Step Out on Nothing

by Byron Pitts

  Outsiders knew my hometown as just Baltimore, but if you grew up there, there were actually two Baltimores; East Baltimore and West Baltimore. And the side of the city you lived on said as much about you as your last name or your parents’ income. East Baltimore was predominantly blue collar, made up mostly of cement, ethnic neighborhoods, and tough-minded people. Most people I knew worked with their hands and worked hard for their money. You loved family, your faith, the Colts, and the Orioles. In 1969 my world centered on the 2700 block of East Federal Street. Ten blocks of red brick row houses, trimmed with aluminum siding. Decent people kept their furniture covered in plastic. Each house had a patch of grass out front. To call it a lawn would be too generous. The yards on East Federal were narrow and long, like the hood of the Buick Electric 225 my father drove. Those in the know called that model car a Deuce and a Quarter. Ours was a neighborhood on the shy side of working class. Like I said, my father was a meat cutter at the local meat plant. My mother was a seamstress at the London Fog coat factory. My sister was about to graduate from high school. Big hair. Bigger personality. I idolized her. My brother was sixteen. We had the typical big brother–little brother relationship: we hated each other. Born William MacLauren, we’ve always called him Mac as in MacLauren, but it could have stood for Mack truck. Not surprisingly, he grew up and became a truck driver. Even as a boy, he was built like a man, stronger than most, with a quiet demeanor that shouted “Fool with me at your own risk.” He and Clarice Pitts were not blood relatives; however, they’d always shared a fighter’s heart and a silent understanding that the world had somehow abandoned them. They would always have each other.

  My nickname in the neighborhood was Pickle. I despised that name, but it seemed to fit. You know the big kid in the neighborhood? That wasn’t me. I was thin as a coatrack, my head shaped like a rump roast covered in freckles. We were a Pepsi family, but my glasses resembled Coke bottles. I was shy out of necessity. But whatever my life lacked in 1969, football filled the void. I loved Johnny Unitas, John Mackey, and the Baltimore Colts. I never actually went to a game. I guess we couldn’t afford it. But no kid in the stands ever adored that team more than I did.

  On Federal Street, the Pitts kids had a reputation: God-fearing, hard-working, and polite. Next to perhaps breathing, few things have meant more to my mother than good manners. She’d often remark, when I was very young, and with great conviction and innocence, “If you never learn to read and write, you will be polite and work hard.” Most days, that was enough. Back in North Carolina, the only reading materials around my grandmother’s home were the Bible and Ebony magazine. My parents did one better with the Bible, Ebony, and Jet. My father read the newspaper. My mother had her schoolbooks, but reading and pleasure rarely shared the same space in our house. Neither one of my parents ever read to me, as best I can recall. We had a roof over our heads, food on the table, and church every Sunday. When my mother compared our lives to her childhood—in which she and some of her siblings actually slept in the woods on more than a few nights, terrified that their father would come home in a drunken rage and beat them—she felt that her children had it good.

  Around the house, my mother was the enforcer, dishing out the discipline in our family. My father was the fun-loving life of the party and primary breadwinner. As long as I can remember, relatives from across the country (mostly the South) would call our home, seeking my mother’s counsel. When there was trouble, people called Clarice. My dad loved cooking, telling stories, and occasionally, if encouraged, he would sing songs. The same relatives who often called my mom for advice would flock to our house annually to enjoy those times when my dad would cook their favorite foods, retell their favorite stories, and pour their favorite drinks. At some point in the evening, my mother would end up in my dad’s lap, and neighbors could hear the laughter from our home pouring out onto the sidewalk. Those were the good days.

