A Summer of Kings (15 page)

When we came to Eighth Avenue and West 148th Street, which was the address King-Roy had mentioned, we found a row of apartment buildings. All of them looked as if they should have been condemned long ago. There were dark holes for windows, some with clothes and rags hanging out of them, some with people sitting in them or leaning out, propped up on their elbows and staring down at the street with bored expressions on their faces.

On the sidewalk a group of girls were skipping rope with a double set of ropes, and a couple of fat women sat outside on a sofa with three legs, smoking and fanning themselves with folded-up newspapers.

I stopped in front of the women and I said, "Excuse me, but could you tell me if a man named Accident lives here?"

"Who wants ta know?" one of the women asked me.

"I do," I said. "I'm Esther Young and this is Sophia and Stewart." I pointed at my brother and sister. "We're looking for his apartment."

"No you ain't," the other woman said. "You ain't lookin' for no Accident." Then she chuckled and said it again, "You ain't lookin' for no Accident."

"Why not?" I asked.

"' Cause he don't got nothin' to do with no gray girl."

"Gray girl?"

"She talkin' 'bout you, child," said the first woman. "Accident, he Muslim. He won't talk to no white devil."

"I'm really looking for our friend, King-Roy, King-Roy Johnson. He was visiting Ax—Accident—today."

"Yeah, we know. We seen him."

The two women eyed each other and smiled, and I knew they thought he was handsome. I just knew that's what they were communicating to each other. I felt relieved that we were at least in the right place. I asked, "Do you know which apartment building he's in? Would it be all right if we went inside?"

Both women found this funny. "Yeah, you can go on inside. He up on the fifth floor of that building there." She pointed to her right. "Don't got no elevator, though. You gotta walk up."

"Thank you," I said, turning around to find that the girls with the jump ropes had stopped skipping and were staring at us.

One of the girls, dressed in a pink dress and wearing pigtails in her hair, waved at me and I waved back.

"You wanna jump?" she asked. She smiled and shook the ropes in her hands.

I wanted to jump with them. I wanted to learn how to do double-Dutch jumping and maybe impress Kathy and Laura, but I knew it was getting late and we needed to find King-Roy, so I said, "No, sorry. Thanks, anyway, but we've got to go find a friend of ours."

"Some other time, then," the girl said.

"Yeah, some other time." I nodded, wondering if we'd ever see each other again. I turned back around and led Sophia and Stewart along the sidewalk until we came to the apartment building the woman had pointed to. I looked back at the women to make sure I was at the right one, and when they nodded their heads, I nodded back, took a deep breath, and went inside.

The building smelled sour—just like piss and vinegar, exactly like piss and vinegar, and I felt sorry that I had ever described my Auntie Pie in that way.

The stairwell was hot and airless, and the higher we climbed, the more sour the smell. I didn't know how anyone could stand it. The smell made my mouth salivate. I wanted to spit, but I swallowed my saliva and kept climbing.

Sophia was making a whimpering sound that grew louder with each flight of steps we climbed. Once we reached the fifth floor, Sophia said, "I'm going to tell Mother and Daddy on you. Wait till they find out what you've done. You shouldn't have brought us here."

"You're right, Sophia, okay?" I said, knowing she was. "But we're here now, so let's just find King-Roy and then we'll leave."

A tall man with a broom in his hands was coming out of one of the apartments. He looked over at us, and his head jerked back with surprise. "Hey, what's this we got, now? What you three doin' here?"

"We're looking for Ax," I said, speaking louder than usual because there was a couple on the floor below us yelling at each other.

The man slid his eyes sideways at the apartment door across the hall from him. "Ax ain't here."

"Do you know where he is?" I asked, hoping he was telling us the truth.

"You don't want to go there." The man shook his head.

"Yes, I do. I'm looking for our friend, King-Roy Johnson. He's living with us this summer."

"Oh, yeah?" The man said, a smile coming to his lips. "Well, I met King-Roy and I seen him go off with Ax and I know where they gone, but you ain't invited."

