Little Shoulders for Such a Large Burden Part 2

The police refused to have my aunt’s car repaired; this was a total loss for all three families. The anger from this stayed bottled up in me throughout my adolescent and young adult years. This could be the very event that started my issues with authority. I know for sure that at this time I rejected the doctrine of the honorable Dr. Martin Luther King. In fact I hated what he represented. He represented the non-violent approach. When I would watch TV and I would see them beaten with clubs, arrested, sprayed with water hoses at full blast, and police dogs chewing on them. I became the breeding ground for anger and rebellion. I couldn’t understand in my wildest dreams why they would not fight back. At lest the Panthers didn’t lie down and roll over. These experiences caused me not to trust the establishment, “the man” (white man), and authority. The intent of this book is not to undermine the accomplishments and works of Dr. King. His nonviolent approach was the only way to go. I could write more about the accomplishments of Dr. King, because there was much that he did. I found it difficult what to choose to write about. Too bad humanity didn’t really recognize the greatness of his contribution until long after his death I grew up a young kid with a chip on his shoulders. I adopted the sense of protector of my family, whether it was my immediate siblings or my girl cousins because of this I stayed in fights. I was small in stature born only a couple of ounces over six pounds. I wore the same size clothes as my younger brother most of my life, and I did not get taller than my younger sister until the eleventh grade. I had fights all through elementary school. My mom became so worried about the fighting that she decided to send me to the east side of Oakland to a better area and junior high school. Chapter three The fears, the nightmares, the sleepless nights, and the wetting of the bed This self appointment of protector, I believe, brought on the fears. The fear of being hurt. It was common in our neighborhood to witness violence. It was so common that it became entertainment for all the kids in the hood. There was a couple of café speakeasies (a place not only where food and beer where supposed to be served, but also illegal gambling and drinking in back rooms). These cafes would open on Friday evenings, and would not close until early Monday mornings. It was pretty much a guarantee that every weekend there would be some type of violence, whether it was a fight, a stabbing, or a shooting. It was a way of life. Even though I witnessed these events firsthand, it all seemed so distant from me and my family. It was as though we watched these events in the living room of our home, on TV. No way could these violent events reach out into our world. Until the day a lady came to our house to fight my mom, over some man. I remember the door bell ringing. We kids were in the back of the house playing. My mom was in the front of the house doing whatever it is that moms do, when the doorbell rang. We could hear the loud talking, but it did not concern us. It was grown folks business, and besides we were too busy having fun. Suddenly we could hear a ruckus in the front hallway. We could not wait to see what all the commotion was about. We ran to the hallway from the rear of the house. What we saw was my mom tussling on the floor, with a lady we did not know. I remember my mom yelling at us to get back in the back room and stay there. As we darted to the back room, I remember thinking to myself, “What could I do to help my mom”? I then realized that I was too scared to do anything! In processing this event at the age of seven, I began to realize that our home was not the sanctuary which I had believed before, that trouble and violence can come knocking at our door, at anytime. As protector I had to be willing to meet it head on when it arrived. The fear of being hurt and the scariness gripped me even more than before, even though, I experienced nightmares in the past. They began to be more intense and more regular. The other event that had a bearing on me at this time was with my dad. My dad was about 5’10” and about 250 pounds. This information came from my mom when I would ask questions about him. I found out later in life that he was one of toughest guys in the hood, known for knocking out guys with one blow. All of this was kept secret from us, for fear of the Clifton boys would follow in my father’s and my three uncles’ foot steps. What I do remember is that when my dad did come around I could see scars all over his body. They looked so interesting to me; I would ask him about the scars. He would only say some were from a fight and some were from cuts. To me they were trophies, medals of honor, wounds from the battlegrounds. I have to admit, I really admired this about my dad. On my way home from Clawson Elementary School, (I attended), I had to walk by Poplar Park, the neighborhood park where all the kids came to play. I had a lot of fun there, as well as a lot of fights. There was a rare activity going on in the grassy field of the park. The adult men were having a tackle football game. This was an event that as kids we did not get close to. I saw it too many times, when curious kids got too close, they became collateral damage, either by getting run over, stepped on, or even ending up at the bottom of a tackling pile. Suddenly, I noticed what looked to be my grandmother’s car. This was very unusual, because we lived a block away, and she wasn’t parked in front of our house. Then I heard a familiar voice. My grandmother. Mary (my Dad’s mom) had an unmistakable voice that sounded like someone scratching a chalkboard (but I did love that sound.) As I walked towards the sound of my grandmother voice, I notice my grandmother standing in front of a woman’s house, speaking to her very frantically. I was still too far away to understand what the conversation was about. Usually when my grandma was this frantic she would be cursing. I remember as kids, when were being mischievous, her phrase for us would be, “little niggas,” “what are you lil’niggas doing now” or, “what are you lil niggas up to now?” she would say, laughing. This always made us laugh and feel important to her. I’ve been around a lot of cursing throughout my life, and there is no one that I have run across that could come close too her ability to curse. She could be so poetic with her phrases. She had words and phrases for every gender, race, creed, and religion. No one was safe, if you crossed her path the wrong way. She was a cursing linguist! This happened mostly while she was driving, (she was a horrible driver) and other times when she was returning thing she had purchased back to the store. My grandmother was a gorgeous- looking woman. Very light skinned with shoulder length natural black wavy hair. Her appearance was that of a person of Creole descent. Which she wore under a cloak if humbleness. I know this appearance had to throw her opponents off. I remember the time she took me to a retail store to return some items, in exchange for her money back. When the clerk would not cooperate, I thought to myself “this going to be bad”. All of a sudden,! she transformed from this nice old lady, to a rooster in a cock fight. The cloak of humbleness had vanished. This was an analogy of, ‘a rooster’s face off’. Especially when a rooster displays his authority by stretching his head high, his feathers raised around his neck that turns into a large fierce collar, with wings a flapping. Just as a rooster stretches his neck and began crowing, so did my grandmother. She never failed to amaze me, how she would rear back, and let the flow of words, motor out of mouth in such a flurry of cursing words and phrases, in an operatic style. It would hit the adversary with such impact, that they would be stunned and overwhelmed. It amazed me, how my grandma could turn this technique on at the snap of a finger. Adding her high pitched tone, never failed, I turned my attention to the clerk. I could see the blank face, ‘of this poor victim’ (the clerk). He was stunned, as if someone hit him from behind, and didn’t know what hit him. He had been knocked senseless, and didn’t know why this was happening. As I looked back towards my grandma, I knew she was on the verge of the final knockout punch. This was also when my embarrassment kicked in, it when the crowds would be to gather around to see what the ruckus was about. The results were always the same, the clerk reaching into the cash box, to get the money to give her as fast as possible. My grandma could not turn this off, as fast as she turned it on. It would take some thirty minutes, in this cooling off period. All the way home she would continue rehearsing this event, and every now and then, stopping, looking down at me saying “don’t you repeat these words” and I would say “I won’t.” Little did I know that some of these techniques would become part of my character later on in life.