Pivot Point

His grandma said, “Boy, you better be good. You hear?” Don’t get mixed up in all that bad stuff going on out on the street. You listening to me Michael?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Michael said.

Michael listened before his mom and dad got divorced. He heard his dad say, “Damn white folks always putting black folks down. Make us dig their shit holes. I am going do something about it. Sure am.” And he took another swig of his beer. “You hear my words. They ain’t gonna break my back no more. Ain’t gonna put me back in that place. I’ll kill me a bunch of whities before that happens.”

Another time, his mother said, “The school called. Said you wasn’t there yesterday. You got to go to school Michael and study extra hard. Look at what I gotta do cause I ain’t had enough schooling. Look at the diapers and cooking and work I gotta do. You my oldest. You better stay in that school or I’ll tan your hide.”

One day his grandma showed him a photo of his Uncle Mac, an important judge in California, Judge MacArthur. “Look here at his cap and gown. Ain’t he something. He’s one who made it. Graduated with high honors. You work extra hard you can do it too, Michael.”

Michael remembered what his dad told him about how black folks were kept down, so he asked his grandma, “Why I gotta work so extra hard.” Michael asked. “Do white folks need to work extra hard too?”

“Not all, but most.”

“Why it gotta be so hard all the time?”

His grandma thought for a minute and said, “That’s the way God made us. Life is a struggle for everyone.”

When Michael was eight he saw a lady cleaning blood off the sidewalk with a pail of water and a brush. He’d heard about little Johnny getting shot while riding his bike. He watched with fascination as she moped up the brown blood until she told him to stop gawking and chased him off.   

When he was twelve he watched a police car pull his cousin Rodney over and push him up against the car to frisk him. One of the policeman punched Rodney in the stomach before they let him go.

When he was thirteen his father finally came and picked him up after not visiting for four months. He heard his mom yell at his father on the phone that it was Michael’s birthday and he had better show up, or else.

When his father picked Michael up, he said they were going to the Belle Isle Park so Michael could ride on the giant slide. Michael felt too old for the giant slide but didn’t tell his father that.

While they were driving down I-75 towards Jefferson, his father said, “Grab me one of those beers from under the seat.”

“Dad, you’re driving. Maybe you shouldn’t drink.”

“Just do as I say.”

Michael reached beneath the seat and pulled out a bottle of beer.

“Hand it over.”

His father unscrewed the cap and took a swig then set the beer between his legs. He kept taking drinks of the beer as they exited the freeway and drove on towards the park. At a stop light, his father didn’t stop in time and ran into the back of another car.

“Don’t worry” his dad said, “Just a fender bender. I’ll take care of it.”

But he didn’t take care of it because coming from the other side was a police car that had seen the accident. They made his dad get out of the car and his dad got angry and everything fell apart from there. Michael watched the police take his father away and then they called his mother to come and get him. It was a day Michael tried to push out of his mind for a long time, but couldn’t.

Four months later, Michael got expelled from school. Mr. Hartford, a white English teacher had asked him a question about the book, “Tom Sawyer” he was supposed to read. Michael told him he wasn’t gonna read about  black people being treated like trash. When Mr. Hartford instructed Michael to stand up and read a paragraph, Michael refused. Soon Michael was sitting in the school office and got expelled for two days.

Still boiling with anger, he took a wide path home because he wasn’t in a hurry to explain why he wasn’t at school. Then he wished he was back in school when he saw Jock across the street. Jock was trouble. He’d left school last year. He was standing with two friends and they called him over to their side of the street. “Hey, fat boy, come here. I might have a job for you.”

Michael felt like punching that smug smile off Jock’s face, but he strolled over anyway. It was either that or run. Michael saw Jock and his two friends were dressed real sharp and wearing gold jewelry. Jock had a Rolex watch on his wrist which he showed off by shoving his arm out for Michael to see.

It looked grand to Michael, but he figured the stuff was hot.

“Wanna job?” Jock asked him. and pulled out a fat wad of money that he fanned like a deck of cards. “I think I got a small job you can do.”

Michael thought about the things he could buy with all that money as he watched Jock put the wad back in his pocket.

“What do you mean, small job?” Michael asked.

“Nothing much. Can’t say unless you say ok.”

At this moment, Michael’s life had reached a pivot point.

And at this same moment the Angel Abram whispered, “Turn around and walk away,”  into Michael’s ear, but Michael mind was churning with too much anger and confusion to hear the soft voice of an angel.

The angel Abram refused to give up and went for help. Invisible and silent, he flew over to where Mr. Jackson had his head under the hood of his car removing spark plugs. He whispered into his ear, “Go help Michael.”

Mr. Jackson didn’t hear the angel’s words but being an avid church going man, he felt the call to do something as if there was a tickle in his mind.

“Darn,” he lifted his head from under the hood and rubbed at his forehead as if to erase an annoyance. He saw four boys across the street, three of them seemed to be picking on a younger boy. The tickle stopped when Mr. Jackson decided to walk across the street to see what was going on.

He walked up to the group and glared. Then turned to the young boy saying, “Come with me. I could use another pair of hands.”

One of the older boys said, “Push off old man.”

Mr. Jackson stood tall with his hands on his hips and glared hard at the three young punks for a long minute until they finally slithered away.

When Michael looked at Mr. Jackson he saw a middle aged man with dark wrinkled skin who had a stern look about him. He seemed to know what was what. But, more than that, he saw that Mr. Jackson had eyes looked just like his grandmother’s, like he knew everything in the world there was to know.

Michael followed Mr. Jackson to his car and helped him screw in the new spark plugs. As they worked, Mr. Jackson asked him why he wasn’t in school.

“Got kicked out.” Michael told him.

“You happy about that?”

“No, but I don’t want to read about slaves and stuff cause we ain’t no better off today.”

“Look boy, if you don’t like what is going on in the world you need to fix it.  

“How am I going to do that?”

“You’ll never fix anything if you don’t stay in school. You need an education first. Education will make white folks listen, education can make changes. But first you got to go to college.”

“That’s a long way off.” Michael thought about the three more years of high school he still had left. Then college? It seemed like a lot of work, maybe too hard. He thought of his father always complaining about white folks, his mother who worked too hard raising his brothers and sisters and his grandmother who always seemed to know the best thing to say. He remembered her pride when she spoke of Uncle Mac in his cap and gown. He pictured himself in a cap and gown with his family watching as he walked across the stage to get his diploma.

Michael smiled up at Mr. Jackson and said, “You know what? I don’t think college is such a bad idea. I just might do that.” And he did.  

The end