Manchild in the Promised Land

by Claude Brown

  She looked at me silently for a while. Then she said, “Do you really believe this?”

  “Sometimes I feel that way.”

  “Well, let me tell you that when you feel that way, you’re wrong. You’re just taking a defeatist attitude. If you loved somebody, and you really loved them, you’d just have to find a way to make it work so you both could be together and be happy.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe.” I looked at her for a while. I thought, Wow, this young girl is really on fire, really on fire! I said, “Yeah, Judy, maybe you’re right. Then again, I don’t know whether I’d be game enough to do something like that myself.”

  “Wait a minute, Claude. You mean to tell me that if I were to fall in love with you, there would be no hope for my ever becoming your wife?”

  I look at her, and smiled. “Well, you’ve got us getting married already, huh?”

  “No …”

  “Don’t rush me, lady, please don’t rush me to the altar. I’ve been afraid of this sort of thing all my life.”

  She smiled and said, “Oh, no, no, no. I wasn’t suggesting anything. I was just trying to find out.”

  I just grabbed her around the neck, playfully, and I said, “You just let your parents try and take you away from me, and I’ll chase you to the ends of the earth. Just to spite ’em, I’ll marry you, and we’ll have a houseful of half-breeds. We’ll have a houseful of nigger and Jewish kids running all around. Every Christmas, we’ll let them send your parents a Christmas card with their pictures on it.”

  Judy laughed.

  After a while, she said, “Claude, didn’t you tell me you live around here somewhere?”

  “Yeah, I live right over there on Cooper Square.”

  “What does it look like?”

  “What does what look like?”

  “Cooper Square, and the place you live.”

  “It’s down the street from the club we went to Friday night. As a matter of fact, I showed you the school of Engineering at Cooper Union, and also the School of Science and Art.”

  “Oh, you live near there. Why don’t we go, and you can play something for me?”

  “I’ll do it later.”

  “Oh, no, you’re just going to procrastinate about it. You don’t want to show me how well you can play. Are you ashamed or something?”

  “No. You could probably play better than me.”

  “Okay, then, come on and let me show you how well I can play.”

  For some reason, I was hesitating. I didn’t know what I’d be able co do with her, or what I’d want to do with her. I said, “Okay, Judy, you come with me. We’ll see how good you are on the piano. I’ll bet you’re very talented. I’ve always had the suspicion that you were too modest.”

  I took her up to my place. We met Tony coming out. I introduced Tony to Judy. He was polite, with his beard and all, but I don’t think he was too impressed. It was just a white girl. Tony said he’d see me later.

  It was really a drab-looking room I had down there on Cooper Square, but I had a lot of nice paintings. The landlord was a painter, and he had made reproductions of masterpieces. They were hanging up all over the room.

  Judy looked at them; she looked at just about everything as she came in. She said, “This is a very quaint place.”

  It was a loft room with the slanted ceiling near the window. The window was between the two drops in the ceiling. It was late afternoon when we came in there. The sun was just going down. There was a little breeze.

  She thought it was beautiful. She just raved and raved about it. As she looked out the window, I came up behind her and said, “The Third Avenue El used to be there when I first moved down here. It was miserable.”

  She said, “Why, I’ll bet it was beautiful even then.” She looked around at the room and said, “I’ll bet many a great artist has stood here and looked out this window. Probably during the Depression.”

  She was really excited about it. I just stood there and watched her. She seemed to be going through some kind of fantasy. The place looked dreary to me, but Judy said, “Wow! It’s beautiful. Everything about it is beautiful. As a matter of fact, it seems ideal for the painter, for the musician, or even a writer. It’s a place where you can get away from everything.”

  “Oh, yeah. I’ve had some pretty nice lonely moments down here.”

  “I’ll bet you’ve never been lonely.”

  “No. I have all my paintings to keep me company.”

  Judy said, “Play something for me on the piano.”

  “What would you like to hear?”

