Out of the Madness

by Jerrold Ladd

  CRITICAL PRAISE FOR JERROLD LADD

  AND

  OUT OF THE MADNESS

  “LADD INSPIRES HIS READERS WITH A ROUSING STORY OF PERSISTENCE AND TRIUMPH. A valuable book about the mental, physical, and spiritual hardships of America’s worst ghettos.”

  —Washington Post

  “A FRESH AND ANIMATED VOICE, OFFERING A VIEW INTO A BRUTAL ELEMENT OF AMERICAN SOCIETY.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A RIVETING NEW BOOK.”

  —Philadelphia Inquirer

  “HERE IS AN UNFORGETTABLE TESTAMENT TO THE INDOMITABILITY OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT, WHICH IS DESTINED TO BECOME A CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN CLASSIC. Shows in vivid detail and unvarnished, unpretentious language why we must care about those trapped in America’s ghettos, especially the young.”

  —Mark Mathabane, author of Kaffir Boy

  “JERROLD LADD IS A REMARKABLE INDIVIDUAL…. [He] offers some profound thoughts on why and how society must solve its racial problems before the problems destroy the nation.”

  —Abilene Reporter News

  “WE HAVE THIS MIRACLE, THE MIRACLE OF THIS AMAZING PIECE OF WRITING…. I could hardly believe that I was reading something so good and so fresh from a source that defies all the numerical odds of great literature.”

  —William Zinsser, author of On Writing Well

  “LADD IS TRULY A LIVING TESTIMONY THAT YOUR SURROUNDINGS DON’T AUTOMATICALLY DICTATE WHO YOU WILL BE.”

  —Macomb Daily (MI)

  “AN OUTSTANDING WRITER WHOSE STORY IS COMPELLING.”

  —Napa Valley Register

  “HIS PASSION SHINES THROUGH…. Ladd’s plight is touching.”

  —Arizona Republic

  “MOVING.”

  —Fort Worth Star-Telegram

  “A BEACON OF HOPE FOR BLACK YOUTHS BORN TO DESPAIR.”

  —Newark Star-Ledger

  “FAST-PACED AND UNBLINKING…. Ladd shows us how sheer force of the human spirit can overcome the worst of odds.”

  —Greensboro News & Record

  “IMPASSIONED.”

  —Tallahassee Democrat

  COPYRIGHT

  Some of the names and identifications of people who appear in this book have been changed to protect their privacy. Such names are marked by an asterisk when they first appear.

  Copyright © 1994 by Jerrold Ladd

  All rights reserved.

  Warner Books, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  First eBook Edition: September 2009

  ISBN: 978-0-446-56495-3

  This book is dedicated to every black who would rather

  be burned at the stake than die with no honor.

  “Be not conformed to the ways of this world but be ye

  transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

  —Romans 12:2

  CONTENTS

  CRITICAL PRAISE FOR JERROLD LADD AND OUT OF THE MADNESS

  COPYRIGHT

  INTRODUCTION by Mark Mathabane

  1. WELCOME

  2. DEADMAN

  3. COOL BROTHER

  4. SCHOOL TORTURE

  5. SAVE ME, LORD

  6. DO IT FOR MOMMA

  7. STRUGGLE

  8. MARRIAGE

  9. FORGED

  10. MIND WILDERNESS

  11. STAY ALIVE

  12. CLOSED LORE

  13. FAILURES

  14. BABY JACQUA

  15. THE FIRM

  16. REBIRTH

  17. OUT OF THE MADNESS

  EPILOGUE

  AFTERWORD by Fahim Minkah

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  by Mark Mathabane

  Black parents rose in the morning and turned into the living dead,” writes Jerrold Ladd in his searing autobiography chronicling the nightmares and horrors he witnessed and experienced coming of age in the drug-infested, poverty-stricken and violent ghettos of Dallas.

