A Black, a Mexican and a Jew

By Robert M Freedman

When Ron, Willie, and Mario find themselves drawn by a mysterious force into a downtown Los Angeles bowling alley. Little do they know what a fateful turn their lives will take that day. Down and out, beaten by the drugs, violence, and fear that plagued the streets they call home, these three high school misfits find each other on the verge of giving up. Can they climb out of their depression and bring forth a new city that will be void of the things that brought them to this point? With the help from powers they dont quite understand, a Black, a Mexican, and a Jew are about to find out.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543478204

Book preview

ONE

A Black

H ERE I AM, me, W. Willie White. The black that was going to set all the blacks free and teach them how to live in the white man’s world. Dr. Martin L. King lived inside of me. I was going to carry on his work. What went wrong? Where did I screw up and how did I get here? But let me not get ahead of my story. It is the 15 th of June 1989 and it is about 6:00 PM. The sun is still high in the sky as I am walking down a street in Hollywood. My mind is elsewhere. It is at the Hollywood Bowl where I should be graduating with my class … but I am not. With each step I take, I try to relive what went wrong. I was the best student in school with a future made for success, and now that is all gone. But let me review what happened and see if I can find where I went astray.

I was born W. Willie White in the Watts area of Compton, California. I can remember back to when I was five. We had nothing. My mom used to tell me that the white man was bad and that he would do things to hurt me and that the only way I could not get hurt was for me to hurt him first. I can still think back to those days and remember how I felt as I didn’t believe her, for I knew many whites and they were very nice to me. But it always made me more cautious of the whites, where to the blacks I gave my trust very quickly and easily. We were living in a condemned house at the time, with no water, electricity, or heat. It was my little sister, Willsala; my mom; and me. Each day my mom would leave in the morning and come home in the evening before it got dark. She always said, I don’t ever want you to be alone in the dark. The city condemned the house because it was not fit to be lived in and the city knew what it was talking about. The floor was made of wood and there were many cracks in it and we could see the ground under the house. The wood had many splinters in it, and my sister and I would find most of them. I became very good at taking them out. I liked the house. I used to play spider. It’s funny that everyone hates spiders, except me; I liked them. I didn’t touch them, but I liked to look at them and just watch them. So I used to play spider and scare my little sister. I didn’t really scare her, but she let me think I did. I think that these were the most wonderful years of my life, as I had no worries or problems.

My mom was away most of the time, and I used to cook and take care of my little sister. It was great, we got along so well. I sometimes had to hit her, not too hard, to make her mind me. The thought of giving her pain hurt me, and I was sure she knew it.

On my first day at school, the teacher asked me my mother’s name. I said Mom, and everyone laughed at me. I was very embarrassed and became afraid to talk out loud. The teacher asked me what my father called my mom. I told her I didn’t have a father and that my mom never told me about him. Then the teacher said to me that I was a nice boy and there was no reason why my mom’s name could not be Mom. But then she explained to me that everyone had a first and last name. She said, You call me teacher. Some of the students will call me Mrs. Green. My husband calls me Ann as do most of my friends and my son calls me Mom. She said that I did not have to feel bad by calling my mother mom. She made me not feel embarrassed and then dropped the subject.

While I was at school, Willsala would stay with a friend. Mom would drop her off and I would pick her up when I came home from school. When I got home from school that day, I asked Willsala if she knew what Mom’s first name was. She didn’t know either. When Mom came home that night, I asked her what her first name was. It was Shavon.

All the kids in my class seemed to like me and I liked them. But when school was out, they went their way and I went mine. I didn’t know that my social life was going to be hurt by this. But as I look back, I remember how hard it was to talk to kids outside of school. I never knew why it was so hard. I guess they sort of made me feel I didn’t belong. I know it was my imagination, but it seemed so real. When I did talk to them, they would turn their backs to me and talk to others and never respond to me.

There was no one to play with or be around as we were the only ones living in this small area. It was hard for me to make friends because no one was ever around, and I guess that was the best thing that could have happened to me. For with no one to play with and no TV, there was only one thing I could do and that was to do my schoolwork. Later we moved into a nice apartment near school and near other boys and girls. But all I could do was hit the books.

When I turned eight, we moved again. I was in the third grade now and I knew what I wanted. It was to go to college to study the economy and learn all about real estate and how the stocks and bonds worked. I also started asking my mom questions like: Where are you when we come home from school? Where do we get our money? Why do we have such poor-looking clothes? My mom would say, Willie, you are growing into a man too fast. I didn’t understand what she said, but I accepted it and learned to live with it.

