Out of the Madness (21 page)

His silent tears were dripping to the ground. “It’s Vernon. He just got shot in the head.”

Not Vernon, not my friend. He hadn’t had his chance yet. He hadn’t even begun to live. Jonathan was talking rapidly now.

“It was a dope dealer in Grand Prairie. Vernon whooped him in a fair fistfight. When we got ready to … to leave,” he faltered,
“the punk waited till we were far off, and fired his forty-five down at us. Vernon just turned, and looked at him, just stood
there. Then he fell to the ground. He had a big hole in his jaw. The blood was gushing out like water. I tried to stop it.”

Jonathan and I stood there in silence before I could ask him what I needed to know. “Is he dead?”

Jonathan relaxed. “I don’t know, man. The ambulance took him to the hospital. He didn’t look like he was breathing when they
left. They were taking their time, not even attending to him.”

He continued, “I told one of them to turn him on his back. I told him, ‘Can’t you see he can’t breathe? He’s drowning off
his own blood.’ The man looked up at me, then he slowly did it, and Vernon coughed and started back breathing.”

I told Jonathan to go on home and I would be over later. I went inside and explained everything to my concerned mother. Then
I called Vernon’s grandmother. She said Vernon was alive, but in critical condition.

“He’s going to live. There’s nothing anyone can do right now. Just come by tomorrow, Jerrold,” she said.

I was back in bed, but I wouldn’t sleep. It was the last news I wanted to hear. I already had enough problems. After the first
few months, things weren’t going as well as I thought they would at work.

Oh, everything had started out fine: I had slid right into the middle of things with my first boss, a paralegal for one of
the partners.

When we first met, she had taken me on a tour of all the different courts downtown, where later I would file papers for the
lawyers. Walking back to the office from the tour on the second day I had known this woman, she had told me one of her secrets.

“My father hates blacks. I don’t know why. He’s been like that since I’ve known him. I mean, I don’t see what’s wrong with
y’all or anything,” she had said in her capricious fashion. She, like every person I would meet up there, seemed to have a
million assumptions about blacks, things she wanted to explore.

In the beginning, my supervisor loved my performance. “You’re so intelligent,” she said. “I never imagined that.”

I had been there for only a few months but had gotten the attention of a lot of people. The offices were all security coded,
and on the hire date, management would assign the new employee his code. When I received mine, I looked at the piece of paper
once, memorized the four-digit code, and threw it in the waste-basket.

“You must have a good memory,” the hiring manager said.

I started off just running errands and copying documents. Yet the way I did that even surprised them. The courts were about
three city blocks away. In the beginning someone said I was taking too long on trips, so I began to run full speed down to
the court and back.

“How’d you get back here that fast? You must’ve zoomed down here,” I’d hear.

Accuracy and speed were essential at the firm, for any small error could disrupt a case. I would work side by side with some
of the best paralegals in the firm, scanning documents for witness files, putting documents in date order, and finishing two
piles to their one. I wondered how some of them got any work done. They took so many breaks and “lady” conferences—while the
clients were charged for hours of gossip.

If you need an assignment done fast, call Jerrold. If you have sixty boxes of documents and you need someone to skip lunch
and work late on them, call Jerrold. “Jerrold, we can see you’re way above average intelligence. The firm needs young, sharp
people like yourself,” said one of the supervisors.

“I heard how hard you worked on that case. Keep up the good work, Jerrold,” said a partner.

I stayed mostly to myself, in my office with my piles of documents. To most of them, going through the thousands of pages
of correspondence, memos, reports, and briefs, was dull work. To summarize a deposition made some of them pull their hair
out. But I was like a kid in a candy factory. “He likes to write,” they often said.

After work, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I would sit for hours and read the correspondence from these big businesses, the engineers,
chief officers, and bankers. I would take apart maybe two or three thousand pieces of paper, knowing I would have to put all
that paper back in order. I would sit there and read these high-tech word battles, over and over. With this, I got a general
sense of how industry works and a firsthand education in business writing.

