“Becoming” excerpts: “Black Kids & A Bullet”

Junior Johnson

Chicago, Illinois

July 6, 1951

His cocked elbows on the banister with his chin nestled in the palms of his hands, he watched from his porch as the five Negro kids—three boys and two girls—played softball. He’d seen them playing in the alley before and thought they lived in the recently converted, now multi-flat building across the alley where not too long ago Sharon Duffy lived with her mother and the Gogulski twins lived with their parents.

“’Ey, Leroy hit dat ball!” The largest of the group was sitting on the broken cement incinerator calling encouragement to the batter.

Closing his eyes, “Oh, God,” his lips moving in a whispered prayer because he believed that unless he prayed out loud God wouldn’t hear him. “Please, God, let it be Norman and Phyllis and Big Rosalind and the Gogulski’s. And God, ‘please’, God, let things be like before!” Closing his eyes tighter, One… two, he counted silently, three…

“’Ey! ‘You’, boy!”

Four… five Slowing, giving God more time, six… seven…

“ ‘You’! Da white boy on da third floor!”

...eight…” Knowing his concentration had been broken. Knowing his prayer wouldn’t be answered. Opening his eyes, he looked at the boy.

Standing in the yard, “ ‘Ey’,” the boy called again. “Wh’ch’ya doin’?”

Thinking, Praying for you to disappear. “Uh, nothing,” he said.

“Don’t’j’ya be doin’ that!” The boy said in a loud, friendly tone.

“Doing what?”

“Standin’ way up der doin’ nothin’! Come on down, boy. We’s only five an’ needs us another player.”

“ ‘Me’?” Poking his chest with his thumb.“You want ‘me’?”

“ ‘Lordy’! Yeah, you!” The boy threw the ball. Surprised at the accuracy, Mitchell instinctively caught it. “We won’t eat’ch’ya! ‘Come on down’!”

Actually, Yeah, I do, wanna play ball with them, he thought. But actually, having no reason to be, he was afraid of them. But if I don’t go down and play with them, they’ll think I’m prejudiced or something, and I sure don’t need a bunch of shvartzer kids, especially that big one, thinking I’m prejudiced.

“So, ya comin’?”

Throwing the ball back,.“Yeah, why not?”

Opening the screen door, “Mom,” he yelled, “I’m going downstairs to play ball!” Letting the door slam shut, he clumped down the stairs.

“Hi!” Feeling intimidated, holding his hand forward, “I’m Mitch Lipensky.”

“’Ey, Mitch.” Big, six-foot-three, with thick, muscular arms, “I’m Junior Johnson.” Grasping Mitchell’s hand, shaking it in a strong grip. “An’ this here’s my sister, Katie.”

Smiling, “ ‘Junior?’ I’d sure hate to see senior.” Turning he looked at the tall, angular girl, “Hi, Katie.”

Nodding her head, “Mitch,” the girl said shyly.

“An’ this here’s my baby brother, ‘Baby Joe’.”

Warming to the group. “Do I call you ‘Baby Joe’?”

Smiling, showing two missing front teeth. “Not lessin’ you wants’a be missin’ your teef, too.” A smaller, younger duplicate of his big brother. “You jus’ call me Joe,” the boy said.

“An’ this here’s ‘Leroy’. Leroy lives over there,” pointing in the direction of the old Duffy apartment.

“ ‘Leroy’,” holding his hand out, “hi.”

Leroy hesitated a moment then, a smile coming to his thick lips, accepted the handshake. “Yeah, hi.”

“An’ this is…” Junior said proudly, “my girlfriend, ‘Lousy’.”

“ ‘Louise’?” Mitchell looked at the girl. “Did he say your name’s ‘Louise’?”

“Yeah. Dat’s what I said,” Junior repeated. “ ‘Lousy’.”

The ebony-colored girl was small, about five-three, and maybe fifteen years old. She had a thin, Caucasian nose with wide, flaring nostrils. Sensuous—though not overly, by Mitchell’s standards—full lips and, for a girl her size, unusually large breasts. Her almond-shaped black eyes looking up from under long, thick lashes. “Hi.” she said.

