Unemployment rates for blacks in America are consistently twice as high as for whites.
African Americans with a college education or beyond experience nearly the same rate of unemployment as whites with only a high school diploma.
My father, at heart, was a family man. When I remember him, the first image that comes to mind is of Daddy cooking. He could turn an ordinary pot of red beans into a gourmet meal. Wielding a chopping knife with ease, stirring the simmering pots, he’d man our kitchen, taking swigs from a bottle of red wine he kept in the freezer.
He moved through life with a zest, a passion. He laughed easily and robustly. He was also an adventurer. Most people we knew didn’t travel beyond the neighborhood, but Daddy took us to the Pike in Long Beach, where we’d ride the Cyclone Racer, an old wooden roller coaster that spanned beyond the shore, so when the cars twisted and plunged all you’d see beneath you was ocean. We spent many Saturdays in Lincoln Park, running around in the fields and playground while Daddy grilled. There was a lake, and we’d go out in a little boat, dangling handmade fishing poles baited with worms we dug up.
On the Fourth of July, Daddy went all out, and we’d head to Lincoln Park in the morning with blankets and coolers and a barrel barbecue pit, staking a spot under the biggest tree. Daddy grilled chicken and ribs and weenies and corn on the cob, with beans and potato salad he’d made the night before. Later, we ate watermelon by the slice while fireworks exploded over our heads. He celebrated every holiday with flair, but made the biggest hoopla of Christmas. The day after Thanksgiving we picked out the biggest tree on the lot. We didn’t have keepsake ornaments or anything like that, but we strung lightbulbs and angel hair until the tree was in Technicolor. Christmas meant red wagons, Lionel trains, an Easy Bake Oven for me, and I’d bake Daddy little chocolate cakes to take to work.
But when I was around seven years old, everything changed. In the first wave of deindustrialization, the sheet metal factory closed down. This wasn’t just a temporary blow, wasn’t just a few months of tightening the belt while my father found another job. When the doors of that factory closed, my father’s worth, his pride, got closed up in there too. Without his career, without that paycheck to provide for his family, he didn’t know how to pick himself up day after day. All his life he had to move against a forceful undercurrent—growing up in Texas, he knew to look down when passing a white woman on the street; and when strange fruit hung from the trees, he tried not to look up. He fought for our country, but the army treated him like a second-class citizen. A charcoal-black man, he dared to have dreams for himself and his family. But at what point does that undercurrent overtake you? At what point does the struggle to, yet again, try to find a place for yourself in an unwelcoming world become too much? With the closing of that factory began the dismantling of our family.
I was still young, but I remember the swift change. A hopelessness gripped my dad. His flickering eyes turned sad. He used to say, “Come on, Susie Q, let’s go,” and we’d go to one of his friend’s houses and they’d throw dice while I eagerly waited for someone to toss me a nickel. But Daddy didn’t do that anymore. Friday nights, we kids would be ready to pile in his car for the drive-in, but there were no more movies. Instead, Daddy went out alone and returned hours later, slurring and walking sideways.
On it went: my father drank, and my mother worked. All day she cleaned white people’s houses—a sad use of her Home Economics major—while he tried to numb the layers of disappointment, of hardship after hardship. She would come home bone tired; he would come home eyes red. They both came home angry.
Their fights grew louder and rougher. At night the walls vibrated with their shouting. Many mornings, Mama had a swollen eye or busted lip. One night the police showed up. I remember it was just after Christmas because my brothers had toy guns in holsters and sheriff badges pinned to their shirts, and a policeman told them to shoot the bad guys.
Often, Daddy lashed out at my brothers, too, especially Billy. We all knew Billy had a different father, Mr. Walker, who sometimes came around the house. I’m not sure how the events had gone down but, before I was born, my parents split and my mother moved in with Mr. Walker—until my daddy showed up, demanding his wife return home. Mr. Walker tried to make a relationship with Billy, but my father resented him coming around and reminding everyone of Mama’s dalliance, even though my father himself had a loose definition of devotion.
Daddy would punish my brothers by ordering them to strip and endure a switch or razor strap. They were whipped until they fell to their knees, or until my father tired. Didn’t matter if skin would break, if blood would come. This was how my parents had been disciplined. This was how their forefathers had had their souls beat out of them. But Daddy never so much as raised his voice, let alone a hand, to me—and neither did anyone else when he was around. When he wasn’t there, though, I was at the mercy of everything, including my mother’s wrath. Directed solely at me, her temper could be vicious.
We kids were the collateral damage of my parents’ histories, of the worst and weakest parts of themselves, and of the plain fact that neither was around during the day and we were left to raise ourselves. Meanwhile, Aliso Village was changing. Black and Mexican gangs began to face off by the big clothesline. Our neighbor Miss Gerthree took her daughters and moved away after one too many times of looking out the back window in broad daylight and seeing knife fights. Her eldest, Dorothy Sue, said she was worried about me, that I was such a friendly little girl, wandering around Aliso Village, saying hi to everyone. She said she hoped someone would keep an eye on me like she had.
Most days I was sent to Aunt Elizabeth’s. Eventually, her crazy boyfriend vanished—I don’t know if he’d been discharged from the hospital and dropped her, or if she finally got fed up with him. Even without Curly around I was on guard with my auntie. When she couldn’t keep me for the day, Big Mama would, and the way I felt when I was with Big Mama was in stark contrast. I was too young to articulate it, but when I was in Big Mama’s care, I felt free to be myself. I felt safe.
Other times I was left at home with my brothers. Probably because Daddy beat on them but spoiled me, they had no soft spot for their only sister. They often barricaded me in the closet or locked me out of house, laughing as I banged my fists and pleaded for hours.
All of us kids thought I was my father’s only daughter. Until, one day, Celeste showed up for a visit. Her skin damn near white, she lived in New York with her mother and was thirteen years old—born before my parents had married. For the time Celeste was with us, everything was picture perfect. My brothers left me alone, and Daddy left them alone, and Mama didn’t whoop me or scream at Daddy but moved gently, like it was she who was the visitor in the house. I didn’t want Celeste to leave. With her there, our house felt like Leave It to Beaver. With her there, I felt safe. When Celeste told me she had to go back home, I begged to go with her. Ironically, years later she admitted she had envied me, because I had Daddy. But that one time she visited, she didn’t really see Daddy, didn’t know how the drink was wasting him, and how he was turning into a shadow of the man and father he’d once been.
I was shattered when Celeste left. And the chaos in the house started right back up. It’s interesting, I suppose, to trace the trajectories of half sisters growing up across the country. When we met, Celesta and I were both studious and made good grades, but our paths diverged. She went on to college, eventually getting a job that brought her back to Los Angeles, working for Mayor Tom Bradley. By this point, I was in the midst of a reckless and dark time. I had become the bad seed. Although we were finally living in the same city, long-lost sisters, Celesta understandably distanced herself from me.
Not long after Celesta’s visit my mother got wind of the fact that my father had another daughter in Long Beach, about twenty miles away. I was around six years old when Mama took me to meet my half sister LaRonda, who was two years younger. I was happy to have another sister, but, hardly surprising, my mom never paid another visit to Long Beach, and LaRonda and I were too young to keep in touch ourselves.
Decades later, in the early 1990s, I was reading the prison movement sheet, a daily bulletin that reported things like work detail openings and new inmates, when I saw the name LaRonda Burton. Out in the yard, I found her, my half sister, also serving time for possession of drugs.