My mother’s voice spoke in my right ear. “Where do we look when we have lost something?”
“The garbage?” I answered.
I went into the kitchen and pushed the lever of the chrome can with my foot and underneath the dumped black coffee grounds was the eulogy.
I gasped, pulled it out of the trash and shook off the wet grimy grounds. My beautiful white document now had black streaks across it, and some of the words were illegible. Linda and I looked at each other and we both burst out laughing.
“I have to re-type this!”
I dashed to her computer room. My fingers flew over the keys and I paid no attention to typos.
When we were racing to the church, both of us were feeling giddy and lightheaded. It didn’t feel like I was going to my mother’s funeral. Linda said she was going to heckle me while I spoke to the congregation.
“I’m going to yell ‘Sit Down’ when you start your little speech,” she said.
And that’s why I was laughing as we got to the church where I was going to deliver the eulogy for my mother.
My immediate family was standing in the back of the church and they looked at me with relief.
I saw the coffin. The lid was open. A woman from the funeral home whispered to me: “If you want to see your mother you should do it now. We are about to close the coffin.”
I had not seen her at the prayers the night before and had not seen her during the last four months of her life. She was dressed in her powder blue suit and her hair was perfectly set. Her face looked frozen and unnatural. But it was her. I didn’t want to kiss her cheek but thought that I should so I wouldn’t regret not doing it one day. So I did. So cold.
We settled in the front rows of the church. The priest announced almost immediately that he thought the eulogy should be given then and not near the end of the mass. I snapped to attention.
“What did he … ?”
I glanced at my brother next to me and he smiled.
Then I was standing behind the microphone and looking out on the crowd. I knew where Linda was sitting so I didn’t look at that area. I no longer was nervous or anxious, but warm and confident, and I opened my mouth and the words came out.
Later, many people remarked that it was a job professionally done.
I knew my parents expected nothing less of me.
Black and White Hands
(for Rosa Parks)
Litteratzi
YOU KNOW IT’S FUNNY but I don’t remember the day that I discovered my hands as a child. I don’t remember the day that I discovered my ears, or my eyes. Perhaps it’s because I was too young to remember, or because they were always there. But I remember the day that I discovered the color of my skin. There are some things you just never forget.
“You’re black,” she said, with her golden pigtails flapping in the breeze. “You’re black, and that’s why I’m not going to hold your hand.”
I stood there embarrassed, in front of the big yellow school bus that was to take us on our field trip to the museum. Her words knifed through the chatter of my classmates and murdered what had begun as a perfect day. I’d gotten up early that morning and, without the usual prompting from mom, donned my freshly starched uniform – white shirt, khaki short pants and a pair of new brown shoes. In my right pocket was a little notebook and pencil. I knew that mom would quiz me as soon as I got home to make sure that I’d paid attention so I was going to take notes.
Now, just before embarking on my journey to the museum, I was getting a different kind of education.
“But Miss said that we must hold hands in pairs to enter the bus,” I said.
“I don’t care what Miss said! My mommy says that all black people are criminals. She says that I should never mix with you people. She says that if you mix colored clothes with white clothes, then the colored clothes run on the white clothes, and the white clothes become useless.”
Her thin mouth narrowed into a slit. Her straight nose held itself aloft as if avoiding some ghastly smell. Her icy blue eyes glared at me, daring me to contradict her.
“You’re black,” she repeated, stomping her feet, “and I’m not going to hold your hand. That’s final.”
I stared at my tiny outstretched hand – the hand that would one day wield a surgeon’s scalpel. I listened to her with ears that would one day hear the symptoms of patients. I looked at her with large brown eyes that would one day see Ms. Golden Pigtails’ very own mother come to me for treatment, and get it with the respect and dignity that every human being deserves. I stared at my tiny outstretched hand, and then I burst into tears.
No Help
Francais
“WHATEVER YOU DO, don’t shake hands with the new guy. He does this thing, man, it really hurts.”
That was James talking to me, one morning in the third grade. One thing I was glad about was that it meant there was a new kid in our class, so I wasn’t the new guy anymore. I had just moved to L.A. from New York, and I was sick of being the new guy. People made fun of the way I talked, the clothes I wore, even the way I walked. So now there was a new new-guy. Great.
“Hey,” he said. “Shake.” And he stuck out his hand. I just looked at it.
“Somebody told you, huh?” he said. And then he cackled and walked away.
His name was Marcus and it turned out he lived in the same apartment complex as James and me. Most of our other classmates were white. There were a few Asians. Robert was black, and there were a few other black people in our class, and a few more throughout the rest of the school. But not many.
Marcus was great. He was always making jokes, he was always there to play ball, he was always with us, having fun, passing time, all the afternoons of our childhood.
There were about twenty kids in our complex, a stretch of pink towers and white courtyard apartments in the middle of L.A. We’d go to the recreation center after school every day to play tetherball. When we got to know each other better we played pickup football games in the fall and baseball in the spring and summer. Marcus had a brother a year older named Tony, and a younger sister, Susie. Along with a couple of other guys from the complex, Marcus, Tony, James and I would play ball games on the field, a huge stretch of lawn, and Susie would jump rope with the other girls on the cement walkway down by the entrance.
