I Don't Want to Die Poor

by Michael Arceneaux

  I was still chubby and short then. She was taller and bigger than I was. She looked like a fake-ass Lady of Rage. And she claimed to have sold something called cheese. She showed it to me once. It wasn’t really yellow; I guess I could say it was tan. I didn’t learn until much later that cheese was black tar heroin mixed with crushed Tylenol PM tablets. Motherfuckers are inventive. Turns out, middle school students and high school students use it. She put it in my hand. I was not impressed. I dropped that right back to her. I didn’t want to run the risk of those drug-sniffing dogs that we used to see from time to time at Madison getting a whiff and biting my hand off or something. Let her deal with Officer Cujo.

  When she punched me, I took it. I stood there. I was not going to hit her back. Normally, if you hit me, I am swinging and best of luck to you. But not her. That was a girl. I was not going to do that. I told myself I would never, ever, ever, ever hit a woman. I would not be like him. I would never do that. I could not do that. To do that would destroy me.

  That’s why I stood there. She taunted me for it. She laughed. Called me a lot of names. Some of the names Dad would call you. I didn’t want any problems; I just wanted my paper back.

  Then she pushed me. Hard. The class was watching. It was a classroom run by someone who didn’t have the range to demand respect and wrestle control back from the students who obviously intimidated him. Catering to that audience, she swung again. I ducked, I grabbed her by her weave ponytail, and we fought.

  She was a big motherfucker so she kept swinging, but it was too late. She unleashed me. I only remember grabbing her by the hair, bringing her down to my height, and letting my anger—no longer quiet, not yearning to remain dormant—take over. We knocked over desks, or maybe, I knocked over desks. We fell to the ground. I had to be pulled off of her.

  I was sent to the class next door. I had to go see the vice principal. I forgot his name, but that lanky Black with the curl that looked crafted by a box is who they sent me to. But first, one of my classmates got me. Since she was another girl, I just knew she was going to be mad at me.

  “You beat that bitch ass!” is what she shouted gleefully as she tried to dab me up. No, sis. We’re not there yet. Ebony’s nose was bloody and her weave ponytail was in her hand. We walked together with Vice Principal Silky Hair From A Box to the office.

  I was so worried about what you were going to say when I got home. I was so embarrassed to see you and my sister. I was prepared to be rightfully put down. I might have actually lain down had you struck me in that moment.

  You weren’t mad at me. As you explained to me then, you were told what happened and how extremely hard I had tried to not get into a fight with a girl, but the girl was determined to have a fight with me. And my three-day suspension was scaled back to one after my Pre-AP English teacher found out what happened. He talked about what a good student I was, and because he, too, heard about how it went down, he felt an equitable punishment was unfair in this circumstance.

  Ebony ended up apologizing and acted like nothing ever happened. Yeah, this was some hood shit. All’s well did not end well. I could not get over what happened. You not being mad at me was not enough.

  I have not been in a fight ever since.

  I resisted the temptation the few other times I felt provocation coming at high school. It was to be expected; the nickname for the place was “Madhouse.” I learned to settle myself. In the past, while I might not have swung first, I knew how to trap someone into giving me a reason to swing back at them. I had decided that no matter how mad I got, it was better not to put myself in that situation unless the situation once again forced itself on me.

  I almost did get in another fight some years later at the club. I’ll never know what that dude’s problem was. He kept bumping me. He said he’d beat my ass. I would have let it go had he not bucked to me one too many times. Marcus stopped that fight from happening. He said I would not be fighting in the club and potentially catching any cases while in college. It’s a good thing he separated us. I am quick and I saw a bottle I could have cracked his face open with. He could have caught that to his face with a force fueled by some twenty-plus years of pent-up angst and frustration.

