Chapter 4: THE ARRANGEMENT

When I was about nine years old, I remember asking my father why he and my mother decided to get married. My dad paused and said, “Well, it was sort of an arrangement.” An arrangement? Even at nine years old, I knew that wasn’t the right answer. But, that was my dad; he was the master of the half answer and the cryptic cliché. He very rarely gave a straight answer to anything. It could be something very simple like, “hey dad, why did you decide to do it that way?” The inevitable answer would be “why do you care? Besides, who’s skinnin’ this cat?”

As a kid, these answers were sometimes humorous and rarely bothered me. As an adult, I realized that these answer were dismissive and an indication of his inability or unwillingness to be an active participant in the lives of his children. Sometimes, the best lesson a father can teach his children is what not to do as a parent.

I can’t blame my dad for all of his faults. Three tours of Vietnam can really change your outlook on life. He married my mom at 24 years old and became an instant father. Basically, he was a young man from a small country town in Louisiana. He was raised in a very large, traditional Southern Black family. His dad worked the fields, his mother managed the household and the ten children worked to on the family farm before and after school. Until he joined the Navy, he had never traveled beyond New Orleans. This is not an excuse for being who he was, but it is a reason.

He was a simple man in regards to his “needs”. He loved to tinker with things so he was happy driving a beat up old car or truck. He didn’t put much value in material possessions. The easier something worked and the more he understood how it worked, the better it was for him.

My mom could not be more different from my father. My mother is very attractive, very smart, very ambitious and a classic underachiever. My mother was born in a small town in Tennessee. Her father was in the military so the family did their share of traveling. Unlike my father, she had seen much more of the world as a youngster. She didn’t come from money however through her travels and experiences, she had glimpses of what it could be like and she wanted “it”. Whatever “it” was; the nice car(s), the wardrobe, the big house, vacations; she wanted “it”.

My mother graduated from high school at seventeen years old. She was an excellent student and upon graduation she was offered a couple of university scholarships. The reason for her not taking one of the scholarships has been debated for many years. My mother says that her father saw the scholarship offers as a form of charity and that he said he wouldn’t allow it. My grandfather said she was too young and that she was unsure of what she wanted. The truth is somewhere in there, but not important at this point in time. When the scholarship became impossibility, my mother decided that she would enlist in the Navy. But at seventeen years old, she needed my grandfather’s approval to join the armed forces. My grandfather refused to give his permission.

Sometime over the next year, my mother met my father. I’m not sure how they met but I believe it was at a club frequented by enlisted men. Shortly afterwards, at nineteen years old, my mother gave birth to me out of wedlock. I don’t know much about their relationship before they were married. I’m not sure my dad knew what he had gotten himself into when he met my mom. Here was a pretty young girl who desperately wanted to leave home, who desperately wanted to rise above her station in life and saw no immediate way to break free from her situation. Perhaps this was what dad’s cryptic response was meant to convey to me when I asked why he and mom got married. It was an arrangement, an arrangement that was destined to fail in miserable fashion.

If a young woman desperately wants to rise above her station in life, she is not likely to do so being a stay at home mom, married to an enlisted man. Here lies the rub; my father was very comfortable being an enlisted man and living the life style that goes along with that. These were two people who could not have been more different. My mother was twenty years old but by all accounts, she was a very “young” twenty year old. She liked to go out to dance clubs and parties. My dad was five years older than mom. He liked clubs too but he was very disciplined in his approach to things. There was a difference in maturity that could only add friction to an already unstable situation. The fact is, these were two people who were bound together by one common tie, me.

There was physical abuse, infidelity and long periods of separation. As I remember, some of the separations were caused by my dad’s service commitment. It is a well-known fact amongst military families that long overseas “deployments” are a catalyst for family problems and issues regarding infidelity. Neither of my parents was ready for marriage and neither was really interested in being a parent. I think they did the best they could but it really was not the ideal situation. Regardless of this, I always felt cared for and loved as a child. But, I wasn’t what most would call a “typical” child.

I never felt the need for my parents “approval”. Of course, I felt ten feet tall whenever my parents praised me for something but I didn’t long for that type of validation. I wasn’t the perfect kid but I was fairly low maintenance. Therefore, my dad’s dismissive attitude, his lack of involvement never really bothered me. Though later in life, I realized that his attitude towards my younger sister and me was clearly a reflection of his distain for his marriage and family situation.

One of my dad’s favorite sayings was “knock yourself out”. “Hey dad, I’m going to the park and hang out with some friends, do you mind?” “No, Brian, knock yourself out.” As a child, I enjoyed the freedom my dad bestowed upon me whenever he could. As I reached adulthood, I realized that the “freedom” my dad allowed me was accompanied by a general lack of concern. “Hey dad, I’m going to hang out with some gang members and rob a couple of liquor stores, do you mind?” No, Brian, knock yourself out.”

