Back then, Bed-Stuy was a village, a community comprised of relocated people who, like Grandma, hailed from “Down South” or, like Grandpa, the Caribbean. It felt safe. When I think of Bed-Stuy, I think of Mother Sister, Ruby Dee’s character in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, who watches over the neighborhood from her window. We had Mother Sisters everywhere. If my grandmother was at work and one of the Mother Sisters caught me doing wrong, she’d discipline me right then and there. Then she’d tell Grandma, which means I’d get my ass whupped a second time.
My grandmother was so protective of me and loved me so much that even if I got in trouble for a good reason, she would defend me. She’d deny I’d done it with every fiber of her being, and then, in private, she’d tear my behind up for what I’d done. Punishment was to teach, not to shame. So, she wasn’t going to let anybody embarrass me. Still, her anger never lasted long. By evening, I’d be cuddled up in her bed, the two of us watching I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, or her favorite, The Lawrence Welk Show.
Life with my grandparents in Bed-Stuy was not only its own distinct universe, but I was a whole other person there, with a whole other name. This came about because so many of our neighbors came from Down South. (Down South was the term everyone used. Until I learned otherwise, I thought Down South was the name of an actual city.) Most of the transplanted southerners retained their drawls. When I met Poppy Branch, the kid next door who had just moved from “Down South,” his sister Renee asked me, “Whas yo naaaaaame?”
“Lennie.”
“Eddie?”
“I said, Lennie.”
“Oh, yeahhh. Eddie.”
I gave up. And just like that, I became Eddie throughout Brooklyn. In Manhattan, I was Lennie (with an ie, as I used to spell it); and in Brooklyn, I was Eddie. My Gemini ass was pleased.
The streets excited me. This was a time—the late sixties and early seventies—when Bed-Stuy had not yet become a war zone. There was crime and scattered violence, but elders were still treated with respect. No matter what kind of deal was going down, if my grandfather walked by, he was greeted with, “Good afternoon, Mr. Roker.” If my grandmother was walking home from the supermarket with an armful of groceries, the boys would insist on carrying them to her door.
I loved the characters strolling the sidewalks sporting their finest “tailor-mades,” hand-sewn gabardine slacks by the man who ran the dry cleaner’s. He was a big deal. He was hip. There were lots of platform shoes, gold chains, and blown-out Afros.
My buddies lived in apartments with paint peeling off the walls and cracked linoleum rolling up off the floor. We sat on milk crates and drank Kool-Aid out of jelly jars. Yet the places were full of life and love. No matter where I went, I was family. My friends’ mothers treated me like their son. There was always an extra plate of chicken, red beans, and rice.
The soundtrack of Bed-Stuy was soul. Music was always in the air. James Brown endlessly spinning on someone’s turntable. Certain songs stuck with me: Mrs. Maudie Osborne, who rented the third floor from my grandparents, loved to listen to Fontella Bass’s “Rescue Me” while she drank her blues away. Not sure anyone ever did rescue her, but I sure did love the song.
The sights and sounds of Bed-Stuy: boomboxes, block parties, men crowded around tinny transistor radios blasting Mets and Yankee games, salsa music pulsating from an apartment building mainly populated by Puerto Ricans. Clothes hanging on lines across alleys. Girls jumping double dutch in front of bodegas where we bought miniature bottle rockets, put them on the ground, set them aflame, and, with giddy satisfaction, watched them take off after pedestrians—thus the nickname “nigger chasers.” That was my bad boy mode.
In my good boy mode, I accompanied Grandma down DeKalb Avenue to buy fresh whiting from the fish market. We’d stroll past the fruit and vegetable stand, the butchers and the barbers, the record store and the Chinese takeout with the bulletproof window. Back home, I’d help Grandma coat the fish with cornmeal and fry it in her cast-iron skillet. After dinner, she’d never wash the skillet. She’d pour some of the oil into an old Chock full o’Nuts can and let the rest live in the pan. The years of grease and love gave her food an original flavor that, to this day, no one can match.
Who was happier, Eddie in Brooklyn or Lennie in Manhattan?
I never really thought about it. Both places were full of character and had their own authentic vibe. I would have been stimulated by either borough. But living in two at the same time only served to overstimulate me. I leaned in and explored all the extreme interests and thoughts inside me. I saw that I could find adventure anywhere.
Take our swanky Upper East Side neighborhood. Some saw it as stuffy or snobby. I saw it as a beautiful tableau, almost like an amusement park. A few steps from our front door was Fifth Avenue, where, at the entrance of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, crowds were always congregating: tourists, locals, school kids, hot dog vendors, postcard vendors, acrobats, caricature artists, roller skaters, and mimes. One of those mimes, I recognized years later while watching Mork and Mindy, was Robin Williams.
In the other direction was Madison Avenue. I can’t imagine two more different streets than DeKalb in Bed-Stuy and Madison Avenue in Manhattan. DeKalb was funky; Madison was fancy: block after block of boutiques and bookshops where I could leaf through Peanuts and Curious George; antique stores and art galleries with strange objects and gorgeous paintings in the windows; French bakeries with crepes and pillowy croissants.
After I finished preschool at Junior Academy in Brooklyn, the script flipped. From then on, I spent the entire week in Manhattan and only weekends with my grandparents. That’s because my folks had enrolled me at Ethical Culture on the Upper West Side for kindergarten and then first grade at Public School 6, just a block from our place. Because our neighborhood was super-affluent, P.S. 6 had the feeling of a progressive private school. It was an education and an awakening in every sense.
On my very first day of school, a kid bolted from out of nowhere, pointed at me and my parents, and yelled, “Your mother’s Black and your daddy’s white!” Before that moment, I had never thought about my parents’ skin tones. They were what they were. What difference did it make? Who cared? What was the big deal? The kid’s accusation made no sense to me, but it did get me thinking. I was being ostracized, and I had no idea why.
When I got home that day, Mom knew something was wrong. She also knew that kids have a hard time expressing their feelings. That’s why, years before, she had introduced a game where she became a character named Ruff Ruff, a magical dog. Ruff Ruff was a friend I could tell anything to. He was my mother’s way of getting me to express pent-up feelings.
The game began with Mom asking to me say “Abracadabra.” When I did, just like that, she became Ruff Ruff. Ruff Ruff wanted to hear whatever was on my mind, all the bad things that might have happened during the day, all my fears, all those nightmares about being trapped in a grave. Ruff Ruff would nod or smile or laugh. Ruff Ruff always understood me. Ruff Ruff kept my secrets. Ruff Ruff always made me feel better. To get Mom back, all I had to do was say “Abracadabra” again, and there she was. Roxie Roker was a gifted actress, mother, and empath who understood how to combine all three roles.
Outside the Ruff Ruff/little Lennie dialogue, my mother had her own viewpoint on race. She knew it wasn’t enough to just let me vent my feelings when some kid called me a zebra. She realized an explanation would be needed. And her explanation was simple: I had two heritages, one Russian Jewish and the other African Caribbean, and I should be proud of both. At the same time, she made it clear that the world was always going to see me as only Black. To the world, my skin would be my first and only identification. I accepted her explanation and didn’t object. If that’s the way the world saw me, fine.