4
the good people
Sometimes things can happen and even though the thing that happens is bad you don’t mind so much because no one knows about it except you. It’s like having on raggedy underwear. You don’t really feel cool having it on, but you don’t feel nearly as bad as if you knew somebody else knew. If you were in school, for example, and somebody knew you had on raggedy underwear you’d spend all day thinking that person was thinking about you and your raggedy underwear. And if that person went up to another person and started talking so that you couldn’t hear what they were saying, well, right away you’d be thinking that they were talking about you. You might even think your underwear was showing through your clothes or something.
Everybody has had on raggedy underwear or something like that that they really didn’t want anybody to find out about. Take Little Petey Johnson, for example. Now Little Petey was a smart guy and was supposed to graduate from Lane about a year ago. So it’s time for him to graduate and he doesn’t show up. The music is going and everybody is coming down the aisle and still he don’t show. A lot of guys didn’t graduate and naturally they weren’t in the ceremony, but the ones that did graduate were pretty happy with themselves. They were looking for Petey because he was in the graduation group. After all the diplomas were given out, a few medals and a lot of speeches, everybody went outside of the theater and started signing each other’s book. They held the ceremony in a theater instead of the school auditorium.
Then somebody spots Little Petey Johnson.
He was standing on a stoop across the street drinking a Coca-Cola. They went over and asked him why he hadn’t come to the graduation and he said that it was just a jive ceremony and he was tired of jive ceremonies. Now that was really heavy because the ceremony might have been jive but you were still graduating from high school. Later we learned the real reason why Petey hadn’t shown up. Everybody had been talking about how sharp they were going to be in their blue suits, which all the boys were going to wear. And Petey just couldn’t get the money together for a new suit and he didn’t want to be the only one different. He felt bad about not coming to the graduation but I guess he would have felt worse if everybody knew that he couldn’t afford the suit.
Anyway, the same thing happened to Gloria. When me, Clyde, and Sam were telling everybody about the dance and how Sam and Clyde almost won, everybody cracked up except Gloria. Gloria had been acting funny for a while but nobody knew why. Sometimes she would come and sit on the stoop with us for a while, but just for a short time, as if she had to do it to be respectable or something. You could see that she wasn’t really enjoying it or anything.
Then one day we were all sitting on the stoop, me, Gloria, Clyde, Sam, Binky, Cap, Maria, and this girl named Debbie. When all of a sudden we hear all this noise and scuffling in the hallway. We all turned to look and made a space on the stoop so whoever it was could pass if they were leaving. All of a sudden Gloria’s father comes out with a suitcase and you could see that he was really mad. And her mother was right after him and she was mad too. She was wearing a house dress with an apron.
“If I ever see you again—” Gloria’s mother was half talking and half crying. “If I ever lay eyes on you again it’ll be too soon!”
“You don’t have to worry none about me coming back!” Mr. Chisholm said. “You don’t have to worry about me coming back. Why don’t you go on back upstairs and polish your nails again, Miss Queen!”
Well, they kept on shouting at each other for what seemed a long time, with her saying that she hated him and he saying that he never wanted to be with her in the first place and things like that. Then Mrs. Chisholm pushed right up against him and started talking real fast and half crying, and suddenly Mr. Chisholm hit her. He didn’t punch her but he slapped her as hard as I’ve seen anybody get slapped. He slapped her so hard that everybody on the stoop jumped. Really. I took a look at Gloria and the tears were running down her face and she really looked miserable. Mrs. Chisholm just slowly went down. Not so much from being slapped but from everything—the arguing, the crying, and the slap. She just took a couple of deep breaths and sunk to the sidewalk. I didn’t know what to do—none of us did, I guess. Mr. Chisholm picked up his suitcase and started to walk away when Gloria suddenly jumped up and ran after him and hit him on the back. He whirled around like he was going to punch her out, but when he saw it was Gloria he just kind of pushed her away. And she hit him again and again and started screaming that she hated him, just like her mother did. He just kind of kept his hands in front of him so she couldn’t get at him and kept backing away. Then Gloria looked back to where her mother was and took a couple of steps toward her and then looked at her father and then back at her mother. It was as if she didn’t know what to do. She turned and started back toward her mother but she stopped one more time and called after her father. Her voice was all cracked up and so full of crying that it was hard to understand what she was saying except she said it over and over again.
“Daddy, please don’t go! Daddy, please don’t go! Daddy, please don’t go….” She kept saying it over and over even though she wasn’t saying it nearly loud enough for him to hear it. And then she just turned away when she couldn’t see him any more and went back and helped her mother up. And together they went into the house and she was still saying it, in this tiny little voice. “Daddy, please don’t go.”
Clyde looked at me and I looked at him and we both looked at Sam. Sam looked terrible and I felt about as bad for him as I felt for Gloria. Almost, anyway.
