Booker T: From Prison to Promise: Life Before the Squared Circle (3 page)

After I had stared at nothing and thought about everything for about an hour, my mind drifted back to my mother and those words that had haunted me since my first night in Harris County Jail:
You’ll end up dead or in jail.

For the first time in years, I really missed her. I thought of the rest of my family too, my brothers and sisters. The story of our lives—together and divided, hellish at the time—played out in my mind as I nodded off to sleep.

There were eight of us kids. In order from oldest to youngest, Mom had Danny James, Carolyn Jones, and Lula Gayle James, and then she had her five Huffmans—Billie Jean, Donald, Lash, Bonita, and me, Booker T, the mischief kid. I came into this world March 1, 1965, in Plain Dealing, Louisiana, born to Rosa and Booker T. Huffman. Yeah, I was Booker T. Huffman Jr. All my siblings called me Junior, but when my father suffered a stroke and died at the age of fifty-nine, I became the sole Booker T. Huffman. Still, out of habit and perhaps respect for our father, I would always be known to my immediate family as Junior.

Since I was only ten months old when Dad passed, I never had the chance to know him. The only thing I had of him was a photo showing a big, strong black man who looked like me. I used to focus on his frame and his face and wish I could be just like him.

Though I didn’t know him for myself, everyone made it clear that he was a well-respected man. Fortunately, Carolyn, my oldest sister from one of Mom’s earlier marriages, knew my dad for a few years before I was born and gave me insight into the man she called Mr. Booker.

“He was very quiet and rarely joked,” she said. “But when he said something, you knew he meant it. We immediately did whatever he said. He was fairly tall, probably about six foot two, with a lean face, like yours. He always wore a khaki suit with a large-brimmed, beige hat made of felt. He looked like a hustler or a really slick man off the streets.

“One thing’s for sure. Mr. Booker took care of our family. Mom stayed at home, and your father was a great provider, very responsible, a true man’s man. We always had plenty of food and a nice place to live.”

Once I asked Carolyn if she ever found out where Dad got his name, but she didn’t know. That wasn’t the only mystery. I didn’t know what my middle initial stood for, if anything at all. I used to think it meant To-be-determined-at-a-later-time. No one could tell me. I do remember hating my name. Sometimes kids at school or around the neighborhood teased me, calling me Booger and things like that. For a while there I wanted to change it to something more typical, but as time went on I was proud to have something that set me apart and connected me to my father.

Carolyn’s stories about him helped fill in so many blanks and were as therapeutic as they were entertaining. “I remember the first times your daddy came around when he started dating Mama. He drove this big old green Oldsmobile that I used to call the Batmobile. Danny, Gayle, Don, and I loved to jump inside the Batmobile and horse around while Mr. Booker visited with Mom on the porch, just talking and laughing.

“He was such a pleasant man toward us kids and very generous. The local Dairy Queen sold a grape soda float called the purple cow. At least once a month, your father would load us all into the Batmobile and take us to get one. It was the thrill of the week! You never saw so much singing and dancing.”

Soon my siblings would see a lot more of Mr. Booker. Carolyn told me, “One day he came over to Granddaddy Namon’s house and asked him respectfully for Mom’s hand in marriage. Of course Granddaddy said yes, and I’ll tell you what, he and Mr. Booker were two peas in a pod from that day on. Mr. Booker gained a fine woman for a wife and a tremendous man for a best friend.”

Carolyn’s stories about my dad’s job were fascinating too. “Mr. Booker used to work down at the local pool hall in Plain Dealing. It was a place where they served beer, played dominoes, and gambled some. That was your daddy’s job six days a week from eight or nine in the morning until nine or ten at night. The only times he’d take off were Sundays to stay at home with Mama and us.

“On that seventh day, Sunday, he’d usually sit at the small kitchen table while Mama cooked one of her unbelievably delicious dinners. Mr. Booker would casually chat with her while counting his money for the week and then go sit out on the porch with Namon. The two of them had such a good time talking about life and the goings-on around town.”