When I wasn’t reading the documents, I was in the law library, reading the case laws, the torts, all the books. I read everything
that came across my desk. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I was at the community college, taking two classes, English
and computer science, which were both a cinch. Everyone I knew back home could have performed highly. At night around nine,
I would catch the bus home.

Before long, some of the attorneys were assigning work directly to me rather than going through the chain of command. They
were so busy and under such pressure, they had time to worry only about who could get the job done quickly. One attorney even
had me sit in a deposition with him for hours, to advise him on his questioning. As the paralegals saw and heard this, their
mouths dropped open, their opinions changed.

Around then, too, a former clerk returned to the firm. I kept on working the same way, but no matter what I did after that,
it was never right. If I had to work past lunch for an attorney, I was reprimanded for not taking lunch at noon. When an attorney
would send for me, this clerk would, somehow, get the message before I did. I was shifted around to different paralegals.

I was finally assigned to the woman I surprised when she heard I could talk straight. I found her to be the least skilled
of them all. She would make me look over her correspondence and reports to correct the mistakes. Once, I was going through
about fifteen boxes of documents and saw a mistake that could have cost the law firm time and money. “You wasn’t told to look
for that,” she screamed at me one day. People close by looked up.

A week later we were both called into the office meeting of one of the administrators.

“Jerrold, I understand there are problems with your speed. You’re too slow.”

I was so angry. I couldn’t even find words. They were looking as if I were too dumb to comprehend what was going on. My supervisor
added, “He found mistakes in the bates numbers. Perhaps he wants to go back through all the boxes.”

“Yes, ma’am, I do,” I said submissively, and heard, “Stop being so aggressive.”

Some of the lower-level employees, like those in mail delivery, and also another case clerk, a Hispanic you would never guess
was Hispanic, began to tell me in hushed tones that they had it in for me.

Then daily, slowly, all my morale left. Even though it seemed so untrue, I began to question myself. Maybe I had been doing
everything wrong and it only looked right to me. Maybe they can see something that I just don’t have the capacity to see.
Maybe something in my head would not let me work the numbers right, could not let me think right, and everything was coming
out backward.

In October I began to miss school to try to work harder, but it still was backward. No matter what I did, no matter how many
times I looked over something, I couldn’t satisfy these women. Then, over the next few months, my whole world began to crumble,
I began having migraines and sleepless nights. I stopped eating, lost twenty-five pounds, and became skin and bones. I would
sit in that office all day with my head pounding, just waiting to leave work. The whites seemed to sense this weakness, draw
strength from it. I would leave work and curse the heavens for making me inferior. I was terrified to know that for the rest
of my life, regardless of my determination, the only way I was going to get established was through the help of those white
people, who would make my life miserable.

I couldn’t read anymore, concentration was so hard to keep. I would just walk around the neighborhood, go shoot pool, or just
drink with the fellows on the corner. I no longer wanted to work for that law firm, no longer wanted to be among white people.
If I had to spend my life being miserable, it was going to be right here with the brothers, where at least, sometimes, I could
get some relief.

I was experiencing the same impasse that had afflicted every black one of us, the same dilemma that crippled my mother, the
dope dealers back in west Dallas, the man who made me steal the TV, sweet Gloria, Shortleg Lee, Syrup Head, Three Finger Willie,
Drunk Tom, the old heads, the Dixon Circle dope dealers, and the workers—and especially my aunt’s husband, who told me I would
only get as far as the white man let me. He was right.

