John 13:34
~
“Don't punish me with brutality
Talk to me, so you can see
Oh, what's going on?”
-Marvin Gaye
It
was the spring of 1977 in Somerville, Massachusetts. April 13th. Some
of my brothers recall this day with levity mastered skillfully overtime,
because dissecting that afternoon with clinical focus stirs up a surreal pain
that others in my family care to forget. I can’t forget however.
It
brought the police to our door steps, and days later, Mayor S. Lester Ralph. It
even found small notoriety in The
Somerville News, but try searching for those excerpts in their archives now.
I’ve tried. It’s as if the battle we fought never happened. Polished over like
some mundane afternoon in the middle of some insignificant month, but my family
and I know better.
Afterschool,
and as usual, I was in the kitchen hanging under Mama as she cooked a speedy
dinner. She tried in earnest to shoo me away to my sisters, Nicole and Delourdes.
They were washing dishes and I wanted no part in it. Our small apartment housed
a troupe of hungry mouths that needed feeding. Last one in the kitchen got grate, the burnt scraps of the meal, and
being the youngest, I was generally the last one for all things.
I
made sure it wasn’t going to be me. I was in prime position to be the first one
served if I stuck close with Mama.
I
was supposed to be doing homework, but Papa was too busy fixing a dresser the
twins broke in their room to ensure my work was done. The oldest, Jack, fresh
back from work, laughed nearby as Papa lit into the twins for being so
careless. The twins were a hand full even at twelve.
My
father’s voice didn’t weaken one bit as he hammered away in their bedroom. “You
two-” BANG! “-too fucking old for this!” BANG! “-always breaking something.
Don’t just stand there idiots!” BANG! BANG! The sounds of his hammer were
thunderous throughout the apartment.
I
was happy it wasn’t me on the other side of Papa’s yelling and cursing. Since finally
landing a job in a kitchen, Papa brought back more than just desperately needed
income. His words became fiercer, hurtful at times, and his temper was shorter
with us. He got to smoking through two packs of cigarettes in a week. His
hardened persona was the result of months of rejection and being forced to take
on labor that cheapened his former carpentry skills.
Papa
was working with his hammer, when the front door flew open, smashing into the
adjacent wall. At first, I confused the sound as Papa’s hammer.
At
the door was George, who was lifting his bicycle into the house. Sweat ran down
the sides of his face. His shirt was stretched out its stitches and several of
the buttons were missing. He was covered in dirt. His fine dark hair was dusted
shades lighter than it should’ve been. His pants were stained with mud that had
started to crust over. He breathed hard as he barricaded the door shut with the
full weight of his body.
Everything
stopped at once and filled with a church-like silence found in congregations
deep in meditation. Mama turned away from the stove. The girls left the water
running in the sink. George’s wild breathing was all I could hear.
A
sob wrenched from Delourdes, “They did it again.”
Nicole
threw her arms around Delourdes to absorb her deluge of tears. She swayed
Delourdes in her arms and gently cradled the back of her head.
They.
I knew who They were. We all did in some way. They picked on us every chance
they got. They peed on Delourdes one day as she walked home from school. They
yelled at the twins for coming into their stores. They kept Papa from finding
good work.
“Joseph!”
Mama called for my father. “Come here! Quick!”
I
wanted to latch myself on to my mother as she ran to George, but my limbs were
hardened in place. I twisted and pulled nervously at my stiff fingers to feel limber again.
“They’re
coming after me, Mama,” George’s voice sprung tears to my eyes. To this day,
I’ve never heard him so exhausted. “They’re coming.”
Mama
screamed again for Papa, and before I could let out a weak cry, Nicole quickly pulled
me into her arms. I buried my face in her side and ignored the pain of her bony
hips. Inside her embrace, I squeezed my eyes against tears and listened to the
muffled sounds of Mama pleading for my father.
When
Papa emerged, his voice brought some order to the surging chaos within me. He
was a carpenter. He made things right whether with his hands or words. He was
going to fix this too.
The
twins beat him to the front room and tripped up Mama as they clamored over
George.
“Damn!
George! You look horrible!” The twins finished each other’s sentence.
With
a hammer gripped in his hand, Papa asked tersely, “What happened to you?”
“They
took my bike. They can spit on me and call me names,” George swelled with
anger, “But they won’t take my bike.”