  Raised by an abusive and drug-addicted mother, whose own mother had abused her and died from a drug overdose, Jerrold, a precocious and sensitive child, soaked in all the phantasmagoric goings-on of that netherworld of lost souls in which violence, casual sex, poverty and drugs were a daily fixture.

  At seven he witnessed two bigoted white policemen almost let his mother be killed by drug dealers she had crossed. While still a child he suffered the ultimate man-child trauma when his mother’s philandering and drug habit drove his father to abandon them. And before Jerrold reached his teens he had seen friends murdered or transformed into dope fiends, thieves and prostitutes, by poverty, parental neglect, broken homes, lack of opportunity and racism.

  Remarkably, Jerrold not only survived, he did so with his intellect and soul intact. His experiences and enormous talent have made him one of the most powerful young black writers to emerge on the contemporary literary scene and to give impassioned utterance to the voiceless and disenfranchised millions who daily languish and die in the Sowetos and Beiruts of America.

  Jerrold’s story speaks for and to a generation. He tells us, in riveting and poignant details, without self-pity and with eloquent rage, about his complicated relationships with “Momma,” his strong-hearted but naive older sister Sherrie, and his quiet, children-loving brother Junior. He introduces us to a motley of unforgettable characters who peopled the projects of Dallas: Ugly Biggun, the bully; his mother’s string of lovers; grandmotherly Ruthy Mae, “who gave like Jesus”; the “Afro bandits,” who executed people in the drug trade; and the many hardworking men and women who miraculously found ways to survive in the raging hell which daily twisted the humanity of countless of their brethren into something almost bestial.

  Through Jerrold’s eyes we feel the degradation suffered by blacks quarantined in America’s ghettos, and the desperation with which they often seek solace and meaning for their hopeless lives in religion, alcohol, casual sex and drugs. We grieve with him at the sheer waste of young black lives deprived of hope, guidance and support. And lastly, we rejoice and marvel when he miraculously makes it Out of the Madness.

  Jerrold escaped by embracing Malcolm X’s credo of self-reliance, and by realizing early that knowledge was power and the key to liberation. He became a voracious reader. He discovered his African heritage, with which he forged a new identity. “Knowing the great accomplishments of my people, when they existed in their own civilizations, started a chain reaction that would change the foundation of my mind.”

  He also benefited from rare friendships with whites who helped him along and gave him important breaks. He learned from his mistakes, fought for the right to be a father to his out-of-wedlock daughter, and strove to help his mother kick the drug habit. By accepting responsibility for his own life and destiny, even when racism was a daily and deadly reality, Jerrold understood the most important lesson of survival.

  Out of the Madness provides disturbing similarities between apartheid South Africa and America. In both societies the majority of blacks fight for survival in violent worlds which breed the same frustrations, desperation, rage, bitterness, violence and self-destruction. The men are often emasculated by the system, and many in turn abuse their women, neglect their children, and even kill each other. In the mean streets of South Africa and America innocence dies young; children cannot afford to be children and live; and few survive long enough to understand what it truly means to be a human being.

  Jerrold Ladd survived the madness. The scars his soul bears have enabled him to pen a deeply felt and beautifully realized memoir of what it means to be a young black male in America’s equivalent of the Alexandras and Sowetos of apartheid South Africa. It is a story o
f survival with dignity and pride against insuperable odds. So universal is its message, and so sincere its anguished voice, that it emphatically makes its appeal to the human heart by which we all feel, and the conscience by which we seek to do right.

  1

  WELCOME

  My body felt hotter than the sun scorch coming through my bedroom window. My mother had just told me my fever was 103, though she didn’t need to. Slowly I turned onto my side and laid my scrawny arm on the sill. When I touched the metal trimming, heat shot through my arm. I jerked away and saw the skin already blistering on my forearm. In the delirium of fever, I had forgotten just how hot that window could become.

  This was west Dallas housing project heat. Just like the life here, it was thick, foul, and hard to breathe. Today, a morning in July 1977, the heat hovered over my bed like a vulture surveying its prey. Today, it was unbearable.