I loved hearing these stories. When I was old enough, Carolyn explained some funny details of my dad’s seedier adventures. Apparently, another one of his Sunday activities was bootlegging with Granddaddy. It was illegal to sell liquor on Sundays, so he would buy a couple big bottles of whiskey, which they would sell little by little all day to make some pretty good side money. One time Dad got caught selling the whiskey to an undercover policeman, and they took him to jail.

When it was time for Dad to go to court, his defense attorney took one look at Granddaddy Namon and realized he could pull a switch. The crazy part was that even though the two of them dressed alike with the khaki suits and hats, Granddaddy was a light-skinned man and Dad was really dark. So to confuse things for the prosecutor, the lawyer had my granddaddy take the stand instead of my dad.

When the arresting officer came in to positively identify the man who had sold him the whiskey, the attorney pointed out Granddaddy. That policeman must have done a double take, and all of a sudden he wasn’t so sure he had the right man. As a result, the judge had to throw the case out. The attorney had pulled the oldest trick in the book. Later at the house, Namon and my dad could be heard laughing into the wee hours of the morning about how they’d beaten the system.

In later years, Carolyn also went into detail about my dad’s death. He was in great health, wasn’t a drinking man, and never smoked, but on his way to work one day, he stopped off at one of those old icehouses to pick up a block for the pool hall. Suffering a stroke, he fell and died instantly in front of everyone.

It happened just shy of my first birthday in early 1966. There was no rhyme or reason to it. I guess it was just his time, as they say, but I sure wish it hadn’t been.

Mom was beside herself with grief and concern for her family. Dad had been the breadwinner, and now she was left alone with a houseful of children to look after and feed. Almost immediately she looked for employment opportunities, and it wasn’t long before she was hired as a medical assistant in town.

Although she worked long, hard hours, it wasn’t enough. She needed a bigger, better opportunity. She called Carolyn, who had recently moved to Houston, to see how things were going out there.

“Great, Madea,” Carolyn said, using our family’s term of endearment for Mom. “There are so many jobs. You need to come and check it out for yourself. It could be a great move.”

Though I don’t remember anything about our town of Plain Dealing, I learned it offered nothing to us but dead-end jobs and racial tensions, even heavily segregated sections where black families had to live separately from whites. With such a bleak outlook, my mother was undoubtedly making a solid decision to move on.

After packing up a few things, she drove out to stay with Carolyn while Granddaddy Namon and Gayle watched over the rest of us. Within a few weeks, Mom found a job as a nurse’s assistant at the hospital as well as a house for rent in Sunnyside, a Houston suburb.

The next thing we knew, we were all crammed in her little red Plymouth and on our way to a new life.

Mom was a proud, hardworking woman. I had many wants, as most kids do, but because of her I didn’t have any needs. We didn’t have the sharpest car or the nicest house, but I had a coat on my back when it was cold, shoes on my feet, and hot meals on my plate even if it meant Mom had to take food stamps.

Mom worked from eleven at night till seven in the morning. She left when I was asleep, and she was home before I headed off to school. To my young mind, it seemed she had never left the house. I can’t imagine how exhausted she must have been after a shift at the hospital to step into the kitchen to make us breakfast and pack our lunches. In the evenings, we would find her working hard in the kitchen again, smoking a Virginia Slims cigarette and maybe drinking a cold beer. None of us could wait to run in for dinner. Mom was an amazing cook. She had a big collection of recipes from former generations, and her mushroom chicken and candied yams were my favorite.

Raising eight children single-handedly must have taken its toll, but you would not have known it. Life at home with Mom was true peaches and cream. She cooked, cleaned, drove us wherever we needed to go, and expected nothing in return except that we would go to school and stay out of trouble.

From time to time, my sisters helped her out, but my brothers and I were lazy and never lifted a finger. All we wanted was to watch TV or bolt out the door and play.

By the time Danny, Carolyn, Gayle, and Billie Jean either had moved out or were running the streets, Mom was still taking care of Don, Lash, Bonita, and me. The four of us Huffman kids got along pretty well and didn’t cause Mom too many headaches, but like any family we had our fights.