At eight I had my mom get me a library card, and I spent a lot of time in the library. When I would leave school, I would pick up my sister and we would go to the library. They had a section where Willsala could look at videotapes. So while she watched the tapes that I picked out for her, I would read. I was pretty good. Of course, many of the books I got were written for a fifth- or sixth-grader. The librarian got to know me and would always get books that I would be able to read about. I would tell her what subjects I liked to read and she would get me the books. She was a white person and was always very nice to me. While I was there, I met a man who would help the librarian. His name was Mr. Jones and he was a black man. If I was having trouble with my reading or couldn’t understand something, I would always ask Mr. Jones to help me. I spent many a day in the library and it became my home away from home.

My mom worked at a 7-Eleven store that was open twenty-four hours a day and she spent most of her time there, but she was always home when it started to get dark outside and she stayed the night with us. There were some times she went out, but had a friend stay with us. She loved us both so much, but the hatred she had for the whites was always there. It was drummed into us morning, noon, and night. The whites are bad and you can’t trust them. They put us in this ghetto and will leave us here forever.

One day at school we had a substitute teacher who was a white man. We only had a few white teachers at our school, and they were awful; not to say that the blacks were any better. So to see a white man coming into our classroom to be our teacher was a big surprise––a big strong man with a mean face. He scared me just by looking at me. We sat down and no one said a word. He looked at us for about five minutes, still with this mean, ugly face, just staring at us. I pictured him eating us all up. Then he smiled and it was just like God coming down from the sky and letting us all take a liking to this man. His first words were, I hope you like me, because I sure like you. He was very nice to us, answering all our questions about whites and blacks. A girl even asked him a question about sex, and he answered in a manner that put us all at ease with him. He was different from most black teachers, as all they wanted to do was go home after school. When we told him that, he smiled and said that he had a wife and two small boys and that when school was out, he also wanted to go home. He told us that he was the same as all teachers, and that all teachers, white or black, have but one goal, and that is to teach the young boys and girls. He was there about five days, and to this very day, his words have stayed with me.

From most of the teachers, black or white, I would get the feeling that blacks were indeed second-class citizens, and we could be anything we wanted, as long as the whites allowed us to. They would say that a black could go to college as long as it was a black college where blacks studied things that were best for the blacks and stayed out of the white man’s world. They never talked to us as individuals, but only as a group, and if you were black, you were part of the group. The teachers told us of blacks that were successful in life, but in doing so, made us feel that we would never be able to do what they did. Of course, I read of the blacks in sports and felt that it didn’t take smarts to be in sports, so the whites let them play. But this white teacher was different. He seemed to like us. He liked all people—white, black, and any kind.

One day in class he looked at a girl and asked her what she liked to do outside of school time. She said she liked to watch TV. The teacher said, Maybe that is why your grades are as poor as they are. Maybe you should do a little schoolwork on the side. He did not embarrass her but made her see that grades depend on the amount of work you put into your class.

He asked what kind of shows she liked to see. She said, I like the ones where people get killed. The teacher asked the class if anyone else liked those kinds of shows. Everyone raised their hands except for a few. The teacher asked the other ones what they liked. They said that they liked action shows, and I said I liked the news. The teacher said you can learn a lot about people from the kinds of shows they watch on TV.

He told us that the reason we like to watch TV is that it is fun and we enjoy doing it. But some watch it so they can live it out and this is not good. Boy, a lot of the kids looked around the room and felt bad that they had raised their hands. The teacher said that you should be able to learn as well as be entertained. So the next day he brought a TV to class and he picked a boy and asked what show he would like to see. John picked Happy Days, and we all watched for thirty minutes. Then the teacher asked John a few questions about the show. He couldn’t answer even the simplest one. The teacher said this was no way to watch a show. Then he showed us what to look for. It was a lot of fun and very interesting, but I was very disappointed to see most of the kids just not care. They seemed to be in their own worlds and that is where they wanted to stay, afraid to come out and let their words be heard.

It also made me want to set my goals for life. Then when I became nine, I started to look at the market and pick stocks by what I had read about them. I could not believe how good I was at making paper money. All my stocks seemed to go up. If only I had money to invest in them! I found my schooling to be very poor, and I continued to spend a lot of time in the libraries and using the school mail to write for advanced information on certain things I was interested in. My grades were all As, as I worked very hard for them. My teachers helped me more and more, as they wanted me to amount to something. A few took me to their homes and showed me what life would be like after I had a family. Many of my friends would find books for me. I was becoming very well versed in almost all subjects. One of the teachers gave me his old TV set and asked me to watch the news each day for fifteen minutes. I put the set in my bedroom and became interested in what was happening in the world.