I don’t remember where Marcus and Tony Robinson came from. Marcus was smaller and could lose his temper. Tony would always keep his cool. And he always had a kind word. One day I showed up to play football in a red shirt and black pants. “Nice colors, Artie,” he said. Funny that I still remember that, huh?
Marcus would get mad if we’d lose. Tony, never.
We formed a softball team and played in a league. We even had shirts made: “All Stars” in blue letters and blue sleeves on a golden-yellow torso. Tony was the best athlete. My dad would come to the games, and so would Mr. Robinson. He was a lawyer.
One day we were doing our cheers after the game. “Two-four-six-eight who do we appreciate?” Except the other team didn’t do a cheer for us. And as they walked by, one of the kids said something to Marcus.
“What?” Marcus shrieked. “I’ll KILL you!” Tony grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back. The dads from both teams pow-wowed. Then we all left.
I asked my dad what the kid said to Marcus. My dad wouldn’t tell me. I asked my dad if the kid apologized. He wouldn’t tell me that, either.
We formed a Boy Scout troop. It was pretty pathetic. We were in the middle of the city. We hardly ever did anything. You had to do three five-mile hikes to pass from Tenderfoot to Second Class. We did one along the beach in Santa Monica. I had to miss the second hike. There was never a third hike. But some of the dads did organize a trip to a Dodger game one night. I’ll never forget it, and here’s why:
It was twilight, the sky was glowing a beautiful deep blue and the stadium lights were on. We were in the center field bleachers. Tony had just come back from buying a Coke. These were the days before they
put lids on cups. Tony was sitting down about three seats to my left. The batter popped one straight over the field, straight toward us. Toward me. I saw it coming. Right at me. Tony stood up, drink in his left hand, and balancing in an awkward stance, grabbed the ball with his right hand – I still remember the sound, slap! – just before it would’ve broken my nose or a rib, or something, I couldn’t quite tell. He turned around to me, realizing he had gotten out of his seat and snatched the ball from in front of me. He didn’t know that my reflexes hadn’t kicked in and I’d just been sitting there, not ready to do anything.
“Oh sorry, Artie,” he said.
“No, don’t be sorry, thanks, it would’ve hit me.”
I think it put him at ease.
He’d barely spilled any of the Coke. I can still see him, standing in front of me, to this day, making that catch, baseball in one hand, Coke in the other. Whenever I go to Dodger Stadium, I look out at the bleachers and picture us, exactly where we were sitting, exactly as it was that night.
One weekend morning we were sitting on the tables at the entrance to the rec center waiting for whatever activities were scheduled to start. I was there with Tony and the McConnell brothers, Pete and Tommy.
“Heard about your dad,” Tony told them.
“That was pretty screwed up, huh?” Pete said.
“What happened?” I asked.
“He was out for his jog Monday night and he got jumped by two guys with pipes and they took his wallet,” Tommy said.
“Wow, was he hurt?” I asked. There wasn’t a lot of crime in the complex. That was a really unusual case. I lived there four years, and that was the only time I’d heard of anything like it at all.
“A little, a few scrapes and a black eye. He says it looks worse than it is.”
“Do they know who did it?”
“Couple of spades,” Pete said. Then he turned to Tony and said, coolly: “No offense.”
“None taken,” Tony said.
And from the way he said it, I thought he was sincere. He knew Pete was talking about the kind of people who would jump a guy and beat him up and take his wallet and that even though it was a racist word, it didn’t apply to him. I thought.
My mom came home from grocery shopping one afternoon. It was the day Martin Luther King was assassinated.
“I saw Mrs. Robinson at the store,” my mom said. “She came up to me and said: ‘What are they doing to us?’ She was crying.”
After elementary school, my family moved away, out to the suburbs. I was miserable. I missed my friends from the apartment complex. I hated my new classmates, snotty rich kids who grew up in big houses and made fun of me because I was a good student in music appreciation and I dressed the way we did in L.A., nice pants and paisley shirts with Nehru collars – it was 1969 – instead of T-shirts and jeans. And just about everyone was white. There were about three black kids in the whole school. I didn’t make friends with any of them. Or anyone else.
I learned to get along. I made it through junior high somehow, and in high school I was starting to have a little fun. I had an electric organ and I was playing in some bands and my parents would go out on Saturday nights so the other musicians could come over and we’d jam. Some girls would come to hear us, too. We even had a black singer joining us every now and then; a guy named Dennis. He had a great voice. He’d come out from the east and was living with a girlfriend at her parents’ house in my neighborhood.
One night when my dad came home from work he wanted to talk to me so he came into my room. And just like I’ll remember that night at Dodger Stadium, I’ll remember this night, too, only for a different reason.
My dad was usually a lighthearted guy, but I could tell just from the way he was carrying himself that he had something important to say.
“You remember Marcus and Tony, don’t you?” he asked.
“Of course,” I said. They’d come to my birthday parties when I was in elementary school. There was a picture of us together in our family’s photo collection. But it had been four years since I’d seen them.
