by Jerrold Ladd
But Henry eventually did something that made me dislike him. He convinced my mother to sell drugs with him. They started selling for Nick*, Shortleg Lee’s brother. Now my mother was a drug dealer again, and I knew it was only a matter of time before the gun-toting gangsters kicked down our door like they had done before, only now they would probably kill us. Because their drug habit came first, I knew things always went wrong when dope fiends dealt the dope, too.
Eventually my mother’s new career brought more of her free-loading fiend friends around. They kept death near us. One evening I ran to the back door. As I jerked open the screen, this dope dealer who was visiting my mother kicked me hard between the legs, so hard that it made me urinate on myself. I flew backward through the air and hit the ground. I saw him reach for his revolver, then stop when he recognized me. When I walked back up to the door, he hit me in the face and told me never to run up and startle him.
I said, “Excuse me. I didn’t know we were entertaining some panicky dope dealer. I thought I was allowed to run up to my back door.” My mother just stood there and said nothing to the man for busting up her son. She probably was afraid to.
Along with oddballs like the panicky dealer were people like Big Mary. She came around more than the others. She weighed around three hundred pounds, with rolls of flesh on her huge arms and legs. She was clever, her every intention ill. With her big earrings, she reminded me of a fat voodoo woman. Big Mary always brought her skinny flunky husband with her when she came to our house, and the black-toothed jerk would go through our icebox and eat every bit of food we had left.
Always with a pleasant yet insidious undertone, Big Mary would shoot us her nettled smile. I hated how she slithered my name from her mouth like a lizard. “Jerrold, come talk to you Aunt Mary. Tell me what you momma’s been doing.” My mother was easy to manipulate, and the vulture Mary pecked away every bread crumb she could. She would encourage my mother to waste her welfare checks, always making sure she received her cut first. She knew she was depriving us by doing this, but Big Mary didn’t care. That vulture did it to her own kids, so what the hell, free bread crumbs.
However, one of my mother’s friends, despite being as hooked on dope as the rest of them, did me a favor. She took me into the bathroom to make me bathe. I wasn’t going to let her, but she won my confidence with her brisk but polite comments.
“Boy, I’ve seen many men before, so there’s no reason for you to be ashamed.” As I sat in our bathtub, she used a kitchen knife to scrape the dirt from my ankles. I avoided her eyes as I watched the water blacken with dirt. The woman told me not to be ashamed because it wasn’t my fault.
“But don’t let me see you let yourself go like this again, Jerrold,” she said. She said I should learn to take care of myself and not depend on my mother. I never forgot her lesson, even after she stopped coming around.
When a kid had parents selling drugs, he did one of two things: moved with relatives or stayed away from the house as much as possible. Junior, Sherrie, and I had to take the second alternative. When the house was crowded with these noisy dope heads, when smoke, needles, and trash were everywhere, we would get the hell away. Sherrie would go to her boyfriend’s grandmother. Junior would hop down to Big Mark’s house. And I would linger with the older boys, would go to some pool or conversational gathering, or would play football in the wide field. Sometimes I would do just as Eric and I had done: sit on the money swings and watch the noisy people. At night I still watched the stars.
If stars were most visible in the late hours, my mother must have seen a lot of them. Her new career kept her out all night with Henry, among the black blackness. Sometimes she didn’t come home. During these times, Sherrie began to take care of Junior and me. She made us come in the house, bathe, and lay out school clothes. When there was food, she made sure we ate, too. In a way, we all were growing closer, leaning more on each other for support. Even in the darkest hours, at our ages of nine, eleven, and thirteen, we were finding our inner strength, to help us deal with our daily tribulations.
But I never would have figured Junior could be brought from his privacy, his isolation, to defend Sherrie. It was a very late night, when my mother again was gone, that Sherrie crawled into our room. The trip from her room to ours certainly didn’t require her to crawl. But the heavy black rapist on her back did. She managed to fall on Junior and me, waking us up. In my sleep I mumbled something about making the man wait in the living room until Momma returned. I had become so used to men being in our house that I thought his visit was just routine.
