A Reason to Believe (3 page)

I was frightened that night. It was unnerving to hear Uncle Sonny threatening us from just the other side of the door and embarrassing to think the neighbors were also hearing it. Everyone knew about Sonny’s transgressions but mostly looked the other way. His addiction was never
discussed in front of Rhonda and me. My mother was her usual remote, calm self that night, hardly saying a word, smoking in bed, as if it were perfectly natural to have a grown man hammering away on the door and shouting threats and obscenities for hours in the middle of the night. I was confused, but no one offered a word of explanation to Rhonda and me.

Gram was quite open about her belief that mothers prefer sons, and she never wavered in her unapologetic preference for Uncle Sonny. That slight was indefensible, and my mother never forgave it. While Sonny routinely stole from his own parents and could not provide for his children, my mother stuck by her kids, worked to improve herself, and provided. She was a clerk at a local dry cleaner’s while taking night classes at Dunbar High for her GED. Eventually she landed a job at the downtown post office, joined the union, and got benefits. We took a trip to the downtown Sears on State Street once a year for new school clothes and tried to make them last all year long, even through our growth spurts. We had to change into play clothes every day after school to prolong the life of the school gear. Except on Sunday mornings, holidays, and special occasions, when Gram took charge of us all, my mother was expected to provide our meals. They were plain and functional, food as fuel. I did not know that peas were green until I was an adult. I thought they were gray.

I never heard Gram complain about our being there, but her frustrations were evident. Always careful with
money, she tried to maintain two separate economies in the household—my mother was responsible for us, Poppy was responsible for her. Gram would buy one small can of frozen orange juice concentrate every week and apportion one tiny glass for Poppy, and only Poppy, to have with his breakfast. She kept his juice on a shelf in the Frigidaire that was dedicated exclusively to my grandparents. On hot summer days, that juice, with all the sweet pulp floating around in it, would absolutely call to us. I used to wonder what possible difference it would make to take a single sip. Who would notice? Well, Gram noticed, and would let me have it—especially on those occasions when one sip would lead to more.

(Years later, my wife, Diane, could not figure out why I bought gallons of orange juice at a time, even though we were at no risk of running out and I had lost interest in drinking it.)

The little stresses in our house or in our lives never seemed to bother Rhonda. She was enviably at ease at home or in the neighborhood. Though she looked awkward as a girl, skinny and all elbows with crooked front teeth, she was sociable and had many friends with whom she spent hours. She was in and out of their houses, jumped double Dutch with the best of them, knew all the latest dance steps, and kept up with the kids’ gossip. Although we were close when we were small, we were openly contemptuous of each other as adolescents. Having raised children of my own, I now know this was a natural phase, but as teens Sonny justifiably referred to us as “the battling Patricks.” I was a total nuisance
when boys started to enter my sister’s picture, taunting them and generally being a pain. Rhonda endured me as patiently as she could while her suitors were around, then let me have it when they left. Other confrontations were mostly spawned by my jealousy. Though I was regarded in school and at home as more studious and responsible, my sister had a comfort with herself and her peers that I craved.

Like everyone else, I was taunted by the neighborhood bully, Richard, an uncommonly violent youth; one time, he wedged a piece of glass in an empty soda can and hurled it down from a second-floor porch at my head. It hit its mark, opening a wound that sent blood gushing and leaving a scar that I carry to this day. He was a part of the same gang that stole my bike from me—while I was riding it. I had a few buddies with whom I played stickball or capture the flag or chased lightning bugs in the summer. But I was mostly a loner and spent countless hours by myself under the back steps, playing in the dirt with my little toy soldiers, creating imaginary battles, riding to the rescue, and vanquishing enemies. Later, I would huddle for hours with the real estate section of the Sunday newspaper, studying the floor plans of model homes and imagining myself and my life in them. I never missed an episode of
Roy Rogers
.

