New Boy

by Julian Houston

  I fled outside onto the busy sidewalk and started to make my way through the teeming crowd. Whites and Negroes clogged the sidewalks in the pink haze of the late afternoon, everyone avoiding each other's eyes, careful not to touch each other. I passed a Salvation Army lady in a stiff navy blue bonnet and cape ringing her bell as if she was sounding an alarm. I dropped some change into her pot and took a moment to catch my breath, now that I had escaped from the floorwalker's clutches. I was standing in front of Pritchard's big windows. A tinny version of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" was blaring from loudspeakers stuck over the windows, behind which several elaborate Christmas scenes had been arranged: Santa's Workshop, with mechanized elves assembling toys; a jolly Santa with rosy cheeks and a red suit, with a bag of toys over his shoulder, seated in a sleigh being pulled by reindeer in simulated flight on a moonlit night; and Santa sliding down a chimney, his face and beard covered with soot, his raccoon eyes and pink lips frozen in rings of mock surprise. Santa had become a minstrel. White parents were holding their children up against the glass or hoisting them on their shoulders to view the display and were laughing at the minstrel Santa. As soon as colored parents saw the minstrel Santa stuck in the chimney, however, they passed it up altogether. Aletha Watkins was there with her children dressed up in their Sunday clothes, and when she saw it, she covered their eyes and quickly led them away. It was almost closing time and the crowds were pouring out of Pritchard's; throngs of white folks were pushing me toward the minstrel Santa and I was unable to escape. Soon I was being pressed against the plate-glass window by the crowd, while on the other side, the minstrel Santa, with his soot-covered face and bug eyes, was mechanically rising and falling in a cardboard chimney under an artificial snowfall.

  "Well, I never," said an old white woman, standing next to me and shaking her head with a grin. "What will they think of next?"

  "Show me, Momma. I wanna see," said a little white girl in pigtails, straining on tiptoe to see the display until her mother picked her up in her arms. At first, the child was unable to detect what all the excitement was about. "Well, what is it, Momma? What's everybody looking at?"

  "Look over there at Santa Claus, Patsy," said her mother, pointing out the minstrel Santa on the other side of the window. "What do you see?"

  "His face is dirty. Santa Claus has a dirty face," said the child excitedly.

  "And what does he look like?" said the mother, waiting patiently for her daughter's response. With one finger in her mouth, the daughter studied the figure in the window thoughtfully.

  "A nigger!" she exclaimed.

  "That's right!" crowed her mother, giving her a hug.

  I returned home just before dark, and Dad was standing in the living room with a Christmas tree.

  "You want to give me a hand with this, son?" he said. After we had secured the base of the tree, Mom brought out boxes of Christmas-tree decorations we had been using since I was a child, and the three of us trimmed the tree with lights and bulbs. When we finished trimming, we had dinner and I went off to my room to be alone for a while. I sat down on the side of my bed. I was still upset about what had happened at Pritchard's. I hadn't said anything to my parents about the run-in with the saleslady or the scene in the store window, but the incidents served to confirm, once again, my resolve to leave the South for good. And even if I did tell them, there was nothing my parents could do. Or would do. The doorbell rang.

  "Rob!" called my mother. "Come on out here and say hello to Miss Bernice Gibson!" I got up from my bed and headed for the living room. Miss Bernice was an old friend of my mother's from their college days. Her husband, Mr. Leroy Gibson, was a little brown-skinned man, shorter than his wife and very thin. A chain smoker with a chronic cough, he sold insurance policies door-to-door. Mr. Gibson had started college but had never finished, and he was often cited by my parents, in private, as an example of the fate that awaited me if I failed to graduate. Like a lot of my parents' friends, Miss Bernice and Mr. Gibson had only one child, a girl named Charlene, who was just my age. I had always suspected that Miss Bernice was plotting to arrange for me to become Charlene's future husband. When our families visited, she would always comment on how well Charlene and I played together and how much we were alike. When I was seven, she even tried to persuade my mother to put me in a children's fashion show at her church. Charlene was going to be dressed up as the bride, and I was to be the groom.

  I took my time going out to the living room.

