by Wayne, Jimmy
Rather than baptizing converts in the church, Preacher Davis encouraged a public commitment of getting baptized in a cold, muddy river nearby the church. The day I joined the congregation to be baptized could have been a scene right out of the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?
The women of the church gathered in “holy” garb, apparently having worked hard to avoid looking even somewhat attractive. With long hair and no makeup, wearing long, bland dresses, the women stood on the riverbank along with the short-haired men, most of whom wore polyester pants, suspenders, and white button-up shirts with the sleeves rolled up. Some of the men and women were singing; some had their arms raised above their heads, their eyes closed and lips quivering, mumbling, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.” Others were speaking in tongues. The uninitiated looked on in wide-eyed wonder.
My eyes remained open the entire time, looking at Preacher Davis, his red face appearing even brighter against the background of the blue sky and the white clouds above him, as he dunked one person after another beneath the brown water, retrieving each person after a few seconds or whenever he felt sure the convert was ready to shout “Hallelujah!” or “Praise the Lord!” which each person did upon being pulled up out of the water. When my turn came, I slowly stepped into the cold, dark water, glancing over toward the bank every few seconds to see if Mama was watching me. She was, as she sang and swayed. I finally reached the reverend and presented myself for baptism.
“Have you been born again, son?” he asked loudly enough for all the folks on the riverbank to hear.
“Yes, sir,” I answered hoarsely, getting more nervous by the second. I didn’t know what being born again meant, but fortunately I came up with the right answer.
Preacher Davis covered my nose and mouth with his left hand, cradled the back of my head with his right hand, and began to pray.
A million thoughts raced through my mind as the preacher prayed. I hope he doesn’t drown me, I fretted. He sure looks different without his church suit on. I don’t like his hand on my mouth. Why is his face so red? Trying not to worry, I imagined, Maybe his face is sunburned from all the fire and brimstone he preaches about.
Preacher Davis finished praying, loudly shouted, “Amen!” then pinched my nose, and slung me backward, lowering me down into the muddy river. As soon as the cold walls of water caved in on me, I panicked and fought loose from his grasp.
I sprang up out of that river, coughing, sputtering, and hacking, with my arms flapping and flailing around in every direction. I wiped my eyes and searched for the trail that led up to the top of the bank where I’d last seen Mama. I staggered out of the river like a drunk boy, thinking that possibly Mama might come running to my rescue. But when my eyes cleared, I saw the look on Mama’s face.
Oh no! I knew that disappointed demeanor all too well, and I could guess what she was thinking. It was my fault the baptism “went to hell,” and I was going to pay dearly for that when we got home. I had embarrassed her in front of the church folk, so I knew I was in trouble.
But at least I had been partially baptized. For my Methodist, Anglican, Catholic, and other more liturgical groups, I was definitely “sprinkled.” And for my Baptist, Church of Christ, and Pentecostal brethren, I was at least partially immersed for a fraction of a second. Despite the amount of water, I’ve heard that God looks on the intent of the heart. And even in that muddy river, my intentions were pure.
But I knew I was going to have a hard time convincing Mama of that. When she was off the booze, Mama was the epitome of the uneducated Bible-thumper. Every current event was a sign of the times, and we were all going to burn in the lake of fire. She loved the church and believed anything the preacher said. I’m certain she would have grabbed the tail of a copperhead if the preacher had told her to do so. The only thing Mama wouldn’t do for the church was permanently change.
Twelve
GRANDPA’S PLACE
PATRICIA AND I CAME HOME FROM SCHOOL ONE DAY AND, to our shock, found our trailer wrapped in police tape. We weren’t allowed to go inside.
Mama had stabbed Ronnie Brown in the chest and was in jail. Mama had met Ronnie in Reed’s Trailer Park, where we were now living. Ronnie was a good man and a nice man—maybe too nice for Mama’s crowd. When another tough guy showed up and started coming around our house, Mama soon grew sweet on him. Her new flame started picking on Ronnie. A fight ensued, and somehow in the middle of it, Mama stabbed Ronnie, apparently trying to kill him with a large steak fork. Somebody called the police, and the authorities hauled Mama off to jail again. Although Ronnie lived, Mama’s arrest was a violation of her probation. Eventually she was convicted and sent to a state prison in Raleigh, North Carolina.
