Maybe You Never Cry Again (9 page)

Times like that—you feel yourself slipping into the abyss, and you know you can't go there. So I took a deep breath and made myself strong. And I did the only thing I knew was worth doing: making people laugh. That's right, I decided I'd entertain the 141 other people in line ahead of me.

“The joys of being broke, motherfucker,” I began.

Heads whipped around.
What's that?
I started talking about jobs, and life in the inner city, and how you know your little girl ain't gonna have much in the way of Christmas that year. But I made it
funny.
And people were laughing. Letting it out.

Couple of security guards came over to see what all the fuss was about, and pretty soon they were laughing, too.

“I was gonna sing a little song I know,
Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?
But somethin' tell me this is the wrong place to sing it.”

Even the clerks were paying attention. Mood in that whole place changed fast, like magic. That's comedy for you.

I kept going: “My landlord comes by. Tries to be nice. He tells me, ‘Bernard, I like you. I've always liked you. But the rent's way overdue, and I've got people lining up around the block for this apartment.' ‘Lining up around the block, motherfucker!' I tell the sumbitch, ‘Who wants to live in this crack house?' And he says, ‘
You
livin' here, ain't you?'”

I stopped to catch my breath, enjoying the laughter, when one of the guards came by to say a clerk was sending for me. There was still about a hundred people ahead of me, but I went over to the window to see what was up. The elderly woman on the far side of the glass nodded hello.

“That was fast,” I said.

She smiled at me. “Gonna let the funny man jump the line.”

She took me out back and I sat across from her at a desk and she filled out the paperwork right quick. She had glasses like my grandma, little half-moon things on a chain, perched at the end of her nose.

“I'm going to give you four hundred cash and three hundred in food stamps,” she said. “That ought to get you started.”

Sweet Jesus. My head went down. I was so ashamed.

“Young man?”

I couldn't look up at her.

“I want you to hold your head up,” she said.

“Can't hold my head up,” I said, near to crying.

She reached across the table and took my left hand in both of her hands and she squoze it. And she said, “Bernard McCullough, you just hang on, boy. I know you're going to make it.”

Man, I about lost it there and then.

 

I went home and the landlord was waiting for me. He said he was sorry, but I couldn't stay another day. He had to rent the apartment. New tenant was coming by first thing the next morning. And would I kindly try to leave the place clean.

I called Rhonda at work and told her, and then I called my grandfather, over at 105th and Eberhardt, and asked if we could please move in for a few days. And, you know, he was a good man, but he was getting on, and my grandmother wasn't doing so well on account of her diabetes, and he wasn't exactly thrilled about having us underfoot. But what could he do? We were family.

So Big Nigger and A.V. and Billy came over and helped us pack and got us moved in. Grandpa Thurman watched us bring the stuff in, frowning to beat the band. And I'll be honest with you, I wasn't exactly dancing, neither. My little family squeezed into one room, boxes and shit piled high against the walls. I was ashamed, brother. I didn't even want to show my face. Plus this was the house my mother had died in. I could smell that cancer smell, and it seemed to be following me around.

Got to bed that night, saw that Boops was fast asleep, and I turned to my wife. “I'm sorry, Rhonda,” I said.

“What are you sorry about, Bernard? It's fine. We'll be fine.”

It's like we'd changed places. It was usually me that told her to take it easy; that things would come out all right; that she worried too much. But now she could see how humiliated I was. I was failing my family. I knew I would overcome it, but at the time I was full of terrible feelings.

Next morning, while it was still dark outside, I got up and went to the newsstand and fetched the newspaper. I brought it back and sat in the kitchen, hunched over the classifieds, looking for work.

Then Rhonda was up and off to the hospital, and I got Boops fed and took her to school. When I let go of her little hand and watched her walk through the front door, I felt lost and alone.

Then I had to go back to Human Resources to get my state ID card. My picture on there: It made me feel like a criminal. Every time I went for my check and my food stamps, standing in those long lines, I'd reach the window and slide that little laminated card at the clerk. Lord, the way the clerk would look at my card!
Close at my picture, then up at me, then at the card again. That sour look; disapproving. It made me feel like a criminal. Made the degradation worse than ever.