  "Well, will you looka here!" said Miss Bernice as I walked into the room. "Come here, boy, and gimme some sugar!" She was standing on the other side of the room in a floral print dress that covered her big, heavyset frame like a tent. Her fleshy, yellow arms opened wide, and reluctantly, I walked over to be enveloped in them. "Don't he look fine, Charlene?" said Miss Bernice, looking over my shoulder at her daughter while locking me in her embrace. I hadn't even noticed Charlene, standing demurely behind me in a corner. She was wearing her overcoat. Charlene was perpetually in her mother's shadow, dragged along everywhere to be displayed like a sample from a drummer's suitcase. When she was younger, everyone thought of her as spoiled. She had more dolls and more clothes than any girl I knew, and as she got older, Miss Bernice would take her to the hairdresser when other girls her age were still wearing braids, but I didn't think she was spoiled. To me she seemed unhappy, and I always felt sorry for her. "How long you here for, Rob?" said Miss Bernice.

  "Just a few days," I said. "I have to go back to school right after New Year's."

  "Well, I certainly hope we get to see some more of you before you leave. Charlene was saying just the other day how much she missed seeing you at school." Charlene rolled her eyes, covered her mouth, and looked away. "Maybe we can get y'all over for dinner one day before you leave," said Miss Bernice.

  "Well, maybe so," said my mother, stepping in. "Why don't we talk about it sometime," said Mom. "Now, Bernice, if you'll excuse me, I've got to start getting my Christmas dinner ready. How are you coming on that reading assignment, son?" She was tossing me a life preserver, which I gladly accepted.

  "I still have quite a few pages left," I said.

  "Well, you better go read 'em," said Mom. "We don't want you slippin' off that honor roll while you're down here." Miss Bernice's eyes got big as saucers.

  "Say what? The honor roll? Did you hear that, Charlene? Robby is up there on the honor roll. Well, I do declare. That boy is gonna make some woman mighty happy one of these days." She grinned at me and batted her eyelashes. "Come on, Charlene, we don't want to keep this boy away from his schoolwork." Charlene headed for the front door. She still hadn't bothered to take off her coat. Halfheartedly, she waved at us and rushed out the door without speaking. "That child is gonna be the death of me," moaned Miss Bernice, shaking her head. "I try to give her some home training, but it just goes in one ear and out the other," and she followed Charlene out the door. I stood in the living room looking out the picture window, and I watched her catch up with Charlene on the sidewalk.

  We had a quiet Christmas at home, which suited me just fine. My mother wanted to have a party and invite a lot of people, but I didn't feel like celebrating, and Dad was on my side. "We don't need to have a party, Clarissa. You know some people are gonna be stopping by anyway. Just leave it at that." Mom didn't resist, and the three of us sat down to dinner on Christmas afternoon. Mom had made a roast turkey with all the trimmings and a corn pudding with nutmeg sprinkled on top. After a dessert of ice cream and fruitcake, we sat in the living room and exchanged gifts. My parents gave me a fancy pen-and-pencil set from England and some ties and dress shirts.

  Finally, my father settled into his armchair for his annual holiday talk. Dad always opened up on Thanksgiving or Christmas in the privacy of his home. He started with bromides, but he would also impart the wisdom of a lifetime, recalling what it had been like to overcome the doubts of others again and again, explaining to me, in his own way, how he had managed to survive. And now that he
and Mom had sent me off to boarding school, there were things he wanted to say, things he wanted me to know. "We got so much to be thankful for, son. Lots of rich folks don't have half what we've got. No matter what they say up there at that school or anywhere, money can't buy what's most important in life. Can't buy love. Can't buy peace of mind. Can't buy character. Never could." He paused for a moment and sighed. "But most people don't realize that until it's too late." Seated in his favorite chair with his arms extended on the armrests and his legs stretched out, he looked immense. "When I was growing up," he said, "nobody thought I would amount to anything. That's how it was in those days. People took a look at you and your nappy hair your thick lips, your flat nose and where you came from, and they thought they could tell your future. I'm talking about Negroes as well as whites. My momma did day's work and I didn't have a daddy around, so they thought, well, this little nigger's just gonna end up shining shoes somewhere, and they wrote me off. But I worked hard in school and then I got the scholarship to college. I lived at home to save money and Momma took in laundry and cleaned white folks' houses seven days a week to help me out. She always believed in me. That was the most important thing of all." There were tears in his eyes when he said it. "When I finished dental school, I met your mother. You can imagine how popular I was around here, a colored dentist just starting out. The women wouldn't leave me alone. Sometimes they would even call me at my office, trying to get me to meet them somewhere. All they were looking for my money. All of 'em except your mother. She used to say all she was looking for was a man she could trust. She believed in me too." I had heard most of this before and it still moved me, but it also seemed to be rooted in the values of patience and individual perseverance that had become the hallmark of black professionals. On the other hand, once they had achieved pro~ fessional status, some of them seemed to tolerate racial indignities to an alarming extent, not only inflicted on their patients and clients and customers, but on themselves, without even bothering to put up a fight.

