Manchild in the Promised Land

by Claude Brown

  I’d take him to a movie or something like that. I’d take him downtown to the Village, and we’d hang out for a day, but I noticed something was missing. We didn’t talk about all the really intimate things that we used to talk about. He wouldn’t share his secrets with me any more, and this scared me, because I didn’t know how far he’d gone. I wanted to say, “Pimp, what happened to the day that you and I used to walk through the streets with our arms around each other’s shoulder ? We used to sleep with our arms around each other, and you used to cry to follow me when I went out of the house.” I wanted to say it, but it didn’t make sense, because I knew that day had gone.

  I gave my gun away when I moved out of Harlem. I felt free. This was one of the things that made me feel free, that I didn’t need a gun. I didn’t need any kind of protection, because I wasn’t afraid any more. I had been afraid in Harlem all my life. Even though I did things that people said were crazy—people who thought that I must not be afraid of anything—I was afraid of almost everything.

  Fear made me stop and think. I was able to see things differently. I had become convinced that two things weren’t for me: I wasn’t going to go to jail, and I wasn’t going to kill anybody. But I knew I couldn’t completely sever all ties with Harlem. My family was there, and just about all my life was there. I didn’t know anybody anywhere else. I didn’t know anybody in the Village. All I knew was that I had to get away.

  I was only seventeen when I moved downtown, but I felt much older. I felt as though I was a grown man, and I had to go out and make my own life. This was what moving was all about, growing up and going out on my own.

  Every time I came up to Harlem, it was a surprise, a frightening or disheartening surprise. If somebody hadn’t died from an O.D., somebody had gotten killed trying to get some drugs or something crazy like that.

  I remember once I came up to Harlem after I had been living down in the Village for about a year. I saw Turk, and he said, “Sonny, have you seen Knoxie around?”

  I said, “No, man.” I hadn’t seen Knoxie for years, not since before I went to Warwick. He had gone into the Army. I hadn’t seen him since the time he and Turk had had a fight on the corner of 145th Street for about two hours. That was about four or five years before.

  Turk said, “When you see him, man, you really gon be surprised.”

  I said, “Why, is he bigger, or is he into somethin’, is he into drugs?”

  “Yeah, man, he’s into a whole lot, but more than that, he’s changed, man. He’s changed a hell of a lot.”

  He smiled when he said it, so I said, “Yeah, like, I’m anxious to see the cat.”

  Turk said, “Look, man, he’ll be in the Hole tonight. Come by and see him. That’s where he deals stuff from.”

  That night, I went by the bar called the Hole and asked for Knoxie. The bartender said, “Yeah, he’s over there.”

  As I started over, a peculiar-looking character looked up from the bar and said, “Hey, Sonny, how you doin’, baby?” He said it in a very feminine voice. He threw his arms open wide to grab me and hug me. I didn’t have that much against faggots, but I was shook. This was Knoxie. I had heard years ago that he’d gone good boy, but I could never imagine Knoxie being a faggot. But here it was.

  He acted real happy to see me, but I felt a little uncomfortable. He said, “Come on, I want to buy you a drink.”

  I didn’t want anybody to think I was his man, but I said, “Yeah, okay.” We were friends, and it went past that feeling of not associating with faggots.

  I stood there and talked to him. I asked him what had happened. He said, “Nothin’ happened to me, baby; like, I’m happy. It got a lot of pressures off my back. I think I was cut out to walk queer street all my life, and I just found out recently, so I’m doin’ it.”

  Knoxie put his arm around my shoulder. I sort of pulled away. I did it automatically, and I felt bad about it after I’d done it. He said, “Sonny, are you mad at me, man, for the change I made?”

  “No, man, that’s your life, and anything, you know, anything you want to do with your life is all right with me.”

  “Do you feel the same about me?”

  “Yeah, we’re still all right.” Then I joked, “If I wanted to go party with some bitches, I’d never say ‘Come along, Knoxie.’”