  “I don’t know. Anything nice.”

  “Have you ever heard “These Foolish Things Remind Me of You’?”

  “Oh, yeah, I’ve heard that. Can you play it?”

  I sat down and played it. She raved about it. I didn’t think it was that good, but I sort of expected it from her, because she was that way.

  After that, I asked her to play. She said she wanted me to play another one for her. I played another one. She was sitting over in the corner, in the rocking chair. I had had a rocking chair and a chair at the desk. These were the only two chairs in the room, other than the bench for the piano.

  She said, “There’s something about this room that seems to be you.”

  I stopped playing, and I said, “Something like what?”

  “The books that you have, and the piano, with the metronome sitting on the top, the paintings that you have. It’s just the coloring and everything.”

  “It’s not really. All the paintings and just about all the furniture, except for the piano, were here when I came.”

  “Yeah, but it seems to have blended in with you.”

  “It’s probably that I blended in with the furniture.”

  All the time, she just kept rocking. She said, “I want to hear you finish playing that, whatever it was you were playing. What was it?”

  “It’s a tune called I’m in the Mood for Love.’”

  “I’ve heard the tune.… I’ve never heard it played that way.”

  “Yeah, well, this is what jazz does to tunes.”

  She laughed.

  As I was playing, I heard the rocking chair stop. The piano was right next to the bed. Tony used to say I treated it like the woman I loved; I kept it near the bed so that it would be the first thing I touched when I woke up and the last thing I touched when I went to sleep. I used to put in long hours on the piano.

  When I was sitting there playing, I didn’t hear Judy get up; I just heard the rocking chair stop squeaking. Then I heard her plop down on the bed. She said, “Do you ever lie here and look up at the ceiling?”

  “No, I don’t look at the ceiling too much. Sometimes I lay there and read. Sometimes I just lay there and think.”

  “What do you think about?”

  I was still playing and she was lying on the bed looking. I’d just noticed something about her. She had a very big chest; her breasts were large, and she looked ready, very ready. I don’t know why, but I had a crazy feeling about her. I didn’t want to look at her, because she looked so good, so tempting there. I had seen chicks with much finer bodies, but they never seemed to have the mind and womanly sweetness to go with it. It wasn’t just the body or her big breasts; it was all the things we’d done that day, all the things we’d said, the kind of telephone conversation we’d had the day before. I looked at her and smiled.

  She reached one hand up, and she put it on my leg. I said, “Okay, Judy, it’s your turn. What’re you trying to do, distract me? Did you think I was going to forget?” I started joking. I said, “You’re going to get up and play something for me.”

  She got up and played. She said, “This is the first movement from Beethoven’s Sonata Pathétique”

  I said, “Wow! I should have known with all the modesty you have. It’s usually the people with the most modesty who can play best.”

  I kept talking, and she kept looking at me. She had a look in her eye that sort of let me know that sh
e wasn’t in the mood for playing piano and talking. I knew what she wanted, but I just couldn’t. It seemed as though I would have been treating her like an average bitch, just one of the whores you’d pick up out there on the street. I just couldn’t do that; I just couldn’t do it. I said, “Look, Judy, why don’t we go out and get something to eat? I’m hungry. There’s a nice delicatessen over on Second Avenue. We could go and have a hot pastrami sandwich and a beer or something.”

  She said, “Okay, if you want to.”

  “Yeah, I want to.”

  We went and had the pastrami sandwiches and the beer. When we came out, I said, “Come on, there’s a park I want to show you. It’s up on Eighteenth Street and Second Avenue. It’s one of the nicest parks around here.”

  She came along, but she looked a little disappointed. I knew she wanted to go back to my place.

  We walked and walked until it was time for her to go home Then we went to the subway at Fourteenth Street and University Place.