He had watched her from three stories up, especially when she ran the bases, and thought she was pretty then but, close up, God, she’s beautiful! His eyes flicking from her face to her chest, Mitchell saw that Louise was not wearing a bra, and could actually see the clearly defined, circular projections of her nipples under the tightly stretched, white cotton T-shirt. Swallowing. Forcing himself to keep from licking his lips. Sensing a tightening in his crotch as his thumping heart pumped blood downward, the dual thoughts of the dark intensity of her nipples and if her pubic hair matched the tight nap of the hair on her head, simultaneously flitted through his mind and, Oh, God! I’d love to see her naked! I’d love to f…

Prodding him with his elbow. “Real looker, ain’t she?”

Glancing at Junior Johnson, having no idea how to respond to this question, Mirchell emphatically nodded his head.

****

“…Ain’t much of’a ball player, are ya, Mitch?”

The game over. The four others gone. Junior Johnson and Mitchell were sitting on the old concrete incinerator smoking.

Thinking of the hundreds of times he’s sat on this exact spot. Nostalgically remembering when he was a kid sitting on the building block opposite home looking down Phyllis’ and Sharon’s blouses whenever they’d had their ups. Mitchell looked for the building block, but it was gone. “Sometimes I play better than other times,” he answered.

“Y’all work?”

“Yeah, part-time, at a shoe store on Cermack. You?”

“Duz I work? ‘Sheet’, yeah! I goes wif my Pa every day!”

“You don’t go to school?”

“Sheet, no! What I needs wif school?”

“How old are you, Junior?”

“Almost sixteen.”

“ ‘Almost sixteen’! Shit, you sure are one big guy for ‘almost’ sixteen!” Really, he’d much rather ask about Lousy, but thinking better of it, “What do you do with your dad, uh, when you go to work with him?”

“Me’n’him works over on ‘Hoyne’, in a junk yard. We’s wreck cars.”

He looked at him. “ ‘Wreck cars’? How in the hell do you wreck a car?”

“Mostly there’s machines that do it. But I’s use a sledge a lot, an’ haul lots’a steel shit ’round in a ‘barrow.”

Mitchell looked at the knotted muscles beneath the taut, brown flesh of Junior’s arm. “Well, that kind’a work does great things for your body, I guess.”

“Sheet!” Lifting Mitchell’s arm, “Y’all wouldn’t last a minute wif scrawny things like this.” Smiling, he let the arm drop. “’Ey, Mitch, you wanna come up an’ have a beer wif me?”

“’Beer’? Your mom’n’dad lets you drink beer?”

“They’s better! I pay half the rent!” Digging in his pocket, removing a shiny object, tossing it in the air, Junior caught it. “So?” Tossing… catching. “You gonna have a beer wif me?”

“I’d like to,” surprisingly, he would, “but it’s about supper time and my mom’ll be calling me any minute… Ain’t that a bullet?”

“Shoo ’nuff.” Handing Mitchell the bullet. “I found it ’tween the seats of an’ ol’ Chevy.”

An inch or so long, the lead slug comprised about half the stubby bullet’s length. Turning the brass cylinder, he looked at the bottom. There was an indentation to the side of the silver percussion cap telling him it had been fired. The tiny imprinted lettering around the base of the cartridge read: Smith & Wesson, Caliber .45.

Bouncing the bullet in his palm, feeling the weight. “I was in the National Guard for three months before Korea.”

“No sheet!” Junior interrupted.

“Yeah, and they issued me a .45, but I never got a chance to fire it ‘cause the day I was supposed to, the bastards gave me KP…” Not sure if Junior knew what KP meant, “work in the kitchen. And would you believe this is the first time I’ve even seen a .45 slug.” Hefting it one last time, he handed it back to Junior.

“No, man,” pushing his hand away, “you keep it.”

“No shit! You mean it?”

“’ ‘Ey, even if I had me a gun, wo’fo I needs a ol’ shot bullet?”

“That’s really nice’a you! ‘Thanks’. Thanks’a lot!”

“Yeah, an’ you fo’ comin’ down an’ playin’ ball wif us.”

“It’s okay, I enjoyed it.”

