BROKE WOULD HAVE BEEN A NICE WAY OF DESCRIBING my family’s financial situation. I could think of a better phrase to paint a full picture of Pearl’s predicament: no pot to piss in. When the electricity was on, the thirteen-inch, black-and-white television didn’t work.
When you had a large family in the Beans, housing officials gave you an extra apartment. So they tore down the wall of the adjacent apartment to make room for Pearl and her clan. Government cheese, powdered eggs, and the other fine cuisine food stamps afford made for dull dining. My mother never worked. I know that raises a red flag with most hardworking American folks, but I’m proud of my mother nonetheless. She did her best to provide for eleven kids. Sometimes people are dealt one sorry deck of cards. Society may look at Pearl as everything that’s wrong with the inner city. Folks may paint her as the face of the welfare cartoon skit. Pearl would star in the one in most people’s minds of a teenage girl who wears hair curlers and chews a big stick of bubble gum, with a tribe of nappy-headed kids tugging at her skirt.
If that’s what people want to see on the surface, I’m okay with that because they don’t know Pearl and the sacrifices she made to put food on our table when there were no food stamps. I won’t shed light on those things in fear of furthering the comedy skit already etched in people’s minds, however much of a good laugh it provides.
We slept on three mattresses all huddled together. My mother slept on the couch. I snuggled up to her some nights when I saw her cry. Pearl is a strong woman. She never really cries like most people do. No tears flow when her heart seems heavy. But I felt her pain. I know that may sound all soft and shit, but it is what it is. I’m my mother’s oldest son, and for the most part it’s safe to say I raised her. That sounds suspect, but in hoods all across America young brothers are burdened with doing much the same thing. I’m not special.
My mother has ten different baby daddies. It’s a past that made her distrustful of men. She didn’t keep a man. So you know drama was always a stone’s throw away. I’m not sure if Pearl was just genetically disposed to picking losers or she consciously did so to avoid having to get close to anyone.
Let me explain. Some people actually choose people they know will be trouble from jump street so they have an out when things get heavy. Regardless of the reason, my mother’s battles with men were legendary.
“No-good suckers,” my mother called them. “All your daddies are a bunch of sorry bastards.”
Pearl wasn’t one to hold her tongue. I guess that’s why none of the men hung around long. If you wanted a war, my mother would give you the bullet, gunpowder, and rifle. She liked a good fight. Our apartment wasn’t large by any means, so you know when she and one of her boyfriends got into it. The whole Beans would know.
A typical scenario had her throwing one of those lousy dudes out with people peeking out their doors to witness the WWE Raw prime-time special Pearl vs. Sorry Baby Daddy, Part III. One guy in particular, Ralph, couldn’t get enough of the abuse. I mean, even I used to feel sorry for the guy. I still can’t tell you what Ralph’s occupation was. He had one of those “all of the above” résumés. A lot of folks around my way had that work history. Leaky faucet? I got you. Broken television? I got you. Concert tickets? You get the point.
“What’s cracking, young blood?” I hated when he called me that. I am the man of the house, dammit, even if you fools think I’m not past puberty. “Your mama, Pearl, around?” I always wanted to tell the bastard, “No, go bum food stamps from another single woman with kids! We’re in the projects. I’m sure you’ll find plenty of options.” But I knew my place, and besides, old Ralph had a sense of humor.
The truth is, I wanted a father figure. When you’re alone in the projects with your mom, you envy the kids whose father stuck around. In the ghetto pecking order—yes, there’s such a thing—kids whose father and mother live together always feel they have one up on the kids who don’t have that. Because most likely, they know your father may have been a shot caller who simply took advantage of your mother and kept it moving. He probably lived in a big house with his real kids married to the woman he really wanted. Yeah, it’s sad but it’s true. Even in the projects where everyone is at the bottom economically and sociologically, markers say who’s at the bottom of the bottom.
Pearl and her clan were the residue in the pan. So much so the social services people always came to check up on us. I hated that. Let’s be honest, those social services folk rarely give a damn. It’s a shitty job and the pay sucks. Do you really think some caseworker enjoys driving to the Pork-n-Beans once a month to see how poor Kiesha is making out with little Ray Ray and the flock? Hell no! In their opinion Kiesha should have kept her damn legs closed or used birth control, which they gave out in schools those days.
Our caseworker was Ms. Ridley. I had a crush on the lady. (Well, I had a crush on pretty much everything in a skirt and two legs, even in those days.) So when she came knocking on our door, I ran up all polite and shit and said, “Welcome to our humble abode.”
“Boy, move out the way!” my mother would yell. “That lady doesn’t have time for your foolishness!”
Pearl doesn’t fancy a lot of people, but she despised Ms. Ridley. It probably was because Pearl saw an image of what she could have become before she found herself stuck on welfare with us.
“How are you making out, Pearl?” Ms. Ridley would ask.
“I told you we’re just fine. I don’t know why you people have to always keep coming around here.”
“I keep coming because it’s my job and I care, Pearl. I know it must be hard being a young woman with all these children to take care of.”
“You don’t know a damn thing! You don’t know your ass from a can of beans!” yelled Pearl. “Coming around here like you really give a damn. Lady, spare me!”
Pearl has a fiery temper. You bring the artillery and she’ll start the war. “Pearl, maybe you just need some counseling. There’s a great program where you can even take classes while someone watches the kids.”
“Lady, what I need is for you to hurry up with your walk-through so you can kindly leave my house!”