But when he made the three of us stand by the closet, I understood. We weren’t nervous or frantic. We kept asking him what he wanted and telling him that our mother would be back soon. In response he kept telling Sherrie to come with him. Finally Junior bravely stepped forward. Junior, who had run from every bully in the projects, who hated violence like Gandhi, told the man that no matter what he did to us boys, he wasn’t going to harm my sister.
Junior had a lot of undiscovered physical strength. He was very stocky and muscular, so he probably could have given the man a good battle. And Sherrie and I would have helped, probably would have hit the man in the head with a hammer or stabbed him with one of the kitchen knives. We were hard enough to do that.
Luckily, that wasn’t necessary. When the rapist went to check things out at the front door, we put Sherrie through our bedroom window while shouting, “Run, run!” She sprinted to Mrs. Burnese’s house, where she knocked on Mrs. Burnese’s back door so hard that the glass at the top of the door broke. Mrs. Burnese’s son, Charles, ran after the rapist with a pistol. But he already had vanished.
In the dark, I ran through the Deadman units I knew so well to go call the police. They came a little late, about two hours later. We spent the rest of that day on Mrs. Burnese’s living room floor and didn’t see our mother until the next day.
Man, my family was buried under all this pressure. Things definitely were coming all the way apart. Even throughout that night at Mrs. Burnese’s, as I sat up sleepless, I doubted we would ever make it, unless we found an Almighty force, maybe one who held the power of life and death in His hands.
5
SAVE ME, LORD
It had been almost two years in the gruesome projects since the man tried to rape my sister. I had gotten to know Mrs. Burnese, who was ancient in the projects, and her grandson, Sherrie’s boyfriend, enough to visit them more often.
As I visited, I had heard Mrs. Burnese talk about her episodes with ghosts. Most adults in the projects claimed to have had an experience with one. She could tell the most terrifying stories. Always after nightfall, she would gather us children in her living room on the hard tile near the two couches. While we sat in a semicircle at her feet, she would bring the spirits alive.
Because her storytelling was so strong, it seemed as though the ghost would gather with us, would come from the dark pantry or from upstairs to listen to her tales. She seemed to be such a truthful woman, so she left everyone in fear. After each story, Mrs. Burnese, with her prunly wrinkled skin, so dark it looked burnt, and with her red, knowledgeable eyes and towering height, would warn us to respect the dead.
Her favorite story was about a man with fiery red eyes. “He was big, black, and cold,” she said. She had seen him on a late trip to the bathroom one night. On her way back to bed, she looked downstairs, and there he stood. “Hey, whatcha doin’ down there?” she had screamed. But he just stood there, blank and cold and without expression. She said she knew he wasn’t anything living. Yelling, she ran and jumped into bed with her husband. He grabbed his pistol and ran downstairs, ignoring her objections.
“What could he do with a ghost?” she said. But his disbelief had forced him to investigate. Downstairs, he found the doors and windows secure, no sign of forced entry anywhere. “He must have come through the walls,” said Mrs. Burnese. After hearing several of her stories, I stopped walking past the graveyard on my way to the shopping
center.
Henry stayed around our house a few months after the rapist had come. On a night when dope money was hard to come by, he shot up a lot of the dope and fled with the proceeds from the rest. This upset my mother severely. She stayed restless and upset after his departure—but it was routine to us kids. She paced around the house, listened to old love songs on the radio, and stared yearningly out the window. She and Henry had become two dope fiends in love.
We all were terrified of the house after the rapists. Sherrie began spending most of her time with Teresa or Mrs. Burnese; Junior hung around more at Big Mark’s house. I still visited the library, reading volumes of books. We all were just stagnating. We knew killers were going to come.