  I said, “Look, Judy, why don’t we just let the relationship take its course? I would never think of rushing you into anything. If something just happened on the spur of the moment, I wouldn’t be certain whether I caught you off guard of whether you wanted to, or what. I want to get everything you’ve got, everything. But when I get it, I want to feel absolutely certain that you want me to have it.” I kissed her, and she smiled. I had the feeling that we understood each other.

  “Claude, I think that the luckiest thing that’s happened to me is that I met you. I thought that at first, but now I’m more convinced of it than ever. I feel more certain every day that it has been the luckiest experience in my life.”

  She used to say things like this, and it always made me feel good. I wanted to devour her right there on the spot. I told her, “I feel pretty lucky too,” and we just stood there, in the middle of the subway entrance, kissing. We went down the stairs holding hands.

  I rode up as far as Fifty-ninth Street with her, then came back downtown. When I came home, I saw a light on in Tony’s room, so I knocked on the door. I asked him, “Man, how are things?”

  He said, “Okay. How are things with you?”

  I smiled and said, “All right.”

  He said, “Yeah, I sort of thought they would be. Sonny, it looks like you’re becoming a regular Villager now, man.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, you’re into this thing, man. You got your art, and you got your beard … even though it’s only three days old and you might shave it off tomorrow. And you even got your white girl now.”

  I thought he’d said it in a joking mood. I said, “Yeah, man, I guess I am.” I wasn’t ready to joke about it now; I just wasn’t ready to joke about it. I didn’t know I would feel that way. Tony and I were tight. I always felt that I could say anything to him, and I suppose he always felt that way too. Well, he was saying it, and I didn’t know how to take it.

  He said, “Sonny, man, how is she?”

  “How you mean how is she?”

  “Well, did you pop her? You must have jugged her by now, haven’t you?”

  I said, “Uh-uh, man. I don’t know.”

  “Damn, man, what you doin’ with it?”

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to talk about it. I hadn’t thought about it before, and I didn’t know until Tony started talking about it, but I just knew that I couldn’t make her a topic of conversation for the fellows.

  He said, “Well, what you doin’ with it? Holding hands, man? You mean to tell me that you got a gray bitch there and you gonna hold hands?”

  “Mind your fuckin’ business. What you got to do with it?”

  “Cool it, baby. I think that chick is fucking up your mind, Sonny.”

  “You just mind your mother-fucking business. Whatever she’s doing to my mind, you just don’t have a damn thing to do with it, man. Don’t ask anything about it. Just keep her name out your mouth.”

  Tony was going over to pour himself a glass of wine. He stopped and looked at me. He said, “That’s the way it is, Sonny?” That’s all he said, but he meant more than that. He was really asking, “Damn, man, I can’t even talk about her? She’s got priority over me?”

  I didn’t answer. I just looked at him. He poured some wine, and he poured me a glass too. I was still just standing there in the doorway. I took the glass of wine, and I said, “Look, Tony, I’m sorry, man. I’m sorry I shot off like that.”

  “That’s okay, Sonny. I think it’s nice, man. She looks like a nice girl. I wish I could meet a bitch I could shoot off about.”

  I didn’t say anything more about it. We just drank some wine and talked about the people uptown who’d gotten busted lately, who’d gotten strung out, that sort of thing.

  The next time Judy came down, I knew that I would have to try to make her happy, and I wanted to. I wanted to really make her happy. She was a sweet little girl, and she was ready. I played with her. She was kind of scared at first. She told me, “Claude, I want to, but I’m scared.” I told her that there was nothing to be afraid of, because I wouldn’t let her get hurt or anything, that I would be gentle.

  It was a terrible night. She was a virgin, and she was going through all that clawing business, crying and carrying on. But she got used to it. She got used to it and got to like it.

  We had a great relationship for about six months. Summertime came around, and she just stopped coming down. I almost panicked, because she was the best thing that had ever happened to me. I got a friend of mine, Chet, to call her house. I figured, Chet being Jewish too, he would know how to talk to her parents and give them the impression that he was a nice young man.