 

Back at the house, I tried to make myself useful. Aunt Evelyn was out all day, at work, and my grandpa was usually off visiting with friends from church. But my grandma never left the house. The diabetes had really laid her low. Her eyes were worse than ever, and her legs had begun to fail. Everybody tried to limit her, but she wouldn't hear it. If I tried to help her off the couch, she'd shoo me away. “I can still do it! Get off me! Don't help me up!”

One time she almost blew up the damn house. She was in the kitchen, by the stove, and she couldn't see that the flame hadn't come on. Woman was cooking with gas; couldn't understand why the potted meat wasn't getting hot. They took away her cookin' privileges right quick.

It was hard on her. She was a proud woman, and she was getting old and feeling useless. All her life her greatest pleasure had come from helping others. Now that was being taken from her. Now she was the one who needed help.

One afternoon she was home alone, clipping her toenails, and her eyes were so weak she cut clean into her toe. It was bleeding like a motherfucker, but she wrapped that foot up and kept wrapping it till it stopped, and she didn't tell anyone about it. She was ashamed, I guess. Humiliation can take many forms.

Of course, she was in terrible pain, and my grandpa caught her limping and knew right off something was wrong. So he and Aunt Evelyn got the story out of her, and they took one look at that foot and rushed her to the hospital.

But it was too late. Gangrene had set in. They had to cut her leg off above the knee.

I went to the hospital and stayed by her side, tried to give her strength. But when the orderlies picked her up and put her in a
wheelchair, I could see in her eyes that she was giving up. She looked right at me, as if to say,
Son, it's over. It's all over for me. I've had lots of chances to improve myself, and this is it. This is as improved as I'm gonna get.

 

On the heels of this tragedy, I got some good news. I was sitting in the kitchen going through the classifieds when I saw that Sears was looking for drivers. I called at nine sharp and made an appointment, and the next Monday I went down to the Holiday Inn, over on the West Side, for my interview. I guess it went pretty well, because they scheduled me for a physical. And I took the physical and they thanked me and sent me on my way. I went home and waited. And nothing. Not a word from Sears. Now I was getting worried. Not only didn't I get the job, but they'd found something wrong with me. I was dying, and they weren't going to tell me. With me gone, who was going to take care of Rhonda and Boops? Your mind—it'll drive you crazy if you let it!

Mornings, still dark, I kept going out to get the paper, circling those classifieds. But a few days into it, the phone rang. Woman on the other end said, “Bernard McCullough, this is Sears calling. You start Monday, seven
A.M
.”

Don't take much to make an unemployed man happy. Rhonda got home, I was grinning. “I got a job, honey! I'm going to be working for Sears!” And she lit up like this was maybe the best news in the world. And it
was.
It's all relative. It was like the McCulloughs had just won the lottery.

 

I went down and got fitted for my uniform and went for training. They taught me how to break down refrigerators and dryers, and how to reassemble them, and how the doors fit and stuff, and then they sent me off to get a special license to drive the truck.

I was working again. Man, it felt good! Only they paired me up with this guy who smoked weed all day,
every
day. Useless sumbitch. He was always so stoned I had to do everything myself.

 

Now that I had a regular paycheck, Rhonda and I started looking for a new place. I don't think we were in a hurry; we didn't have enough for a down payment yet, but we were on our way.

That first paycheck, I bought groceries for the whole house. Aunt Evelyn and Grandpa Thurman had a way of separating their stuff—“Don't touch my chicken! That's my chicken on the second shelf!”—but I didn't care. In fact, it made me sad, the way everyone was fending for theirselves, thinking only of theirselves. Things had really gone down since my mother died. There were no family dinners. There was no family, come to think of it. My mother had really held things together, even when she had nothing left. She was a saint, that woman. That's the got-damn truth. She was a saint and I missed her something awful.

