Manchild in the promised land

by Brown, Claude, 1937-

  On this day, Hildy was standing around the stoop with some more people who looked like winos.

  I stopped and said, "Hello, Hildy."

  She looked around and said, "Sonny Boy! My Sonny Boy!" She grabbed me with both arms—she was kind of a fat woman—and she started kissing me. I would have been embarrassed had it been anyone but Hildy, I guess.

  "Sonny Boy, you really grew."

  "Yeah, well, I guess everybody does."

  She pointed to the building that she was standing in front of. She said, "I live right here, you know. Right down in the basement. I want you to come and see me sometime, and I want you to bring Pimp to see me. How is that little rascal? I'll bet he's gotten bigger."

  "Yeah. He's gotten bigger and badder." We joked about it.

  I introduced her to Tony as an aunt of mine. I think it really made her feel good, and I was glad that I had done that.

  She told some of the other people on the stoop that I was her nephew. They looked and said, "Yeah, uh-huh." It made her feel proud; she was proud of me. As I walked away, I told her that I was going to bring Pimp by to see her and that I was going to tell Carole and Margie where she was living, this sort of thing.

  "Sonny Boy, would you wait a minute?"

  I asked Tony to wait at the corner and turned around and

  went back. I thought she was going to ask me for some money or something, I wouldn't have minded giving it to her, but when I went back, she grabbed me by the arm and started walking a little way away from the crowd with me. She said, "I want you to come back real soon, and I want you to bring Carole and Margie and Pimp, but don't tell anybody I live in the basement."

  I don't know why, but I felt a little hurt when she said this. I wanted to tell her, "Look, Hildy, you don't have to be ashamed of living in the basement or anyplace else. They've got people living on Central Park South and Sutton Place and Tudor City who're not half as good as you are." I wanted to hug her and comfort her and tell her, "You don't have anything to be ashamed of."

  I just smiled and kissed her on the cheek and said, "Okay, Hildy," and I left.

  That was only one of the things that I loved about Harlem, the meeting old people and old things. There was always something new to do. Somebody would always come along now and then and make me feel that it was getting better. Harlem was getting better. The people throughout Harlem were getting a lot more compassion for one another.

  People were protesting, but not that the police should take all the junkies and put them in jail. As a matter of fact, they were petitioning to get a place to cure the junkies, to get more facilities at the hospitals for helping drug addicts to kick their habits. Before, all the people wanted to do was put them in jail or shoot them. It just wasn't this way any more. People were getting a little bit of tenderness.

  As time went on and I kept going to Harlem, I was still out of it, but I was getting more feelings for it each day I hved out of it.

  Around the end of 1957, I saw Danny. I think he had been back for a month before I saw him. He had straightened out. He'd been in Kentucky for fourteen months, and he was still clean. Danny had been down there a few-times before. He'd been to a lot of places, and he had kicked it before. But this time, there was something different about him. He was more determined. When I saw Danny, he was really clean. He had new clothes; he was really dressed. He was decked out like a Madison Avenue executive.

  The cat was happy. He grabbed me and started hugging me, all that nonsense. We went into a bar and had a drink.

  Danny said, "Softny Boy, you know what? I'm offa drugs; I'm offa drugs for good!"

  I said, "That's damn nice, man."

  "No, man, it's not like before. I'm tellin' you I'm offa drugs and soundin' like I'm just sayin' that like I've said it so many times before. But it's not that way. I've been through it. I've had it."

  "What do you mean you've had it, Danny? Did you get the calling from the Lord or something?"

  He said, "Look, man, you know me better than that. I'm just through. I know that I've had it. I was strung out for seven years, and it seemed like I was strung out all my life. When I was down there and I couldn't get any drugs, I did a whole lot of thinking this time. It seemed like when I was strung out, I was living on the outside of life. There was so much shit happening that I didn't know about. I didn't know what was going on. I'd hurt my whole family, man, I'd hurt them something terrible. Sormy Boy, I'm twenty-three years old now, and I got to do something. I haven't been doing anything, so I'm going to get a job. I'm going to straighten up. As a matter of fact, I think I'm going to get married soon."

