It’s a sad and beautiful feeling to walk home slow on Christmas Eve after you’ve been out hustling all day, shining shoes in the white taverns and going to the store for the neighbors and buying and stealing presents from the ten-cent store, and now it’s dark and still along the street and your feet feel warm and sweaty inside your tennis sneakers even if the wind finds the holes in your mittens. The electric Santa Clauses wink at you from windows. You stop off at your best friend’s house and look at his tree and give him a ball-point pen with his name on it. You reach into your shopping bag and give something to everybody there, even the ones you don’t know. It doesn’t matter that they don’t have anything for you because it feels so good to be in a warm happy place where grownups are laughing. There are Daddies around. Your best friend’s so happy and excited, standing there trying on all his new clothes. As you walk down the stairs you hear his mother say: “Boo, you forgot to say good-by to Richard, say good-by to Richard, Boo, and wish him a . . .”
Then you’re out on the street again and some of the lights have gone out. You take the long way home, and Mister Ben, the grocer, says: “Merry Christmas, Richard,” and you give him a present out of the shopping bag, and you smile at a wino and give him a nickel, and you even wave at Grimes, the mean cop. It’s a good feeling. You don’t want to get home too fast.
And then you hit North Taylor, your street, and something catches your eye and you lift your head up and it’s there in your window. Can’t believe it. You start running and the only thing in the whole world you’re mad about is that you can’t run fast enough. For the first time in a long while the cracked orange door says: “Come on in, little man, you’re home now,” and there’s a wreath and lights in the window and a tree in the kitchen near the coal closet and you hug your Momma, her face hot from the stove. Oh, Momma, I’m so glad you did it like this because ours is new, just for us, everybody else’s tree been up all week long for other people to see, and, Momma, ours is up just for us. Momma, oh, Momma, you did it again.
My beautiful Momma smiled at me like Miss America, and my brothers and sisters danced around that little kitchen with the round wooden table and the orange-crate chairs.
“Go get the vanilla, Richard,” said Momma, “Presley, peel some sweet potatoes. Go get the bread out the oven, Dolores. You get away from that duckling, Garland. Ronald, oh, Ronald, you be good now, stand over there with Pauline. Oh, Richard, my little man, did you see the ham Miz White from the Eat Shop sent by, and the bag of nuts from Mister Myers and the turkey from Miz King, and wouldn’t you know, Mister Ben, he . . .”
“Hey, Momma, I know some rich people don’t got this much, a ham, and a turkey, Momma. . . .”
“The Lord, He’s always looking out for my boys, Richard, and this ain’t all, the white folks’ll be by here tomorrow to bring us more things.”
Momma was so happy that Christmas, all the food folks brought us and Mister Ben giving us more credit, and Momma even talked the electric man into turning the lights on again.
“Hey, Momma, look here, got a present for Daddy. A cigarette lighter, Momma, there’s even a place to scratch a name on it.”
“What you scratch on it, Richard, Big Pres or Daddy?”
“Nothing, Momma. Might have to give Daddy’s present to old Mister White from the Eat Shop again.”
She turned away and when she turned back her eyes were wet. Then she smiled her Miss America smile and grabbed my shoulder. “Richard, my little man, if I show you something, you won’t tell nobody, will you?”
“What is it, Momma?”
“I got something for you.”
“Oh, Momma, you forgot, everything’s under the tree.”
“This is something special, just for you, Richard.”
“Thanks, Momma, oh, thanks, how’d you know I wanted a wallet, Momma, a real wallet like men have?”
Momma always gave each of us something special like that, something personal that wasn’t under the tree, something we weren’t supposed to tell the other kids about. It always came out, though. Garland and I’d be fighting and one of us would say, “Momma likes me better than you, look what she gave me,” and we both found out the other got a secret present, too.
But I loved that wallet. First thing I did was fill out the address card. If I got hit by a car someone would know who I am. Then I put my dollars in it, just like men do. Ran outside that night and got on a streetcar and pulled out my wallet and handed the conductor a dollar.
“Got anything smaller, boy?”
“Sure, Mister,” I said and I pulled out my wallet again and took a dime out of the coin purse and snapped it shut and put the dollar back in the long pocket and closed the wallet and slipped it into my back pocket. Did the same thing on the way back home.