For much of the 1960s, the South Side felt rather insulated. Except for our occasional family trips or the annual journey to Sears for school clothes, we lived, worked, went
to school, played, and shopped on the South Side. We didn’t think of it as segregation, just the neighborhood. We were trying to live middle-class lives in hopes of making it into the middle class ourselves one day, and we spent precious little time resenting wealth or white people. We had a vision for where we wanted to go, if no real path on which to get there. The focus in our home seemed to be inordinately on table manners, respectfulness, and homework—not poverty, deprivation, or social justice.

But by the late 1960s, the barriers against the outside world had begun to come down. The civil rights movement had grown from nonviolent protests to increasing militancy. Opposition to the Vietnam War had escalated, and riots had afflicted urban areas from California to New Jersey. In 1968, after the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the riots finally swept through our neighborhood. Stores were looted. Gangs organized and attacked innocent bystanders. Gunshots became regular background noise. In only a couple of years, our transplanted southern enclave, with its indigenous economy, neighbors who watched over the children, and institutions that craved order, turned into a wasteland of charred buildings and restlessness.

Things were most dangerous during the hot summers, so my mother decided that Rhonda and I should be away as much as possible. When I was twelve, she decided that we would attend Bible camp in Michigan. We would be away for two weeks, sleeping in a bunk with kids from other churches around Chicago.

My sister and I were horrified. We were regular but reluctant churchgoers on orders from our grandmother, but religious camp was going too far. No one else from the neighborhood was going, and we would be out of step with the other kids when we got home. And it was to be our first sustained experience with white people. To us they sounded odd. They were mostly harmless, even amusing, as long as they kept their distance, but they could be dangerous if they got too close. These truths we learned from television, which showed Lucille Ball’s endearing hi-jinks but also Bull Connor’s high-powered fire hoses used against defenseless blacks.

When the day came to leave for Camp Beechpoint, we boarded the bus with all the other kids and set off. We tried not to reveal our apprehension, but we failed. We were hopelessly conscious of being out of place, and it showed. For instance, most of the white kids had duffel bags and backpacks suitable for the rugged outdoors, but we showed up with plastic, hard-sided luggage and steamer trunks, as if we were about to embark on the Grand Tour of Europe. The bus was quiet much of the way, and the ride seemed to take hours. I suspect most of the new campers were nervous as well, but at the time we were sure it was only us. One thing was for certain: There would be no bickering between Rhonda and me. We had to look out for each other.

When we arrived, we met the counselors and were shown to our cabins. They were simple wooden boxes on
stone footings. Each had six or seven sets of bunks and a small common bathroom with walls so thin, there were no secrets. In the early days, the new kids were more modest and tried to urinate silently, along the inside of the bowl, to be less obvious. Most of us had never even undressed in front of someone outside our families. The woods were spooky and exceptionally dark at night. The swimming test was a particular source of anxiety for the black campers; for many of us, contact with the water consisted of splashing in the public wading pool or running through an open fire hydrant.

We prayed all the time: grace before meals and a blessing afterward; chapel after breakfast and before dinner. Sunday was a hallelujah marathon. We sang hymns around the campfire at night and at bedtime before lights out. Even our arts and crafts projects had Christian themes. The black kids prayed especially hard before the swimming test.

To this day, it amazes me that the organizers were able to blend two often volatile ingredients—race and religion—and make it work. They succeeded by making it less about issues and dogma and more about people. By the end of the two weeks, no one wanted to leave. We sang camp songs and hymns together on the ride back to Chicago and cried when we had to say good-bye at the bus stop, the parents looking on with amazement. Rhonda and I had also found an experience in common all our own. By the following summer, we couldn’t wait to go back.

I was most appreciative of the woman who prepared
our fine meals. She was from Maywood, Illinois, the first African American I ever met who owned a home in a suburb. She had two daughters at the camp, one of whom became a great friend of Rhonda’s, and over the years, we visited them often in their tidy community. In her ease with whites and blacks alike, her educated diction, and her confident bearing, she seemed to confirm what my grandparents had been trying to envision for us all along: A secure middle class was within our reach.

