In the Light of You Read online

  in the light of you

  NATHAN SINGER

  a division of F+W Media, Inc.

  Contents

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  10.

  11.

  12.

  13.

  14.

  15.

  16.

  17.

  18.

  19.

  20.

  21.

  22.

  23.

  24.

  25.

  26.

  27.

  AFTERWORD

  A Prayer for Dawn

  Also Available

  1.

  IT’S hard to know how to feel when your best friend blows out a man’s stomach with a shotgun. Self-defense, you understand. The guy had a knife. Picture it: my friend is sitting in his trailer one evening making moves on his lady du jour, when there comes a banging on the window. The girl’s ex stumbles in drunk waving a butterfly knife, screaming, “Bitch! You broke my heart! Can’t you see I love you, you fucking cunt!?!” because he’s a smooth operator, see, with lyrics to spare. My friend says, “Get the fuck out!” Guy goes to stab, triggers are pulled, messes are made. Hands are cuffed. Courts are adjourned. Not guilty. Like I said, it’s hard to know how to feel.

  “Congratulations.”

  “I had to,” he said.

  “I understand completely.”

  “It was him or me, Mikey.”

  “No doubt.”

  “I’m eighteen this month. I coulda gotten death.”

  “Dodged that bullet.”

  “It’s not like I’m not sorry it happened.”

  “Hey man, I’m here for you.”

  But I wasn’t. We moved away from Louisville not long after that. Not because my friend decorated a double-wide with a dude’s intestines. Dad just thought there’d be better work in Ohio. He was right … more or less. This was 1994. I was fourteen. It was nearly three years before I had another friend. That’s just the way it is.

  People often ask me, “What was it that made you decide to dedicate your life to hate?” They want an answer that starts with, “Well, you see, I was hurt this one time …” And when people ask me, “What was it that turned you around?” They want an answer like, “Jesus.” Or, “Jail really opened my eyes.” Or, “Soandso taught me the meaning of love / peace / tolerance / inserthippieshitbuzzwordhere.” But none of that is right. My answer to both is “Nothing.”

  My dad is a boiler operator. Or rather, he was until the accident. Mom is a tele-marketer. At least fifty times on an average day my mother is invited to go fuck herself, get cancer, die a fiery death, or suck any number of anatomical bits and pieces. If she works after 9:00 PM she gets an extra two dollars an hour. Good times.

  Let’s get one thing straight: my parents are not stupid people. But it’s safe to say that academia was never in their cards. I mean, my name is Mikal. M-I-K-A-L. Because the “chae” in “Michael” made them nervous. When we moved up north a piece in 1994 they were both thirty years old. You do the math.

  I’m glad the plan to move to Ohio did not include hopes of leaving the manslaughter behind, because that would’ve been mighty disappointing. Finances being what they were, we ended up in a little pocket of the world called Blackchurch. Although that name is shorthand for the whole eastern side of the neighborhood, the area that can rightfully be called Blackchurch is really just one intersection where Blackstone Street crosses Desmond Road (or even just one of the four actual churches that occupy the adjacent corners). And you see, a million years before Christ was born Desmond Road was called Churchwalk, and everyone in the neighborhood still calls it that. Get that wrong and you expose yourself as a Blackchurch virgin. Not a good thing to be. Another thing not to be in Blackchurch is white.

  You go to sleep there every night to the sound of gunfire. To this day I toss and turn in fits of restless slumber without the melodious sounds of the ratta-tat-tat bop pop tagow. We hadn’t been there but two months when I watched a boy get shot in the face at midday. I’m out by the basketball courts by the old, abandoned YMCA building, delusional enough to think that I might get in on a game, when this young homeboy makes the scene, pulls a 9mm out of his shorts, and blasts this other young cat right in the forehead. I duck behind a big yellow LTD. Folks are screaming, running for cover. And glacier-cool, the boy caps the poor son of a bitch once more in the thigh, walks up to a girl who’s curled up on the sidewalk screeching and bawling and goes, “How ya like me, huh?” And then he just strolls away. (When I think about that now, I hear the funky bassline of his theme song kick in just then. Sort of a Curtis Mayfield / Isaac Hayes kinda joint.) The boy he shot lay on the sidewalk crying, “I need uh amboolass! I NEED UH AMBOOLASS!!!” the blood from his temple spilling into his mouth, spraying out with every wail.