The Department of Social Services (DSS) didn’t take us back to the county-run receiving home. Instead, they escorted Patricia and me to the far end of the trailer park to trailer number 34—Grandpa’s place. Grandpa had moved to Reed’s Trailer Park, so the DSS asked Grandpa if we could stay with him for a while.
Most kids have fond memories of spending time with their grandparents. I don’t. When I recall visits to Grandpa’s place, it makes me retch. Grandpa was a mean, grouchy, nasty man, so we rarely stayed with him for long. But this time we were moving in.
MOVING IN WITH GRANDPA WAS MUCH WORSE THAN LIVING in any foster home. Grandpa constantly reminded Patricia and me that he didn’t ask the DSS to bring us there. He wanted us there about as much as he had wanted a litter of kittens he had put inside a potato sack along with a brick. Then he tossed the sack into a deep creek.
Truth is, Grandpa didn’t care about much of anything except smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and watching Rawhide on his small television. He especially couldn’t have cared less when Mama had someone dump Patricia and me at his place from time to time, whenever she had to go back to the mental hospital or when the law came and took her off to jail. Sometimes Mama simply took us to Grandpa’s and told us to get out of the car before she romped away on another escapade. But this time was different. We had no idea when Mama might return. Attempted murder was a serious charge.
Grandpa got up every morning before the sun rose. Weekends were no exception. Grandpa always said you could get more accomplished before the sun came up than any good-for-nothing-late-riser could accomplish all day. Of course, Grandpa hadn’t really tested that theory; Grandpa never had a job or a hobby.
Grandpa didn’t teach me how to fish. We never worked on a bike together or talked about school or anything else that grandfathers and grandsons ordinarily do. The only time he voluntarily spoke to me was to yell something like, “Ya darn punk, go outside!” or “Git outta the way, boy!”
We had one real conversation in my entire life. I asked Grandpa about the scars on his neck and how they got there.
He replied, “I was sitting in my car at a drive-in theater. Someone walked up beside the car, reached in through the window, and cut me with a knife.” That was it. The entire explanation.
I didn’t believe him, but then again, Grandpa was an old-school entrepreneur from the mountains of North Carolina, where they hauled the sunshine in and the moonshine out. He sold moonshine and carried a gun in his right front pants pocket. There was no telling how those scars got there. A part of me wished it had been Grandma who had put them there.
My mom said Grandpa treated Grandma really badly. I never met her, but I heard my grandmother was “a good, God-fearing lady,” as some might put it. Grandma passed away when Mama was seventeen years old, before I was born. People who knew her back then said that Mama was never quite the same after her mom died.
I DO CREDIT GRANDPA FOR ONE THING—HE TAUGHT ME how to earn money at a young age. His teaching method was simple. When he lived near the golf course, he’d say, “I’m not givin’ ya nothin’. Git yourself out there on the golf course and hunt golf balls outta the weeds and bushes and sell ’em to the golfers.”
I spent every summer day searching for golf balls in the creeks and brush that surrounded the golf cou
rse. The bushes scratched my arms and legs, and there was always the danger of deadly copperhead snakes, but I plunged right into the weeds and ponds, searching for those balls. One by one, as I found them, I’d wipe them off and toss them into a tube sock. I filled an entire tube sock with golf balls and tied the sock to my belt loop. Then I’d do the same with another sock. I’d wait quietly at the greens with tube socks filled with golf balls attached to both sides of my shorts. I must have been a funny sight, but I didn’t care. I was in business.
Once the last golfer putted, I yelled, “Wanna buy some golf balls? Quarter apiece!”
Almost always, the golfers replied, “Let’s see what you have.”
I untied the socks and shook all the golf balls out on the ground alongside the green. The golfers searched through them, picking out a few they liked.
Sometimes a golfer might ask, “Will you take one dollar for five balls?”
“Sure thing, mister.”
On a good day, a golfer might make a special offer. “I’ll give you ten dollars for all the golf balls you have there.”
