Manchild in the Promised Land

by Claude Brown

  “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. Bur 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 talkin’ 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 first love.’ He said, ‘Stuff 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.

  11

  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 joint
s 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.

  I knew he had problems now. He had that problem of staying home and taking all that stuff from Dad. Mama had told me that he had had a fight with Dad. He was fighting back now. He was declaring his independence. I couldn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to do when he started complaining about how Dad and Mama and Papa, my grandfather, were still in the woods and he was growing up. He was getting away from all that old down-home stuff, and he didn’t go for hearing it all the time around the house. I knew he was right, because I’d had the same feeling. You feel as though they’re trying to make something out of you that you couldn’t be and didn’t want to be if you could, as though they’re trying to raise you as a farm boy in New York, in Harlem.

  I knew he was right, but I couldn’t agree with him. I couldn’t say, “Yeah, man. You got to get outta there.” I wasn’t sure that he was ready to leave, and I didn’t have anyplace for him to go.

  He would come down to my place after he’d had a fight with Dad and stay for a night. I knew Mama was all upset, because she’d get on the phone and start calling until he got there. She’d be real upset every time he stayed out after twelve o’clock. She was afraid that he was going to run away. She’d had her troubles with me, and I guess she figured history was repeating itself. Mama had really been through something with me, and I knew this. She had not had any trouble out of Carole and Margie. She’d always said she hoped she wouldn’t have any grandsons, because if she had it all to do over again, she’d never have any boys.

  I knew she had one reason for saying that, but I didn’t want her to have another. I was trying to cool Pimp. I didn’t feel that this cat was really ready to make it out on his own. He’d been a good boy all his life, and good boys weren’t supposed to be pulling up and leaving home at fifteen.

  I had to stop him from coming down to my place, because he was liking it too much. He’d come down, I’d give him money to go to school, money to blow. It was better than being home, because he didn’t have anybody to answer to. I never asked him where he’d been or where he was going. He could stay out as late as he wanted to. Cats were always jamming at my place, all the young jazz musicians, the cats playing at the joints around where I lived. They’d be coming up all times of the night, getting high smoking pot and having jam sessions.

  There’d be all kinds of bitches up there. We’d be partying way into the wee hours. This was a hip life, the way he saw it, and he wanted to get in. But I knew he wasn’t ready for anything like this. It might have had a bad effect on him. The last thing I had to worry about was having my morals corrupted. But Pimp was younger, and he wasn’t ready for this thing, the way I saw it. I was afraid for him, so I had to pull a mean trick on him to stop him from coming.

  One night he came down, and he said he was tired of Mama and Dad and wanted me to look for a place for him. This was about twelve-thirty.

  I said, “Okay, man,” and pretended that I was serious about finding him a place. It was a cold night. I said, “Look, I only have one blanket.” I put him in the little room across from me, and he almost froze. The next morning, he was in a hurry to get out of there and get back uptown to his warm bed.

  I still didn’t think he was ready, and more than that, I just didn’t want him to hurt Mama as much as I had. I decided to go up there and talk to him, find out just what was going on. I could ask Mama about it, but she’d say, “That boy just thinks he’s grown; he’s gon fight his daddy, and he gon go outta here and stay as late as he wants.” Mama couldn’t understand Pimp any more than he could understand her.

  I tried to talk to her. I said, “Look, Mama, Pimp grew up here in New York City. He’s kind of different. He didn’t grow up on all that salt pork, collard greens, and old-time religion. You can’t make a chitterlin’ eater out of him now.”

  Mama said, “Now, look here, nigger, you ate a whole lot of chittcrlin’s yourself, and chitterlin’s wasn’t too good for you back there in the early forties when your daddy wasn’t doing too good on his job.”

  “Look, Mama, why don’t you listen sometime, just for a little while. I’m telling you your son’s got problems, Mama. It’s not problems down on the farm. He’s got problems here in New York City. And the only way he’s going to solve these problems is that you try and help him.”

  “Oh, boy, sometimes I don’t know what’s wrong with you. You gon get involved in all that psychology you’re always talkin’ about and go stone crazy.”

  “Yeah, Mama, forget it.” I just couldn’t talk to her.

  This day that I’d come up to talk was right after a big snowstorm. It was pretty cold; there was a lot of snow in the street. Traffic was moving at a snail’s pace, almost at a standstill. Mama was complaining about how cold it was.

