A joint got passed around while various conversations continued. A big beach ball bounced over followed by a little girl in hot pursuit who tripped over Tala and was righted to her feet by a laughing Prez.
“Show of hands,” said Toffee, “has anyone ever seen Doug laugh before?” Looking at Tala she said. “So, you show up and suddenly we have a laugh factory in our midst.”
“Toffee! That’s such a gross exaggeration,” said Prez.
“Well, dude,” piped in Roberto, “that’s a pretty true assessment.”
“Tala, don’t listen to any of them. It’s the summer solstice and they’re smoking weed too early in the day to be sane. By the way, Tala and I saw the sunrise this morning.”
“Good god, man, you’re the only person I know who would get out of bed for a stupid sunrise. Now that’s insanity,” said Roberto.
For Prez it was time to go.
“Okay, we’re off. There’s a few more things I’d like to show my friend before she leaves.”
There was a round of, “It was so nice to meet you.” Then Lora said, “Why not come over to my place tomorrow evening? That would be fabulous!”
“Can’t,” said Prez. “She’s leaving in the morning.”
“How long have you been here?” Toffee asked Tala.
“Since last evening,” said Tala.
“One day?” said Marie-Claire. “You’re only here with Doug for one day?”
Roberto had become painfully pensive. He had for some time taken note of Doug and his co-worker Theresa during breaks or lunch bent over laughing on the grass in front of the library.
*
As they drove westward on Sherbrooke Street Tala remarked so quietly that Prez knew she was really thinking out loud: “it was so carefree back there.”
He motored quickly through the intersection at University Avenue and said, “Montreal’s Golden Square Mile starts here. This is where all the wealthy Anglos lived about a century ago, so this area is considered a very symbolic reminder of their domination. Something like seventy percent or more of all the wealth in all of Canada was concentrated right here.”
“Whoa there!” she exclaimed.
“Yeah, I know. The opulence of some of these buildings is really something.”
“I’m talking about your driving, man. I had forgotten you think you’re in a race whenever you get behind the wheel. That last yellow light was really just about red.”
“Relax. You know not to worry. I taught your little Beetle a few tricks, didn’t I? That’s McGill University, where I work.”
“Where?”
“Back there. Oh, you should have looked quicker. You missed it.”
“Is that where they had the computer riot?”
“No. That was at Sir George Williams University. I’ll show you.”
He took a left at Guy Street and parked close to the intersection of De Maisonneuve Boulevard. They got out and Tala gave him a look when he closed the roof. “Pigeons,” he said. They walked east on De Maisonneuve until Prez stopped in front of a big building that took up the whole block.
“This is the Hall Building. The computer department is up there.” He pointed to the upper floors of the building. “Last February a bunch of mostly Afro-Caribbean students took over the computer center to protest inaction on the part of the university in addressing their complaints of racial discrimination. Max, Toffee, and Roberto were outside on the street in a supporting demonstration. The protesters and university officials were talking and it seemed they had worked things out and then the police showed up. Some protesters started throwing punch cards out the window, then the computer center caught fire and they started throwing equipment out the window.”
“Who started the fire?”
“Don’t really know. The police say it was the protesters. The protesters say it was the police. But it was the big turning point in the whole affair.
“I showed up late. Thick smoke poured from the windows. People were yelling for the fire department to rescue the protesters before they all perished in the fire.
“But then I started to hear other voices that seemed louder, chanting something very disturbing. They looked meaner and angrier than the students supporting the protesters.”
“What were they saying?”
“Let the niggers burn!”
8
Washington, D.C., Spring 1953
New leaves were sprouting on the big oak trees that lined both sides of Sherman Avenue. The leaves would grow big like the greens his grandma put in her terrible big gray pot on the stove. And the trees were so tall that when they were full and lush in summer, they touched at the top, forming an extended archway under which Sherman Avenue ran for as far as the eye could see.
Five-year-old Preston Coleman Downs, Junior, sat on his front porch with his father. Everyone had a front porch, and a nice lawn in front that sloped down toward the sidewalk; perfect for rolling things down, such as marbles, balls, and little bodies like his own.
Little Preston would listen as his father told him the name of every car that went by. His daddy not only knew their names, but their year of manufacture and all kinds of strange things like cylinders and transmissions.
Preston Sr. was especially proud of his own car, a brand-new powder-blue-and-white 1953 Chevrolet Bel Air that had wide whitewall tires and a three-speed stick shift on the column. It was in that car that Preston Sr. would later sit Little Preston on his lap at the old family place in Spotsylvania County, Virginia and let him steer the car down a country road. Little Preston loved being with his father, whether it was lying on the grass with his daddy at Hains Point beside the Potomac River and watching the faces in the clouds go by, or watching his daddy laugh his head off when he was with his brothers. Or simply, like now, just sitting on the front porch under the lush, green, peaceful canopy of big oak trees and listening to his father speak with such authority.