“Thinks I’ll get me that beer.” Bounding off the incinerator, cutting diagonally across the long yard, “See ya sometime, Mitch,” Junior called over his shoulder.

“Yeah, you too!” Running across the alley, into his yard, “Hey, Junior!” he called from the first floor landing.

Up to his second floor landing, stopping, Junior looked back.

“Hey,” waving the hand holding the bullet, “thanks again!”

****

That night, in bed, That wasn’t so bad, Mitchell thought.

Never having more than a fleeting contact with people of the Negro race, it was not as though he’d had any preconceived conceptions about Negroes—he’d had no conception at all, and not knowing is what had frightened him.

Those kids aren’t all that different from us. He further thought. Yeah, the way they talk is different, and they have different ideas about going to school and the way they live.

Not knowing that with most people prejudicial and economic conditions dictate the way they’re forced to live.

Ain’t nothing wrong with them! Mitchell concluded, They’re just kids with brown skin… And, God, that Lousy!

Mitchell spent the next twenty minutes concocting a passionate, although totally impossible scenario where he and Louise, to the best of his imagination, were naked together and, shvartzer or not, yes indeed, they did fuck.

 The Bullet
August 5 , 1951

Glancing skyward, even after all these years, still waiting for the bolt of lightning on this Sunday morning over breakfast of fried matzo and pork sausage.

Walter and Myra had both come from moderately religious homes insofar as their families moderately observed the kosher dietary laws of not mixing ‘milchedig ( dairy products) with ‘flayshedig’ (meat product) and, of course, all pork and bottom-feeding seafood, including shrimp and Myra and Walter’s favorite dish, lobster, was strictly forbidden.

Within the first few weeks of their marriage, Walter had asked his new wife, if she had no ‘really’ strong objections, might an exception be made because away from the home of his parents he had developed a taste for—God forbid—ham and bacon.

This request did, more or less, offend Myra. But being a new bride and wanting to please her new husband, she’d announced, a bit facetiously, ‘So long as we’re going to break some of the rules, we may as well break all the rules’. And the new husband taking his new wife at her word, readily agreed; from that day forward, much to the envy of Walter and Myra’s brothers, the Walter Lipensky household was henceforth declared a ‘free zone’ regarding all kosher dietary laws.

“Mitchie, your father and I have something we’ve got to do today, so we’re going to drop Mortie off at Ma’s and, if I give you money, you ‘will’ take Larry to a movie, won’t you?”

This posed by his mother in much the same manner as Sergeant Martinez asking him if he’d like to volunteer for his mortar squad.

Nineteen days from his seventeenth birthday, he felt it beneath him to have to schlep his, just barely seven-year-old brother to the movies, so, “Aw, Mom, do I gotta?”

“Yes, ‘you gotta’!”

But the objection was feigned because he’d planned on going to a double feature matinee at the ‘Lindy’ anyway, and with Norman moved to the north side he had no one to go with and this way at least his parents would pay. And besides, for the past two weeks his parents had been in a running battle that had occasionally been punctuated with machine-gun-like bursts of angry words from his mother that always ended in something like, ‘That goddamned boat’! Boat? And today had been the first time since the start of their battle that his father had been referred to as ‘your father’ rather than an angry, ‘your father’. So, he thought, if they want to be alone together… —although ‘why’, Mitchell still didn’t know because sex between his mother and father was still inconceivable, even if they had, somehow, conceived three children— ...and if it’ll help end the argument they’re having, and make ’em talk to each other again. “Yeah, okay,” he said, “I’ll take Larry to the movies.”

****

In the theatre, between sharing a brown grocery bag of homemade popcorn and eating boxes of ‘Ju-Ju Beads’ and ‘Jujy Fruits’, Mitchell absently played with Junior Johnson’s bullet.

For some unknown reason considering it somewhat of a good luck charm, from the time Junior had given it to him the bullet had jingled in his pocket against keys and change. Tossed in the air, it was caught hundreds of times, occasionally, though, it was missed and fell to the concrete sidewalk. Within a few weeks the slug began to loosen and, after popcorn, ‘Ju-Ju Beads’ and ‘Jujy Fruits’ as he sat in the Lindy Theater, playing with it, Mitchell was able to turn the lead slug in the cartridge.

