Not everybody’s family enforced the importance of manners in this way, but there were unwritten community rules for keeping kids out of trouble. In many households at the time, there was a distinction between abuse and being punished forcefully for something you did wrong. Rods were definitely not spared. Since everybody’s mommas and daddies all knew each other, it was perfectly acceptable for somebody else’s parent to give you a whuppin’ if you stepped out of line. Then they’d call your momma and you’d get it from her when you got home. Then you’d have to wait for your old man to come home, and he would just mop up the floor with you again, giving you a whuppin’ worse than any of the others.
Our household was slightly different. Freddie was excessive enough with beating us on a regular basis, whether we were being punished or not, so Momma chose not to whip us. As a true teacher, she was able to give us the real lessons we needed to learn without force; instead, her well-chosen words, the sharp tone of her voice, and the look in her eyes said all we needed to hear.
There were very occasional exceptions, like the one time I got it for stealing a nickel bag of Okey Doke cheese popcorn from the “nigga store.” The African American woman who owned the store not only knew my momma, she announced—when she caught me trying to be slick and walk out the door all seven-year-old innocent and grabbed me by the collar—but also knew where Momma was employed. For my trying to shoplift a nickel bag of popcorn, both the police and Momma received phone calls. And after my mother had to come and collect me at the store before escorting me home, I got my butt whipped with all the ferocity of a woman hell-bent on making sure I would never steal again.
Being creative about it, Momma whipped me with the coiled-up, thick, old-fashioned telephone cord that caused the bell on the phone to ring each time she struck me. Bing! Bing! Bing! Besides the physical agony of it—harsh enough to make me wonder if she was going to kill me—the psychological piece of it was the fact that for weeks after that, every time the phone rang, I had flashbacks. As the last beating she ever gave me, it certainly prevented me from even thinking about stealing anything for a very long time—at least until I was a teenager.
Maybe part of my mother’s fury was making sure that while I might enjoy tagging along with my cousin Terry, she didn’t want me following in his footsteps. The reality was that we all sensed Terry was on his way to trouble, one of those kids born to be a hoodlum.