Did we eat that night! It seemed like all the days we went without food, no bread for the baloney and no baloney for the bread, all the times in the summer when there was no sugar for the Kool-Aid and no lemon for the lemonade and no ice at all were wiped away. Man, we’re all right.
After dinner I went out the back door and looked at the sky and told God how nobody ever ate like we ate that night, macaroni and cheese and ham and turkey and the old duckling’s cooking in the oven for tomorrow. There’s even whiskey, Momma said, for people who come by. Thanks, God, Momma’s so happy and even the rats and roaches didn’t come out tonight and the wind isn’t blowing through the cracks.
How’d you know I wanted a wallet, God? I wonder if all the rich people who get mink coats and electric trains got that one little thing nobody knew they wanted. You know, God, I’m kinda glad you were born in a manger. I wonder, God, if they had let Mary in the first place she stopped at, would you have remembered tonight? Oh, God, I’m scared. I wish I could die right now with the feeling I have because I know Momma’s going to make me mad and I’m going to make her mad, and me and Presley’s gonna fight. . . .
“Richard, you get in here and put your coat on. Get in here or I’ll whip you.”
See what I mean, God, there she goes already and I’m not even cold, I’m all wrapped up in You.
“What’s wrong, Richard? Why you look so strange?”
“You wouldn’t understand, Momma.”
“I would, Richard, you tell me.”
“Well, I came out to pray, Momma, way out here so they wouldn’t hear me and laugh at me and call me a sissy. God’s a good God, ain’t He, Momma?”
“Yes, Richard.”
“Momma, if I tell you something, would you laugh at me, would you say I’m crazy, would you say I was lying? Momma?”
“What is it, Richard?”
“I heard Him talk to me, Momma.”
She put her arm around my shoulders and pulled me against her. “He talks to people, Richard, some people that are real special and good like you. Do me a favor, Richard?”
“Sure, Momma.”
“Next time you talk to Him, ask Him to send Daddy home.”
“Let me stay up and look out the window with you, Momma.”
“Everybody’s in bed, Richard.”
“All my life, Momma, I wanted to stay up with you on Christmas Eve and look out that window with you, Momma. I won’t laugh at you.”
“What you mean, Richard?”
“You’re waiting on him, ain’t you? I know, Momma, every Christmas Eve you take a bath and put on that perfume and those clothes from the rich white folks and get down there on your knees in front of that window looking for Daddy.”
“Richard, you better get on to bed.”
“I know, Momma, that whiskey ain’t for people coming by, that’s for Daddy.”
“Richard, you go on to bed and when he gets here I’ll wake you up.”
“No, Momma, I want to sit up with you . . . Momma?”
“Yes, Richard?”
“I shoulda got a present for Mister White, ’cause I know Daddy’s coming to get his this year.”
There were a lot of things I wanted to tell Momma that night while we sat and waited for Daddy, while we prayed on our knees, and dozed and hugged each other against the cold and jumped up like jacks every time we heard a noise on the street. But I never did. Sometimes I think she knew anyway.
I wanted to say to her, Momma, you remember that day I came home and told you I was at Doctor Jackson’s house? And how he liked me, Momma, and told me I’d be a good doctor? How he’s going to help me learn to read, and how he told me when it gets too cold to study in my house I could come by his house? Remember that, Momma? It was a lie. I played all that day in a vacant lot.
I guess she knew. She never pressed me for names when I told her about all the people who liked me, all the people I created in my mind, people to help poor folks. I couldn’t believe God had made a world and hadn’t put none of those people in it.
I made up a schoolteacher that loved me, that taught me to read. A teacher that didn’t put me in the idiot’s seat or talk about you and your kind. She didn’t yell at me when I came to school with my homework all wrinkled and damp. She understood when I told her it was too cold to study in the kitchen so I did my homework under the covers with a flashlight. Then I fell asleep. And one of the other five kids in bed must have peed on it.
I’d go out and sweat and make five dollars. And I’d come home and say, Momma, Mister Green told me to bring this to you. Told me he liked you. Told me he wished he could raise his kids the way you’re raising us. That wasn’t true, Momma.
Remember all those birthday parties I went to, Momma? Used to steal things from the ten-cent store and give the best presents. I’d come home and tell you how we played pillow kiss and post office and pin the tail on the donkey and how everybody liked me? That was a lie, Momma. One girl cried and ran away when she threw the pillow and it hit me. She opened her eyes and saw she was supposed to kiss me and she cried and ran away.
