by Jerrold Ladd
Ironically, a week or so after we had begun meeting, Vernon almost knocked my door down at the little lime duplex. I reached for my pistol until I heard him call my name. I let him in. He jumped around, blurting his words out. He was coming from a meeting that Jamie had encouraged him to attend—Jamie was learning more about Islam and thinking about becoming a Muslim.
“Man, I just came from this meeting,” Vernon said. “You should have been there, man. We heard some powerful black people speak. Some of them were Muslims. They had on these long robes. They were dressed so death [impressively]. They had people there from all kinds of organizations, man. I got the number from this one man, Fahim Minkah. We’re going to go to his meeting this Friday.”
Vernon was so excited because he had just seen for the first time in his life people whom he thought really cared, could really do something, who hadn’t gotten out and become Uncle Toms.
On a Friday, we piled into Jamie’s car and drove to an apartment in Oak Cliff. We were going to get advice on our ideas. We were invited inside by a nice man, who had arranged several chairs in his living room. Several people already sat around. Outgoing Jamie and Shelvin were mingling real well, while Vernon and I stayed quietly seated. Soon, Fahim Minkah arrived.
Fahim was keen looking, tall and gray-bearded, like a wizard. He smiled broadly, and his eyes gleamed with knowledge. He quickly took control of everything, stood before us, and spoke.
“My name is Fahim Minkah, formerly Fred Bell. I want to welcome you all here today.”
He talked a very long time. He mentioned an organization he was about to start and how important it was for blacks to become economically self-reliant. I got the impression he was there to recruit people. I sat there quietly, amazed to know he even existed. Clearly he was skilled with words and accustomed to speaking. And sincerity sprang from him like sunshine. Toward the end of the meeting, Fahim angrily stated that we were going to do something about all the crack houses. Afterward he inquired with us for more information on just how bad things were. He was somewhat detached from the deeper levels of poverty.
Jamie managed to mention our desires to start a small business. Fahim, and the man who lived in the apartment, said to keep them aware of our progress so that they could help us. They offered no advice at the time. But they both agreed that self-employment was better than working for white people.
Vernon and the rest of us would all try, as many had done, to defy our poor origins, without sacrificing the community, hold on before fate sucked us under. We agreed to meet every Tuesday to try to start a business, to get out, get some resources, bring some life into this dead, sleeping neighborhood. But we all were so fatalistic and overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of this undertaking. We would try, though, until it brought us close to despair.
Back at the duplex, I finally had gotten around to getting that girl’s phone number. Her name was Tammie. We had been talking often on the phone and before she went home after school. We also spent time together in my living room, when I wasn’t with Vernon or the fellows or writing poetry and essays late into the night while watching for crack-head burglars.
Tammie, sixteen, was an only child and had been raised, mostly, by her grandmother. Her mundane, materialistic mother had taken over and passed on her values when Tammie was a teenager. Tammie’s personality was sweet yet clever, her mind ready, her heart inexperienced.
She was a nice girl and really admired me, even though she was from a more fortunate background. Her mom hated me and tried to stop her from seeing me. But Tammie was a rebellious sixteen-year-old who had been watching her fifteen-year-old cousin, who lived with Tammie’s grandmother one street over, go to all the parties with all the boys she wanted. Tammie wanted her teenage life and would do whatever it took to get it.
After Tammie’s mother found out she was seeing me, she told Tammie her all-too-familiar “You can get out.” That day Tammie gathered her clothes and went to her grandmother’s house, as she had done many times before, where she called to let me know she was okay. But, after this time, she would never again move back with her mother.
On many nights, Tammie and I lay in that dark duplex, sweating on each other, sweat mixed with a fervor untouched by any wrong. Unlike many young couples in the neighborhood, we were serious. We were spending a lot of time together. Times were pleasant. I was excited about the possibility of success, and this helped us with the relationship. Even though we were opposites, Tammie and I had grown close. She would not let anyone keep her from seeing me. “But, Grandmother, I love him,” she had said one evening. Her family began to accept this.
