by Barry Wolfe
Chapter
4.
One Summer Night
You might have thought that after winning the dance contest I would fall into a “sleep of kings”. But instead my sleep is intermittently disturbed by dreams of Peter’s resentful, sulky face and his recurring harangue that somehow I had betrayed him. In my dream I see an enlarged version of his face screaming at me over and over, “I GOT HOSED!” I know I will be the one to call first thing in the morning and be the peacemaker. I’ll have to apologize for “stealing the dance contest” from him and Charlene. When I call him at 10 am, I begin by offering him a totally insincere apology. It takes me 15 minutes to mollify his anger. When he finally “forgives” me, it is with his patented line, “You know, Izzy, you really have to stop being jealous of me.” I bite my tongue until it starts to bleed. I tell Peter that James is picking me up shortly to go to the Silver Spring Pool Hall, and, with some reluctance, I ask him if he wants to go. “I guess,” he says in his annoyingly sulky tone of voice. I wanted to say, “Don’t do me any favors you whiny putz,” but instead I practically beg him to come along. “OK,” he replies with an air of noblesse oblige that leads me to nearly sever my tongue in two.
The burbling sound of fiberglass mufflers announces James’ arrival. I inform Peter that we’re leaving now and will be at his place in 10 minutes. James’ lowered red and white Bel Air Convertible is gleaming after one of James’ too frequent wash and wax jobs. James is as fastidious about grooming his car as Peter is in his personal grooming. I get in and notice that James is donned in all black: black tee shirt, pants and loafers. He looks like a beatnik, but with his own kind of poetry. I recount to him my phone exchange with Peter and how he reluctantly agreed to go with us to the pool hall. James’ response is, “Too much monkey business for me to be involved in.” We drive in silence the rest of the way to the apartment house that Peter lives in with his parents. We drive past the large stately houses on Rittenhouse Street, cross Georgia Avenue and continue past Fort Stevens. This Civil War relic was an alternate playground for us in our childhoods. None of us were aware that the major battle fought here in July of 1864 stopped the furthest advance into Washington by the Confederate army. This was the first and last Confederate attack on the District of Columbia. As kids, we used to jump across the parapets where cannons were once placed. I counted it a major achievement of my childhood when my short legs were able to carry me successfully across one parapet to another.
Just as we pull up, Peter comes dashing out of the apartment yelling cuss words at the top of his voice. “I hate that man! He doesn’t get a word I’m saying.” Peter looks back toward his apartment and yells “Well, Fuck you, Pop!” Peter is in tears by the time he reaches the car. James looks at him with pity and as pitiful at the same time. Peter throws himself into the backseat and continues bawling. “What’s going on?” I ask solicitously. “My old man don’t understand shit.” “What don’t he understand?” I inquire in my sympathetic voice. “He knows how much I need a car. Charlene’s always bitching at me about having to rely on others for wheels. I need a car man or I’m gonna lose Charlene.”
“When you told him that, what did he say? ”
“Get a job! Get a job! Get a job! That’s all he ever says. I have a job. It don’t pay me enough bread. I asked him for a loan; a little loan that I can pay him back over time. No, he says. Get a better job, he says.” As stressed as he is, Peter still takes time to look into James’ rear view mirror and comb his hair.
“How much of a loan?” I ask.
“All I want is $300. I’ve already saved about $400. I have my eye on a hot ’55 Mainline Ford 2-door sedan. It’s a two-toned beauty, baby blue and white, separated by a cool chrome strip. It’s a V-8 with 110 horses. I saw one advertised for $700. Boy, what I couldn’t do to soup up that baby.”
I pause for a moment and see that we’re approaching the pool hall. From the outside the building seems old and decrepit. Inside is another story. The space is cavernous, well lit, and surprisingly clean. The room is filled with 20 pool tables arranged in five rows of four. Even though it was a little after 11 in the morning, the place is packed. We are lucky to find a table being vacated just as we enter. As James racks the balls, Peter starts in again with his diatribe against his father and his girlfriend. “My father’s such a putz,” Peter grouses as James and I barely listening, carefully eye the available cues.