And on my birthday, Momma, when I came home with that shopping bag full of presents and told you the kids in my class loved me so much they all got me things? That wasn’t true. I stole all those little things from the ten-cent store and wrapped them up and put a different kid’s name on each one.
“Oh, Richard, if he don’t show up this time . . .”
“He’s comin’, Momma, it’s like you said. He got held up in traffic, the trains were full.”
“You know, Richard, your Daddy’s a cook, he has to work on Christmas.”
“He’ll be here, Momma, you go put those clothes back on.”
Remember when those people came by and told you how dirty we were, how they didn’t want us playing with their kids or coming into their houses? They said we smelled so bad. I was six then, and Presley was almost eight. You cried all night, Momma, and then you told us to stay home until you could get us some new clothes. And you went and hid all the clothes we had. Momma, it was summertime and we couldn’t just lay there, crying and watching out the window at the kids play running tag, and rip and run, and get called in for their naps, and get called in for their dinners. And we looked all over for our clothes, down in the basement, in the coal closet, under the stove, and we couldn’t find them. And then we went through your things, Momma, and put on the dresses you never wore, the dresses the rich white folks gave you. And then we went outside to play. The people laughed at us when we went outside in your dresses, pointed and slapped their legs. We never played so good as we played that summer, with all those people watching us. When we came off the porch those Negro doctors and lawyers and teachers waiting to get into White’s Eat Shop across the street would nudge each other and turn their heads. And when the streetcar stopped on the corner, right in front of our house, the people would lean out the windows and stare. Presley and I would wave at them. We did it all that summer, and after a while nobody bothered us. Everybody got to know that the Gregory boys didn’t have clothes so they wore their mother’s dresses. We just made sure we were home before you got there, Momma.
“How do I look, Richard?”
“You look okay, Momma.”
“These are the best pair of shoes I got, Miz Wallace gave me them, but they’re summer shoes.”
“What you mean, summer shoes? Those are the black and white ones I like so much, the ones you never wear. I didn’t know they were summer shoes.”
“You never see folks wear white shoes in the wintertime.”
“People dye them, Momma. I’ll dye them for you so you can put them on and Daddy can see you.”
“Oh, Richard, there won’t be time, they got to dry.”
“Don’t worry, Momma, you burn the dye and it dries right while you wear it.”
I’ve dyed a lot of shoes, Momma, down on my hands and knees in the taverns, dyeing shoes and shining shoes. I never told you too much about the things I did and the things I saw. Momma, remember the time I came home with my teeth knocked in and my lip all cut? Told you I tripped downstairs. Momma, I got kicked. Right in the face.
It was Saturday afternoon, my big hustling day. I was ten, but I looked like I was seven. There were a lot of people in the tavern, drinking beer, and I was shining this white woman’s shoes. They were white and brown shoes, summer shoes. The men sitting at the bar were laughing.
“Hey, Flo, gonna take the little monkey home with you, change your luck?”
She started laughing. “Maybe I will. Heard these little coons are hung like horses, I’m getting tired of you worms.”
“Little monkey’s got a tail, Flo, swing from limb to limb.”
White and brown shoes. I didn’t want to get the brown polish on the white part so I put my other hand on the back of the white woman’s leg to steady myself.
“He’s got a tail all right. One of you boys can warm me up, but I’m going to get me a black buck to do me right.”
One of the white men, a man who wasn’t laughing, jumped off his bar stool. “Get your dirty black hands off that white lady, you nigger bastard.”
He kicked me right in the mouth.
One of the men who had been laughing came off his stool and grabbed the man who kicked me.
“For Christ’s sake, he’s just a little kid.”
“Mind your goddamn business.”
Whop. The fight was on.
The bartender jumped over the bar and grabbed me with one hand and my shoeshine box with the other. “Sorry, boy, it’s not your fault, but I can’t have you around.”
Out on the sidewalk he gave me a five-dollar bill.
When I saw all the blood and pieces of tooth on my shirt, I got scared. Momma would be real angry. So I went over to Boo’s house and spent the night. I told Boo if I could get kicked in the mouth a couple more times today, and get five dollars each time, man, I’d be all right.
“What time is it, Momma?”
“Four o’clock, Richard.”
“I guess I didn’t have to burn them, did I?”