  He laughed it off and said, “I’m glad, man, that you feel the way you do.” He told me a lot of stuff about how he thought I was one of the hippest cats around there and could understand a lot of things.

  I said, “Yeah, thanks.”

  Then we talked about the fight he’d had with Turk. He said he remembered it, that it was a good fight. I said, “I think Turk is kinda hurt behind that now.”

  He said that he’d seen him and they’d talked. He said that Turk took it big and was an all right cat. He understood things too. Turk had changed a lot since we were kids out there in the backyard bebopping.

  Turk had started fighting in the Air Force, and he was talking about turning pro when he came out. He was pretty good; I guess he was always pretty good with his hands. He was always cut out for that. It would be a funny thing, I told Knoxie, if one day Turk became champ. I said, “Look, man, you’re gonna have to change your way of life, of doin’ things. We couldn’t have Turk bein’ heavyweight champion of the world and having once fought a faggot for two hours. That sounds damn bad.”

  Knoxie laughed at it. We had a drink, and he asked me if I wanted some drugs. Knoxie had a piece, so he wasn’t worried about anybody trying to take the drugs from him. He said some cats had tried a couple of times. He’d been around for a while, out of the Army, and he had been dealing drugs downtown. He said some cats stopped him once, and he stabbed one of them. The word got out, and that was the only time he had ever had any trouble with junkies. It seemed as though most of the junkies thought a lot of him. If they came to him half a dollar short, sometimes a dollar short, Knoxie would let them ride with some drugs.

  Here he was, a faggot dealing drugs and wearing a raccoon coat. He used to wear the coat even in hot weather. It was June or July, and the weather was damn hot. And here was Knoxie standing up at the bar in his raccoon coat, while everybody else was in shirt sleeves. Nobody thought that Knoxie was crazy for wearing the raccoon coat or for being a faggot, because there were a whole lot of crazy people around Harlem, and there were a whole lot of faggots. Nobody thought anything was wrong with faggots. Faggots were an accepted part of life.

  One of the biggest thieves around there was a faggot, Broadway Rose. They tell me that Broadway used to rule Rikers Island every time he went over there. Cats used to say that if you had Broadway as your woman when you went over there, it worked in your favor. He would say, “That’s my man,” and nobody would mess with you.

  All the kids in the neighborhood knew Broadway. He used to take them to the candy store or ice-cream shop. He even had them calling him mother.

  I remember one time I was going up on the hill with Reno and Broadway was coming down. He stopped and started talking to Reno. He looked at me and said to Reno, “He’s cute. What’s his name?”

  Reno said, “That’s Sonny. He lives on the Avenue.”

  Broadway said, “Yeah, I’ve seen him around.” He put his arm around me and started talking, trying to play that girl role. He said, “Sonny, I’m gon put five dollars in my back pocket, and if you take it out real slow you can have it.”

  I looked at Reno as if to say, “What the hell is wrong with this faggot? Is he crazy or somethin’?”

  Reno kept hunching me, as if to say, “Go on, man, go on.”

  The whole thing was that I was supposed to put my hand in Broadway’s pocket and take some time getting the five dollars out and play with his ass. This faggot was about six foot four and big as a house. Since Reno kept hunching me to go on and do it and since he was a cat who knew what was going on, I thought, Shit, this is probably the best thing to do. He must know what he’s doin’.

  So I went on and got the f
ive dollars out kind of slow and thanked him … played the part like I dug him. I said, “Thanks, baby, maybe I’ll do you a favor one day.”

  Broadway said, “Maybe someday I’ll hold you to it.”

  I asked Reno afterward, “What was that all about, man? Why you gon tell me to play with some faggot’s ass?”

  He said, “This faggot is one of the best people you could ever know if you go to the Rock. Cats who’re suppose to be real killers on the outside, when they come in there—like, if Broadway’s there, he rules the Rock. A cat might think he’s a killer, and Broadway might walk up to him and say he digs him, like, ‘Look, you my man.’ And if the cat squawks or acts like he’s not gon play the game, he just punches him out, and that’s that. On the other hand, if a cat comes in there and Broadway likes him and thinks he might be able to get a play out of him now and then, he’ll tell everybody else, ‘Look, that’s my man, don’t fuck with him.’ They know this is law, because he runs the place.”

