by Claude Brown
Once I learned how to get by, the Youth House became one of the nicest places I had ever been. I really liked it there. I became a member of the Council on my floor. Toto was a member too, and we both were getting by real good. The people in the Youth House trusted the Council members more than they did the rest of the boys. So Toto and I could steal a lot of things and nobody would even think we did it. Sometimes when we took something and thought somebody might find out, we would bully some punky guy and make him say that he did it. And if things really got bad, like everybody on the floor losing play privileges for a while, we would take whatever we stole and put it in somebody else’s room. Then when the searching started, either me or Toto would find it, and the person whose room we found it in would get in trouble. As time went on, the floor supervisor started getting wise to us, but this didn’t mean that we had to stop. We just had to find a new way to do what we wanted to do, and we always found one. I was getting by real good, and I didn’t care if I never left the Youth House.
I was learning to shoot pool real good. Before I came to the Youth House, I never had a chance to learn. I wasn’t big enough to go in the poolroom on 145th Street. Mama came to visit me every Saturday or Sunday, so it was just like being out on the street, only better, because I could do everything I wanted to do—steal, fight, curse, play, and nobody could take me and put me anywhere. I was already in the only place they could put me. I had found a way to get away with everything I wanted to do. When I got out, I was going to tell Knoxie and Bucky and everybody what a good time you could have in the Youth House. And I was going to find Danny and tell him that I had found out how to do all the things we wanted to do and get away with it. The only thing you had to do was go to the Youth House first, then you didn’t have to worry about anything after that.
Around Christmas time, Toto started saying that I was changing and that he wasn’t going to hang out with me any more when we got out of the Youth House. He said that I was bullying everybody and that sooner or later somebody was going to kick my ass. So I got mad and kicked his. Before that time, I had never been in a fight with Toto; but I always knew I could beat him, and he knew it too, so there was nothing for us to fight about. We wouldn’t have had that fight if I hadn’t said something about his mother. He had to fight after that, because a guy who won’t fight when somebody talks about his mother is the worst kind of punk.
Toto was right in what he said. I guess that’s why I got mad. Just about everybody on the third floor of the Youth House was scared of me, and I liked it. This was the first time I had ever been anyplace where nearly everybody was scared of me, and before I knew anything, I was liking it. And I didn’t care what anybody said or how right what they were saying was. I was having more fun than I’d ever had in my whole life. I knew I was doing things to people that I never would have done out on the street, but I didn’t care. It didn’t make sense to be in the Youth House if you were only going to do the things you did out on the street.
One Sunday, Mama and Dad came to visit me, and while we was sitting in the visiting room talking, a boy came over to us with his mother, pointed at me, and said, “He’s the one who’s always hittin’ on me.” I jumped up, swung at him, and missed, and while Dad was holding me, I called him a lying faggot. Dad slapped me in the mouth. It didn’t hurt much, but I got mad and I cried. I wanted to kill him for hitting me in front of all those people—and in front of some of the guys I was bullying too.
I said to myself, That’s all right, ‘cause when I git big enough to kill him, I’ll jis have one more thing to kill him for. So I stopped crying. Dad was going to make me kill him. Sometimes I was only going to kick his ass real good when I got big, but then he would do something like that, and I would start planning to kill him again.
Mama was looking scared about something, and she said, “Boy, where you heard that word at?”
I knew what word she was talking about, but still I said, “What word?”
Mama said, “That word you called that little white boy; that’s what word.”
“Oh, you mean ‘liar’?”
Dad slapped me and promised to beat my ass right there in that visiting room if I kept on playing dumb. So I told Mama that everybody called him that.
“Do everybody know what it means?” Mama asked me.
I thought I saw a way out with this question. So I said, “Yeah, it means he can’t fight and lets everybody pick on him. That’s what it means.”
Dad said, “Oh,” and started to say something else, but Mama beat him to it, like most of the time.
“What does everybody pick on him for?”
I said, “ ‘Cause he won’t fight, that’s why. Anyway, I don’t pick on him. He was lyin’ when he said that.”
Mama said, “Look, nigger, you know that boy didn’t bring his mother over here and point you out just to tell lies on you.” Mama looked over me and started talking to Dad.