#
It was one such spring afternoon when his daddy abruptly stopped talking and disappeared into the house. Up his front steps and right onto his front porch came two white men. Now, it wasn’t as if Little Preston had never seen white people before. He watched the Mickey Mouse Club on TV and had a crush on Annette. Some of the people in his neighborhood—even in his own family—were so light as to be practically white. But these were real white men like Joe Friday and Frank Smith on Dragnet.
“Hey s-s-sonny b-boy, was th-that your d-daddy we j-j-just saw ru-r-run into the house?” began the shorter of the two men.
He never looked down at Little Preston, probably because he couldn’t keep still long enough. He sure looked everywhere else, though; through the windows, through the door, around the side of the house, over his shoulder, up and down the street, and all over again.
“You go t-t-tell your d-daddy th-th-that Mr. St-St-Stein would l-like to see him.”
Little Preston laughed. He had no idea a person could talk like a cartoon character.
“You sound like Porky Pig!” he blurted.
Next thing he knew he was choking and his throat felt like it was being crushed. His eyes felt like they would pop out of their sockets. And beneath his feet there was only air.
“I’ll f-f-fuckin’ k-kill you, y-y-you l-little sk-sk-skinny-assed ni-ni-nigger!!” screamed the stutterer as he held Little Preston up against the wall by his throat. Something in Little Preston’s head kept flashing white behind his eyes, as he simultaneously kicked, punched, and tried to scream for his daddy. But no words would come, and no daddy would come, and he was getting so tired and sleepy he just wanted to close his eyes for good and go to sleep for a long time when—
“Ow!” Little Preston felt his butt hit the porch and the back of his head bounce off the brick wall.
He was crying now, but he wished he could stop; just long enough so that he could go and punch the man who
had hurt him so. He tried to get up but felt too weak and landed back on his butt. He rubbed his head where it had hit the wall, and cried and screamed through his tears, “I’ll get you; you just wait!” He tried getting up again, and again his legs gave out. So, he got on his hands and knees and tried crawling. It was at this point that Little Preston sensed an eerie stillness all around him. It was as if the whole world had stopped moving except him. There was a heavy silence. All he could hear were the tires buzzing over the pavement as they drove by. The stillness was absolute, entrapping Little Preston, leaving him motionless in mid-crawl.
Little Preston first noticed her stacked-heel, lace-up, black Oxford shoes with very shiny tips. Next, his eyes went higher to the lace around the bottom of her petticoat-like dress, over which was her ever-present white apron.She had on her gold-rimmed glasses, which she once told Little Preston she only wore when she needed to “see real good.” And his Grandma Denie needed to see real good at this moment because in her hand she held a little silver-plated, two-shot Derringer pistol which she had pointed at the two men. She grabbed Little Preston and shoved him behind her.
“Git inside, boy.” She fixed her stare into the eyes of the shorter man. “Now back away and stand beside your friend over there and don’t neither one of you move.”
Both the white men knew now that all they had to do to stay alive was to comply with her commands. But what was she waiting for? The cops? What a joke that would be. Mr. Stein, who controlled the numbers racket in this part of D.C., and owned every gas station for miles, had the police in his pocket. But Mr. Stein knew Denie Williams when both were young hustlers during the twenties. She was the toughest broad he knew. But he needed it to be known that if her son Preston’s gambling debt was not paid off by the end of the week, he would not live to see the next.
“They hurt me, Grandma!” screamed a tearful Little Preston through the front window.
“I know, baby. But they won’t hurt you no mo’,” Grandma Denie said.
No sooner had his grandma uttered those words did Little Preston hear the screeching of tires coming to an abrupt halt. His uncles were rushing out of his Uncle Cadgie’s big white convertible Mercury. They were up on the porch so quickly that the two white men didn’t have time to react to being put in headlocks, frisked, and dragged to the car. They were shoved into the back seat. The car pulled away from the curb at a relaxed pace that belied the pummeling the brothers were administering to Mr. Stein’s goons.
*
Later that evening, and much later than Little Preston and Gussie were accustomed, they sat on the front porch with their father, his brothers, Grandma Denie, their mother Mattie, and an ever-changing assortment of family members, close friends, and neighbors who came to sit and talk in hurried whispers or just stare quietly into the night. All the family members and a few of the close friends brought money. The neighbors, they just came to fraternize with the Williams boys.
The only thing he loved about as much as being with his daddy was when his daddy and his daddy’s brothers were there. What a fun time that was. They were always happy, and joking, and laughing, and telling Little Preston and his baby brother Gussie all sorts of things they didn’t understand and Preston guessed, by the look on his mama’s face, they weren’t supposed to know. His mama would look at his father, and then at all the uncles, and try to ask very quietly, “Now, do you really think Little Preston and little Augustus should be listening to you all talk about what you do with your lady friends and how you make your money?”
“Sorry, Mattie,” they’d say in near unison, snickering under their breath, before bursting into raucous laughter.
