City Kid (25 page)

Ma's desire to own a home made Stan face a tough decision: Would he buy a house with her, or not? Would he be with Arizona George for the long run? Together their teachers' salaries would have gotten them a bigger house in a better neighborhood. Stan procrastinated. Ma waited. He couldn't make up his mind. Ma viewed his hesitation as a negative comment on his commitment to her. So, being a stubborn little woman, she just went on and bought her own damn house. That bold move effectively ended their relationship. They saw each other for a while after we moved into 812, but the bond that had sustained them for years had been irreparably broken.

Over the years I'd spot Stan at sporting events—once he even called out to me—but the man had broken my mother's heart, so there was no place for him in mine. However, he did leave a small mark on our future. As a housewarming present, Stan gave Ma a black calico cat that Andrea named Baby. To this day either my mother or sister has always kept a cat as a pet, a lingering bit of Stan in their lives. Ma tried to hide her disappointment from Andrea and me, but I knew it hurt her deeply. I don't think she's ever loved another man since.

As a result of all this, 812 New Jersey was always a melancholy residence. We had a basement with a washer/dryer, a concrete backyard, two bathrooms, and an upstairs storage room, the kind of space we'd never had before. Maybe because my room was smaller than at 1081, maybe because of how and why Ma purchased it, that house never seemed that happy to me.

Not helping my feelings about 812 was that there was no escaping the fact that by moving below Linden, we were now officially back in a ghetto. Unlike Brownsville, which was dominated by acres of public housing, East New York had block upon block of attached two-story homes. Not row houses, since they didn't share the same architectural style, but all the ones around us had little ledges that could allow the adventurous to walk from one end of the block to the other. Our integrated life in Fairfield had already disappeared, so moving back into a 100 percent black environment was no big deal. Plus, we were on a block of homeowners, so it wasn't like we'd moved back into the projects.

But, like most of New York's working-class 'hoods in the late seventies, the quality of life in East New York was declining rapidly. While owning a home was an economic step up for Ma and us, everything else around us went to hell. The night of the infamous 1977 blackout the last shopping strips in the area were robbed clean of appliances and furniture. Our neighbors hauled them home on their backs or tag-teamed carrying them. The stores that were ravaged then didn't come back. Whatever short-term gains people made the night of the blackout were fleeting. When the morning came, and order was restored, we saw that the economic backbone of East New York was broken and, all these years later, it is yet to be fully repaired.

Our new neighbors were an eclectic group of working-class people. There was a pious family of Jehovah's Witnesses. There was a tough family of Caribbean immigrants. There were our next-door neighbors, the Griffiths, a family of rowdy boys, most of whom would join the Five Percent nation and be renamed True God and Powerful. Across the street from our house was an elementary school where, in the summer, mobile DJs would blast Kraftwerk's “Trans-Europe Express” and MFSB's “Love Is the Message” for hours on end, giving me inklings of the transition in New York street music from disco to hip-hop.

After I moved out, first to Queens and then to Fort Greene, the area became drenched in drugs and its attendant violence. I got into the habit of listening to CBS News Radio 88 before I went to sleep. Late at night I'd go into my bedroom after writing and listen to the overnight news. So many times there were stories of drug-related drive-bys or suspicious fires that had happened in East New York. I'd listen tensely, always worried that an incident at 812 New Jersey Avenue would end up on the police blotter.

This wasn't idle anxiety. My sister had made several bad choices that made my fear well founded. Starting in high school, and then through a sad short-lived college career, Andrea had grown more rebellious. Whereas once she had been a straight A student, school fell by the wayside for her as she concentrated her energies in the street. Soon it became clear that drugs were becoming increasingly central to her life. Andrea, always an aggressive soul, became even more short-tempered and volatile. My mother and sister became engaged in a hot war, not just over Andrea's state of mind, but over the future of Ebony, my sister's first child. While Ebony was being raised by Andrea, she was still living under her grandmother's roof. So the arguments in 812 weren't just over my sister's behavior, but over how to raise a little girl.