I loved my mama with all my heart.

One night—this was in 1986—I came home around ten o'clock so tired I could hardly stand. Those 400-pound refrigerators take it out of you, and I had to be back at work at seven in the morning!

I looked in on Boops and took a quick shower and got into bed next to Rhonda, and I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

But then I heard someone call my name, “Beanie! Beanie!”

It was my grandma, home from the hospital and getting worse every day. I looked over at the alarm clock. It was two in the morning and I was bone tired. I couldn't even move, and Rhonda was dead to the world.

Again my grandma called, “Beanie! Beanie!” Her voice was weak, but I could still hear it. She must've said my name about umpteen times. So I threw the covers off me and got my feet on the cold floor, and just as I was about to get up I listened closer. She wasn't just calling my name; she was calling the names of all her kids and grandkids, in the order they'd been born. And she kept going around in circles. She'd had about nine kids, and five of them died early. But she was saying their names. All of them. Including the ones that died before she got to know them.

I lay back down and fell asleep again. Usually I went in when she called for me, but I didn't go in that night. I was exhausted.

Early the next morning, I got up and showered and put on my work clothes and went downstairs and my grandma was already up. She was sitting in her wheelchair by the door.

“Hey, young lady,” I said. “How come you up so early?”

“Medicare's coming,” she said. They had to take her in for her regular checkup.

“I heard you last night,” I told her.

She smiled a little smile and waved her hand like it was nothing, and for me not to even think about it. And just then the two guys from Medicare showed up at the front door. Aunt Evelyn came down. We wheeled Grandma out and I kissed her and she patted my hand and looked into my eyes. Didn't say nothin'. Just
looked at me deep. Then the two men from Medicare took over and hustled her off.

I followed Aunt Evelyn into the kitchen. “She ain't comin' back,” I said.

“Why you sayin' that?” she snapped. “Stop talkin' like that.”

And I just repeated it: “She ain't comin' back.”

 

I got home late that night and no one was around and I went upstairs and found Rhonda there, with Boops on our bed, asleep. She had a look on her face.

“What?” I said.

“You heard what happened to your grandma?”

“No,” I said.

And she told me how they got her to the hospital. And how she was sitting there. And that when it was time for her checkup, the orderlies came by with that rolling stretcher and lifted her on the count of three. And as they laid her flat, my grandma looked away, turning her head to the side, like she was done looking at them, and at the world. And by the time they got her into the examining room, the doctor knew right off.

“This woman's gone,” he said.

I didn't know what to say. I felt emptied out all over again. And I felt bad that I'd been too tired to visit with my grandmother the night before, when she'd called my name. But then I remembered the way she'd looked at me that morning, waiting on Medicare, and the way she patted my hand. And what I'd told Aunt Evelyn about Grandma not coming back. “She was ready,” I told Rhonda. “She was tired and she was ready.”

I went downstairs and had a little dinner and thought about how much I was going to miss her. Sometimes, people—it's strange. You look at an old lady, any old lady, and all you see is an old lady. What you don't see is the life that's been lived. With all the joys and sorrows. All those years. A lifetime. Gone.

 

Back at work a few days later, we're delivering a fridge to an apartment on 82nd and Peoria, my last stop of the day. And my sidekick—true to form—was too high to help. It was a two-flat building: nice, clean. I knocked at the door and a lady came out and I told her I had a fridge for her. And she watched me unload it and slide it onto the dolly and cut it out of its box and rock it up the stairs, one stair at a time.

“I can't believe you manage that thing on your own,” she said.

“It's easy once you get the hang of it,” I said. “Plus my partner's stoned out of his head.”

She laughed and her brother came out from the back and we got to talking. I was making them both laugh, mimicking my partner, high as a kite. “I am stoned. I am seriously stoned, motherfucker. This is some fine weed. I got to get me some more of this weed. Get enough of this weed, I'll retire.”

Then I did my Edward G. Robinson impression: “You think I'm soft. I'll show you how soft I am.”

