The Vulture (16 page)

‘What is?’

‘I want you to talk to my mother. I want her to see some of the fine things other young people in our area are doing. All she knows is Spade.’

‘Spade? What about Spade?’ I asked.

‘My mother hates him and Hicks and boys like them.’

‘Do you know him?’ I asked.

‘Who?’

‘Spade.’

‘Not well.’

There was a pause in the conversation. Natalie offered me a cigarette that I refused.

‘Will you come?’ she asked.

‘I don’t think I can do much good. I’m not much of an example of anything. Perhaps after the school is on its feet she will be more receptive to my ideas.’

‘But don’t you see? The school starts in August, and it’s almost August already. I need to get her permission soon to send for transfer applications to other places.’

‘You mean you haven’t sent for the transfer notices and you want to be accepted for September?’

‘I sent for the transfer to Howard, and they accepted me, but if I don’t get her permission soon, by the time I convince her that I’ve written off and gotten everything back, Howard will have assumed I’m not coming. In the meantime, I can’t say I am coming until my mother reacts.’

‘Whew! Girl, I don’t know about this situation. It’s almost too confusing to even attempt to figure out. I think I know what’s what, but I didn’t know women did that kind of thing outside of the movies. Especially not black women.’

‘I know it sounds confusing, but that’s all I could do. Will you help?’

I was about to answer when I.Q.’s face appeared at the window. I leaped to my feet and ran to the door, but before I could get outside, I had a feeling that he would be gone. He had disappeared.

‘What’s wrong? Who was it?’ Natalie asked.

‘Looked like a guy I knew,’ I said. ‘Guess I was mistaken.’

‘Well . . .’ she began.

‘Look, when do you want me to come and see your mom?’

‘Tomorrow night. That is, if it’s all right with you.’ I nodded that it was all right. ‘I’ll tell her we’re going to a movie and you’re my date. Come in about eight, and I won’t be ready. You can talk to her while I get dressed. Then I can go to a party they’re having at my girl friend’s house. Would you like that?’

‘No. I’m not much for parties . . . I’m not much for lying either,’ I added. ‘Why can’t you just tell her why I’m coming?’

‘She wouldn’t talk to you.’

‘Okay,’ I agreed. I said I would do it just because I wanted to see her one more time, without all the lying involved. I wondered what she was like. She made me realize that I had a lot of homework to do when it came to women.

I walked Natalie home and explained that I had some unfinished business to take care of. My unfinished business was named Ivan Quinn. I wanted to learn why we were playing games around the block. I left Natalie at 18th Street and Ninth Avenue and started toward the 17th Street park. The rain had been a shower, hard for a second and then gone. The streets were damp and seemed to reflect a certain calm that I felt.

All at once I realized why I.Q. was following me. He wanted to know why he received a rejection slip from BAMBU. He wanted to see me alone. I knew he had received the slip because
I
had mailed it to him two days ago. All I had to do was wait, and he would find me.

The whole thing with I.Q. started when John Lee held a
party at the close of the school year. For once I had been as anxious as anyone else to go out and do some partying. The school year had been no problem, but it seems that no matter how close you stay to the work, there are a million things to get together when they start talking about finals.

The Party

I had come in expecting a good time. The music was nice in the back of the Lee apartment. The food was cooking somewhere, and most important of all, nobody was drunk or rowdy. I plucked a can of beer out of the bathtub and slid into a corner chair.

‘Congratulations, man,’ Websta said, coming over and giving me the handshake. ‘I hear you untied the knot today.’

‘Yeah, brother. It’s all over.’

‘Soon as I get a l’il bread, I’m gonna go back an’ do that thing. What you plannin’ on doin’ fo’ yo’self?’

‘I’m working with the organization, you know. We’re gonna open a center near here in August. Up near the Chelsea projects. I start nine to three with N’Bala on Monday.’

‘You in the same boat I am,’ Websta said. ‘Workin’ two jobs. Hell, seemed like I wuz gon’ need an act a Congress t’git here t’night . . . You got that paper. Seem like you could git some bread with IBM or one a them initials.’

‘Yeah, I could, I suppose. The only difference is that I didn’t get my education so that I could run off the street to the suburbs. I want to work around here.’