I stopped being with my friends so much once she entered my life. We could often be found at the Hardemans Barbecue on Oakland, where they still remember us today. We would sit in there and eat, and play the jukebox, and do the same thing at the Ponderosa on Pennsylvania Avenue. When I had extra money, we sometimes spent nights at motels. Tammie didn’t drink, but she wasn’t bothered by the beer I like to have sometimes. To support our relationship, Jamie and Shelvin would pick us up in the mornings and take us to breakfast sometimes.
She didn’t care much for them, my friends, and would often want me to choose between them and her, wanted me to be with her all the time. But I always managed to divide my time up in a way that made everybody happy.
I would meet Tammie downtown, to ride the bus to south Dallas with her. I had never been much for going out, so when she wanted to go to a ball game, party, or formal dinner, I would stay home. In a way, I never thought I fit that form of teenage life-style. I had way more experience on the streets than Tammie, and I preferred, instead, the small, close gatherings with my friends, with whom I felt comfortable and safe.
Tammie seemed to be the perfect addition to my life. Her concern for me seemed genuine, and at the start she was very supportive of the ideas I had. Then one day, only three months after we met, the troubles began. I was about to learn a valuable lesson about the power of a woman and the priceless bond between a man and his child. While we played on the couch one afternoon, her shirt flew up. I saw the little nudge in her stomach. She was pregnant.
13
FAILURES
After Tammie and I confirmed the pregnancy at Dr. Mason’s Clinic on Martin Luther King Street, from the depths of my mind sprang the deeper passion.
Deeper than my love of privacy, deeper than my love of my own life. It was a calling of manhood, of responsibility, of too much knowledge of children abandoned by their parents, deceived by their parents, abused by their parents, good children, manipulated, hurt, molested, and molded by an organized society, deserted in their most urgent times, left to chance a ruthless environment.
From the moment of confirmation, heredity took over. This was me, a man, a black man, all black men, to either accept or deny, nourish or suppress, love or scorn, the child. It was nature, human, godly, all these things, to know that I was appointed the director of this life, as my mother and father, as their mother and father, even as the first mother and father had been.
Whether it meant sacrificing high ambitions, slaving as a blue-collar laborer, miserable and depressed, or running away completely, choosing not to be responsible, giving up the ghost, choosing not to comfort my own hurt in the godforsaken life, I had to choose.
As I would, many teenage black fathers chose to be responsible. Many did not. The latter were everywhere in the neighborhood, denying their Pampers- and milk-lacking babies, denying the desperate, burdened girls. These were the young, hopeless fathers who abandoned their children, ignored their needs. Rather than face another failure, knowing their ragged lives could only take so much, they refused to try.
The thoughts were in my mind, and I chose, just as surely as there is night and day, to be a true father. It was still spring 1988. Tammie was only four weeks pregnant. I had some time to sort out a plan, however much that trouble would assail me.
Tammie and I both agreed that an abortion was out of the question. We want
ed to just be responsible and do the best we could. But I could tell she was very, very scared. She had come from a spoiled background, with a wooden spoon—a good poverty spoon—in her mouth. She was afraid yet was trying to be brave.
She decided to keep the pregnancy hidden from her family for the time being, and so did I. Hopefully, everything would work out with the things I was trying to do with my friends, which I discussed with her in detail. And maybe we could move together. She believed in me.
At Vernon’s small duplex, we had combed through every idea from a car detail shop, a small record store, a small grocery store, and a record production company. We chose a record shop, wrote an outline, and even caught the bus around west and south Dallas to look at some possible sites.
Needless to say, nothing ever got off the ground. The first major obstacle was money. We couldn’t borrow any—not with our zip codes and lack of collateral. Our parents didn’t have money. We didn’t know any investors. Jamie did draw up a couple of proposals, which, I believe, he submitted to some small loan, government, and business entities. They were laughingly rejected or caught up in some bureaucratic process. The only way we were going to get any money was to take it.