  “Mama, why don’t you complain to the landlord about this?”

  “I called the office of the renting agency twice, and they said he wasn’t in. When I called the third time, I spoke to him, but he said that it wasn’t any of his problem, and I’d have to fix it up myself. I ain’t got no money to be gettin’ these windows relined.”

  “Mama, that’s a whole lot of stuff. I know better than that. Why don’t you go up to the housing commission and complain about it?”

  “I ain’t got no time to be goin’ no place complainin’ about nothin’. I got all this housework to do, and all this cookin’; I got to be runnin’ after Pimp.”

  “Look, Mama, let’s you and me go up there right now. I’m gonna write out a complaint, and I want you to sign it.” “I got all this washin’ to do.”

  “Mama, you go on and you wash. I’m gon wait for you; I’m gon help you wash.”

  Mama started washing the clothes. As soon as she finished that, she had to put the pot on the stove. Then she had to fix some lunch. As soon as she finished one thing, she would find another thing that she had to do right away. She just kept stalling for time.

  Finally, after waiting for about three hours, when she couldn’t find anything else to do, I said, “Look, Mama, come on, let’s you and me go out there.”

  We went over to 145th Street. We were going to take the cross-town bus to Broadway, to the temporary housing-commission office.

  We were waiting there. Because of the snowstorm, the buses weren’t running well, so we waited there for a long time. Mama said, “Look, we’d better wait and go some other time.”

  I knew she wanted to get out of this, and I knew if I let her go and put it off to another time, it would never be done. I said, “Mama, we can take a cab.”

  “You got any money?”

  “No.”

  “I ain’t got none either. So we better wait until another time.”

  “Look, Mama, you wait right here on the corner. I’m going across the street to the pawnshop, and when I get back, we’ll take a cab.”

  She waited there on the corner, and I went over to the pawnshop and pawned my ring. When I came back, we took a cab to Broadway and 145th Street, to the temporary housing-commission office. When I got there, I told one of the girls at the window that I wanted to write out a complaint against a tenement landlord.

  She gave me a form to fill out and said I had to make out two copies. I sat down and started writing. It seemed like a whole lot to Mama, because Mama didn’t do too much writing. She used a small sheet of paper even when she wrote a letter.

  She kept bothering me while I was writing. She said, “Boy, what’s all that you puttin’ down there? You can’t be saying nothin’ that ain’t the truth. Are you sure you know what you’re talking about? Because I’m only complaining about the window, now, and it don’t seem like it’d take that much writing to complain about just the one window.”

  “Mama, you’re complaining about all the windows. Aren’t all the windows in the same shape?”


  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, look here, Mama, isn’t it cold in the whole house?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When was the last time the windows were lined?”

  “I don’t know. Not since we lived in there.”

  “And you been livin’ there seventeen years. Look, Mama, you got to do something.”

  “Okay, just don’t put down anything that ain’t true.” She kept pulling on my arm.

  “Look, Mama, I’m gonna write out this thing. When I finish, I’ll let you read it, and if there’s anything not true in it, I’ll cross it out. Okay?”

  “Okay, but it just don’t seem like it take all that just to write out one complaint.”

  I had to write with one hand and keep Mama from pulling on me with the other hand. When I finished it, I turned in the two complaint forms, and we left. Mama kept acting so scared, it really got on my nerves. I said, “Look, Mama, you ain’t got nothin’ to be scared of.”

  She said she wasn’t scared, but she just wanted to stay on the good side of the landlord, because sometimes she got behind in the rent.

  “Yeah, Mama, but you can’t be freezin’ and catching colds just because sometimes you get behind in the rent. Everybody gets behind in the rent, even people who live on Central Park West and Park Avenue. They get behind in the rent. They’re not freezin’ to death just because they’re behind in the rent.”

  “Boy, I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but you’re always ready to get yourself into something or start some trouble.”

  “Yeah, Mama, if I’m being mistreated, I figure it’s time to start some trouble.”

  “Boy, I just hope to God that you don’t get yourself into something one day that you can’t get out of.”

  “Mama, everybody grows into manhood, and you don’t stop to think about that sort of thing once you become a man. You just do it, even if it’s trouble that you can’t get out of. You don’t stop to think. Look, forget about it, Mama. Just let me worry about the whole thing.”