“You
funny,
” she said. She about bust a gut.

“I'm working on becoming a comedian,” I said, and I realized it had been a long time since I'd worked at it. It made me sad for a minute. But I was too busy to be sad.

I got the fridge into the kitchen and began screwing on the doors, and they asked me about me—was I married and stuff. I told them about Rhonda and Boops, and how we were looking to get us a new place—how we were living with my grandpa temporarily. And the lady and her brother told me that the family owned the building, and that they lived in that there apartment, but the other place had just opened up. I asked if I could see it, and they took me to see it. And it was exactly my dream apartment. Three bedrooms and two bathrooms, immaculate.

“Lord,” I said. “This is the place. You think I have any chance of getting this place?”

She said their mother would be home that evening, and that she had the final say. And I asked if it'd be all right to come by later with my family.

 

I raced home after work. Told Rhonda about the place. “It's beautiful,” I said. “We can't jinx this!”

I cleaned up, and we dressed Boops nice and hurried over and got there just as it was getting dark. For the next two hours, we talked and talked. Me and Rhonda and the brother and sister and their mother. I made everybody laugh. “I have a good feeling about you,” the mother said. “You can have the place.”

Well, Rhonda started crying. And Boops hugged her. And I was practically crying myself. The thing is, when you're looking for a home and you find something that holds as much promise as that place, well—it's hard to beat.

We moved in the next weekend. It was heaven. We'd never had such a nice place. That first night, Rhonda and I were walking around like we were in a dream. “Can you believe it?” I kept saying. “Can you believe this place is
ours
?”

A week later, Sears fired the stoner and paired me up with a guy I'll call Paulie. He didn't say much, but I could see that he was thinking all the time. They were the kind of thoughts, well—you got the feeling you really didn't want to know what was going on in that man's mind.

One day, soon after, we were on a job and Paulie “fell” down three stairs, real smooth.

“You okay?” I said.

It didn't look like much to me, but Paulie was moaning like a stuck pig. He said he was hurt bad, and for me to call an ambulance. So I called an ambulance and they came and took him to the hospital, and I finished my deliveries and went back and filed a report and went home.

The next morning, I got to work to see who they'd paired me up with, when I got called into the office.

“Where's the delivery money from yesterday?” they asked me.

“I don't know,” I said. “Paulie handled the money. Ask Paulie. I'm sure he's still got it.”

“We already done asked Paulie,” the man told me. “He said he gave it to you.”

I was stunned. “No,” I said. “He didn't give me nothin'.”

“Well, we need to get to the bottom of this, Bernard.”

“We sure do.”

“Why don't you take the day off?”

“I don't want to take the day off.”

“Mr. McCullough,” he said, his voice getting firm. “Take the day off.”

I went over to the hospital and walked into Paulie's room and his eyes got big as saucers. Talk about
spooky juice.
“Hey, partner!” he said, acting real friendly.

I wasn't smiling, though. “Where's the got-damn money?” I said. “You stole the got-damn money.”

“No, no, no, no, no,” he said. “There's been some misunderstanding.”

“You're got-damn right there has.”

He was pretty nervous and said not to worry, that he was going to straighten this whole mess out as soon as he was on his feet.

“No,” I said. “You're going to straighten this mess out right the fuck now. Or somebody's going to get fucked up for real. Right here in this hospital bed.”

So he called the supervisor and told him that he had the money, and that he'd made a mistake—he'd just forgotten. Bernie'd never even gone
near
the money. Honest. Then he hung up and smiled at me like I'm supposed to thank him or something.

I went home, told Rhonda about it. People—they fucked up.

The next morning, I went back to work. And of course I'm thinking everything's been taken care of. But I was wrong.

“We're sorry, Mr. McCullough. We have to let you go.”

“Why?” I said.

“I'm afraid I don't know. These are orders from upstairs.”

Motherfucker.
Upstairs?
What upstairs?

“Sir, with all due respect—I didn't do anything.”

