“When the black people improve themselves economically, then they become more accustomed to the white man’s ways and more desirous of becoming a part ofit.”
“Becoming a part of the white man’s ways?”
“Well, you know, the white man’s culture.”
“Do you know any blacks who have said this?”
“No.”
—Interview with Frank King, executive vice president of the San Leandro Chamber of Commerce, November, 1971
Looking back on it from a perspective of thirty-five years, my mother worked very hard at learning “the white man’s culture,” from the books she read (all of the best-sellers among white women of the day, Fear of Flying, The Stepford Wives, The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, Looking for Mr.Goodbar) to her conversion to Catholicism, to her switch to the Republican party. She tried to assimilate in any and every way possible. Her unspoken philosophy was that while we may not look like them, we could sure as hell act like them if that’s what it took to be accepted; if that was what we had to do to succeed. It was Sunday morning and we were pulling out of the parking lot of St. Felicitas Church where I had just served my first mass as an altar boy. It was fun and it made my mother happy.
I was in the backseat with my sisters. Grandma was driving. Mom, as usual, sat in the passenger seat. She never learned how to drive; she was always too nervous.
“I’m very proud of you, Brian,” she said, craning her neck around her seat in order to make eye contact. “You looked very handsome in your robes.”
I smiled. It made me happy to please her.
“I liked it. At communion, I got to hold the little catcher thing under people’s chins in case they dropped the bread. A couple of times old ladies came up who couldn’t get their tongues out for Father to put the bread on . . . so I jabbed them in the neck with the catcher thing to make their tongues stick out farther!” I said, proud of my ingenuity.
“Brian!!!” she shrieked.
Whoops. Maybe it wasn’t that ingenious.
“Well, Father had to put the bread on it, Mom.” Grandma shook her head.
“Now them doggone white folks gonna be sayin’ you hit ’em in church.”
Grandma was paranoid. She was always looking ahead to what white people might accuse us of. When she would start to go off like that I would say, “Come on, Grandma. This isn’t Birmingham. This is Northern California. This is the 1970s.”
But Grandma was paranoid. Take Halloween. We were allowed to go trick-or-treating until Grandma said, “Some white folks might say y’all was involved in some devilment. If you here with us, they can’t say you did nothing.”
That was the end of trick-or-treating, but we still got to give out candy. For a while, anyway. Then Grandma said, “Some white folks might get some mess in they candy and say it came from the niggers’ house. If we ain’t giving nothing out, they can’t say we did nothing.”
My mother said, “That’s okay. We can have a party here. You can give each other candy.”
She always tried to straddle that fence between making us fit into that indefinable box that she considered “normal” and compensating for situations when the realities of the social climate made it impossible to fit our square pegs into the round holes of that box.
“Well,” she said, dismissing my transgression at communion, “I’m very proud of you, and we’re going to go celebrate.”
“We are?”
“Yes we are,” she said. “We’re going to brunch.”
“What’s brunch?” Tracie lisped, the effects of her thumb-sucking addiction becoming more evident with each syllable.
My mother smiled. “It’s what you have when it’s too late for breakfast and too early for lunch.”
Under her breath, Grandma muttered a disgusted, “White folks shit.”
“Do you mind?” Mom snapped in that clipped way of speaking that she used to express displeasure.
In hindsight, I don’t know if my mother really was impatient with Grandma’s cussing or if she just hated being called on her bullshit.
So, we drove into nearby Hayward for our first brunch and pulled into the parking lot of the fanciest breakfast place in town: the International House of Pancakes. We walked into IHOP dressed to the nines in our Sunday best.
After a short wait, this little bleached-blond waitress (with prominent dark roots) came over to show us to our table. I guess that I can best describe her attitude as—well, perhaps “resigned” is the right word.
“Come on, follow me,” she said without making eye contact. She spoke in that breathy, “I don’t really want to be bothered by you” tone that hormonal adolescent girls use when their parents have the unmitigated gall to ask them how school was that day.