My grandparents and my mother were physically close but emotionally distant. They always had my best interests at heart, but their affections were circumscribed and conditional, preoccupied as they were by their own struggles and demons. What I craved most, consistent love and encouragement, I got from teachers.

The Mary Church Terrell School was on State Street, part of the Robert Taylor Homes complex just a block behind my grandparents’ apartment. I started first grade in 1962 and attended straight through the sixth grade. All my teachers were self-confident professionals, and they embodied a very different vision. What they had—college diplomas, steady jobs, well-built homes, stable families—was what I too hoped to have someday. They spoke proper English and wore clothes that fit. And they looked like me.

I was attentive and eager, diligently completing what
little homework I was given. School came easily to me, and I developed a reputation as a good student. Rhonda, a year ahead of me, came to resent that teachers started asking if she were my sister. It was supposed to be the other way around.

In the early grades, I would hug my teachers hello and good-bye. I sought their attention unabashedly and usually got it, though it wasn’t always positive. In the third grade, I was well ahead of my classmates, and the teacher, Mrs. Threet, gave me special library privileges. I could skip certain classroom lessons and read or do homework in the library. I once came back to class in the middle of a lesson with a picture book on horses. Another student indiscreetly started asking me questions about it while Mrs. Threet was speaking.

“Excuse me, Mr. Patrick,” she said. “I think it’s time for you to settle down.”

I told her I hadn’t said a word.

“Well,” she said to the class, “it seems that Mr. Patrick is getting a little too big for his britches.”

I was devastated, though I did learn how exposed you are by privilege. (I loved her anyway.)

My grade school teachers did what all great teachers do—expand your mind, your vision, and your world—and none more so than Eddie Quaintance, my sixth-grade instructor. She was tall, milk-chocolate brown, and supremely confident. In her early thirties, she epitomized maturity and experience. She was pretty, in the way a
person who is self-composed always seems attractive. Our class was large, maybe thirty kids, but she brooked no nonsense. She was firm and had a reputation for being the toughest grader—and disciplinarian—at Terrell. Rhonda confirmed some of those rumors before I got to the class, having been in her class the year before. We were all a little afraid of her.

Hormones start to bubble in sixth-graders, and acting out was the custom for many students anyway, so quite a few teachers seemed to spend most of their time just keeping order. Not Mrs. Quaintance. Her presence alone commanded order. She could cut you a look that made you shrink from whatever tomfoolery you were up to or considering. If that were not enough, she had a wooden paddle, inscribed with the words
Board of Education
, and a storage room nearby where she confidently applied the paddle to an errant student’s backside. Our ill-fitting clothes, our runny noses, and our broken homes were no excuse. She was all about learning, which for her was more than facts and figures. It was about imagination.

Mrs. Quaintance made me aspire to live as a citizen of the world. She had traveled to Germany to visit her son, who was working there, and she taught us all to count and greet one another in German. She took us to see
The Sound of Music
and used it both to enchant us and to teach us about the rise of the Nazis in Europe. She took us on another trip to the Chicago Lyric Opera; I had no idea what they were singing about, but I was completely enthralled
with the music and pageantry and remain so today. She made achievement and urbanity seem natural for us poor, black South Siders. It was a gift I still cherish.

That year, I entered a regional essay writing contest on “Father of the Year.” I wrote about Gram—and won. I wrote a similar essay about Poppy. I now realize that I wrote to gain the attention and approval of the adults who were most remote, yet most important, in my life.

From Terrell, we went to middle school at DuSable Upper Grade Center. The classes were in DuSable High School—a mammoth, grimy, brick and limestone building that seemed to have mile-long hallways. (I now know they were just average for a large urban high school.) By the late 1960s, the Blackstone Rangers and the Disciples, two rival gangs, were growing and competing. Part of their initiation seemed to involve assaulting the young, well-intentioned white teachers at DuSable, like the math instructor who was whacked in the head by a bat-wielding, would-be gangbanger.