I always sided with my mother in these battles, but Andrea didn't really care what I thought about her. She was going to do what she wanted how she wanted. During my years at 19 Willoughby our communications became brief and, at best, cordial. Sometimes she'd try to get me to see her side of things. “Ma is getting in my business,” she'd argue, as though her mother was suppose to ignore her daughter's decay. These arguments made me incredibly angry at her, forcing us even further apart. I felt like she was trying to manipulate me, that every conversation had a purpose and that she was never being honest with me.

Things would get worse. As East New York was ravaged by crack, any family that could escape did. A home on New Jersey Avenue on the end of the block nearest Linden Boulevard became abandoned. About a month or so later some people removed the “For Sale” sign and moved in. They weren't a family, though. They were squatters. Even worse, they were drug dealers. These were lean and hungry young men who ran wires into neighboring backyards to steal electricity, and they began having noisy visitors day and night. Most folks on the block were rightfully freaked out by their appearance.

Not Andrea. My sister befriended this posse and began spending increasing amounts of time at their squat. Her relationship with one posse member escalated into a brief marriage and the birth of her second daughter, Leigh. Saddled with two young daughters and complicated relationships with both fathers, Andrea became increasingly angry. I felt very distant from my sister, viewing her now as the destructive force in our family, and I was constantly having to choose between my mother and my sister, which is a terrible position to be put in. Visiting 812 New Jersey became a chore, since I was confident I'd always end up in the middle of a nasty argument between the two women I loved most in the world. Whenever I spent time with my nieces I found myself in an untenable place—being very affectionate and loving with them while withholding any emotion I felt for Andrea except frustration.

I urged Ma to toss Andrea out or move herself. Even if it meant pushing Ebony out with her, I worried that my mother was being put in grave danger by Andrea's presence in the house. I could argue until I was blue in the face, but Ma felt she could not abandon Ebony. And even though she wouldn't admit it, she couldn't let Andrea go. As long as Andrea was nearby, she could, perhaps, save her from the streets.

By supporting my mother, I became my sister's de facto enemy. It was such a weird journey my family had taken. We'd gone from being a tight team working to escape the projects to a dysfunctional family in a two-story home. The chaos of Brooklyn's streets, which we'd barely avoided for years, now controlled our lives.

Few people in Fort Greene, or any of my other worlds, knew how complicated my family situation had become. All they knew was that I was writing books, yapping on the tube, and involved with high-profile types. Despite all that activity, I was scared for those I loved, yet determined not to let the druggy undertow pull me under. My mother urged me to keep on pushing with my work, to achieve, and to make her proud. I guess I felt like my life was a validation of her life, quelling any doubts that she might have had about how she had raised Andrea and me. And so I did that. I pushed and pushed, and I still do.

I first became aware of Spike Lee via public television. Sometime around 1983 I saw a broadcast of
Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop
on New York's channel 13, and I was electrified by the shock of recognition. This depiction of a barbershop owner deep in debt to a suave philosophy-spouting loan shark was the first film I'd ever seen that resembled the Brooklyn I knew—not simply the gorgeously photographed streets and buildings, but the bits of slang, body language, and relaxed black flavor that oozed out of every frame. Even if I hadn't been aware that this student Academy Award-winning film had been directed by a homeboy, I would have known this film had to have been molded by black hands.

Turned out that Spike and I had a mutual friend, an aspiring filmmaker, who arranged for us to meet at a Chinese restaurant on Seventh Avenue in Midtown. Spike had on a boxy red tam, gold wire-framed glasses, a small, bemused face. Don't remember much about the conversation other than that Spike really wanted to do music videos. I hooked him up with some executives, though no gigs came from these biz introductions (a quite embarrassing fact for these same executives, who'd later try to win rights to Spike's soundtracks).

I kept in loose contact with Spike over the next year or so. I remember meeting with him about a movie idea I had called
Empire
, a Motown roman à clef that never went past the treatment stage. As I said, in early 1985 I was still living in Queens and about to move to Fort Greene, when I (literally) received a wake-up call from Spike, and we reconnected.

