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Author's Note: An Angry Ass Black Woman is a semi-autobiographical novel that
I've been working on for years, but finally decided to publish. I was a little
reluctant to share so many intimate details of my life, but everyone who knows
me already knows there's a part of that is, and has always been . . .
An Angry Ass Black Woman
Chapter One
Me and my twin sister, Kitty, was born in Harlem, in 1958 in the basement of an apartment building on the corner of 117th Street and Seventh. Just for the record, Kitty’s name is Kathleen, but my parents nicknamed her Kitty. My name is Karen, but they nicknamed me Ke-Ke. That’s pronounced Kay-Kay not Kee-Kee.
Actually, we was born in Flower Fifth Avenue Hospital. It ain’t there any more, but that’s where we was born. But mom took us home to the basement when we was three days old, then had to take me back to the hospital when I was a month old cause I caught pneumonia. I was lucky. A kid from another family that lived in the same basement before us had two fingers bit off by rats.
The basement we lived in had cold concrete walls, and even colder concrete floors – so cold that even when you were wearing shoes it felt like you were walking barefoot in the snow. We didn’t have money for rugs, so my mother used to put sheets and blankets down on the floor to give us some protection, but it didn’t help much. The basement was freezing. I guess because the rats had fur coats they didn’t care.
I was almost a year-old when we graduated from the basement to a second-floor two bedroom apartment in the same building. We didn’t live with rats anymore, but damn if we didn’t have mice, and of course roaches. Hell, everyone in Harlem seems to have roaches. No matter how clean you kept your house you had roaches. It was one of the things you got so used to you didn’t even notice after awhile.
My mom was collecting welfare, and also working as a bookkeeper – off the books – at a small dinky real estate office on 116th Street. It wasn’t that she was trying to get over on the government, but she had four kids to feed, and welfare didn’t give nobody enough money to survive in those days.
God knows my dad wasn’t much help. Joe-Joe was a sweet guy and a fucking wimp. He was a ninth-grade drop-out with an I.Q. of 215, and became a raving lunatic because of it. He was Puerto Rican, from a poor family in Spanish Harlem when Spanish Harlem was still Spanish Harlem. Fifth Avenue was the boundary back in those days, and he lived on 116th between Fifth and Madison (the Spanish Harlem side of Fifth) and my mom lived on 115th between Fifth and Lenox (the Black Harlem side of Fifth). Somehow they hooked up and he got my moms pregnant when he was 17, and in those days, you got someone pregnant you’d better get married. Especially since Grandma had a shotgun she wasn’t afraid to use.
So my dad was 23-years-old with four children, and couldn’t get a job but as a window washer. That 215 I.Q. musta eaten him up when he was hanging outside of high rise windows with nothing but a belt holding him up. He became a big doper, using whatever kind of drugs he could find. The big joke was when my dad came to your house you couldn’t let him use the bathroom because he’d clean out your medicine cabinet. Joe-Joe would swipe the cold medicine, the aspirin, and even the mouth wash, poor guy. Yeah, they might call it self-medicating these days, but back then it was just called doping like a muthafucka.
Joe-Joe wasn’t a real big guy, only about 5’8” but he was really muscular, so muscular he didn’t have to walk around in a t-shirt for people to notice. But there was nothing intimidating about him because he always had this real dreamy smile on his face, even when he wasn’t high. And he was the sweetest and most caring man in the world. He was the type of person who would walk down the street and say ‘hi’ to everyone he passed, whether he knew them or not. And if he saw someone who looked a little down he’d stop and talk to them, even if they were total strangers, to make sure they were okay.
Everyone in the neighborhood loved Joe-Joe. Everyone who ever met him did. But he was just crazy. Sometimes he’d be sitting on the stoop reading a newspaper and all of a sudden he’d get up, walk into the middle of the traffic filled street and start reading the funnies out loud to the cars zooming by. Beetle Bailey seemed to be his favorite, because he could never get through it without doubling over with laughter. Then he’d get all serious again when he read Rex Morgan. It was so weird for me to see him standing there on the yellow line reading from the newspaper, and being too young to cross the street to persuade him to come in the house. After he read the funnies, then he’d start reading the editorials and then the local and national news. If we lived back in the 1700’s when the city had a town crier who walked around ringing a bell and letting people know what was going on in the world, Joe-Joe would have a guaranteed job. But it was the early 1960’s, and people had radio and television, so they didn’t need to get their news from the neighborhood nut.
Most of the cops in the neighborhood knew him, and pretty much left him alone, and some were even nice enough to direct traffic so that none of the cars passed to close to him, but every now and then there’d be a new cop on the beat and all hell would bust loose. Joe-Joe would ignore them when they came up and told him to get out the street, and when they tried to take his arm and lead him back to the sidewalk Joe-Joe would simply walk away. But if they kept tugging, or got rough, Joe-Joe would fold the newspaper into quarters or eighths, stick it into belt, and punch the cop in the chest. Then they’d be rolling around in the street. Inevitably, Joe-Joe would wind up hauled off to jail, and then off to the nut house.