We took her direction and squeezed into two bright orange booths sandwiching a faux-wood-grained table.
Wow, look at all the syrup.
Tracie, as always, had to be the shit disturber. “Mommy?”
“Yes, honey?”
“Instead of’brunch,’ why don’t they call it ‘leakfast’?”
Kids. Naively logical.
My mother searched in vain for a logical answer. There wasn’t one.
“Because . . . because . . . put your napkin in your lap, honey. Brian, take your elbows off of the table.”
“So,” I asked, “what do you eat for ‘brunch’?”
“I’m going to have the cheese blintzes,” she said.
“Shit,” Grandma said. “I want me some grits and some eggs.”
Poor Tracie and I looked back and forth at each other. We didn’t know what to do. Grandma was cussing. Mom was ordering frou-frou food. I was overwhelmed looking at three or four hundred different kinds ofsyrup.
“Okay, I’ll have the cheese blintzes, too,” I said, ever the good son. Always the people pleaser. “What are they?”
It worked. The smile in her eyes told me that she was delighted. She had that rare gift, the ability to smile with her eyes.
“They’re crepes filled with cream cheese and strawberry preserves.”
“White folks shit,” Grandma hissed.
I could feel the heat from the dirty look my mother gave her. Tracie saved her.
“Can I just have syrup?”
“No,” Mom cut her off.
“Okay,” she said, disappointed. “Shit.”
There are few things on this earth funnier than somebody cussing with a lisp. “Shit” comes out sounding like “thit.” I bit my lower lip to stifle my laughter. My mother was shocked.
“What did you just say?”
“Shoot. I said ‘shoot.’”
Grandma smiled.
The waitress came over to take our order. She still avoided eye contact.
“Okay, what’ll it be?”
I have always hated feeling that my mere physical presence was somehow an imposition.
She came back later and flung our food on the table. “Okay, will there be anything else?” she said, in a way that translated to “Now will you just leave me alone?”
“That will be all. Thank you,” Mom said, her politeness tinged with frost.
Tracie reached for a fork and my mother slapped her hand. The smack was loud enough to turn the heads at the neighboring tables.
“Tracie, where does your napkin belong?”
Tracie put her napkin in her lap, I followed suit, and we looked at my mother before we dared dream of touching a utensil.
“Grace first,” my mother said.
We crossed ourselves, bowed our heads, and said in unison:
“Bless us, oh Lord, and these Thy gifts that we are about to receive, from thy bounty through Christ our Lord. Amen.”
It was looking as though we’d finally get to eat in peace until Tracie, again, had to open her mouth.
“How come Grandma didn’t say grace?”
“Because I ain’t Catholic,” Grandma said, raising a scrambled egg-covered fork to her lips.
“Come on Suer . . . ” Mom pleaded.
We looked at Grandma in anticipation. Work with her, Grandma.
She forcefully placed her fork on her plate, folded her hands in reverence, and bowed her head.
“Thou shalt not steal.”
“That’s not grace!“ my mother hissed through clinched teeth. ”It’s in the Bible,” Grandma said, defiant, retrieving her forkful ofeggs.
“But it’s not a blessing. It’s not grace.”
“If it was good enough for Moses, it should be good enough for your ass!”
Grandma put the food in her mouth signaling the end ofthe discussion. Mom looked down at the table and shook her head.
“Shit,” she muttered under her breath.
“Ooh, Mommy said a bad word,” Tracie said in her singsong tone.
We ate politely. A short time later the waitress brought our check. I sneaked a look at it. Sixteen dollars. I watched as my mother opened her purse, took out two twenties, and slipped them under the check.
“Okay, let’s go,” she said.
“How much was it?” Grandma asked.
“Never mind. Let’s go.”
Grandma picked up the check and looked at it. She looked at the two twenties and then at the check again as if to make certain that she had read it correctly.
“Gal, what you doing?” she finally asked.