I heard a loud noise coming from below us and it sounded like a gunshot. I glanced over at Sophia and Stewart and their big, wide eyes had grown even bigger, and I could tell they were ready to run out of that building, flee Harlem, and get back home,
now,
whether I came with them or not. I knew, too, that I was going to be in big trouble when we did get home, but we were there and I couldn't leave Harlem until I had found King-Roy. I gripped their hands in mine, ignored the noises below, and turned back to the man.

"Could you tell us where they are, please? It's getting late and I
need
to find King-Roy."

The man cocked his head to one side. "What if he don't want to be found?" he asked me.

I looked down at the floor and realized I was standing on a dark stain that looked like old blood. I stepped off of it, and feeling a surge of irritation and impatience hitting me at the same time, I said, "If he doesn't want to be found, then I'll let him tell me so himself." I glared at the man.

The man held up his broom and hid his face behind it. "One Twenty-fifth and Seventh," he said from behind the bristles.

"Seventh Avenue? Is that where he is?" I asked.

"That's what I said. One Twenty-fifth and Seventh."

"Thank you," I said.

The man poked his head up over the top of the broom and said, "I'm gon' kill me some rats."

I turned to leave, pulling Sophia and Stewart with me and hoping that this man wasn't about to hit us with the broom, thinking we were rats. "Thanks again. Bye, now," I said, fleeing back down the steps.

"Watch out for them rats on the third floor," the man called after us.

Back out on the sidewalk I had to do some quick thinking. I knew it would be easier and faster to take the subway, but I also knew that Sophia and Stewart would insist that we go home and forget about finding King-Roy. I knew they would stay on the subway, and refuse to get off with me, so I decided we had to walk. Twenty city blocks equals a mile, so I figured we had just a little over a mile to go and it was already after six. I looked at my brother and sister and said, "Come on, we'll have to hurry; it's getting late. Sophia, do you need me to carry you?"

She shook her head and said nothing.

I knew Sophia was scared out of her wits, because she clutched my hand and didn't make a sound all the way to 125th Street, even when a gang of boys about Stewart's age followed us for two blocks, taunting us and throwing litter at us from off the sidewalk, and even when we passed an alleyway filled with garbage and too many rats to count, and even when we passed a group of men nodding at us and looking half out of their minds, and even when we passed a white policeman, who kicked a tired-looking man just sitting on the curb and minding his own business. None of us said anything. It felt like more things happened in that long walk to 125th Street than we had experienced in our whole lifetimes combined. It was more than any of us could deal with, so we just kept our heads down and ignored the comments, the calls, the litter, the rats, the dogs, the police, the dirt, the beggars, the stoned, and everything else until we started to notice a crowd gathered up ahead. I could hear someone speaking, someone saying, "... stolen our heritage and the so-called Negro isn't going to take it anymore."

Shouts came up from the crowd.

We kept walking, listening to the short heavyset man we saw standing in front of the crowd, wearing a gray suit with a white shirt and a bow tie. He had a book in his hand, and he held it above his head when he spoke and brought it down whenever he paused for breath.

"You don't need bleach creams," he shouted, and the crowd agreed. "You don't need to get your hair straightened," he said, and again the crowd agreed. "And you don't need anything else the white devil is selling in his stores and on the streets and in his churches. He's selling Christianity, but we don't want it!"

"No sir!" The crowd yelled.

"He's selling us the idea of a white Jesus and a heaven above, but we aren't buying it."

"We aren't buying it!" the people shouted.

"And he's selling us Cadillacs and trying to get us to spend more than we got so we're always in debt to the white devil, isn't it so?"

The crowd agreed, with "That so!" and "Yeah, man!"

"Mr. Charlie's selling us drugs and alcohol and cigarettes so we get addicted and go out of our heads and we can't think straight, isn't it so?"

"That's right!"

"Right on!"

"Why are you buying things from Mr. Charlie? Why are you buying things from the white devil? White isn't even real. They aren't even real people. The white man was created in a test tube. He's made of chemicals, bad chemicals, and now we got all these white devils, these bad mistakes, walking the earth."

The man shook his book above his head. "The honorable Elijah Muhammad has been sent from Allah to free us, to open our eyes and show us that we've been blind. We're better than the white man."