After Dad had slapped me, Mama went over and talked to the other boy’s mother. Mama came back and told Dad that the white lady had said that her son was a meek boy and wasn’t “aggressive or some-thin’ another like that.” Mama couldn’t understand white people too well anyway, and when they used those big words she couldn’t understand them at all.
Mama could understand Jewish people pretty well because she had worked for them for years. That’s how she could tell if a white person was Jewish or not, I guess, by whether or not she could understand them.
Dad said, “Maybe the little boy is got girlish ways, and if he is, ain’t nothin’ nobody can do about it, especially if he won’t fight.”
Tears started sneaking down Mama’s face. The first tear stopped for a little while on the rough spot on her cheek, then it went on down and stopped between her lips, and her lipstick started shining. I didn’t watch it any more. Dad got up and went over on the other side of Mama and put his arm around her. I reached into the bag of fruit that Mama and Dad had brought me, took out a pear, and started eating it; I liked pears. Dad started telling Mama that it wasn’t so bad, since I was only ten years old; and, anyway, it wasn’t as if I was the one who couldn’t fight. I had a feeling that Dad was only going to make Mama cry louder and more, because he never knew what to say to her.
And that was just what happened. Mama started crying more and saying, “He’ll be eleven years old soon, and he gittin’ into that shit already.”
Dad said, “Can’t nothin’ real bad happen before he gits thirteen or fourteen.”
“Lord knows I want that boy to be around some girls when he git that age.”
And Dad said, “No, Sugar, he’ll be home then if he ever learn to stay outta trouble.”
Mama just kept on crying, and Dad couldn’t do anything about it. I could have told Dad what to say to make Mama stop crying. I could even have told him something to tell her to make her smile. It would have been a lie, but it would have made Mama feel real good. But I didn’t say anything. It wasn’t my place to say anything. And Dad kept on holding her and saying stupid things to her and Mama kept on crying and I kept on eating the pear.
I didn’t know it then, but at the Youth House I met a lot of guys I was going to see again and live with again in a lot of places, white guys, Spanish guys, colored guys, all kinds of guys. The Youth House had more guys in it than Bellevue did, and it didn’t have any girls. Some of the guys in the Youth House were a little crazy, but it was only when somebody made them mad, not that real crazy kind of crazy or the all-the-time kind of crazy like the guys in Bellevue. Most of the guys in the Youth House were all right; some of them just couldn’t fight. But even the ones who couldn’t fight were going to be with me again in other places and for more time than in the Youth House. Some of the guys I didn’t like there I was going to like someplace else, and some other time we were going to be friends and fight for each other.
On January 5, Toto and I went to court, and when the mean queen said she was going to place me in some kind of school for boys, it didn’t bo
ther me. I don’t know why, but I just didn’t care. Then she said she was going to send me home for a while first, till they had room for me. She was talking to Mama, and I could hear her, but I couldn’t understand what the mean queen was saying. I knew it wasn’t anything bad—Mama didn’t look like she was about to cry like she did when the queen sent me to the Youth House. I kept watching Mama, and Mama kept looking up at the queen from the bottom of her eyes and nodding her head faster and faster to let the queen know that she understood her. It seemed like Mama was trying to make that mean lady judge stop talking and let us leave before the queen changed her mind and sent me back to the Youth House.
Mrs. Jones, Toto’s mother, was standing right next to Toto and me. And Toto was watching her and trying to look pitiful, just like I was. Mama and Mrs. Jones sure did look crazy with their heads going up and down faster and faster as they peeped up at the mean queen from the bottom of their eyes and tried to look as if they knew what she was saying to them. All I knew was that I was supposed to look sorry for what I had done. Toto knew this too, so we were both looking real sorry while our mothers nodded their heads. All the time, I was wishing that I had gotten caught with somebody else, because Toto was too good at looking pitiful. He was so good that he even made me feel sorry for him. After a while, I stopped trying to look sorry and just tried to look like Toto. I sure was glad that Bulldog wasn’t there, because he could look more pitiful than anybody I knew without even trying. When he started looking pitiful, he might have made the mean queen think that Toto and I were laughing. Mama said that they had sent Bulldog to Bellevue from the Children’s Center and that he was still there.