‘Yeah, you
wuz
that way. You ain’ gonna make much with N’Bala. He ain’ gonna ketch on aroun’ here like New Breed did uptown. We got too many jitterbugs in the neighborhood.’

‘Thass all right,’ I told him. ‘Nothing changes overnight. I mean, I don’t expect miracles.’

‘You rilly like them African clothes that N’Bala sells? I mean, the shirts like the one you got on. What’choo call ’um?’

‘It’s called a dashiki, brother. I think they’re better than the white man’s shirts. You see the way it’s cut?’ I stood up so that he could see the way the dashiki is stitched under the arms. ‘With a cut like this, you have a measure of freedom in case of attack. In a thing like what you have on, you can be limited physically. I could run a jack on you f’rinstance.’ Websta nodded in agreement. Running a jack is the street term for grabbing a man’s shirt and pulling it over his head.

‘It’s pretty. They all are. Lotta colors an’ whut have you.’ He waved. ‘I’m gonna have to talk to you, man. Lemme ketch this slow one.’

‘I’m So Proud,’ by the Impressions, came on. I touched the arm of the sister next to me, and we stepped to the middle of the dance floor. I was caught up with what Websta had said. My mother and father had been disappointed when I told them what my plans were. I suppose they had been looking forward to seeing me leap out into status-symbol-land. My father had always told my mom that the things I was doing were just a passing fancy, because he had been intent on changing the world and helping the Negro when he was in college. Sooner or later I would be out there for the buck too. I would get a haircut and start wearing white shirts and maybe even go on to a four-year college so that I could teach for the state or the city. Now that I had graduated and moved my stuff to another apartment in the same building, even he was asking questions about how long was I going to stay with N’Bala and what the hell was I doing with the organization, pulling eighty dollars a week.

First of all, I wanted to teach black history. The opportunity that BAMBU gave me to do this could never be touched by the city or state. For any government teaching job I would have to have a diploma from a four-year college, and I wouldn’t be
able to help shape the curriculum until I had gotten tenure. BAMBU was giving me the curriculum for my area, along with the syllabi from other centers for references. I had almost an unlimited budget in terms of books and materials.

The second job was with N’Bala. I didn’t consider that a permanent position. N’Bala was an African brother who had opened an Eighth Avenue clothing shop that featured all of the finest in black wear. He was suffering, however. In opening the store he had spent most of his money and didn’t have much for salaries. He had been open for a month, and business hadn’t exactly been booming. The answer to that was the area. Most of the Chelsea area is Puerto Rican. From 14th Street to 23rd Street west of Eighth Avenue, the population is seventy percent Puerto Rican. The black people live just outside of this wall, in force.

I had bought the dashiki I was wearing at John’s party less than two weeks ago from N’Bala, and even though business wasn’t heavy, he had his hands full running up and down and trying to make sure that he wasn’t robbed while he stocked his shelves.

‘Where’s your help?’ I asked.

‘He quit, brother. Yesterday he came to me and he said, N’Bala, I am very sorry, but I cannot work anymore for you because I will never have money.’ I watched the little African wipe away the sweat from his face and neck. ‘I told him that we will do better and I will raise him some money, but he wants to know when, as though I am God and can see tomorrow.’

‘I know what you mean. Getting a business started is a struggle.’

‘You think you know?’ N’Bala asked. ‘I have to close the door to go to the bathroom. The schoolchildren, the little ones, come here to try to steal from me. Not to mention the large high-school ones. I think I will go crazy.
The air is broken down. The air-conditioner, I mean. You don’t know!’

‘How much you payin’?’ I asked.

‘Sixty dollars a week for five days. What can I pay?’

I liked the little man. He was self-made, in a way. He had graduated from Columbia as a business major and returned to Africa. When his country became involved in a revolution that failed, he was forced to flee to the United States. With his life savings he was trying to start a little business. It was exactly what we had been asking for in BAMBU. More black businessmen, therefore more black workers in higher positions, better deals for the black consumer, and more financial stability for the black family.

‘Can you last two weeks?’ I asked.

‘Even the dying man finds courage when he knows that help is near.’ N’Bala quoted something, and I smiled at the metaphor.