  However, I wouldn’t say I lost my cool in that instance. That was some ho ass bitch with a chip on his shoulder. I was merely prepared to let it be what it was if he decided to take that swing. After Marcus broke us up, we went back to dancing. We used to go off together to Hurricane Chris’s “A Bay Bay.” You have always been so tickled by that song. It took you back to growing up in Louisiana. You were related to someone they called “Bay Bay.” I loved how amused you were whenever it played on the radio.

  My anger would rise like the humidity in Houston in summer, but trust me, I learned how to cool down. If I didn’t get ahold of myself and my emotions, I knew who I would turn out like.

  The only other time I lost my cool was the first year I moved to New York. It was a few months after my thirtieth birthday, which you hadn’t acknowledged until I called you right before I celebrated with those who cared more about the day than you did that year. You usually call at my exact time of birth—3:24 p.m. CST, or somewhere in that vicinity—every year to confirm when it is exactly my birthday. But you were upset with me. I reminded you that I was gay and talking about it.

  We didn’t talk much for months. You wouldn’t have wanted to hear about much of what I had going on at the time. I had started dating someone. A man. I know. Who had a man. I know, I know.

  I looked myself in the mirror and quoted Monica’s “Sideline Ho,” the best song from the painfully underrated album The Makings of Me: “You’s a ho. You’s a ho. Sideline ho.” I also sang a little bit of MoKenStef’s “He’s Mine” while cruising through both his and his boyfriend’s Facebook pages. I began to make peace with my reality.

  As it turns out, he was dating me, his boyfriend, and somebody else he met the same day he met me. Realizing how unfair he was being to all of us (despite my being a willing participant), he eventually made a decision: not me or the boyfriend. I didn’t take this well. For the first week I tried to be rational and said all of the things that you tell yourself when shit blows up in your face: You knew what it was when you got involved. Blah, blah, ha ha, you sideline ho, etc.

  I ended up at that same bar I met him at with a friend who, at the time, didn’t appreciate the value of “woosah.” I ended up carrying her out of the club. She wanted to throw a drink in the face of the dude in defense of me, which I did not ask for or approve of.

  We got into a cab and left. I told her I was fine. But I really wasn’t. I broke into tears. Crying makes me uncomfortable, so I washed it away with anger and unleashed a fury on Sixth Avenue that had me kicking over people’s bikes, various trash cans, and pushing over newsstands. Apparently I made my way back to the bar to yell a lot of not nice things about him. Another friend, Alex, had to come down to restrain me and remind me about the consequences of a Black man acting like a damn fool in the West Village.

  “You can’t be kicking down white people’s bikes.”

  He was so right. Never give them a reason to turn you into a hashtag, and you, another grieving Black mother.

  Although I knew it was over—he made a choice and it wasn’t me, plus I now looked crazy as shit—I apologized days later. Repeatedly. He accepted. We talked for some weeks after the incident, but I had to let him go. The last thing he told me was that I smelled good. I left it at that and considered it closure. Then I ended up seeing him once a year later and then it was the kind of closure that lives up to the definition.

  That’s the last time I can recall allowing my anger to get the best of me in such extremity. The ordeal exposed that I was better, but needed to work a lot harder to control my anger. To not let someone else allow me to get that upset. To not allow myself to get that pissed off, no matter the perceived provocation.

  I made a real effort to control that quiet anger.

  We were talking about
quiet anger in the setting we do most of our convos of depth: your car, riding home from the airport. I didn’t say all of this to you. I knew my audience. Still, I said enough to paint a picture of someone carrying baggage who doesn’t want to let it take me whole or take down some innocent bystander.

  It felt good to hear you say you have struggled with that same degree of quiet anger. The kind not everyone can spot, but if you suffer from it, too, you can at least sense it in another. It doesn’t carry a stench, but we can sniff each other out.

  Since I was eighteen years old, you are the only person to have picked me up from the airport and dropped me off. You have rearranged your work schedule in order to keep that going. Was it because you wanted to make sure you saw me for the last time should the unthinkable happen? We never really discussed that, but that’s how I have always taken it. I have loved that so much about you. It’s the unspoken tenderness to you. It’s one of the things about you that makes me love you so much, Mama.