There was Uncle Troy, at six feet, three and a half inches, the tallest of the four brothers, slender of build, and sharply featured like his mother Denie. He was just as light-complexioned as she. He was also the eldest of the four. From there on down the brothers got darker, reaching the milk-chocolate skin of his own father, Preston Sr. Next in line was Uncle Rolando, who could pass for his daddy’s twin except that he was, at five eleven, three inches taller than his daddy. But they both had the same smooth skin, wavy hair, and thick eyebrows that formed perfectly above their light-brown, long-lashed eyes. Both of them had the same moustaches above the same mouths, and the same teeth that were perfectly straight and gleamed so white when they laughed, both from the same places in their stomachs. In between his uncle Rolando and his daddy was his Uncle Cadgie, the wild one of the bunch. At five ten, he was all muscle, possessing thick thighs, a massive torso, thick neck, big fists. And according to what little Prez heard when all the brothers were together, his lady friends thought he was built like a tree trunk everywhere.
“That’s because they ain’t seen mine,” one of them would always quip. Oh, how the brothers would howl, bark and crow. Little Preston always marveled at the spectacle of the brothers together.
It would be years before he understood that his daddy and his uncles had different fathers—which explained why his grandma and his uncles were Williams, but his daddy, his mother, his baby brother, and himself were Downs.
The Williams boys weren’t braggarts and they really didn’t like to be seen to be too much different than their peers. But they were. No one else in the neighborhood would dare stand up to the white man like that. The Williams boys’ reputations were the stuff of legend. They refused to suffer abuse or fools—no matter who it was, or what their station in life. As infrequently as they went to church, they very much lived by the golden rule. And they also had a reputation for taking no prisoners. Thus, no one ever expected those two white men to ever be heard from again . . . by anyone. Including Mr. Stein, who would have gotten his money if he had simply rung Denie up on the phone and told her the situation instead of trying to strong-arm his way around the neighborhood. That wasn’t necessary.
Negroes knew the score; had known it for generations. White folks ruled. And Negroes would just as soon stay out of their way, because being around white folks only left one open to humiliation, degradation, abuse, and violence. What white folks wanted they got. And most Negroes would just as soon give in to white demands as try to fight the power.
There was, however, a new, militant, fearless crop of post-World War II black men coming of age. Some were brilliantly defiant, like that Black Muslim minister up in Harlem. Imagine—calling the white man a “devil.” Some were not so brilliant, like the Williams boys, who could not expound upon the similarities between the United States’ efforts to keep the black man oppressed in Africa and efforts to keep the black man oppressed at home, in America. But one thing they did know: the white man would never again be allowed to come into the neighborhood and put his hands on Negro women and children. That’s where the Williams boys drew the line, especially when it came to their beloved Little Preston and Gussie. Cross that line and you might meet your maker.
9
Washington, D.C., May 1953
“Preston! You’d better git this little black thing you married outta my face in a hurry befo’ I do something the lord will have me regret!”
“He’s in the bathroom. But, so what? I’m not afraid of you, Denie Williams!”
“Well, you should be, with your little, black, ugly self!”
“Denie, you’re the ugly one. No matter how light your skin is, it can’t hide the fact that you’re ugly inside. Ugly, hateful, mean . . . and thoughtless. Your own grandsons are within earshot of you screaming at their mother and calling her black! What do you think that’s going to do to their little minds, their little souls?”
“Well, Miss Mattie Adams, don’t think you’re so much better ’n the rest of us, with your college degree ’n all. This is my house and you will not tell me how to run my house.”
“Mrs. Mattie Downs, Denie. I am legally married to your son. Respect that. I’m not trying to tell you how to run your house. I simply came back here to tell you that I was taking the boys
across the street to my friend Lois’s house while you cook those chitterlings. They don’t like the smell. Whenever you start to cook those things Gussie starts sucking his thumb and Little Preston starts crying.”
“Gussie is a thumbsucker. That’s got nothing to do with my chitterlings. And as for Little Preston, hmmphh, that boy cries when I cook anything in the big pot. That’s Cadgie’s fault; a damned fool of a son if I ever had one.”
“What do you mean it’s Cadgie’s fault, Denie?”
Denie turned her back to Mattie and began looking into her spice cupboard, muttering to herself that people should just stay out of her kitchen because things were never where they were supposed to be.
Mattie was not taking that bait. She would not allow herself to be sidetracked into defending herself against a shaded accusation that she was the one responsible for Denie not being able to find the spices she was looking for. It was all a ruse anyway, because though Denie loved being coy, she really let that slip. She really didn’t want to tell Mattie what Cadgie had said to Little Preston.
“What did Cadgie tell him, Denie?” Mattie queried again, this time with that North Carolina temper seething just below the surface.
Denie, still with her back to Mattie, mumbled, “Cadgie said that we cook dead people in the pot . . .”
Mattie, momentarily stunned, as she always was when confronted by abject stupidity, blurted out, “He said what? Denie!”
“Cadgie said that chit’lins stink because dead people smell real bad when we cook ’em in the pot.”
“Oh, my lord,” said Mattie. Denie glanced over and saw a truly dumbfounded young woman seemingly unable—for once—to muster any words. So Denie decided to rub it in some more.
She got down from the stool she was standing on and closed the cupboard door. She walked over to Mattie and put her arm around Mattie’s shoulder. “You must promise not to say anything.”
Exile Blues Page 6