Manchild in the promised land

by Brown, Claude, 1937-

I'd always been afraid too, and I wasn't afraid of what they

  were afraid of. I wasn't afraid of not using drugs. I sort of

  • knew that I wouldn't have to kill anybody.

  I suppose I was luckier because, when I was young, I knew all the time that I couldn't get in but so much trouble. If I had killed somebody when I was twelve or thirteen, I knew I couldn't go to the chair; I knew they couldn't send me to Sing Sing or anyplace like that.

  Then the manhood thing started getting next to cats through drugs. I saw it so many times. Young cats wanted to take drugs because they used to listen to the way the junkies talked, with a drag in their voice. I used to see some of the younger cats on the comer trying to imitate the junkie drag, that harsh "Yeah, man" sort of thing.

  It was changing. By 1957 the fight thing had just about gone. A man didn't have to prove himself with his hands as much as he had before. By then, when I met cats who had just come out of jail, out of Woodbum, Sing Sing, Coxsackie, and I asked about somebody, they'd say, "Oh, yeah, man, I think I know the cat," and they would start describing him by features, his height, his voice, that sort of thing. But as I late as 1953, if I asked somebody, "Do you know a cat by the name K.B.?" The guy would say, "Yeah. He's left-handed, and he always fights with his left hand cocked back?"

  This was something that was dying out. Now- people would ask if you knew somebody by scars or the way he talked, something like that. The fighting thing didn't seem to be important any more. The only thing that seemed to matter

  now, to my generation in Harlem, was drugs. Everybody looked at it as if it were inevitable. If you asked about somebody, a cat would say, "Oh, man, he's still all right. He's doin' pretty good. He's not strung out yet."

  I never got too involved with drugs, but it gave me a pretty painful moment. I was walking down Eighth Avenue, and I saw somebody across the street. It was a familiar shape and a familiar walk. My heart lit up.

  The person looked like something was wrong with hex, even though she was walking all right and still had her^ nice shape. It was Sugar. She was walking in the middle of the street.

  I ran across the street and snatched her by the arm. I was happy. I knew she'd be happy to see me, because I hadn't seen her in a long time. I said, "Sugar, hey, baby, what you doin'? You tryin' to commit suicide or somethin'? Why don't you just go and take some sleeping pills? I think it would be less painful, and it would be easier on the street cleaners.'*

  I expected her to grab me and hug me and be just as glad to see me, but she just looked around and said, "Oh, hi." Her face looked bad. She looked old, like somebody who'd been crying a long time becai^e they had lost somebody, like a member of the family had died.

  I said, "What's wrong, baby? What's the matter?"

  She looked at me and said, "You don't know?"

  "Uh-uh, uh-uh."

  I looked at her, and she said, "Yeah, baby, that's the way it is. I've got a jones," and she dropped her head.

  "Well, anyway, come on out of the street."

  "I don't care. Claude, I just had a bad time. You know a nigger named Cary who lives on 148th Street?"

  "I don't know him. Why?"

  "He just beat me out of my last five dollars, and my jones is on me; it's on me something terrible. I feel so sick."

  I was so hurt and stunned I just didn't know what to do. I said, "Come on, Sugar, let me take you someplace where I know you can get some help. Look, there's a man in East Harlem. His name is Reverend Eddie, and he's been doing a lot of good work with young drug addicts, and I think he could help you. He could get you into Metropolitan Hospital or Manhattan General, one of the places where they've started treating drug addicts. Come on, you got to get a cure, baby. This life is not for you."

  I pulled on her, and she said, "Claude, Claude, I'm sick. There's only one thing you can do for me if you really want to help me. There's only one thing anybody can do for me right now, and that's loan me five dollars to get me some stuff, because I feel like I'm dyin'. Oh, Lord, I feel so bad."

  I looked at her, and she was a part of my childhood. I just couldn't stand to see her suffer. I only had one five-dollar bill and some change. I said, "Look, baby, why don't you get off this thing? Because it's gonna be the same story tomorrow. You'll just be delaying it until another day."

  "Look, Claude, I'll go anyplace with you, but I can't go now. In a little while, I'm gon be laying down in the street there holdin' my stomach and hopin' a cai runs over me before the pains get any worse."