Things were happening very fast to me. Life was drawing me into the world of the blacks, and I didn’t want to get into their world. I wanted to belong to the whole world. I was bombarded with fights in schools and gangs and then drugs. Once I was coming home from school when a friend took some pills out of his pocket and said that they made him feel good and that they made him forget about the problems of the day. Would I like some?

I remember saying to him that we have to live with our problems as we make our own problems, so we must be able to live with them, and then I gave him a lecture on life. This was when I was thirteen. He was a little older than me, and he just looked at me and then said, Billy, you’re kidding yourself. We are what we are and no one can ever change that. The world we live in is bad and cruel. You will find that out someday, and when you do you will be hurt, so think about it and you will come in with us. Thomas was a nice kid, and I sort of looked up to him after that and he sort of watched out for me. Thomas was a very popular boy at school, as everyone either liked him or was afraid of him.

I guess I should have broken off with Thomas because of his drugs and all, but he was so nice to me and my sister, and he kept me out of trouble, so I just couldn’t. In the ninth grade, Thomas and some friends and I went to a football game. Two black schools were playing, and would you believe it, a riot broke out with kids hitting each other and breaking anything and everything they could. Thomas got me out of there fast and went back. I begged him not to go back, but he said that I shouldn’t run his life. He looked at me in a way that made me understand that what he was going to do, he had to do, even if he didn’t want to. Later that night we met. He had some marks on him that made me know he got into the thick of things. He said to me that he knew that someday he would get killed doing what he was doing, but the real world was full of crap. No matter what happened to him, he was ready for it, and no one, not even me, could change his mind.

That night seemed to change the way I was thinking. I found out that there were three types of blacks. The first were the Thomases that were out to get anything they could and hurt anyone who got in their way. They felt that they were doomed from the start, so anything was better than just sitting around waiting to die. The second group felt that the whites owed them a living, and the last group felt that blacks and whites were only separated by their color and nothing else.

The sad thing was that I could not get to the other two groups and bring them over to the last group. In the last group, the blacks were hard workers and stayed out of trouble and tried to get a good education. Many of my very good friends were in this group, but to my surprise, they didn’t care about the others, saying that if they tried to help them, they would only bring trouble to you. I didn’t believe them and kept trying to reach some of the others. It was funny to see how some of the blacks were so set in their thinking that they could not even realize what was happening to them. They saw their friends getting killed by the gangs and taking overdoses of pills and dying, and to them it was just a part of living. I couldn’t reach them; still I tried.

However, the more I tried, the more disappointed I became. They would talk to me like I was the outsider and what they were doing had to be done. They would kill because it was part of their life. They didn’t want to understand that they didn’t have to do this. There was another and better way to get what they wanted. But still I tried every time I could. If I could get just one to change his ways, I could save at least one life; so I thought.

My sister started to get in trouble. When she was twelve, she was caught smoking pot in the restroom at school. Then there was the market she and two others robbed. Her friends seemed to have more control over her than my mom or me. It used to destroy me when I would sit down and talk to her and she would always say, I am not you and I will do as I please. Where Willsala went, you would find trouble. It got really bad, and when she was in the eighth grade, she got arrested for auto theft. So off to juvie she went. She was there for two weeks, and when she came home, she told us what a big mistake she made listening to her friends instead of us, and told us that she would repent. No more drugs or running around with the wrong crowd.

She told us of the people she met in Juvie Hall. These people were bad dudes, as she put it. They were mean and ugly and told her to stay out of their way. When these kids got back out into the streets, they were going to do what they did all over again. Many of the kids in Juvie Hall were white, and they did the same things the blacks did. She told us she never wanted to go back to that place, never again.