  For better or worse, there was structure or, at the very least, a routine in the first years of my life. My mother made my brother and me get haircuts every Saturday. We enjoyed one style: The number one. The skinny. And my mother’s favorite, “Cut it close.” Food was part of the ritual too. We’d have pot roast for Sunday dinner. Leftovers on Monday, fried chicken on Tuesday, pork chops Wednesday, liver on Thursday (I hated liver, so I got salisbury steak), fish sticks on Friday, and “Go for yourself” on Saturday. But mealtime was often the flashpoint for the anger and bitterness that began to consume my parents’ marriage. Their fight scene on the street was a rarity, but Fight Night at the Dinner Table, as the kids called it, was a regular feature. Meals always started with a prayer, “Heavenly Father, thank you for the food we’re about to receive . . . ,” and often ended early.

  The fight usually started with very little warning, either my mother’s sudden silence or my father’s sarcasm. One night we were having fried pork chops (so it had to have been a Wednesday). Pork chops were my favorite, with mashed potatoes and cabbage on the side, and blue Kool-Aid (that’s grape to the uninitiated). The sounds of silverware against plates and light conversation filled the air. Then came the look. We all caught it at different times. My mother was staring a hole through my father’s head. It sounded like she dropped her fork from the ceiling, but it actually fell no more than three inches from her hand to her plate. My dad gave his usual response soaked in innocence: “What?”

  He didn’t realize my mother had been listening on the phone in our kitchen when he had called Miss Donna from an upstairs phone to see how their son, Myron, was doing. Yes, I said their son. I think my mother was actually willing to forgive his child by another woman several years after my birth. But his name being so close to mine (Byron/Myron) was what seemed to break her heart and sometimes her spirit. At this point during dinner, however, she wasn’t just broken—she was angry. First went her plate. Aimed at his head. And then her coffee cup. Then my plate. Followed rapid-fire by Mac’s and Saundra’s dinner plates.

  “Calm down, Momma!” Saundra, the ring announcer, screamed.

  Mac, always the referee, stood up to make sure no one went for a knife or scissors. Me? I just sat there. You ever notice at a prizefight, the people with the best seats don’t move a lot? They’re spellbound by the action in the ring. That was me at the kitchen table: left side, center seat between my parents, my brother and sister on the other side. That night my mother was determined, if not accurate. Four feet away, four tries, but my mother never hit my father once. Granted he was bobbing and weaving the whole time, like Cassius Clay dodging a Sonny Liston jab. As my father dodged plates and coffee cups, he would call my mother Sweetie. Her name of choice for him was Son of a Bitch. Except for a few potatoes in his hair, he got away without a scratch. The plates and the wallpaper didn’t fare as well. With coffee-stained walls and cabinets full of chipped plates and broken utensils, I presumed every family had some variation on the same theme. And as quickly as it started, the fight was over. My father backpedaled to another room. My mother retreated to the comfort of her sewing machine. I cleared the table. My sister washed dishes. My brother dried them. We finished our homework. I was in bed by 8:30 P.M.

  For all their bickering, Clarice and William Pitts always worked hard. They always believed in the power of prayer, the goodness of God’s grace, and the importance of faith. That partially explains why my mother stayed married as long as she did. For as long as I can remember, she’s worn a tiny mustard seed encased in a small plastic ball on a chain around her neck. The story of the mustard seed in the Bible has always given her great comfort.

  Matthew 17:20: “Because you have so little faith, I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

  It’s a belief that anything’s possible if one’s willing to work hard enough, if one’s faith runs deep enough. I think she still believed in her marriage long after it was over. Her first answer to every diffic
ult situation was always the same: “Did you pray yet?” In the midst of any crisis, whether at the beginning, the middle, or the end, my mother always turned to prayer. That night—after my parents fought on the street and my father bled inside his car on my lap, outside his girlfriend’s house, where strangers looked on and laughed, in a neighborhood I’d never seen before but have never forgotten—my mother drove me home and we prayed.

  We never said a word in the car on the way home. My mother had climbed off my father, held my hand, and scooted me into her car first. We went home in silence. I ate dinner in those same bloody clothes. I washed my hands but not my face. No one seemed to notice. The tension that evening had exhausted everyone. We all headed for bed early.