“Hey, man, maybe you can check her out later,” Clyde said to Sam, giving his knee a little punch. “Let her get it out of her system a little and then maybe give her a call later or tomorrow morning.”
“That’s why she didn’t want to go to the dance before. I spoke to her for about a hot minute yesterday and she said things weren’t going down too good between her folks.” Sam shrugged his shoulders. “Every time I even think that girl feels bad I feel bad.”
“What did you say when she said her folks weren’t getting along too good?” Clyde asked.
“I didn’t know what to say,” Sam said, “I just told her that as far as I was concerned me and her were still tight.”
“She go for that?” Clyde asked.
“Yeah.” Sam smiled a sheepish smile. “I’ll call her later.”
“It’s bad when your folks don’t make it,” Clyde said. “You don’t know what to do.”
“At least we can talk about it some,” Sam said.
“’Cause it ain’t our folks,” Clyde said. “A lot of times things happen and you can see the problem but you can’t help it.”
“Nothing you can do about that,” I said.
“Maybe not, maybe yes,” Clyde said. There was a faraway look in his eyes.
We didn’t see Gloria for some time and then one day when we were down at the center cleaning it up we got some news about her. (We had to clean the center twice a week for an entire month after the dance because of them catching Clyde dressed up like a girl.) Anyway, Maria had went down to the welfare office with a friend of hers and she said that she saw Gloria and her mother in the new-application section of the welfare office. We said that we hadn’t seen Gloria in about a month. Sam wanted to ask some more questions, like how Gloria was acting—was she crying or anything—but Clyde told us to get on with the cleaning and let’s get out of the center. I got the feeling he was telling us to shut up. After we finished cleaning, me and Clyde and Sam went over to Freddie’s restaurant and sat in a booth and had coffee. Clyde liked to do that and so did Sam. I hated coffee but I dug sitting in the booth drinking it. I thought it was pretty cool at the time.
“How come you didn’t let me ask about Gloria, man?” Sam said, putting his fourth spoonful of sugar in his coffee. “After all, she is one of the group.”
“Why did you want to know about her?” Clyde said, in this real cool voice. That’s one thing about Clyde. When he had somethi
ng really heavy to lay on you he always came up with this cool voice and you just knew you were going to be zonked. Then he’d ask you a question and you knew you weren’t going to get the answer right. Sam looks at me and I looked back at Sam, trying to be cool like Clyde did, so he would think I knew what Clyde was thinking.
“What you mean, why did I want to know about her?” Sam said, stalling for time.
“Just what I said,” Clyde came back.
“Well, I just wanted to know what happened, that’s all. I mean, that’s natural, right?” Sam looked at me. That sounded pretty good to me so I nodded. When I did this he went on talking. “When you know somebody it’s natural that you should want to know what they’re doing, see. There ain’t no particular reason, you just naturally want to know.” Sam slurped down some coffee and that made the waitress look over at us and shake her head.
“But that’s the problem,” Clyde said. “You said that Gloria is part of the group. Then there should be a special reason. There should be a special reason for us to find out what’s happening to her.”
“That’s what I said. Only you’re saying it’s special and I’m saying it’s natural. Same difference, man.” Sam slurped his coffee again and I looked over at the waitress and she shook her head again.
“No, what I’m saying is that we shouldn’t get into her business at all unless we’re going to try to help her. I mean, if all we’re going to do about her being down at the welfare office is use it as something to talk about and pass the time of day, well, why bother? We can talk about the moon or the World Series or anything.”
“You mean,” I said, thinking I was into something, “that we ought to take up a collection for her?”
Clyde didn’t say anything. He just turned real slow and gave me a look. For a young dude he had a cutting look, I want to tell you.
“What we can do,” Clyde said, mercifully looking back to Sam, “is to let her know that we care. You know, we haven’t seen Gloria in a while but we really haven’t made an effort to either.”
That was right. Even her girl friend, this girl everybody called BB but whose real name was Karen, hadn’t been around to see her. Mostly because Gloria just wasn’t as easy to get along with as she had been before. BB was saying that Gloria was being defensive.
“So what we gonna do. Bust on up to her house and say things to her?” Sam asked. “You going to do the talking?”
“You can do the talking if you want to,” said Clyde.
“I wouldn’t know what to say.”
“I don’t think it makes that much difference really. If you go up and she sees what we’re trying to do she’ll understand. And anyway, when my father died you came up and talked to me. That’s what gave me the idea really.” Clyde looked right at Sam and Sam kind of smiled.
“Well, we got to stick together,” Sam said, pleased that Clyde had said it was his idea.
“You know, I don’t know about other kids, but, dig, we got a lot of problems. You know, my father died. Gloria’s going through this thing.”
“I don’t have any problems,” I said.
“You know what else you don’t have, Stuff?” Sam asked.
“What?”
