Maybe You Never Cry Again (4 page)

I looked over at Spann and didn't say nothing. But at that moment I knew something for damn sure: It was over between us.

Takes a strong man to find the right path and follow it.

I was going down the wrong path. I didn't need friends like Spann. No hard feelings, brother. But it was time to move on.

 

My mama was always tired in those days, but she never cranked or whined. We'd have dinner and sit in front of the TV after. Sometimes she'd nod off, and we'd cover her up and let her lie there, and we'd watch shows well into the night. I couldn't get enough TV. I watched everything.
Lost in Space. Gunsmoke.
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. The Fugitive. Marcus Welby. Perry Mason. The Twilight Zone.

I saw television as a form of higher education. I learned all about structure from those shows. Structure and pacing and plot. I learned the difference between suspense and surprise. I learned how to make stories
unfold.
I tried to beat Perry Mason at his own game, and a lot of times I did pretty well.

But comedy and comedians had a special place in my heart. I used to study Bill Cosby, check out his moves, practice them in front of the mirror. Man was smooth. Even white people liked him. He had what they called “crossover appeal.” Of course, back then, I had no idea what that meant. My world was black. Hell, I didn't even
know
any white people.

Flip Wilson had a show, too, starting back in 1970. And Redd Foxx got his show in '72, after thirty years of standup. Redd had a real edge to him. I liked him more than either Cosby or Flip. Redd was raw. Redd told it like it was, took chances.

Many years later, I actually met Redd Foxx, and he gave me a piece of advice that helped put my career on the right track. But I'm getting ahead of myself; let's get back to my mother.

 

Like I said, she was sick. Within a year of moving into the new house, she got too sick to work. One day I happened to be coming down the street just as she was getting home with my aunt Evelyn, and I saw from afar the way Aunt Evelyn had to help her out of the car. She was so weak she couldn't lift her own legs. I ran over to see if I could help, but she was on her feet by now, leaning on Aunt Evelyn for support, and she acted like it was nothing and disappeared into the house. Aunt Evelyn gave me a sorrowful look, then followed after her, and that's when it finally hit me. I walked off, thinking terrible thoughts, and by the time I reached the park I was in tears.

Billy Staples saw me and hurried over. “Bernie,” he said, “what the hell's wrong with you, man?”

“I think my mother's dying,” I said.

In a matter of weeks, my mother had turned into a skeleton. I don't think she weighed more than ninety pounds. But still she didn't crank or moan. Weak as she was, she tried to make herself useful. She'd putter around the kitchen, getting dinner together. Or tidy up. Or catch up on the bills.

When the weather was good, she'd sit in the backyard and try to get a little sun.

One day, as she was crossing toward the deck chair, the bathrobe slipped from her shoulders. She had a huge bandage on her back, and the robe caught an edge and pulled it down. I just about died on the spot. Her skin was like paper. It was so thin I could see clear through it, to her beating heart.

She readjusted the tape with one thin arm and lifted the robe back onto her bony shoulders. That's when she saw me standing there, watching her. She looked at me with terrible sorrow. “Go back in the house, son,” she said. “Fetch me some water.”

I did as I was told. I went and got her a glass of water and took it outside and set it next to her. She had a terrible smell about her in those days. The cancer was eating her up. To this day, I can see her lyin' there, the sun on her thin little shoulders, and I can smell that haunting smell.

“Don't stand there lookin' at me like that, boy,” she said. She was weak, but she said it hard and hurt my feelings.

I went inside. My grandpa was just getting off the phone. “That was your father,” he said.

“My father? What does he want?”

“He heard how sick your mama is. He wants to see her.”

“Why? He think he gonna get something out of her?”

My grandpa didn't answer. I was still hurt, and now I was getting angry.

“That man weren't no father to me,” I said.

“Well, that's true,” my grandpa said.

“What do you mean?”

“He and your mother, they was never married.”

Jesus. I can't even begin to tell you how bad that felt. My parents had never married. I was crushed.