  "Oh, yeah? That's damn nice, Danny.'*

  "You don't believe me now, but just wait a couple of months. Have I ever stayed off drugs for three months or even one month?"

  "No, not that I can recall."

  "Okay." He took fifty dollars out of his wallet and laid it on the bar. He said, "Sonny, I want you to take that."

  "What for?"

  "I want you to take it, and I want you to hold it for three months. Take down the date and time and put it on a piece of paper with the fifty dollars. Three months from now, I want you to give me that fifty dollars if I'm still clean, only if I'm not messin' with that poison again."

  "Okay, Danny, I'll do that." I took the money, but I was kind of concerned about what Danny was doing with a fifty-dollar bill. I figured he must have been dealing drugs; he must have been dealing a whole lot of drugs. I said, "Look here, Danny, what are you doing?"

  "I'm back in business, man. I'm clean, and I know I won't get strung out. I feel so secure about this thing that I don't have to stay away from drugs. I can stay right here in Harlem, and I can even deal drugs, sell it to the cats I use

  to get high with, Sonny. That's just how secure I feel in this cure that I've got now. I know it's over with. All those other times when I was kickin', I'd go down to Kentucky or I'd go to Brothers Island, and the psychiatrist would say that I had complexes and all this. That was a lot of B.S., Sonny. I just used drugs because drugs was good. I liked it, and I wanted to. It made me feel belter than anything else. It made me feel as though I was complete, man. I just wanted to use drugs; I didn't want to do anything else. I didn't want to stop doing it.

  "But when I was down there, I did so much thinking, I just had to stop. I had to stop causing my family all that trouble. My moms is getting old. Have you seen my moms lately? Have you seen how much gray hair she got? Shit, I got to do something for that woman before she dies. She's suffered a whole lot for me, man. Half of that gray hair up there is on account of me."

  When Danny said that, I had the feeling that he was serious, that this was it. But at the same time, I was still kind of leery about him dealing drugs and staying off it. Cats didn't do that. Just about everybody who dealt drugs for any length of time had to start dabbling, and eventually they got strung out.

  "Danny, man, do you have to deal drugs? There are a lot of better ways to . . . it's safer to get away from it altogether."

  "Yeah, but if you do that, you're not really cured. The only time you're cured, man, is when you can sit around people who're getting high off drugs and you know the good feeling, but still it doesn't move you to get high. I had seven years of that, man, so I know I'm not missing anything if I sit around and see people get high."

  "Yeah, uh-huh. Okay, Danny, if you do it, man, that's a mother-fuckin' miracle. But I just hope you can do it."

  He said, "Okay, Sonny, you just hang on to that fifty dollars."

  I did and three months later, I had to give D^ny that fifty dollars back. This was a big surprise because he was out there with everybody. It's easy, I suppose, to kick a habit and stay off it if you get away from the old environment, but Danny was doing what I had thought impossible. And I suppose just about everybody who knew anyliiing about junkies thought it was impossible too. He had kicked his habit, he was dealing drugs, and he was successful at it.

  This was a most admirable feat to anybody who
knew anything about drug addiction and had watched drugs rule an addict for so long and so destructively as it had Danny for all those years when he was strung out.

  It was a damned admirable feat when the victim became the master of the poison that had had him by the throat. But Danny did it.

  Cats used to say, "Man, Fm gon do like Danny. I*m gon kick my habit. I'm gon make drugs work for me." He began to be a Uving symbol of victory over drugs even though he was still dealing drugs.

  I suppose he wasn't an asset to the community in the eyes of the law or in the eyes of the good-doing folks who do all the talking, the guardians of our society and community. But he was an asset to the junkies, and I think many of them knew it. If it weren't for Danny, many cats would have had no kind of hope. He had compassion for the jimkies. He didn't do cutthroat business. If a cat wanted a five-dollar bag and he only had four and a half, Danny would tell his lieutenants, "Don't wring it out of anybody, and don't tell a cat to go get a gun and get him some money if he can't make it any other way."