Anyway, he was in and out of the loony bin since I was five. So while he sat around in a nice clean hospital, getting three square meals, and sleeping in a warm bed while telling people how bad he felt, my mom was left to raise four children on her own.
Yeah, I came from a long line of Angry Ass Black Women.
Being the enterprising woman that all Angry Ass Black Women with children are, Mom did make the best of the situation. In those days, nut houses like Bellevue had this thing where if you brought a crazy person in off the street they’d give you five bucks. And back in the early sixties you could buy a family of five almost a week’s worth of dinners for five dollars. I mean, shit, a quart of milk only cost 25 cents back then, a pound of potatoes was like eight cents, and a pound of ground beef was only 59 cents. So whenever we got real broke, my moms would call my father at the hospital and tell him to break out so she could turn him back in and get five dollars.
Being born in Harlem was the shit. It really was. It was in the early sixties, after the white folks stopped coming around because of the riots, and before the black folks started talking about black power. But I gotta tell you, all the bullshit I hear about people being poor when they was kids but not knowing it, is just that. Bullshit. Hell yeah, we knew we was poor, and everyone else in the neighborhood knew they was poor, too.
Like I said, I lived on 117th Street, between Lenox and 7th Avenues. They call it Marcus Garvey Boulevard and Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Boulevard now, but for old-time New Yorkers like me, it’s always gonna be Lenox and 7th.
I lived on the same side of the street as Graham Court, that grand old building on Seventh Ave that took up part of 116th street and 117th street. All the rich folks lived at Graham Court. And there was a big old fence around it, which I just knew was there to keep us poor folks out. Didn’t matter. We knew how to scale fences. We’d climb the fence all the time to play hide-and-seek. See Graham Court was a big old ass complex, and actually had four buildings inside that fence. I bet in the real old days they had doormen at each building, but by the time I was up and playing over there weren’t no doormen. They had intercoms, though, and you could just keep ringing bells until someone let you in. So when someone became “it” and had to count to a hundred, all of us other kids would scale the fence and start ringing bells to get in one of the buildings. Inside was just beautiful. They had real brass doorknobs and door trimmings and there was even a chandelier in the lobby. The stairs were made out of marble, and they had the old-fashioned elevators where you had to open the door and then open a gate to get inside. Oh man, Graham Court was the shit. When I used to dream of being rich I would dream about having an apartment at Graham Court. But it seemed like an impossible dream. Especially when hide-and-seek was over and we’d have to go back to our homes filled with mice and roaches. I don’t care how clean your mom kept the apartment you had mice and roaches, and like I said, when we lived in the basement we had out and out rats. I remember my mom bought a cat cause she thought it would scare the rats, but one day we woke up and the cat was dead – a rat had bitten the shit out of it.
Most of the buildings on the block were five-story walk-ups, but there was a couple of brownstones, too. They was built like in the 1900s to be townhouses for white folks, but after blacks took over Harlem most of them was turned into rooming houses. Everybody was finding a way to make ends meet.
I remember there was one kid who moved on the block when I was about 5-years-old. A real uppity kid, who believed his parents when they told him he was too good to be playing with us. I think his father used to be a butler or something for some rich old white man in Long Island, and when the rich old man died his grown up kids swept in and swept the old faithful butler out on his ass, and down to Harlem without a job.
Anyway, we used to call the uppity kid, Poindexter, because his nose was always stuck in the book, and his head stuck up his ass. Don’t get me wrong, we ain’t hold the fact that he liked to read against him. At least, I didn’t. Maybe because both my mom and Joe-Joe were such prolific readers I started reading real early myself. I had moved past the illustrated fairy tale books long before I was 5 and attending kindergarten, and was already tackling books on the 4th grade level like Snowbound with Betsey, and The Black Stallion. Yeah, I loved to read, so Poindexter’s nose in the book didn’t bother me, but the fact that if one of the kids tried to talk to him he’d look at us as if he were dirt and scurry off without saying anything back did bother the shit out of me. Bothered the shit out of all the kids on 117th Street. I mean, Poindexter actually believed the crap his parents were telling him about him being too good to associate with riff-raff like us. And on top of that, he was scared of us kids although he tried to hide it at first. But see, kids in Harlem can smell fear like a shark can smell blood. Brucie, who lived up on the fourth floor of my building, was the first one to corner the fool.
It was in the summer, and all us kids were in the street. Nobody had air conditioners in those days, least not anybody on 117th Street, so from sunup to sundown the kids were out in the street. On this particular day, just like any other day, the boys were playing skelzies, a chalk game drawn on the black pavement and played with soda tops, and the girls were jumping double-dutch. The older men in the block had cordoned off both ends of the street with trash cans so no cars could disturb us. But none of them was around to save Poindexter, and probably wouldn’t have if they were. They ain’t like his folks just like we ain’t like him.
So Poindexter was coming out the building, trying to guide a big two-wheeler bike down the front stoop. An English Racer. Just like we used to see on the T.V. commercials. I don’t know if they even make them anymore, but they was the shit back in 1963. It was the last gift the white old rich man bought for Poindexter before he dropped dead. Brucie looked up and saw Poindexter, and saw that bike, and it was on.
