Why I Don't Write Children's Literature (4 page)

WALKING WITH ORAL LEE BROWN

In the late 1980s, Oral Lee Brown visited a first-grade class in Oakland, California, to give the children a pep talk. The content of her talk is lost, but not the content of her character. As she was leaving, she told the class, “Children, if you stay in school, I'll pay for your college education — and I mean every one of you. You hear me?” Leaving the school grounds, Ms. Brown perhaps felt a bit shocked at her audacious promise. She drove off looking into her rearview mirror.

But Ms. Brown was familiar with struggle. She was one of a family of twelve children from the Mississippi Delta. Her household had not been unlike the classroom itself — noisy but with loving adults. Her parents farmed peaches, cotton, and watermelon. At the time of her classroom visit, she had three of her own children. For income, she baked and sold peach cobbler pies, and worked as a real estate agent, earning less than fifty thousand dollars annually — a significant fraction of which would now have to go into a trust fund. Still, she had made a pact with the class of first graders.
Oh Lord
, she was probably thinking,
What have I done?

The answer: everything glorious.

Ms. Brown was then in her mid-thirties and feeling momentarily brave. Attempting to cajole the students to study, study, study, she took hope to another level and encouraged them to think about college. During that first year, she deposited ten thousand dollars in an account that would allow her to live up to her promise. She added more money the second year, the third year, and so on. In the end, she kept her word. Of the twenty-three children in that classroom, nineteen went on to college or trade school. Two were lost in street killings, and another to an accident.

But Ms. Brown was not done. While most people her age were socking money away for their own retirements, she committed herself to more children: “phases two and three,” she calls them. Again, more of her “babies” went off to college. Her faith in young people did not diminish.

Admiration from afar is one thing, but sidling up to a visionary is another. I was quick to jump into my tennis shoes when I heard about her “Walk around Lake Merritt” fundraiser. I went not for exercise but to see Oral Lee Brown, a soft-spoken educational champion who has had my attention ever since I read about her in the newspaper. There were about a hundred of us — in all sizes and shapes, with all levels of education and courage, and all with a personal attraction to her and her cause. When she addressed us walkers, I was almost in tears. She embodied everything noble and caring, everything that most billionaires are not.

She made a few remarks then said, “
OK
, let's go.” By “go,” she meant the five-mile walk, stroll, or skip (if you were a child — and there were children) around Lake Merritt. I paid forty dollars to be a part of this cause — money well spent.

We stepped around the geese at the lake, some in pairs or groups, and others alone, like me. I ached to march next to her, but figured that I would let others swarm around our queen bee for now. I strolled alone, then with a realtor who helped finance the foundation, and then alone again. The sun glinted off the murky water of the lake. The sky was bluish and hopeful. Somewhere a chain clanged against a flagpole. A dog barked and geese clacked their bills.

After about a quarter-mile, I decided to make my move. I slowed my pace, puttered to a stop, and feigned tying my shoe. I rose and looked around: Mama Brown, as she is affectionately known, was nowhere in sight. Confused, I continued to believe that she would soon walk up from behind. Then I would have my chance to peer into her eyes and live briefly on her retinas. I asked a volunteer, with a “Hello My Name Is” tag on her sweater, the whereabouts of our intrepid hero. Back at camp, I was told. “She always does that. She gets you started, and you have to walk on your own.”

BAD START

On a recent walk-jog-walk workout in the neighborhood, I began searching my mind for material for a ten-minute graduation speech. As I strained uphill I discovered in the old gray matter a piece of lingo that might suffice: “In the course of life we find ourselves . . .” It didn't take more than three brisk steps to acknowledge that the phrase was 1) a cliché, 2) stupid, and 3) inappropriate. My talk would be directed to juvenile offenders in a facility set among rolling pastures and from which you could hear cows at night and, when the light crept across the eastern hills, a lonely rooster. These teenagers, all male, had been jailed for such offenses as shoplifting, assault (hitting a classmate with a chair, for example), car theft, unarmed muggings, and marijuana possession — forms of urban conflict they deemed harmful only after getting caught. Words like
in the course of life
might sound prophetic to them, as some might eventually be sentenced to life without parole. The sorrowful statistics weren't in their favor.

I slowed to a stop to tie a laggard shoestring and opted for the sonorous, “In the dark moments of our lives, we can turn to family,” as a warm-and-fuzzy opening. I stood up, winded, and realized 1) some didn't have family, 2) some didn't want to know family, and 3) some had been turned in by family for reward money. I pouted at my shoes, which were in their usual splayed position: one foot wanted to go this way, the other that. Finding the right angle at which to begin this speech was trouble­some.