Their parents still away when the two got home.

As Larry lay on the living room floor watching television, for a reason known only to himself, almost seven-year-old Larry’s older, ‘smarter’ brother decided that he’s ‘just got to’ separate the slug from the cartridge, so…

Getting brilliant idea #1: Using a pair of pliers, Mitchell proceeded to twist the slug, until… It’s off! Holding the lead slug in one hand and the brass cartridge in the other, Hmmm, he thought, looking at the coarse, black powdery stuff inside the casing, what’s this? Maybe, since the bullet’s been fired and this black, powdery stuff looks kind’a burnt, maybe this is what gunpowder looks like after it’s been shot. So…

Getting brilliant idea #2: Which, by the way, was the ‘only’ brilliant idea Mitchell Lipensky had on this day, he was about to pour the ‘burnt’, black powdery stuff down the drain… But, alas, never equating beauty to brains, changing his mind, he then got ‘really’ brilliant idea #3, and…

Hmmm, maybe, he thought, it’ll still burn a little… Should I try it? Nah, better not! Well… No! Well, what the hell. Looking for something to put the black, powdery stuff in. Seeing a thick, glass ashtray on the kitchen table he sat it on the far end of the worn, white enamel steel sink. Pouring the ‘burnt’, black powdery stuff into the ashtray he turned to the stove. Taking a wooden match, striking and lighting it he was about to touch the flame to the black, powdery stuff…

...When the Guardian Angel of ‘moronic teenage boys’ whispered in his ear, giving Mitchell moderately brilliant idea #4: ‘If you insist…’ the Guardian Angel of moronic teenage boys said, ‘...on doing this abysmally stupid thing, then at least make a wick.’

Yeah, good idea!

If nothing more, Mitchell Lipensky being inventive, went to the bathroom and tearing off four squares of toilet paper twisted them into a thick wick. Back in the kitchen he laid one end of the toilet paper wick onto the powdery, black stuff and the other end on the lip of the ashtray and was about to strike another match… But before striking the match, for some reason thinking he must have a witness to his brilliance. “Hey, Larry!” he called, “You wanna see somethin’ really neat? Maybe.”

“Aw, Mitchie, I’m watchin’ TV.” But his curiosity piqued, getting off the floor he went into the kitchen. “Wha’z’it?” he asked.

“Look, Larry... But you can’t tell mom or dad!”

Having no idea what he was talking about, it was easy to say, “Okay.”

“You ‘promise’ now! You won’t say nothin’!”

“Yeah! Okay! I ‘promise’ I won’t say nothin’! ‘Bout what?”

“You know that old bullet the kid across the alley gave me?”

“The shvartzer kid?”

Since meeting Junior and Louise, whom he was still making hand-held love to, he no longer categorized Negroes that way. “Yes, ‘Junior’.”

“Yeah, so?”

“It’s been fired, see?” Showing him the cartridge, pointing to the percussion cap. “This is where the firing pin hit the bullet and it shows that it’s been fired. But when this fell off...” — not wanting to tell his brother that he’d pompously pulled it off— ... showing him the lead slug “This powdery…” pointing to the ashtray, “... stuffwas in it, and it’s ‘got’ to be burnt and I’m sure nothing’ll happen, but I’m going to light it to find out.”

Looking at his older, ‘smarter’ brother, “Why?”

Why? Yes indeed, ‘Why’?

Why? Mitchell wasn’t sure ‘why’. “Just because; to see what’ll happen.”

“If it’s been burnt, then nothing’ll happen, an’ if it ain’t, then maybe somethin’ might happen, an’ maybe it’ll be bad.”

Dumb, just barely seven-year-old logic.

“ ‘No’, I’m sure nothin’ll happen, but I’m gonna do it anyway.”

People, sometimes, do ‘inexplicable’ things.

Pointing to the open back door. “Stand there,” Mitchell said.

“If nothin’s gonna happen,” Larry asked, “then how’s co,e I gotta stand by the door?”

Becoming annoyed. “Because I said so! ‘Okay’?”

“Yeah, ‘okay’! You don’t gotta get mad.”

