Free Trick Baby by Iceberg Slim Page B

at least ten to twelve youngsters my age who lived in our building. I was to enroll in school that fall. I was lonesome. I tried several times to join little groups of my neighbors playing on the front stoop and in the hallways. Each time they would break up and move away from me.
    One day I saw a band of them playing blackjack for matches. I approached them. They looked up at me wide-eyed. They started to move away.
    I said, “My name is Johnny O’Brien. I’d like to play cards with you. I live in apartment seven. Is it okay if I play?”
    The lanky black leader of the clique scooped up the deck from the hall floor. The others snatched their matches and stuffed the wooden stakes into their pockets. He gave me an evil slit-eyed look.
    He said, “You is a trick baby. My paw whup my ass, I play wid you.”
    The young gamblers scrambled up and raced for the sidewalk. They chanted over their shoulders, “You is a nasty trick baby. You is a nasty trick baby.”
    I burst into tears. I didn’t know what a trick baby was supposed to be. I cried at their rejection. I couldn’t wait for Phala to come home that night. I went down to the streetcar stop and waited for her. She had scarcely stepped off the streetcar when I tugged at her sleeve.
    I said, “What is a trick baby, P.G.?”
    She was startled like I had cursed at her. She stopped on the sidewalk. Her mouth was a thin, tight line. She held me by the shoulders and looked down at me for a long moment.
    Then she said, “Who said that word? Where did you hear it, Johnny?”
    I was really bewildered then. I had hoped all day that it had been just nonsense.
    I said, “A bunch of kids in the building called me a nasty trick baby today. What does it mean, P.G.?”
    She didn’t answer. Her eyes glistened as she squeezed me close.We walked home silently through the steamy July night. I sensed my question had no easy answer. I didn’t press it.
    Two of the blackjack players were on the front stoop. They tittered as we passed them on the way to the third floor. We sat in our smelly combination bedroom-living room on a battered couch.
    Phala sighed deeply. She leaned forward and cupped my face in her palms. Her breath was heavy with whiskey odor. I looked down at her open purse at the side of the couch. The shiny neck of a whiskey bottle flashed inside it. She moved her head from one side to the other like a puzzled robin. She always did that under emotional stress.
    She said, “Honey, don’t let what they called you upset you, it’s a lie, Johnny. It means a very bad thing. If it was true, then I would be a dirty woman who goes to bed with men for money. You wouldn’t really know who your father was. Do you understand, Johnny?”
    I said, “P.G., I understand what you said. But why did they say it when it’s a lie?”
    She said, “Even they didn’t know why they said it. They heard the ugly name from their mamas and papas. Johnny, it’s so hard for Mother to explain the way I should. It all has to do with your white skin and blue eyes.
    â€œYou see, honey, this world is really two worlds. The white world and the black world we’re in now. If mother had married a black man, you wouldn’t look white. Then those boys would love you as one of them.
    â€œIf we lived in the white world and you had a black face, then the white kids would hate and tease you with hateful words. It’s not the kids, black or white, to blame. It’s their mamas and papas poisoning their young minds with ugly hate for skin colors.
    â€œJohnny, you have to be strong and proud. Don’t let hate and ugliness tear you down. Mother’s going to send you to college if it’s the last thing I do on this earth. You’ll be grown and educated with the brains to do your part to change things.
    â€œDon’t hate your father. His parents disowned him when he married me. Their hate ruined him