Don't Cry for Me

by Daniel Black

Let me start with this: love wasn’t a requirement of men in my day. It wasn’t a man’s achievement. In the sixties, when you were born, love was a woman’s passion, a mother’s hope. Fathers had far different obsessions: food, shelter, clothing, protection. My job was to assure you had these things, and I did that.

When I was a boy, we knew what a boy was. There were signs—agreed upon signs—that left no one confused or unsure. Girls had certain features; boys had others. It was simple as that.

Slavery did a number on black people. We haven’t survived it yet. The institution is over, but its aftereffects still linger.

We try not to think about it, our time in bondage, but it shapes who we are. I’m convinced of this. We worked for free for four hundred years while our self-worth went down the drain.

We learned to despise ourselves—not white folks—because our failure, we think, was having been captured at all. And we know that some of our own people participated. We know that. We’ve never forgiven them either. Perhaps that’s why some of us hate us. When they ...

I can’t remember when it started, but, as a little boy, I recall wanti...

A few Colored boys had soft curly hair, but they were light skinned. We were dark. Black dark. All Nigga, Granddaddy liked to say. Because of this, we lived lives of desperate hope, afraid that white people’s disapproval equaled our destruction.

Everything we did, whether we were aware or not, we did with white people in mind. Our life’s aim was to make them believe we had value and worth, so we spent our nights trying to figure out what they liked, then spent our days trying to do it. We still haven’t pleased them, and truth is, we never will.

You’ll think I’m crazy, but I met Death several months ago. I didn’t see her, but I sensed her. I felt something brush my arm, like a cool breeze, and saw my whole life fla...

I was born a slave, Isaac—almost literally. My grandfather raised me, and his father had been a slave until age eighteen. That’s long enough to shape one’s way of thinking and pass it along for generations. Even after freedom, we were not free.

We were lynched and beaten and mobbed and raped and burned out and stolen from and cheated and denied and degraded and humiliated and insulted and belittled and disrespected so much that we believed white folks were God’s chosen people.

We were never safe in this country. Can you imagine that? A life where you and your family are never safe?

there was no rest for the weary.

I do not remember who was there. Or what folks said. Or what the choir sang. Or who preached the eulogy. I do not recall viewing Esau’s body. Or what they served at the repast. Or whether folks hollered out loud or wept quietly. All I remember is that shiny gray casket lowering into the earth as the rain beat it angrily.

“A man is gon pay for his mistakes, boy. One way or the other. Good Lawd gon make sure of that.”

“A woman’s a mighty thang. What you see ain’t always what you get.”

I saw the prettiest, deepest-set dimples I’d ever seen. I grabbed my thighs to keep my hands still. I couldn’t touch her. Not yet. We didn’t do that back in my day. At least not on the first date. And usually not until marriage. No one thinks that way anymore.

From my folks’ example, marriage was having babies and raising them together. I didn’t know anything about love. I certainly hadn’t seen it—mutual affection between adults—and I wasn’t sure how it worked, but I liked the way it made me feel—warm inside, worthy of life. The way a man is supposed to feel with a woman.

Every minute in your mother’s presence was a blessing. That probably sounds cheesy to you, but it meant everything to me. When she laughed, I smiled and tingled inside. This was all new, but I loved it. I felt desired, son. Attractive.

you thought I was cold and mean. Perhaps I was. But I was a man. I was a man the way I’d been taught to be a man. People respected that. I stayed on the same job forty years because of it. I supported you and your mother because of it. I own a house because of it. You have an inheritance because of it. Never did I think I’d have to apologize for being a man. But, like I said, the world changed faster than I could.

There are no do-overs in this life. Either you get it right or you wish you had.

White folks ain’t votin for no Nigga, don’t care how nonviolent he is.” “They might. You never know. Plenty white folks marched with King when he was living.” “Course they did! That’s how they do! They act like they standin with you until you get authority over them. Then they stab you in the back.” “Some Negroes do that, too!” “They do! But they ain’t got the power to alter your life. If white folks don’t like you, they can mess up your whole damn existence.”

