March 19, 2008--For Barack Obama: "My Negro Problem"

Biologically, for six years I was an only child.

At the time, even what we now call the “working poor” could afford to have help in the house—a Cleaning Girl. My mother was no exception. It wasn’t that she was aspiring to being a fancy lady; it was more a practical necessity. She was an elementary school teacher and had a small child at home—me—who needed to be taken care of while she worked. Thus, because they were available and affordable, she hired help. Though there were a series of Cleaning Girls who came and went, none worked for her longer or more loyally than Bessie Cross.

Bessie was originally from South Carolina. Even I called her Bessie, while she addressed my mother as Miss Ray and me, I’m ashamed to admit, as Master Steven. Her parents had been the children of slaves and as a little girl she had worked in the cotton fields. My favorite stories were about her days as a field hand and how she picked cotton and filled up long, long bags, pulling them along between the rows of cotton plants. And how when a bag was full, she emptied it into a big container and received a quarter. This seemed like all the money in the world to me and picking cotton sounded like something that would be fun to do. While a lot of my friends on East 56th Street thought being a firemen would be even better, sliding down the brass pole, riding in the truck with the sirens going full blast, I still hoped one day to be able to go to South Carolina with Bessie and pick cotton.

In retrospect, I now know that the look on Bessie’s face when I shared these aspirations with her was of caring understanding. She loved me too much to want me to know about slavery or sharecropping or picking cotton for a quarter a hundred-weight in a stifling hot field in August in South Carolina. She knew that time itself would fill in those gaps in my awareness. And when that happened, it among other things, would signal the end to my childhood.

Then one day her son Henry arrived. He had been living with his Aunt Sis and Uncle Homer just a block or two away from our apartment. But they were getting old and infirm and could no longer care for him so my parents offered to have him move in with us, sleeping on a small bed set up beside mine. He was two years older than I and knew so much more about the world, and most important was willing to share some of it with me. I was happy to think about him as a wiser older brother.

My parents took special pleasure from the reaction of others when we would, on rare occasions, eat out. When someone at a nearby table would stare more than was acceptable, even during those less tolerant times, my father would say, in a voice that filled the room, “This is Steven, my white son. And this is Henry, my black son.” That would quiet the place in an instant and allow us to eat in peace our Chicken Chow Mein, Pork Fried Rice, and Shrimp with Lobster Sauce. These were the only times I ever saw Henry smile. His life had made him very, very serious. As it would mine.

Since there was no TV or other such distractions we spent most of our time in the street. And because we didn’t have very much, street games required pretty much what we had—nothing. Just a broom handle for Stickball (the sewers in the street or the rear wheels of cars served as home plate and the bases). A Spaldeen was enough to get a day-long Punch Ball game going and Johnny On The Pony required even less, just a wall to lean on and a fat kid, always Stanley Futoran, to serve as The Pillow, to cushion us as we came crashing down in a pile on top of each other. A used rubber shoe heel was a piece of equipment, all we needed to play, what else, Heels. And if we managed to find some marbles, we would dig a small hole in the dirt for the shim and could spend hours then playing Pot. And so on.

We were very inventive little creatures. In school we learned that Ben Franklin said that “Necessity is the mother of invention.” I suppose we were being trained to be entrepreneurs, or just poor.

In the street games that required real skill, Henry was an asset and highly sought after. As we choose up sides, he was always the first to be selected. Especially for Punch or Stick Ball. Henry, when he connected, could punch a ball nearly two sewers. My specialty, in contrast, was slapping sharp, less than half-sewer grounders that when well executed eluded the fielders. This made us a good team, these complementary abilities, and a winning side usually included both of us.