The tavern isn’t so bad, Momma. No kid ever runs up and laughs at me because I’m shining shoes. But they sure remind me I’m on relief. And there’s another reason I won’t quit working the taverns, Momma. In the wintertime it’s warmer in there, and in the summertime it’s cooler than our house. And even though men spit in my face and kick me in the mouth, Momma, every so often somebody rubs my head and calls me son.
“Why do you believe he’s coming, Richard?”
“Oh, Momma, I talked to that Man in the backyard, I know he’s coming.”
“Go on to bed, Richard.”
“No, Momma, I’ll wait here with you. If I lay over there in the chair, when he comes will you wake me up?”
“Sure I will, Richard. Now get some sleep.”
“Okay, Momma.”
So many things I wanted to tell you that night, Momma. There was a little girl used to wave to me when I cut through the alley to get onto Taylor, a clean little girl who used to sneak a piece of cake off her table and give it to me. A piece of cake and a glass of Kool-Aid. After a while, I’d finish up my paper route early just to come back and wave at her. After dinner, her Momma and Daddy would go up to the front room to sit around and leave her in the back to do the dishes all alone. I started to help her wash the dishes. I’d creep in up the back porch and she’d let me in and say: “Sh, nobody knows you’re here.” It was like playing house. I’d just come and stand there at the sink with her every night and help her with the dishes. Then one time her father came back to the kitchen. He grabbed me and he shook me and told me how I broke into his house because his daughter wouldn’t let no dirty street kid in.
She was crying, scared to death, and she said: “I let him in, Daddy, I let him in, he’s my friend.”
“No, sir, she’s lying,” I said. “I make her bring me food out, I make her let me in.”
He slapped me. He slapped me until I fell down, and when she grabbed onto his arm, crying and screaming to make him stop, he kicked me out the door to the back porch. He started to choke me.
Then he stopped. “Why you grinning at me like that, you little bastard?”
“Last week when you woke up drunk on this here porch, that was me brought you home. Found you on Sarah Street and brought you home and was so proud leading your black ass down the street ’cause you acted just like my Daddy would. Come out of your drunk every now and then, swinging and fighting. I had to run and duck. People see you and want to jump on you. But I tell them that’s my Daddy, he’s all right. Leave him alone, that’s my Daddy.”
He let me go, and he backed away and there was a funny look on his face. He started sweating, and chewing on his lip, and looking around to see if anybody heard what I had said. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He gave me a dollar. I threw it back at him. I reached into my own hip pocket and pulled out a dollar. My dollar was bigger than his because nobody knew I had mine. And then I walked away.
“God, my little Richard’s asleep now and I have to talk to You. I always made a big mistake, God. I sit here every Christmas, times in the summer, too, and pray for his Daddy and never pray for other kids’ Daddies. Send them theirs first, and then if You’re not too weary, oh, Lawd, send Big Pres home. But when You send him, God, don’t send him for me. Send him ’cause the boys need him.”
“God, my Momma cried herself to sleep so I’m asking You to send Daddy home right away. God, wherever he is let him knock on that door. I’ll wait up for him, God, just let him please knock on that door.”
Momma, I loved those firemen in St. Louis, so big and tall and strong, rushing out to save people, Negro firemen and white firemen, no difference, they’d rush out and never ask whose house it was, how much money he had, if he was on relief. I’d stand on the corner where they had to pass and I’d wave to them, and sometimes they’d wave back. Sometimes I thought they went out of their way to pass that corner, just so they could wave to me. Then I’d follow them to the fire, and stand there and pray they would put it out fast so none of them would get hurt. I used to count every fireman that went up the ladder and count them as they came back down. Once I saw them use the net to save somebody and they didn’t act like they were doing anybody a favor. I’d see them standing around in their uniforms, like they all belonged to the same family, and talk about fires. At the big fires, when the Red Cross came, they’d drink coffee and bite into sandwiches. It’s a beautiful thing to watch a man who really deserves the food he eats.
One time I bought an old raincoat with hooks instead of buttons, and a pair of old hip boots. I hid them in the cellar. Nobody knew I had them. Whenever I wanted to feel good I’d put them on and walk around the cellar, pretending I was putting out fires, running up ladders to save people, catching people in my net. Then I’d take them off and walk over to the firehouse and watch them drill and clean the engine and roll up the hose. I’d walk right up to a fireman and say: “Excuse me, mister, but I shore like you all.” He’d turn around and say something nice to me. Sometimes, before I knew better, I used to think my Daddy was a fireman somewhere, saving people and saying nice things to kids.
