I remember when / he was just a momma's boy . . .
Churches were everywhere down south, and in Charlotte, North Carolina, the church was still the cornerstone of the community. I thought the whole world went to church every Sunday just like my family did. That was where I first laid eyes on John Williams, at Christ Universal Baptist, long before he became Loverboy. I say “laid eyes on” because I used to watch John in church before I even met him. He was a quiet and calm, well-mannered kid with a mother who was all over him. I mean, she would brush his hair, lotion his face, wipe crust out of his eyes with her fingers, fix his shirt and tie, retie his shoes. Everything, and right there in church in front of everybody. I had two older brothers and one younger sister, and my brothers taught me that letting your mom do too much for you was a bad thing. So it became a fight for my mother to even touch me, let alone do it in church in front of hundreds of people. And there was John, who didn't have any brothers or sisters, with a mother who practically re-dressed him right there in the pews every Sunday.
I was really disturbed by this boy's situation. Every single Sunday, I felt an urge to walk over to him and lay down the law of boyhood. “Man, don't let your mom baby you in church like that. You fix your own face and hair and clothes.” But his mom guarded over him like a cop or something. She barely let him out of her sight. I always thought that she looked too old to be his mother. Call me mean if you want, but she looked more like his grandmother to me.
I couldn't concentrate on anything else in church while John's mother continued to baby him. John and I were not even in grade school at the time, but my brothers were, and they had taught me plenty about standing my ground against Mom. Against Dad? Well, we weren't that crazy. Not yetanyway. I even used to wonder where John's dad was. Maybe his dad could have saved him.
I finally got a chance to get close to John when we were both pushed into the children's choir at age six. John had already been taking piano lessons and whatnot, but I wanted no part of that choir, so I would act up in rehearsal.
“Darin Harmon, I will tell your mother on you, young man! Do you hear me?!” Sister Dennis, the choir director, would shout at nearly every rehearsal at me.
I mumbled, “Tell her. I don't want to be in no choir anyway.” I always made sure to do my back talk somewhere near John, so that he could see a good example of how to be defiant. It never worked, though. That boy would smile and go right back to doing what he was told. That only made me more persistent in acting up, until I was finally kicked out of the choir. That's when John's mother forbade him to play with me. I had no proof of that at the time, but it sure seemed like it. Half of the time, he wouldn't even look in my direction in church. Once that happened, I considered the boy a lost cause. I began to ignore him too. He wasn't my type of kid anyway. So I moved on and started playing sports, and John continued to be a choir-singing, piano-playing momma's boy.
Years later, we ended up in the same class in elementary school, and the game was on again. I was pressed to turn John Williams into a rebel. Every day there was a new kid picking on him about his neat clothes, his hair, his quietness. Everything! They were all jealous of how peaceful John seemed. Every once in a while he got frustrated about it, but he never would strike back at anyone. So I had to bail him out of trouble nearly every day. You would think that I was his bodyguard or something.
One day while we were out in the school yard, I just asked him, “Don't you want to protect yourself, man? God!”
He said, “I don't know how to fight.”
“Put up your hands. I'll show you.”
My brothers had taught me most of my moves.
As soon as John put up his hands, I popped him straight in the mouth.
He said, “Ow,” and grabbed his lip.
That boy had no idea how to block or to avoid a punch.
I said, “You were supposed to block it, man.”
“Block it, how?”
“You smack it down with your hand.” I said, “All right. You try to hit me. I'll show you.”
John swung the weakest punch in the world, and I smacked his arm so hard that he lost his balance and nearly fell to the ground.
This girl named Mary said, “I can fight better than that. Even my little brother can.”
I said, “So what?” and went back to teaching John how to fight. Or trying to.
Mary said, “Let me fight him.”
“Girl, get away from here,” I told her. “This is boy stuff.”
John said, “My mother told me never to hit girls anyway.”
Mary said, “What if they hit you first?”
Come to think about it, Mary was a tomboy back then. Big-time!
“I'll just walk away,” John answered her.
I frowned at him and said, “Man, you walk away too much already. You need to learn how to stand up and fight.”
Mary sucked her teeth and said, “That boy can't beat a fly. Look at how skinny he is.”
I said, “Aw, girl, everybody don't eat chicken and biscuits every night like you do.”
Me and John started laughing, and instead of Mary going after me, she went right after him with a flurry of slaps and punches. She was all over him before I could grab her. When I finally grabbed her off of him, she punched me straight in my eye. And that did it! I don't even remember where I hit her because I could barely see, but I swung three hard punches that connected.