‘In two weeks I’ll be your salesman,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘If you can use me.’

‘Of course. But you will be a graduate then.’

‘Two weeks. I’ll start the Monday after graduation.’

I was cut short by the record’s end. The sister I was dancing with said something that I didn’t catch.

‘Beg pardon, sister?’

‘I said thank you,’ she repeated.

‘My pleasure,’ I said. ‘You’ll have to excuse me. I’m not together this evening.’

‘Are you drunk?’ she asked.

‘No. No. I’m just doing a lot of thinking when I should be concentrating on more important things like yourself.’ I smiled, and she smiled.

‘That was a nice try . . . That’s a beautiful dashiki,’ she commented.

‘Thank you.’

‘I was looking at them. I made one for my brother, but it didn’t turn out very well. No pattern.’ She was sipping a drink. ‘Did you make that one?’

‘No, I bought it.’

‘How much are they? Aren’t they expensive?’

‘They come in all styles, colors, and prices. I got this one at N’Bala’s Fashions on 18th Street and Eighth Avenue. It just so happens that I’ll be working there starting Monday, and I can see to it that you get a well-made dashiki at a reasonable price.’

‘I’ll have to come in,’ she said.

It was nearing midnight. The crowd was wild, but everything was under control. I didn’t blame them for celebrating. School was out. The beaches were in. The weather was warm, and the beer was cold. A lot of people had paired off, but it was my misfortune to get into an intellectual conversation with a few of the brothers. I appreciate their interest and am always proud when they ask me a question that’s been on their minds, but sometimes you just do not want to talk. That was how I felt.

From my initial remarks about BAMBU when one of the brothers asked about it, an argument had cropped up between several of us as to the cause of riots and the explanation of what constitutes a riot. The real issue was whether or not riots were helping or hindering the movement.

‘A riot is a violent dramatization of black despair in America,’ I told them. ‘Time comes when you just can’t stand no more. A man can have his ass kicked so often figuratively that he doesn’t care what happens to him literally. A few brothers are standing on the corner, looking inside the white man’s store, and their hands are closing in on the nothing in their pockets. Before you know it, they’re taking what they want.’

‘It’s usually ’cauz somebody got high,’ one brother said. ‘They’re all drunk, and then they start throwin’ shit.’

‘Drunkenness is the ruin of reason. It is a premature old age. It is temporary death,’ I.Q. quoted.

‘It’s not necessarily due to drunkenness,’ I said. ‘I believe the primary ingredient is frustration and not alcohol. Combine that with opportunity, and you have a very emotional, explosive situation. What is always necessary is the spark that ignites the fuse, because black people are tired of being exploited and taken advantage of. Also of being underestimated.’

‘Only the complacent are true slaves,’ I.Q. quoted.

‘There are very few happy people in the communities of this country that exploded last summer and that may explode again. Being drunk may pacify for a while; that’s why I don’t think the rioters were drunk. These were the men who had been denied the right to be men, treated like savages for three hundred years, and they suddenly decided that they may as well take what they want. They have seen the white boys’ law. It works for the benefit of the white boys.’

‘But if you notice,’ one brother pointed out, ‘the people who are killed are always black. No whitey get offed. It’s really murder.’

‘Murder is white justice. Livin’ in America has always been murder for black people. There has been three centuries of murder. Either the quick death from a gun or a rope, or the slow death of trying to survive under inhuman conditions.’ I looked over the group of naturals and beads. ‘Black people aren’t as foolish as they used to be, though. They ain’t callin’ on the Lord like they used to. They realize that God helps those who help themselves. And as for those of us in the great North, we know that a whitey is a whitey and that his bullshit is everywhere. We know we’ve got just as much of a struggle here as we do in Mississippi . . . Maybe even
more, because we’re supposed to have to pick out the good whiteys from the bad ones. Down there you know who the enemy is.’

As the group began to break up, an even more frenzied dancing thing with the women began. I.Q. stayed near the window with me and continued the conversation.

‘We’re movin’ into a new day, brother,’ I told him. ‘The younger brothers are talkin’ black, thinkin’ black, and usin’ the white boy to better themselves and their people.’