  “Go take off those clothes and leave them outside your door,” my mother told me. “Call me when you’ve got your pajamas on.”

  I did. I could hear her walking up the stairs. Slow and deliberate, as if she was carrying a heavy load. Earlier, back in my father’s car, when I glanced into my mother’s gray eyes, they were narrow and mean. Now at home, in my room, her eyes were soft around the edges and sad. My mother was not the crying type. She wasn’t crying then. But she was sad. I could see it in the slump of her shoulders. It was written across her face.

  “You okay?” she asked me. Her tone now was 180 degrees lighter than a few hours ago, when she had picked me up from school.

  “What happened between me and your father had nothing to do with you,” she said. “I wish we could wash away memories as easily as we can wash clothes,” she added. Then she took my hands, closed her eyes, and touched her head to mine and started to pray. It’s the way I’ve prayed ever since.

  “Dear wise and almighty God, we come to you as humbly as we know how, just to say thank you, Lord. Thank you for blessings seen and unseen. Thank you, Lord, for our family, our friends, and even our enemies. Thank you, Lord, for the bad days, for they help us to better appreciate the good ones. Please, Lord, mend us where we are broken. Make us strong where we are weak. Give us, Lord, the faith to believe our tomorrow will be brighter than our yesterday. Hold us, Lord. Keep us in the palms of Your hands. Give us faith to keep holding on. These and all other blessings we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.”

  I opened my eyes to her familiar smile. We’re not a teeth-smiling family—more grinners. But her grin promised better days were ahead. She hugged me. Tucked me in. Said good night. I remember expecting an apology before she left the room. After the day I’d had? Please! But sorry is not a word my mother used very often. The suggestion was, sorry indicated regret. With faith, why have regrets? Everything happens for a reason, for the good. Perhaps understanding would come by and by. As I listened to my mother’s footsteps beyond my door, I suddenly felt a peace. The clanking of our old electric fan in the window even had a pleasant melody to it. On the surface, not a damn thing good had happened to me that day. But at that moment, after my mother’s prayers, all I could think about was rejoicing in the notion that I was now on the other side of a difficult moment.

  TWO

  Keep Your Head Up

  No good thing will be withheld from them that walk uprightly.

  —Psalm 84:11

  KEEP YOUR HEAD UP no matter what. I heard that line so often as a child that I still hear it in my sleep. I’ve repeated it to colleagues, new acquaintances, even strangers. It was one of my mother’s favorite expressions. It was a saying to motivate if needed and redirect if necessary. Keep your head up was never meant as a statement of false pride or arrogance. It was always one of Clarice’s go-to phrases in difficult moments, meant to reverse whatever circumstance was pulling us down.

  But honestly it was hard for me to keep my head up with so much weighing me down. While I was loved and spoiled, like the youngest child in many families, all that attention could not smooth over the deep flaws that I was hiding. Only my closest relatives, a few friends, and a teacher or two even knew I stuttered. But the big secret: I couldn’t read. That was top secret. I was a phony, faking it, mouthing words in books that I did not really understand. Hiding my secret from my teachers and my parents. One of my favorite songs of the late 1960s was “Secret Agent Man.” That was me carrying what seemed to me one of the great secrets in the world. I could not read, yet no one seemed to notice. It was a distressful combination for a boy who had big dreams. Illiterate and barely able to speak. I could read my name and a few simple words that I saw every day. It wasn’t much, but for the time being it was enough. I was also unfailingly polite. In public school simply being polite all but guaranteed at least a passing grade in most classes. I was quiet and a good athlete. (I was never first pick as a class project partner, but if it was stick ball, football, or tag, Byron Pitts was a first-round draft pick.) All reasons enough for most teachers to leave me alone and for my peers to give me space. Most of my classes at Fort Worthington Elementary School, known simply as P.S. 85, were overcrowded. It’s the same school my brother attended, and so in part I lived off his reputation. My brother was quiet, hard-working, and an average student. My mother was an active participant in parent activities. I was in a sense a legacy student, surviving at P.S. 85 on the family name. It was assumed I was learning, just as Mac had. For a quiet child falling further and further behind, it was a good place to not get noticed.

