Keith Laufenberg CHILDHOOD
The days of childhood are but days of woe. —Southey, The Retrospect. St. 9.
Where children are not, heaven is not. —Swinburne, A song of Welcome. 1. 37.
My name is Cole Black, that’s my street name, I ain’t gonna tell you my real one—cause you might turn me in. I don’t wanna be turned in so’s I ain’t tellin’. I got a story to tell, so if you wanna listen, I’ll tell it. I live on the streets and I am fifteen and I am black. I used to live over on Norf-Wes’ Twenee-Firs’ Stree’ and Second Avenue a bad neighborhood where a lot of my friends got killed in drive-bys and drug deals. I lived there with my Moms and my Daddy but then they caught my Daddy. I got two brothers and two sisters and they all messed up—just like me. I liked it in Overtown ‘cause I had friends there but now things is different ‘cause they all gettin’ killed so fast and put in jail. I only went to the seventh grade in school but all my teachers told me how smart I was and I did the best in English class, even though I cusses a lot. I be trying to not put none of that down here—right now. I got a friend, probably only one I got left, Jeffrey Waller—his street name is Red—and he got a tenth-grade education and he helped me write this right, so you could read it. Anyway, I’m gonna start at the beginning, cause, see, this is my life story, what there is of it. See, I ain’t got much longer to live—I got Aids and I’ll explain that later—it’s just a part of my story, see. One of my brothers and both my sisters got it too, so it ain’t nothin’ special not around here. So, if you’re ready to listen, here’s my story. It all started when my Moms married my Daddy, in 1968. It was the same year Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy both got assassinated, my Moms told me that. I learn history things like that. So, here it is, my life: In 1968, my Moms married my Daddy ‘cause he was working regular at that time. He was a construction worker; he did everything, laborer, carpenter, ironworker, he even learned how to read blueprints—he was real handy. My Daddy had a sixth-grade education and his Daddy was a sharecropper—somewhere in South Georgia—I never knew exactly where and my Daddy don’t never talk much to us since he got put in prison, again. See, my oldest brother Blade, that’s his street name ‘cause he’s so good with a knife, he was born in 1969, then came my sister Latisha, we calls her Big ‘cause she’s always pregnant, she’s born in 1970, then my other sister Tanisha, we calls her ‘Nish the dish’ cause she likes to eat so much—she’s born in 1971—then my other brother Tommy, his street name is Truck ‘cause he’s big as a truck, he’s born in ‘72, my Daddy was in jail and he always figured Truck wasn’t his; see his friend Ray Jenkins was always here when he was in prison and he always thought that Ray-Jay, that’s his street name, that Ray-Jay is Truck’s Daddy. That’s why he kilt Ray-Jay and that’s why he’s in Raiford Prison right now. See, Ray-Jay he come in one night and he brought a case of beer, and some crack too, and we all got high and see Daddy remembered Truck was Ray-Jay’s son and he took a butcher knife and killed Ray-Jay. He done cut his throat; I still remember all the blood and stuff. Daddy made us cut him up and put his body-parts in a bunch ah garbage bags but he got caught anyways and they gave him life with no chance of ever getting paroled. Anyways, I was born in 1973 and everybody knows I’m Daddy’s ‘cause I gots a nose big as a apple and it’s a pig’s nose, just like Daddy’s. Anyways, they call me Cole Black ‘cause I sing just like Nat King Cole used to, they tells me that ‘cause I don’t know who Nat King Cole was, and I’m black as midnight. Anyways, my Moms began working the streets when my Daddy gots put in prison for the first time and she became a heroin addict. She always be stealing money and going to jail, ever since then. The HRS peoples came and got us the first time when I was just ten and they put me and Blade in the Shorty Unit in the Dade Juvenile Detention Center. It’s where they put the littlest boys. They put Truck in with the adults, ‘cause they didn’t believe an eleven- year-old boy could be six feet tall and weigh almost two-hundred pounds. Anyways, they put us all in a nasty foster home where the people was nasty to us and so we runs out of there. So’s the pooleece they caught us in Mama’s old apartment and they put us back in the J.D.C. and we stayed there three months, until Mama got out of jail and we gots to go back to Overtown. See, so that’s why I don’t want to give you my real name ‘cause now, in 1988, I done knows the system too good to let them get me again. See, they catch us, they puts us back in jail until we gets put in another foster care where we gonna runs away, anyways, ‘cause they’s all bad. It’s just Truck and me now, ‘cause Blade is eighteen now, he gone be nineteen next month, and both my sisters is working the streets and gots false I.D.’s. Truck is six feet five inchestall now and weighs almost three-hundred pounds but, see, they gots us in they files and they knows how old we are now. We been runnin’ and gettin’ locked up for so many years they knows us better than crooks. We get locked up for months and see murderers and thieves get out or go to prison before us. They sends us to another foster care when they remembers we still in jail and we escape and meets up in Overtown somewheres. Well, Red just reminded me that I said I’d tell you about my sickness. Well, see me and Blade and Truck we used to lets mens do stuff to us, over at the dumpster on Biscayne Boulevard around the causeway area, over there. So, anyways, they gave us money and I was only like about seven years old when I did it. I did it once for bus fare to Overtown. Anyways, they done tested me six times already and so’s I knows that I gots Aids, ‘cause they all come up positive but it’s was only the last one that showed I gots signs of having immune deficiency. Red looked that word up in the dictionary and I hopes you can read this what I been writing, ‘cause I’m looking up a lotta words in the dictionary. I got back in school and I was wanting to become a writer but now I know I can’t do that ‘cause I ain’t got but a few more years to live. I started crying the other day and Red he done told me about something I didn’t never know about, ‘cause I only went to church a couple times when I was little. Anyways, he told me about my Lord and Savior—Jesus Christ. So, I listened to him and then he gave me his bible and I read it. It took me almost two whole weeks but I read the whole thing. I don’t understand the Old Testament too much but the New Testament made me feel like I have a chance now—in the next life—and I be on my knees now every night, praying for myself and Red too but mostly for my Moms and Daddy and my brothers and sisters and everybody else I knows ‘cause we all needs savin’. I called this story Childhood ‘cause I know that you not an adult until you be eighteen and I don’t think I’m going to make it to eighteen. I read the bible everyday and I pray everyday. I will say a prayer for you; will you say a prayer for me? They calme Cole Black.
[Publisher’s Note: This piece previously published, in a slightly different format, in Pleaides Magazine in 1998.]
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