Chapter One – I am not a Gangster
If I had to pick the moment when I moved from boyhood to
manhood, I could. I know exactly when I became a man. It was five years ago,
the year before my little sister was born, and I was fifteen years old.
It all started at 11:00 am on a Thursday morning, and I was
standing in front of 6119 Blue Street. I knew the house, the block, and the
alley behind the home like the back of my hand, but I stood on the sidewalk
looking up at the yellow frame house like a stranger. If I walked into the
house, my mom was going to kill me. She looked at high school suspension like
jail-time. I was the good son, the one on the honor roll since fourth grade.
For my mom, school suspension linked a kid to jail; in her
mind, suspension led to county lockup, and then the penitentiary. My brother
had followed that route. In my fifteen-year-old mind, if I walked in our home
and told my mom about getting suspended, my death was certain, and once she
found out who I was suspended with, she would kill them too. She had been
warning me since the beginning of the summer about my new friends.
Our little black and white dog, Skipper, kept peeing on her
throw rugs. She warned him, “If you urinate one more time on my rugs, you will
no longer be a problem.” He peed on the rug in front of the television. The
next morning, I found him stiff as a board on the back porch with his dingy
white teeth still bared. He wasn’t two years old, but my mom killed him. After
my brother went to the penitentiary, she told me, “I’d rather see you dead than
in jail.”
In total, there were eight porch steps that led up to our
front door. The white plastic address numbers - 6119 - hung bright above the
door. Mr. Nichols, the school principal, had said two weeks of suspension
unless we brought a parent up to the school. He suspended James, Jesus, and me
until our parents came up to the school.
I exhaled and decided to take the first step up then I heard
the beep, beep of Jesus’s grandfather’s truck. I turned and saw Jesus and James
in the rusted orange truck pulling up to the curb. James opened the passenger
door and waved me over. I ran toward the truck. But, before I got to the truck,
I heard, “Thaddeus Lawrence Adams, what on earth are you doing home?”
I stopped in mid-stride. It was my mom. I looked back over
my shoulder and saw her standing at the edge of the porch in blue jean cut offs
and a purple Grateful Dead T-shirt. I looked back to the truck, and James had
already closed the door, and Jesus was putting the truck into gear; they knew
my mom had killed before. I watched the truck drive off.
“Please turn around.”
I whispered to the puffs of exhaust fumes. They weren’t
going to turn around, and I knew it. If I didn’t have to face my mom, I
wouldn’t have.
“And what happened to your new glasses?”
I’d forgotten about the masking tape holding on both arms of
my glasses. Earl Jacobson, a member of the Sinnin’ Gangsters, had snapped the
arms off; that started the fight. He snatched my glasses from my face and broke
off the arms. I jumped up from my desk chair as if I could fight and swung on
him. I missed, but he didn’t. He hit me square in the nose. I saw lightening
not stars, and I heard the rush of the ocean not bells; the force of the blow
sent me stumbling backwards through the classroom. The blackboard stopped me,
and I slide down and landed on my butt underneath the chalk tray.
I sat there and weighed my options: either standup and offer
a semblance of a fight, but my bleeding nose was strongly against that option,
or flee the classroom. With Earl advancing toward me, I opted to flee, but
something happened. A foot appeared before Earl’s advancing feet and tripped
him.
His forehead smacked hard on the tile as he landed face downright
next to me. I jumped up and without thinking started stomping his head. I was
joined by Jesus and James; the three of us were stomping Earl and all his
teasing, embarrassing nookies, painful wedges, and consistent bullying into
oblivion. It felt so good.
“I asked you a question, Thaddeus. Actually, I asked you two
questions. What are you doing home, and what happened to your new glasses?”
My mom’s dark brown hair was in two long Pocahontas type
braids, and the braids were swinging with the beat her questions.
The glasses were new, brand new. I turned completely around
and walked back to the stairs.
“I got into a fight at school, and the principal suspended
me. You have to go up to the school today or tomorrow to stop the suspension
from being a two-week suspension.”
She stared down from the porch to me. She looked at me like
I was a deranged mouse trying to come into her house for the winter. I have seen
her kill those too; the last one she beat to death with a cast iron skillet.
“I bet it was you and your . . . your . . . your minority
friends wasn’t it? Since you started spending time with that Jesus and that
James, you started changing and not for the better either. I told you before if
you keep hanging with that Black kid and that Mexican kid, people are going to
start treating you like you are Black or Mexican.”
I didn’t answer, but I started climbing up the porch stairs.
We had been having that conversation since the beginning of the summer. She
spent the summer warning me that my summer job buddies shouldn’t become my
school buddies. When I didn’t heed her warnings and kept hanging out with Jesus
and James, she started being rude to them: hanging up the phone when they
called the house, ignoring their greetings when they came over, and speaking
over them when we were together as if they weren’t present.
When I got to the top of the porch stairs, I told her, “If
it wasn’t for Jesus and James, I would be in the hospital. One of the good
white people you love so much was trying to beat me to death.”
I walked
into the house, but I knew it wasn’t over.
My mom looks like a Mexican
American, but she is Black and Korean. Her mother was Korean, and her father is
Black. My mom followed me into the house.
“What are you talking about, son? Who tried to hurt you? Who
were you fighting?”
I walked through the front door, the
vestibule, and into the living room. My thought was to answer all her questions
as soon as possible to stop the conversation from continuing, so I sat on the
couch and answered her.
“This kid named Earl Jacobson broke my glasses. He is a
bully and a gangbanger. He’d picked on Jesus and James in the past, but this
time the three of us fought against him.”
She sat on the couch next to me.
“What? What are you saying, Thaddeus?”
My favorite, blueberry muffins were baking in the oven. The
scent put me at ease, some.
“Yeah well, he snatched my glasses off of my face and
snapped the arms off. I got up and swung on him, and he pretty much knocked me
out, but Jesus and James joined the fight, and the situation turned around. For
once Mom, I was not the kid taking the beating.”
In my peripheral vision, I saw my mom smiling, but when I
turned my head to look at her she stopped smiling.
“Violence seldom solves anything. I will go up to the school
and see about having that bully’s parents pay for your glasses and getting you
back into classes as soon as my muffins are done,” she stood from the couch,
“they need another thirty minutes.”
We were finished talking, and I was close to shocked. The
expected emotional explosion didn’t occur. She walked toward the kitchen but
stopped short and turned to face me.
“We all have to learn to stand up for ourselves, acting with
a group to defend yourself is close to cowardice. But you didn’t request their
help, and that was good.”
I nodded my head and remained speechless. She turned and continued to the kitchen. I got up and climbed the stairs to my room. She must not have heard the part about Earl Jacobson being a gangbanger. I stood up to Earl and won the battle with help, but the war was coming. I was certain of it. Sinnin’ Gangsters didn’t accept getting beat up.
Copyright 2018, Tony Lindsay
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