FOOL THAT I AM

even in a perfect world
where everyone was equal
I'd still own the film rights
& be working on the sequel...

--"Everyday I Write the Book"
Elvis Costello & The Attractions

Underneath the elevated train around the corner from my house, the strivers are usually out in full effect around 7am waiting for the liquor store to open. As I walk to the train station, I do my usual morning hello's and I proceed to the train. We're all familiar enough to one another that we stop a chat for awhile. This includes the "working girls" in my neighborhood. Sure, they're at work, but they always spare a moment to fancy me in a little exchange every now and then.

THEM: Good mornin' baby, how you doing?
ME: I'm alright, and you?
THEM: I can't call it, you got the best hand!

And like that we continue on with the task at hand: work. This morning, I decided to catch the bus, and after maneuvering through all the dirty snow piled up at the King Drive bus stop, I found just enough room on the barely snow-free space where someone else was waiting for the late (as usual) bus. Within fifteen minutes, I found out that she is the mother of three grown children--one son living in San Jose, another in Shreveport and a daughter who lives here in Chicago. I also found out that she is a former English teacher with the Chicago Public Schools who has come out of retirement to teach special needs students. There we stood and talked like old friends, and I must say that started my day just right. Now that's the kind of morning I like.

I wish it was warm, but this is Chicago. The city whose motto is "if you don't like the weather now, wait a few minutes until it changes". What it should be is "if you don't like the weather now, you're really going to hate it when you turn that corner." The hawk is a very attitudinal bitch whose business it is to cut you to the quick.

For some reason, I started thinking about summer camp once I got back to my office. Those summers spent away from parents at places named after the surrounding woods, usually names you don't remember (like now, but at about 3am, I'll remember). It was popsicle stick houses and macaroni necklaces that were to die for; the daily craftmaking days while happy campers consume mass amounts of sponge cake and bug juice. Truthfully, it had nothing to do with income--we were all poor, but my-oh-my, our mother's love never let us know that.

Summer camp wasn't that bad. It was where I made my debut as a performer with the other guys from my cabin as we sang that soulful hit called "The Mighty Pimp" at the camp talent show (this guy named Eric taught us that one; someone in his family was a pimp or something). I went to camp each summer and winter from the time I was eight through high school and had fun each time (but I feign ignorance when asked if I went).

One summer my sister and I were about to go to camp, after hardly getting any sleep, it was fianlly almost time to go meet the bus at the Henry Horner Boys and Girls Club where my mother worked as a secretary. We were packed and anxious as hell. I was ten and my sister was eleven, and both of our years combined made us ready to get the hell out of the house for a month becauase we had HAD IT with the whole cleaning up routine. Cleaning up in our house was not relegated to that one week per school year that the catholic archidiocese let us out of school. My mother, on several occasions back in the day would put the dishes you didn't wash or the trash you didn't take out in your bed!

In the summers, we welcomed the mosquitos and wooden trails; the fresh smell of manure in the mornings from the farm right next to the boys cabins, and most of all, we were ready to not clean up a damn thing for one whole month and live out of suitcases and sleeping bags on the bunks that had survived a foreign war before being donated to the camp we were at. However, before we went anywhere, my mom needed us to go to the store to get some snacks from the corner store.

She had already fried the chicken at about four that morning, seasoning it with the Chinese Five Spices she'd added to the batter (our favorite). There were bags of vegetables for us to share, but we didn't have those other two much needed staples: chips and pop.

"I need you two to go to the store and get you all something to drink along with some chips," she said, and after handing us what was, to my eye, a fist full of dollars, we were off.

Down the six flights of stairs, we exited out the back of our building to cross Lake Street where Lil' Joe's corner store was. Sandra Homan, this crazy lady who lived on the first floor of our building (in one of the 4- and 5-bedrooms that usually housed families of sixteen) was working that morning. We absolutely hated her! She and the majority of her sisters were crazier than cat shit, and were notorious for starting up a lot of mess because there were so many of them. But it wasn't like they could fight. Their whole family got beat up by the Adams clan (beautiful people with names like Mozella, Goldie & Baby Sister) who lived on the third floor. There were a lot of them in that three bedroom apartment, and they fought just for fun (sometimes one another)--and won!

So, we get our snacks and pay her. Sandra was what we called a "surp head": she got high off that toxic cough syrup (among other things). As usual, she was moving like someone had inconvenienced her. All the while she was getting our change together, my sister made that sucking noise with her mouth that everyone knows means "bitch, hurry up" and Sandra knew it, but we were the last two kids she wanted to bother, seeing as though our older sister had beat up four of hers on more than one occasion. After finally getting our change, we ran back home so we could finally get our camp experience underway.

My sister handed my mom the change and we both headed back to our room to get our suitcases, but not before putting the chips and juice (we liked pop, my mom required juice--and not those colored sugar water ones either). Before we got to our room good, we heard my mother call us to the kitchen.