“And Charlene; I know she’s gonna leave me. My life is shit,” Peter continues. “Peter, you know you’ve been saying the same thing over and over about Charlene the entire time you’ve been dating her and she hasn’t left you yet. Why can’t you see that?” I ask with great exasperation. Peter is offended by the implication that he reads into my question; namely that he’s dumb. “Well, what do you know, asshole, you can’t even get a girlfriend.” James sees that I’m stung by Peter’s attack. He looks at Peter sternly, and chastises him with an Elvis Presley line. “Don’t be cruel/to a heart that’s true!” After a pause, James starts blasting balls into the various pockets. He makes six in a row. Before each shot he lines up the cue, and when he’s ready, he wiggles his ass and talk/sings “I’m in love; I’m all shook up.” That line becomes his signature prelude to every shot.
James easily wins the first three games and then begins to tire. Peter and I split the next two games. During the 6th game we’re interrupted by a loud conversation, taking place at a nearby pool table. Two guys almost identically dressed in black motorcycle jackets and pants and identically coiffed with perfectly formed duck tails in the back of their heads are commiserating over a developing sociological phenomenon not to their liking. The fellow with the blond ducktail is loud in his complaint: “You know the niggers are gonna take over Silver Spring soon. They keep moving north up Georgia Avenue. They already are taking over Jewlidge High School. Only niggers and Jews go there now and a few Greeks.” Brown ducktail nods in vociferous agreement. “Yeah, the coons are gonna come after our white girls soon and somebody’s gotta do something about it.”
“You best believe it,” Blond Ducktail agrees. “We’ve got to rumble those nigs and let ‘em know that Silver Spring is still white man’s land.” Their fulminations are interfering with Peter’s concentration as he’s lining up a shot. He stops and yells over to the ducktail boys, “Would you guys keep it down? I can’t hear myself think with all your jabbering.” Blond ducktail takes umbrage at Peter’s rebuke and says in a menacing tone, “How about we come over there and kick your ass?” James, the only member of our trio who even approached the size of the ducktail duo, steps forward and says, “We’re not looking for a fight. But we can’t hear ourselves playing pool with all your ‘Yakety Yak, don’t talk back.” And as for kicking our asses; that’ll be the day when you say goodbye,” James sang in a sneering tone. That is one insulting song title too many for the ducktail boys, and they begin to move toward us. "Hey Don, I see some pansy asses cruising for a bruising," says brown ducktails to blond ducktails. Rack’em Harry, the owner of the pool hall, sees what is about to happen and gets between us. “If you guys want to fight, he says, “take it outside. Otherwise, shut up and play pool.” “My point precisely,” Peter agrees triumphantly. Brown ducktail waves his hand and says, “Aw you guys ain’t worth bruising my knuckles on. Come on, Don,” he says to his blond companion, “Let’s blow this joint. It’s filled with nigger-lovers anyway.”
After the ducktail boys leave, Peter starts in on me. “You see how everyone is worrying about the niggers…” He sees my frown and says, “OK, Negroes. Everyone is scared to death that Negroes are taking over our neighborhoods.”
“A few blacks move into a neighborhood and the entire block panics and begins to put up “For Sale” signs. I wouldn’t call that taking over the neighborhood,” I rebut. “I’d call it a cowardly retreat by white home owners.”
“Well, all I’m saying is that if you get too cozy with Negroes, you’re gonna end up in big trouble. I want to say, “Peter, yo
u’re full of shit.” Instead I seethe in silence. I feel like a harness is strapped across my chest, which prevents me from offering Peter an offensive rebuke to his racist prattle.
“Well, you know what, Izzy, you go to Howard and be with your nigger friends. Those hard asses that almost beat the crap out of us just now were right about one of us at this table.” James, who had obviously tired of Peter’s nattering, finally says, “We gotta go, fellas, I’ve got the rockin’ pneumonia and I need a shot of rhythm and blues. Roll over Beethoven and tell Tchaikovsky the news.”