My dad retired from the Navy in 1974, after twenty plus years of service. Prior to his retirement, my parents had been separated for a couple of years. Upon his retirement, my parents decided to give it one more try. I vividly remember my mother urging my father to apply for work with one of the major airlines. She thought that his experience and work ethic would serve him well and more importantly, he would earn a good living for the family. My mother saw this as an opportunity to advance. My father saw it as my mother pushing him to do something he did not want to do. This was not something that my dad was interested in at all and I believe it was a major contributor to the final breakup of their marriage.

Obviously, my father’s lack of ambition was a major source of frustration for my mother. His contentment with punching a timecard was far from what she wanted or deserved, in her estimation. If the “chore” of constantly pushing and trying to motivate him weren’t enough to deal with, there was the constant drinking that added to the mix.
My father was a world-class drinker. Though he would never consider himself an alcoholic, most people would agree he was. After all, what would you call a person who drank a minimum of four beers each weekday after work, an eighteen pack on Saturday and a twelve pack on Sunday? He rarely drank hard liquor because it made him sick, but not true of his beloved beer. When I look back on my childhood, I’m amazed that he never seemed to be sick a day in his life. As I’ve grown older, I realize that I really wasn’t around him enough to know how often he was sick.

Describing my father is fairly simple. He was a very simple man. Trying to describe my mother is a much more complex and difficult undertaking. My mother is the most complicated person that I have ever met. She is both loving and distant; she is caring yet egocentric, very intelligent and sometimes credulous; she is a complete enigma. Dad usually had a straight answer but rarely gave it to you. Mom rarely had a straight answer but she’d give you one. Mom’s complex nature never really allowed her to understand dad’s simplicity. Dad said he wanted a small house in the country and he’d like to go fishing whenever possible. That was much too simple for mom. He said a small house in the country and he wanted to go fishing but he must have meant he wanted a ranch in the country and a four-wheel drive truck to pull his big new fishing boat. From mom’s perspective, all he needed was someone to help him see what the possibilities were. There was a basic and very clear disconnect between these two individuals, a cultural barrier that was beyond their comprehension.

When it comes to African Americans, there is a belief that we all share the same cultural background. The fact is African Americans are as diverse in their backgrounds and beliefs as any other ethnic group. What we have in common are the stereotypes, barriers and obstacles to success shared by all whose ancestry can be traced back to sub-Saharan, Africa. In some cases, that is the only thing that we have in common. It may be hard for some to people to understand but cultural differences amongst Black people can be really difficult to overcome. It can be analogous to having a Jewish person marry in to a Catholic family.

The cultural differences between my parents were clear from day one. My mother was born in Toone, Tennessee. Toone is a very small Southern town however, other than the public school system, there really was no enforced segregation. There was a rather peaceful existence and there were even some interracial marriages. The “practice” of segregation was very different from places like Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi. While the implementation of segregation may have been different in Toone, the meaning and purpose was always the same; that is the single cultural tie that all black people share.

My father grew up in St. James Parrish, Louisiana. The people of Southwestern Louisiana are unlike any people in the world; the language(s), the food, the religion; their belief and knowledge of herbal medicines are all unique to their rich heritage. Their experience with Jim Crow and segregation are also not necessarily in line with the experience of all other African American people. Theirs is not the most open and inviting of cultures. If you are not one of them, it may take a while to find you place within the family. However, once you have established yourself as part of the family, theirs is a warm and supportive community. Unfortunately, my mother was never really accepted my father’s family. I can only speculate why and for the purpose of this journal, the reasons are irrelevant.

When I was thirteen years old, my mom and dad separated for the final time. From 1974 to his death in 2003, we spoke over the phone every 5 years or so and I saw him perhaps three or four times. He never called on my birthday, during holidays or ever for that matter. Each time we talked, it was because I was reaching out to him. If I hadn’t attempted to contact him, I doubt we would have ever spoken after he separated from my mother. He remarried and fathered another six or seven children. From what I understand, he was a wonderful and beloved father to his “other” family. Unfortunately, his relationship with my mother overshadowed the relationship between the two of us so we were never able to move beyond anything superficial.

My father provided me with a blueprint of what a father should be by showing me what a father should not be. Though it wasn’t all bad, I do remember a few good times. I recall a few of the things I enjoyed most about the time I spent with my dad and I try to pass those good experiences on to my girls. Unfortunately, there weren’t enough good times to offset the reality of what our relationship was, an arrangement; an obligatory, superficial arrangement.