The next thing I knew, Mary was wailing like a big baby and holding her face in her hands. When the teachers arrived, they pulled her hands down, and Mary's face was smeared with blood from a busted nose. I knew I was in trouble then. You didn't have to tell me a thing. I would have a whipping coming, and all because of John.
I got suspended for three days, my dad whipped my behind that night, and then my parents made me sit on my sore rear at the kitchen table and explain what happened. You would think they would ask me what happened before they whipped me. Not in my household. When you cut up, you got your whipping first, then you could explain. I didn't understand the purpose of explaining things after getting a whipping already. What was the use? But that was old-school Southern discipline for you. You were not getting away with anything. And talking wouldn't save you.
I said, “I was just teaching John how to fight, and—”
“John who?” my mother asked me.
“John Williams from church.”
My mother frowned and said, “That boy needs to learn how to handle his own business. What are you doing fighting for him? And fighting a girl at that! You want some boy to punch your sister in the nose?”
“No, but—”
“Then what happened?” my father asked me.
“She just jumped in and started talking about—”
“‘She’ who?” my mother asked me.
“Mary. She just jumped in saying how skinny John was and—”
“That's when you hauled off and punched her in the nose?” my father said.
“No, she starting hitting him and—”
“Did he hit her first?” my mother asked me.
That was the other thing I couldn't understand. My parents would ask you to explain it to them, but then they would barely let you finish a sentence.
I said, “No, he didn't hit her. She just started—”
My father raised his voice and said, “You mean to tell me that this girl just went and hit this boy for no reason?”
I nodded my head and said, “Yeah, so I just—”
“That boy need to get out the house more anyway,” my mother said to my father.
“Mmm hmm, that boy need to go somewhere and do something, ” my father responded. “But Darin don't need to be around that boy no more, I know that. ”
He said, “So then what happened?”
“I tried to get Mary off of him and that's when she punched me in my eye.”
“And then you went and punched Mary in her nose?” my mother asked me.
“I didn't know I had punched her in her nose.”
My father raised his voice again. “You didn't know you punched her in the nose?”
“I had my eyes closed. I couldn't see.”
My father said, “Well, you see this belt right here don't you?”
I looked up again at his big brown leather belt and my heart started racing. “Yes.”
He asked, “Was it worth it?”
I was confused for a second. “Hunh?”
“Yes!” my mother yelled at me. “You answer your father with a yes or a no.”
“Yes,” I said back.
“Oh, so it was worth it? So you want some more then,” my father said to me.
“NO! I meant yes, because I didn't understand you—”
“You didn't understand what?”
“Your question?”
I don't know what was worse sometimes, the whipping or the torture of explaining why you had gotten into trouble in the first place. First they would whip your body, and then they would whip your mind. All the while, your behind still felt as if it was on fire.
My father said, “Well, you know you ain't seeing no outside until next week, right?”
I nodded and dropped my head. “Yes.”
“Boy, you look at me when I'm talking to you!”
I heard my father's belt jingle and I looked up in a hurry and said, “YES, I know!”
“You know what?”
“That I'm on punishment.”
“Good. Now go to your room and finish up your homework.”
That was the best part of getting punished. Freedom to go to your room. But then you had to do your homework while laying on your stomach. That was usually when my older brothers would laugh at me. It was all fair, though, because I laughed at them when they got theirs.
I cursed John Williams with every word I could think of that night. I told myself that I would leave that momma's boy alone for the rest of my life. I meant it, too. Or at least I thought I did.
My mom came to my room later on and told me to come with her. I stood up and wondered what else was coming to me. Hadn't I paid enough?
My mother led me to the kitchen telephone, where my father waited with the receiver in his hand.
He said, “Here he is,” and handed the phone to me.
“Hello,” I answered.
“Hi, Darin. This is Sister Williams, John's mother. He told me what happened to you two at school today, and I just wanted him to call you up so that he could apologize to you.”
I didn't even know that they had our phone number. I guess it was pretty easy to get, though. We went to the same church, lived in the same neighborhood, knew a lot of the same people, and John and I went to the same school together.
Anyway, his mother let him on the telephone.
He said, “Sorry, Darin. I didn't mean to get you in trouble.”
I nodded my head, not really wanting to say anything. “Okay.” That was about it. We didn't have much else to say to each other, so I handed the phone back to my dad.
“You wait right here,” he told me.
My mother talked to Sister Williams about John playing sports and becoming more active around the neighborhood, but I knew that he had his music lessons to go to, so his mother turned my mother's suggestions down. Then my mother dropped the bomb on me.
“Well, I don't see any reason why these two boys can't be friends,” she said.
