Read Online Yaccub's Curse by Wrath James White - Free Book Online
Authors: Wrath James White
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kids got murdered for. It was much better than her knowing that I’d trashed the kid’s brother and he was out looking for revenge. She’d have worried herself sick if she knew that. Just like I was doing.
“Well, ain’t nobody gonna beat you but me if you don’t clean up that room. Ain’t nobody gonna lay a finger on you as long as I’m around.”
I loved hearing her say it, but even she knew that parents couldn’t protect me from everything. That life was bigger and stronger than Mom or Dad or even Grandma. Some kids make it all the way through college before they learned those lessons. But those kids never lived in the ghetto.
“Do I have to clean my room now? I’m hungry grandma.” I made the most pitiful face I could muster and could see grandma’s resolve melting like an ice-cream castle.
“Lord, child you gonna be the death of me. Don’t them people feed you at school?”
“That food is nasty! I don’t eat that mess!”
“Well, you sure got fine tastes for a little boy with no job and no money. Get in there and do your homework while I make you a sandwich. And don’t tell me you ain’t got none ’cause I know better.”
“Oh, alright.”
I picked the book up off the table and marched with it into the family room. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Grandma’s eyes latch onto the book and follow it out of the room. Now I was really curious. What was it about this little book that made her so afraid?
Grandma went shuffling into the kitchen to scrape the meat off some left-over chicken legs to make me a sandwich and I sat down at the huge ornate dining room table that would have been a gorgeous antique in a nicer home but in ours, covered with cheap plastic placemats that smelled like airplane glue, it was just another piece in a cluttered maze of junk.
I opened the book by Elijah Muhammed and began to read about Dr. Yacub and how the white man was the devil. I laughed as I thought about it. All the white boys I knew were far too soft to be devils. They were more like those bitch-ass cherubs in the renaissance paintings at the art museum. Then again I hadn’t been a slave nor had I been forced to deal with the degradation of the Jim Crow laws as most Black people did back when this book was written. Poverty was the only burden that Black people today had to bear and it seemed that much of it was our own doing. Dropping out of school, having babies at 15 years-old, getting thrown in prison before we could legally vote, voiding our minds with drugs, men abandoning their families to start new ones over and over again without supporting any of the children they produced. I didn’t see the devil involved in any of that. I saw our own self-destructive ignorance. Even my own family seemed to have a fear of success, afraid to risk everything to go for their dreams, but rather content to stay in the ghetto and complain about what they didn’t have.
Even Grandma could have gone back to school if she wanted to. I’d heard of lots of middle-aged people who went to college to try to better themselves. Every day I heard my mother and grandmother complaining about the depressed economy and non-existent job market in Philadelphia, but yet they stayed here suffering, too afraid to leave the comfort and familiarity of the goddamned block. I made a promise to myself that I was going to get the fuck out of Philly the first chance I got. I tossed the book aside and started my math homework.
All of a sudden I heard loud voices cussin’ and arguing outside. One of the voices was speaking in an almost indecipherable Jamaican patois’ and the other was speaking in the most exaggerated ghetto slang I’d ever heard. I could barely understand either of them.
“What! Nigga, what! You betta act like you know and stop slangin’ that shit on my turf ’cause I know you don’t want no drama from me, fool!”
“Go on bloodclot! Lickle peckerwood wannabe! Jah Warrior say ’ow tings go down ’ere and ’e
“Well, ain’t nobody gonna beat you but me if you don’t clean up that room. Ain’t nobody gonna lay a finger on you as long as I’m around.”
I loved hearing her say it, but even she knew that parents couldn’t protect me from everything. That life was bigger and stronger than Mom or Dad or even Grandma. Some kids make it all the way through college before they learned those lessons. But those kids never lived in the ghetto.
“Do I have to clean my room now? I’m hungry grandma.” I made the most pitiful face I could muster and could see grandma’s resolve melting like an ice-cream castle.
“Lord, child you gonna be the death of me. Don’t them people feed you at school?”
“That food is nasty! I don’t eat that mess!”
“Well, you sure got fine tastes for a little boy with no job and no money. Get in there and do your homework while I make you a sandwich. And don’t tell me you ain’t got none ’cause I know better.”
“Oh, alright.”
I picked the book up off the table and marched with it into the family room. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Grandma’s eyes latch onto the book and follow it out of the room. Now I was really curious. What was it about this little book that made her so afraid?
Grandma went shuffling into the kitchen to scrape the meat off some left-over chicken legs to make me a sandwich and I sat down at the huge ornate dining room table that would have been a gorgeous antique in a nicer home but in ours, covered with cheap plastic placemats that smelled like airplane glue, it was just another piece in a cluttered maze of junk.
I opened the book by Elijah Muhammed and began to read about Dr. Yacub and how the white man was the devil. I laughed as I thought about it. All the white boys I knew were far too soft to be devils. They were more like those bitch-ass cherubs in the renaissance paintings at the art museum. Then again I hadn’t been a slave nor had I been forced to deal with the degradation of the Jim Crow laws as most Black people did back when this book was written. Poverty was the only burden that Black people today had to bear and it seemed that much of it was our own doing. Dropping out of school, having babies at 15 years-old, getting thrown in prison before we could legally vote, voiding our minds with drugs, men abandoning their families to start new ones over and over again without supporting any of the children they produced. I didn’t see the devil involved in any of that. I saw our own self-destructive ignorance. Even my own family seemed to have a fear of success, afraid to risk everything to go for their dreams, but rather content to stay in the ghetto and complain about what they didn’t have.
Even Grandma could have gone back to school if she wanted to. I’d heard of lots of middle-aged people who went to college to try to better themselves. Every day I heard my mother and grandmother complaining about the depressed economy and non-existent job market in Philadelphia, but yet they stayed here suffering, too afraid to leave the comfort and familiarity of the goddamned block. I made a promise to myself that I was going to get the fuck out of Philly the first chance I got. I tossed the book aside and started my math homework.
All of a sudden I heard loud voices cussin’ and arguing outside. One of the voices was speaking in an almost indecipherable Jamaican patois’ and the other was speaking in the most exaggerated ghetto slang I’d ever heard. I could barely understand either of them.
“What! Nigga, what! You betta act like you know and stop slangin’ that shit on my turf ’cause I know you don’t want no drama from me, fool!”
“Go on bloodclot! Lickle peckerwood wannabe! Jah Warrior say ’ow tings go down ’ere and ’e
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