  It’s only been one time since you didn’t pick me up and drop me off at the airport. When I came home for a book event in Houston. For my very first book. I know grudges aren’t in vogue (by the way, I wish the original former members of the R&B group En Vogue would reunite and make some of that Xscape and SWV tour money—they can keep the new member from The Jamie Foxx Show if they must), but I still cannot believe that major bookstore rejected my publisher’s request to do an event there only to randomly tell my brother when he went out to buy a copy of the book that I should do something there. But shout-out to Brazos Books, an indie bookstore, for a superb event with a room full of old high school classmates, family members, and the lovely white people and other non-Blacks who heard me talking to Terry Gross when I blessedly appeared on Fresh Air.

  You don’t know about any of this because you wanted no part of it. You never did approve of me “telling my business.” You always told me that information can be weaponized. Your other concern was that “those people”—who I interpreted as white folks—were allowing me to ride the wave of something that society is pretending okay but isn’t—the gay shit—and they would eventually let me falter. But, as you always added, you would be there for me when that happened. It is a delightfully passive-aggressive pledge, but you mean it.

  I never blamed you for not trusting white folks as a collective. You helped integrate a high school and were attacked for it. You are a Black woman and daughter of the South. You have every reason to be suspicious no matter your age, but because you were born in the 1950s, you know how ripe their contempt for us can be. You have seen so many be propped up only to be taken down. You were protective for good reason.

  But I’ve always known you to judge people individually. You were fine with white people and all types of people in that regard. As a nurse and as a Christian (not perfect, but no one is, and my criticisms notwithstanding, you’re one of the best ones I know), your capacity for compassion and decency was extended to all. It’s why that Saudi Royal wanted to hire you and whisk you and yours away to his home country to take care of his wife and family. Not that you would have ever done that. You are a traditionalist culturally, but you are the type to literally swing at any form of a woman’s subjugation. And again, you’re Catholic and you mean that shit, ma’am. That’s why you didn’t go away with him or any of those other very rich foreigners who tried to woo you away.

  You’ve never said it, but I get the feeling some of these people just wanted you for non-medical reasons. You’ve never owned how beautiful you are. You were discouraged from believing it because your complexion wasn’t fair enough and your hair was not as straight as someone hoped for it to be. You are stunning, though. I’ve seen your old pictures. I see your face as I write these words. You are so pretty and I’m not only saying that because I see you whenever I look in the mirror at my own face.

  We are twins in some ways and maybe that’s always been the underlying problem.

  When you didn’t pick me up, it stung, but it was for the best. I went over to see you anyway. To say I loved you even as I listened to you vocalize your disapproval. Mainly because you know and I know that you’ll either get over it or I’ll continue in spite of it. With your support, no less. You are always rooting for me even if you aren’t for what it is I have to say and share.

  I think you always sensed that creative spirit in me. Marcus’s surfaced early, too, but I reckon—yeah, reckon, and I bet you can hear me exactly how I sound it . . . I’m so goofy—you knew how determined I was. That I was trying to figure out how I could be like those people on television.

  Remember when I asked you about my cousin that was a CNN anchor? I saw the name Arceneaux and felt something different that morning. I always thought the last name Arceneaux was cool even if other people couldn’t spell it or pronounce it. I felt a sense of pride seeing that name on a chyron.

  I never connected with her, though, outside of a brief call nearly a decade after I saw her on TV. I was a freshman in college then, majoring in broadcast journalism. She was polite, but the conversation was brief and we never spoke again. I had heard she had some health issues later, but I never begrudged her in any way. She knew my father, not me. I didn’t know any of those people—the Arceneauxs—really. I may never know them. But that was just an aside. I’m used to not knowing them. I was more interested in meeting people who could help me achieve my dreams. I did my best to make the most out of this overpriced, debt-riddled excursion into higher education and the access it provided. I am so grateful to you and your credit score. I am so sorry it’s taken longer than anticipated to pay you back.