“I'm sorry, Bernie”—Oh! So it's
Bernie
now!—“it's out of my hands.”

Got-damn coward. Don't nobody take responsibility for nothin' nowadays.

 

I took the El home, thinking what was I gonna do. I had a nice place. Nice neighbors. I wasn't going to lose my home. I wasn't going to let my family find itself on the street again.

I went back to the damn classifieds. I called everyone I knew—and people I didn't know. Cold callin'. “Hello, my name is Bernard McCullough, and I'm looking for a job.”

Click! Ain't no job here, motherfucker.

Suddenly I'm back to being a househusband. I'm getting Je'Niece to school and shopping for a little food and cleaning the way my grandfather taught me to clean. Buffing and mopping and keeping the water off the baseboards, and wiping that glass till it squeaked.

Whenever I'd see my nice neighbors, I'd smile like I didn't have a care in the world. I knew they were wondering what had happened to my job, and what was I doin' home all the time, dusting the corners with my little dust mop, but I wasn't going to look worried because I didn't want
them
to worry.

I knew something was going to turn around. I just didn't know when.

Long days, brother. Long, empty days.

I couldn't wait until it was time for me to get Boops from school. I couldn't wait for Rhonda to get home. I couldn't wait for us to be sitting around the dinner table together, a family.

And there was one other thing I couldn't wait for: late-night TV.

I was hooked on Johnny Carson and David Letterman. I ain't lyin'. It got to a point where I was looking in the paper to see who was going to be on, and I'd be flipping between the two shows to catch the best acts.

Johnny Carson—that's as good as it got. Man knew how to move. Had timing. Knew how to laugh at himself, too. If he told a joke that bombed, nobody found it funnier than Carson. He was very comfortable with himself. That's not something you see often. Man was gifted.

Letterman had launched in 1982, and he came at you from a whole different place. He was a little arrogant, and he liked to think he was smarter than everyone else, but he didn't lay it on thick or mean, so it worked. He was okay.

And of course there was that lineup of guests. There were the actors and assorted celebrities and whatnot, and they were fun to watch. But my real interest was in standup, and between Carson and Letterman you got a regular Who's Who of hot comedy.

Sid Caesar might show up. Richard Pryor. Jack Benny. George Carlin. Rodney Dangerfield was hot; I could watch that man put himself down for hours. Jackie Gleason. What can I say about Jackie Gleason? He was one of my heroes. You had Jerry Lewis, Don Rickles, Redd Foxx. And you had a slew of younger guys: Andy Kaufman. Billy Crystal. Steve Martin. Robin Williams. Steven Wright. And don't forget the women; God bless our funny women: Carol Burnett and Goldie Hawn and Madeline Kahn and Gilda Radner.

Too many people to name, and every last one of them contributing to my education. And it
was
an education. Hard work, I
tell ya. Hell, in those days, we didn't have a remote: You had to walk clear across the room to change the channel.

But seriously, I learned more about comedy in the space of a few months than I'd learned in ten years prior.

I began to see that there were basically four types of standup comics. The first type were the joke tellers. They'd just get up there and do bad jokes. You knew you weren't going to be seeing much of them in the future, and that worried me a little. I thought maybe I had a little of the joke teller in me.

Next were the political comedians. Guys like Mort Sahl, who were on top of all the current events. You'd read something in the paper only that morning, and there it was that very night, a routine on national TV.

Then you had what I call the “anthropologists.” George Carlin was a good example. He was an observer. Watching people, studying them, dissecting them. Anthropologists can be very funny, but they're usually shut-down types. They never talk about themselves; never reveal anything personal.

Finally, there was the type of comedian I responded to: the ones who used their own lives to create comedy. I didn't know it then, but this was the kind of comedy that really reached me. It was comedy that came from pain. The comedy of Richard Pryor—when he got good again. Or Carol Burnett. She might be up there, stumbling like a drunk across the stage, but there was a depth to it that told you booze had made trouble in her life. What set these people apart for me was that they were true to themselves. Their comedy was honest comedy.