He was right because none of us had ever had any proof to the contrary. How can a man reason without knowledge? Where was
our knowledge, our evidence? No one had ever told me I was capable of being a genius, building a city, pioneering new medicine,
becoming an engineer. And if so, how would he have known? How would he have proven this to me, convinced a nineteen-year-old
black boy that what had been reinforced all his life—through guileful TV, warped religion and education, through government
propaganda and deception, Uncle Toms, and the so-called black leaders up there spitting out a lot of nonsense—was just a delusion?
How could he disprove that the success of every black person was not somehow, always, tied into someone white: white teachers,
white schools, white mentors, white history, white founding fathers? How could he explain that success was conceivable without
white people? The evidence surely pointed to this. And, like everyone else I knew who was black, poor, and human, this is
what I accepted.

The next morning I handled another day at the office, then prepared to see Vernon after work. On the way out, I felt as if
I were leaving one white nightmare and entering another, the white walls, uniforms, and bedding of the hospital, a place that
always gave me the creeps. The busy information center at Methodist directed me to intensive care. A family, grieving aloud,
walked by. Their sorrow made me wonder if Vernon would look bad.

Once there, I stood outside his door, gathering enough courage to go inside. From the hall I saw two doctors taking pictures
of his face.

I walked in and bent near him. The blackish swelling made his face and neck look like old, limp balloons. The doctors must
have noticed the same breathing problem that had upset Jonathan because they had cut a large hole in his throat. A thick tube
attached to a machine bloated in the hole. He held his mouth wide open and sucked air in slowly. I realized that Vernon was
going to be laid up for a while. I gripped my compassionate friend’s hand as he continued to rest.

Several days later the doctors gave a positive prognosis. He had no brain or spinal injuries, maybe some nerve damage. During
the next three months he remained in the hospital, where he underwent reconstructive operations. He was so charismatic that
the surgeons decided to treat him for free.

Afterward I went to visit him several times. He was usually heavily sedated, so I never stayed long. His body was strong,
and he was recovering faster than normal. After he was released, he moved in with his mother.

* * *

Back at the duplex, my mother had driven her latest boyfriend away. Now, since he was gone, she mostly stayed away from the
house, so I saw her less frequently, maybe three times a week. But one week, she stayed away for many days. During what I
thought would be a normal evening, I came home from work to another empty house. The heroin had again made her sell everything
that we owned. At times like this, when something was pushing her to the edge of insanity, she had no mercy. She did whatever
it took to hold on. She even sold my work clothes and school books. More important, though, she sold the dresser in which
I kept the receipts for the money I sent to Vanessa. This meant I wouldn’t be able to prove I had taken care of her. I sat
on the porch all that night, meditating on the situation, trying to figure out a plan. Although I only had the clothes on
my back, I was so hardened that her actions no longer affected me.

I called Vernon for help. He convinced his mother to let me move in with them. The few weeks that I stayed there, I stayed
close to him. His mother let us have the upstairs room, which had a giant closet that we converted into a room, adding a bed,
a TV, and a phone. Vernon now weighed about 135 pounds. His tongue had been sewn to his mouth, and his mouth was wired shut.
He could only drink liquids and eat very soft foods. He smoked weed a lot, because of the pain, which had increased after
each of the several surgeries he’d had. In that room I stayed with him, listening to music or talking for hours. And with
my paychecks, I bought him medicine, weed, special foods, and anything else he requested.

I later moved in with my sister for two months. She still lived in the apartments in Pleasant Grove. With the money I saved
while living there, I rented a small, cozy apartment on Ferguson Road. The apartments were in east Dallas, on the fast 64
Ferguson bus route, which meant I would have no problem getting to and from work.

Over the past months, I had continued to meet with Alex, even though he now made me feel uncomfortable. Lately I was feeling
the same kind of distrust of him. I knew without a doubt that Alex would never love me like my own people, would never go
all the way for me, like Vernon, especially if it meant confronting his own people. And some of his remarks shook me up.

On the day I moved into my new apartment, he came and helped. That day I asked Alex why he was continuing to assist me. He
stopped and looked hard at me. He said, “Well, it’s better than us coming down here with rifles and shooting a bunch of y’all
up.”