“I left a tip. Let’s go.”
Grandma reached for one of the twenties. “This is too much money to be throwing away,” she barked.
The other diners were looking our way again.
“Leave it where it is!” my mother snapped, jolting us all to attention. “I’m not throwing it away.”
There was a silence. It was a tense silence. Then again, I feel that all silences are tense. I hate dead air. She finally broke the impasse.
Staring into Grandma’s eyes, she said, “Maybe the next black family this waitress serves will be treated a little better because this black family left her some money. Let’s go. Please.”
My mother. Never in moderation.
This gesture struck me, because here was my mother in all of her—I don’t know, is “regality” the right word?—showing that she was better than that waitress. That she had more class. That it was actually possible to buy respect, for twenty-four bucks.
Earlier, I wrote that my mother wanted white children, that she wanted to be white. Actually, that’s a cheap shot because it’s not accurate. What my mother wanted was respect. The respect that white people seem to give each other based upon their common heritage. You see, black people have to “earn” the respect of white people, whereas white people grant it to each other based upon their pigment.
The funny thing is that I’m sure that that waitress had no idea what that gesture was all about. She probably thought it was a mistake. Two twenties stuck together. Our tough luck, her good fortune.
My mother’s gesture is one that impacts both me and Tracie to this very day. Many servers of all races have a preconceived notion that black people don’t tip. In many cases they’re right. (Tip? Shit, you’re getting paid!) Still I hate being painted with that broad brush. As a result of that common belief, many times people of color will receive inferior service from waiters and waitresses because the servers figure, “Why should I knock myself out when they aren’t going to leave me a tip, anyway?”
So, what happens? The black customer gets his check and thinks, “I got shitty service. I’m not tipping.” To which the server is then able to reply, “See? Told you they don’t tip,” thus making the whole thing a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I find myself acting as my mom did. I not only tip every time, I overtip. Even if I get bad service. In a way, I guess I feel a responsibility to break the stereotype. I’m tipping so that the next black customer gets better treatment. Kind of like paying the bridge toll for the car behind me.
One question, though. When did tipping become a right that servers were entitled to? Growing up, it was always my understanding that a tip was an extra reward to show a waiter or waitress gratitude for superior service. I always thought that the word “tips” was an acronym for the phrase “To Insure Proper Service.” If this is indeed the case, why is it now an entitlement? Moreover, why are there tip jars in places where you aren’t even getting any kind of special service? Why is there a jar for tips next to the counter at Starbucks? I stood in line. I placed an order. The clerk handed me my order. I paid the menu price plus tax for said order. Why am I now expected to compensate you for handing me my latte?
I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right. I put money in the jar just so that the bohemian at the register won’t think, “See? Black people don’t tip.” It’s a vicious cycle.
The restaurant issue is a perfect example of how race wears on our society. If a white customer goes to a restaurant and gets bad service, more likely than not he thinks, “Gee, I got bad service.” If a black customer goes to a restaurant and gets bad service, part of the evening is spent wondering, consciously or not, whether it was simply bad service or whether it was racism. White friends in the restaurant service industry have told me on several occasions about owners who instructed them to give blacks inferior service so that they wouldn’t return.
One of the most egregious cases I’ve heard of involves a popular restaurant in the San Leandro/Hayward area that my mother took us to a few times when we were kids. Former employees have told me that it was a common practice in the 1960s and 1970s for the restaurant staff, at the direction of the management, to oversalt the food of black patrons to discourage their continued patronage. I remember thinking then that the food was kind of salty, but the place was packed. I figured that it must have been my pedestrian palate so I never said a word; nor did my mother. The only blacks in the place were not going to tell a building full of whites that the emperor had no clothes. And that he was too salty.
I’m not sure that Grandma agreed with my mother’s reasoning that day at brunch, but she loved her and she indulged her, as we all did. Without saying another word, Grandma took her hands off of the money and we got up and left the restaurant.