“I don't believe you,” I said.

“Go ask your mother,” he said.

I was angry-hot inside, but I didn't want to show it. I couldn't ask my mother, the condition she was in. And if it
was
true, you'd think the old bastard would have found a nicer way to tell me.

 

My father came over later that day, and he spent a few minutes outside, talking to my mama. I watched them from the kitchen window. When he came inside, he smiled at me like he was happy to see me or something.

“How you doin', son?” he said.

I felt like punching him. “How you think?” I said. I didn't even try to hide my anger.

“Why don't you walk me to the bus stop?” he said. “We'll talk.”

I nodded.
Sure. Fine.
Suddenly I wanted to go. Suddenly we had something to talk about.

We left the house and made our way down to 103rd Street, and before we'd gone a hundred yards I cut in front of him and made him stop. “I got to ask you something,” I said, “and I want you to give it to me straight. Are you married to my mother or not?”

He tilted his head to the side, like he was carrying some terrible burden. “Did she say that?” he asked.

“Never mind what she said,” I snapped. “I'm asking you.”

“Ask your mother,” he said.

“What the fuck you tellin' me to ask my mother for? She's so weak she can hardly talk. I'm asking
you.
”

He saw the bus in the distance, approaching, and kept walking. I fell into step beside him, shaking with anger. “You gonna tell me or what?”

“Son, that's not important.”

“The fuck it isn't! It's important to
me.
”

He turned and grabbed my arm and I pulled away from him. I had to stop myself from hitting him, and it wasn't easy.

“Listen to me,” he said, “no matter what you hear tell, I'm still your father, and my blood runs through your veins.”

“Get the hell out of here,” I said.

He looked at me hard, like I'd hurt his feelings, then turned and hurried off to meet the bus. I watched him go. I saw my father for the punk he was—a no-good coward. But it didn't make me feel any better.

 

I went back home and my grandfather looked up as I came in.

“What'd he say, son?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Nothing?”

“I just walked him to his bus.”

I went outside to see how my mama was doing. She looked up at me and smiled a sad smile.

“How you doin', Mama?”

She lay there on her chair, studying me for a while. She must have seen something on my face.

“You know, Beanie, as you go through life, you're going to meet all sorts of people. And many of those people,
most
of those people, sometimes your own
blood
even, they don't have your best interests at heart.”

“I know that, Mama.”

“If you learn to listen, if you really
hear
what's being said, good and bad, you'll see that most times it's got nothing to do with you. At the end of the day, son, the loudest, clearest voice
needs to be the one inside your own self.”

That's what my mama had been trying to teach me my whole life. To listen to that voice above all others.

“I love you, Mama,” I said.

“I love you too, Beanie.”

She closed her eyes and I sat there until she was asleep, then I went inside and called Billy Staples and we met up for a little basketball.

Man, you couldn't stop me that day! I was shooting like it was nothing. The ball felt smooth against my fingertips, and it held solid there—as if my hand was magnetized. It was amazing. I could do no wrong. I could see seven moves ahead of everyone else, and I could see them in slow motion. It was magic. I was in a place I'd never been before. Every time I let that ball go, pure net.

 

My mother died a few weeks later, in August 1974. It was a school day. I remember going into her room that morning, to say good-bye. She was propped up in her rented hospital bed, her face turned toward the window, and I could hear her talkin' to someone. But there was no one in the room. No one I could see, anyway.

“Who you talkin' to, Mama?”

She looked at me and smiled. It looked like it hurt her to smile. Her face was tight, like a skull. Her lips were dry and cracked. I bent low and kissed her on the lips.

“You have a good day at school, hear?”

“You look so tired, Mama.”

She smiled again and turned away, closing her eyes, and I left for school. I wouldn't let myself believe that she was dying. This was my mother, after all, and I was just a little kid. She
had
to be there for me when I got back.

I had choir practice after school that day. By the time I got home, she was gone.

