Out of the Madness (18 page)

But we had completely stopped the stick-up kid business and were reluctant to start again. However, Vernon, with his by-whatever-means-necessary
attitude, was pushing for one last robbery. He was fed up, irritated, and restless—word had gotten to Jamie’s concerned mom,
my mom, and others that Vernon had us selling dope for him, after we had tried to encourage him to choose another way. Vernon
did one last job, a department store, and netted about $1,500.

We split the money, each person vowing to keep his lot per the plan, and continued our research. We soon learned that $1,500
could hardly buy us buckets and mops, much less pay the lease, registering cost, and the rest and still leave us some money
with which to feed ourselves and give bounty to our family members. Stuck, we consulted Fahim, who had no money and suggested
we consult some of the same entities we already had contacted. And, he added, he was a very busy man.

We did service a party at Lincoln but got into a big fight with some dope dealers. A young dealer was staring hard at Vernon,
the kind of stare men use to dignify their manhood. Vernon wouldn’t stand for that under any circumstances. He let the cuss
words roll. The dope dealer pulled a gun and chased Vernon through the crowded gym, then through the back door. I followed
behind the two of them. Just as the dealer was about to point the gun at Vernon, I put him in a choke hold. He lost consciousness
and dropped the gun.

Meanwhile, Vernon was sprinting to his house to get our guns. At the scene, having run outside, I had placed myself among
the dealer’s friends, who reacted. When I rose up, one of them hit me hard on the face. By this time, Jamie, who had been
spinning records, had come to my aid, hitting the guy several times with a pipe. Jamie and I fought our way back into the
gym. Afterward, the police came. Everything was spoiled.

Around the house, Vernon’s mom was getting tired of his attitude and had threatened to put him out. His uncles were constantly
fighting, causing trouble, and keeping the police around, who would harass everybody. Later, Shelvin’s sister, whom Shelvin
had been living with, put him out because he wasn’t working. He moved in with Vernon, and Jamie was such a loyal friend that
he left his own house to come and suffer with Shelvin. We used the money to eat and live, the four of us. They spent the nights,
sometimes sleeping in Vernon’s room, sometimes sleeping on the floor at my duplex. We would give my mother ten or fifteen
bucks to keep her happy. Big J. was happy if she was happy.

Vernon’s mother did eventually move away from the commotion her brothers kept up, even though she wanted to stay close to
her mother, with whom her two brothers and sister still lived. Vernon chose to move around to his grandmother’s rather than
move away with his mother. This forced Jamie to go home and Shelvin to go back to his sister, who accepted him. Later, Shelvin
foolishly tried to rob a store by himself. The details remained vague because he got caught, and we couldn’t talk to him in
jail.

We were all depressed about our failure. However, we pledged never to give up hope and to try again when things were better.
But for now, we all would go our separate ways.

Over the next eight months, Tammie and the baby became the center of my attention. I found an evening, part-time job cleaning
office buildings downtown. I would meet her each evening at the bus stop on Latimer, where we would talk about our plans before
she went home.

She would skip school on the days of her doctor appointments, I was proud and determined, and already nature was forming a
bond between the baby and me. Always on the corner, we would stand for an hour or so, comforting one another, me doing most
of the comforting. Her bulge had gotten bigger, and her face had become puffy. I even would feel her warm stomach, standing
out there.

My brother had begun coming around to visit. He was looking for somewhere else to stay besides Dixon. With no alternative,
he had joined the navy. All along, I had been hearing about the dozens of boys I knew from the projects, Oak Cliff, Dixon
Circle, and south Dallas, who joined the service. These black boys weren’t joining freely and willfully. They saw right through
the transparent lies the armed forces told about success and opportunity for blacks. I believe the armed forces knew that
the poverty-stricken black boys joined for the hot meals and warm beds. Most of them were coming back to start where they
had left off, nowhere.