  As many times as I have fallen, you have refused to let me stay down. You are too tough for that. And you know I am not weak, and thus needn’t behave as such. You may not quite understand what I do for a living. Hell, I don’t. I’m learning as I go.

  But you do know that I have struggled and there is a guilt I have carried for feeling like a bad return on your investment. Publicity is not money and there are people who find less value in me over the identity you felt best to shield for different reasons. Or maybe that was part of your calculation. You don’t know media and television, but you know white people and you know America.

  I remember big sis once saying, “I’m sorry you weren’t born to a rich white family.” I don’t remember the context, but while I don’t make apologies for dreaming big, I am sorry for not factoring in how difficult and how expensive it was going to be to put myself in the position to pursue many of the opportunities that come much easier to white people. All of the people whose careers I admired were white men. It wasn’t their whiteness I was attracted to; I didn’t and don’t want to be white. It was the type of work they did that I gravitated toward. It appealed to me. I knew I could do the same quality of work, only in my way. I only wanted to show I was no less capable and no less deserving. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but I can admit that perhaps I didn’t know how many attempts would be made to humble me.

  I’m sorry I didn’t take that into greater account.

  We never talk about any of this at great length. My work has always been a touchy subject. Not only is it too personal now, the benefits still haven’t outweighed the debt I took on to get there. None of it has yet to significantly scale back the balance on all those loans. The ones your names are attached to.

  That, probably more than anything, is what I am sorry about.

  You do not want me to be sorry. It’s done. There is no going back. You’ve said this so many times to me. You had your concerns, but you did this for me. I worry guilt factored into that decision a little bit.

  As much as I complain about the debt, what eats me about it is that while I did have lofty dreams, it took me into my thirties to acknowledge that careerist purists alone were not why I fled. I needed to get out of that house and be far from the city no matter how I loved it because it all felt suffocating. I could never be at peace there because no one around seemed to want to help me put some of the parts brok
en in me back together. But we’re all a bit broken, as lovely folks as we all are.

  I, too, have wondered if you sensed that. You are so perceptive. You are such a good observer. I get that from you. I can talk and talk and talk, but I know how to be silent and observe my surroundings just as well. You lent me a life raft and your reward was being chained to my debt.

  Had we known better, we could have gone about all of this differently, but as you said, it’s done. I still want to say I’m sorry. I’m going to be sorry until the last payment is made—maybe even after that. I want you to forgive me, even if you don’t think I need to be forgiven. You have not allowed me to feel like a self-centered bastard. You meant your apology well over a decade ago. Why can’t I accept it?

  The fear lingers—specifically the one where I question if I grew up to become another man who let you down. That is something I alone have to make peace with. I will try harder.

  I am proud of the work I have done, even if I have never explicitly said it to you. It is work that has been undervalued, and while money may not be everything, we live in a capitalist society. Our value is collectively judged by the metric of how much we have to show for it. I don’t have enough yet to show. I want to be bigger than such superficial influencing, but it’s been drilled into my psyche so the shrinkage seeps in sometimes.

  I can go without your approval on who I love and who I want to have sex with. I can live with your horror that I could end up in hell. What I cannot stomach is to leave this world in a state worse than the one I entered through my parents. That’s already happened to so many through no real fault of their own. People fall under a system designed for their perpetual stumble.

  Nevertheless, I don’t want to become one of them.

  What good is any of this if that’s how it ends?

  I don’t think that is my fate, but to have carried some of the burdens of my twenties into my thirties has shaken my faith. You have long worried about my faith levels. I have a strong spirit, but it has been beaten down. I still have a lot of fight in me, but I am tired. You can hear it in my voice. It’s with you when the confidence I try to exude with everyone else instantly melts at the sound of your voice.