With my mama gone, things changed at the McCulloughs. She was the quiet center of that household, and suddenly everything felt off balance.

For days and weeks afterward, people were coming by to pay their respects. People from the old neighborhood. People from her place of work. People I'd never seen before. Seemed like everybody in the whole world was missing her, and the world was a colder place without her.

At the funeral, my brother, Darryl, stood by the casket and stared down at her face. He didn't move a muscle the whole time. Just stared. Kinda spooked people.

I was in the front row, with my family, but I didn't feel like crying. Don't ask me why; I just didn't. Everyone was looking at me like there was something wrong with me, so I forced up a few tears and they was all relieved.

I cried later. But it was a long time comin'.

 

My mother had left a letter making Aunt Evelyn my guardian, but Evelyn wasn't up to the challenge. She was a good woman—don't get me wrong—but she wasn't as strong as she pretended. My mother knew this. In her letter, she tried to give Evelyn confidence. She reminded her that she was a Christian, and that Christians can deal with anything. And she asked her to take good care of me, her little boy.

She wrote the letter on February 3, 1973, two days before she went back to the hospital to see if there was any hope for her at all. “My dearest Evelyn,” it began, “words could not express my sincere evaluation of you. That is why I saved this message until the very last days. With meditation and prayer, it was most wise to handle it this way.

“Sometimes you appear to be under such emotional stress, I often wished it could be someone else, just pray for strength and guidance and everything will be ok…. You have to be strong and
handle whatever comes, because life plays many tricks and fate intervenes, therefore we have to adjust our life accordingly.”

She asked Aunt Evelyn not to try to impress anyone with a fancy funeral, but to keep it “quiet, quick and cheap,” and she urged her to “try to understand Bernard, so you too will develop a fine relationship.”

That fine relationship never happened, of course, but I was okay with that. My mama had taught me to be strong, and I was gonna be strong. I didn't need nobody. I could take care of myself. Even at the funeral, these people, looking at me all-sorrowful, talking about my terrible loss—I wasn't going to let them get to me. And at school the following week, the kids, looking at me all misty and miserable—I wasn't going to let them get to me, neither.

No, sir. I was
strong.
I was gonna push on. Not look back.

 

I filled the time with sports—things had changed, like my mama'd predicted: they was picking me
first
now—and doing odd jobs around the neighborhood. I worked at Hillman's Grocery on King Drive, baggin' and stockin' shelves, and helping people get their groceries to their cars. Sometimes, at night, one of the neighbors would come over and ask me to baby-sit, and I was glad to do it. I'd make the kids laugh and put them to bed and watch TV.

At school, I was back to my clowning self in no time. I never cracked a book and I never paid attention to my teachers—except for Miss Ford, of course, who let me tell my Friday stories.

That first Friday after my mother passed, though, she took me aside before class. “I'm sure you don't much feel like entertaining us today,” she said.

I took a moment before answering. On some level, she was probably right. I didn't much feel like entertaining anyone. But on another level, she couldn't be more wrong. I had to entertain people. I had to keep myself busy. I didn't want to think about my mother, her cracked lips, her thin shoulders, the way I could see
clear through her skin to her beating heart. I didn't want to think about the empty chair at the kitchen table, or her spot on the couch, and how I couldn't look at them without missing her. I had to keep
active.
I wasn't going to feel sorry for myself.
Self-pity is self–brought on.

“No, ma'am,” I told Miss Ford. “I feel fine.” And when the time came, I told a story about a kid who loved basketball so much he taught himself to practice in his dreams.

That kid was me. I loved basketball. I could lose myself in basketball. You find The Zone and nothing can touch you. In The Zone, there's no pain.

I remembered how it was earlier, when I'd be the last to get picked. And how it was now, being the go-to guy. I wondered what would've happened if I'd listened to all them whiny voices:
Oh, man! Not Bernie! That nigger can't play.
That was what my mama meant when she told me to listen to my own self. I was glad I'd listened to my own self. Was the only reason I got good.

