My People Are Rising. Aaron Dixon
sure we were not idle during the summers.
One summer Poppy got his friend Jerry Sussman to employ us as laborers on his boat. A friend of our whole family, Mr. Sussman was Jewish, and we celebrated Passover with his family. Joanne and I also frequently babysat his three children. Mr. Sussman’s boat, The Puffin, was a one-mast schooner, a twenty-five-footer with a cabin. We worked hard on that boat for several months, dry-docking it, scraping the hull, repainting the hull inside and out, and re-rigging the mast. It was very tedious work, and Mr. Sussman made everything a lesson, stopping to teach us the purpose and importance of each task. After our work on the boat was complete, we sailed up through the Strait of Juan de Fuca to Cypress Island, one of the San Juan Islands up north near Canada.
As we approached our destination, islands were scattered all around us, with green forests, white cliffs, rocky coastlines, and a few sandy beaches, eagles flying. Herons skimmed the water, trying to catch jumping fish, and an occasional orca streamed by in the distance. We finally reached Cypress Island, dropped anchor, loaded up the dinghy, and rowed ashore. We could hardly contain our excitement at being in this lush, deserted place.
Mr. and Mrs. Sussman and their daughter camped on the beach, while Elmer, the two Sussman boys, David and Matthew, and I camped inland. Our main job was to help Mr. Sussman build a cabin on a cliff overlooking a small bay. In between playing on the beaches and running in the forest, we spent hot days hammering, sawing, and hauling materials up the cliff using a pulley. Some days we worked long hours, laying the floor of the cabin and putting up the frame. Other days, realizing we were city kids, Mr. Sussman cut us loose to run free.
Being on the island reminded me of the book Treasure Island, and I imagined I was a pirate on the crew with Long John Silver. I loved being up on Cypress—no phones, no electricity, no stores, no cars, just the ocean holding countless creatures, some of which made their way to the surface. During low tide, we gathered oysters on the rocky edge of the beach. There seemed to be thousands. We ate them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I remember the solitude of the island, the white sand and the green forest. Everything seemed so perfect, so right, so much in harmony. Sometimes I sat on a dried-out log, watching the sun slowly set, looking up at the vast, open, clear sky, wishing I could remain there forever. Much too soon, our time was up and we had to sail away, leaving Cypress behind to go back to the city, back to everyday reality.
When Elmer was fifteen he got an evening paper route, and I, without a choice in the matter, was ordered to accompany him for a whole year. We left the house together with the papers in Elmer’s bag carrier, taking turns carrying the papers to the big houses down by the lake, splitting up and dividing the route, and meeting up again before heading back up the long, steep hills of Madrona. Rain, snow, sleet, or hot weather, the two of us worked that paper route as one. There were many times I detested helping my skinny younger brother on his route. I could have been up at the park or running with my friends or—worse—getting into some trouble. Despite being forced to support Elmer’s paper route, I truly enjoyed those days of the two of us working in tandem for one goal: to finish in the quickest way possible. In a few short years, we would be working in tandem for a much bigger purpose.
For my junior year, I transferred to our neighborhood high school, Garfield. I was tired of the racism at Queen Anne and the whole idea of voluntary integration. Elmer and I also began to drift apart as we got older. Mommy and Poppy eased up on their demands that we stick together. Elmer hung with his white friends, wearing sandals and a serape, riding a skateboard, listening to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. My Black buddies from Garfield and I sipped beer and listened to the Temptations and the Four Tops, gathering in damp basements, trying to sing notes too high for our screechy voices, occasionally puffing on Pall Malls.
At some point we realized we needed to look for work. Emerson Swain, a comically wild friend, and I got jobs at the Pancake House washing dishes, making $1.25 an hour. On weekends we would get to close the place, leaving us two kids alone in an empty restaurant full of pies and ice cream. We would take a whole pie, top it with vanilla ice cream, and gorge ourselves while we hastily cleaned.
I took on a second job at Swedish Hospital up the street, making $1.75 an hour working in the kitchen. For a while I tried to keep both jobs, running from one shift to the next. I finally quit the Pancake House and concentrated on the job at Swedish. I worked with the dieticians, checking the individual patient menus to make sure the correct food was put on each patient’s tray. I enjoyed working. It helped me to free myself, at least partially, from my parents. At the hospital my friend Mike Dean and I worked from 4 to 8 p.m. after school and 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekends. During the summer we worked fourteen-hour days, seven days a week.
On some paydays Mike and I would have saved enough to go downtown and buy sharkskin suits, Italian sweaters, and loafers. And at Mrs. Jackson’s record shop up on 34th, we’d buy the latest from Motown— Junior Walker, Ben E. King, Mary Wells, Stevie Wonder, and Smokey Robinson. No longer did I have to sit at a sewing machine under dim lighting, tapering the unfashionable baggy pants sent by Ma, as I had done on so many occasions. It felt so good to have this financial freedom from my parents. I didn’t want to have to ask them for anything other than permission to go out.
At sixteen, I guess you could say I was “smelling myself.” I felt like I knew a few things—and maybe I even knew enough to set Mommy and Poppy straight on a few occasions. A collision with reality was inevitable.
On one of the many evenings that Poppy chose to work overtime, Mommy and Joanne got into a little disagreement. Like many girls growing up in the ’60s, Joanne was having a difficult time with her parents—Mommy and Poppy were no exception. It was two cultures clashing—the old ways of long skirts and polite, pigtailed girls who played the piano and did their arithmetic, versus the new girls of the ’60s, who wanted to wear short skirts and long hair, do the Watusi and the Hully Gully, and hang with greasy-headed boys at the dance, slow-grinding to some Smokey Robinson or Etta James. Mommy’s personal frustrations and battles with her own mother often surfaced in the verbal clashes between her and Joanne.
Poppy was usually the calming force, the voice of reason in these clashes, but on this particular evening he was gone. In the kitchen, Mommy verbally attacked Joanne, asserting something she assumed was true. Joanne did not argue back. Mommy was a small, slight woman, but with a fiery disposition. She even grabbed a belt.
I was standing in the hallway, watching and listening. Suddenly I rushed in and grabbed the belt from Mommy, looked down at her, and said, “Stop. Leave her alone.”
My actions and words shocked everyone, including Elmer and Michael, who were also standing by, looking on in disbelief. I had wanted to say “stop” for so long. The words had been held at bay long enough and they just came out.
Mommy looked at me with amazement and then burst into tears. “I’m going to tell your father.”
Afterward I could feel the sense of doom in the house. Everyone knew that Poppy would not be happy about this. Disrespecting Mommy and Poppy’s authority was not tolerated—not in this house.
The next morning, as I was quietly getting ready for school, I awaited my fate. Poppy came into the room, his fist up and anger on his face. I stood there, now almost six feet tall, looking down at a still muscular Poppy.
He blurted out, “If you ever do that again, I will knock you out.”
I just stood there and listened. I had no doubt that he could knock me out with one blow, but that really didn’t matter. He could knock me out a thousand times and I would still have done the same thing. I felt strongly that Mommy was wrong, and that since Joanne was eighteen it was time to treat her with respect.
The Tide of the Movement
Reading my poetry in a Links Arts contest, Seattle, 1967.
6
Slow Awakening
When you feel really low
Yeah, there’s a great truth you should know
When