  "Shit. Come on with me. I'm not gon give you another five dollars to go and give it to somebody and get bit again. Come on with me. Come on to 144th Street. I know somebody there who's got some drugs, and I understand it's pretty good. I'll, get you some drugs and take care of that. Then we're gon see about doin' something for you."

  "Okay. You get me high and I'll go anyplace with you after that. But first I want to go downtown. You could come with me, down around Times Square. I really appreciate this, and I'm gonna give you ten dollars."

  "Shit. You gon give me ten dollars? Why don't you just go on and . . ."

  "No, I ain't got the money now. I got to go down there and turn a trick. I'll give you ten dollars, or I'll give you twenty dollars if you need some money. I'U turn a few tricks for you tonight."

  I wanted to hit her when she said that, because it meant she thought of me as somebody who might want her to turn a trick, somebody who would accept her turning a trick for him. But I knew that it wasn't so much me. This was what she'd been into, and she'd probably turned a -whole lot of tricks. She probably thought of everybody that way now, as somebody who she could turn a trick for. I suppose that's all anybody had wanted from her for a long time.

  I was hurt. I said, "Come on." I took her to Ruby's, on 144th Street. Ruby was a chick I knew who was dealing drugs. I said, "Look, you can get high right here."

  I told Ruby who Sugar was. I introduced Sugar to her. I told her I wanted to get Sugar high. Ruby said, "Nol I'm sur-

  prised. Damn, Sonny, you sure waited a long time to start dabblin', didn't you?"

  "No, baby, it's not for me; it's for Sugar."

  She said, "Oh, yeah? She looks like she's in a bad way."

  Ruby told us to sit down in the living room. She had a bent-up spoon that she cooked stuff in for the poison people. She cooked some for Sugar. While Sugar was waiting for her to cook it, I asked her, "Sugar, what's been happening? The last time I heard about you, you were dancing with a popular troupe, and you were doin' good."

  "Yeah, I was dancin', but I haven't done any dancin' in a long time."

  "I guess not. What happened? You were doin' so good. You had finished high school. I thought you were really gonna do things; you were a damn good girl." I asked her what had happened to the young cat that she had eyes for when I wanted her to be my woman, about five years before.

  "Oh, that was just one of those childish flames. It burned itself out."

  "Yeah? I heard you'd gotten married. Wasn't it to him?"

  "No, it wasn't to him. He wasn't mature enough for anybody to marry."

  "Well, what happened with the marriage?'*

  "It's a long story, Claude, but I guess I owe it to you."

  "No, baby, you don't owe me a thing. Save it if that's the way you feel about it."

  "No, I want to tell it to you anyway. I guess you're the one I've been waiting to tell it to. . . . Do you remember a boy on 149th Street by the name of Melvin Jackson?"

  "No, I don't know him."

  "Anyway, he use to be in a lot of trouble, too, around the same time that you were raisin' all that hell. I think he was a year or two older than you. When you were at Warwick, he was at Coxsackie. He came out about a year after you did.

  "He was a lonely sort of guy. He seemed to really need somebody. Claude, you know what I think? I think all my life, I'd been looking for somebody who needed somebody real bad, and who could need me. Who could need all of me and everything that I had to give him." />
  I said, "Yeah; baby, I think I know."

  "We got married in '55. For about a year, we were happy. Marriage was good. I thought this was something that would last and last for a long time."

  "Yeah."

  "Claude, I hope you don't have anyplace to go tonight. The first thing I want to do after I get high is go down and turn a trick and get some money."

  "Look girl, stop saying that. Stop saying that before I beat your ass."

  She looked at me and smiled and said, "Yeah, won't you do it? I think I'd like that, just for old time's sake." And she went on with telling me about the marriage.

  "For the first year, we were happy. He was working and I was working. After about a year, he started going out nights and stayin' real late. He'd get up out of bed at one o'clock in the morning, go out, and come back about four or five. At first, I thought it was another woman or something like that. I thought it was for a long time, until I found out.