You be patient, it comes. And when it comes, you ready.

“Your brother was here earlier,” the coach told me one day.

“What do you mean?” I asked. I hadn't seen Darryl since the funeral.

“What do you mean, what do I mean? Your brother was here, checking up on you, see how you gettin' along.”

“I didn't see him,” I said.

I went home and asked Aunt Evelyn and my grandparents if they'd heard from Darryl, but they never heard from him now. They hadn't seen him since the funeral, either. He never even called. I didn't tell them he'd been by the school, but knowing that he'd been there made me feel good. I thought maybe Darryl really cared about me, and he was just too twisted up inside to say anything. So I went over to his place one day. It was a condo building, real sweet. He rented it. Had two bedrooms and thick carpet on the floor, real clean.

“What the hell you doin' here?” he said. I thought he wasn't going to let me in, but he moved aside and I stepped through and he closed the door.

“I never see you no more,” I said.

He didn't say anything. He was ironing a pair of pants. My mama taught us both to iron, and to this day I can iron better than any dry cleaner. I saw Darryl's shirt laid out on the bed, every crease perfect, just waitin' for him to slip into it. A pair of cuff links was sitting next to one sleeve, and his clean socks were by the edge of the bed, next to his shiny shoes.

“You going out?” I asked him.

He didn't say anything. Kept ironing his pants. I looked over at the dresser; there must've been ninety bottles of cologne there, all of them lined up nice and orderly. Darryl was particular about smellin' nice, and I learned from him to be particular about it, too.

“What do you want?” he said finally, but he wouldn't even look at me.

I knew what I wanted. I wanted him to look at me. I wanted him to tell me that he missed Mama, too. I wanted him to say he loved me. I wanted him to be my brother. I wanted him to love me the way I loved him.

“Nothing,” I said. “I just came to say hi.”

“Well,” he said. “You done said it.”

I said good-bye and left, and all the way home I kept trying to figure out why I didn't matter to him. My own blood—surely that was worth something? But no. If there was one thing Darryl taught me, it's that you can't depend on anyone—least of all the people you think are close to you.

It reminded me of another of my mother's Mac-isms: “If you want a helping hand, look at the end of your arm.”

Funny thing about life. Everything's a lesson. Good things shape you, but the things that cause you pain shape you harder and better.

 

That summer, I worked for the National Youth Program, picking garbage off the expressways or painting lines down the middle of roads. I got another job building houses. I learned how to lay foundations, how to put up walls, how to lay pipe and wire.

At night I'd go back home in time for dinner, but things had changed there, too. My grandmother wasn't a very good cook. She cooked bland food, and I liked food you could taste—food with garlic and seasoning and spice. Plus Grandma's eyes were failing. Half the time she didn't know what she had in front of her.

“How'd you like your dinner, Bean?”

“It was wonderful, Grandma.”

I could have turned and dumped the whole sorry mess in the trash, and she'd be looking right at me and smiling, not seeing it. She was
that
blind.

“Pass the butter,” my grandpa said. And I'd pass the butter.

 

One of the strangest jobs I ever had was at this building not far from school. Guy there, Mr. Walker, he was the super, and the basement was infested with rats. Nobody would go down there, not even Mr. Walker. But I didn't mind. I had this stick, thick as a broom handle, with the end taped up so I could get a good grip on it. And I'd grab me one of those aluminum garbage can lids, big old battered round thing, and make my way into the basement, banging on that damn lid.

Those rats would freak the hell out. I'd go down into the darkness, my eyes adjustin' to the light, and I could see the whole place in motion. Rats everywhere. Rats trying to climb the walls. Rats pouring out of the garbage cans. An
ocean
of rats. You looked at it too long, you got seasick.

Finally I'd stop all my bangin' and just listen. Be a confused rat here and there, lost, still trying to find its way out. But most of them was gone, and I knew I had about three minutes to get that
garbage the hell out of there before they came back. So I
moved,
brother. Bernie Mac was lightnin'.

