Traveling Soul Read Online Free Page B

school, he took the beatings. With a cruelty special to children, his classmates roughed him up and zeroed in on his every imperfection. They mocked his poverty, although they were most likely poor too. They picked on him because of his short stature and big teeth. Perhaps most hurtful, they made fun of him because of his dark skin. He’d never forget the derogatory nickname they slung at him like a stone—Smut. They used the word in its original sense, meaning a dark stain or blot. This bred in him insecurities that would take decades to shake.

    Soon, Marion left Eddie and moved the family to the White Eagle, a decaying hotel on Eighteenth Street between Indiana and Michigan Avenues. Of all the cheap digs, the White Eagle haunted my father’s memory most. He recalled it as a dark, dreary joint where hookers stalked the sidewalk day and night, and many more lived in the neighborhood nearby. He never saw a pimp at the time, though. “I guess pimps are a luxury of wealthier neighborhoods,” he said later.
    Outside, trash choked the sidewalk and broken windows made the building’s face leer like a jack-o-lantern’s smile. Inside, prostitutes, dope pushers, and drug fiends lived on one side, while poor families huddled on the other—mostly single mothers struggling to raise their children in the jaws of nighttime’s vices. At the White Eagle, the whole family lived in a single room the size of a postage stamp. Marion slept on a let-out sofa bed, and the children shared a bunk bed, Curtis on top, Carolyn, Kenny, and Kirby down below.
    Their floor had eight units but only one communal bathroom, so young Curtis had to trudge out to the hall to use it, not unlike Annie Bell’s beaten path to the outhouse in Louisiana. The bathroom was a nightmare—putrid, cramped, filthy, full of exposed pipes and crumblingwalls. Residents stuffed newspapers into crevices to stanch water leaks, while exposed light bulbs dangled from dangerous wires overhead.
    Life in the White Eagle reflected the building’s shabby state. Most nights, Curtis and family went to bed hungry and woke up itching from bedbug bites. As Aunt Carolyn remembers, “Many Christmases, we didn’t have anything. Mama would fix corn bread and a bowl of sugar to make syrup. We thought it was a treat, but that’s all she had.” Grandma Sadie moved into the building, as did Marion’s siblings, Uncle Son and Aunt Edith. Having family close by did nothing to make the White Eagle a homier place, though. At age seven, Aunt Carolyn narrowly escaped a pervert trying to lure her into the bathroom.
    Under such duress, my dad had to grow up fast. He lived in a world that snuffed out innocence, a world that forbade the luxury of childhood. At age five, he became the man of the house through no choice of his own. The word “man” is instructive here—there’s no such thing as child of the house. When Marion wasn’t around, Curtis exerted control like an adult, and he got used to having others look to him for that control. As Aunt Carolyn says, “If anything went on, we looked to him if Mama wasn’t there because he was the oldest one around at that time.” It fit his natural tendencies as a Gemini, and for much of his life, if he couldn’t control something completely, he wouldn’t do it.
    Marion’s situation taught him the dangers of living without control. At the same time, she also taught him about the strength of the spirit to survive, and the importance of art as a way to manage despair. She couldn’t provide creature comforts, but she kept the family respectable through sheer force of will and artistic talent. Whatever clothes she couldn’t afford, she could knit, sew, or crochet just as well. She also loved working at puzzles—jigsaw and crossword—and she always had a book in hand, which provided endless entertainment for her children. She’d tell them