Sold.
Sure, he was ripping me off, but ten dollars was a lot of money to a nine-year-old boy.
MANY TIMES MAMA SIMPLY LEFT PATRICIA AND ME ALONE with Grandpa for several days or weeks at a time. She gave us no warning or advance instructions. If she wasn’t in the mental hospital or jail, we had no idea where she was, and sometimes it could be quite frightening.
For instance, I woke up on my tenth birthday, and Mama was gone. I wasn’t sure where Grandpa was either, and that concerned me because from the back of the trailer, I smelled smoke. By now I had lived around trailer parks enough to know that most of the mobile homes were tinderboxes, tragedies waiting to happen. If the trailer was on fire, I didn’t have much time to get Patricia and me out of there.
I slid the bedroom door open, ran through Grandpa’s bedroom area, and slid the door open between his bedroom and the kitchen, looking for Patricia. Then I saw her; she was standing in the kitchen, bawling.
She had gotten up early and had tried to bake a birthday cake for me, but she had burned it, smoking up the whole trailer. I felt so sorry for her that I told her I liked burned cake.
“No, you don’t!” she said, tears streaming down her face.
“Sure I do. Watch, Patricia,” I said. “Look; it’s good. I’ll eat it.” I laid some canned pineapple slices on top of the charcoaled cake and cut a piece.
“See, I love burned cake,” I told her, as I stuffed the piece of blackened cake into my mouth. It nearly gagged me, but I ate the whole thing. And Patricia stopped crying.
It really is the thought that counts.
AFTER MAMA WENT TO PRISON FOR STABBING RONNIE, Patricia and I stayed with Grandpa for a few months before we moved in with Sarah Moses, a childhood friend of Mama’s. Growing up, Mama and Sarah often got together and baked homemade biscuits, fried fat-back, and fried chicken, along with all sorts of other soul foods. Sarah’s old house always smelled like cooked grease, but it was better than Grandpa’s. Plus, we were accustomed to staying at Sarah’s.
Even when Mama wasn’t in jail, she sometimes left us at Sarah’s for a few days, weeks, or even months at a time. Truth is, we spent much of our childhood at Sarah’s. Her house was a second home to us, and during my preteen years, Sarah was as real a mom to us as Mama—often, more so. Sarah was good to us, especially considering that she had three children of her own: Lawrence, the youngest; little Sara, who was disabled; and John Wayne, who was meaner than the devil himself. Making matters worse, Sarah’s husband, Bill, was an alcoholic and unwilling to work.
When we realized that Mama wouldn’t be coming home anytime soon, I stayed at Sarah’s a few months before Sarah and Grandpa made me move back to Grandpa’s. Patricia remained at Sarah and Bill’s. Sarah needed Patricia’s help around the house since Sarah had to go to work to support the family. Patricia washed all the clothes, cut the grass, and cleaned the kitchen while Sarah walked to and from work in the textile mill. Meanwhile, most days, Bill laid passed out drunk on the bed.
I worried a lot about Patricia that summer.
Thirteen
A LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS
SURPRISE, SURPRISE! PATRICIA AND I HAD ANOTHER BROTHER and sister, Charlie and Rhonda. They were five and six years older than me, born to Mama by a different biological father than ours. We didn’t know Charlie or Rhonda until one day they showed up at the trailer park and Charlie said, “Your mama is our mama too.”
That kind of news will rock your world.
Mama confirmed the truth of Charlie’s statement, that we had older siblings even though they didn’t live with us. Charlie showed up again when I was around eleven. Mama told him that he couldn’t stay with us unless he provided some food. Charlie left in a huff but returned a few hours later, carrying several bags of groceries he had stolen. Mama let him in, and he stashed the stolen food in our refrigerator. Just as Charlie finished unloading the food, Mama screamed at him, “Get out of here. Leave now, or I’m callin’ the cops!”
Charlie bolted out the front door, but I could still hear him yelling back at Mama. “You tricked me!” he railed at her as he fled.
Mama didn’t answer. She simply slammed the door.