With my mother, I should have known things wouldn’t hold together too long. No matter where we moved or how much things had
settled down, it never lasted long. My mom had begun stealing money from Big J., who was on a fixed income. I would get into
shouting matches with her for abusing this good man. She would threaten to make him put me out, but Big J. wouldn’t. So she
began staying away, two and three days at a time, because I wouldn’t let her exploit him. Big J., who knew she was on drugs,
was very appreciative. He told me I would always have a place to stay as long as he was around. To get even, my mother, from
wherever she was, sent people to steal his checks.

Consequently, the lights, phone, water, and gas were turned off. So I used my cash stash, about five hundred dollars, to get
everything reconnected for him and me. He was so grateful, he was almost in tears when he learned what I had done for him.
But things got slow at the part-time job, and I was laid off.

I cooked and cleaned for Big J. until we ran out of food. Fahim, late into the night, would bring us dinner from his own table,
after I had swallowed enough pride to call him. Fahim said I should never hesitate to call him in times like that.

Partly through my curiosity, partly hoping he could help me find a decent job, I began spending more time with Fahim. I would
go to his house, where I mostly wound up just sitting, listening to him talk on the phone, or running errands for him. He
made me pass out pamphlets in front of grocery stores and also to various places where he held meetings. I learned he had
dedicated his life to these kinds of things. Among others, he had belonged to a group called the Black Panthers, and he had
been wrongly imprisoned. He said the police had framed him for bank robbery, in an effort to silence people like him.

At age forty-nine, Fahim was a very dedicated, experienced man. He didn’t have much money and was just a fraction above people
like me. Even though he was married and had five young children, he was always on the go, always at some community or city
council meeting, giving a speech to a small group or confronting the establishment about something. He was full of charisma,
and people seemed to sense he could do wonders if he had the right support.

Fahim was starting a new organization, one whose first objective was to form an antidrug group—under the authority of his
parent organization—to confront the drug establishment. It was at one of these related meetings that I learned he was a Muslim
(I didn’t care; I didn’t have much respect for any religions at the time). He took me to this strangely shaped church on Harwood,
a mosque, where fellow members worshiped. Although they congregated there with Arabs, the ones we met with were black.

As I sat there quietly observing, Fahim introduced his idea to the black Muslims. They listened while looking stubborn. Although
I felt comfortable around them, I immediately disliked them all. They were very discourteous to each other and acted like
a bunch of arrogant know-it-alls. Fahim could hardly complete a sentence without some interruption from a man who could not
even talk right, much less say something with substance. They all would talk about how manly they were and would try to take
the lead with Fahim’s ideas. (Later I would hear their spiritual leader on a radio program claiming to have started AAMAN.)
Fahim seemed much more intelligent and out of place with them. And but for him, I would have lost all respect for black Muslims.

At length, Fahim suggested to everyone that the serious drug problem needed to be handled first. He said there would be no
future to deal with unless it was resolved first. As we listened, he explained his strategy for dealing with the problem,
which he called civil harassment of the drug dealers. They chose to launch the first effort from the Martin Luther King Jr.
Center.

That day, the group picketed some dope houses. The media, with their reporters and cameras, accompanied the group, gave AAMAN
a lot of coverage. And I was interviewed by a TV crew and a reporter, because I was the youngest member of the group, eighteen.
After the local churches saw the attention and praise AAMAN received, it seemed they all started clone groups. But the churches
had parades with police escorts, while claiming they were confronting the dope dealers.

AAMAN did have some success. But the lure and snare of rocks would prove too strong for their meager attempts. Over time,
after about six weeks of patrols, the group disbanded. The men in AAMAN were fearless. Yet they were also suspicious and jealous
of Fahim, and of each other, and always trying to get credit if anything positive happened. Some of them had a price, too.

As for Fahim, he seemed to have a drive, almost an obsession, with his organization and not much time for anyone who didn’t
join. As for the others, they all seemed so confused to me, seemed just as troubled as anyone. While I felt sympathy for them,
they still disappointed me, wasting their time bickering while everyone was hurting. I had expected so much more from them.
But they were in deeper trouble than me and my friends.