But the reason black people hate black people is ’cause white people made us hate ourselves.” “Come on, man! That ain’t nothin but an excuse. We can think for ourselves now. Slavery been over.” “No it ain’t. Not in our minds. We didn’t start this mess about light skin versus dark skin and all that shit. They started that. We just inherited it.” “But we can’t be victims forever, Charlie. We gotta think for ourselves sometimes. Like you said, we can read now, so we can’t blame white folks for the rest of eternity.”

White folks argued about abortion, but most black people were clear: YOU DON’T DO THAT! GOD DECIDES WHO LIVES AND DIES!

Hurt is worse than anger, you know. Anger dwells in the head, then fades. Hurt lingers in the soul. It rearranges your feelings without your permission. It blinds you.

You wouldn’t think ideas have geographical context, but they do. We teach certain things because of where we live. We like to think we’re governed by some higher spiritual or philosophical motivation, but really most of our thinking comes from our environment.

“A man ought to live by the sweat of his brow,” which is certainly an honorable thing, but this applies more to the farmer than to the executive. The businessman definitely endures difficult, strenuous labor, but it doesn’t necessarily produce sweat. Granddaddy had no notion of that life. So he taught what he knew—as we all do—and tossed around proverbs that promised one’s success with the soil.

Many black people left the land in search of an easier life. The swap wasn’t worth it. We got to big cities and realized we had less than we’d had before. The land was our hope, our guarantee that we wouldn’t starve. Once we left it, our lives were up for grabs. Cities devoured us whole. Drugs, unemployment, crime all took their share as we shook our heads at what we’d left behind. Now, most black kids across the nation have no connection to the soil at all. Their people escaped the country, believing they were escaping a life of toil. I understand that. I did that myself. But we lost the gamble, I’m afraid. It’s sad that so many black kids have never felt the earth, never let mud seep through their toes or planted a seed then watched it grow. This, I believe, is a spiritual loss.

The ways of God are more obvious in the country. We left the land, and white folks gobbled it up and created estates for their children while, in big cities, we scrambled to pay rent or mortgages on half acres of nothing.

Yes, you had insulted me, but why had I reacted so violently? Maybe I wanted your place in your mother’s heart. I’d dwelled there once. She’d adored me until you came, then everything I did displeased her. A few months after your birth, I began to miss the light that once sparkled in her eyes for me. It had been replaced with something murky, cloudy, and insincere—the look people give when they’ve given up on you. I thought that maybe she was tired and overwhelmed with new motherly duties, but the glimmer never returned. Not for me. I should’ve known then that we were done, but I kept hoping. Perhaps now I had accepted, finally, that she belonged to you—and you alone—and the realization devastated me.

It was a strange thing, sitting next to people you love but being unable to love them.

But adults are always wrong about children’s emotional capacity. Children don’t carry the weight of history, so their capacity for heavy things might be greater. But few adults believe this, so we pass along only what we think they can bear. Children wonder later why we didn’t tell them everything so they could avoid our mistakes.

Actually, many black people avoided photographs in my day, afraid that their image might get in the wrong hands and be used against them. They said a picture contains your spirit, and I’m inclined to believe this, since cameras focus on and capture the eyes so well. Sometimes you can look at a person in a picture and when you move, their eyes follow you. I’m not sure what to make of this, but it’s something spiritual, I believe. And back in the ’40s, people protected their spirit with their lives. It’s all they had.

She really was a pretty woman. Tall, like Granddaddy, but curvy and hippy like an August pear. She was dark like all of us, with big lips that might’ve appeared swollen. Her crowning feature was a long, slender neck that, like a stream, poured into her torso. Dangling earrings danced between her lobes and shoulders. She was elegant without effort.

I’ve spent a lifetime wondering if she would’ve loved me. But of course she would’ve. She was my mother.

I guess I’m saying I understand the love one man can have for another, although I don’t mean it the way you do. But perhaps the difference isn’t as great as I’ve thought.

I’m dying in my own house—where a man ought to die.

Knowledge is a funny thing, Isaac. It informs by exposing. It shows you precisely how much you don’t know.