After brunch, we went to the mall to shop . . . for house-wares. Every kid’s dream afternoon. A few years later (all right, a few hours but it felt like a few years) we were back in our apartment where I was finally taking off my itchy sport jacket when I was interrupted by a knocking at the front door. Actually, “knocking” isn’t the right word. It was more like a banging or a pounding.
I went downstairs and opened the door to find a little blond girl, about my age; an older woman, apparently her mother; and a white mob, standing there. I’m talking about fifteen or twenty people all piled up on our little front porch and squeezed up against the green picket fence that surrounded the patio adjacent to the front door.
There was a little raggedy boy, about seven years old; a woman with her head tied up with a train engineer’s bandana, a cigarette dripping from her lips; a teenage boy wearing a Confederate-flag tank top. I felt like Nostradamus looking at a Jerry Springer premonition.
The woman spoke to the little raggedy boy.
“Is this him?” she asked, pointing at me.
He nodded his head.
“Yeah, that’s him.”
Suddenly, she was inches from my face, her words spewing at me like so much bile.
“You keep your damned hands off of our cat!”
What cat? What is she talking about?
My mother appeared at the door behind me. She had been taking off her makeup and still had traces of face cream on her cheeks.
“Is there a problem?” she asked, putting her hand gently on my shoulder.
The woman backed away from my face a few inches, taking Mom in. My mother was a slight woman. She was demure and almost dainty, but she had a presence much larger than her actual physicality.
“Are you this boy’s mother?” the woman said.
My mother’s demeanor changed.
“First of all, don’t you call my son a damned ‘boy.’”
She could be black when she wanted to.
“I am this young man’s mother,” she continued. “What is the problem?”
The little blond girl spoke up. “He threw my kitty in the pool!”
“No I didn’t,” I protested. “I didn’t.”
“Yeah he did. I saw him,” the raggedy boy said, with a self-satisfied smirk on his face.
“The cat was missing,” the woman said, with venomous animation, “and when we found her she was soaking wet and half-drowned.”
She jabbed her finger in my direction. For a woman, it was a thick, meaty finger. It reminded me of a sausage link.
“The kids said that the black boy . . . ”
My mother’s stern glare forced her to rethink her choice of words.
“I mean, the black ‘kid,’ who lives here, threw her in the swimming pool.”
“My son did not touch your cat,” Mom said. She was calm. Reasoned. I’m not going to lose control.
“He’s allergic to cats.”
Now the raggedy boy was pointing at me.
“Yeah, he did. I saw him.”
“When?” my mother asked. “When did you see my son throw a cat or anything else in that swimming pool?”
The answer was quick.
“Today. A couple hours ago.”
My mother maintained her cool. “You’re clearly mistaken. He’s been with me all day. We went to mass, then we went to brunch, and then we went shopping. We just got home.”
The little girl spoke up again.
“Mommy, what’s ‘brunch’?”
It felt good knowing that my mom had my back like that. There were so many people out there accusing me, I thought for a minute, “Shit, maybe I did try to drown the damned cat.”
The woman was adamant.
“We have witnesses,” she said, every word enunciated with clipped precision.
“Well,” Mom said, “they’re either mistaken, or they’re lying.”
“Well, you are the only colored people around here and . . .”
There went Mom’s cool.
“And you had better get the hell off of my doorstep.”
“And who’s gonna make me?”
Suddenly there was a splash. Then steam. The woman got all red-faced. Steam rose from the little boy’s head. The teenage boy started crying. What the hell just happened?
I looked at my mom and a sly smile crept across her lips. I noticed that she was looking over my shoulder at the patio. There, on the other side of the green picket fence, stood Grandma, holding a steaming pot. She had been boiling water to cook some greens but found a better use for it.
There was outrage, pandemonium, cussing. The woman went ballistic.
“You niggers!” she screamed. “You fucking niggers!”
Mom had my back and Grandma had hers.
“Come on inside, son,” she said gently.