He got up from the skelzies game and walked over to Poindexter. “I heard you called my little cousin a bitch.”
Poindexter held the bike’s handle bars, and looked around, his eyes getting all big like. “I haven’t called anyone out of their names. I don’t even know your cousin.”
“You’se a liar!” Bruce looked around quickly to see who was available to play his make-believe cousin. “That’s her right there,” he said pointing to me.
I sucked my teeth because I was next in line for a jump, but walked over to play my part. Brucie had a good pick, cause I was the best actress on the block. I had plenty of experience cause my big brother David was one of the baddest kid on the block, and he was always getting me involved in his little get-over schemes.
“Yes you did call me a bitch.” I put my hands on my hips and wiggled my little butt and shoulders. “You said it yesterday when I was coming outta Mr. Tom’s store on the corner. And you hit me on the shoulder, too!”
“And I saw him to it!” another girl said as she came up behind me. All the kids had gathered around by now.
“Why you hit my cousin, huh?” Brucie stepped up and pushed Poindexter on the shoulders with both hands. An “oooh” went up in the crowd.
Brucie was six, a full two years younger and three inches shorter than Poindexter, but he had a big mean pit bull head and a two-inch scar on his left cheek from where he got cut with a jagged bottle six months before. Brucie looked really tough, and was even tougher. And scaredy-cat Poindexter didn’t want no part of him.
He tried to run back in the building, and mighta made it, too, if he ain’t try to bring the bike with him. Before he could get the bike up the front steps, Brucie was on him. He punched Poindexter in the nose, then grabbed him by the throat and threw him on the ground and just started wailing on him. Punch after punch landed on the screaming Poindexter’s bloody face, until Brucie got tired of swinging and started banging the boy’s head on the pavement. We was all crowded around, jumping up and down and cheering Brucie on. I was right in the front, elbowing anyone who tried to get in front of me, and screaming for Brucie to kill him.
He probably woulda, too, but all of a sudden Miss Hattie, who lived on the first floor of my building pushed her way through the crowd and grabbed Brucie by the scruff of his neck and pulled him off of Poindexter. Brucie was still swinging and almost hit Miss Hattie, but he pulled his punch just in time. Ain’t nobody fuck with Miss Hattie cause that woman was really crazy. She was a big fat woman with a real cute face, and always had her hair done up real nice, and a big smile on her face so you could see the gold cap on one of her front teeth. She was always calling us kids, “Sugar,” and “Honey,” but we kids knew there was another side to Miss Hattie. We was in the street that time she threw lye on some woman who was messing around with her husband, and we saw when she pistol whipped that husband when he came home later that night. Naw, Miss Hattie weren’t the one to be fucking with.
She shook Brucie a few times, then shoved him onto the sidewalk and walked over and tried to help Poindexter up off the ground.
“You okay, Sugar?” she asked as she tried to dust off his clothes.
“Look.” I pointed at Poindexter. “He peed his pants.”
Everyone started laughing, and Poindexter got embarrassed and started crying even louder and tried to run into the building, but Miss Hattie grabbed him. “Don’t pay them no mind, Honey. You okay? Or you want me to take you to the hospital?”
Now you know that stupid ass Poindexter, who was too scared to fight Brucie, decided to take a swing at Miss Hattie? I guess he thought he could take his frustrations out on her and she wouldn’t do nothing to him cause she was a grown up. That goes to show you he ain’t know Miss Hattie. His fist landed on her chest. She grabbed her big boobs, and she let out this little “Eek.” Then she hauled off and slapped the shit outta him. Poor Poindexter was on the ground again, and this time he was out cold.
It was the first time I had seen anyone unconscious, and I stepped closer to take a good look, but unfortunately he was only out a couple of seconds. When he woke up, Miss Hattie was holding him in her arms and cursing us out for beating the poor baby.
We pretty much lost interest after that. But one good thing came out of that beating Poindexter got.
My big brother had popped up on the scene while Brucie was beating up Poindexter. David never really cared about brawls he wasn’t in, so while we was all crowded around watching the fight, he had made off with Poindexter’s bike. David was a slick little con man even in then, and he realized that if he kept the bike at our place, the cops might come looking for it. So he started renting the bike out for a dime a day, so the bike was never in anyone’s apartment long enough for them to get caught. Everyone on 117th Street learned how to ride a two-wheeler that summer.
Believe it or not, Poindexter grew up to be a City Councilman, but he never lost his fear of the 117th Street kids. As we got older, whenever one of us got in trouble, someone from the block would go pay Poindexter a visit. He got more people outta jail then any other politician in the New York. We was all hoping he’d become president someday so we can have our own punk in at the White House. But wouldn’t you know it? The little weasel got caught taking kick-backs from some contractor.
I never felt sorry for Poindexter, and even looking back I still don’t. But it was really his parent’s fault we hated him like we did. They ain’t had no business moving on our block and acting like they was the shit when they was just poor as us. It was bad enough that everybody else in the world treated us like we was trash, we didn’t need anyone on our block treating us the same way.