George’s
ten-speed varsity bike was leaning against the wall. It had a metallic blue
frame with curved handles and thin wheels. Now days, a bike like his would be
considered vintage goods, but during those times, and to George, it was a
luxury he worked hard for. He saved up from washing restaurant dishes and
mopping bank floors just to get the bike no one else had. It was supposed to
get him around faster. My mother thought he had too much pride in the bike, but
her rationale was rooted in the Islands. She never understood how much one’s
possessions defined status in our new world of concrete project-homes and
segregated hoods.
A
satisfied smile spread across George’s face as he recounted how he found the gang
of boys that stole his bike and broke one of their noses to get it back. “Don’t
worry, Mama,” he shrugged off her touch. “I’m fine. I biked as hard as I could,
but they followed me. They’re coming.”
“Why
didn’t you just let it go?” Mama argued with him. “They could’ve killed you!”
George
looked Papa dead in the eyes, and with his head held defiantly, he said, “I
fought them back.”
Papa’s
harden exterior didn’t leave room for much soft emotions. That’s why I remember
his curt, approving nod in George’s favor. He understood why George fought
back, but it wasn’t what Mama wanted.
Mama
flew into a rage. She grabbed the bike and throttled it violently in her hands.
She screamed up to the ceiling for God to give her the strength of Samson to
break the machine that evoked so much pride. She threw it to the floor in
desperation. She looked as if she wanted to stomp it under her foot, but she
stopped in motion. She looked to the window, horrified.
“Do
you hear them now?” Mama cried, “All for this damn bike!”
They
were outside. Their taunts and catcalls rose and crashed outside our window in
waves. Their collective voices ranged of violent intent. They shouted for
George’s blood. They called for the nigger. Their taunts resounded heavily in
my head just as Papa’s hammer did.
Jack,
who was silent up to that point, paced the room and mumbled angrily, “Papa, we
gotta do something. They can’t do this to us.”
“You
will stay inside this house.” Mama pointed daringly at Jack.
“This
is our home,” Jack replied to her. “If we don’t feel safe here, we won’t feel
safe anywhere.”
Mama
walked away from him invoking the Lord’s name.
The
twins were brave and stupid enough to peek out the window.
“Wow!
Look at! All of them!” The twins shoved each other aside to get a better view.
George
looked out the window with them and said in surprise, “They brought more
people.”
Suddenly,
George and the twins dove to the floor and glass shattered over them. I
expected to be swept up a cloud of fire and my lungs fill with smoke. What I
thought was a firebomb was actually a brick. It hit the floor with a terrible
thud and rolled once, twice, before stopping against a wall.
Jack
stayed out of the plane of view to pull the twins and George to safety.
Mama
retrieved her bible and growled for God to intervene. She made her way back to
the kitchen. She slammed her book and thick hands on the table. It rattled as
she knelt before it with hands clasped in praying.
“Pray
with me,” Mama ordered everyone in the house, but only Nicole moved to pray
next to her. Nicole said later that Mama held her hand so tightly, it went
numb.
Delourdes
and I jumped at the sound of banging against our door. George wasn’t against it
anymore. There was nothing to hold the door back if someone wanted to get in.
As
the door shook, I wished it were reinforced with steel. It quickly appeared to be
paper thin and held up by weak swears.
A
grim look came over Papa’s face. I looked back and forth from him and the door.
Papa’s
face was so red. He had high-toned skin that could’ve passed for white, not
white enough to get him good work, but white enough that his face rouged
brighter than I had ever seen.
In
Papa’s tightened grip, the hammer jiggled to life, trembling in anticipation.
Shouting
on the other side of the banging door came from our neighbor across the hall.
He wanted to know if we were okay.
Jack
quickly opened the door for our neighbor, who stood in the hallway in nothing
but his shorts and sandals on. His jailhouse muscles made Jack look puny.
Across the hall, our neighbor’s wife clung to their apartment door with an
infant in her arm. She straddled one foot in the hallway and the rest of her
safe in her apartment.
“Man,
can you hear them crackers!” Our neighbor spoke. His time in the House of
Corrections taught him to mask his anxiety with foul words, “Them mothafuckers
want to kill us! Ain’t nothing but lil’ fucking honkies either!”
Papa
looked around the room at Mama praying, Nicole wincing in pain, and shards of
glass on the floor. The shouting outside got so loud Delourdes covered her
ears.
I
can only imagine what Papa was thinking, because he has refused to talk about
this day in any length. The most I got out of him was as a result of an alcohol-induced
stupor. He has taken to drinking and smoking daily now.