These youths hadn't intended to get caught while committing their petty crimes. The chair that came down on the classmate must've hurt like hell, but the
vato
presently attired in an orange suit had been hurting ever since he left diapers. The stolen Ford Taurus was a smoke-spewing clunker that got only twelve miles to the gallon — no threat to an Oakland
PD
cruiser. And that righteous marijuana was good shit for watching
Batman
in a smelly theater, but had the lifespan of a bag of Cheetos.

When the comb had been pushed into the elderly church lady's back, she'd fainted and hit her head, so scared was she. But the young thug rocking on his heels also was scared. Lowering his face to the woman on the pavement, he'd squinted and asked, “Grandma, is that you?”

Crime isn't worth it unless you own a three-hundred-dollar haircut and bespoke English brogues. Positioned as a
CEO
behind a desk, you can do easy inside jobs on Wall Street. Within months of your first heist, you can become spoiled with your own jet, your own island, even your own butler to rotate your vintage wines (trained in the art of caring for executive buttheads, the butler will slip on white gloves before beginning his work). Crimes committed while in coat and tie are seldom prosecuted. When the rare defendant is found guilty, he gets probation and a fine — which can be covered by the money stolen in the first place. The biggest frauds ever committed on our country occurred during the 2008 housing collapse, perpetrated by banks and financial institutions. Name one
CEO
twiddling his thumbs behind bars for that. Me, I can't.

But how about the young offenders named Tyrone or Mario? These young people rob others who look kind of like themselves and are often surprised when they have to raise their hands to the
SWAT
team. Big-eyed, they shout, “You mean
me
?” They spend hours doing fingertip pushups in their cells. After five to ten years, they're released to the public with sculpted bodies.

My walk-jog-walk workout became a long-stepping climb as the wheels of my imagination spun in sand. I had volunteered to give this talk and hand out a few of my books as graduation gifts. Now I worried that I couldn't reach these youth, a little old man up on a makeshift platform. Is “dawg” still part of the young people's vernacular? I wondered. How about “the bomb”? Or “bad,” as in something cool? Was “cool” now un-cool? I promised myself not to make references to Justin Bieber.

I paused to retie both shoes then stood up, hands on hips, a little winded, my face a wet brown stone. I began walking again with my head down, a jay scolding me from a low branch on a magnolia. I thought: just ad lib, make stuff up on the podium.

“We make mistakes,” I began, then winced at this imprudent piece of crap. I couldn't open with that, or worse, “When I was a child . . . .” The young people in their seats, hands folded as if in prayer, would look down at their size-thirteen shoes and think, “Yeah, Pops, like you and Abe Lincoln. Dang, this is hecka boring!”

I continued my walk-jog-walk, mustering up these observations: 1) today's teenagers have it harder than when Abe and I were young, 2) prison is a mean business, and 3) when you're asleep on the couch, a blaring television is not an option. Why the last? When the police come, you want everything quiet-like. That way, you can hear them coming up the steps in their storm-trooper boots and make a run for it.

* * *

On the other end of the social spectrum is Tana, my wife's cousin's daughter. She is five feet tall and weighs ninety-three pounds — of which seventy-five seem devoted to purposeful brainpower. She possesses a natural intelligence and the likeability and sophistication to go with it.

At our recent day-after-Christmas family get-together, she and I sat on our smallish sofa, holding bowls on our laps. We faced each other, angled just so, momentarily separated by the steam from our
chilaquiles
breakfast. Frankly, however, there is more than steam to separate us. She is fifteen and the clock inside her ticks slowly. During every day that passes for her, a whole week seems to push rudely ahead for me. In short, I'm on the other end of life, with the gears inside me speeding briskly. At the risk of further depleting my dwindling store of self-confidence, I make two observations: 1) Tana is able to spring to her feet unaided, while I must push myself up with at least one hand; and 2) her eyes are clear and unpolluted, while mine are a scribbling mess of lunatic red. I could offer other distinctions, but I would lose my appetite for
chilaquiles
.

When Tana parts her breakfast with a fork, more steam is released. She blows on the morsels in her bowl. She pokes them. She blows again and lifts the corner of the egg on top. To me, she's a movie inside my head, each little gesture memorable, as when her paper napkin parachutes to the floor. It's pretty the way she picks it up and even prettier when she sets it on her knee — God, am I so old that I must tally her every move? We each raise a forkful, blow some more, then taste. Carolyn, my wife, is the best short-order cook. I dab the corners of my mouth.

“Tana,” I ask, “what school do you go to?” She told me the previous Christmas, but I've forgotten.

She puts down her fork, swallows, then says, “Boston Latin.”