All the head nodding stopped, and Mama and Mrs. Jones were thanking the mean queen. On the way home, we walked over to Lexington Avenue, and Mama bought me a hot dog and a glass of soda. It was kind of good being outside in the street again. Mrs. Jones bought a hot dog for Toto too, and then Mama and Mrs. Jones started telling us that we were in a lot of trouble and that we were going to be sent away to a school for bad boys until we were twenty-one. Mama asked me if I was ever going to be good or if I was just planning to spend my whole life in jail, die in the electric chair, or let somebody kill me for stealing something.
I was glad to be with Mama, and I wanted to be nice to her because she had tried so hard to get the mean queen to send me home. So I told Mama the truth. I told her that I didn’t know what was going to happen and that there was nothing I could do about it anyway.
Mama got mad and said, “You little dumb nigger, didn’ you hear that lady judge say she gonna send you away someplace to a school?” Mama looked down the counter and saw a white man drinking a cup of coffee. Then she looked down at the floor real fast. She wanted to hit me, but she remembered I had just gotten out of the Youth House, and she didn’t want to start hitting me already. Mama looked at the floor for a little while, and I knew she was ashamed that the white man had heard her call me a nigger.
Then I said, “Mama, that’s nothing, ‘cause I don’ care, and it ain’t none-a his business anyway.”
Mama said, “Boy, hurry up and eat that hot dog.” The next thing Mama said was something about hoping that I didn’t think that lady judge was talking about a real school. Mama said that the judge was sending me to a reform school and that I might get out when I was eighteen if I was real good till that time. Mama asked me again if I understood that. I told her that there was nothing I could do about it now and that maybe I would die before I went, so it didn’t make sense for me to worry about it. And I told Mama that Grandpa use to always say that. Mama said that Grandpa was older than me and that Grandpa had never stolen anything from anybody—or at least he had never gotten caught. I said I never thought that I was older than Grandpa and that I didn’t get caught all the time either. Mama got mad, and I kept on eating the hot dog. I liked Mama a whole lot, but there were things that she just couldn’t understand, and she wouldn’t listen to me when I tried to explain them to her.
When I got back home I promised Dad and Mama that I wasn’t going to hang out with Toto any more, and I didn’t for two whole days. I even went to school for a week straight without playing hookey once. Then Knoxie started coming by my house early in the morning, and we would go up on the Hill instead of going to school. I just stopped going to school altogether, and nobody seemed to care about it. I had to leave the house every morning so Dad and Mama wouldn’t know I wasn’t going to school, but nobody sent any absence cards to my house, and the truant officer didn’t come around either. I didn’t know what was going on, but I liked it, whatever it was. Well, I liked it for a while anyway.
One day when I hadn’t been to school in a long time, Mama said, “So you ain’t been goin’ to school, huh? Okay, have your fun young man, ‘cause pretty soon you gonna be someplace where they’ll make you go to school.”
This was the kind of thing that was supposed to make Dad grab the ironing cord and me at the same time, but Dad didn’t do a thing, and I got scared. Not knowing what I was scared of and not knowing that it was too late to “git by,” I started going to school almost every day.
Even though I was going to school a whole lot, I still had time to get into trouble with Knoxie, Bucky, and Toto. They all knew I was going to a place called Warwick. All of us had been hearing about Warwick for years. We kind of knew that we would all get there one day. The judge said I was going to a place called Wiltwyck, but Bubba Williams said that there was no place by that name and that the judge just didn’t know how to say Warwick. Bubba knew everything. He knew almost as much as God, so I had to be going to Warwick, because Butch and Kid were there, and it made me feel as old as them to be going there too. Toto was mad because he wasn’t going. I kept telling him that he was too young, but not to worry, because I would probably still be there when he got old enough. This made him real mad, because we were the same age. But I kept telling him I was older than he was.
