Manchild in the Promised Land (12 page)

Dad started telling me that it would be a long time before I would see the streets of New York City again. And that maybe when I got back, I would appreciate them enough to stop all that goddamn stealing and stay home like somebody with some sense. He talked on and on like that. Then he said something. Dad asked me if I remembered when I used to get up every Sunday morning to go out and watch Mr. Jimmy win money from people who were dumb enough to go hunting for a pea that wasn't there. I told him I remembered. Then he asked me if I knew what a fool was. I said a fool was somebody stupid. Dad said I was right, but there was more to it than that. He said it takes a stupid person to keep looking for something that is never there. Dad told me to go into the kitchen and get a black-eyed pea.

When I came back with the pea, Dad had set up the card table and was sitting at it with three half nutshells in front of him. I gave him the pea, and Dad started switching the shells around the way Mr. Jimmy used to do. It looked like Dad was doing it real slow, and I was sure I knew where the pea was all the time. I never knew Dad could do that trick, and even then I was sure he was doing it too slow. When Dad stopped sliding the nutshells around, he told me to pick up the one I thought the pea was under. We did this ten times. Each time, I was sure the pea was under the shell I picked up. Ten times I picked the wrong shell. After I made that last wrong pick, Dad looked at me and just kept shaking his head for a little while. Then he said, “That's jis what you been doin' all your life, lookin' for a pea that ain't there. And I'm mighty ‘fraid that's how you gon end your whole life, lookin' for that pea.”

Mama was hollering for me to get ready to go. When I turned away from the window and looked at her, she was handing me my shoes. She didn't look at my eyes; she just kept telling me to hurry up because she had to go to work after she left the office we were going to. I knew by the way Mama was not looking at me that she was going to be crying before I left her that morning.

When we went into the Wiltwyck School office on 125th Street, I still thought I was going to Warwick, so I didn't feel so bad. We had to
wait in a little room for a while, then a white lady with a sad-looking face came in. She smiled at me, but her face still looked sad. The white lady with the sad face took Mama into another room. They stayed for a long time. Then the white lady came back into the room where I was. She had her coat on. She told me Mama had said good-bye and took me by the hand. I didn't believe Mama would do that, but she did. She left and didn't even say good-bye. I told myself I didn't care. I said to myself, Fuck it! I don't need nobody anyway. But I kept feeling sad inside, and I kept wishing that white lady would shut the hell up. She told me that her name was Mrs. Grimes and that this was the first time she was going up to Wiltwyck too. Mrs. Grimes was a weird-looking lady. She wasn't old, but she had gray hair and a lumpy face. She looked too sad to be doing so much talking, but she seemed scared to stop talking.

While we were riding the train up to Wiltwyck, I kept thinking about the date on the big calender in the office. It was March 4. I never used to pay attention to dates before, but I kept thinking about that March 4 and watching the snow fall outside the train window. The train passed a big red-brick wall. I heard Mrs. Grimes say, “That's Sing Sing.”

I said, “Wow! The real Sing Sing!” I couldn't wait to get back home and tell everybody on the block I had seen Sing Sing, not in the movies, but the real Sing Sing.

When we finally reached Wiltwyck, where we were welcomed by Mr. Stillman, the resident director, snow was everywhere. It was almost lunchtime. Mrs. Grimes and I went into the lunchroom to eat. The lunchroom was crowded, and some of the boys there looked like they were happy. But they all looked real strange. I looked for Butch and Kid and Goldie, who were all in Warwick too. I didn't see anybody I knew. I asked a man sitting next to me, “Ain't this Warwick?”

He said, “No, this is Wiltwyck.”

I was numb for a while; all I could feel was a warm tear starting down my face on its way to my chin.

I
CAN'T
remember going to sleep that first night at Wiltwyck. I only remember lying there in a strange bed, in a strange place, for what seemed like a year-long night. I closed my eyes about a million times, hoping that I would open them and escape from that bad dream. But every time I opened my eyes, it was still there.