But we had completely stopped the stick-up kid business and were reluctant to start again. However, Vernon, with his by-whatever-means-necessary attitude, was pushing for one last robbery. He was fed up, irritated, and restless—word had gotten to Jamie’s concerned mom, my mom, and others that Vernon had us selling dope for him, after we had tried to encourage him to choose another way. Vernon did one last job, a department store, and netted about $1,500.
We split the money, each person vowing to keep his lot per the plan, and continued our research. We soon learned that $1,500 could hardly buy us buckets and mops, much less pay the lease, registering cost, and the rest and still leave us some money with which to feed ourselves and give bounty to our family members. Stuck, we consulted Fahim, who had no money and suggested we consult some of the same entities we already had contacted. And, he added, he was a very busy man.
We did service a party at Lincoln but got into a big fight with some dope dealers. A young dealer was staring hard at Vernon, the kind of stare men use to dignify their manhood. Vernon wouldn’t stand for that under any circumstances. He let the cuss words roll. The dope dealer pulled a gun and chased Vernon through the crowded gym, then through the back door. I followed behind the two of them. Just as the dealer was about to point the gun at Vernon, I put him in a choke hold. He lost consciousness and dropped the gun.
Meanwhile, Vernon was sprinting to his house to get our guns. At the scene, having run outside, I had placed myself among the dealer’s friends, who reacted. When I rose up, one of them hit me hard on the face. By this time, Jamie, who had been spinning records, had come to my aid, hitting the guy several times with a pipe. Jamie and I fought our way back into the gym. Afterward, the police came. Everything was spoiled.
Around the house, Vernon’s mom was getting tired of his attitude and had threatened to put him out. His uncles were constantly fighting, causing trouble, and keeping the police around, who would harass everybody. Later, Shelvin’s sister, whom Shelvin had been living with, put him out because he wasn’t working. He moved in with Vernon, and Jamie was such a loyal friend that he left his own house to come and suffer with Shelvin. We used the money to eat and live, the four of us. They spent the nights, sometimes sleeping in Vernon’s room, sometimes sleeping on the floor at my duplex. We would give my mother ten or fifteen bucks to keep her happy. Big J. was happy if she was happy.
Vernon’s mother did eventually move away from the commotion her brothers kept up, even though she wanted to stay close to her mother, with whom her two brothers and sister still lived. Vernon chose to move around to his grandmother’s rather than move away with his mother. This forced Jamie to go home and Shelvin to go back to his sister, who accepted him. Later, Shelvin foolishly tried to rob a store by himself. The details remained vague because he got caught, and we couldn’t talk to him in jail.
We were all depressed about our failure. However, we pledged never to give up hope and to try again when things were better. But for now, we all would go our separate ways.
Over the next eight months, Tammie and the baby became the center of my attention. I found an evening, part-time job cleaning office buildings downtown. I would meet her each evening at the bus stop on Latimer, where we would talk about our plans before she went home.
She would skip school on the days of her doctor appointments, I was proud and determined, and already nature was forming a bond between the baby and me. Always on the corner, we would stand for an hour or so, comforting one another, me doing most of the comforting. Her bulge had gotten bigger, and her face had become puffy. I even would feel her warm stomach, standing out there.
My brother had begun coming around to visit. He was looking for somewhere else to stay besides Dixon. With no alternative, he had joined the navy. All along, I had been hearing about the dozens of boys I knew from the projects, Oak Cliff, Dixon Circle, and south Dallas, who joined the service. These black boys weren’t joining freely and willfully. They saw right through the transparent lies the armed forces told about success and opportunity for blacks. I believe the armed forces knew that the poverty-stricken black boys joined for the hot meals and warm beds. Most of them were coming back to start where they had left off, nowhere.