  Chet didn’t seem to want to tell me what had been said on the phone. He’d talked to her mother for about fifteen minutes. I was trying to hear, but Judy’s mother wasn’t a loud woman. I kept pulling on him and saying, “Listen …” He kept putting up a hand, as if to say, “Just a minute. I’ll let you know as soon as I get off here.”

  When Chet hung up the phone, he looked at me and stammered for a while. Then he said, “Uh-uh, Claude, Judy isn’t in town any more.”

  “What do you mean she isn’t in town any more, man?”

  “Her parents sent her to Connecticut to stay with some relatives They think it’ll just be for the summer.”

  “Well, didn’t they have the address? Couldn’t they give it to you or anything? Couldn’t they give you something, man?”

  “No, her mother wouldn’t give me the address.”

  “Well, what happened? Did she think you were me?”

  “Yeah, she thought I was you.”

  I said, “And so what was wrong with that?”

  “She thought that I was Claude Brown, and she thought that I was colored.”

  “Yeah, and so what?”

  “She said … I wouldn’t want to repeat it, Claude.”

  “Man, look, tell me. I’m not going to take this kind of shit laying down. Do you know how I feel about that girl, Chet?”

  “Yeah. Look, man, you got to face facts, baby. She’s not here. She’s gone. They sent her away. They told me she’s in Connecticut, but she just might be in Florida somewhere.”

  “Look, I’m going to call them.”

  “Claude, please don’t call them, please, if not for your sake, then for mine. I think her mother is just liable to say something that might hurt your feelings. Don’t call.”

  I looked at Chet, and I could feel tears swelling up in my eyes. Chet sort of looked away, and I said, “Thanks, Chet, thanks, baby, anyway.” He didn’t say anything.

  For a long time, I was sorry I’d ever stopped that time when Judy called to me in the hall with that “Hey, there.” I remembered it for a long time. For a long time, I expected the phone to ring or thought I’d get a letter. Nothing came.

  16

  I DECIDED to run. The most natural thing to do was to take refuge in Harlem. I was hurt, and I was running home. I was going to stay away from white people an
d the white world.

  I joined a new group of young jazz musicians. We weren’t good enough to play club dates for pay yet, but we were good enough so that the people who liked jazz wouldn’t mind listening to us. We all hung out together, and we liked playing. The cats who were still in this young-jazz-musician groove around Harlem were really serious about music. They had to be serious to stick with it.

  The attitude had changed about drugs. These guys didn’t believe that drugs had anything to do with playing good jazz. Many of the cats did when we first started out. But it seemed as though the guys who felt that drugs had something to do with it didn’t make it as musicians. The cats who were still hanging in there were just good jazz musicians, damn good.

  This was the group of cats I started hanging out with. We would go places together. We’d go to little gigs, and we’d do a lot of things; they cut me into a lot of different musicians and a lot of cute chicks, dancers and singers, people in show business. It was a hip group of people, who knew how to be happy. I liked them more than I liked anybody else.

  They didn’t want to be a part of street life. Some of them had just awakened to this fact. They were the same cats who had lived according to the code of the street. Now they were the only young people in the community who were doing anything worthwhile. They were married, they had good jobs, and they were always dressed presentably. They had to stand out, because most of the young people in the community were junkies. Anybody who wasn’t a junkie stood out.

  They became a new class, the young elite of the Harlem community. A few of them had government jobs. They worked for the city or the Federal government, those who’d finished high school and didn’t have a sheet on them. Many cats had a sheet on them; they had been in street life for a little too long, past that sixteenth year. Even then, they straightened out. But to get a good job, making a good salary, I suppose they had to go into phases of employment where the sheet didn’t mean too much, like into the entertainment world or music. Occasionally, some of the guys would get a good job from a private employer who believed in them. These were the lucky ones. There were some guys who had talent but didn’t necessarily want to be musicians. But since they didn’t want to be in street life either, the only thing that was open for them was a field like music.