  "Dad, did you ever do anything to challenge segregation?" I asked.

  "What do you mean?" he said, looking at me from the soft recesses of his armchair. "You mean walk a picket line or something like that?" He regarded me with patronizing skepticism, as though I was broaching a subject that I didn't know anything about.

  "Exactly," I said. "Did you ever do anything like that?"

  "Never had time," he said, shaking his head firmly. "When I wasn't working, I was in class, and after I finished school I had to set up my practice. Get a loan from the bank. Buy my equipment. Rent an office. Nobody ever gave me anything. I had to work for everything I have." He looked at me sternly. "And everything you have."

  "I know, Dad," I said. "But nothing's going to change around here unless everybody gets involved in the struggle."

  "I do my part," he said testily. "I give money to the NAACP every year."

  "I'm talking about more than that," I said. "I'm talking about standing up to the system." He sat brooding in the armchair for several minutes, without looking at me. Then he sighed and looked me straight in the eye.

  "Boy, let me tell you something. You aren't going to that school up there for free. And nobody's giving us clothes to wear or putting this roof over our heads. If I spend my time standing up to the system, when am I going to earn a living? If I don't work, we don't eat. It's as simple as that." He was in a huff, insulted by my questions, and I decided there was no point in pursuing the subject on Christmas, but I knew it was something I would discuss with him again.

  The doorbell rang several times that evening, with friends and family dropping by for a cup of eggnog and some fruitcake, and a glimpse of me, of course, the hometown boy who had gone away to a New England boarding school and had returned to tell about it. Mother ushered the guests into the living room and I sat politely answering all the perfunctory questions. "How you getting along up there?" "Must be cold up there this time of year?" "Any snow yet?" No one asked me about courses or books or what my days were like. If I was breathing, I must be doing all right. And so I sat there on the sofa like a celebrity, until the last guest, Mozelle Thomas, my mother's cousin on her father's side, had finished her fruitcake and stood up to leave. She was getting along in years and walked slowly, so I got up to help her. I always liked her. When I was younger, she took a. special interest in me, since my mother's people were not around.

  "Sure is nice to see you, Rob," she said, thrusting her wrinkled brown cheek toward me for a peck, which I gladly supplied. "You certainly are becoming a fine young man. Now don't let those folks up North change you any. You make sure you come back home when you finish up." I didn't say anything. I helped Cousin Mozelle to the front door and opened it for her, and even though the houses on the street were bristling with Christmas lights and decorations, the true spectacle was overhead in the night sky filled with stars, the same stars I had seen at Draper and in Harlem.

  "So beautiful," I sighed as I looked up.

  "They sure are pretty, aren't they," said Cousin Mozelle as I helped her down the front walk to her car. "But you should see the decorations on my block. We got Santa Claus, reindeer, angels, we even got a baby Jesus lying in a manger, everything all lit up, sitting right there on the front lawn so you can't miss it." She chuckled and shook her head. "Big as life," she said. "Big as life."

  I helped her into her car and headed back up the walk to our house, stopping again to look at the flood of stars overhead, wondering if I would ever find my place in the universe.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Two days after Christmas, Russell picked me up in his father's car, a new Ford coupe, two-toned in yellow and black, to take me to the meeting. I was impressed and I was jealous. "When did you get your driver's license?" I asked.