“Momma, Momma, wake up, wake up, Momma. Didya hear it, didya hear it? Somebody’s knockin’ on the door.”
There was a neighbor woman standing at the door when I opened it.
“Let me speak to your mother, Richard.”
I left the room like I was supposed to when a grown person came in. But I listened.
“He’s here, Lucille, Big Pres been down my house all night scared to come home ’cause he ain’t got nothing for the kids but some money. He just got in this evening. Been over my place crying, Lucille, ’cause he went and gambled and won and when he finished winning all the stores was closed.”
I ran right in and Momma grabbed me and hugged me. “I told you, Momma, didn’t I tell you he was coming? Go get him, Momma, go and tell him we got everything we want.”
I ran back and woke up the kids—“Daddy’s home, Daddy’s home”—and they tumbled out of bed, all five of them rolling and fighting their way out of the blankets, caught up in the sheet and scrambling around for the socks they lost under the covers and bumping into each other and in such a hurry they got legs and arms all mixed up. But nobody was mad at all. We all ran into the kitchen and jumped up and down while Momma got dressed again, put on the fanciest of the clothes the white folks gave her, clothes she never wore, and fixed her hair and put on lipstick and perfume.
“You don’t need that stuff, Momma, just go get Daddy and bring him home.”
After Momma left, we quieted down. We sat in the front room by the window and we waited. We hadn’t seen him much in five years. We waited a long time because Momma hadn’t seen him much in five years either.
“Aw, he’s not really here,” said Dolores. She was twelve. “Anyway, I don’t want to see him.”
“I want to see him,” said Ronald. He was seven, and he was sitting on the floor, shivering, and holding onto Pauline’s hand. Pauline was the baby, she was almost five.
“Oh, man,” said Presley, who was fourteen, “I can’t wait, he’s gonna be so clean, a two-hundred-dollar suit on him.”
“Dare anybody, he gonna be wearin’ thousand-dollar suits,” said Garland, who was nine. “And he’ll have a pocketful of money.”
“Yeah, a pocketful of money, but no gifts,” I said.
“He been busy makin’ money,” said Garland.
“He’s a soldier,” said Ronald.
“Momma said he’s a cook,” said Dolores.
“Big deal.”
“What’s matter with you, Richard, don’t you want to see Daddy?” said Presley.
“Last week I wanted to see him, when the rent man was cussin’ Momma.”
“He been busy makin’ money,” said Garland.
Pauline started to cry, and Ronald leaned over and rocked her in his arms. “Ooooh, you be quiet, little rat, you Daddy comin’ home, he’s a soldier.”
“He’s a cook,” said Dolores, pushing Presley a little to look out the window.
“Shut up, girl,” said Presley. “You remember when Daddy carry that old lady cross the street?”
“No.”
“See, you don’t know nothing. Man, was he ever big and clean. He got arms so strong he just picked this old lady right up after she fell off the streetcar and carry her cross the street and up to her house. Everybody saw it.”
Presley did a lot of talking that night. I was just thinking. I thought about that time that trampy woman came by and shouted at my Momma. “Goddamn husband of yours home?”
“No, he’s not,” Momma said politely.
“I just want you to know anytime he ain’t at your house or my house, he’s at some woman’s house.”
“I appreciate you wouldn’t come by here talking like this because the kids can hear you.”
“I don’t give a damn ’bout your kids. I got some kids for him, too.”
Yeah, I thought, Big Pres is coming home. All those nights Momma kept the hallway light on after we went to bed. All those nights she listened to the police news on the radio, listening to hear his name. The times the police came by the house to ask if we’d seen him lately.
Suddenly a taxicab pulled up outside the window and we heard the door slam, and a big, deep voice like nobody’s but my Daddy’s was saying, “Keep the change, friend.” And then all the kids were on their feet and knocking each other down to get to the door, and Ronald dropped Pauline, and everybody was hollering and screaming, and the last thing I heard was my Momma’s voice saying, “Don’t touch his clothes with your dirty hands, now don’t touch his clothes.”
I slammed the bedroom door and climbed into bed with my sneakers on and cried. I pulled the blanket over my head, but I could hear all right.
“Man, look at that thousand-dollar suit, see, what’d I tell you, Presley? . . .”
“Lookit, Daddy, lookit, Daddy . . .”
