house. And this was something she had done for every provider in the past.

I kept the job for a while but eventually was laid off again. It seemed to happen every time. Before I left, I begged the
owner, who didn’t have the nerve to tell me in person but sent his assistant, not to lay me off. I told him I understood he
was having hard times, that I would work for free until things got better. Although impressed, he couldn’t do that. At home,
I couldn’t tell my mother I had lost my job, I was so ashamed.

She made everything easy when she came to me one day as I was pretending to leave for work. “Jerrold, I already know, don’t
worry about it, baby. You’ve been trying real hard. Momma got some ideas to help us get on our feet,” she said.

Her idea was to rent her bedroom out, mostly to male tenants, who would hit on her. And even though I kept telling her getting
involved with them was the wrong thing to do, she dated a few of them. I came close to fighting one of them, a heroin addict
named Mark who stole car stereos. He told her some stupid story about his wife just passing away, and my mother wound up being
compassionate toward him. In the end, he paid no rent.

My mom tried to work, too. She was hired at a temporary maid service, cleaning up after conventions. But the work was temporary
and not enough. We were near being homeless again. With all the money and morale vanishing, she took her only alternative.
She called a thrift store. And she called Big Mary. I don’t know who got there faster, this white man who knew he was about
to make a killing off some poor desperate black, or Big Mary, who had the same ambition. My mother and Big Mary sold everything
in the house for about two hundred dollars. She was going out with a big bang, a big heroin party.

Motivated by the new proceeds, Big Mary agreed to let my mother live with her—she knew having my mother around would generate
more dope for her. But where was I going to stay? I certainly couldn’t go over there. Unknown to me, my mother already had
worked out a deal. “Big Mary said you can come, too,” she said.

I had no intention of doing that. I told her not to worry about me; I would find somewhere to stay. Her worry lines popped
in her forehead. “Baby, Momma thought you were gonna come with us,” she said. “I understand that you don’t want to be around
her, but what are you gonna do? This may be our only choice for now.”

I would rather have been homeless than move in with Big Mary. I was afraid of what I could become being in the same house
with her. I decided I was going to just stay right there in that empty house until I found another job.

My mother seemed saddened, seemed to have not figured I would reject the offer. But after I assured her I could make it on
my own, she packed her clothes, gave me the address and twenty dollars. “In case you change your mind,” she said. We then
exchanged our last good-byes.

The first week, I started off okay. The landlord didn’t know we had moved. I would get up each morning and go through the
want ads. I would try to visit all the different spots on the city bus. Up until then, I had been able to find work on the
first or second try. But I soon learned just how difficult it could be without basic resources. For example, the labor jobs
for which I qualified usually were dispersed all across the wide city. In a day, I could expect to visit maybe two, which
required impeccably correlating the bus schedule with the days and times the companies allowed interviews. Then the long bus
ride there, which sometimes only came within a mile of the place and sometimes ran every two or three hours.