  Normally, I could have withstood the heat, even the fever. They were not uncommon. But an unusual anger was sapping my strength, an anger I couldn’t release. Two white police officers had almost let my mother die the previous evening.

  Yesterday, I heard voices coming from the living room that did not belong in our house. I peeked around the corner of the stairs and saw two men holding revolvers against the heads of my mother and stepfather, hollering about how tough they were. My parents had swindled drug money from them. One of the men looked at me. I dashed past him, running through the back door of our apartment as fast as I could to where my brother and sister were playing.

  Sherrie, my older sister, made me run across the wide field to get the cops assigned to the fire station. I ran like a deer, death, blood, and murder running through my head, my lungs screaming for air. I hoped that since the men had noticed me, maybe they would spare my parents. Many parents had been shot in the head lately.

  When I arrived at the firehouse, I told the Dallas police officers that men were in my house with guns and were about to kill my parents. They took one look at me, this little black scrawny kid, then casually continued discussing a hunting trip. They took their unconcerned time, no hurry, no rush.

  If I had not been seven, bony to the bone from starvation, and in such confusion, I would have hit those white cops, pounded them with my seven-year-old’s fury. The nerve! After I had sought help from the only other adults a kid is supposed to trust besides his parents. The nerve! After I had told them that men were in my house with guns and were about to kill my mother. The nerve! To make me race against time for my mother’s life, the most important person in the world to me, then be shown that it doesn’t count, that it isn’t more valuable than a lousy conversation.

  When the cops and I finally returned fifteen minutes later, I looked inside before entering. There was no blood on the floor, no dead bodies lying around. The men had left. My mother wasn’t concerned at all. She told the cops everything was okay.

  The following morning I was still upset over what had happened as I lay on my used flea-populated mattress. It stank from the piss of other children, and was becoming soaked from my sickly sweat—mostly because there were no sheets. It was too hot, anyway, for sheets.

  The project heat. It was worse than the dirty clothes scattered around my room, worse than the mildew, the crusty white walls, and the spiders, roaches, and other bugs that lived in the apartment.

  I decided to get out of bed. I knew the best way to fight the fever, the heat vulture, and the anger was to get up, walk on the hard quarry tile, which looked like a warehouse bathroom floor, and find some food. Before I could, though, my mother entered the room with two pieces of chicken. My appetite left.

  “Here, Jerrold, you want some chicken?” she asked while looking at her frail son, her youngest of three. But I just sat there, shadowed by my woolly hair, looking with my big rabbit eyes, which missed nothing, examining my mother’s face. For the second time in an hour she had spoiled my appetite.

  “Are you still feeling bad?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  “Momma is going to go and get you something for that fever. Okay?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She, twenty-seven, thick long hair, baby smooth skin, attractive, sat the chicken down and left the room again. My appetite came back. In a few minutes I had devoured the bird pieces, using my fury for strength. But I was still angry at her for almost getting herself murdered. It was her fault. She should not have run away with that man’s money, the person who had sent the hitmen to frighten her. Thank God that visit had been only a warning.

  But I knew she would continue to do wrong, for she was compelled by a force more powerful than love, hate, hunger, or death. More important than her children, her dignity, herself. She would do it again, and again, until she was forever damaged or killed. As a teenager, I would hear the story from her, how her mother started her on dope.

  Before moving to the west Dallas housing projects, she had lived with her mother and seven brothers and sisters in a weathered shack in west Dallas, around 1957. As the oldest of eight, she had little time for anything but cleaning, cooking, and washing and no time for games and other things young girls love to do. Although she wanted to go to school, her mother made her drop out at age fourteen. After all, that’s what kids were for, she would show. Not to love, nourish, teach, or help plan for life, but to clean, cook, and wash. But my mother had a plan to get away from her mother, who ran a slave camp, who stayed high off prescription medication, and who was concerned mainly with men and not her children: Marry young.