I didn’t see Charlie again until Mama went to jail for stabbing Ronnie Brown. Charlie showed up at the trailer park with a gorgeous new girlfriend on his arm and a gun in his hand as he strutted around the trailer park with his chest bowed out like a rooster. For some reason, I was impressed by him. I guess because he stood up for himself.
By then his arms and neck were covered in tattoos. He had everything from a swastika to the words White Power! inked onto his skin.
To say that Charlie was a racist would be a gross understatement. One day Charlie handed me two business cards soliciting new members for the Ku Klux Klan. The information on the cards included a sketch of a hooded KKK member and the message, “Join the KKK and fight for race and nation.” An address and a phone number to call for free information about joining were boldly printed on the cards.
I didn’t know much about the Ku Klux Klan or its activities, but Charlie told me Klan members did not like black people. I thought that was cool, especially since my sixth grade teacher at school, Ms. Friday, was an African-American.
“I’m going to take these cards to school,” I told Charlie, “and flash them to let Ms. Friday know she better not mess with me again.”
Charlie nodded approvingly, and I could tell he thought I had a great future as a racist.
CRYSTAL FRIDAY WAS ONE OF NINE CHILDREN IN A CHRISTIAN family with traditional values and a strong work ethic. She had been teaching professionally for about six years when I showed up in her sixth grade class at Bessemer City Central Elementary School. A rotund woman with a vibrant personality, she was one of very few black teachers in a predominantly white school system in North Carolina, but she kept a firm grip on the class. She strengthened that grip with the help of a leather strap she used for corporal punishment when anyone in our class stepped out of line—which I did often.
I acted out horribly, doing everything I could to make Ms. Friday mad. At one point I received more than sixty citations denoting poor behavior.
Although she was a strict disciplinarian and didn’t take any guff from anyone, Ms. Friday was an angel. She loved her students and called us her “kids.” She often made Rice Krispies treats and brought them to school for us.
Despite Ms. Friday’s kindness, I was determined to make her miserable. I gave her dirty looks and made nasty comments about her in class. Since Mama was in prison and I was living at either Grandpa’s or Sarah’s, I often showed up late for school, conveniently just before lunch. I did everything Ms. Friday told us not to do. If I knew something might get on her nerves, I did it intentionally.
Ms. Friday kept the leather barber strap in her desk—the sort of strap barbers used to sharpen their razors. She whipped me with that strap at least once
a week. I never sensed that she took any joy from disciplining me; in fact, I knew she was trying to help me, and she disliked paddling me almost as much as I disliked her doing it. Ms. Friday didn’t know Mama was in prison; she had never met anyone else in my family, but she recognized that I had no discipline at home. As she liberally applied the leather strap to my behind, she said, “You’re not getting this at home, so you’re gonna get it here.”
It made no sense that I should constantly attempt to irritate Ms. Friday. But I did. Sometimes I’d sneak up to the front of the classroom when she wasn’t looking and erase something she had written on the chalkboard.
Whenever she caught me being mischievous or disobedient, Ms. Friday sent me out to the hallway to wait for her. She corralled another teacher as a witness before Ms. Friday reminded me of what I had done wrong. “Okay, bend over and touch your toes.”
Ms. Friday grabbed my belt loop, pulled it up, and then reared back and hit me three times with that leather strap. She hit so hard the force made my face hurt!
When I returned to the classroom, I wore an expression on my face daring any kid in that room to think it was funny that I had just been whipped. None of my classmates even looked at me after a whipping.
I tried everything to make Ms. Friday mad, and that included flashing the Ku Klux Klan business cards that Charlie had given me and writing derogatory comments, such as “Save the land, join the Klan,” on the back of my T-shirts with magic markers.
“Jimmy, why is that on your shirt?” Ms. Friday asked me.
“It’s a new club I’ve joined.”
“Do you know what that means or what the Klan does?”
“We just get together to talk.”
“Well, Jimmy, whether you realize it or not, that is offensive to me and to many other people.”
As much as I tried to agitate Ms. Friday, deep down I really loved her, and it hurt my heart to think that I had insulted her. She noticed my pained expression and said, “I want you to go to the restroom and turn your shirt inside out. You can wear it like that the remainder of the school day.”