  Sirens sang in the distance, advancing. Paramedics pulled up, tossed him on a stretcher, slapped a mask on him. They peeled his shorts off the bullet wound with shhhhhhhlt, his thigh shredded and burnt like barbecue gone wrong. I didn’t see the exit wound, but it was enough to make one of the paramedics gasp, “Motheragod on a pogo stick!” So they loaded the boy into the wagon, rolled away, and that was that. That was that. I never heard what happened to him.

  I sat on the curb leaning against the LTD, locked up so tight you could bounce a quarter off of me. This baller from the court came walking over, shirtless and sweaty, hair half-fro’d / half cornrowed.

  “How ‘boutcha, whiteboy?”

  “How about me what?”

  “Welcome to Niggatown,” he said, and headed on back to his game. He hadn’t really even looked at me. His name was D’antre Philips. And I would grow to hate him.

  Blackchurch is fifteen minutes from downtown proper as the Metro rolls. Twenty to University Village, but it may as well be a million. Blackchurch is an island. It is its own nation with its own language and law. The rule for non-blacks around those parts was simple: act black or suffer. And the Catch-22 addendum to the first part of the rule is “quit tryin’ ta perp.” If you wanted to at least attempt to play their game, the uniform was set and not to be altered: XXL white T-shirt / XXXL blue jeans. It is to date the most startling example of voluntary conformity in all of recorded history, and I should know. Don’t get me wrong, I understood the concept behind it perfectly. Like many young men I always dreamed of being a soldier. The idea of being part of a perfectly oiled, perfectly regimented fighting machine … damn … that’s pure power. A wall of strength. One mind. Charge in, search and destroy. So boys make armies in the streets. But I knew I’d never make rank there.

  D’antre Philips was one of the many low-rent thugs to populate our little hamlet. He sold a bit of dope, drove a car far out of his price range, played “da hoes” like it was his job, and spent his money on big, ugly, gold jewelry as he continued to live off his mother well into his twenties. As he was a little older, he acted as the de facto leader of a small group of local players: Arnold Lincoln, Arnold’s older brother Tremaine, Ezekial Johnson, Rakeem Hollis, the Willis twins, and token white nigger Jack Curry. Of all the people in the neighborhood for whom I had no love, I hated Jack Curry most of all. I’m not going to tap dance around the fact: I was terrified of him. A lot of people were. “There go that crazy white muh-fucka Jack,” folks would say, “so jus’ keep yo’ distance.” And believe me, the fear was justified. I know that better than most. Myriad rumors about him echoed in hushed tones throughout the neighborhood, and after what I’ve seen I have no reason to doubt a single one of them.

  At first it seemed Jack Curry rolled
with D’antre Philips and that crowd completely on his own terms. He gained respect by bringing every ass-thumping he received back on his attackers tenfold. He didn’t wear the uniform. He didn’t play the game. In fact, he didn’t look like anything else in town. He wore his hair down to his belt, knotted into dreadlocks that he dyed black and oxblood red. He wore shirts by bands like EYEHATEGOD that read “Kill Your Boss.” He was coated in tattoos like something out of a nineteenth century circus sideshow. (I’m fond of tattoos myself and have a number of them, as do most of the people I know. But that fucker was more colored paint than man.)

  This is the only conversation I ever had with Jack Curry:

  “Hey dude,” I said. “Your ink work is bad ass.”

  “Just trying to cover the white up,” he growled, and kept walking. Never even looked me in the eye.

  Just trying to cover the white up. That was why I detested him. His seething, undying contempt for white people made me shudder. Curry grew up right there on Blackstone Street, and his response to a childhood spent abused for his skin color was to hate us, his own kind. I wasn’t particularly up on racial ideology at that time, but it seemed to me even then that self-loathing of that magnitude could only lead to horrible things. I definitely hold to that belief today.