After a three-hour series of Punch Ball games all of us, sweaty as we were, would gather on the stoop of one of our families’ houses and the mothers would bring out quarts of cold milk and home baked cookies (or, to me, just as good, Lorna Doones). Or, if we were really lucky, there would be ice cold bottles of Coca Cola and glasses of black cherry soda made fresh on the spot from thick pourings of Hoffman’s Syrup and Seltzer water squirted from a siphoned bottle. Pretty dreamy days, particularly if a soon-to-be pubescent sister would join us.

These days and years rolled into one long memory. We were all growing fast. Very fast—another of America’s promises was that the sons and daughters would turn out to be much, much taller than their immigrant parents; and mostly all of us were fulfilling that dream. A few, Heshy Perlmutter, especially, were not only growing taller by the hour but were even sprouting hair in unmentionable places and earning exotic street names such as Big Dick.

By then I had a younger brother and that meant there was no room any longer in our cramped apartment for Henry and that he needed to live with Bessie. Which he did. But he visited regularly and stayed over night frequently, particularly if East 56th Street was scheduled to engage in an inter-block Stickball competition on the weekend. Henry was our only hope of victory and thus was welcomed and secreted onto our team as a Ringer.

And while staying with us, in addition to the Stickball, he and I would visit his Aunt Sis and Uncle Homer, now quite ancient. In fact, they looked as old to me as those Armenians who were frequently being pictured in National Geographic as the earth’s oldest living humans. They could have given them a run for their money, though they I am sure they never ate any yogurt. In fact, I don’t think they ever ate more than some rice wet with giblet gravy.

Aunt Sis and Uncle Homer lived in the basement bowels of the one apartment house in the neighborhood, among the coal bins and hot water boilers. The walls of their “rooms” were made from the cardboard sides of discarded refrigerator cartons hung on clothes lines strung between the basement columns. In turn for not having to pay rent (it was hard to imagine anyone paying rent for where they lived), they were required to haul up to the street the huge steel ash cans of cinders that were the residue from the building’s coal-fired burners. A job well beyond their capabilities, and thus Henry, with me as his assistant, did that for them. In turn, in what I now understand to be dialect, they would tell stories of their life in the rural South 50 years earlier. Stories that began to make picking cotton sound to me like anything but fun. Thus, as my neighborhood friends, I too began to think about becoming a fireman.

Those afternoons with Aunt Sis and Uncle Homer were among the happiest of my life. It is not just a gauzy memory of a simpler reality when I was much younger and full of hope and optimism, when anything felt possible and my body always did what I wanted it to. They were amazing, generous, and loving. Wise with years. And in spite of what they had seen and experienced, they were without anger or bitterness. They had become my aunt and uncle as much as Henry had become my parents’ son.

One Saturday, we managed to eek out a late-inning victory in the Stickball game with the hated team of Italians from around the corner. With Henry driving in the winning run with a two-and-a-half-sewer blast. We had never beaten them before so we were in the mood to celebrate back on 56th Street.

It was a hot day and we looked forward to cooling off at Melvin Shapiro’s house. With arms around each other we returned to our street in triumph, receiving the cheers and congratulations of our families who were sitting out on their stoops seeking to catch a cooling breeze.

Melvin went ahead to make sure everything was ready for us. The milk. The icy sodas. The cookies. But before we got there he came running back and pulled me aside. He needed to tell me something.

His parents said though it was OK for me to come over, because his 16 year old sister was at home, Henry wouldn't be allowed to join us. I thought I misunderstood; but when he repeated what he had been instructed to say, I then understood. And so did Henry.

I did not need to tell him. Without a glance, he turned and left.

* * *

Though I had thought often about Henry and attempted to find him—Bessie had moved back to South Carolina—as the months and years passed, I got distracted by school and friends and plans and in truth he drifted away from these thoughts and even from my memories. Then one day, it was right before Mothers Day, I was in another part of Brooklyn and stopped at a Barton’s Candy shop to buy some chocolates. Behind the counter was a Negro man. When he looked up and we recognized each other, before I could even say "Henry," he disappeared into the back and, though I lingered, did not return.