“Mirrors. Because if you had yourself a mirror and looked into it you’d see that you had a problem. I mean, if your face was your only fortune you’d be on welfare.”
“You think he could use a face lift?” Clyde asked. I knew they were just getting on me because I was younger than they were. Sometimes when they had nothing else to do they’d get on me just to pass the time.
“No, I don’t think he can use a face lift. He could use a face drop. Maybe they could drop it somewhere around his chest so his shirt would cover it up.”
“Aw, man.”
“So come on. Let’s go over to Gloria’s house now,” Sam said, finishing his coffee with one last slurp.
“Who’s going to do the talking?” Clyde asked.
“You,” Sam said.
“What will I say?”
“What will you say? Hey, look, you were the one that said that it didn’t matter what we said. Right, Stuff? Didn’t he just…”
“I said that, but we ought to have something definite to say, too. We just can’t walk in and start stuttering around. I mean, I don’t know…let me think about it until tomorrow. Okay?”
“Okay,” Sam said. It was okay with me too because I had to get home by nine and it was already five past nine.
The next day we were all supposed to meet at three thirty, but I couldn’t get there until four because my mother called from her job and said that I had to clean the bathroom before I left the house because I had got home late the night before. I asked her if I could clean it for just ten minutes because I was only ten minutes late but she said no. And that if I didn’t do a good job I’d have to answer to my father. And that’s a pain, you know. Because he always comes up with these long lectures about how lucky I am and how hard he had it as a boy and all that kind of thing. And while he goes through all of this lecture bit I’m supposed to sit there and look like I’m really interested when the only thing I’m really interested in is his finishing.
Anyway, I start cleaning the bathroom as fast as I can, see, when Sharon comes in with four of her friends. And don’t you know, they all have to go to the bathroom. Well, I tell them that they can’t use the bathroom and one of them says she really has to go.
“Tough titty,” I said.
“I’m going to tell Mama on you and you’re going to get it.” Sharon waved her finger in my face (which she knew I really hated).
“How would you like your teeth knocked out?”
“And I’m going to tell Mama that you said you were going to knock my teeth out, too.”
“I don’t even care.”
“And I’m going to tell her that you said that you don’t care if she knows it or not.”
“I didn’t say that. I said that I didn’t care what you told her,” I said.
I didn’t say anything else, just closed the bathroom door.
“You open this door right now, Francis!” she said. And before I had a chance to even think about it she opened the door herself. “Edith has to use the bathroom and she’s going to use it because this is my house as well as yours and my friends have just as much right to go to the bathroom as your friends and Mama’s going to hear about this whole incident.”
“Well, I’m not leaving. If she wants to use the bathroom with me in here she’s welcome to it!”
You know what she called me then? A pervert. Only she said it pre-vert.
“You pre-vert!”
Now where did she learn a word like that? Anyway she gets on the phone to Mama’s job and I know I’m going to lose this fight. I wanted to grab the phone from her, but I knew she’d just tell Mama that when Mama got home. She told Mama everything and then some.
“Mama, this is Sharon.” Can you believe she was crying? “I came home with three of my girl friends because you said that I could always bring my girl friends to the house instead of hanging around in the streets and getting into trouble and one of them had to go to the bathroom real bad and she’s an older girl almost eleven years old and may have her period any minute now and Francis won’t let them use the bathroom and he said if I called you he was going to beat me up and knock out my teeth and he said that he didn’t care if you knew it or not and he said a dirty word which I wouldn’t even repeat!”
The next thing I knew I was on the phone and Mama was saying that I had to let them use the bathroom and why couldn’t I be a gentleman for just once in my life. And she asked me what word I said and I said I didn’t remember the word. She said she would speak to me when she got home. That was all. She must have forgot to tell me that I couldn’t go out, which is what she usually did when I did something wrong. So then all of Sharon’s girl friends went to the bathroom. Naturally, Sharon had to go too and stay an extra-long time. But then the first girl that went said that she had to go agai
n! Twice! I said, “How can you go to the bathroom twice like that?” But then Sharon said that I wasn’t supposed to ask girls questions like that.
I finally got to the meeting at four o’clock. We met at Clyde’s house and Clyde said that he pretty much knew what he was going to say. So we all went to Gloria’s house and her mother was home. So we sat around for a while and then her mother said that she had to go out and get some air.
“I know when I’m in the way,” she said. “You want me to bring anything back?”
“No, thanks,” Gloria said.
After her mother left, Sam stood up and squared his shoulders off. “Gloria,” he said, “we’ve been thinking about this and that, you know. About what’s going on in the community. And we’ve been talking a lot about it and we decided…” Sam looked at me and Clyde. “…We decided that Clyde has something to say.” Sam sat down just as the doorbell rang. Gloria looked at Sam and then at Clyde and then answered the doorbell. It was Maria, BB, and Angel.
Fast Sam, Cool Clyde, and Stuff Page 5