  Everybody liked him not only for defeating the drug habit but for the kind of cat he was. I always knew that Danny had it. I always knew this, but I never thought I'd see him bring it forth. But he did it.

  Danny never thought it was such a miracle or any fantastic feat. He just said, "Look, man, it was something I had to do.'*

  One time he said, "Remember the time I went into the liquor store and pulled a stickup with the toy gun, Sonny? Well, I was doin' shit like that every day, climbing into people's apartments while they were sleeping and robbing them because my habit was down on me. I was going down from the roof into somebody's fifth-story apartment window on some kind of thin rope."

  He said, "Every day, I was goin' out there, risking my life, gambling, for just five dollars or enough to get straight, enough to get me enough to buy some duji and stay high for a day. It went around in a cycle. If the phone rang while I was out—my three brothers, they were fuckin' up too; my moms couldn't sleep; there were four of us out there for her to worry about—every time the phone rang, she figured somebody was gon say, 'Your son is dead.'

  "We'd all gotten shot trying to pull stickups or running from the cops after we had stolen something. The best thing we could have done to make it easier on Moms was to die. When you stop and think about this shit, you know what you have to do. I knew I had to go on and throw just one big brick—kill myself, take an overdose, or something—or put the shit down. I couldn't do the shit any more; I couldn't do it to my moms, to my family. Everybody was suffering too much on account of me. I remember one day. You know my older sister, don't you? Vivian."

  "Yeah."

  "Her little girl, man, my niece, she's about five years old now, but she was only about three years old then. I'd been out all day trying to scrounge up enough to get high. I finally got enough to get me a ten-dollar bag. I came home and -cooked my stuff. The family use to hide all the belts and all the cords. You know how Moms is, man, she didn't know that much about drugs. She figured if I couldn't get any belts or shit like that ... she even use to hide the spoons so I couldn't cook my drugs in it. They figure it's gon be that hard. They were doin' all kinds of crazy stuff to stop it, but they just didn't know what was goin' on.

  "This day when I had finally got my stuff together and came home to take off, I went into my room. I had had me a belt. The people had taken most of my belts, my ties, any kind of cords that I could use to tie up my arms and get the vein to bulge. I had cooked up everything, and I looked for a belt, but my belt was gone. I figured, I'm gon go in my father's room and get a belt. I put the drugs in the spoon, put a matchbox under the spoon to keep it level, and left it on the bedside table in my room. I went in the front room to get the belt. It seemed like I was only gone for about a minute.

  "Vivian was in her room ironing some clothes. My niece, Debby, was comin' out of my room as I was coming down the hall. When I saw her coming out of the room, I said, *Oh, shit, I should've locked the door!' I raji^-back to my room.

  "The spoon wasn't there, man. You don't know. I panicked behind that . . . when I saw the spoon gone off the bedside table. The floor was kind of wet, man, looked like it had some water on it. I said, 'Oh, Lord, no, it can't be that! I know that's not my stuff.' I fell down on my knees, and I prayed when I ^aw that liquid on the floor. I prayed one-a

  them hopeless prayers, like 'Lord, please don't let it be my stuff.' The spoon was gone from the table.

  "I knew, I just knew. I put my tongue down on the floor in the liquid and tasted it. I coulda almost died. My habit just started coming down on me altogether then and started eatin' through me. My whole stomach tightened up in me, and I knew I was gon die. I got down on my hands and knees, and I crawled on my knees into Vivian's room, and I grabbed Debby. I was gon throw her out the window with the last bit of strength I had.

  "Vivian was ironing, and she hit me in the head with that hot iron. I didn't wake up until they woke me up in the hospital about three hours later. I was so glad when I woke up that I was in the hospital and hadn't done what I was going to do."

  He said, "Sonny, when I was down in Kentucky, I use to lay awake at night and have awake nightmares just thinking about it. I knew, man, now I had to get up off it. I think if I wasn't so young before, I would have done it a long time ago. I was just too young."