By the time daylight began to creep into that big old room that everybody was calling a dormitory, I had already been planning for a good two hours how I was going to get out of Wiltwyck. I couldn't run away, because I didn't know where I was and wouldn't have known which way to run. So the best way to get out was to talk that white man named Mr. Stillman into letting me go home. I decided to find Mr. Stillman as soon as I got up, and I was going to tell him that I had something real important to tell him. While Mr. Stillman was listening to me, I was going to fall down and grab my chest and start breathing real hard, like I was dying. They would probably take me to the hospital and try to find out what was wrong with me, and when they couldn't find anything wrong, they would probably kick me out of the hospital. But then I was going to stop eating, stop talking, and eat some soap powder or a lot of salt and get real sick. When they put me back in the hospital and tried to feed me, I wasn't going to eat, not even if they gave me fried chicken and pear pie. And every time the doctor asked me how I felt, I was going to say, “I wanna go home.” That's all I was going to say to anybody, and I wasn't going to eat anything as long as they kept me there.

I knew they would have to send me home. They wouldn't want me to die on them. I was only up there for playing hookey and stealing and stuff like that. I hadn't killed anybody, so they couldn't let me die.

When a real tall, real light-skinned man came into the dormitory, clicked on the lights, and started yelling all over the place, everything was all set in my mind. I was sure I would be back on the streets by the next week.

I was still lying in bed thinking about how I was going to get out of Wiltwyck when a voice boomed, “Let's git one!” right in my ear.
Before I could turn my head to look at him, my bed started jumping up and down real fast. The bed stopped jumping all of a sudden, then the bed next to mine started jumping up and down. The light-skinned, white-looking man was shaking it and yelling, “Let's git one!” Guys were jumping out of bed and running to the bathroom, so I jumped out of bed and ran to the bathroom too. I asked a guy who was washing next to me how I could see Mr. Stillman. He told me all I had to do was go to his office. After throwing a handful of water on my face, I dashed out the door to find Mr. Stillman's office. Before I could get out of the house, I heard a voice booming out my name. Before I stopped running, I knew it was that tall, light-skinned man. And before I turned around, I knew that I didn't like that man and never would.

When I told him where I was going, he said Mr. Stillman wasn't in his office yet and that I had to make up my bed before I could go to see him. So I went back and made up my bed, then I started out to see Mr. Stillman again. Again I heard the real loud voice of the man that everybody was calling Simms. When I turned around this time, I knew that I would never like anybody named Simms as long as I lived.

The man named Simms told me that Mr. Stillman wasn't going to be in his office until after breakfast and that in the meantime someone would show me what my job in the house was. After I finished my job, which was cleaning the bathroom, and had breakfast, a bell rang. Everybody started heading for the last place I wanted to go—the school building. I started walking away from the crowd, but before I could begin to hope that I was going to get to Mr. Stillman's office, I heard the voice that I had learned to hate in just a few hours. I turned around and faced Simms. At first, I wanted to cry. Here was this big man I hated and couldn't do anything to. If I hit him, he probably would kill me. But I had to do something, because he kept fucking with me. Mr. Simms asked me where I was going. I opened my mouth to tell him, but the thing I heard myself saying—smiling to protect myself—was, “Mr. Simms, are you white or colored?” When I heard what I said, I thought, Lord, please have mercy on me.

After what seemed like a real long time, Mr. Simms smiled, real quick, and said, “C'mon, boy, you have to go to school now. Mr. Stillman will come to your class when he gets here.”

I wished I had called him Mr. Red instead of asking him what I did. Not the way white people say red, but the way Dad and colored people his age say it. I should have said, “Whatcha want now, Mr.
Re-e-e-d?” I'll bet he wouldn't have smiled then. He might have killed me, but he wouldn't have smiled. But I don't think he would have killed me—he would have lost his job. Then I thought, The next time he messes wit me, I'll call him that.… No, I'll call him yaller. Yeah, I'll say, “Whatcha want, Mr. Yaller Man?” If he wasn' so big, I'd call him yaller nigger. But if I did that, he prob'ly would kill me, job or no job.

