My childhood was a confusing barrage of mixed messages. On the one hand, Mom would say, “Be proud that you’re black, because black is beautiful.” Then, when we acted up, she and Grandma would say, “Act your age, not your color,” as if immaturity, rambunctiousness and negative behavior were “black” things. Did that make good behavior a “white” trait? If that was the case, then why was so much of the bad behavior directed toward me coming from white people?
The discrepancy was glaring to me. Every time I heard the word “black” it was in a negative context. A litany of images overloaded my senses with the less-than-subtle implication that there was something negative associated with things black.
In school, we learned that the day the stock market crashed in 1929 was “Black Tuesday.” On the news, I heard difficult times, such as the Watergate affair and the war in Vietnam, described as “Black days in our nation’s history.” Funeral processions I’d see on the street were led by bodies carried in black hearses. Mourners dressed in black. “Black clouds coming in” meant unpleasant weather ahead. Other than the occasional black comedian like Bill Cosby or Flip Wilson, the blacks that I saw on television were being led away in handcuffs. Murderous radicals, who instilled fear in me simply by the way that their names were ominously intoned by television newscasters, shared my pigment. The Black Panthers, the Black Muslims, and Cinque, the leader of the Symbionese Liberation Army, which had kidnapped newspaper heiress Patty Hearst from her home in nearby Berkeley. All inspiring dread, panic, and trepidation, all looking like me.
The mobs that gathered at the food distribution stations the SLA had demanded Randolph Hearst establish as his daughter’s ransom, the mob that rioted and behaved like a pack of wild animals over the free vittles, looked like me. Sylvester looked like me. Even in old cowboy movies I’d see on the Late Late Late Show (I’m dating myself with that reference), the bad guys wore black hats.
On the other hand, the good guys wore white hats. Commercials touted detergents that made “whites whiter.” The “whiter,” the better. The communion host at mass, the actual body of Jesus Christ himself, was white. I’d hear women speak of wanting to have a white wedding. The seat of American power was the White House.
To try and make sense of it all, I did what my mother always told me to do when I was in search of information. I looked it up. Even the thesaurus reinforced the perception. It defined “white” as innocent, pure, unsullied,, stainless, unblemished,, spotless, immaculate, virginal, virtuous, undefiled, and chaste. It defined “Caucasians” as fair-skinned. The skin of white people denotes “fairness”! White was clean. White was pure and virginal. Like the driven snow. Did this mean that I wasn’t these things?
The thesaurus defined “black” as somber, gloomy, menacing, lowering, threatening, malignant, deadly, sinister, dismal, hateful, disastrous, bad, foul, wicked, evil, diabolical, hellish, atrocious, awful, malicious, abominable, vicious, villainous, vile, disgraceful, unscrupulous, unconscionable, unprincipled, insidious, nefarious, dastardly, treacherous, unspeakable, shameful, criminal, felonious, angry, wrathful, furious, frowning, bad-tempered, sulky, resentful, and glowering.
At least “black” got more thesaurus space.
It was a gray morning as we walked to school. It was just the three of us on the one-mile trek. Tracie, Delisa, and me. I was in charge, responsible for the girls’ well-being. If anything happened to them, anything at all, it would be my fault. More accurately, it would be my ass. I held Delisa by the wrist, like Grandma did. She was a little first grader and she had a tendency to straggle and wander off. Not on my watch.
“You’re walking too fast,” Delisa complained.
“No, I’m not. We can’t be late. We won’t be late. We’re going to be on time.”
“I can’t keep up and you’re squishing my arm.”
“Yeah, Brian,” Tracie said. “Slow down. I’m sweating.”
“Sweat then!” I said.
“Why don’cha let the li’l gals catch they breath?” the voice said. The drawl was Southern and as thick as heavy fog.
I ignored it and kept walking.
“Ah say, why don’cha slow up so the li’l gals can catch they breath?”
I saw the old man standing across the street. He appeared to be ancient. He had a large round face. Wisps of silky gray ornamented his mostly bald pate. Thick, black glasses with even thicker lenses rested on the bridge of his nose, which had prominent veins and capillaries treading through it, reminiscent of a AAA road map. A medium-sized beach ball protruded from his midsection. He was a large man. His frame was imposing. I could tell that in his youth, he was powerful; formidable, even.