Ms. Ridley shrugged.
I felt sorry for the lady. She seemed to have our best interests at heart, but Pearl just thought she was an up-North “patronizing bitch.” I believe Ms. Ridley was educated somewhere in New Jersey, and back then Southern folks didn’t take kindly to what people round my way called “uppity ways.” It’s funny how even back then and to this day behaving like you have some good sense and home training is frowned upon in the hood.
My favorite part came after my mother would give Ms. Ridley the third degree. Pearl would go to the kitchen, leaving Ms. Ridley all to myself. I guess you could call it my first rendezvous.
“Come here, Maurice. How’s the little man of the house doing?”
“I got everything under control,” I answered, nodding my head.
“That’s my boy. Your mother is under a lot of stress, so it’s up to you to take care of her, okay? Can you do that for me?”
“I think I can.”
Then Ms. Ridley gave me the biggest hug. I guess the crush I had on her wasn’t the boy-likes-girl type. Looking back, I think my affection toward that caseworker and several others that would float through my life came from the fact that someone actually gave a damn. It might sound clichéd, but stuck in that crummy apartment with my mother and brothers and sisters, I felt lost. You look outside and everyone around you is pretty much in the same rut. There was no love in the Pork-n-Beans. It was just people scraping by. So when someone from the outside visited, it was like I got to take a field trip to some faraway land.
Ms. Ridley didn’t live in the projects, or close to them for that matter. She was well-educated but she looked like us. She was black. Back then, we didn’t get to meet black folks who actually went to college. I know my mother felt Ms. Ridley was just doing her job. Maybe she was. Or maybe I was just a number on a pad she had to check off on her daily visits, but the hug was a gift. In those five fleeting seconds or so, it made me feel important. It made me feel like I wasn’t just some nappy-headed bastard child trapped in the hood.
Then she went home.
I don’t think my mother actually disliked Ms. Ridley. I believe every time she or any other social worker came around, it caused fear that my brothers and sisters and I were on the verge of being split up. At times when Ms. Ridley came, the water or electricity was off. Sometimes they were off at the same time. Sometimes she came by when Pearl and Ralph or some other boyfriend were arguing. Those factors didn’t bode well with the child services people always lurking. Of course, Pearl’s predicament could easily have been taken care if my father or one of my siblings’ fathers had assumed the man’s role, but they were all too busy being a statistic.
Only two of my siblings share the same father. What was the sum total of those ten guys’ financial and emotional contribution to our well-being? Zero. I hated those men. I know it’s a strong word, but feeling abandoned in that rat-infested apartment took its toll. There is a reason why black boys raised with single mothers are prone to killing other black boys. You don’t have to take my word for it. Do your research. Here’s my theory. If your first images of black men are of those who leave your mother stuck on skid row without a pot to piss in, then you’ll assume a hatred for your likeness. You grow up believing that brothers will tear you down, so you try to destroy them before they destroy you. It ain’t rocket science. I know it sounds like some twisted, fatalistic mumbo jumbo, but it’s real. Go to any prison in America and take a survey of what the inmates think of their fathers. That’s if they even knew the cat. If I could have killed one of those dudes, I would have. Now I’m not saying there aren’t exceptions to that rule. But a boy’s chances of becoming a success increase when he has a blueprint to follow.
Dating options for an unemployed woman with eleven kids are slim to nonnegotiable. It takes a special kind of man to even consider a woman with that kind of baggage. Only a man who was willing to look past what others see as damaged goods would take on such a challenge. His name was Lucious. He was my mother’s long-term boyfriend. He was in the military and what you could call a man’s man. Every time Lucious paid a visit from being away on his tour of duty, it was like Superman had entered the Beans. Well, to me at least. In those days, a brother in the military meant he was doing something. Most cats from the hood didn’t have the financial means to go to college so they did the next best thing and bore arms. It was an honorable path to becoming all you can be, I guess. When Lucious arrived, my mother rolled out the red carpet. Inside, she laid out a dinner with candied yams, roast beef, peach cobbler. Like I said, it was really as if Superman had entered. I would run into the bathroom when he knocked on the door.
“Hey, baby.” He kissed Pearl on her cheek. “Where young blood at? Where my little man at? Where he hiding? I got something for him.”
“I told you stop spoiling that boy,” my mother answered.
All the while I listened behind the bathroom door. I got happy every time Lucious asked for me. I respected Lucious and knew I was his favorite. Yeah, I was special to Lucious.
“What’s happening?” I said sheepishly.
“What’s happening!?” he sarcastically replied. “Oh, all of a sudden you ain’t excited to see old Lucious?”
Of course I was. But I wanted to show him I was a man, and men don’t show emotion. He pulled out a toy German soldier as my mother went into the kitchen.
My eyes lit up.
“Yeah, I knew this would get you to smile,” he whispered. “Now go put it under the bed so your mother won’t see.”
I tucked it under the mattress, alongside the other trinkets Lucious had brought back from the places he had visited. Lucious knew I had never seen anything beyond Twelfth Parkway. The gifts were his way of expanding my view of the world.
After staying for however long his tour of duty gave him, he would give my mother some cash. She was always reluctant to take it. But he insisted. Lucious always tried to be the rock in our storm when he came around. Honestly, he was that eye in the hurricane. Sadly for us, he and my mother could never get it together. That left me with big shoes to fill as Pearl’s oldest son. It gave me a title too often held by shorties in the Beans and other projects across America—head of the household.