“Their dad came to my office today. He’d tracked me down. He remembered where I worked and he came to my office. He didn’t call. He came in person. Did you know they moved to Beverly Hills?”
I didn’t. I wasn’t in touch from anybody from my old neighbor-hood at that point.
“Wow, Beverly Hills,” I said. “How great. The dad made it big, huh? Great. They were great people. Remember? How great for them. Great.”
We’d moved out of the apartments, too, but out to the suburbs, not to Beverly Hills. Big difference in money. Big difference.
But I could see that my dad was upset.
“No,” he shook his head. “Not great. They’re miserable. They’ve got no friends. Nobody at Beverly Hills High will be friends with them. They’re outcasts. You know what I’m saying.”
He didn’t use the word black. He didn’t have to.
“And the dad was miserable, too. ‘If I’d known, I never would’ve moved there, Ed,’ he told me. ‘I would’ve stayed in the complex. Everybody would’ve been happier.’ ”
My dad handed me a piece of paper.
“Here’s their phone number. But when you call, don’t say the dad tracked me down. Say that we bumped into each other at a restaurant and I got the number then. Don’t say that you know they don’t have any friends. Just invite them to hang out with you and your friends on Saturday nights when we’re not home, OK?”
“OK,” I said.
But I didn’t.
Even though I was starting to fit in – finally – out in the suburbs, and was making some friends, I had been damaged by the humiliation, the teasing, the taunts, the fights during my first years there. I had no confidence. I just didn’t feel good about myself. Things hadn’t turned out the way I thought they’d be when I was a kid, when I was friends with Marcus and Tony. I thought I’d be having fun, but I hated myself. And I didn’t want them to see me that way. Pretty bad, huh? Pretty selfish.
But there was another reason I didn’t call them.
As I looked at the number, and I thought about this new crowd that I was just starting to fit in with, I thought – for just a brief moment:
“Wow, you know, it might be cool to have some black friends.”
And then I said to myself:
“What kind of person are you? What kind of person have you become? What kind of human being would think that thought? You would even consider, even for a moment, using your childhood friends as status symbols? You don’t deserve to have them as friends. You don’t deserve any friends. You don’t deserve to walk among decent human beings.”
So I didn’t call. And a couple of weeks later, when I decided that I should put myself aside for a moment and reach out to them, and I went to look for the piece of paper with the phone number on it, I couldn’t find it. And that was proof, I decided, another sign that I didn’t deserve to have them as friends. Then I got really sick – hepatitis, then spinal meningitis – and life became even more challenging through the rest of high school.
I wonder what Mr. Robinson thought of me and my dad afterward. ‘Oh, just more of the same,’ he might’ve said to himself. ‘I practically begged Ed to have Artie call, but no, nothin,’ no help from nowhere.’
I hope Marcus and Tony and Susie made it through Beverly Hills High OK. Marcus, the jokester, the fiery, friendly, funny guy, and his older brother Tony, so calm and cool. And they were both so handsome. I still have that picture of us at my sixth-grade birthday party. I look at it sometimes. I hope they’re OK.
They didn’t deserve what they got in Beverly Hills. And they sure didn’t deserve the blow-off they got from me in my self-absorbed adolescent anguish. Yeah, I know. I was 15. It’s a good excuse.
But not good enough.
Last Reunion
IAA
“I DON’T CARE WHO DIED – just do it,” Rich barked into the phone. Darrin had only heard this nasally snarl once befo
re – after Rich gave the game-losing answer in college bowl finals.
“OK… No! That’s why… Fine…” Rich tried detachment. Darrin glanced at the clock again: It had been six minutes since Rich had said ‘…in a minute.’
“I agree, it’s a sad end. I hope you get your company fixed… no, you’re wrong… That’s not the way to do business… Fine.” Darrin tried reading the documents on Rich’s desk but they were just a jumble of black on white. Rich made quick eye contact with Darrin and grinned:
“Hi buddy, I’ll be with you in a minute.” The smile vanished – Rich switched his attention back to the phone:
“How am I? I’m sad to see your company fall apart… I agree… Sure… What? You wouldn’t be anywhere without me. I kept your business alive for years… I’m sorry, too… you know where to mail it.”
Rich hung up and studied Darrin’s Brooks Brothers suit.
“Looks like you’re moving up in the world.”
“Heh, well, you know – gotta keep up appearances,” Darrin said carefully.
“Sure,” Rich sank back into his black vinyl chair and folded his fingers together behind his head. Darrin thought his elbows looked like the pincers of a beetle. “… So, what can I help you with?”
“You know what you can help me with.”
“I’m not sure I do …”
“Dammit Rich, my wife saw that Notice of Default.”
“How’s that my problem?”
“How am I supposed to pay you back?”
“Start by selling that watch… and the suit.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
“Hey, take it easy.”
“You take it easy. You coulda called me an’ we coulda sorted this whole thing out.”
“What’s there to talk about? We sent you three bills. For all I knew, you threw them away.”
“Now, you see? There you go again, thinkin’ the worst.”
Rich sighed.
“So what do you want me to do?”