  But I was performing well below average. In first and second grades, there was not a single A or B on my report card. My highest marks were always in behavior. My mother finally decided that the public school system was getting too big and impersonal for me. Because the discipline and attention offered in a parochial school was much more appealing to her, in September of 1968, for the third grade, she moved me to a Catholic school called St. Katharine’s.

  It didn’t matter where I went, school was work, difficult work. And so, walking into St. Katharine’s every morning felt like a job I wasn’t good at and didn’t enjoy. The school was a nondescript three-story cement building surrounded by a cast-iron fence on what appeared to be more like an alley than a street. There were row houses on three sides of the St. Katharine’s Church building, which was later converted into a Baptist church, as the neighborhood continued to change. Most of the teachers were nuns. They treated me well. The strict discipline only seemed like an extension of Clarice’s rules. It was actually comforting being in a school where nearly everyone was afraid of breaking the rules. There were never any more than twelve to fifteen kids in a class. Hardwood floors were polished to such a high sheen that you could see a reflection. The place had a clean, antiseptic smell. Giant windows were perfect for daydreaming about matters other than school. The boys wore uniform shirts, pants, and ties. The girls wore blue, gray, and white checked dresses. There was great emphasis on prayer and discipline. Reading, writing, and arithmetic seemed like second-tier priorities. Most of my classmates came from working-class homes, and many were raised by single parents. Despite our age, most of us seemed well aware that someone was sacrificing to send us to Catholic school. As usual, I became one of the less visible boys in class.

  My third-grade teacher was Sister Clarice. I admit, I had a crush on her. She was the prettiest nun in our school. But that was just about the highlight of my school experience. In this new environment, being polite was no longer enough to get by. I could not read and understand sentences. Even simple ones. And the more difficult the work, the less I tried, the more easily I was distracted. We were required to read aloud at least once a week, and it was torture. Between the stammering and stuttering and mispronounced words, I was hard-pressed to do anything but hang my head in shame.

  The only relief I had was that I was bright enough to memorize just about anything read to me. At night during homework time I would torture my family into helping me. A few tears every now and then would seal it. Since my sister was soon to be away at college, these after-dinner study sessions usually fell to my brother. Though our family lived in a three-bedroom home with a living room, dining room, kitchen, and almost-finished base
ment, we spent most of our time in the kitchen. That’s where homework was done. (Perhaps that is why, to this day, I do my best thinking near food.) And it was one of the early front lines in my secret battle to hide my reading problems.

  The two of us at the dinner table built for six. We’d sit across from each other. Table covered with our books, two glasses of milk, buttered toast or peanut butter sandwiches. Why buttered toast as an after-dinner homework snack? I have no clue, but it was what it was.

  “Mac, help me please. Pretty please,” I’d beg.

  I was never sure if it was because my brother loved me so much, hated my whining more, or simply feared my mother’s reaction if he didn’t help, but whatever his motivation he’d suffer patiently.

  “Okay! I’ll read it to you one more time. Pay attention,” he said, frustration wrinkling his forehead. Our study sessions could go on for three hours. Arithmetic, reading, spelling, history—it didn’t matter the subject. Before the night was over, my brother would end up finishing my assignment and I’d have sections memorized for class.

  In school the next day, when it came time to read aloud, I would have my section memorized. Sister Clarice took great pride in student involvement.

  “Today we’ll read chapter three.”

  Hands would shoot up. The smartest student would always go first. That was usually Pauline Tobias. I may have had a crush on her, too, but I know I always marveled at how she could read anything and seemed to know everything. She could read like a church elder. I’d wait around for the hands to thin out. Wait for the reading to get closer to the paragraph I’d memorized.