My father and I both looked at each other. I didn't want to be friends with that boy anymore. My mother went right ahead, talking about us hanging out and doing things together, like she was a matchmaker or something.
When she hung up, my father asked, “Do you think this is a good idea?”
My mother said, “Well, this boy obviously needs somebody to be friends with.”
“Yeah, but why does it have to be with our boy?”
I didn't say it, but I was thinking, Yeah, why me ?
My mother answered, “Well, Darin has already gotten into trouble with him, so he might as well get into good things with him too. And John's not a bad boy, he just needs someone his age to be around.”
My father looked at me and said, “Yeah, well, your friend John told us that you called Mary fat. Now how come you didn't tell us that?”
My heart started racing again.
My mother laughed and said, “He didn't say that. He said he joked about her eating chicken and biscuits every night.”
“Yeah, well how come Darin didn't tell us that?”
Because y'all didn't let me! I thought to myself in a panic while keeping one eye on my father's belt. No way did I want to be John's friend. That boy would tell everything. That's why my mother was trying to match us up. She wanted a stool pigeon around to keep me in check. I was reading her game plan.
I said, “I didn't get a chance to tell you.”
My father gave me an evil eye. He raised his finger to me and said, “Darin, don't you ever think, in your life, that you're ever gonna get away with anything. You hear me? Because even if I don't find out about it now, it's always gonna come back to haunt you later.”
When I saw John at school again, he had brought me some homemade cake to share at lunchtime. I didn't want to take it from him, but it smelled good. It tasted good too. His mother could really bake a good cake!
I asked him, “Your mother cooked this?”
He smiled and said, “Yeah.”
I got greedy and asked him if he would bring me some more the next day. I figured that if he was going to be my friend, then he would have to pay me for it. It was wrong, but I was a kid, you know. So John promised to bring me good food whenever I wanted him to until his mother got wise to what was going on.
She called my mother again and asked her if she packed enough food and goodies for me to eat at lunch at school.
“Darin!” my mother hollered at me.
“Yes.”
“Come here, boy!”
I walked up to her while she was still on the phone with Sister Williams.
“Have you been asking John to bring you extra food to school every day?”
I said, “Umm . . . well, they have homemade cake and pies and stuff.”
“Boy, you need to be ashamed of yourself!” my mother yelled at me. “I'll make sure that he won't do it again,” she told John's mother.
When I saw John at school again, I wanted to wring his neck, but I figured that he'd tell on me for that, too. So I just asked him why he told, you know, like in a regular conversation.
He said, “Well, she kept asking me if you had enough to eat at lunchtime. And, you know, I said, sometimes. But I told her that you liked her cooking. And at first she would smile about it. But then she started getting mad.”
I thought about it and laughed. It wasn't John's fault. His mother had just caught on to me.
I said, “John, do you like your mother, man?” I was ready to play a game of devil's advocate.
He said, “Yeah, I love her.”
“But don't she get on your nerves sometimes?”
He said, “Don't yours sometimes?”
I looked at him and broke up laughing again. John wasn't as dumb as I thought he was. In fact, John had been a straight-A student, and I wasn't. I guess I just thought that I could push him around because he wasn't rough-and-tumble like I was.
“Do you like that music stuff?” I asked him. By that time I had been involved in organized football, basketball, soccer, and baseball.
John nodded and said, “Yeah, sometimes.”
“But not all the time, right?”
He smiled at me. “Do you like playing sports all the time?”
I said, “Yeah,” and I meant it. I could play sports all day long, and without a care in the world.
John said, “Well, me too then.”
“You don't even know how to play sports.”
He said, “I'm talking about playing music.”
“So you could play the piano all day long?” I asked him. I didn't believe that. No way! You would probably get a cramp in your hands and in your butt from sitting down for so long.
He said, “I play more than just the piano.”
“What else do you play?”
“The trumpet, the clarinet, the drums, and I want to learn how to play the saxophone.”
I started looking at him in awe. I had no idea he could play all of those instruments. But so what? He still couldn't play any sports. And he couldn't fight. I said, “Yeah, that music stuff ain't gon' get you nowhere. You just gon' sing in the church choir all your life. You not gon' be no Michael Jackson or nothin'.”
He said, “And you're not gonna be Dr. J.”
“I don't want to be Dr. J,” I told him. “I like football more anyway. I'll be like Herschel Walker.”
“Well, he runs track.”
I said, “So? I can run track. I'm fast.”
“You're not that fast.”
“I'm faster than you.
” We went on and on like real friends, and people got the message not to mess with John Williams anymore, because he was my new schoolboy.