Delisa stopped dead in her tracks. I was now dragging her across the sidewalk; her black patent-leather shoes scraped loudly across the concrete.
“Come on,” I yelled. I wasn’t talking to strangers, especially not strangers with a Southern drawl.
“Y’all can’t speak?” he shouted.
“Hi,” Tracie said, waving.
He pulled a hand from the pocket of the filthy denim coveralls that he wore over a crisp white shirt. Black dirt and a clean white shirt. Dichotomy. More mixed messages.
“Hey, there,” he said. The word “there” came out as theah. His words had a barking quality. Short. Staccato.
I snatched Tracie’s hand down.
“Come on!” I hurried my pace.
“I just waved,” she said.
“Don’t!” It was me who barked now.
“But,” she pleaded, “Mommy always says to be polite. She always says to be ‘ladies and gentlemen.’”
“Not now! Not to him!”
I was dragging them both now. Delisa with my left hand, Tracie with my right, struggling as I tried to hold on to both their wrists and my lunch bag at the same time. We were getting out ofthere.
I knew this guy. I knew all about him. I had just watched a show about Martin Luther King Jr. with Grandma the previous night. The anniversary of his murder was coming up and there were stories about him everywhere. I didn’t know much about Martin Luther King Jr. I knew that I was almost four when he was killed. I was watching TV with my mom when the news bulletin broke in. I remember watching her cry and I remember that for what seemed like an eternity, there was nothing on television but sadness and tears, rage and rioting, punctuated by brief periods of somber remembrance and reflection. The show that I watched with Grandma had shown me more. Horrifyingly more.
I watched the grainy footage of men with clubs beating black people. I saw the fury in their eyes as they threw rocks and bricks at children; children just like me who were only marching, singing, and clapping. I heard the horde’s gleeful laughter as they let loose snarling dogs to bite and tear at the flesh of people peacefully sitting in the streets and praying. I saw the policemen and the firemen assist with the carnage, the force of the water from their hoses washing the blacks down the street like so much dirt swept from a suburban driveway into the drainage gutter and down the sewer. I watched the interviews where the members of the mob justified their brutality. Rationalizations peppered with the phrases, “nigger” this and “nigger” that. Justifications uttered with a drawl. A drawl where the word “there” was pronounced theah.
I had never set foot in the South in my life. I had never before set eyes on this man shouting at us from across the street. I didn’t know his name, his occupation, or his origins. But I felt that I knew him. I had just watched an evening of televised nightmares starring men just like him.
“Don’t look at him,” I instructed the girls as I rushed them down the street out of the man’s line of sight. “Keep your eyes straight ahead and don’t look at him!”
“Bye, y’all,” the voice yelled after us.
It was a few days later, as I walked home from school. It was Friday. Good Friday, the last day before Easter break. A whole week without school. This time, I was alone. My sisters had a Girl Scout function and would get a ride home from Grandma later. As I meandered down my street, I daydreamed about all of the delicious freedom that lay ahead.
I pictured Easter baskets overflowing with sugary goodies. Mom still thought that I believed there was an Easter Bunny who would creep into our apartment on Holy Saturday night and leave me cavity-inducing treats. I had figured this scam out ages ago, but I would do what it took to reap the rewards. If ignorance was bliss—made real in the form of chocolate rabbits and jelly beans—I would play along. I’d even go so far as to not question what a big rabbit with colored eggs had to do with the resurrection of Jesus Christ. What in the world is the connection between the death of our Savior and an Easter-egg hunt?
What happened when the women found Christ’s tomb empty?
Woman #1: The body of the Lord is missing.
Woman #2: Maybe we should look under the couch.
I’m Catholic, so I don’t ask questions. I learned that with Christmas. A fat man in a red suit who spends his days at the mall promising kids toys if they’ll sit on his lap. That’s not religious. That’s creepy. Even more so when Grandma told us, as we struggled in our excitement to fall asleep on Christmas Eve, that if we were awake when Santa Claus came, he’d put ashes in our eyes. Ashes! You get gifts or you’re blinded. There is the true spirit of Christmas. God bless us, every one.