"Where is the rest of my change?" she demanded.

"We gave it to you, mama. That was all of it." we both answered in unison.

"You both have got to be kidding me. Can you two count?" she asked to no one in particular as she snatched our purchases from our separate bags to do a count on her own.

"Look, where is my change you two. All of this didn't cost as much as I gave you. This is some dollars short." she calmly reasoned.

"Mama, that's all the change that Sandra gave us," my sister revealed.

Now, how do two children at the store together forget to count the change we'd been given? We had just paid for the same thing we bought any time we had change to burn, but it didn't occur to us to count our mother's change against what we knew the items were worth. I felt embarrassed immediately, and my sister was hurt, because she was older and hadn't thought to count the change either. Just as the tears were about to come down so we wouldn't be beat, her other personality came out, and this one we knew well, but thank god it wasn't for us.

"Get you all's shit together and come on! I'm about to beat this bitches ass 'cause this isn't the first time her dumb, dope-fiend ass has tried to cheat somebody. I'ma show that bitch she picked the right one today!"

And with that, we had to rush and grab our stuff and follow our mother back to Lil' Joe's where we knew Sandra was about to get it. It was like the scene out of that mini-series "Lace" when Phoebe Cates comes down those stairs and halfway to the bottom she says to the three women she has summoned to meet her, "Okay, which one of you bitches is my mother?"

It went down equally as stunning. She all but pushed the door off it's hinges as she walked right in to Sandra's counter where she was sitting behind the warped, linoleum-covered rectangle on two crates stacked atop one another, nodding. The exchange went exactly like this:

MAMA: Look, you ignorant junkie bitch, just give me my goddamn change or I'ma fuck you up in this goddamn store. I don't want to hear nothing you have to say except my change hitting this fucking counter!"

SANDRA: What the hell are you talking about, I ain't got your change. They must've dropped it going back to the building.

MAMA: Sandra, you not fucking with one of these ignorant ass project girls you eyeball on the side. I'm a grown woman, and if you don't hurry up and give me my change, I'm gon' beat your ass right here, right now.

SANDRA: You ain't gon' do nothing to me, 'cause I can make a phone call and settle this right now.

MAMA: Who you gon' call, that stud-broad ass sister of yours? Well tell that BITCH she can get fucked up, too! Give me my change or get fucked up, plain and simple!

My sister and I were used to this. My mom, an otherwise patient and reserved woman; a single parent who worked three jobs while going to college was doing a kick-ass job raising four children in Chicago's vertical experiments, did not play when it came to her kids. This mathematics/computer science major of a mother would get down and dirty with the best of them, and because she didn't like Sandra anyway, my mother was more than happy to give the dope fiend a beating to remember. I recall being extra happy about this (as I said, we absolutely hated Sandra Homan). Just as my mother was about to go OVER the counter to grab her, Sandra slammed the couple of dollars and some change down on the counter.

MAMA: Thanks, you young, ignorant ass bitch! Your luck runs out today, because when you get off work, I will be waiting on the other side of that door for you, and make sure you call whoever the fuck you need to. Like I said, you can all get fucked up!

My mother took the dollar bills and put them away, but I'm pretty sure if I'm remembering right, she took the remaining coins and threw them in Sandra's face.

We went straight to the boy's club, walking back across Lake Street behind 14o N. Woods where the club was. In silence we walked; my sister and I trying to hold in our laughter and fear while our mother led the way. After a barely inaudible series of curses and swears from my mother, we made it to the club and immediately found our friends in the lobby while our mother went to sign us in. When she came back, she was smiling again. We could hear her recounting the scenario to her co-workers, who also knew Sandra and all the other Homan females.

Camp was a success that year as usual. Me and my sisters would later find out that my mother, indeed, waited on Sandra Homan sitting at the Lake Street bus stop which was right across the steet on the northeast corner of Lake and Woods. She and my godmother Louise had a bottle of CAW (cheap ass wine) which they drank as they waited on Sandra to get off work. As my mother expected, Sandra called her sister (the "stud-broad"), but when she saw my mother, she politely turned and walked back into the building. Sandra spent the night in the store that summer day in June of 1983.

Years later, with families of our own and hosts of nieces and nephews to boot among us, my sisters and I have held on to three lasting lessons:

1. Count your change before leaving the counter.

2. Always pack vegetables in your children's lunches.

3. When people try to give you too much, call them a slew of stud-broads
and ignorant junkie bitches.

That year at summer at camp, I also learned a little something extra about why it's not a good idea to put a bunch of ten year old boys in one cabin and not expect the playful joking to turn into something else. But those memories of Camp Winona (finally I remember the damn name) can't be written about--too many people involved, and confidentiality agreements were signed (just joking...um...yeah, just joking).