  I believed Danny. I believed a lot of cats out there were too young. We talked about drugs and about the cats coming up using drugs and not really knowing what was happening. Danny seemed to really know something about it, and I said, "Damn, man, if you could write about this or talk to the younger cats comin' up, it might stop somebody, turn 'em around."

  Danny said, "No, Sonny, that's not gon help, because everybody has got to try that thing for themselves. Either they're hip enough to know before they start that they can't win, or they have to find out for themselves. If anybody could tell 'em . . . look at all the examples they've got. It doesn't make sense for anybody to be starting to use drugs, when they've seen aU the cats who were dying." Danny started naming the cats, like SkuUy, Butch, Wattlo, like Sonny Bobbins, air the cats in the neighborhood who had died off drugs.

  He said, "Man, these should be enough examples for everybody; the cats who use to be big time, and now they're down and out and noddin', this should be example enough for anybody, if examples were gonna help. Here's the living story. Look at some of the cats around here, like Father Time."

  Father Time was an old junkie. He'd been around for years. He didn't want to kick; he didn't want to do anything

  but use drugs. He was harmless. Most of the cats who dealt drugs would give Time some, because he was a good-doing cat, and everybody wanted to keep him on the street. The cats who dealt drugs used to feel it was luck to give Father Time drugs.

  I think it had started years ago, when Johnny D. was dealing drugs. He had given Father Time some drugs one time. The law was waiting at Johnny's house to bust him. Father Time had started begging him to give him some drugs. Johnny only had one last bag on him, but he left Father Time talk him out of it. He was just in a good mood. He gave it to Father Time and went upstairs.

  The Man was waiting for him, but he didn't have anything. So it became a tradition with all the drug dealers to give Father Time some drugs. Almost every night, somebody would give him a bag of drugs. He just sat around on the stoop. The other junkies used to try to get tight with him, hoping that when the drug dealers gave him some drugs, he would turn them on. But Father Time never got tight with anybody.

  He never talked. He never talked about anything. I guess this was why all the drug dealers liked him. He used to see a whole lot on Eighth Avenue. In fact, it was just about impossible to stay on Eighth Avenue all night long, hke Father Time did, and not see a hell of a lot. He had to know what was going on, but since he never talked, nobody ever knew how much he saw.

  Danny said, "If examples or stories were gonna help any, Father Time would be the living example and the living story.
You see the pants that cat wears, man? I bet he hasn't changed them in three months. The cat doesn't bathe, and he stinks. Unless somebody takes him out in the backyard and turns a hose on him, he'd never get no water on him. That's how the cat is, he's so strung out.

  "Do you think all these young boys going around trying to be hip, who want to use drugs, who want to nod, who want to be down, want to get away from thiy ycene, to get older in a hurry, you think they don't know. Sonny? They can see. They got two eyes, just like you and me, man. They dig Father Time; they dig the whole scene, all these other cats noddin'. They know who died last month and who died last year. They know just who got killed over some drugs. But that's not gonna help them, man. They have to find out for themselves. What they don't know is all the

  individual hell that a junkie goes through. And this is something that they got to know, man, before they really understand what-ihey're doing.

  "Yeah, they're just a bunch of little chumps, man, just the way I was, Scared to live. Scared, that's all it is. You can't talk people out of fear, man. You just can't do it. You got to let them grow up and one day stop runnin*.

  "That's all it was with me. Sonny. I stopped runnin'. You know how it is; you run and run from a cat, down the street or around the comer. Then one day you come out of your house and you say, 'Damn this. I'm not gon run from that mother-fucker any more. He's just gon have to kick my ass, or I'm gon have to kick his ass.' That's the same way it is with drugs out here. When you come out of your house every day and you're a young boy on Seventh Avenue, Eighth Avenue, Lenox Avenue, or any of the other avenues around here, you got to walk up to that big gorilla, that big gorilla named duji.

  "Every man's got to pick his own time. Sonny. Every man's got to pick his own time to stop running."