Purple Daze (2 page)

Dear Cheryl—

 

Today we have a substitute in Biology,
so I'm writing you a letter.

 

When you confide in your girlfriends
instead of me—I feel left out,
unimportant.

 

I know something's bugging you.

 

Why won't you talk to me?

 

I think our relationship is important—
that's why I want us to be
closer
,
if you get my drift.

 

I love you very much!

 

(For the 9,004,367,051st time)

 

I've never told another girl that I loved
her except K.S., and we were fourteen.

 

Love, Don

 

P.S. Guess who's captain of the golf team?
I'll get a bitchin' letter for my jacket.

Here's the thing:
my mom picks me up from school
when the nurse calls saying
I have men-stru-a-tion cramps.

 

She pays me for As on my
report card from the money
she saves by clipping coupons
and doesn't ground me
unless I ditch school
or sneak out at night.

 

I should tell her about our creepy
neighbor.

 

As Year of the Dragon gives way to Year of the Snake,
two squads of Viet Cong slice through a barbed wire
skirt at Camp Holloway's airstrip, sneaking in unseen,
one-arming satchel charges, blowing up helicopters
and reconnaissance air crafts.

 

Concurrently, guerrillas hiding 1,000 yards away poured
55-rounds from 81mm mortars into the compound.
52 billets are damaged. 7 Americans die. 100 plus wounded.

 

President Johnson addresses the National Security Council
around a casket-shaped table in the Cabinet Room,
responding to the slaughterous Communist attacks,
“I've had enough of this.”

 

U.S. warplanes receive orders to destroy supply dumps,
communications systems, and guerrilla staging cites
north of the 17th parallel.

 

The White House states, “Whether or not this course can
be maintained lies with the North Vietnamese aggressors.
The key to the situation remains the cessation of infiltration
from North Viet Nam and the clear indication by the Hanoi
regime that it is prepared to cease aggression against its neighbors

Chatsworth High doesn't have
any Black kids.
Not one.

 

Angela, the girl who sits next to me
in biology is Chicano. She eats lunch
with the Science Club, peanut butter
on Wonder.

 

Angela said if they bus in Negroes,
she'll transfer to another school.

 

“Why?” I asked her.

 

“They'd use our
toilets
,” she said,
dissecting a frog.

Born Malcolm Little, May 19, 1925, a preacher's son. Big Red, a teen involved in street crime. In prison by twenty, becoming Malcolm X six years later, spiritual desperado and controversial leader of black national movements.

 

 

A crowd of 400 waits impatiently, curious newcomers and faithful followers.
Tall and trim, striking in a dark suit, he walks purposefully to the lectern.
Malcolm gazes into the audience amid a lengthy ovation:

 

“A salaam aleikum (Peace be unto you).”
They respond, “Wa aleikum salaam (And unto you, peace).”

 

In the dingy light, a man shouts, “Nigger! Get your hand outta
my pockets!” A second diversion: a sock soaked in lighter fluid,
flying fire. A smuggled-in sawed-off shot gun. A blast splinters
the lectern. “Then all hell broke loose.”

 

Malcolm falls backward, sprawled limply over a folding chair.
His pregnant wife rushes forward. “They're killing my husband!”
Men, women, and children flatten themselves on the floor. Others
charge the assailants, kicking and beating them.

 

According to the medical examiner's preliminary autopsy,
Malcolm X died from “multiple gunshot wounds.” Two different
caliber bullets and shotgun pellets.

 

 

Activist and actor Ossie Davis delivers the eulogy,

 

“Many will ask what Harlem finds to honor in this stormy, controversial and bold young captain ... They will say he is of hate—a fanatic, a racist—who can only bring evil to the cause for which you struggle! And we will answer and say to them: Did you ever talk to Brother Malcolm?

 

“Did you ever touch him, or have him smile at you? Was he ever himself associated with violence or any public disturbance? ... if you knew him, you would know why we must honor him. ...

 

“Let his going from us serve only to bring us together, now. ...”

 

—Buried as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, Ferncliff Cemetery, Hartsdale, New York

Chemist Augustus Owsley Stanley III concocts
his first batch of home-brewed LSD-25.

 

To control the quality, he tints each lot a different
color. Although the pills contain the same dose, myths
develop about attributes of the various colors.

 

Owsley is the primary acid supplier to Ken Kesey,
author of
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
, and
the Merry Pranksters—a band of communal friends
who trek cross-country in a psychedelic school bus
called
Further
.

 

February 21:
Police raid Stanley's makeshift laboratory.
Not only does the errant apothecary beat the charges,
but he successfully sues for the recovery of his equipment.

 

Experts estimate the total production from his lab
at one-half kilogram or two million “hits.”

Mom, do you have the late shift again?
Punching numbers into the cash register,
making change, bagging shampoo, toothpaste.

 

“Anything else, ma'am?”

 

rent
groceries
new tires

 

Will you be home soon?

 

My bag needs filling too.

Ms. Hawes gave every kid
in class a notebook. She
calls them
free
journals.

 

Our homework for the semester
is to fill the pages with
free
writing.

 

I love the word
free
.

 

Free
-and-easy.
Free
spirit.
Free
love.