A school for eggheads, I'm certain, each egg with two or three languages already in the shell. For a second, I see Tana and her classmates floating around campus in togas — togas and stone tablets chiseled with smart-aleck quips from Socrates and other robed wise guys. I lower my fork, for the breakfast is dangerously hot. I ask, “So what's your school motto?”

She picks up her fork. Smiling brightly, she says, “Sumus primi.”

This means, I believe, “We are first.” Could there be any doubt? She and her classmates will probably attend Harvard when they graduate from high school — Yale or Harvard or Princeton or
MIT
, universities for those born to be successful.

We stir our breakfast, releasing more engines of steam. When my napkin falls to the floor, it looks like litter. I pick it up un-prettily. It's nothing but paper with brown chili smudges, while the napkin in Tana's hand is a crinkled origami flower.
How does that work?
How does the same object in her grip seem dainty?

She asks, “Did your high school have a motto?”

The vapor between us has dispersed. We're comfortable with each other. How did I get so lucky as to know a bright ninety-seven pound girl? “Yeah,” I answer, “it was in street Spanish, but I can translate it into English.”

I let a few seconds pass while she waits, her body leaning forward as if to say,
And?
I stall, smile, then reveal our motto: “Run like you stole something.”

She laughs, hand over her mouth, and the napkin falls to the floor again. I like how she does that — how she drops the napkin. Happiness leaps in my heart as I fetch it for her.

THE FAMILY FORTUNE

The young man was named either Barclay or Basil. As he was from wealth, he most certainly kept a string of polo ponies and hunting horses, the noble profiles of the finest rendered in oils and hung above mantels. I came to know him — briefly — in a biography of an English writer who did his best work in the 1930s.

Memory fails once again. Was his name Barclay or Basil? I imagine him with a mallet — is that what they call it? — clad in a wool hunting jacket, white britches, knee-high leather boots tooled in Bradford. His silver flask was etched with his name — Barclay or Basil? His family estate was near Knole in County Kent, not far from the Churchill estate, Chartwell. I'm thinking of him and his family's friendship with Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West, a notable couple of the 1930s, doers in literature and gardens, considered eccentrics by the neighboring landowner — and also, as I've learned, political conservatives.

This young man, possibly the only son of a family that included five girls, became excited when he was named an assistant in a publishing firm near Fleet Street. Unattached and lighthearted, recently come into his inheritance, he accepted a job reading and responding to author queries. He arrived in late morning and left by four in the afternoon, part-time work when we consider the office scene these days.

I recall tidbits of a biography, but of whom exactly? I see it like this: Basil or Barclay was at Oxford for two years before he was sent down; still, he wore his college's tie and pin. His family's fortune came from Jamaica and their five-hundred-acre plantation (a word they avoided) of sugar cane, crisp stalks rustling and sweetening the air. He had visited the island once and remembered that the sea, blue as the china in the breakfront at home, was almost never out of view. There also were tea and banana plantations in British Guiana, and investments in South Africa. On his mother's side, they had land in Scotland. What worry could pleat his brow?

He was called home by family for the weekend — something about the pending marriage of a distant cousin. He boarded a train at Waterloo station, then took a taxi to the family's estate, where black bulls roamed on a far hill and lambs gathered by a fence. The sky was wide and a row of clouds paddled in the direction of London. Two muddy Labs greeted him, while the butler hurried across the gravel with an umbrella.

Rain kept the family indoors most of the afternoon. The young man was wise enough to stay away from his mother. She would probe about the girl — or girls — in his life and he would have to tell her all about their families. He unpacked, hurriedly ate a sandwich alone, then visited the horses in their stalls. He spoke with Lawrence, the new boy, and Nigel, one of the three gardeners, who had been with the family nearly twenty years. Their conversation regarded the heated floors in one stall and a chicken coop ransacked by a fox. Rain fell on them equally, and rain filled their shoeprints when the three of them went to see the calf, born in April. As it was now September, the calf had a place on the hill among other cows.

Before dinner, there were drinks: near the fireplace, a visiting uncle with a tumbler containing two fingers of Scotch, his monocle like an immense wet raindrop gleaming on his lapel. The young man — Barclay or Basil — reported gaily, “Uncle, I've got a job,” expecting his uncle to reply, “Spot on — let's hear about it!”

But his uncle frowned at this news. He lowered his drink, where it was momentarily lit and colored by the fire, then placed it onto the mantel. “A job, you say?”

“Yes, Uncle — a job,” announced the young man.

The uncle ran a hand over his chin and muttered, “A job — really.” He turned his face toward the fire, breathed in, then exhaled. “I'm sorry to hear that.”