  "At first he just started goin' out and stayin' for a few hours. After a while, he started goin' out at night or early in the morning and not comin' back for two and three days. I got worried. After a while, I couldn't work. I had a miscarriage about a month before he started staying out all night long. I was kind of sick. I was weak, and I would get worried and couldn't go to work in the morning.

  "Once, when he came home, I asked him where he'd been. He just said, 'I had to go out, baby.' I knew he knew a whole lot of shady people, because he'd been in street life for a long time, most of his life. And he knew a whole lot of characters who I didn't want him to bring around the house and who he was respectful enough not to bring around.

  "I didn't ask him too much about these people. I didn't try to butt into his business, because we just had this understanding. We never talked about it. That's just the way we understood each other.

  "I knew him, and I knew he loved me. I think he loved me more than anybody ever loved me in all my life before. That's what made it so bad when he started staying out at night. All that love I had finally found, the love that I'd been seekin' so strongly all my life, was being threatened. It made me sick. I'd wake up in the morning, feel that he wasn't there, and I became so scared I felt like a httle kid hidin' in the closet from monsters.

  "My eyes just started pushin' the water out. Heat waves would swell up and come out of my eyes in tears. That's how I felt. It wasn't a thing of body with him. It wasn't a thing of this flesh stuff. He didn't even know that I had a body when I first met him. He didn't like me; he couldn't

  stand having me around. One day, he said something kind, and I realized that it wasn't just me that he disliked. It was everybody. And he was lonely. He needed somebody, and I knew that the somebody could've been me.

  "I'd never felt so un-alone, you know, until I met this guy. I never felt as though I had anybody or anything but him. I would've lived with him or done anything he asked. I would've went out on the street corners and tricked for him if that was what he wanted me to do, because he became a part of me, and I wanted him just that badly.

  "But he really loved me; he didn't expect anything out of me. That wasn't the worst part of it. I thought he was getting money from me to give to another woman, because sometimes he'd be going into my handbag in the middle of the night, and he'd take money out of it. Then he'd be gone. Maybe he'd come back later that night, or maybe he wouldn't come back until the next day or two days later. It scared me.

  "Well, anyway, one night, he was layin' next to me, sleepin'. I should've suspected it, because I came up in Harlem, and I knew what was goin' on. I don't know, I guess I was so frightened about this other woman thing that I couldn't see the symptoms. He seemed to be almost losin' his nature. He would . . . you know how if a guy wakes up in the morning, and he's a young guy, he usually has a piss hard-on. But he'd be as soft as a rag all the time. I was wonderin' if it was just that he was gettin' tired of me. Maybe I was making him lose his nature, because he didn't want to be bothered with me any more. I just got so afraid of this . . . and I should've known. I should have known what it was.

  *'Anyway, he didn't eat. I became more afraid of this thing. I became afraid to ask him, 'What's wrong?' I wanted to say, 'What's wrong, Mel?' But I was scared. I was so afraid he might say, 'Look, I'm tired of you, and I got to get out of this thing.' I thought it was gonna come one day anyway. He was gonna tell me, 'Look, I got another woman, and I got to leave you.' But it was gettin' to be too much for me to keep quiet about, because when he woke up at night and started leavin', I would be awake most of these times. I'd be tellin' myself for a week, 'Look, I'm gonna ask him the next time.'

  "But still I was scared; I was scared of losin' him. I'd already lost him in that love thing. He always was quiet, but now he was more quiet than he'd ever been. It seemed as

  though he didn't want to kiss me. If I played with him in the bed, he'd get mad, that sort of thing.

  "One night, he got up, and I asked him. I said, 'Mel, turn on the light, please.' He had been nervous. I hadn't been sleepin' for over a week, because I use to lay awake just wonderin'. Is he gonna go out tonight, or maybe he's gonna come back to me? Our sex life had been dwindling away to almost nothin'. I thought. Maybe tonight, maybe tonight he'll play with me. I kept hopin'.

  "When he got up to dress, that night I asked him to turn on the light, he was real nervous. He just said, 'Bitch, go on to sleep, and don't bother me!'

  "I was kind of hurt, because he'd never said anything like this to me. We were real sweet to each other. This was crazy. I could've never imagined him saying it to me. When he said that, I had to jump up and turn on the light. I had my scream all ready. I told you what I was gonna tell him about the other woman, and all that sort of thing.

