Read Online The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones by Amiri Baraka - Free Book Online Page A

Frustration now shot out all the way into tragedy! And the pain in those stopped eyes, stopped from vision and transformation, was horrible, like death alive and sitting in a chair completely dominated by reality.
    My grandfather’s last years were all like that. Stopped motion, frustration turned all the way to tragedy. And the old image of Tom Russ slowly evaporated from our young minds and we cruel kids, my sister and I, would whisper to each other like savages about “Spitto” sitting there. We mocked him. But why could we create such ugliness in ourselves? How did it cometo replace the awe and respect? Was it just the grossness and crudity of children or was there some impulse we picked up from the adults around us?
    But it didn’t come from my grandmother. His “Old Miss.” She was with him, close by him, waiting on him, even to her own detriment, until he died. Until they cut down one of his black coats so I could wear it to his funeral.
    Now my grandmother was my heart and soul. She carried sunshine around with her, almost in her smile. She’d have some little hat cocked to one side and she strutted when she walked. Rocked when she was a little weary. But full of fun, her eyes sparkled. You cross her, you were gonna get at least pinched. Like mess up in church, be talking, or fidgeting, she’d cop your flesh between her fingers and rival the inquisition with their more complicated shit. And she had to do that to me quite often in church because I would go completely out, like some kind of menace. A little big eyed monster, yapping, running up and down stairs, giggling and laughing. One time I turned off the electricity down in the basement for the whole church and the organist (another Miss Ada) was pushing on the keys and people rushed to her thinking she was having another stroke. They caught me just as I came up out of the basement. Even the special policeman, Mr. Butler, wanted to smash me. But I got ate up when I got home.
    My grandmother was deeply and completely religious. Her life was defined by Jesus and the holy ghost. Every aspect of her life either had God in it or she hooked him up in some way. And the church was her world. She was head of the Ladies Aid Society, an usherette, and a teacher in the Sunday School. And now and again she’d get “happy” in church and start fanning and weeping, rocking back and forth, but most times she’d just sing and listen and amen, under her little flat-top hat trying to see God from behind her rimless glasses.
    It was my grandmother who most times fed us and kept us, and her spirit is always with us as part of our own personality (I hope). I loved my grandmother so much because she was Good. If that had any meaning in the world. She’d tell you, “Do Unto Others as You’d Have Them Do Unto You,” and you knew that’s what she believed and that’s what she practiced. She’d tell me when I was doing something she approved of, “Practice makes perfect!” Maybe it was being polite, emptying the garbage like I was supposed to, or having shined shoes, or even getting good grades in grammar school. “Practice Makes Perfect.”
    And she was funny, really. Like all those various “teams” on radio and later television whose names she’d turn around. I’m not sure why — was it intentional or why she had to twist it up — but it always cracked my sister and me up. Like she’d talk about Abner and Lum or Costello and Abbott. And when she came out with Andy and Amos I thought she was putting us on, but she would pull it with a straight sincere look and it cracked us up.
    And she dug
The Road of Life, Life Can Be Beautiful, Ma Perkins, Young Widder Brown, Our Gal Sunday, Stella Dallas, Lorenzo Jones
(and his wife, Belle). She’d be listening when we came in and then the kid adventure stuff would come on and she’d fade to do her dinner, preparing stuff,