We drive down Georgia Avenue, past the Hot Shoppes and cross the District Line. James veers right onto Alaska Avenue, which was one of the most attractive streets in the city. He drives past the flower streets, Holly, Geranium, Floral and Fern, past Walter Reed Hospital and turns left onto 16th street. I sit fuming in the shotgun seat. I am pissed—at Peter, certainly, but more so at myself for allowing him to trigger my Negrophobia. But what if Peter’s right, and I’m rejected by white people? Or what if I’m changed by saturating myself with Negro contacts? Will I become Negro-like? The fear inside me keeps rising until this whole train of thought seems to suddenly implode. And then a moment of peace comes over me when I finally ask myself the only rational question of the day – What the hell am I talking about?
After James drops me off, I flop my pissed-off self onto my bed. I loathe myself for being unable to tell Peter what I really think. I hate the way I always act nice to Peter when I’m actually appalled by his whining and his paranoia. It’s all I can do to gently challenge his absurd and fearful fretting about Charlene. It is obvious to everyone but Peter that she is nuts about him. I hate even more that I let his attitudes toward Negroes fill me with fearful questions.
My only antidote to my self-loathing is music-- Rock n’ Roll music and Rhythm and Blues. I put on Little Richard’s "True Fine Mama" and pure joy rises in me and obliterates my self-loathing. I grab on to the nearest doorknob and start dancing. I rock and sway trying my best to make some cool Black moves. I can’t stand the spastic movements of my clumsy, rhythm-deprived peers. It’s not that I want to become a Negro, but I want to move with the same expressiveness, freedom, and pure uninhibited joy that I see in the dancing of black teenagers. Heads shaking in rhythm, graceful swaying arm movements going in one direction while legs and hips seem to move in another. Bodies moving in smooth undulations to a rocking beat. But I want to create my own moves that are neither black nor white. I just want to be cool. OK, I’m not being completely honest. Black is cool!
Then the voice takes up residence in my head…again. “Look at you dancing like a jigaboo, trying to be a Schwartzeh. What’s the matter with you? You are odd. You want to step over the line that’s been there for centuries? For what?” And the eternal debate commences-- Izzy the Conformist vs. Izzy the Rebel.
Izzy the Rebel: “But the line makes no sense. I don’t understand all these barriers.”
Izzy the Conformist: “I don’t know where they come from either, but it feels very dangerous to cross it.”
Izzy the Rebel: “It’s outrageous to have such an irrational barrier separating people. It’s stupid!”
Izzy the Conformist: “Yes, but are you willing to risk ostracism, ridicule, maybe even violence for associating with Schwartzehs.”
Izzy the Rebel: “Well, I am going to Howard.”
Izzy the Conformist: (Mockingly) “Well, you are insane.”
Izzy the Rebel: “Look, I’ve already been through this with my father.”
Izzy the Conformist: “Ah, but now you have me to deal with.”
To escape this internal chattering, I call my friend, Henry Prescott. Henry is light-skinned and is among the first wave of Negroes that integrated Coolidge High School. He’s bright, pleasant, and easy to talk to, and we have fallen into a comfortable friendship. For some reason he does not trigger my Negrophobia. Maybe it’s because he’s so light-skinned that whenever I’m with him, I never self-consciously think of him as a Negro. When we’re together, he brings out in me whatever latent intellectual tendencies lurk in the muddle of my brain. We have many wonderful conversations; and like a crowbar slowly opening a heavy crate, he opens my eyes to larger issues in the world, issues that go beyond my current obsession with dancing, doo-wop, basketball, and Negrophobia.
Henry and his family have spent most of their life in Northeast Washington. When the DC schools began to integrate, they were able to move into a beautiful, spacious house off Kansas Avenue in the northwest quadrant of Washington, DC. This allowed Henry to be eligible to attend Coolidge, which at that time was generally considered to be the second best high school in the city after Wilson.
