At that time I was just a child第三节.docx

1、At that time I was just a child第三节Chapter 3 HomeboyI looked like Lil Abner. Mason, Michigan, was written all over me. My kinky, reddish hair was cuthick style, and I didnt even use grease in it. My green suits coat sleeves stopped above my wrists, thepants legs showed three inches of socks. Just a s

2、hade lighter green than the suit was my narrow-collared, three-quarter length Lansing department store topcoat. My appearance was too much foreven Ella. But she told me later she had seen countrified members of the Little family come up fromGeorgia in even worse shape than I was. Ella had fixed up a

3、 nice little upstairs room for me. And she was truly a Georgia Negro woman whenshe got into the kitchen with her pots and pans. She was the kind of cook who would heap up yourplate with such as ham hock, greens, black-eyed peas, fried fish, cabbage, sweet potatoes, grits andgravy, and cornbread. And

4、 the more you put away the better she felt. I worked out at Ellas kitchentable like there was no tomorrow.Ella still seemed to be as big, black, outspoken and impressive a woman as she had been in Mason andLansing. Only about two weeks before I arrived, she had split up with her second husband-the s

5、oldier,Frank, whom I had met there the previous summer; but she was taking it right in stride. I could see,though I didnt say, how any average man would find it almost impossible to live for very long with awoman whose every instinct was to run everything and everybody she had anything to do with-in

6、cluding me. About my second day there in Roxbury, Ella told me that she didnt want me to starthunting for a job right away, like most newcomer Negroes did. She said that she had told all thoseshed brought North to take their time, to walk around, to travel the buses and the subway, and get thefeel o

7、f Boston, before they tied themselves down working somewhere, because they would neveragain have the time to really see and get to know anything about the city they were living in. Ella saidshed help me find a job when it was time for me to go to work.So I went gawking around the neighborhood-the Wa

8、umbeck and Humboldt Avenue Hill section ofRoxbury, which is something like Harlems Sugar Hill, where Id later live. I saw those RoxburyNegroes acting and living differently from any black people Id ever dreamed of in my life. This wasthe snooty-black neighborhood; they called themselves the Four Hun

9、dred, and looked down theirnoses at the Negroes of the black ghetto, or so-called town section where Mary, my other half-sister,lived.What I thought I was seeing there in Roxbury were high-class, educated, important Negroes, livingwell, working in big jobs and positions. Their quiet homes sat back i

10、n their mowed yards. TheseNegroes walked along the sidewalks looking haughty and dignified, on their way to work, to shop, tovisit, to church. I know now, of course, that what I was really seeing was only a big-city version ofthose successful Negro bootblacks and janitors back in Lansing. The only d

11、ifference was that theones in Boston had been brainwashed even more thoroughly. They prided themselves on beingincomparably more cultured, cultivated, dignified, and better off than their black brethren downin the ghetto, which was no further away than you could throw a rock. Under the pitifulmisapp

12、rehension that it would make them better, these Hill Negroes were breaking their backstrying to imitate white people.Any black family that had been around Boston long enough to own the home they lived in wasconsidered among the Hill elite. It didnt make any difference that they had to rent out rooms

13、 to makeends meet. Then the native-born New Englanders among them looked down upon recently migratedSouthern home-owners who lived next door, like Ella. And a big percentage of the Hill dwellers werein Ellas category-Southern strivers and scramblers, and West Indian Negroes, whom both the NewEngland

14、ers and the Southerners called Black Jews. Usually it was the Southerners and the West Indians who not only managed to own the places wherethey lived, but also at least one other house which they rented as income property. The snooty NewEnglanders usually owned less than they.In those days on the Hi

15、ll, any who could claim professional status-teachers, preachers, practicalnurses-also considered themselves superior. Foreign diplomats could have modeled their conduct onthe way the Negro postmen, Pullman porters, and dining car waiters of Roxbury acted, stridingaround as if they were wearing top h

16、ats and cutaways.Id guess that eight out often of the Hill Negroes of Roxbury, despite the impressive-sounding jobtitles they affected, actually worked as menials and servants. Hes in banking, or Hes in securities.It sounded as though they were discussing a Rockefeller or a Mellon-and not some gray-