"Much better!" The crowd agreed.

"We're smarter."

"Much smarter!"

"We're superior to the white man in every way."

"In every way!"

"It's time we acted. It's time we showed them we mean business. It's time we showed them we're not going to let them push us around."

The crowd shouted. "That's right!" "Yeah, man!" "Ain't it the truth?"

"The white devil has stolen us from our country, stolen our African names, and given us their names, like Jackson and Brown and Smith. We ain't no Jackson and Brown and Smith!" he shouted.

The crowd cheered.

"They've raped our women and beaten our men and pushed and shoved us in and out of this place and that. Look around you. Is this how you want to live? Do you want to lose all your children to the white devil's drugs and alcohol?"

The crowd shouted, "No sir!"

"We're not going to take it anymore. We got too much self-respect. We got too much pride. We say enough's enough!"

Everybody shouted, "Enough's enough!"

"If they shove, we gon' shove back. If they strike, we strike back. If they shoot, we shoot back."

This got the crowd really stirred up, and the man at the front smiled and shook his book again. A group of men, standing close by, suddenly took notice of Sophia, Stewart, and me, and looked as if they were checking to see if we were about to strike or shoot, because they were ready, they were ready to fight back.

While this man was speaking, I was looking over the crowd standing there, a mix of well-dressed men and women, in suits and dresses, and men and women dressed like the poor people we had seen back on Eighth Street. I looked for King-Roy, but I kept finding myself listening to this man up front. What he said stirred me. I felt frightened and angry and confused all at the same time. What did he mean by saying white people were created in test tubes? Who told him that? Were white people trying to hurt Negroes by selling them things they couldn't afford and trying to get them addicted to drugs? I had heard stories about the South, about bombing Negro families' homes, and about hanging them and beating them. I had heard King-Roy's horrible story about the hoses and the dogs, but as much as it had upset me, I had felt that it had happened in some far away, unreal place. I had been to Alabama to visit relatives, and I never saw any of those kinds of things happening. It was like hearing in school about slavery, something that happened too long ago and too far away to be real, but as I stood there listening to this man up on the stand, shouting and waving his book, and heard him talking about freedom and how the "so-called Negro" was still a slave, still living with their heads caught in Mr. Charlie's noose, and how they would never be free until they lived in a separate nation from the white devil, I felt the immediacy of what he was saying. Everything—all those terrible stories about the South, and King-Roy's stories, and the stories the man up front was telling us—suddenly felt real and true and close, too close. I was standing in the middle of it. I had seen it with my own eyes right there in Harlem, and as I stood listening to the shouts of the people around me and saw the tired gray looks in some of their faces, all the tragedy and sorrow in the stories I had heard hit me all at once and I felt angry. I felt so angry, I found myself shouting with the crowd. "Enough's enough!" I shouted. "Enough's enough!" I raised my fist in the air and shouted again, "Enough's enough!"

I had gotten so involved in the shouting and in shaking my fist in the air that I had forgotten all about Sophia and Stewart, and even looking for King-Roy, but then I heard a woman close by say, "Ain't nobody gon' hurt you, baby. You all right."

I looked around and saw an attractive chocolate-skinned woman, wearing a pretty aqua dress, speaking to Sophia. I looked at Sophia and saw tears running down her face. Before I could lean forward and say anything to comfort her, the woman in the aqua dress reached down and picked Sophia up in her arms like she was picking a flower from a garden. "You a pretty little thing," the woman said, smiling big.

I was afraid Sophia might demand that the woman put her down and then start showing off how smart she was the way she usually did when people mistook her for a typical six-year-old, but Sophia just wiped her eyes and said, "My feet hurt and I'm tired and I want to go home."

She sounded so pitiful and so little, just like a real six-year-old, and I knew her feet must have been killing
her, because we were all three dressed in our good shoes. Her shoes were at least a size too small because she didn't want to get big feet like mine, so she always wore the smallest shoes she could stand. I patted her foot. "Sorry, Sophia. I'm really sorry," I said. "I shouldn't have dragged you here. You either, Stewart."