I had been saving my allowance and I had two dollars in my pocket. Enough for ten comic books. I couldn’t wait to go to 7-Eleven for my fix. It was the thing I most looked forward to in the world. There was something exciting, yet at the same time soothing, about the squeaky sound of the metal magazine racks as I slowly spun them, mesmerized by the flashes of bright color and the smell of comic book paper. Before me was another world I could escape to. A world where good always triumphed over evil. A world where nothing was impossible. I thought of how I would spend the next week soaring over the skies of Metropolis with Superman, running through the streets of Central City with the Flash and stealthily lurking over the rooftops of Gotham City with Batman.
I was so deep in my fantasies that I didn’t even hear them behind me. I just felt the breeze of the rock as it whizzed past my left ear. I turned around just as the next stone made contact with my right shoulder. It was a small stone and it startled me more than hurt me. The third stone was bigger and caught me on the forehead. I felt a cold numbness in my nasal cavity. A constellation of stars appeared, blinding me.
As I rubbed the confusion from my eyes, I saw them. There were three white boys. Two appeared bigger than me. The third was a little runt with a black knit Oakland Raiders beanie covering his head.
As far as I could tell, I’d never seen the boys before. Another rock creased my scalp. I felt that fear-based adrenaline rush. My legs took off. I didn’t command them to, they just ran. I thought of the Flash, running faster than the speed of sound, moving so quickly he could run across bodies of water because his feet don’t have time to sink, skimming the liquid like a stone skipping across a pond on a summer afternoon. I thought how badly I needed his super speed as the footsteps behind me got louder. They were faster, closer, and mingled with gleeful delight and laughter.
Another rock hit me square between the shoulder blades. It stung like hell. My feet didn’t stop as I heard theirs getting closer still. The next thing I knew, my back was against the garage of one of the houses that lined the block. I didn’t know how I got there, but it was a deadly mistake. A dumb tactical error. Now I was cornered. The boys stood in front of me in a semicircle and I had no place to run. Stupid. Why did I do this? Batman would never have let himself get trapped like this.
I was outnumbered so fighting them was out of the question. Even if it were one against one, unless I squared off against the runt of the litter, it wouldn’t be a fair fight. I wouldn’t have a prayer. The other two were husky, older. So much so that I was half surprised they didn’t hop in a car and drive after me.
I covered my face with my arms as more stones were hurled my way. I felt like the harlot in an Old Testament Bible story, the angry mob stoning her for her illicit transgressions. I was the condemned in a twisted firing squad. I didn’t even know what my crime was. They could have at least offered me a blindfold and a cigarette. Another rock hit me in the forearm. Then another. And another. Tears welled up in my eyes, but I wouldn’t let them fall. They would never see me cry. They could beat me, bruise me, stone me, kill me if they had to, but they would not make me cry.
The onslaught continued unabated. Where were they getting all of these rocks? Had they chased me with rock-filled pockets? Then how did they move so fast? I guess I’m not the Flash after all.
I covered my eyes with my hands.
“Leave him be!” I heard the voice say.
Another rock hit me in the kneecap.
“Damn it, I said leave him be! Now!”
The voice was familiar. I’d heard it before. The bark. The drawl.
There was a startled reprieve. The rocks stopped coming. I slowly peeked through my fingers. The boys stood like statues, looking off to the side, their attention no longer on me.
“Get on ’way from here!” the drawl said, the word “here” sounding like heah.
I glanced in the direction that the boys were looking. The creepy old man stood there, angry. The veins in his neck popped out, the fire in his spectacled eyes magnified by the thickness of his coke-bottle lenses. He gripped a large metal pitchfork in his burly hands. A pitchfork! I had never even seen a pitchfork in real life. Just in that painting of the old farmer and his wife. American something or other. Just on the opening credits of Green Acres. There was nothing funny about the way the man was holding this one. It was a weapon. He was in attack position. I didn’t know you could actually be in attack position with a pitchfork. Eddie Albert had the potential to be one bad-ass motherfucker.