For some reason, I used to get into the most trouble, especially in school. I would have to guess that Dad’s death translated into my acting out. Maybe seeing other kids with stable, two-parent homes triggered something deep inside. One thing was certain: Mom did not enjoy constantly being called down to the school to be lectured about her son’s latest tirade.

One girl at school named Jackie had a crush on me. I never paid any attention, except to mess with her and call her names. One day, for whatever reason, I got the brilliant idea to bully Jackie for money.

“If you don’t bring me five bucks tomorrow,” I said, “I’ll find you and make you sorry.”

She was so shocked by my threats that she went home and stole the money from her mom’s purse. She brought it the next day.

After school, I ran home chuckling over how easy my extortion plot had been. But then it dawned on me: I couldn’t let Mom find out.

Nervously, I stashed the money outside. I had to come up with a story to explain the five dollars, or else I could never do anything with it. I thought up a plan and quickly set it in motion.

While I was playing with my little niece in the yard, I pulled out the cash. “Wow! Look what was just sitting here. I’m rich!”

I ran into the house and showed Mom my newfound wealth, and she bought my lie.

The next day I went to school thinking I had gotten away with the perfect crime.

My success was fleeting. As soon as I got to class, the teacher pulled me out and marched me to the principal’s office. Jackie had reported my crime, and her mom had come all the way down to the school to complain. Everybody gave me the third degree, but that paled in comparison to what awaited me at home after they called my mother.

She whooped my ass. “Where’d you get such a crazy idea?” I really didn’t know.

Then one day in third grade I lost my temper with the teacher and went crazy yelling, throwing books, and destroying anything in my way.

My mother came to meet me at the school. She put her hands on my shoulders and looked at me with her wide eyes. “Junior, why did you do this? What’s the matter?”

I looked at her with a blank expression. I didn’t have a reason to give. I really didn’t know.

When I was still in grade school, we made a little move to the west to an area called South Park, which would be my home for the next few years. I planted my roots and got used to the school and made some more friends.

Around this time, I started following my brother Lash when my friends weren’t around to entertain me. Lash was six years older and much larger than me. In fact, he was one of the biggest kids around, and no one ever messed with him. He was also very protective of me. When we would walk in the neighborhood, his big palm would lightly clutch the back of my neck, while he guided me forward. It was his way of letting everyone know they would have to get through him to get to me.

I regarded Lash as a true role model and a hero I could always count on. There was nothing cooler than hanging out with him and his friends. Our age difference made us worlds apart in many ways, and I wanted to know more about his perspective of life. Lash was a giant of a teenager in a mysterious and private world of girls, fashion trends, and street knowledge. I went out of my way to sneak into Lash’s business, but sometimes it was a bad idea.

Lash had a friend across the street named Clarence. We called him Brother, and he hung out with us most weekends. Some volatile fireworks were usually going off at his house. His dad was a hardworking man, and when Friday afternoon arrived, he drank as hard as they came. Every so often when we were at his house, we would notice Clarence’s mom had a black eye or a swollen cheek. It was no surprise Brother sought escape from all that by spending time with Lash and me.

As good of a friend as Brother was to me, Lash was closer to his age and had the much stronger tie. Those two did everything together, and I always tagged along, even when they didn’t want me to. Of course, I did everything possible to secretly follow.

One afternoon, when I had walked behind them all the way down the street, my brother turned around and noticed me. “You ain’t coming,” he yelled, and they took off running as fast as they could to ditch me.

“Yes, I am,” I hollered and gave chase. But I just couldn’t keep up. I ran so hard I fell in the street. I cried like a baby, part of me hoping Lash would see me and come back. When he didn’t, I finally stood up and ran to find them. Lash saw me and threw his hands up. He let me stay, but I soon wished he hadn’t.

Walking aimlessly, we eventually found a stray cat. Lash and Brother decided to catch him. I can’t remember if the cat was overly friendly or if they had some food or something to lure him, but they wound up bagging the little guy.

Cat in tow, we started walking again. From my place behind the older boys, I couldn’t really hear what they were talking about, but that poor cat was crying and I could see him struggling to get out. We got to the end of our street, then crossed a few more blocks until we were near Interstate 610. Beneath the freeway was an underpass where we always hung out when we didn’t have anything better to do.