  When her young mind was closing on that answer, my future mother became pregnant with my sister, Sherrie. She was fifteen. The baby’s father didn’t marry her. With a young child of her own, she couldn’t stick around a house with seven yelling, screaming, starving, desperate brothers and sisters in a swamp of poverty. And she had no need for a sinister mother who would find a way to use her for her welfare checks. So she met and married Paul Ladd. Then, sometime during the early years of their marriage, my brother, Junior, and I were born.

  I still longed for my father. I missed how he used to wrestle and put us on his tall shoulders, and missed how he would throw big sticks into pecan trees and make us scramble at his feet, seeing who could pick up the most pecans. I missed the cool house my father provided, where my brother and I would take the phone receivers and use them for walkie-talkies. And I missed our clubhouse, which my sister and we boys spent days fixing up.

  But these good times were a thing of the past, had ended when my grandmother started my mother. It happened in a bathroom in one of the many shabby apartments we moved to, when one of her many migraines was at full blast.

  “I know what you can take for that headache,” her mother had said. She handed my mother a syringe and a heroin pill. Then, with the coaxing and reassurance that only a mother can give, she showed my mother how to work the drug into a batter and inject it into her arm. She handed down the force that had made her neglect her own children and many others neglect their children. It was the same force that would make my mother neglect us. She also handed down the force that destroyed herself. In 1979 she died from a drug overdose.

  After my mother became addicted, failure came fast within her marriage. She misused her minimum-wage-earning husband. She broke him. She sold their appliances. She ran off with men who supplied her dope. She left us, her children, naked and freezing on cold winter streets. Neighbors would keep us until our thoughtful dad, who cleaned, cooked, and washed, came home. One night they had argued.

  He left her that day, after they had a big fight in the living room because she had left earlier without letting my dad know where she was going. Usually a quiet man, he shouted and called her names, believing she was returning from a boyfriend’s house. In response, my mother hit him in the face several times, while doing her share of name calling. Fed up, my dad told her to get out and to take her kids with her. That’s when my eyes lit up! I grabbed his leg and hung on; my brother joined me.

  “Go on,
son, go on with your momma,” he kept saying.

  “No, Daddy, we want to stay here with you.”

  I remember screaming and kicking as she dragged me away from my father. I knew things were going to be dreadful without him. Soon, he would have nothing to do with us. The next morning we had moved in with a lady in the projects. Weeks later we had our own project unit.

  * * *

  The small ants, unlike the monster red ants usually rampant around the projects, had started a new trail from under my bed, where I still lay. It led to the meatless chicken bone on the side of my bed. The ants scampered about, scavenging for meat particles. Another trail led to my closet, where bundles of old clothes, which had not been washed for months, were oozing foul vapors. That was my wardrobe. Up my windowsill, past the scorch, and down the outside bricks, the two ant trails merged and disappeared in the brown grass of the front yard.

  Moments later, my mother returned to my room with two Anacin, something she could get even when she couldn’t get food. I took the pills while she watched. My throat was raw. She wasn’t high, as I clearly saw by her alert eyes, but give things a few hours, a couple of minutes. She never stayed down too long. As always, she wasn’t able to hide her unhappiness, even while standing there. Sometimes she tried, offered a smile, a kind word, some pocket change for candy. But most of the time she stayed angry.

  It was not a mean anger, but a desperate one—especially when she had a hard time getting another dose. Shout, whoop, beat, the rage of the devil would come from her. What could I do? I was a scrawny kid who was so loyal to his mother that I would have walked the earth barefoot for the Anacin she was addicted to or the cigarettes she demanded I borrow from strangers when she was high. What could I do but be loyal to her?

  Uneducated, unschooled to the streets, and vulnerable, she was easy prey for people who would take advantage of her. With three children, my mother had been placed inside the projects by the federal housing people. With her new heroin habit, no family support, and no husband, she slipped and began to crumble. She worried, cried, beat us, and dreamed in her heroin high. Her face became a picture of worry.