As I went into the tenth grade, colleges were already trying to recruit me. Willsala was clean and we enjoyed our brotherly/sisterly love. My mom was very happy. My schoolwork was just outstanding, as I won many awards in civic responsibilities. I flew up to Sacramento with five others for winning a writing contest, and stayed three days. When we got off the plane, there to meet me was my state representative. He gave me a tour of the capital and told me that maybe I should consider politics for my life’s work. He made a lot of sense, and I told him I would give it some thought. While we were in Sacramento, we met over one hundred other students from high schools all over the state. We had a competition where everyone went before a group of educators and gave a speech about what he/she wanted to do in life. Then they asked us some questions about events that were taking place and how we would solve certain problems. The experience was fantastic and I learned a lot from it. I came in first in that competition, and when I got home, everyone was proud of me. That was just two short years ago. How in the world could I not succeed? Everyone was on my side. I had the skills, the knowledge, the temperament, the desire, the energy, and now money, with the scholarships I was offered, was not a problem. Some of the colleges were offering me money now, but I was uncomfortable accepting it as that would make me commit to a college and I was not ready for that. All I could think of was how I could repay my mother for all the hard work she put into raising my sister and me. I had thoughts of living in the best area of Los Angeles and buying my mom a big house. I could not help of thinking of the movie Fiddler on the Roof, when he sang a song called, If I Were a Rich Man. But unlike the singer, I knew that God helps those who help themselves and that the harder I worked in school, the sooner I would be that rich man.

When it hit, it hit hard. It was, I guess, October of my junior year when Thomas started to help me too much. I should have seen it coming, but I didn’t. He knew what I wanted in life and was going to help me. He told me that he received a large amount of money when his grandmother died. I should have realized he was lying because I knew he had no rich grandmother, but I accepted it. He wanted to buy me a computer so I could work at home and accomplish more than I ever dreamed possible. The whole setup cost over $5,000, and Thomas said I was doing him a favor by accepting the computer because he knew down deep that I would be able to help our people. (I should have been aware when he said our people, as I knew the only people he cared about was himself.)

He also pushed the public life more with me, because as a state assemblyman or senator, I could do more. So I started to lean that way. Again, everyone at school––my classmates and faculty––supported me. I guess Thomas was the biggest influence in my life, at that time. Little did I know what he would do to me. He spent a lot of time at the house, and he and Willsala became good friends and started to date. I thought that was great and, if they got married, Thomas would be my brother-in-law.

We had a great Christmas party, and Thomas bought everyone expensive presents. We had a great time eating the turkey, and it was nice. I went to bed thinking I was the luckiest guy in the whole world. Then my mom took sick, really sick. She had to go to the hospital. We had no medical insurance, but the 7-Eleven store where she worked helped out. They paid for the hospital and all the medication she needed. I knew they did not have to do this, but they did. My mom was told by the doctor that she could not go back to work for a year or so. I could not understand why my mom was mad at the owner of the store, but she was, maybe because he was white. The owner, Mr. Fienly, visited my mom in the hospital, and when my mom came home, he came to the house to visit and have a talk with her. He said he would be able to give us some money each month to live on until my mom was strong enough to go back to work. It was very nice of him to do that, because he really didn’t have to. But on and on my mom went. It’s a white man’s world. I bust my ass and what does it get me? I work from early in the morning until late at night and what does it get me? I tried to explain to her that Mr. Fienly didn’t have to give us a penny, but because he knew how hard she worked, he did. Nothing I said seemed to make her see that Mr. Fienly was one hell of a nice guy, whether he was black or white.

As the days passed, I noticed that Willsala was not herself, but the change was so slow in coming I didn’t give it much thought. But when her grades started to fall and problems at school surfaced, once more my mom went to school to see what the problems were. This was in May, and she found out that Willsala was not attending all her classes and she seemed to be uptight all the time. When we both got home from school that day, Mom sat us down and we had a long talk. After we talked for a while, it came out that a friend of Thomas’s would pick her up at school about ten o’clock and take her to a local motel where she would stay until about noon. The shock was too much for me. I grabbed her and was going to kill her if my mom hadn’t stopped me. My fifteen-year-old sister was a prostitute, a hooker, a whore, a slut, a piece of shit. After I got control of myself, I told my mom and sister I would take care of it, that Willsala was never to see that guy again and that I would meet him in front of school the next day … big mistake!

When I went there, a black Cad showed up, and out stepped a white dude who had a black suit on. I went up to him and told him that it was over with my sister and that I would not inform the law if he just moved on. Well, before I knew what happened, we were fighting. That was okay with me as I was a pretty good fighter. I was beating the shit out of him when three or four men grabbed me. I can remember two holding me as the others took turns using me as a punching bag. All I could remember was looking into the eyes of the last guy who hit me. Then I passed out. When I woke up, I was in a hotel room naked with two other naked men and the police. I was then arrested for male prostitution … what happened? How could this be? I was taken to the police station and fingerprinted and put in a cell. There I sat for about two or three hours until two policemen come in and talked to me.