I kept asking the teacher, who was a real pretty, light-skinned lady, to let me go to see Mr. Stillman. When the teacher got tired of me asking her to let me go, she told me that Mr. Stillman wasn't at the school but that I could see Mr. Upshur, who was Mr. Stillman's assistant. I knew she was lying, but I smiled and asked the teacher to let me go to see Mr. Upshur. The teacher sent one of the guys in the class with me. The guy showed me Mr. Upshur's office and left. I went into the office and asked to see Mr. Stillman. The secretary told me that Mr. Stillman wasn't going to be in all day but that Mr. Upshur would see me as soon as he was free. I sat down and waited for a few minutes, and Mr. Upshur came in. When he said he was Mr. Upshur, I knew he couldn't help me. He was colored. What could he do for anybody?

It seemed that everybody was trying to stop me from seeing Mr. Stillman, but I was going to see him as soon as I got out of school. All I had to do was stop telling people I wanted to see him, then they couldn't stop me.

When I came out of school that first afternoon, Wiltwyck looked different from the way it had looked the day before. The sun was shining. It was real cold, and everything that wasn't moving around was covered with snow and ice. Some of the trees had little sticks stuck in them, with buckets and tin cans hanging on the end of the little sticks. Boys were sledding on a hill near the four houses that everyone lived in. Some were riding two on one sled, some were fighting over one sled, and some were crashing into trees, but everybody seemed to be having a whole lot of fun. The first thing that had caught my eye when I came out of the school building was the trees with the buckets on them. I asked Mr. Cooper, who was the counselor in charge of the sled riding, why the buckets were on the trees. Mr. Cooper told me that the> were maple trees and that they were being tapped for the sap to make maple syrup. Mr. Cooper was a real funny-looking man. He was tall, thin, and kind of dark-skinned; not real dark, but a little darker than
me. He was scarey-looking at first; he never smiled, and he didn't seem to like anybody. Everybody but me called him Cooper or Coop. Mr. Cooper wasn't a counselor in the house I was in, and I was glad. I didn't like being around him.

I went over to two guys who were fighting over a sled. When I asked whose sled it was, they both said, “Mine.” And when I asked if I could have a ride, both of them said, “After me.” A guy named Dun-baker, who was my working partner in cleaning the bathroom, came up to the guys who were fighting over the sled. He told them he would hold the sled while they fought to see who was going to get it. Dunbaker gave me sled and said that I could have one ride but that if I gave him my beret, I could have the sled for the rest of the winter. The beret didn't mean so much to me, but I had to keep it, at least until I could find out why everybody had been trying to steal it ever since I got there. So I made a deal with Dunbaker to let him wear my beret as long as the let me ride the sled.

When I came down the hill for the third time, Dunbaker came up to me and said he wanted to ride the sled. I knew what Dunbaker wanted before he said anything, but I was busy watching a man talking to Mr. Cooper, farther down the hill. He looked like Mr. Stillman. When I got up off the sled, I saw the man coming toward me. He had the same kind of pipe that Mr. Stillman had been smoking the day before, my first day. And he was wearing the same kind of gray coat. When he got close enough for me to see his eyes, I was sure it was Mr. Stillman.

Mr. Stillman—everybody but me called him Stilly—had tiny red eyes that looked at people in a mean way from way back in his head. He must have had the only pair of eyes in the world like that. The pipe was almost as close to Stilly as his eyes. I never saw him without the pipe. I used to think that the pipe was the thing he cared about most in the world. … I watched Stilly coming up the slope. His look never changed. He seemed to be in his own world, just him and his pipe. I had tried to see Mr. Stillman all day. He was going to be my out; he was in charge of everything in this crazy place. He was the one who looked like and acted like he knew the most. And now here he was … a pair of eyes and a pipe and a big gray coat.

After asking how I was, the pipe waited a while, then it said, “You wanted to see me?”

I just asked him if he knew where I could get a sled. I was in Wiltwyck, really in it.

Wiltwyck was different from the other places I had been in. Some guys had been there for years, and just about everybody had at least one real good friend or partner. When two or three guys were partners, they would share everything they got hold of—packages from home, food and fruits that their parents brought them on visiting day, things they stole, and stuff like that. It took me a long time to find a real partner, one I would share my loot and secrets with.