17、headed;dignity-posturing bank janitor, or bond-house messenger. Im with an old family was theeuphemism used to dignify the professions of white folks cooks and maids who talked so affectedlyamong their own kind in Roxbury that you couldnt even understand them. I dont know how manyforty-and fifty-yea

18、r-old errand boys went down the Hill dressed like ambassadors in black suits andwhite collars, to downtown jobs in government, in fir nance, or in law. It has never ceased toamaze me how so many Negroes, then and now, could stand the indignity of that kind of self-delusion.Soon I ranged out of Roxbu

19、ry and began to explore Boston proper. Historic buildings everywhere Iturned, and plaques and markers and statues for famous events and men. One statue in the BostonCommons astonished me: a Negro named Crispus Attucks, who had been the first man to fall in theBoston Massacre. I had never known anyth

20、ing like that.I roamed everywhere. In one direction, I walked as far as Boston University. Another day, I took myfirst subway ride. When most of the people got off, I followed. It was Cambridge, and I circled allaround in the Harvard University campus. Somewhere, I had already heard of Harvard-thoug

21、h Ididnt know much more about it. Nobody that day could have told me I would give an address beforethe Harvard Law School Forum some twenty years later.I also did a lot of exploring downtown. Why a city would have two big railroad stations-North Stationand South Station-I couldnt understand. At both

22、 of the stations, I stood around and watched peoplearrive and leave. And I did the same thing at the bus station where Ella had met me. My wanderingseven led me down along the piers and docks where I read plaques telling about the old sailing shipsthat used to put into port there.In a letter to Wilf

23、red, Hilda, Philbert, and Reginald back in Lansing, I told them about all this, andabout the winding, narrow, cobblestoned streets, and the houses that jammed up against each other.Downtown Boston, I wrote them, had the biggest stores Id ever seen, and white peoples restaurantsand hotels. I made up

24、my mind that I was going to see every movie that came to the fine, air-conditioned theaters. On Massachusetts Avenue, next door to one of them, the Loews State Theater, was the huge, excitingRoseland State Ballroom. Big posters out in front advertised the nationally famous bands, white andNegro, tha

25、t had played there. COMING NEXT WEEK, when I went by that first time, was GlennMiller. I remember thinking how nearly the whole evenings music at Mason High School dances hadbeen Glenn Millers records. What wouldnt that crowd have given, I wondered, to be standing whereGlenn Millers band was actuall

26、y going to play? I didnt know how familiar with Roseland I was goingto become.Ella began to grow concerned, because even when I had finally had enough sight-seeing, I didnt stickaround very much on the Hill. She kept dropping hints that I ought to mingle with the nice youngpeople my age who were to

27、be seen in the Townsend Drugstore two blocks from her house, and acouple of other places. But even before I came to Boston, I had always felt and acted toward anyonemy age as if they were in the kid class, like my younger brother Reginald. They had always lookedup to me as if I were considerably old

28、er. On weekends back in Lansing where Id go to get away fromthe white people in Mason, Id hung around in the Negro part of town with Wilfreds and Philbertsset. Though all of them were several years older than me, I was bigger, and I actually looked olderthan most of them.I didnt want to disappoint o

29、r upset Ella, but despite her advice, I began going down into the townghetto section. That world of grocery stores, walk-up flats, cheap restaurants, poolrooms, bars,storefront churches, and pawnshops seemed to hold a natural lure for me.Not only was this part of Roxbury much more exciting, but I fe

30、lt more relaxed among Negroes whowere being their natural selves and not putting on airs. Even though I did live on the Hill, my instinctswere never-and still arent-to feel myself better than any other Negro.I spent the first month in town with my mouth hanging open. The sharp-dressed young cats who

31、hung on the comers and in the poolrooms, bars and restaurants, and who obviously didnt workanywhere, completely entranced me. I couldnt get over marveling at how their hair was straight andshiny like white mens hair; Ella told me this was called a conk. I had never tasted a sip of liquor,never even

32、smoked a cigarette, and here I saw little black children, ten and twelve years old, shootingcraps, playing cards, fighting, getting grown-ups to put a penny or a nickel on their number for them,things like that. And these children threw around swear words Id never heard before, even, and slangexpressions that were just as new to me, such as stud and cat and chick and cool and hip.Every night as I lay in bed I turned these new words over in my mind. It was shocking to me that intown, especially after dark, youd occasionally see a w