Here I am in the house of a Negro family; and not only is it twice as large as my house, but it is filled with the most beautiful works of art I have ever seen. So many sculptures and masks from Africa adorn the shelves, along with more books than I have ever seen in any house. I‘m astonished because I had been told that Negroes had neither the education nor the money to live in such elegant surroundings. And there are flowers and exotic plants everywhere. I could not make sense of the barrage of feelings overtaking me, feelings of surprise, jealousy, and finally comfort and tranquility.
When I find him in the downstairs study, Henry has his nose in a book. He is reading about Thurgood Marshall who is his most recent role model. Until Henry informs me, I have no idea who Thurgood Marshall is. But Henry likes to say that if Marshall doesn’t make it, he hopes to be the first Negro appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Hey Henry, let’s go play some ball,” I say, oblivious to his obvious absorption in the book.
“In a minute, Izzy. I just want to finish this chapter,” he says without looking up.
“Why hello, Izzy,” I hear a sweet voice say as Mrs. Prescott enters the study. “I thought I heard your voice,” she adds.
When I first met Mrs. Caroline Prescott, I was immediately taken by her dignity and elegance. This would have been off-putting if it weren’t for the fact that she was so friendly and warmly welcoming. She’s so light-skinned that I wonder how anyone, including herself, could think she’s a Negro. In fact, her entire family is so light that she has several siblings who pass as white.
Mrs. Prescott and I have many conversations that clearly demonstrate to me just how crazy the racial attitudes are in the United States and how psychotic the Jim Crow Laws are. On this day we discuss the meaning of race and how the term is used to hold down the Negro.
“You know, Izzy, I am quite convinced that there is no biological basis for the concept of race. Human similarities far outweigh their differences. Race, I believe, is a term that was made up by white people to separate them from people of color in terms of a hierarchy of value. Beyond all of the fancy academic terminology, what race really means is that white people are better than everyone else. It is a socially constructed reality. The problem is that if you get enough people to believe in it, a socially constructed reality becomes reality. I hope that this “reality” will eventually become clear to you.”
I ‘m not quite clear what she means by a socially constructed reality, but I do catch the gist that there might be other, better ways for people to think about people who are different. She pauses for a moment as she looks at a portrait of her husband, a prominent physician in DC.
“Let me tell you a story that illustrates the point,” she continues. “Not too long ago I met a good friend for lunch. She happens to be a Jewish woman who had just returned from Florida. She was, in fact, deeply tanned. We entered the restaurant and without waiting to be seated, we sat ourselves down at the nearest empty table. When the waitress finally came to our table after a terribly long wait, she had a look of dismay on her face. After eyeing us both, she said to me; “I’m sorry, I can’t serve your friend here.” Feigning innocence, I asked, ‘And why not?’ “Because we don’t serve Negroes,” the waitress replied. With great indignation, I began chastising that waitress for her rude and ins
ulting behavior toward my friend. Without waiting for a reply, we both got up and stormed out of the restaurant. Once out of the waitress’s line of vision, we began to double over with laughter. But our amusement soon turned to sadness, however, when we both began to reflect on the fact that people are actually turned away because of the color of their skin. You see, Izzy, it is reality; a stupid one, but reality nonetheless.”
“I know! I know,” I said excitedly, “but what can be done? What can we do?
Mrs. Prescott looks at me with such sternness. “We have to fight, Izzy. We have to push back against the long, painful history of Jim Crow.”
“Enough lecturing, mother,” Henry says as he enters the room. “Izzy and I are going to play some baseball.” As we make our way to Rudolph Playground at 2nd and Hamilton Streets, I am so struck by Mrs. Prescott’s words that I can barely pay attention to what Henry is saying. I know he is complaining again about the dismal play of the Washington Senators, but I am trying to figure what I can do to bring about the end of Jim Crow. What can one person do to change the world? But another question begins to insinuate itself into my mind. If someone as light-skinned as Mrs. Prescott chooses to think of herself as Negro, then what does Negro really mean? And how can it be a choice?