At the sink, Mitchell struck the match…

There came the immediate odor of sulfur.

Holding the flame to the toilet-paper wick…

There came the odor of burning paper.

Going to the door, Mitchell stood next to his brother, as…

As the toilet paper burned, the rising smoke was made all the more visible because of the canary-yellow walls and ceiling

And…

WHOOMPH!

The thimble-full of gunpowder ignited in a sliver flash and…

Erupting from the ashtray, a dense cloud of gray-black smoke roiled up the canary-yellow wall, across the canary-yellow ceiling and out the door as…

“ ‘Holy shit!’” Larry said, and…

“ ‘Uh-oh’!” Mitchell said, and...

The worn, white enamel steel sink was scorched black from where the force of the erupting gunpowder had split the ashtray.

Looking at him. Actually feeling sorry for his big brother. “Mitchie, I don’t think it’s gonna matter whether I say somethin’ to mom’n’dad ’bout what’ch’ya done.”

The canary-yellow wall and ceiling above the sink and across the room was charred a dark, streaky gray, and…

Coming into the smoky kitchen, “ ‘What the hell’!” Walter said.

Clutching Morton’s hand, “ ‘The building’s on fire’!” Myra screamed.

Looking at his wild-eyed father and his near-hysterical mother, “ ‘He did it’!” Larry cried, pointing at his older brother. “Mitchie did it all by hiself! I told him not to! But ‘he’ did it!”

Standing in their kitchen—standing in what ‘had’ been their kitchen—Walter and Myra Lipensky gaped at the now charred sink and the bubbled, blackened paint of the wall and ceiling.

“What the ‘hell’ did you do?” Taking five rapid steps, Walter stood nose to nose with his eldest son, whose back was now pressed firmly against the doorjamb. “What in the ‘hell’ did you do?”

“Uh, well…” His eyes focused on the fine hairs that grew on his father’s nose, “Uh…”

“Answer me, ‘goddamn-it’!”

His eyes rolling to the right, looking for help from someone, from anyone, “Uh…”

“You said that already!”

“Dad, you know the bullet that I, uh…” Like the time he’d been responsible for Ina Dorfmann knocking herself out, what else could he do but tell the truth? “…uh, that bullet I’ve been carrying around?”

“ ‘Bullet’? ‘No’, what bullet have you been carrying around?”

“Uh, Junior Johnson, a kid from across the alley gave…”

“A shvartzer that lives across the alley gave it to him.”

Walter looked at Larry, then back at Mitchell. “A ‘shvartzer’ that lives across the alley gave you a bullet?”

“Yeah.” Holding his suddenly sweaty palm upward, he showed his father the slug and casing.

“Okay! So a shvartzer that lives across the alley gave you a bullet. I don’t know why…” He looked questioningly at his wife. “Why would a shvartzer give him a bullet?” When she shrugged her shoulders, Walter looked back at Mitchell. “And even if did, what in the ‘hell’s’ that got to do with whatever happened…” sweeping his hand over his shoulder, “here?”

“Uh, the shv… he said it was fired; here, look!” Turning the casing over, “See?” showing the indention to his father. “It’s been fired, and I thought the stuff inside was just old, burnt powder and nothing would happen if I, uh, lit it.”

“If you, ‘uh, lit it,’ huh?” Walter stared at his son for five very long seconds, then, “Did you ever,...” using his index finger, poking him in the forehead for emphasis, “...heard of a misfire?” poke. “And why,” poke, “would you think that a fired bullet would still have the slug attached?” poke “And powder!” poke “Why would you think that there would be ‘anything’ in the cartridge?”poke “And why,” poke “in God’s name, would you ever set fire to gunpowder?” poke.“Dammit, Mitchell, you’re going to be seventeen in… what? Two, three weeks! When in the hell are you going to start using whatever brains God gave you?” About to poke him again…

“Walt,” looking at the burnt wall, “come here, will you.”

His finger in mid-poke, “Yeah?” Going to Myra, “What?”

“Whew!” Breathing a sigh of relief, Mitchell rubbed his forehead.