Mama said I would have to stay up there till I was twenty-one if I was bad; but if I was real good, I could come home when I was eighteen. When I told Bubba about it, he said I would probably come home when I was fourteen. He thought I was twelve then. So I was telling everybody who didn’t know any better that I was going to Warwick for two years. Knoxie was the only one I knew who didn’t think it was so great—he thought there wouldn’t be anything up there to steal. He kept trying to talk me out of going. I knew that Knoxie was just worrying about losing a stealing and fighting partner. But just to shut him up, I promised to duck out on Mama the day I was supposed to go away. Knoxie said that he would stay home from school and that I could come around his house and stay as long as I wanted to.
I was supposed to go away about a week after my birthday. I was going to be eleven years old, but almost everybody thought I was going to be thirteen, since that’s what I told them. I wasn’t really lying about my age; I was just tired of not being older than anybody but Bulldog, who wasn’t even around any more. I was planning on having a real big birthday and going-away party on the Sunday after my birthday. I had started stealing things for the party and had invited everybody I knew about a month ahead of time.
Bucky was going to miss me a lot while I was away. I was his most important friend. Since food was the most important thing in the world to Bucky, I was always showing him where some food was and how to get it. When I was teaching Bucky how to stay out all night, he use to get hungry all the time and would do dumb things that might have gotten us caught just to get some food. When we would be looking for a store to break into, Bucky always wanted to break into a restaurant, a candy store, or a grocery store. It didn’t make sense to break into those kind of stores, because they didn’t have anything you could sell for some money. Anyway, if somebody got hungry, he could always go up to 155th Street to the Father Divine place and say “peace” to the people there and get all the food he could eat for just fifteen cents. If you were real quick with your hands, you only had to say “peace” and smile every time the lady look
ed at you. After I showed Bucky where the peace place was, he hardly ever went home. Sometimes I would see him in the street with a big old turkey leg. Other kids would ask him where he had gotten it, and he would just tell them, “Father gave it to me,” meaning Father Divine. Bucky was the only guy I knew who would go strutting down the street with a turkey leg in his hand and a pocketful of biscuits.
I guess everybody had something about them that was kind of crazy when it came to stealing or catting out. When I was on the cat, I knew that I was going to get caught sooner or later, but I just didn’t want to get caught before I had stolen a new suit. This was usually the first thing I would steal when I was going to cat out. A new suit would make anybody look respectable, and the cops wouldn’t bother you if you looked respectable. Butch had taught me that before I started catting out, and I never forgot it. If I had a new suit on when the cops brought me home, Mama and Dad respected me too. I didn’t mind not having money; as long as I had a new suit, it meant the same thing—that I could do okay out in the street. Bubba said that was how you could tell how slick a nigger was—by how well he did in the street. Butch said Mr. Jimmy, the hustler, was the slickest cat on Eighth Avenue. Mr. Jimmy knew how to “git by” in the street so well that he had never had a job since he left Alabama twenty years before. Mr. Jimmy changed cars every year, dressed up with shining shoes every day of the week, always had plenty of money, always had a pretty woman with him, and kept his hair slicked back.
I knew Mr. Jimmy from Dad’s Saturday night crap games. He used to be out on the avenue on Sunday morning with an orange crate with a piece of cardboard on it and three nutshells. Mr. Jimmy would hide a little pea under one of the nutshells and bet people that they couldn’t find the pea. I used to try to be on Eighth Avenue every Sunday morning just to watch Mr. Jimmy switch those shells around. He had some real quick hands. I watched a lot of people search for that pea, but I never saw anybody find it. That is, anybody but Bubba Williams, and that didn’t count, because Bubba was Mr. Jimmy’s hustling buddy. Bubba would always find the pea a few times, then he would go to the corner and watch for the cops while other people paid a whole lot of money to look for a pea they couldn’t find. Sometimes Mr. Jimmy had three cards out on the avenue, and people would be looking for a card that nobody could find. When I walked up to where Mr. Jimmy was, I would always say hello to him and he would say hello back to me, and it made me feel good, especially if some of my friends were with me. Yes, I guess Mr. Jimmy was the slickest cat on Eighth Avenue, just as Butch said, because nobody ever found that pea or that card, and Mr. Jimmy is still doing good out in the street.