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.

A whoopin is different from a spanking. A spanking happens on your behind; a whoopin happens all over you. And when Granddaddy got through with you, you’d have to get somewhere and sit down. But he loved me. I understand that now. His behavior was simply the way of black parenting.

I started school at age six, although I didn’t go regularly. It was 1947. Education was a luxury most poor Negro kids in Arkansas couldn’t afford. Not monetarily, but timewise. Only when it rained, and it had to rain hard, were we guaranteed a few consistent days. One or two kids went all the time, but not most of us. We were always behind, always missing homework and failing tests. Miss Ima

We had to work: picking cotton, chopping beans, cutting wood, hauling hay, plowing fields... You name it. It had to be done. Knowledge could wait—or so our people thought. We had the mindset of ignorance. We simply didn’t know any better. We weren’t unintelligent; we were just desperate to survive.

By ten, I had learned to read, but just barely. Esau never learned. He wasn’t good in his books, but he was great with his hands. Granddaddy looked at him with an approving sort of gaze. I envied that. He didn’t look at me that way.

This was boyhood in my day. We built reputations of strength and speed, hard work and resilience, that made our people proud. Girls loved us; lazy boys feared us.

I’d dreamed of raising a boy, teaching him everything I knew, training him to be like me.

Truth was, we believed the real infraction to be Elliott’s weakness. He’d done what no boy should ever do. He should’ve at least fought, and we might’ve respected him, but all he did was cry and submit to what we demanded. We hated him for that, so we degraded him, hoping he’d rebel and become strong like the rest of us. He didn’t.

she was gon marry Bobby Joe,

but Bobby Joe left Arkansas at eighteen and never thought about Sweetie Pie again.

Then, one day, in the summer of 1956, Esau got sick. We were cutting wood with a crosscut saw, and suddenly he collapsed. “Esau!” I screamed and ran to his side. He was dazed and covered with sweat. He squeezed my arm and mumbled, “I’m okay, li’l brother.

cool rag on his forehead and try to

At one point, he clutched my arm firmly and whispered, “I’ll always be with you, little brotha. Always.” I dropped the soup to the floor and screamed, “NOOOOO!” as Esau took his final breath. Grandma shouted for Granddaddy to come.

ran past him, out the front door, as he mumbled, “De Lawd

giveth and de Lawd taketh away. Blessed be the name of de Lawd.” I didn’t bless the name of the Lord that day. Instead, I yelled, “You promised me You’d heal him! I told You I’d do anything You want. I thought prayer changes thing...

The days after Esau’s death were dark and quiet. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t breathe normally. I didn’t wash myself. I couldn’t focus on anything. I stopped speakin...

People said everyone’s got a time to die. Prayers, medicine, or whatever can’t change that. But I didn’t believe it was Esau’s time. I don’t believe that now. I don’t think Grandma believed it either. She cursed through her grief: “This don’t make no damn sense! Why the hell God gotta take everythang you love?” It was the only time

The day Esau died, a part of me died with him. If church folks are right, I’ll see him soon and I’ll be happy again. If they’re wrong, I’ll have no peace in eternity. No peace at all.

It rained the day we buried my brother. That’s how I remember it. Grandma had said it was cloudy but never rained. Memory is such a funny thing.

Grandma died a year after Esau—the day before my seventeenth birthday. Cancer, the doctor guessed. She’d told me a week earlier that, if she could do it over again, she might not marry Granddaddy. He heard her but didn’t care. He

buried her without remorse. The funeral occurred on a sunny Saturday morning at nine because, as he told a few nosey neighbors, “Got things to do. Can’t spend a whole day on what I can’t change. Best do what I can while I can.”

People rejoiced as if something wonderful had happened. They didn’t fear Death; in fact, they treated her like an old, personal friend. There was no terror, no uncertainty of things. People sang songs and tapped feet in rhythm as the preacher spoke of Heaven as a man’s just reward. I find

it funny that, at funerals, all dead people go to Heaven, regardless of how they lived. Perhaps this is black people’s way of rewarding themselves simply for having been black and survived—even for a while.