  He was big enough. Broadway must have been a good 270 pounds, a good six feet four. He used to walk sloppy and slow, but anybody who’s been in jail knows you can’t tell how good a cat is with his hands by the way he walks or carries himself out on the street—or even in jail, for that matter. You never know until you see him in action.

  The people in the neighborhood were accustomed to faggots. Faggots were no big thing, neither were studs. There were a lot of girls who just liked girls. Some started at a young age. I remember once my little sister asked my mother, “Mama, is that a lady or a man?” It was a stud.

  Mama just looked at her and said, “That’s a bull-dagger, baby.”

  It was just like somebody telling a child, “That’s a horse.” This was how the people accepted it in the community. Nobody could be shocked at people being faggots. Nobody thought there was anything so crazy about it. A lot of people, if their sons became faggots or their daughters became studs, were disappointed and hurt. At first you’d hear about people putting their sons out because they became faggots, and putting their daughters out because they started liking girls. But after a while, they always came back home. The family accepted it, the community accepted it, and everybody else accepted it. But, then, there was so much going on in the community. There were a lot of old women who just liked young girls. There were a lot of old men who just liked young boys. Just about everybody knew who was who and who was what, and they just accepted it.

  I never met any faggots in Harlem who were in love with anybody. With them, it was sex, and they always wanted to try this sex thing with anybody who was willing.

  There were a lot of regular whores around. Sometimes you’d be in a bar. Some chick would be sitting around. You might have sold her some drugs, like when I used to be around selling cocaine and pot. She’s turned her last trick, and she’s got some money. You sit at the bar with her. The place is closing, it’s time to go home. It might be a girl you have known for years. You might be good friends or good business associates, or you might have been in the same class at P.S. 90. She says, “You know somethin’? In all the time we’ve known each other, we’ve never been to bed.” It’s not really an offer, and it’s not really a passing comment. It’s more or less a challenge.

  Here’s a bitch saying to you, all of a sudden, “I want to find out what’s to you” … in bed. With the whores, especially if you’re friends, not good friends, but if you’ve known each other a long time, what she’s saying is, “Do you think you’re man enough to come share my bed tonight?” or “I want to try you out.”

  You have to go along with it. Some of the chicks you might really enjoy yourself with. You become a wealthy rat. You get yourself another hole to crawl into on nights when you don’t want to go home to an empty bed.

  But with faggots, I just couldn’t see this.

  I was going through all kinds of crazy things. Harlem and life were becoming pretty confusing to me. Even though I lived downtown and worked and went to school at night, Harlem was still my point of relating to life and events and putting them together, my point of reference. It was becoming confusing because everything was changing and everybody was changing. I started trying to find out what all this changing was about.

  First of all, I started looking into the junkies, the faggots, all this sort of stuff. It had been going on for a long time, and I wondered about the people. Most of the cats I knew who were junkies said they did it because they wanted to, but I knew they did it because they wanted to be down. It was a hip thing to do, to know about—to be nodding. Not only that, it seemed to me that the junkies were running from things. They were running from people and life. Nobody expected anything from you if you were a junkie. Nobody expected you to accomplish anything in school or any other area. It was a good way to run from it all. You could just say you were a junkie and you were through. You were suddenly relieved of any obligations. People just stopped expecting anything from you from then on. They just started praying for you.

  I couldn’t understand why people became faggots. Then I thought, Shit, somebody has to do it, and they just want to.

  Some girls wanted to become prostitutes. Some were prostitutes because they were strung out and had to support their habits. Some girls just liked selling cunt. Johnny D. used to say that prostitutes were cold bitches, that there was a difference between a prostitute and a whore. A whore could never be a prostitute. According to Johnny, the reason a whore couldn’t be a prostitute was that the first time somebody put some good dick to her, she’d be giving him money instead of making him pay for her body. To be a prostitute, a girl had to be kind of cold-natured and businesslike. There might have been something to this.