“Hey, Daddy, pick me up after Pauline. . . .”
“Now you get off Big Pres, don’t go messing up his clothes with your dirty hands. . . .”
“’Cille? Where’s Richard?”
“Richard, Big Pres is here, come on out.” But she was scared to leave him to see if I was okay. When she turned her back he might walk out again.
“Lookit all that money Daddy got. Bet it’s a million dollars. . . .”
“Where’d you get all that money, Daddy? . . .”
I could hear him crackling the money in his hand and his big, deep voice saying, “You been a good girl, ’Lores, doin’ like your Momma says. . . . You been good, Presley, don’t want you growin’ up to be like your Daddy now . . . payin’ your Momma mind and doin’ your school work. . . . How about you, Garland? . . .”
And I lay there and bit the cover and kicked the sheet and cried. Don’t want you growing up to be like your Daddy now. Is that what he’s worried about? I bit the cover until my gums started bleeding and I didn’t stop until my nose was all stuffed up from crying. Don’t you worry, Daddy, don’t you worry.
After a while, Momma brought him into the bedroom. “Big Pres, Richard waited up all night for you, he knew you were coming. He bought you something for Christmas, Big Pres. You know, he buys you something every Christmas.”
She pulled on me. She rolled me over. “What’s wrong with you, Richard, didn’t you hear me call for you, didn’t you hear me say Daddy’s home? What are you crying about, Richard, what’s wrong with you?”
She didn’t tell him what was wrong. No, you got to treat strangers with respect. “Big Pres, he’s just jealous, he’s just jealous ’cause you didn’t pick him up like you picked up the others.”
I lay in bed and I looked up at that man and he was ten feet tall. Tallest man I ever saw. He was clean, and he was strong, and he was healthy. He sat down on the bed next to me.
“Don’t you sit on that dirty bed, Big Pres,” said Momma, and she brushed off his suit and got one of the silk tablecloths the white folks had given her which we never used. She put the tablecloth on top of the sheet, yeah, the one sheet that stayed on the bed for six months. She didn’t want Big Pres to get his suit dirty.
“I brought you some money, Richard.”
“Don’t want it, Daddy.”
“Got more for you than I got for the others.”
“Still don’t want it.”
“I’m your Daddy, boy, don’t you want to see me?”
“I see you every time I see my Momma on her knees in front of the window cryin’ and prayin’ you’ll come. You oughta thank me ’cause I brought you here, yeah, thank me you never get sick ’cause every night I say my prayers I say bless him wherever he is.”
“Richard, I’m going to stay home with you this time, if you want me I’ll stay home. You want me to stay, Richard?”
I didn’t say anything.
“I’ll get a job. Your Momma won’t have to work. You want me, Richard?”
I looked at him but I didn’t say anything. I guess he meant what he said. The moment he said it, anyway. And I lay there and I was thinking: If you stay, old man, I’ll leave. I don’t need you, Daddy, not now. I needed you when the boys chased me home, when the man cheated me out of my paper money, needed you every time Boo’s Daddy came home at seven o’clock.
“’Cille, what’s wrong with this boy?”
“Don’t you worry about him, Big Pres, he’s crazy.”
That got me mad, Momma forgetting all her love for me to pacify him.
“Yeah, he’s crazy. Hey, ’Cille, you got a drink around the house?” She brought out the whiskey. He drank it right out of the bottle.
I got dressed that day and I left the house to play, but I ducked back every half hour to see if he was still there. Once I slipped Boo in to let him peep.
“That’s my Daddy, Boo. My Daddy’s rich, too, man, pocket full of money.”
“Your Daddy ain’t got no money. You all on relief.”
“Come here, Boo, let me show you something.” I walked up to my Daddy and looked at him. It was the first time I walked in and said anything to him. I didn’t ask him, I told him.
“Give Boo five dollars, Daddy.”
When he reached in and pulled out that pocketful of money, Boo’s eyes popped out. He hadn’t ever seen that much money in his life. Looked like he had all the money in the world. He looked so fine fumbling through those twenties and tens and fives, and I wondered if it was enough to go over to Mister Ben’s and wipe out the back bill and put a little on the front bill.
“You got a good Daddy,” said Boo.