When I hear people blame their parents for their situation or place in life, I have mixed feelings. Sometimes I hear people complain about their parents and it smacks of blame and lack of personal responsibility. Of course, physical and sexual abuse are devastating and despicable acts perpetrated on children and I would never down play such heinous crimes. However, when I hear young men say they have gone astray because there was no father around, I can’t help but believe that that is only one contributing factor to their down fall. Having a father around can do much more harm if that father isn’t there for the right reason or is incapable of being a good father. Why do some people who grow up without a father become responsible adults and others become hardened criminals? How is it that some find their way and others fail only to blame their parents, or lack of, for their misdeeds?

When I was six years old, we lived in Pensacola, Florida, where my dad was stationed at the Naval Base. One day, my mother took me to the store and as we were leaving, I asked her for some candy. She told me no and I decided to put the candy in my pocket anyway. I knew it was wrong, I must have or I wouldn’t have put it in my pocket. When we left the store, my mother asked my what I had in my hands and I said “nothing”. She made me empty my pockets and out came the candy.

At first, she thought about making me take the candy back and tell them what I did, but this was in the South, in 1967. She decided against that and waited for my father to come home. When he arrived from work, he had his beer and my mother told him what I had done at the store earlier that day. My father said “do you think that I want to go to jail for you?” He yanked an electric extension cord from the living room wall, dropped my pants to my ankles and began to beat me from my calves to the top of my buttocks. He beat me until he was physically exhausted, until I was covered in purple and black welts. I remember looking up at him as he panted in exhaustion and sweat dripped from his forehead he said once again “I’m not going to jail for you over some damn candy.” I had no idea what that meant. I didn’t know that they had just removed the “Colored Only” signs around town within the last few years. I didn’t know anything about the civil rights movement or segregation. I didn’t know that in those days, they could put your parents in jail for those types of things. Does justify beating a child like that? No but, it was,“what it was”.

This wasn’t the only “beating I received from my dad”. When I was thirteen years old, he beat me with a cue from a pool table. After about 15 or 20 strikes with the cue, it broke across the back of my hamstrings. “Where was my mother when this was happening?” you ask, she was in the living room waiting for it to end, I assume. I wasn’t able to go to school the next day because I was not able to sit down. I slept on my stomach for three days until the swelling went away.

You don’t have to be a psychiatrist to realize that these beatings were not simply about discipline. You don’t beat a person with extension cords or pool cues until you can no longer lift your arm from exhaustion because you want them to understand right from wrong. His distain for my mother and me was in direct conflict with his misplaced sense of responsibility. With each beating, my father unleashed all of the anger, frustration and animosity he felt on a daily basis in this hated arrangement.

The beatings weren’t just reserved for me. I recall my father beating my mother on more than one occasion when I was very little. Once it was with a belt, another time it was with his fist. When you see a man hit a woman with all the strength he can muster, it’s a horrible thing. I have never, ever struck a woman in my life. I promised myself that if I ever felt the need to strike a woman, it would be time to walk away. Like I said before, it wasn’t all bad, my father did teach me something of value.

Today, such beatings are against the law and would not be tolerated in many places. At that time, it was called discipline. If I told someone that my dad literally beat my “behind” until I couldn’t sit down for three days, they would ask what I did to “deserve” it. Nowadays, I couldn’t have done anything to deserve it. It was truly a different world.

Speaking of a different world, here is an interesting side note about the military in the 60’s and 70’s. The military has always been very tough on adultery. This is one offense that can get you in major trouble; court martial, loss of rank, transfer and even discharge were all possible punishments for infidelity. As you can image, morale could be irreparably damaged if there is conflict amongst the squadron. On the other hand, you could beat the heck out of your spouse from sun up to sun down with little consequence. If you beat your wife and someone called the Shore Patrol, they would come and break up the fight and tell the father to go somewhere, “cool off” and come back later. If the father was really drunk or hostile, the Shore Patrol would take him away for a while and bring him back after he “sobered up” or cooled off. Meanwhile, the wife is standing there with a black eye and blood coming from her mouth. The military is a very strange and insular sub-culture.

When I think of my father today, the abuse is not the first thing that comes to mind, but it is one of the first three things that comes to mind. That is the most painful thing of all. Not the beatings, but the fact that there weren’t enough good times to drop this to number 9 or 10 on my list of childhood memories of my father. Strangely enough, I have never felt any hostility or real anger at my dad for his behavior towards me. I was much more concerned and disturbed by the way my parents treated each other. I was hurt by the fact that he was able to express his anger in such a brutal fashion. However, as I got older, I recognized the cultural aspect of this form of punishment. He grew up on a farm in Southwestern Louisiana in the 1940’s. In those days, they didn’t spare the rod by any stretch of the imagination. My paternal grandfather was a firm, no nonsense kind of man whose father was the first generation born after slavery was abolished. Discipline has a different meaning for people of that ilk.