 

Only there're rules in all this freedom.
Pens. No pencils. No erasers.
No ink eradicator.

 

Once we put pen to paper we must
write nonstop for twenty minutes,

 

ink is like blood, smearing our
most private feelings across all
those clean white pages.

 

Freedom, I write, is not free if
strings are attached, even if it
is
a homework assignment ...

I love writing without thinking about commas or periods or spelling or being neat or worrying about anyone else reading how much I hate the creep next door and that I don't care if he was drunk because that isn't an excuse for sticking his tongue down my throat and besides I know he would have done more if he'd had the chance which is really sickening because I just about barf every time someone knocks on our door and I can't get rid of his disgusting booze taste no matter how long I brush my teeth and I hope his tongue got sliced up on my braces and writing like this makes me feel a little bit better because it's like throwing up when there's something bad inside so tomorrow I'm going to write more and the next day too until this sick feeling in my stomach goes away and then I'll write a thank-you note to Ms. Hawes because she gave us journals for free-writing and promised not to read them....

Dad substituted Jujubes for Jim Beam.
5½ days stone sober. Wiping out
his old record by 2 hours, 14 minutes.
That was when Mom split the first time.

 

This time it's Walter Cronkite's fault.

 

He fills a water glass, neat, no ice. I've seen
him like this before, no kidding, when he's
all fired up over the 6 o'clock news.

 

“Some things never change,” he says,
as looters cart off sofas and Frigidaires.
A Magnavox is lifted from a burning building.
Magna-Color. Astro-Sonic Stereo.

 

From our 10-inch Zenith it looks like it's
snowing in L.A. Dad slaps at the rabbit ears,
knocking over the TV tray.

 

“Maybe we should go down there?” he says.
“Pick up a few things. You still got your
driver's license?”

 

He says this while watching
bottles, rocks, and bricks flying
upside down on our floor.

 

I grab my keys,
wishing I could
drive out of his life

 

forever.

2:40 a.m.

 

Mickey has one hand on the suicide knob,
a can of Colt 45 in the other. Two wheels
hop the curb, taking out a fence.

 

 

Mick guns it down the 405 Freeway,
“You think Niggers bleed like us?”

 

“Black as tar!” I say.

 

Cheryl slugs me. “Shut up!”

 

I rub my arm,
What the hell?
I was only kidding.

 

Lights slash the sky, like a world premiere
movie. Smoke's thicker too. Every ramp
downtown is barricaded.

 

I figure Cheryl wants me to tell Mick to ditch
the whole damn thing but he's going about a
hundred miles an hour and besides who knows
when we'll have another burn-baby-burn riot.

 

He doesn't slow down till we pass the 106th Street
exit where the National Guard stands on a ramp
with rifles, bayonets on their muzzles.

 

“Bitchin' uniforms,” Mick says.
Then he punches it to the fast lane
and pulls over to take a wiz.

Despite the Civil Rights Act of 1964, only 156
of the 15,156 blacks in Dallas County, Alabama
were registered to vote.

 

Revered Martin Luther King and 600 civil rights
demonstrators organized a nonviolent march from
Selma to Montgomery to protest discrimination and
intimidation preventing Selma's black population
from registering.

 

The peaceful protesters kneeled, prayed, crossed
the Pettus Bridge over the muddy Alabama River,
where they were attacked by state and local police:

 

tear gas
slap of billy clubs
snap of bones

 

Last month, twenty-seven year old Jimmie Lee Jackson,
farm worker and church deacon,
was shot in the stomach by a state trooper
while trying to protect his mother
and elderly grandfather when they were attacked.

 

Instead of being taken directly to the hospital,
where his wounds could have been treated,
Jackson was arrested, charged
with assault and battery.

 

Eight days later, Jimmie Lee died at
Good Samaritan Hospital in Selma.

 

 

—Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965

“Last Sunday, more than eight thousand of us started on a mighty walk from Selma, Alabama. We have walked through desolate valleys and across the trying hills. We have walked on meandering highways and rested our bodies on rocky byways. ...”

 

“... From Montgomery to Birmingham, from Birmingham to Selma, from Selma back to Montgomery, a trail wound in a circle long and often bloody, yet it has become a highway up from darkness. ...”

 

“... Our whole campaign in Alabama has been centered around the right to vote. In focusing the attention of the nation and the world today on the flagrant denial of the right to vote, we are exposing the very origin, the root cause, of racial segregation in the Southland. ...”

 

“... The bombing of our homes will not dissuade us. We are on the move now. The beating and killing of our clergymen and young people will not divert us. We are on the move now.... Like an idea whose time has come, not even the marching of mighty armies can halt us. We are moving to the land of freedom. ...”

 

“... Let us march on ballot boxes, march on ballot boxes until race-baiters disappear from the political arena ... Let us march on ballot boxes until brotherhood becomes more than a meaningless word in an opening prayer, but the order of the day on every legislative agenda...”

 

“... I know you are asking today, “How long will it take?” Somebody's asking, “How long will prejudice blind the visions of men, darken their understanding, and drive bright-eyed wisdom from her sacred throne?” I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because ‘truth crushed to earth will rise again.'”