  "When I opened my mouth, I could taste the tears, and I heard myself tatkin' to him in a real soft voice. I was sayin', 'Mel, please tell me where you goin'."

  "He said, 'Look, baby, go on to sleep, and don't worry about me. Try and forget me. Imagine that I never even lived, 'cause I think my life is ruined. I don't want to ruin yours. I'm goin' out tonight, and I'm not comin' back.'

  "I said, 'Where're you goin'? Tell me something.'

  "He got mad. He'd been gettin' irritable for a long time. He just snapped at me; he said, 'Shit, if you got to know, I'm goin' to my first love.'

  "When he told me this, it stunned me. I felt as though I'd been hit in the face by a prizefighter. Everything was quiet. I was stunned, and I think he knew it. It was as though lightning had struck the house, and now all was silent.

  "Then I said, 'Mel, I thought I was your first love.'

  "He just said, 'No, baby, you're not my^fitst love.' He said, 'Stufi" is my first love.'

  "I said, 'What do you mean "stuff"?'

  "He said, 'You've heard of shit, haven't you, duji, heroin?*

  "I wanted to cry. I wanted to cry. But it didn't make sense, because I was already cryin'. I didn't know what to do. I just said, 'Oh, no, no, it couldn't be.' He left."

  When Sugar-said that bit about "he left," she tried to smile. I felt uncomfortable. Then she said, "It seemed that

  I stood there in that dark room for hours with the word 'stuff' echoing in my mind. I knew but one thing in life for a whole week. All I knew was that I had to learn about stuff. I had to find out what it was that could make the man I loved love it more than he loved me. Well, Claude, baby, you can see I found out. Yeah ... I really found out."

  Ruby brought in the works; she had a makeshift syringe with a spike on the end of it. She was holding it upside down. I'd given her the five dollars when I first came in. She handed the spike to Sugar, and Sugar paid it no mind. She just rolled down her stocking and pinched her thigh. I saw the needle marks on her thigh.

  She looked at me and smiled. She said, "Do you want to hold the flesh for me?"

  I said, "Thanks for the offer," and smiled, but I just didn't want to help her get high. I watched as she hit herself with the spike, and I thought about the fact that just
a few short years ago, to put my hand on those thighs would have given me more pleasure than anything else I was doing back in those days. I could never have imagined myself saying no to an offer to feel her thighs. Those were the same thighs that had all the needle marks on them.

  I watched the syringe as the blood came up into the drugs that seemed like dirty water. It just filled up with blood, and as the blood and the drugs started its way down into the needle, I thought. This is our childhood. Our childhood had been covered with blood, as the drugs had been. Covered with blood and gone down into somewhere. I wondered where.

  I wanted to say, "Sugar, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for the time I didn't kiss you at the bus. I'm sorry for not telling people that you were my girl friend. I'm sorry for never telling you that I loved you and for never asking you to be my girl friend." I wanted to say, "I'm sorry for everything. I'm sorry for ever having hesitated to kiss you because of your buckteeth."

  Sugar took the spike out, and she patted herself. She started scratching her arm and went into a nod. "That's some nice stuff," she said.

  I got up, went over to where Sugar was sitting, bent over, and kissed her. She smiled and went into another nod.

  That was the last time I saw her, nodding and climbing up on the duji cloud.

  When I went uptown now, I always had a definite purpose. I was going up to see Pimp to try and get him interested in something. I would take him out to the Flatbush section of Brooklyn and to Brighton, and we'd just walk. We'd walk around in Washington Heights. Sometimes on Sundays I liked to take him bike riding with me and show him other parts of New York City, hoping he could really get to see something outside of Harlem.

  I was kind of worried about him now, because he was at that age, fifteen, where it was time to start doing something to be older and get into street life and do the things that the other cats out there were doing.

  He knew that I was playing piano. I'd bring him down to my place sometimes and play for him. I'd take him to joints like the Five Spot. I showed him Connie's. He kind of liked it, but it didn't really impress him. He'd say things like, "Yeah, I'm gonna learn to blow a trumpet; I like a trumpet," but I knew that this wasn't really his thing.