So when the candy man came instead, his arrival was a boon in disguise. This white man lived in a suburb to the west of Dallas. He would arrive each evening to recruit black boys for his illegal candy business. Drunk Tom, who was a wino with a year or two of college, told me to go with him. “You can feed your family,” he had said. That was all I needed to hear.
Sitting in a van with seven other kids, I was taught a speech that claimed the job was a design to keep young boys off the streets and out of trouble by giving them a part-time job. Scott*, a cunning white man, also made sure I could count his money.
Scott was small: some of the older boys were twice his size. He tried to make up for this by talking sternly and barking orders, something we tolerated for the money. But toward the black adults in the projects he acted benevolent and concerned. Everybody saw through his act.
He would take about eight of us to a suburb, fill our carry boxes with candy, then make us work up and down a street, selling his candy. As soon as we sold out, he would pick us up, reload the boxes, and take us to another street.
I recited his speech at every door: “Hello, sir. My name is Jerrold Ladd. I’m with the Junior Careers of Texas. This job is designed to keep us black boys off the streets and out of trouble.” It also makes us do illegal work because my boss is not licensed, doesn’t pay taxes on the money, and works us for under one dollar an hour. We’ll soon have criminal records. He’s making a bundle, too.
Some of the white people were sympathetic, but a lot of them were cruel. They slammed doors in our faces, and others called the police on us. The police busted us in one city, took mug shots and fingerprints. They dragged Scott downtown, too; but, after these incidents, he would just move to another city, until he was busted again. The white people sicced their dogs on us. One of them had bitten a young boy real bad. Scott did nothing.
Scott sometimes took us to his pleasant apartment, where his wife and son lived with him. He would do his books and other paperwork. He also would worship his scroll, a piece of paper in a box that he kneeled and prayed to for money and riches. He invited us to see the ritual one day. While down there on his knees, he chanted strange words in his off-key voice for about five minutes.
On another day, his wife asked me to stay home with her while Scott and the others went to the candy warehouse. I guess he thought she had plans to, say, make me take out the trash or a similar service. But she wanted something else.
She was a sweet, blonde-haired woman. As soon as Scott and the crew left, she put on a gown and we sat on the couch. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and her blue panties were showing.
“Jerrold, you seem like a real special boy, different from the rest. I like the way you ask questions and keep quiet.”
That woman really wanted to give me something for being special. She propped her legs up on the couch and opened them up on purpose. “Have you ever been with a woman, Jerrold?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Do you want to try it, then, Jerrold? It’s a wonderful experience.”
Up to this point in my life, no concept of sex ever had entered my mind. My experience with Gloria had been far from sexual. So I just sat there, scared, saying nothing. After I didn’t respond, Scott’s wife changed her clothes and went on about her chores. She never asked me not to tell or anything, as though she didn’t care if Scott knew or not.
When I told them later, all my friends who also worked for Scott laughed at me because I refused to go to bed with his wife. Surprisingly, they all claimed to have known what she wanted when she asked me to stay. They all said they would have done it.
By 1982 the candy man came less, then stopped coming altogether. I sat in my room one evening soon after. Right outside, an eerie, empty project unit reflected sunlight from its broken windows. Glass and trash, more than usual, littered the barren ground close by. Unusual sounds were coming from outside. I looked out my front door, trying to locate the amplified voice I was hearing bouncing off the project buildings. The voice was full of energy and shouted strange words. Excitement, unlike anything I previously had heard in the projects, was close. What was causing all the noise? I walked toward the voices onto Fishtrap Street to find out.
On a small patch of dirt in a resident’s yard, a small group of people had gathered. Their faces were dry, stern, and serious. The women were wearing dresses, the men suits and neckties. They all held tambourines, which they patted against their hands while they stomped their feet to the rhythm. A lady held a microphone and sang: “Watcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do when the world’s on fire?”
