Jerome ambled a distance behind his father. Later, when they got home, the man looked his son straight in the eye. His own eyes were watery and dull. He turned to his wife, Jerome’s mother, and said, ‘This little nigger is out of his mind. He is one crazy nigger.’
Jerome heard the pride that filtered through his father’s pathetic words.
‘Lemme in my goddam house!’ Daddy’s entire body thudded against the front door. Jerome was sliding out of bed before he knew it. Grabbing the hatchet from under his mattress and shooting out of the bedroom on his tiptoes, out onto the landing, his feet hardly touching the soft carpeting; how quickly and nimbly he skipped down the thirteen steps, hid silently next to the front door, just out of his father’s sight. His mind was empty. No thoughts except the deep and dark awareness of his mission. It’s better this way. Daddy has to die. He can’t come around here ever again, not ever. He can’t ever beat up on Mama again. He’ll kill her.
‘I’ll bust this door down,’ Daddy hollered. Jerome heard the thud of his footsteps on the landing. Mama charged down the stairs, her thin nightgown flapping behind her, like she had wings. She went straight for Jerome. ‘I knew it,’ she said. ‘Give it here.’ She yanked the hatchet out of his hand. ‘Oh, Jerome,’ she whispered. ‘Jerome.’ She sounded disappointed.
The door swung open. Daddy staggered inside. It looked like his head was balanced loosely atop his torso, the way it trembled and shook. ‘Is that why you made me wait so long?’ he said, pointing to the hatchet. They gray steel glimmered in the dim glow from the porch light. Mama put it behind her back.
‘You think you can get ridda me so easy, you ugly bitch?’ He roared with laughter. Mama turned and ran to the kitchen. Daddy followed her, legs wide. He had all the time in the world. From the doorway he turned and looked into the living room. Jerome tried to keep out of sight.
‘I know you’re there,’ he heard his father say. His voice sounded sober and normal. ‘Was it your idea?’
Every word Jerome knew drained from him. As though he was mute again. He heard his father laugh. ‘I knew you weren’t no wimp,’ Daddy said, mostly to himself as he opened the kitchen door. The glass rattled in its frame. The door swung shut behind him.
-
‘This is Madness’ (1970)
Knock! Knock! Who’s there?
It’s Rap Brown and if you don’t open up I’ll strike a light and burn your house down. And I see Malcolm’s spirit his eyes burning Red Black and Green flames and crying tears of thunderbird wine that seem to touch my lips and make me thirsty for a taste of FREEDOM!
Freedom by any means necessary.
It’s necessary to have freedom by any means necessary.
And I begin to hate with love and love with hate.
This is Madness!
This is Madness!
This is Madness!
[ … ]
And during all this time my father was somewhere drowning his mutant plastic-minded self in a bottle of cheap wine letting that spiritual catalyst John Coltrane pay celestial homage to that White God who was riding his main vein.
This is Madness!
This is Madness!
This is Madness!
-
AKRON, OHIO, SEPTEMBER 2001
Reggie Watson
‘One night I’m walking past the athletic field behind our school. Suddenly there’s Jerome’s voice. “Hey Reggie.” I look back. Don’t see anyone. It was pitch-dark. No moonlight. “Hey Reggie,” I hear again. Like the voice came out of nowhere. Really strange. I hear him laugh. He must have hidden himself. Jerk, I think. Then I see his smile light up. He comes up to me. I see the whites of his eyes. His skin was so dark you couldn’t see him from a distance. He dissolved into the night. “You’re just like a ghost,” I said. A haint. “Haint” became “Hank”. So from that day onward he was called Hank. I suppose we were about fourteen. Everybody in South High called him Hank.
“Mr. Giovanni?”
“What, Huling?”
“What part of Sicily are your people from?”
“What do you mean?”
Giovanni was our school principal. He wanted to be whiter than the whitest whites, but he looked like us. Thick lips, broad nose. Hank stood facing him in the hallway. “You’re from Sicily, aren’t you?”
You could see Giovanni getting mad. He held his breath. His cheeks went all purple.
“You got a problem, Huling?”
“No, sir.”
“Then cut it out.”
“I was only asking what part of Sicily your people come from. Just interested, that’s all. Nothing wrong with that?”
I was standing there too. The way Giovanni looked at him, like he could read his mind. This nigger knows I’ve got black blood. He hated us.
“I’m gonna count to three, Huling.”
“Okay, okay,” Hank said, breaking into a laugh.
“Get into my office.”
“What for?”
“Now.”
I’ve forgotten what kind of punishment he got.
‘Hank was a constant in my life. There were times when we didn’t see each other that much but even then I had the feeling he was close by. He was much freer than I was. In a way he was the head of the household. I never knew exactly what all he got up to. I just wanted to be around him. Even when we were little I had the feeling that somehow or other, he had more know-how about life than I did. Why things were the way they were. Like he had some kind of secret knowledge none of us other kids had. He was himself very early on. A personality. And by hanging around with him I had the sense of becoming more of myself too.
‘We had a lot in common. I remember waiting out on the driveway for my father to come pick me up. He’d said he would take me out. It was a Saturday afternoon. Beautiful summer weather. I’d put on my new black sneakers, my jeans, and a tight white dress shirt. My mother said I should come inside, but I sat there stock-still, waiting. I was convinced he would come get me. Only when it got dark did I go inside. This ritual repeated itself four times. My father was an alcoholic, like Hank’s. We felt the same lack of a father, the same pain, the same anger. But Hank wasn’t afraid. I remember once a bunch of us hanging around in front of South High. Just messing around, nothing serious. Up comes the police. They tell us to split up, beat it. Hank steps forward and sticks his fist in the air. “Black power! Black power! I’m Stokely Carmichael’s cousin.” He knew about the Black Panthers. Malcolm X. They arrested him and threw him into the paddy wagon. Only let him free the next day. It was like he was constantly testing himself. How far can I go? And sometimes he tested me too. Once we bought a car together, an old gray Plymouth, for eighty-five dollars. Hank wanted to be the first to drive it. That same night he totaled it. Didn’t say a word about it to me. Of course I was mad.
He recently told me that sometimes he picked on me so much that I’d take hold of him and yell, “Stop fucking with me, Hank.” Or I’d beat him up. But I can’t remember any of that. I must have repressed it. I didn’t want to lose his friendship.
He was a good athlete. Colleges were interested in him, wanted to give him a scholarship. But Hank dismissed it. He said, “The minute I break my leg, they’ll throw me off the campus.” He and Inez Paul were an item. She was his total opposite: popular, well-spoken, nicely dressed, sweet. She came from a good family. Giovanni, the principal, he didn’t like it one bit. He was afraid Hank would be a bad influence on her. But Inez was