I
t was approaching late summer 1988. Tammie’s beautiful brown belly had begun to bulge more from under her checkered, private-school
skirt. She and the baby were why I had to keep moving. I vowed that if nothing else, I would make sure that Tammie and the
baby had someone to look out for them.

Though no one was sure, people, especially her grandmother, had begun to ask questions—I already had told my mother, who had
few words to say but encouraged me to be responsible. Tammie kept telling me it was time for her to move away from there.
She wanted to come over and live with me. But I told her the place wasn’t fit for her, to give me time to make something happen.
Then I tried to talk her into just telling her grandmother, who I knew would be understanding. But Tammie was afraid that
her grandmother would reject her.

Since Vernon was the only one of my close friends left in the neighborhood, I tried to spend as much time as I could with
him. Yet it was difficult. He was dispirited, had begun smoking weed again and drinking more. He got into a lot of fights.
He and I even got into several serious wrestling matches, but we never hurt one another. Finally, one day, he and I stood
on his porch after a heated argument, where he told me that I was going to be shot before the end of the year. I didn’t pay
this prophecy much mind. But he proved to be only half-wrong.

Afterward, just when I was about to look for another job from Latimer Street, my mother called me into her room. She told
me men were looking for her and that she needed to get away. I had learned in situations like that, when someone that close
tells you this, you don’t ask questions; you just act. It’s probably something you don’t want to hear. I asked her how much
money she needed. She said she knew where she could rent another duplex and needed a few hundred dollars to act. We put together
a plan.

She knew this perverted white man she could invite over. She would leave the back door unlocked, to allow me to slip inside
and rob him after he was undressed. I talked to Vernon, and we agreed to do it together. He was willing to do things like
that for me, for my mother, even though our friendship had become uneasy.

Vernon and I had sold our guns, so before she came back we took two knives out of the cabinet. Big J. had several gangster-looking
hats hanging on his wall. We put those on, to make the job more exciting. It was a big joke to us, to be able to catch some
strange, perverted white man.

We sat in the living room until we heard the man driving our mother to Big J.’s duplex. We darted out the back door. Once
we thought she had undressed him, we busted in the room. The man was lying on the bed, fat, naked, pink, and artery looking.
He was very scared and very cooperative, having been caught with his pants down, so to speak. Lying beside him, my mother
still had her clothes on. We pretended not to know her. Vernon was giggling and making jokes. “Now look at you, got your fat,
pink butt in here with no clothes on. … Where’s your wife? You ought to be ashamed of yourself.” He threw in some vulgar comments
at my mother, too, to make things look good. And last, he took the man’s wedding band. “Let’s see what your wife thinks about
that, fat boy.” Later I felt no remorse.

Before my mother and I moved into the new duplex, Tammie and I sat on her grandmother’s front porch. I told her the circumstances,
that I would be moving but would keep in contact. She didn’t want me to move away, was afraid if I did, I would lose interest
in her and find somebody else. But I told her not to worry, that would never happen. “I’ll be in walking distance…. We care
too much about each other to let anyone or anything keep us apart. Don’t worry,” I told her. But she was crying.

The new duplex was close to Second Street and the Fair Park. We were closer to the dense apartments on Park Row, South, and
Warren streets, where danger was more widespread. Just below, a train track stretched along Trunk Street. Our duplex seemed
to sit in the middle of a large lot, with only one other house farther down. The other lots, where weeds had covered the land,
were vacant.

My mom found her a new, older boyfriend, who moved in with us and would take care of her. He was a charming, easygoing fellow,
had false teeth, and worked hard. We were settled within a month.

By then my brother had returned from an unproductive tour with the navy. He had failed the swimming test and had been discharged.
He had moved back into the Prince Hall Apartments on Dixon Circle and had completed a free security officer training program
sponsored by the government. Although he was working with some dirt-cheap company now, he was all excited about a new job
possibility, which included a free apartment at my sister’s complex. Anything to get out of Prince Hall.