With my mother, I should have known things wouldn’t hold together too long. No matter where we moved or how much things had settled down, it never lasted long. My mom had begun stealing money from Big J., who was on a fixed income. I would get into shouting matches with her for abusing this good man. She would threaten to make him put me out, but Big J. wouldn’t. So she began staying away, two and three days at a time, because I wouldn’t let her exploit him. Big J., who knew she was on drugs, was very appreciative. He told me I would always have a place to stay as long as he was around. To get even, my mother, from wherever she was, sent people to steal his checks.
Consequently, the lights, phone, water, and gas were turned off. So I used my cash stash, about five hundred dollars, to get everything reconnected for him and me. He was so grateful, he was almost in tears when he learned what I had done for him. But things got slow at the part-time job, and I was laid off.
I cooked and cleaned for Big J. until we ran out of food. Fahim, late into the night, would bring us dinner from his own table, after I had swallowed enough pride to call him. Fahim said I should never hesitate to call him in times like that.
Partly through my curiosity, partly hoping he could help me find a decent job, I began spending more time with Fahim. I would go to his house, where I mostly wound up just sitting, listening to him talk on the phone, or running errands for him. He made me pass out pamphlets in front of grocery stores and also to various places where he held meetings. I learned he had dedicated his life to these kinds of things. Among others, he had belonged to a group called the Black Panthers, and he had been wrongly imprisoned. He said the police had framed him for bank robbery, in an effort to silence people like him.
At age forty-nine, Fahim was a very dedicated, experienced man. He didn’t have much money and was just a fraction above people like me. Even though he was married and had five young children, he was always on the go, always at some community or city council meeting, giving a speech to a small group or confronting the establishment about something. He was full of charisma, and people seemed to sense he could do wonders if he had the right support.
Fahim was starting a new organization, one whose first objective was to form an antidrug group—under the authority of his parent organization—to confront the drug establishment. It was at one of these related meetings that I learned he was a Muslim (I didn’t care; I didn’t have much respect for any religions at the time). He took me to this strangely shaped church on Harwood, a mosque, where fellow members worshiped. Although they congregated there with Arabs, the ones we met with w
ere black.
As I sat there quietly observing, Fahim introduced his idea to the black Muslims. They listened while looking stubborn. Although I felt comfortable around them, I immediately disliked them all. They were very discourteous to each other and acted like a bunch of arrogant know-it-alls. Fahim could hardly complete a sentence without some interruption from a man who could not even talk right, much less say something with substance. They all would talk about how manly they were and would try to take the lead with Fahim’s ideas. (Later I would hear their spiritual leader on a radio program claiming to have started AAMAN.) Fahim seemed much more intelligent and out of place with them. And but for him, I would have lost all respect for black Muslims.
At length, Fahim suggested to everyone that the serious drug problem needed to be handled first. He said there would be no future to deal with unless it was resolved first. As we listened, he explained his strategy for dealing with the problem, which he called civil harassment of the drug dealers. They chose to launch the first effort from the Martin Luther King Jr. Center.
That day, the group picketed some dope houses. The media, with their reporters and cameras, accompanied the group, gave AAMAN a lot of coverage. And I was interviewed by a TV crew and a reporter, because I was the youngest member of the group, eighteen. After the local churches saw the attention and praise AAMAN received, it seemed they all started clone groups. But the churches had parades with police escorts, while claiming they were confronting the dope dealers.
AAMAN did have some success. But the lure and snare of rocks would prove too strong for their meager attempts. Over time, after about six weeks of patrols, the group disbanded. The men in AAMAN were fearless. Yet they were also suspicious and jealous of Fahim, and of each other, and always trying to get credit if anything positive happened. Some of them had a price, too.
As for Fahim, he seemed to have a drive, almost an obsession, with his organization and not much time for anyone who didn’t join. As for the others, they all seemed so confused to me, seemed just as troubled as anyone. While I felt sympathy for them, they still disappointed me, wasting their time bickering while everyone was hurting. I had expected so much more from them. But they were in deeper trouble than me and my friends.