Morton toddled over and considering the possibility of using his baby brother as a potential deterrent to his father’s poking finger. About to pick him up, hearing a strange sound he looked at his parents. Their backs heaving, sounding almost as if they were crying, “Mom, Dad,” going to them, “I promise I’ll clean and paint it and….”

“The kitchen,” Myra said, breaking into renewed laughter, “looks ‘just’ fine!”

“Huh?” Mitchell looked at his father. “Huh?” and he was laughing also..

“Mitchie,” catching her breath, “we didn’t want to tell you kids till we found one, but we got an eviction notice last week…”

“ ‘Eviction notice’! We’re getting kicked out of here?”

“Yes. They’ve sold the building and the new landlord wants all the old tenants out by the end of the month.”

Turning to his father, “They can do that?”

“I’m afraid so. And if I’d thought about it, I wouldn’t have gotten so mad when we came in.” Thinking a moment. “Yeah, I’d’a still been mad! ‘Dammit’, Mitchell, start using your head once in a while! You 'really' could have been hurt!”

“I told him he shouldn’t had’a ought’a do it!”

“Okay, already!” Mitchell snarled at his brother.

“That’s where we’ve been today.” Myra waited for either Mitchell or Lawrence to ask…

****

Walter Lipensky had made two major purchases in mid July, both without discussing them with, or informing his wife: He purchased a family membership at the Columbia Yacht Club in Belmont Harbor, and paid $750.00 for a used ‘Snipe’: a sixteen-foot, center-board sloop that sold along with a 1951 Belmont Harbor mooring permit and a boat trailer, which the previous owner had agreed to, temporarily, keep in his backyard until Walter was able to find someplace to put it.

Problem was, how to tell Myra? It took him almost two weeks to work up the nerve to tell her and then, when he did tell her, it wasn’t that she was angry at her husband for making these costly decisions without consulting her—although she most definitely would have told him ‘no’. Oh, no, she wasn’t ‘too’ angry. She just refused to speak to him, and after thirteen days of icy silence, speaking to him only when ‘absolutely’ necessary, and then in only machinegun-like bursts of angry words, Myra’s first words to Walter, said in a strangely calm tone of voice, were…

“ ‘Walter, we’ve been evicted’.”

“What?” About as surprised at hearing her voice and the tone of her voice as he was with the shocking announcement, he’d looked up from the evening paper. “We’ve been ‘what’?”

“You heard me,” she said in a harsher tone. “We got an eviction notice today!,” Glaring at him. Daring him to object, she had said—demanded—“I want to buy a house in Skokie!”

Myra had no way of knowing that Walter had received a call from the previous owner of the boat asking ‘ when he might get the trailer out of his yard’. Nor that Walter had been wondering where he was going to store the boat in winter, when the harbor was shut and the buoys pulled, so…

Hmmm. The thought of his ‘own’ home with an easily accessible backyard whizzed through his mind and, Yeah, he thought, that’ll solve the problem. Why not! If it’s not too expensive we can afford it and the interest’ll give me a tax deduction, and this neighborhood’s getting shittier everyday, and. He looked at his wife, It’ll get her off my back. So, “You know…” Myra looked at him with lowering anger and heightening anticipation. “…that’s ‘not’ such a bad idea. No, ‘not a bad idea at all’, us buying a house.”

Having no idea of her husband’s ulterior motive. “You mean it, Walt?” Overjoyed at this. “You ‘really’ mean it?”

Thinking of that ‘easily accessible backyard’. “Why, sure, honey.” Walter said. “If you want to buy a house in Skokie, we’ll buy a house in Skokie.”

****

“That’s where we’ve been today.” Waiting for Mitchell or Lawrence to ask…

“Where have you’n’dad been today?” Mitchell asked.

Looking at Walter, smiling, “We, your ‘father’ and I…” The connotation lost on her children, but picked up by Walter. “…bought a house in Skokie and we’ll be moving before the end of the month.”

Amazed, at not only getting away with blowing up the kitchen, but also that they’re moving out of this place, the only home he’d ever, in his memory, known.

“No shit!” Mitchell said. “Oops, sorry, Mom. Where’s Skokie?”

Next “Becoming” excerpt in sequence:, “Skokie, Illinois: 1951”