We buried Granddaddy next to Grandma, in Rose of Sharon Cemetery behind the church,

and by sundown, your mother and I were headed back to Kansas City. She didn’t feel well, so she slept most of the way. I spent hours wondering what kind of boy you’d be, who you’d look like, what you’d laugh about, what you might one day die for. I hoped you’d look like your uncle Esau.

We named you Isaac because it means “laughter,” which Rachel and I hoped you’d always have. I liked the name because it came from the Bible. I didn’t remember exactly who Isaac was, but I remembered Granddaddy talking about him. Folks down home often gave kids biblical names—Jeremiah,

Moses, Daniel, Mary, Martha, Paul, Silas—because they believed the Bible to be the word of God. I believed that, too.

One day she murmured, “Women aren’t slaves, you know.” It was a casual statement, like one announcing the day’s weather. I could tell she’d been drinking. “Nobody’s a slave,” I said, confused. “Yes, somebody is,” she returned sadly. Her remark startled me, but I didn’t entertain it. Years later, I thought about it and cried.

“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.”

“Don’t nobody live in the past, man! The point of history is to tell you how to live in the future. So people don’t make the same mistakes over and over.”

She announced, late one night, that she was pregnant.

She was afraid, she said, but she told me not to worry. I’ll handle it. I knew what that meant. I didn’t agree with it, but I had no other solution. Now that I am old, I’ve considered that perhaps she raised the child with her husband and never said anything more about it. We stopped seeing each other after that, so she could’ve done it. Perhaps it wasn’t even mine. It certainly could’ve been, but I had no

idea who else she might’ve been seeing. I didn’t press the matter. She’d implied I was the father, so I didn’t refute her. She w...

I’m telling you this because you might have a sibling somewhere in the world. I know this is crazy, but you deserve to know. There is no honor in this admission. I’ve thought about th...

Do black people live in Alma? Are there still segregated schools in the South? Are Kunta Kinte’s descendants still alive? What happened to the big mansion Wilson and Chaney built deep in the woods? Do you have a picture of Uncle Esau or Grandpa?

We moved about until standing before a huge gray headstone with large, black letters that read HENRY and BILLIE JEAN MOORE. “Who were they?” you asked. “And why is their stone so big?” I smiled and said, “They were the wealthiest black family in Blackwell. They were light-skinned people, almost white,

“Someone else is here. I feel them.” I began walking down the grassy lane toward the car. You followed but didn’t want to leave. “Who is it, Daddy?” you kept asking, but I wouldn’t answer. I couldn’t. Not yet. It wasn’t time.

Memories reveal who you used

to be, what you once thought important, what regrets you cannot shake.

A good father steers his son in the right direction and protects him from sick, sinful things.

out. She regretted calling you sick. She told me this later; I’m sure she told you, too. Your

truth was simply more than she could bear.

I’d feared, the day before, that if you were, I would have no legacy. That you’d have no wife, no children, no way to carry our name into the future, which meant our family was doomed. I’d thought of Granddaddy and Esau. How could our family end just like that? All because you were something you weren’t supposed to be? It didn’t make sense, so I’d prayed against it.

We eventually resumed our lives, but things were not good. You asked for stuff you needed, spoke when you had to, said happy birthday on my birthday, but other than that, you hardly interacted with me at all. I was no better. But I didn’t think I needed to be.

Standing before me, in all its glory, was a portrait of my past—our land in Arkansas. The rendering was so exact I shivered. From every direction people commented: It looks alive! Wow, so real, so full of life! I’ve never seen anything so marvelous! Who painted this masterpiece? And on until I had to look away to stabilize my heart.

“People ought to govern themselves. White folks need to get the hell out of Africa.

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

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.

Knowledge is a funny thing, Isaac. It informs by exposing.

It shows you precisely how much you don’t know.