* * *
4KD-589. 4KD-590. 4KD-591. 4KD-592.
My work detail is in the license-plate shop. I’m stationed at the conveyor belt, painting freshly pressed Massachusetts license plates dark hunter green. When my mind is not in a fog, I can still memorize numbers like West Indian Archie showed me. He was the biggest player in the Harlem numbers game. Taught me everything there was to know about the hustle … until he tried to kill me for it.
By now, I know the license-plate numbers of at least a thousand cars out on the road … driving.
Free.
“Hey now, young brother, steady on those strokes!”
That’s Bembry. Works on the conveyor line, too. He’s one of the older prisoners. There’s a bunch of them down here, from all different walks of life, cracking jokes about everything under the sun as if this place is a country club. Not me, though, I keep to myself. There’s nothing funny about being in here.
“You know, I wouldn’t mind doing this type of work on the outside,” Bembry says. He’s a tall, fair-skinned man with a heap of freckles scattered on his face. “Making a good living.”
“Can’t see it making no real money, tho,” says Leefoy, a burly, brown-skinned man with a bald head. Everyone calls him Big Lee. He lays the big sheets of tin down to be pressed with numbers. He’s always hollering about Jesus, and today I hope he keeps his comments to himself. Especially when Mom’s words are still floating in my head.
Wake up, Malcolm.
“This is still good work at the end of the day,” Bembry says. “Come in here, do what needs to be done, break for lunch, finish for the day, go home to the wife and kids.”
There’s a sadness in his voice. Not sure if he has a wife and kids, or maybe he’s just thinking of a life he wishes he could have. This place will do that to you.
“Probably get myself a nice house. No apartment, a house! Pay for it with my own money, with a big kitchen for the wife, you know, since she likes to cook and all. Maybe one of them nice, clean Ford cars for one of these plates and—Hey, hey now! Watch out with that, young brother.” Bembry glares at me over the presser. “You’ll get paint over everything, then we’ll all be scrubbing this machine down!”
All the men chuckle.
“Car, house, and family? Sounds like you trying to live that American dream, Bembry!” Big Lee says.
American dream. Papa used to talk about that. How, whenever they came up with that talk, it wasn’t meant for us Negroes. In this cage or on the outside, it’s all a nightmare at the end of the day. This world doesn’t give a damn about our dreams.
Bembry shrugs. “Or just a dream. We all need to have them. Life ain’t worth living without it and—Hold on now, young brother. You gotta be careful with her. You know, it’s not always about getting it done, but getting it right.”
Bembry’s voice is calming, like the cup of tea Mom used to fix when we had colds. No one even minds his chastising.
“Well, God willing,” Big Lee says, “you’ll be blessed with that house one day.”
Bembry and I catch eyes.
God willing. That’s another phrase that wasn’t meant for Negroes. Did God will this for us? I look around the room, at all these different faces. Hundreds of weary Negroes living behind these bars, pressing plates for cars we’ll never drive or pay we’ll never get. What type of God would let this happen?
“Indeed you will, my brother,” a Muslim guy says. That’s Walter, or Kabir Muhammad, but everyone still calls him Walter. He operates the roller that turns the raised letters white after the plates dry.
“The Honorable Elijah Muhammad says, ‘What we long for, will finally appear.’”
But I didn’t want to talk about the Lord, Jesus, or any of those deities. Who cares what they say or will? They mean nothing to me.
I clutch a plate in my hand, ready to snap it in two.
“You all right there, young brother?” Bembry says to me, eyeing my white knuckles.
I don’t answer. Afraid to say one word while the fire sizzling inside me is ready to boil over.
* * *
After dinner, I sit on my creaking wiry mattress, wondering how many other Negroes slept right here in this space. Hundreds? Thousands?
But the worst part is the smell. One hundred and forty years of cumulative funk.
A mixed batch of sweaty bodies, vomit, and hundreds of shit buckets baked into the granite walls, our clothes, our skin. We eat with the stench. We brush our teeth with the stench. We clean our bodies with the stench.
How can Walter and Big Lee talk of salvation when they are surrounded by hell?
Still, the strength in their voices, their plans for the future remind me of Mom. The way she used to speak of our past, our history.
* * *
Outside the screen door, royal-blue butterflies fluttered and danced as wind whispered through the cracks in our home.
“Malcolm. Malcolm?”
Mom.
She gently turned my chin in her direction. Her face could look so pale at times, like the cream you put in your coffee. Pearls shined like white marbles around her neck, her long hair tucked into a neat bun. But her smile—the way her teeth sparkled—always reminded me of sunny days, no matter the cold digging holes into my bones.
“Now, what did I just say?”
The sweet smell of simmering greens filled my nose. At the table in our kitchen, I was surrounded by Wilfred, Hilda, Philbert, Wesley, and Yvonne. Vegetables hung out of a boiling pot of stew, and a Negro World newspaper was in Mom’s hands as she tapped her foot.
“Um, I don’t know,” I admitted.
Mom sighed and folded her paper.
“You have to listen, Malcolm. You will not learn anything if you don’t listen. Your life will be meaningless if you don’t learn.” She stopped to give us all a hard look. “Do you hear me, children?”
“Yes, ma’am,” we said in unison.
She didn’t look satisfied.
“What are the principles that define us?”
“Self-love. Self-reliance. Unity,” Wilfred said.
“See, Malcolm,” Philbert teased, punching me in the shoulder. “Pay attention and stop being a stupid nigger.”
“You watch your mouth, young man!” Mom snapped, slamming the paper on the table and rattling the dishes. “We don’t use that word around here, not in this house. You hear me?”
“But … aren’t we niggers, Mom?” Philbert said. “That’s what white folks call us.”
Mom’s eyes grew hard as she stared through him. “Who defines this word nigger?”
“The white bigot,” we said in unison.
“And for what purpose?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
Wilfred turned to me and said, “White bigots made up names to keep ‘Blacks’ feeling bad about ourselves. To keep us thinking that we’re worthless. Blaming it on the color of our skin.”
“You are Black, like your papa,” Mom said, shaking her head. “Proud, smart, and Black. Beautifully Black, Scholarly Black, Lovingly Black. You hear me? You are a child of God, strong and protected by the universe. Now, Malcolm, answer my question—where do you come from?”