 

Early evening, in good weather, you'd find me in the park, playing ball with Billy and Big Nigger. James Spann would come around and watch and tell his pimp stories, but we were wiser now, and we'd stopped hanging with him. He always talked in the lowest, crudest way. He'd see a girl and say, “I did her. She a ho.” Man was toxic, and I didn't want to be around him.

One time it rained and I let Spann give me a ride home. He said we should hang; he was missing me; said there was a party Saturday and there'd be lots of booty and would I come. We pulled up at my corner and I told him I'd think about it, but I knew I wasn't going. I thanked him for the ride and got out and saw Darryl coming out of the grocery store, a cold soda in his hand.

“How you doing, Dar?” I said to him. It'd been months since I'd seen him.

Darryl looked down the street. He was watching Spann drive away. He didn't much like him.

“Why you hangin' out with that guy?” he said.

“I'm not,” I said. “He gave me a ride home.”

Darryl gave me that crazy look of his, like he used to when we were younger and he was getting ready to beat me up. Only he knew he probably couldn't take me now—his little brother was all grown up—so he turned and walked away.

By the time I got home, my grandma had already heard from Darryl. The boy had meanness in him, but he still cared about me.

“Your brother just phoned,” my grandma said.

“Oh?”

“Said he saw you with some bad element.” She meant Spann, of course. My grandma knew everything about everyone.

“I don't mix with no bad element,” I said.

“Son,” she said, “I'm going to ask you one time.” Blind as she was, she fixed me with that squinty look of hers. “Are you smoking reefer?”

And I looked right back at her, and I said, “No, ma'am. You know I don't do that.”

And she came over and hugged me because she knew I wasn't lying.

 

One morning, not long after, I was eating my breakfast cereal when Grandpa Thurman walked into the kitchen. “You know what today is, boy?”

“No,” I said. But I did.

“A year ago today, son, the Good Lord took your mother.”

I didn't say anything. I hadn't dealt with my mother's death, and I wasn't about to start. I kept eating my cereal. My grandpa shook his head like I was a lost cause, and walked on out.

I got to class and started clownin', being my regular self. Miss Walters came in. “Bernie Mac,” she said, “pipe down and get in your seat.”

“You don't have to worry about me, Miss Walters,” I told her. “Someone's coming for me any minute now.”

It was a crazy thing to say, and to this day I don't know why I said it or where it came from. But a few minutes later there was a knock at the classroom door and a kid poked his head inside and said I was wanted in the principal's office. All the kids were hooting and whistling and hollering. “You set that up, Bernie Mac!” “How'd you do that, boy?” “Hey, Bean, can you get
me
out of class, too?”

Miss Walters had a look on her face, but she didn't say nothin'; she just watched me go. I made my way down the corridor to the principal's office and found Mitch there. “Uncle Mitch?” I said. “What you doin' here?”

“I need you to come go with me,” he said.

“What's up?” I could see something wasn't right.

He looked at me for a long time before answering. “Bern,” he said finally. “I need you to get strong all over again.”

My heart jumped clear into my throat. “Somethin' happen to my grandma?”

“No,” he said, and he took a deep breath. “It's Darryl.”

I went weak at the knees. “Darryl,” I said. “Is he okay?”

“No, Bern,” Mitch said. “Darryl's dead.”

 

The story went like this: Darryl'd been over at a girlfriend's house the night before. I didn't know this girlfriend—Darryl was very secretive, he didn't share much with the family or anyone else. Anyway, the way the girlfriend told it to the police, he woke up after a night of lovemaking and said he had a pain in his chest. She said for Darryl to lie back down, and that she was gonna call for help. But Darryl didn't want help; he said he'd had a pain just like it once before, and that it passed then and it would pass now.

But when he stood up, he felt dizzy, so he sat back on the edge of the bed and put his head between his legs.