I kept slipping back all that day, peeping in to make sure he was still there. Once I thought I almost caught him leaving, all dressed with his brown bag in his hand, but when he saw me he put it down. I’d slip in and I’d hear him telling Momma all the things he was going to do for her. Stay home. Get a job. Get off relief. Give up other women. Take Momma to all the night clubs. She wouldn’t have to work for the white folks no more.
“Told you about working so hard for them white folks,” he’d say. “Don’t want my kids left in this house all by themselves.”
She cried. “You mean it, Pres, you really mean it?”
“Yeah, ’Cille.”
She got up off her orange-crate chair and put her hands on his face and kissed him.
I walked right in then. “Get your goddamn hands off my Momma.”
He beat me, pulled off his belt and beat me across my backside. Momma held me on her lap while he beat me.
“Ha. That’s a hell of a man there, that Richard. I beat his ass good, ’Cille, and he don’t even cry.”
He had little men and he didn’t even know it. Every time he hit me I couldn’t cry from almost wanting to laugh. I know, old man, couple of days from now you’ll be too far away for that belt to reach me.
Momma made me go to bed and she whispered: “Please treat your Daddy nice. For me. Please do it for me.”
“I’m the cause of his being here, Momma. I’m the one that asked the Man out back, I prayed for him.”
“That’s right, Richard.”
That night he beat her.
He beat her all through the house, every room, swinging his belt and whopping her with his hand and cussing her and kicking her and knocking her down and telling her all about his women.
“Think you’re so goddamn good, bitch,” said my Daddy, cracking my Momma across her back with his belt. She whimpered and fell against a little table, knocking over a lamp from the white folks. She bent over to pick up the lamp and Big Pres kicked her in her backside and she fell forward on the linoleum floor. She lay there, her face pressed against the linoleum, sobbing.
“I don’t even feel right walking down the street with you,” he said, kicking her in the side with his foot. “Walk down the street everybody wants to run up, say hello to you, they look at me like I was dirt.”
He grabbed her hair and pulled her up to her knees. Momma looked up at him, tears running down her cheeks. Slap. Right across her face. “I got bitches, women like you never seen, proud to walk down the street with Big Pres.” Slap. Momma fell down on her face again.
“Get on your feet, bitch.” Momma got up, slowly.
Whop. Momma spun across the front room, back toward the kitchen, like a drunk. Whop. Big Pres had the belt out again, and now he drove her in front of him, around the kitchen table, Momma stumbling over the chairs and the orange crates, Big Pres kicking them out of his way. Whop. Back into the front room, Momma bounced against a soft chair, then against the wall.
“And what the hell you taught Richard, bitch? Hell, whatever you taught him, you ain’t gonna turn them all against their Daddy.”
She never said a word, just crying, sobbing, trying to stay on her feet, trying not to get hit too hard but never really ducking his hand or his belt. She’d see it coming and close her eyes and put her hands up, but she never tried to get out of the way. The kids were crying and hollering and Ronald and Pauline were hugging each other and Dolores was hiding her face in her hands. Garland and Presley were scared to death. I watched him knock her down, and cuss her, and he was saying the things I wanted to say when she forgot her love for me and told him I was crazy. He left her on the floor, dirty and crying, came over and whopped me across my face so hard that when I knocked into the wall the pictures fell right off their hooks. One was a picture of Jesus, and the other was a piece of wood with the Ten Commandments.
And then they were in the kitchen and Big Pres was crying and kissing my Momma and saying he was sorry and how he was going to take care of us and give up his women and get a job.
And Momma kept saying, “No, Big Pres, it’s all my fault, it’s all my fault, I shouldn’t talk like that, there’ll be time to get off relief when you’re home awhile and get a chance to rest up.”
I got up off the floor and I walked into that kitchen. Big Pres was sitting at the table with his face in his hands, and Momma was standing over him, stroking his head. They both were crying. I took down the butcher knife off the wall, the big one with the black handle, and swung at his head. Seen plenty of people swing knives in the taverns and I knew how to cut. Swung right at his head, everything I had, I swung for every kid in the whole world who hated his no-good Daddy.
Momma grabbed my wrist with both her hands and twisted the knife out of my hand.
Big Pres looked up real slow. I guess it’s a hell of a thing for a man to look up into his own son’s eyes and see murder.
“I’ll leave now, ’Cille,” he said very softly. “You should have let him hit me, should have let him kill me. I never was any good, never treated you or him right. I need to be dead.”
He got up. “Don’t beat Richard, ’Cille, don’t beat him. I know what I done.”