At the time of my move I was knee-deep in the music business. Hanging with Spike reawakened two old passions. One was attending basketball games. From my childhood into my college years I had attended a lot of games at the Garden, mostly the Knicks, but also my alma mater, St. John's University. But as a young adult, my
Billboard
gig had filled my nights with concerts, nightclubs, and industry soirees.

To my amazement, Spike, who was working at an independent film distributor in the Village, and lived in a cramped two-room hovel, actually had Knicks season tickets. Years before he became the city's most identifiable Knicks fan, Spike was dropping several Gs to see a squad going down in flames due to a knee injury to star (and Fort Greene native) Bernard King. His seats were in nose-bleed territory, up in section 308, just ten rows from the cheapest seats in the 400s; their saving grace was that they were situated at midcourt, so you had a panoramic, albeit distant, view of the court.

Before every game Spike would stop at a candy shop in front of MSG, get a mint milk shake, and then sit celebrating brief moments of Knicks competence, but more often cursing the ineptitude of referees and coaches. The passion for the game that would make him an (in)famous fan was already much in evidence.

The year the Knicks won the draft rights to Georgetown's Pat-rick Ewing, number one in the NBA draft, I bought my own season tickets. I managed to sit in the same section as Spike, about two rows behind him. For the next twenty years, through lousy teams and two runs to the NBA Finals, I held on to those tickets. Like Spike I'd move from my original seats, though obviously never as close to the court as my friend. Still, because of his example, the Knicks became one of the most enduring financial commitments of my life.

Spike, as everyone now knows, is an intense sports fan. Yet in all the years I've known him, I've never seen Spike hoist a jumper, toss a football, or swing a bat. Guys who grew up with him in Fort Greene said Spike used to play sports, but no one could testify to his competence at any game. What they all agreed, however, was that when they played, Spike always somehow positioned himself in a leadership role. He'd be the guy who drew up plays in touch football or made the lineups in softball. It seemed his most memorable athletic quality was his desire for leadership.

That was one of the qualities that bonded me to him. Back at the
Amsterdam News
I'd spent a lot of time around the embryonic black independent film scene. Spike reignited my interest in film and the dynamics of race in cinema. I remember seeing Kurosawa's epic
Ran
with him up on the East Side. As a Christmas present, he gave me the film's poster, which I still have. Later we went to the first screening of Steven Spielberg's
The Color Purple
in Times Square, a film whose style and content outraged him.

When Spike was impressed, as with
Ran
, his speaking voice was deliberate and slightly hushed, and had a herky-jerky rhythm that allowed you to see his mind gathering his thoughts. When he was irritated, as with
Purple
, accusation and criticism tumbled like cereal out of a box, as his voice swelled with disdain. Spike's third gear was more mysterious. He could be deadly quiet, and then, out of the blue, pop up with a question, receive a response, and then disappear back into his cocoon.

Later, when Spike went on his publicity tour for
She's Gotta Have It
, I'd get calls from journalist friends around the country wondering if they'd offended Spike, 'cause he'd give monosyllabic answers as he gazed at them sleepy-eyed. One exasperated writer in Philly told me of Spike sitting, slumped over a table, responding to questions with all the deliberate speed of a 78 rpm recording. I'd just chuckle, knowing that the agitated intensity he displayed when angry, or the cool confidence he had on the set, was as much a part of him as this somewhat frustrating slow-motion effect. Thankfully that element of Spike's personality has receded with time, a very fortunate evolution for unsuspecting reporters.

Of course, I can't describe young Spike without his playfulness. The man's always had a wicked sense of humor that included gentle ridicule, bad puns, and inspired silliness. He'd see two girls walking together and say, “Lez be friends,” and chuckle at his own bad joke. Or he'd pull out some crazy 1940s slang like “rooty patootie,” or talk in that high-pitched voice that would eventually become Mr. Mars Blackmon.