  "Couple of months ago," he said.

  It was a balmy afternoon and people were walking around outdoors in shirtsleeves. Russell drove slowly through town, carefully working his way in and out of the traffic. We passed the high school and eventually entered Parkside, a little neighborhood of tarpaper shacks with abandoned cars on the streets. Parkside had a tough reputation, and a lot of the kids who lived there never finished school. Russell pulled up in front of a small, shabby building covered with asbestos shingles. It looked like an old garage. There were weeds growing around the foundation and loose shingles lying on the ground. "This is it," said Russell, as he parked the car in front of the church.

  "Place is in pretty rough shape," I said, looking it over as we got out of the car.

  "Just pray it don't rain," said Russell.

  "How come?"

  "Roof leaks."

  We walked up to the front door, which was painted bright red. On one side of the door was a hand-lettered sign that said

  MT. CALVARY BAPTIST CHURCH

  REV. ISAIAH LASSITER, PASTOR

  On the other side was a cross, painted white, with the words JESUS SAVES. Russell took a key from his pocket, unlocked the door, and kicked it open. There was enough light in the shadowy room to see the simple wooden pews and, in the front, a little altar and an upright piano. In the darkness, I thought of one Saturday afternoon when Russell and I were sitting in the Hippodrome eating popcorn and waiting for the feature to begin, and suddenly, the newsreel came on and there was Willie Mays racing toward the center-field wall and making this unbelievable catch, his back to the ball as it was coming down. "Did you see that?" I had shouted. Russell's mouth was filled with popcorn but he nodded vigorously, and others in the theater were shouting, "Show 'em how to do it, Willie!" "Do your stuff!" After the feature, Russell and I had decided to wait around to watch Willie Mays in the newsreel again. The opening frames of the newsreel, however, showed President Eisenhower teeing off at Augusta. With the memory of Mays's phenomenally graceful catch still fresh in our minds, we laughed at the sight of this baldheaded old white man in high-water pants swatting at a little ball.

  Russell led the way downstairs to the basement and turned on the light
s to a simple room that ran the length of the building. Photographs of famous Negroes were tacked to the walls: Lena Horne, Jackie Robinson, Ethel Waters, Canada Lee, Marian Anderson, Paul Robeson. Everyone was there except Joe Louis. I was sorry that he was missing. A long table stood on the cement floor with folding chairs scattered around. At the front of the room, a battered wooden lectern stood in front of a framed picture of Jesus of Nazareth, the color-tinted one of him with a beard and flowing locks in long robes, looking off into the distance. I walked over and took a closer look at the black-and-white photographs of famous Negroes, stiffly posed subjects, mostly entertainers, pictures clipped out of a magazine. How many of these people had really been able to escape the white man's world, I wondered. And then I heard voices and footsteps coming down to the basement.

  "Well, I'll be damned!" I heard a familiar voice. "Rob Garrett! What are you doing here? Come back to see how the home folks are doing?" It was Roosevelt Tinsley, an old friend from junior high school. We had been in the same gym class, and our parents knew each other socially. Roosevelt's father had a dry-cleaning business. "How they treating you up there, man? Made your first million yet?" Roosevelt liked to kid around, but he could also needle.

  "I'm doing all right," I said. "Working my tail off."

  A nice-looking girl whom I didn't recognize had come in with Roosevelt. She was lingering by the stairs, and Roosevelt noticed me looking at her. "That's my cousin Paulette. She just started high school. Fine, ain't she?" Roosevelt smiled at me and I smiled and nodded in agreement. She certainly was fine. I studied her from a distance. Willowy but not too tall, with honey-colored skin, dark brown eyes, and long thin fingers that I could easily imagine playing the piano. When she looked at you, her right eye would sometimes wander slightly, but I thought she was pretty just the same. She was wearing her hair back in a ponytail and was dressed in a pink short-sleeve sweater, a gray skirt with a crinoline, and saddle shoes and bobby socks. Except for her color, she could have been on American Bandstand. I wanted to get to know her.