  From 1994 to 1996 I kept completely to myself. I had no friends. I didn’t speak to one single girl. Either at school or at “home” I dealt with no one I wasn’t forced to. I was beaten, threatened, robbed, ridiculed, and run down as a matter of habit. By the time my dad had destroyed his hand on the job and his drinking had gotten so out of control that he had to be taken away, there wasn’t an eight-by-eight stretch of this earth where I felt all right. I was an alien in every space. I couldn’t even wrap myself in some fake nostalgia for my own friends in Louisville. I just didn’t feel it.

  The one slice of joy I had during that period came as a bit of shadenfreude when D’antre Philips’s little gang disintegrated. In the tireless pursuit of absolute insufferability it seems the well of ideas had all but run dry, and some time in ‘95 D’antre Philips discovered politics. Needless to say, shortly thereafter the rest of them did likewise. Philips, reinventing himself as a boho MC called Daddy Molotov, started some “conscious” rap group and began seriously pursuing the craft of writing—which did exactly nothing to keep him out of prison. (Life being the baffling mess that it is, he recently published a book for children, which he wrote in jail. It’s called Princess Africa Jones. There’s just no telling.) Arnold Lincoln, taking “black awareness” to new heights, changed his name to Senbe Shabazz and cut all ties to white people … Jack Curry in particular. The two had a frighteningly heated public falling out where the police had to be called and property was damaged (little did I know then, but I would come to play a part in reuniting these two men … a role about which I’m conflicted, to say the least). Jack Curry, in some capacity, took up with Ezekial Johnson’s sister Lisa, who by that time had changed her name to Niani Shange (nee-AH-nee SHON-gay). They enrolled in University and—strap yourself in because it’s just so shocking—became lefty cause-heads. I doubt they realized at the time what an explosive decision that would turn out to be.

  None of this meant much of anything to me at the time. I was busy struggling through high school where, thanks to God and his cruel sense of humor, I was once again one of few whites. I wore my hair in a crew cut at that time and was decked out in camo every day, taking the whole “army of one” concept to heart. I had big plans to enroll in the Air Force. On the rare occasion that I actually showed up for school I was attacked and tormented without fail. That’s just the way it was.

  I was a sophomore, sixteen, one quarter from expulsion, when I met Joe and Phil. They were both eighteen and had been shuffled through pretty much every public school in the system. This was their last chance at state-enforced education. I’d seen them once before about a week prior, likely when they first arrived, but didn’t think much of it at the time.

  I was sitting in third bell, Algebra I, and these two girls behind me were having a bit of fun at my expense: ruminating at length about the size and quality of my dick, which, by their estimation, probably didn’t amount to much. Where’s the fucking teacher?, I thought, trying to ignore them, torching up inside, but keeping still and quiet on the surface. I’d been down this road plenty, and I never seemed to know the right way to turn. Finally,

  “Psssssst! White boy! Yo, white boy!”

  And it just came out …

  “What the hell do you want, black girl?”

  Fuck.

  “OOOOOoooooh, no no no no no no no no no no no no NO! NO you di’en’t! You did NOT jus’ call me ‘blackgirl.’ Uh uh.”

  People started to laugh and taunt me. I’m catching erasers to the head and all sorts of slurs about my family tree and the color of my neck (which had to have been mighty red by that point).

  “You called me ‘whiteboy,’“ I said, trying to remain cool. “I called you ‘blackgirl.’ Adds up real nice the way I see it. Stop me if I’m going too fast for you.”

  “Fool! You betta rekuhnize!”

  “I recognize that you ain’t got much manners,” I continued digging my own grave. “Didn’t your mother and father teach you nothing? But then, you probably ain’t got a father, do you?”

  “Awwwwwwwwwwwwwww SHIT!”

  “Did you just insult this here fine sista, punk?” some homeboy said, getting right in my face. “I know you wouldn’t dare use ‘at tone with a BLACK woman. Original woman. Mother of da Earf.”

  “He sho NUFF did! Fuck ‘im up!”

  This is how I figured I would die, I thought to myself … when out of the blue one of the new transfers, silent to this point, decided to chime in.