We went inside and closed the door, and then she hugged me really tight. When I was a kid, my mother’s arms were like a blanket to me. A blanket keeping me warm when the world was so cold. A blanket that smelled like Jean Nate products. This was different, though. She was shaking. For the first time, I was holding her.
“It’s okay, Mommy,” I tried to comfort. “They’re gone. It’s okay. They’re gone.”
“Doggone right they gone,” said a disembodied voice.
Grandma stood in the doorway looking strangely satisfied. She’d been vindicated. She wasn’t paranoid. That day, for the first time in my life, I learned the difference between paranoia and legitimate concern. Who knows? We might have been blamed for poisoned candy on Halloween. The world just got a lot scarier.
“You know,” she said, “it’s a good thing you was with us today or they could have said you did any kind ofmess.”
I think that this was a defining moment for Grandma, being able to strike back like that. Don’t get me wrong. My grandmother has never been anybody’s doormat, but pouring hot water on irate white people? You don’t do that in Birmingham.
“Carolyn,” Grandma bellowed, “what’s wrong with you?”
“I’m sorry,” she said through streams of tears. “I’m so sorry. I never should have moved us here.”
“Sorry, shit!” Grandma shouted. “We got just as much right to be here as they got.”
“But it’s so hard on the kids, Suer. So hard on Brian.”
It was hard for me to see her like this. Unsure. Vulnerable. Human.
“I’m okay, Mom,” I said. “Honest.”
My train of thought was broken by another knock at the front door. Jesus, how hot was that water? Could the cops have gotten here that fast? What was I thinking? There were black people involved. Of course the cops could be there “that fast.”
Grandma ran off to the kitchen to get some more hot water. My mother sat down on her plastic couch to compose herself. I headed for the door. Mom stopped me.
“Wait,” she said through black trails of mascara.
“It’s okay, Mom. I’m the man of the house, remember?”
She gave me a weary smile. Maybe I really was the man of the house.
I went to the door and opened it, slowly at first, just a crack in case I had to shut it fast. Hurry up with the hot water, Grandma.
I peered through the crack in the door to see Mr. Wentworth, the apartment manager, standing on the porch. Wentworth was a fiftyish guy who always wore a sky blue jumpsuit that was about two sizes too small for his chubby ass. Wentworth was one of those “nice” racists. Always kind and convivial in your face. Jovial and congenial with an overcompensated friendliness that came across as insincere even in the mind ofan eight-year-old.
“Hey there young fella!” he said in his smarmy way.
“Hi, Mr Wentworth ”
“I’ve got something to give your mama. I came by earlier and knocked but nobody answered.”
“We were at brunch.”
“Brunch? What’s that?”
Where did my mother come up with this stuff?
“Kind of like ‘leakfast,’ ” I explained. It was as good an explanation as any. “I’ll take it.”
He handed me a white legal envelope with my mother’s name typed on it. I got a queasy feeling in my stomach. What was it about typewriters? The clickity clack of the keys has always made me uneasy. It brought back memories of all of the places I hated most as a kid: doctors’ and principals’ offices.
“Now you make sure she gets that, son,” he said, his bullshit smile plastered across his face.
“Yeah,” I said, closing the door just as Grandma came running in with another steaming pot. “Mr. Wentworth, Grandma.”
She stamped her foot. “Shit!”
I walked over to the couch where my mother appeared to be in better shape now. Though her eyes were still red and puffy, I could feel her struggling to regain the self-discipline she’d spent a lifetime developing. She straightened her body and sat rigidly upright. She sniffled softly and ran the knuckle of her right index finger under her nose. Control. Always under control.
“Mr. Wentworth, Mom. He said to give you this.”
She took the envelope and opened it. She then took out a white sheet of legal-size paper and stared at it for a long time.
“What is it, Mom? What’s wrong?”
Dead air again. I didn’t know how long it lasted, only that, once again, it was too long. Finally she looked up from the paper.
“We’re being evicted.”