The Day Harold Died

November 27, 1987

 

we went to the rock & roll mcdonald’s the wednesday before thanksgiving. moms took a half-day. she was fly & a fashion rep—high on a mound of white. i was 12 & lived with Harold for four years. he was somewhere between Malcolm X & Martin King & a Black grandfather whose feet i wanted to sit at. he was barack before barack; a Chicago hope, a Chicago King who brought Latins & Blacks together like Frankie Knuckles. the first Black mayor in the city of DuSable.

 

the rock & roll mcdonald’s was filled with sequined capes, shiny 50s bar stools, elvis/beatles posters in half a hall of fame of white-washed memorabilia. not a Buddy Guy pic in sight, not a Howling Wolf guitar lick on the jukebox. in the city of Muddy Waters the golden arches were a white heaven where jump blues turned vanilla shake.

 

i knew i didn’t like white music & was beginning to know the extent white people lied on history & in the parking lot that day i knew a lunch out with moms & my brother was a luxury. i knew this was how rich people must live, ordering, off menus. i knew at any time things could be taken away; electricity, fathers, mothers in handcuffs.

 

we ate in the car. moms juggling a fleeting to-do list in her brain. my brother, a boy monk in the front seat trying to visualize some future stability. his heart still, a soft fruit, sweet. he carried toys in his pocket, wanted a transformer for Hanukkah, hoped that what we were, was not the limit of what we could become.

 

the car was on cuz the hawk10 was swooping between buildings on Ontario & Ohio like a flood & the radio was audible & murmuring, tuned to WBBM or WGN or maybe even GCI if moms let us have a say that day, for once in our life. we were mid-bite in the damp & growing cold of november & the radio whispered, Harold was dead. it was the afternoon & i didn’t think someone could leave with the sun still out, a giant shining overhead like some Moses, some Tubman, promising a possible land. the radio said he sipped his coffee, slumped at his table, his heart attacked & he was gone.

 

i thought we’d have to move next, like when the landlord says go.

The Mayor was gone & soon too, the people.