So, these were my parents. Young, inexperienced, mis-matched, cash strapped kids who didn’t really want to be parents and should not have been together. This was my start, my foundation. It is a wonder why I wanted to be a father so much. Considering my experience with my family, creating another family seems almost oxymoronic. On the contrary, the “arrangement” that my father spoke of affected me in ways that many people may not understand. It took me a very look time to understand it myself. It wasn’t so much what he said that touched me, it is what he didn’t say that meant so much. He didn’t say, “I loved your mother and we wanted to get married”. Instead, he expressed their union as a matter of “obligation” not as an act of love. In hindsight, they were nine years into their marriage when he gave that cryptic response. Perhaps, it was love but the stresses of the previous years left him bitter, who really knows. But, I recognize the efforts of these two people and I can’t help but feel sad for them both.

I recognize the extraordinary efforts my mother and my father made in order to provide a stabile home for me. There were other ways of dealing with the circumstances surrounding a young, unwed mother. It wasn’t uncommon for young ladies to give their child to other family members to raise or give them up for adoption. It certainly wasn’t and isn’t uncommon for Black men to abandon their children and leave the mothers to fend for themselves, but neither of my parents would have that. No matter what the outcome, my parents decided to try and provide me with an intact family, a father and a mother working together to raise this child. It was a sincere and noble act, the idea of trying to make a home for their son. Considering their obvious differences, this had to be a major sacrifice for both of them; a sacrifice that altered the course of both their lives and ultimately instilled in me the values that I hope to pass on to my girls. The belief that there was something or someone (me) that was important enough to warrant a major change in the goals and direction of both these young people’s lives. Could they have been better parents? I don’t think so given the circumstances. Like everyone else, they were just the sum of their experiences; they did what they knew how to do. I can’t fault them for that.

In some ways, this chapter reads like some horror story. It’s as if I grew up abused and mistreated in a totally dysfunctional and hostile environment. I assure you that is not the case. The times were different and the circumstances were difficult. This description of my parents would be incomplete if I failed to mention the some of the many admirable traits that they demonstrated throughout the time we spent together as a family. For example, both my parents are extremely tolerant people. They’ve told me some of the problems they faced as black children growing up in the South during the 1940s and early 50s. In spite of their experiences with institutionalized racism and segregation, they have never once demonstrated any fear, resentment or negative feelings towards white people or any other race. I don’t condone racism in any form but I can understand there could be anger and resentment from those who have lived under such terrible circumstances. Not my parents. I have never heard either one of them uttered a single negative word about any other race, culture or religion. When I was growing up, I remember my dad’s Navy buddies ran the cultural gamut. I am very proud of them for their ability and willingness to judge individuals by their deeds. Their lack of tolerance for bigotry and racism was a wonderful example for both my sister and me.

Neither of my parents ever used foul language in front of us. In fact, I never really heard cursing until I was in elementary school. The first time I heard real cursing was when we moved from Pensacola, Florida to East Palo Alto, Ca. My dad was transferred to Moffett Field in 1970, or about that time. In Pensacola, we lived in a neighborhood near a Naval Air Station. These types of neighborhoods tend to have good cultural mix due to the number of enlisted people that are transferred from all over God’s creation. We moved from a racially mixed neighborhood to an all Black neighborhood and it was complete culture shock. My mother told me not to worry because these were “our people.” After the first couple of weeks in East Palo Alto, I was convinced that these were not “our people”. I heard words from second graders that were completely foreign to me; raunchy nursery rhymes, multi-syllabic slurs hurdled in such a way that you knew they should never be repeated. It was really odd because I’d never heard such things. This is something I never appreciated that until I got older.

My dad was a gifted artist. He had wonderful hands. He could draw, he loved to carve driftwood sculptures and he enjoyed calligraphy. Dad was also a very honest person. You could trust him when he gave his word. The trick was getting him to give his word.

My mother has an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and an ongoing love affair with education. If it were up to her, she’d become a professional student, collecting degrees, traveling the world and experiencing other cultures. My mom also has a great sense of humor and a playfulness that I’ve always enjoyed.
These are just a few of the many good things that I remember about my parents. These are the traits that I really want to remember about my parents. This is what I want my girls to know about their grandparents. They were hopelessly human, prone to mistakes and poor judgment. That is what this journal is really about, love and sacrifice in the name of family. What will my children say about my decisions and my judgment? I’ve decided to write this journal in anticipation of the questions that Taylor and Danielle may someday ask. Like my parents, I am doing what I think is best for our children. The sacrifices that I make for my girls today have been inspired by the love and sacrifice demonstrated by my parents