High Price

heard my father talking to a woman who, it soon became clear, was his lover. Most of their fights had to do with real or imagined infidelity. It was a volatile, unstable relationship. And so, driven by rage, MH went coldly and deliberately into the kitchen. She turned on the stove and began boiling a pot full of maple syrup and water. Revenge would be served hot.
    Soon my father got off the phone. He was lying in bed, wearing only underwear. Without saying a word, my mother walked into the bedroom and threw the sticky mixture at him, hoping the boiling syrup would cling to his skin. Her anger had taken over. Fortunately, most of the sweet-smelling but dangerous goo missed him. My father did get somewhat burned on one leg, but the vast majority of the sticky mess wound up on the walls or the floor. But now he was enraged.
    Terrified, my mom ran out of the house—my dad chasing her, still wearing only his Fruit of the Loom underpants. Typically when my parents fought there was a predictable escalation from raised voices to violence. This time there was no preface. I just kept clear.

    MH in New York shortly after she and Carl separated in 1972.
    And fortunately for my mother, my father did not manage to catch her. It had been raining heavily, one of those intense subtropical downpours, slicking everything outside. Hot in pursuit, my father slipped on the concrete or wet grass, giving her precious seconds to make her getaway. To this day, my sisters believe he would have killed her if he’d caught her. But she had, for once, planned ahead. MH had called her cousin Bob and asked him to pick her up. He was outside waiting in his car. She jumped in. They sped away before my father could catch her. Recovering himself, my father made my sisters clean the syrup off the walls and floor. But that incident did definitively end my parents’ marriage.
    Everyone went in separate directions at first. My siblings and I were split up living with various grandmothers and aunts. MH went to New York. My father stayed in our house, and after I’d spent just one night with Grandmama, he brought me there to live with him.
    I was so glad to be going home. He didn’t take any of my sisters or my little brother, just me, his namesake, who was born on his own birthday. That felt right. I was his first son. I was the oldest boy. I was going to have to be the man of the house soon enough. And I wasn’t scared of him; I never felt like the violence between him and my mother had anything to do with me.
    Carl never hit me: when he disciplined me, it was with a stern lecture or by grounding. My mother and aunts were the ones who got physical with us children. Also, at the time, I saw both of my parents participating equally in their fights. Like any other boy, I admired my father and worshipped him with that blind, childish love that admits no flaws or contradictions. Where I grew up, though, unpredictable events often led to major life changes.

CHAPTER 3
    Big Mama
    If you’re going to play the game properly, you’d better know every rule.
    — BARBARA JORDAN
    I was about midway through second grade when I started living with Big Mama, whose home was not far from where I’d lived before my parents divorced. I’d lived with my father for a few weeks after my parents separated. Even though I tried my best to be unobtrusive and well behaved because I so wanted to stay with him, he soon found he was unable to care for a young child adequately. My mother also wanted him to sell the house so that she could have her half of the equity. I’d have to live with his mother.
    Although we called her Big Mama, she was actually quite short, around five foot two, but broad and big-boned. A proud Bahamian woman who had come to the United States as a young adult, Big Mama wore long, colorful dresses and oversize cat-eye glasses. Though she always kept her hair back in a neat bun, I never saw her straighten it or use any kind of relaxer or color. Her hair was black, only lightly streaked with gray. I loved Big Mama and she stood up for me, stressing first and foremost self-sufficiency and schooling. A black man without an education don’t stand a chance, she would always say.
    The debate between the philosophies typically associated with Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois was represented in my own family in the differences between my paternal and maternal grandmothers. Big Mama was with Du Bois: education was primarily what would advance the race,