In
a land that was supposed to be free of war, our home was under attack. Our home
was supposed to be a refuge from war, a refuge from Them, my father could’ve
been thinking. They, outside our house, the whites, wanted to take away what
safety we had from Them. Like George, Papa was probably thinking that he had
enough.
Without
a word, he walked past our neighbor and down the hallway towards the front of
the apartment. His greying beard glinted like curls of steel as he left.
“Your
father’s fucking crazy!” Our neighborhood said to Jack as they followed after
him.
It’s
tough to say what order the rest of us followed. We all moved to quickly for Mama to catch. George wasn’t going to let
Papa and Jack finish something that he started. He had too much dignity for
that.
The
twins were easily swept up in the excitement, and I couldn’t let my brothers go
out there by themselves, especially not Papa.
Nicole
yelled at me to come back as I flanked my father and the army of angry black panthers
around him. Our neighbor incited us with his foul words. Jack had managed to
take off his belt and hold it like a whip in his hands. The twins bounced on
their feet as if boxers in pre-fight. Papa waved his hammer around
threateningly.
Delourdes
told me that she and Nicole left Mama praying feverishly in the kitchen and ran
up to the shattered window to see what was going to happen.
Our
neighbor’s wife protested what we were about to do, but she slammed her door as
soon as we stepped outside.
It
was us versus a mob of angry red-faces that piled around our sidewalk and
stretched into the middle of the street. The sea of white people was mixed
young and old, an army of thirty strong. Cars had honked their horns to get by.
Some stopped and watched the spectacle.
A
swarthy boy with a bloody nose and bloodier shirt seemed to be leading them so
Papa spoke to him. His accented English was Bohemian, but menacingly chilly.
“You
get the fuck away from here,” Papa pointed with his hammer.
“You
heard the man!” Our neighbor backed him up. “Run on home to yo mommas.”
The
mob spoke all at once, agitated and angry. Frothing forth from their mouths
were more curses. Called us out our names and called our mother despicable
things. My father at his foulest of speech wouldn’t dare say in our presence the
things they called her.
The
weather was cool and even. The sun was hanging towards the west like a Frisbee caught
in a tree. Despite such balmy weather, the sun felt like a skillet to my skin. The
heat that built up around my father, my brothers and I would’ve blown the top
off a thermometer.
From
the corner of my eyes, Jack’s grip tightened around his belt. It swung back and
forth threateningly, a black mamba hissing its own silent creole to warn others
back.
The
sound of blood pulsing in my ears reminded me of cicadas on a blazing summer
afternoon.
One
of Them hurled a rock, a stray loosened by the earth by winter plows. I ducked
in time, and it struck one of the twins in the chest instead. Papa responded by
throwing his hammer out into the crowd like a tomahawk. A scream erupted from
Them. It echoed like a battle cry, full of rage and red. They surged forward,
and we launched from the steps together like stallions off a cliff. We collided
with Them in full force.
We
were horribly outnumbered, but we swung wildly, belting back attacks and
trading punches and kicks. We were a mess of ingredients in a melting pot left
to stew in our juices, but we were too spicy, too ethnic to be assimilated. We
were boiling over the rim, spilling out into the streets for the world to see.
Throughout
the fight that battle cry never ceased, growing more intense and girlish as the
moments dragged on.
Through
a ring of tussled bodies, I spotted the boy with the never-ending battle cry. Both
his hands covered the right side of his face as blood poured from his forehead.
Blood trickled down his white arms and broke away in many directions like veins
outside his body.
I
like to think that time slowed down so that I could record this grisly image to
my memories. Perhaps I was spared much of the brutality, because I was the
youngest and smallest. That was short-live, because in my distraction, I was
knocked to the floor.
That
afternoon, I got my first black eye.
The
police showed up minutes later to disperse the mob. We learned from them that
the hammer actually struck one of the boys’ in the face. He required stitches
and was recovering in the hospital.
This
fight turned out to be what got us evicted from our Somerville home. Mayor
Lester Ralph came to our house the next day, armed with State Troopers. He demanded
that we leave.
Papa
tried to protest by the Troopers strung him up by his neck until he grudgingly
agreed.
We
moved out as quickly as we could, probably so that no other mob would come back
for retaliation, but this time at night.
Whether
we won or lost this battle is a matter of opinion in my family. What matters
most is that we did it together. We protected what we had left. It was us
versus Them. It has always been us versus Them, and probably will be for the
rest of our lives.
~
In dedication to my Loves, especially George and other members of the
Joseph Family, who lived this.
April 2 2012 - June 19, 2012