“I said for y’all to get your asses on ’way from here,” he commanded, shaking the implement as he inched toward my tormentors.
“NOW!” he shouted.
The small boy turned and ran. The other two hesitated for a moment and then followed their cowardly companion. I saw them disappear around the nearest street corner. I stung all over. I was bleeding from my forehead. A thin stream of crimson trickled down my right cheek. They were gone. Now the tears could come, and they did. I let out a few sniffles which soon gave way to sobs.
“Now, there ain’t no need for all of that,” the drawl said.
The sobs were heavier now. Louder. My chest heaved. Snot trickled down my nose and across my lips. I was a mess oftears, blood, and mucous. I had never realized how many fluids the body holds.
“Come on inside,” the man said.
I stood in my place. Now it was my turn to be a statue.
“It’s okay. Come on inside and let me clean some of that blood off of ya. You don’t want to go home to your mama bleeding like that, do you? You’ll scare the poor gal half to death.”
I stood still. What do I do? I didn’t know this man. Maybe it was a trick. He probably had a cellar where he buried little black boys like me. Or maybe he had some of those “black-people-eating dogs” from the Martin Luther King Jr. film. Maybe it was their feeding time and he was serving Purina Negro. I’d go inside and never be heard from again.
“I say come on, now!” he bellowed.
My body complied though my mind urged it to stay put. I trudged behind him, slowly, cautiously, as he walked up his driveway and then around the side of his garage into a side door.
“You wait right here,” he said as he went into another door that apparently led into the house.
The smell in the garage hit me immediately: sawdust. The floor of the place was covered with it. An assortment of manual saws and wood-carving implements hung neatly arranged on the wall. There was a metal vise clamping some kind of wooden dowel. A small saw was frozen in the center of a rod it had been busily chewing along before being interrupted. A hand-held power saw sat nearby on a workbench.
On the other side of the garage were two shelves lined with handmade wooden knickknacks: a baby-doll bed, birdhouses of various sizes, a smoothly sanded train engine. Below the shelves was a beautiful cherrywood dining table. It had been stained a deep reddish brown. Next to the table was a large china cabinet. Mom just bought one for our apartment, but it was not nearly as nice as this one. I stood marveling at the workmanship as the man came back out carrying a towel and some bandages.
“I made that,” he said, indicating the china cabinet.
“All by yourself?”
“Yep. Sure did. I made all of these things,” he said, “things” coming out of his mouth as thangs.
He handed me the towel. It was cool and damp.
“Put that on your forehead. It’ll stop the swelling.”
My reluctance fading, I complied.
“What’s your name, son?” he asked.
I hesitated for a moment. Mom always said not to give my name to strangers. I was not to give any personal information to people I didn’t know. Not under any circumstances. Once, when I was home alone, I answered the phone and talked to a woman who said that she was an old classmate of Mom’s from high school back in Akron. We chatted for an hour as she told me about what Mom was like as a teenager and how they used to hang out together and double date to the drive in movies and how scared Mom was of Godzilla. I answered her questions about how we were doing. I told her where we lived and where my mother worked. I even gave her Mom’s work number so that she could call and surprise her. The woman said that they hadn’t spoken in years. It had been longer than that, actually.
It turned out that the woman was a bill collector, gathering information on my mom’s financial situation and personal data. I got my ass chewed out royally when the woman called Mom at her job. I didn’t know. I was just seven at the time. I wasn’t used to the idea that adults lied to kids and tricked them.
The man handed me some tissues to wipe my running nose. His move was sudden and it startled me. I jumped as he thrust the Kleenex in my direction.
“It’s okay, young man. I’m not gone hurt ya. What’s your name?”
“Brian,” I answered softly, against my better instincts. “Just don’t ask me where my mom works,” I thought, “because I’m not telling.”
He put his hand out to shake mine. “I’m Josiah Wilkins. Nice to meet you, Brian.”
I shook his hand. It was big, meaty, and rough. A worker’s hand.
“Thank you for helping me, Mr. Wilkins.”
I put the wet towel on a nearby workbench and moved toward the garage door. I was stopped by his hand on my shoulder.