  It seemed that Carole had started going to Mrs. Rogers’ church. Mrs. Rogers was Danny Rogers’ mother. She had four sons, and they were all junkies and had sheets on them. She’d had a hell of a lot of trouble with the boys. According to Dad and Papa, my grandfather, this was the way the Lord was making her pay for becoming a preacher. They said the Lord had never called a woman to preach, and any woman who got up there and started calling herself a preacher was going against the way the Lord had made things and was going to have to suffer.

  Whatever the cause was, Mrs. Rogers was doing a whole lot of suffering. Danny and his brothers, Johnny, Dennis and George, had been fucking up right and left. Danny had gotten all shot up trying to stick up a liquor store to get some money for drugs. Johnny was doing something like seven years for trying to stick up a mail truck. These cats were some pretty good guys, and they had a lot on the ball, but they all got caught by the plague, all four of them.

  Carole was going so strong, I wanted to find out what had gotten into her, what was going on. One day, I just decided, “I’m gon go down there and check this thing out.” When I went around to the church, I saw June Rogers. It was the first time I’d seen June since she was a little girl. I hadn’t hung out with Danny in a long time, and when I used to hang out with Danny, June was in a Southern boarding school. When June had almost finished school, her parents had to take her out of the boarding school because they didn’t have the money any more. They had had to pay people off to drop charges against Danny and Dennis and Johnny and George, because these cats had been stealing to support their habits and had been messing with a lot of people. Mrs. Rogers was trying to keep them out of jail, and most of her money went to lawyers.

  June was a beautiful girl. She was like a walking dream. If you melted her, she would have been sweeter than honey.

  The first time I saw her, it turned my mind around. I knew I had to get to her. I had to make her mine. I sat there in church and listened to Mrs. Rogers talk all that godly stuff. I’d never paid too much attention to Mrs. Rogers after that time I came by her house after I’d gotten shot and she told me how lucky I was. She thought I should thank the Lord that He had put the bullet down there, because if the bullet had been just a little higher it would have hit my heart.

  I always thought Mrs. Rogers was a little crazy or
something. She was too involved in all that godly business for me to pay much attention to her. She might not have been gone, but I couldn’t listen to it. She was the minister, but I couldn’t listen to any of that “Word” she was talking about.

  I had just come down there to find out how I could show Carole that this was all a lot of bullshit and make her put it down. When I got there and saw June sitting there banging on a tambourine, it just took my mind away. I couldn’t think about anything. I forgot what I was there for. I went up to the collection plate and put in five dollars. She looked like a queen. She had long, jet-black hair. She had a candy coloring, like caramel or peanut brittle. She was tall and shapely. Lord, when I saw her, I wanted to get next to her so badly.…

  I couldn’t think of anything else for days after I went to that church, and I knew I was going to go back and back. I knew I couldn’t take her out anywhere, because Mrs. Rogers wouldn’t allow June and her younger sister, Deidre, to associate with boys. Deidre was about my age. June was about a year or two older. Deidre wasn’t much to look at. I don’t think too many boys would have minded her not associating with them.

  I went home and, since everybody was so religious, I prayed and prayed for the Lord to give me just one chance, one chance to get June Rogers down to my place. After a week or so, I got kind of impatient and saw that the Lord wasn’t going to answer my prayer. I was going to have to take some action myself if that prayer was to be answered.

  I started talking to Carole. Carole was really sold on this Holy Roller thing. She was saying that “everybody needs God in their life,” and that sort of business.

  I said, “Yeah, baby, it’s a lot to that, and I been thinkin’ about bringin’ God into my life.”

  Carole said, “Oh, Sonny Boy, I’m so glad!” and she told me that she had prayed for me time and time again. She’d prayed for the Lord to touch me and give me the message.