Momma grabbed Big Pres’ leg and he kicked her away. He turned and walked out the door. My Momma tried to hold the door open while he closed it behind him.
“No, Big Pres, he didn’t mean nothing, Richard’s crazy, you know that. . . .”
He turned and kicked her foot out of the door, and slammed it shut. My Momma fell down and slid across the floor, holding the doorknob in her hand.
“Don’t leave, Daddy, don’t leave, Daddy . . .” the kids were screaming.
I followed him out the door and down the street. He didn’t see me, his head was down, and he walked like the greatest crime in the world had just been committed against him. His head didn’t come up again until he walked into a tavern. I walked in behind him and stood near the door where he couldn’t see me. He walked right up to a woman sitting at the bar. She was smoking a cigarette and tapping her high heels against the rail.
“Where you been, Big Pres? I been waiting on you for hours.”
“I had to beat the bitch’s ass for bad mouthing you, Mollie,” he said. “But I got a tough little man there, Richard, you should see that little man, beat his ass and he didn’t cry.”
“I been waiting all day, Big Pres. Don’t you start telling me about some little bastard you got. Don’t even know if it’s yours or the . . .”
“Watch your mouth. Mollie. My ’Cille’s a good woman, no loose piece of trim like you.”
“Sure, who you think buys the bread when you’re . . .”
He knocked that bitch right off the stool. He swung that big hand of his and her cigarette went one way and her shoes came off and she went face first on the floor. He stomped that woman like no other man in the world. I got to see my Daddy at his best that night. Two men stood up from tables and started toward Big Pres. He threw back his head and he laughed and he stood over that bitch and his hand came out of his pocket with a razor in it.
“Dare any dirty mother-fucker in this place to come and stop me from stomping this bitch. Hear?”
Nobody moved.
He walked out of there, ten feet tall. My Daddy. I walked over to the woman on the floor and helped her up. She shook me away.
“I’m real sorry, ma’am.”
She spat in my face. She didn’t know I was Big Pres’ boy.
I watched him walk down the street, head up high, hands swinging loose. Big Pres. A real Capone with the whores and the bitches. Heard “I love you” from some broad off the street. But never from his own kids. And that’s worth all the sevens falling on all the craps all over the world. He missed it. Missed seeing his kids grow up, missed having his kids crawl into bed with him and lie down and go to sleep because Daddy’s sleeping. He missed what I have now. Feeling a little girl put a finger in my mouth, knowing that Daddy will never bite hard. Hearing a little kid say: “Throw me up in the air, Daddy,” sure that Daddy will catch her.
Big Pres had to be a lonely man. There must have been times he woke up in a lonely bed, and wanted to give every whore he ever had, every seven, every eleven he ever threw, every wild time he ever had, just to go all the way back and have one of his kids walk up to him and say: “Daddy, I love you.”
There must have been times like that. Because I would turn in all the Dick Gregorys in the world and all the night clubs and all the money just to go back to those days and find a Daddy there.
When you have a good mother and no father, God kind of sits in. It’s not good enough, but it helps. But I got tired of hearing Momma say, God, fix it so I can pay the rent; God, fix it so the lights will be turned on; God, fix it so the pot is full. I kind of felt it really wasn’t His job. And it’s a hell of a thing when you’re growing up and you’re out on the street and you kind of hedge up to a man so he can rub your head and call you son. It’s a hell of a thing to hear a man say: I wish my boys were more like the Gregory boys. If Big Pres could only know how people admired the Gregory boys.
Well, Big Pres walked away and left us. Left us to face the cold winters, the hot summers, the Easters with nothing new, the picnics with nothing in the basket. I wonder if it ever dawned on him that he fixed it so we couldn’t even go to church one Sunday every year—Father’s Day.
I should never have swung at him with that knife. I should have fallen on my knees and cried for him. No kid in the world, no woman in the world should ever raise a hand against a no-good Daddy. That’s already been taken care of: A Man Who Destroys His Own Home Shall Inherit the Wind.
When I got back home that night, the knob was back on the door. And the light was on in the hallway. She was sitting up that night, looking out the window. Momma sat like that for the next three or four months, looking out the window, dozing in her chair, listening to the police news. Then she’d go to work without having been to bed.
Sometimes I’d stay up with her, listen to the radio with her, look out the window with her. I tried to make her believe I didn’t know she was waiting on him.