“It’s Josiah. Mr. Wilkins was my daddy and he’s been dead a long time. You call me Josiah.”
“My grandma says that I should always call grownups ‘mister,’ ‘miss,’ and ‘missus.’”
He thought for a moment.
“Your Grandmama sounds like a right proper lady. Where is she from?”
Here we go. I turned into a mime again.
“Okay, then. I don’t want you goin’ against what your people are tellin’ ya to do. I expect I can be Mr. Wilkins for you. Only for you. Just don’t let it git around.”
He winked at me and smiled. I felt a drop of warm blood drip down my face again so I picked up the towel from the work bench and wiped at my face with it. My head was starting to feel better.
“Those young gals I see you walkin’ by here with in the mornin’. Them your sisters?”
“Uh-huh. Two of them. There’s one more still at home.”
This was stupid. Why was I talking to this man? What if he was another bill collector? I changed the subject.
“Is it hard to make things out ofwood?”
“Not really. Just takes time. Patience with the small stuff. Like that birdhouse.”
He reached on the shelf and pulled down a tiny cedar dwelling. The smallest birdhouse I had ever seen.
“It took me a week to get that hole on the front the right size for the bird to come in. See?”
He handed it to me. The trickle of blood on my face had stopped enough for me to remove the towel and grasp the little structure with both hands.
“Very delicate work,” he said, “work” sounding like wuhk.
It was delicate. The hole was so small that I wondered what kind of bird could possibly fit though it.
“Where did you learn how to make stuff out of wood?”
He ran a hand through the sparse gray strands on his head.
“I used to work in a lumber yard back home.”
“Where’s that?”
“Tennessee.”
“Oh,” I said.
Tennessee, where they killed Martin Luther King Jr. Something in the sound of my voice told him that his answer bothered me.
“You don’t like Tennessee?”
I shrugged, not knowing what to say. I kept my eyes peeled for dogs.
“You ever been to Tennessee?”
“No.”
He paused for a moment and then grinned.
“Your people told you things about Tennessee, though?”
I averted my eyes and looked down at the birdhouse in my hands.
“It’s okay. I understand. Colored folks wasn’t treated too good back theah. I suppose they still ain’t in some parts. Things is better now. Some. I guess.”
I looked at the floor. The sawdust really was everywhere. It smelled good, though. Earthy and natural. Like fresh pine.
“Say,” he said. It was his turn to change the subject. “I’ll bet your mama is a good cook. She cook you good food?”
“My grandma does. She cooks for us,” I said.
He reached up on one of the shelves and pulled down a wooden board. It was smoothly sanded and shaded various hues of brown. It looked to be made of several different kinds of wood. He handed it to me.
“You give your grandma this.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a cutting board. Made it myself. She can use it for cutting meat. She cooks you meat, right? You ain’t one of them odd California folks don’t eat meat, is you?”
I giggled.
“No, she cooks meat.”
“Good. Then she’ll like this. You tell her it’s from Josiah up the street. Or Mr. Wilkins if you must.”
I stood and looked at the board.
“What’s the matter?”
“I really shouldn’t take things from strangers. I’ll get in trouble.”
“We ain’t strangers. We neighbors. You can take a gift from your neighbor. Ask your Grandmama. She’ll say it’s okay.”
He grinned again. He had a kind face when he smiled. It had a luminous, angelic quality.
“Okay,” I said after giving the matter some serious thought.
“Well, okay,” he said, smiling again.
“Thank you again for helping me,” I said, again placing the towel on the workbench.
“It was my pleasure,” he said, his hand again on my shoulder as we walked to the door.
I grasped the doorknob and I stood there for a moment, a knot in the pit of my stomach.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “Them boys ain’t still around here. I’ll stand out front and watch you till you get far enough up the street.”
I smiled a relieved smile.
I opened the door and headed up the sidewalk. At least I could use the cutting board as a rock shield. Like Captain America.
After a few minutes, I turned back to see Mr. Wilkins, as good as his word, standing on his doorstep clutching his pitchfork, watching. As he began to fade into the distance, he waved with his free hand. For the first time, I waved back.
I actually waved back to a man who says “theah.”