  “Just punch the fucking chimp, kid,” he said to me. “Just jack him in the mouth. Look at them gi-normous lips. It won’t even hurt your fist.” We all turned around to see this thick, shaven-headed Caucasian side of beef, smiling like a sunny afternoon. Phil Reider by name. Seated next to him was a fellow named Joe Briggan. They were dressed in identical gear down to the white laces in their black books: bowling jackets, red suspenders, neck tats that each read “white power.” They both leaned in with a cocksure arrogance that I had never seen on white people. Ever.

  “You just say somethin’ to me, peckawood?” the homeboy asked, hissing, his cheek twitching furiously as everyone braced for the inevitable. “No, Rochester, I didn’t,” Phil answered casually. “I said something about you. When you hear the words, ‘Go fetch my slippers, Darkie,’ THEN you’ll know I’m talking to you.”

  And then, the mayhem.

  The entire class spilled out into the hallway on a wave of flying fists. Unbeknownst to anyone, Phil and Joe were packing an arsenal’s worth of weapons: black jacks, chains, brass knuckles, which almost, but not quite, leveled the playing field. I got in my licks and took a few as well, but strangely enough, I wasn’t really all that scared. One of my brand new lifelong friends handed me a retracting baton, which I flipped to its full extension and swung as widely as my arm would reach. Aiming for legs, I built a comfortable little force field all about me. It took a good half of the faculty plus all of the assistant football coaches to subdue the melee and separate the offending parties. We were all expelled. Surprise.

  My parents didn’t care that I was no longer in school. And even if they had it wouldn’t have made any difference to me, for I saw very little of them after that. I’ve seen very little of them since.

  Phil and Joe took me to meet their crew.

  “This here’s Mikal Fanon, y’all. He’s a bad mamma jamma and he don’t take no guff.”

  Phil and Joe were the youngest of the group. At least of the guys. The rest were all in their early to mid-twenties. Top dog was a fellow named Richard Lovecraft.

  Richard’s got a way about him, everyone would say. That Richard’s just got a special something.

  “Welcome to the revolution, Mike,” Richard said, shakin
g my hand and chucking my shoulder as if he’d been patiently awaiting my arrival, and now that I was here all could rock ‘n’ roll as scheduled. Within minutes of meeting this guy I couldn’t help but notice how he could dictate the mood of the room with a look or a joke or the tone of his voice. (In all the time I would spend with Richard from that day on I’d see him work that same energy over and over again, with groups as small as two or crowds of hundreds, and always with the same ease.) You could have told me he was a rock star or the middleweight champion or the Prime fucking Minister and I wouldn’t have bat an eye or thought it at all dubious. And if you had told me right at that moment, You will follow that man off the edge of the earth, I would have told you to go fuck yourself … but you’d have been right.

  “You proud to be white, kid?” Somebody asked me.

  “Oh, yeah, sure,” I stuttered. “I mean not so much proud as grateful, you know?”

  Silence. Not even so much as a shrug. Feeling the need to qualify, I continued, “I mean, my mom, you know, got it on with my dad. He’s white, she’s white, here I am reflecting sunlight. Worked out well. Should pay off at job interviews and shit. So big thanks to Mom for her discriminating tastes. Coulda gone some other way maybe. I guess ole Mom coulda fucked a Samoan, or one of them Ugandan tribesmen who wear dinner plates as lip jewelry. But she didn’t. I think that showed real class.”

  Seven and a half miles away an old woman dropped a thimble on her kitchen floor. I know that because I heard it plain as day. Then, all at once, everyone fell about the place roaring with laughter. Richard most of all.

  “That,” Richard said, wiping a tear from his eye, “is the single best answer I’ve ever heard. I hope you people are taking notes. Somebody get this boy a beer.” And somebody did.

  2.

  FROM that day forth Richard’s pad became my hangout. I never officially “joined” the Fifth Reich in any ceremonial way. There was no initiation, no memorizing philosophies or swearing allegiance to anything. We just all hung out there drinking brew, talking about chicks, listening to tunes, playing cards. Before too long I started crashing there. Not long after that I pretty much became Richard’s roommate.