It must have been my lucky day for they knew who did this and that this dude was using girls from the local high school for prostitution. Would my sister and I press charges against him? Later when my mom and sister showed up, we all talked. I was for telling the police everything and locking that son of a bitch up. But my sister asked if she could speak to us alone so the two policemen left the room. Willie, Willsala said, if we have these dudes arrested, they will get back at us. They probably won’t even spend a day in jail. And when they get out, they will take care of us. Well, she made a lot of sense, and we decided not to press charges. When we came home, my poor sister cried and cried and said she didn’t even know how it happened. She hated it even though she got a little money for it. I guess she had been punished enough.

As I went into my senior year, a bad thing happened. My mom’s boss, Mr. Fienly, came over one night and said that he had to sell the store and that he would not be able to give my mom any money. A black man bought the store and didn’t feel he owed us any money. So Mr. Fienly wished us well and said that he was very sorry and left. I guess I could understand the new owner, but my mom sure couldn’t. That Mr. Fienly was a very nice man, but the new owner––I hated him. I think my mom’s trouble was that she never liked anyone, so hated everyone. It may have happened when my dad left.

So it looked like I would have to get a job. But Thomas said no, don’t worry, as he felt sorry about the dude that got Willsala into trouble and swore to us that he didn’t know a thing about it. So to make up for it, he gave us the same amount of money we were getting from the store each month so I didn’t have to go to work. I could stay home and study. I knew in my heart that the money he was getting did not come from his dead grandma, but was not going to bite the hand that fed us. Thomas was so nice to my mom too. He would call her Mom and sit with her and really treat her like she was his mom too. I guess that is why I turned my head about the money.

But every day after that, I would see that black Cad in front of the school. Well, I couldn’t take it anymore––all those innocent girls. So I went to all my friends who saw what happened to me and said, Let’s get him. It was not surprising to see they all felt the same way Willsala did and told me they would like to help but …

It was Big John who put his hand on my shoulder and said, Willie, these are bad dudes. You can’t beat them, I can’t beat them, no one can beat them. If you have them arrested, they will be out in less than a day, and they will be coming for you.

Well, Big John made a lot of sense. I guess what was so bad was that everyone knew what was happening, but no one would lift a finger to stop them. I can’t believe it, but I didn’t do anything about it either; as school would be out in a few weeks, maybe it would all just stop. What a summer followed. It was one that got worse as time went on. First my mom had to go back to the hospital for an operation, then my sister found out she was pregnant, and then the black Cad showed up at my house. When the dude came to the door, he said that Thomas needed a favor. I never saw this dude before but listened to him. I was to take this box to the hospital and give it to the person in room 450. Well, since I was going to see my mom, I would be able to do this. However, when I got to the hospital and went into room 450, I found the police waiting for me and I knew I had been had. The box was full of cocaine. So back to jail I went. How could I have been so naive? The sergeant at the police station recognized me and asked me for the details of what happened. I gave him a very good description of the dude, and they let me go free. As I went back to the hospital, I was wondering if Thomas really asked that guy to come to my house and take the drugs to the hospital.

When I got back to the hospital, they said my mom could go home with me. That was great, but I would have to take care of her. Thomas was still giving us some money so that was not a problem. The very next day when I got home from school, there was a note on the table. It was from my mother. She said that my sister had an overdose, and they were in the hospital. I got to the hospital in no time and met my mom. After a few hours, the doctors told us that Willsala was out of danger and we could go in to see her. While we were there, a police detective came in and asked her questions. She talked about this boy she was going with and his friends and then she looked at me. She said that they were all friends of Thomas’s. They took turns screwing her and when they were finished, they gave her these pills. She was able to give the police the names of all the people involved. How could Thomas do this? I asked myself. But I knew my sister and wondered how much of it was true. I saw Thomas and he told me that he didn’t know the boys who screwed my sister. They just used his name to get her to go out with them. He also said he didn’t know anything about the box and that he would take care of the dude who gave it to me. Boy, was I ever naive … I believed him.

In a day or two my sister came home. I had to take care of both my mom and my sister now. As my sister and I talked, I asked her how and why she ever got into that crowd––she knew they were bad. Willsala said she did it for me, and I asked how that was for me. She told me that Thomas said she had to pay for the computer and if she didn’t, Thomas was going to put me in jail. He said if I did this for one month, I would have it paid off. Well, after a month Thomas said I would still have to do it or lose the money he was giving us each month. Once