We gathered around to observe the singing and clapping. I remembered visiting several churches when we had lived somewhere with my father, but not since moving into Hades. And these people, they were not confined in a church but had brought their passion right outdoors, smack in the middle of the projects. As I watched them, I was glad that the dope dealers were being tolerant.
After the healthy woman finished singing, an elderly, set-faced man stepped forward to speak: “The Lord can bring ah change in your life. If you’re hungry and worried, if you have bills to pay, if you’re on drugs, whatevah the problem, the Lord can make a change.” This elderly man spellbound me when he went on and talked about the God Who loved me and could make my life happy. He said that Jesus had died on the cross for my sins, and if I accepted Him into my life, I would be saved. I felt hurt and wanted this God to help me and my family. When he asked if anyone wanted to try Jesus, through the laughter of spectators, I nervously stepped forward. I was led off by a woman.
This woman, who acted like she had been through this ritual a thousand times, said, “Close your eyes, young man, and repeat after me.” She prayed: “Lord, I believe that Jesus died for my sins, and I want to accept Him as my personal savior.” I repeated every word. Others who had walked forward with me were being lectured in the background, as I was.
“Ask the Lord to save you.”
I said, “Lord, save me.”
She shouted in my ear, “Save me, Lord.”
“Save me, Lord,” I said.
“Ask the Lord to save you.”
“Save me, Lord.”
“Now thank Him.”
“Thank you, Lord.”
By then she was hyped and spitting in my ear. Some of the group members were making eerie ghost sounds. I opened my eyes and saw the fat singer bent forward, arms outstretched, screaming.
The intensity slowly let up. I was asked my name and told that I was now cleaned and saved. I now needed to come to the church to learn and grow. The arrangements were made. I walked back home, telling no one about my new secret.
The next Sunday I walked to church, without telling anyone where I was going. I had on my usual disgusting clothes. The church was fifteen minutes away, behind the redneck store. When I got there, everyone else was just arriving. The lady who had performed the ceremonial prayer introduced me on the church porch as Brother Ladd. The church had the same red bricks like the projects, but it was trimmed in white and had a small steeple at the top. Since we all were early, we went inside to take our seats among the wooden church benches.
I sat on the very first row and watched about fifty members file into the church. They looked like average project citizens: old men, fat gossi
py women, children, and young couples. I was really nervous, yet curious to see how things worked in the church. Before long, the elders took their seats in the honorable-looking chairs at the front, and the service started. A young lady in her twenties stood before a microphone, and several people walked to the three entrances of the church and stood, like sentries. The young woman called on people to testify, and they told how God had blessed them with money for things like rent, a car part, and food.
Next, the woman on the tallest chair stepped forward. She was the leader of the church.
I didn’t pay much attention to the pastor’s message. I was watching the church members. They wailed, jumped, screamed, kicked, hollered, and threw their bodies around like they were possessed. They made eerie sounds that reminded me of Mrs. Burnese’s spirits. Meanwhile, musicians were banging away on the organ, piano, and drums, enticing the people to jump higher and scream louder. It seemed as though the whole church were bouncing: pulpit, benches, and members.
After they handed around the offering tray two or three times, the service was over. Everyone left full of energy.
I soon learned how to pray, all about sin, living holy, the end of the world, and the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. I was told that God loved me and did not want to see me suffering, hungry, and deprived. Without hesitation, I trusted God. I went to the church every time they had service, maybe five or six times a week. Meanwhile, my mother began respecting my religious devotion, even though I was just twelve and still figuring out exactly what it was. She encouraged me to keep going to church. Word soon spread around my project block that I was saved.
Around the neighborhood, people were just about equally divided on how they viewed church. The younger generation had little interest in the strict, holy lifestyle; they often laughed at any young person claiming to be saved. The older generation, on the other hand, had a deep fear of hell and eternal damnation, the only thing I saw that made them go to church. Most thought it was their ticket to a better life someday, although many still did not attend a church. Regardless, I blocked out everything except my awe and interest in God.