Maybe You Never Cry Again (13 page)

“Something happened to Billy?”

She didn't want to tell me, but she had to tell me. “I'm sorry, Beanie. Billy's dead.”

Then the phone clicked and it was Eric, to tell me what I'd just heard. And Billy's mother takes the phone from him and she was in terrible pain. “Oh, Bernie,” she said, crying. “She killed my boy. She shot him. She killed my little Billy.”

I was crushed. Tears were pouring down my cheeks. My main man. I could have gone to get him, snow or no snow, but I didn't go. I felt awful. Boops came into the room. Nine years old, and she sees me crying and knows something is very wrong.

“What's wrong, Daddy?” she asked me.

“It's your uncle Billy, honey,” I said. “He's dead.”

She started sobbing, like her heart was breaking. I held her in my arms. My heart was breaking right along with hers. I couldn't accept it. I kept wondering what he must have felt like. Was he in pain? What were his last thoughts? Was he maybe thinking how I didn't come to get him? That I'd failed him? Was he already dead that second time Shawna called? Was he lying there bleeding?

The phone rang again. It was Billy's mother, still crying a river. “Beanie,” she said. “When the trial comes, please don't forsake us.” And then I remembered what Billy had told me. “Bean,” he had said. “If anything happens to me, I want you to get Shawna.”

 

But I didn't get Shawna. They charged her with second-degree murder and she got up there and said Billy used to beat her all the time. She was only defending herself against a violent, no-good man. They showed the jury pictures of her body, marked up with ugly bruises, and they said Billy's fists and feet had made those bruises.

Before I took the stand, they asked me if I was sure I still wanted to testify. I said yes, more than ever. I would tell how crazy that woman was, how she had my Billy hooked. And they took me
into a small room and showed me pictures of Billy. There was a little hole in his right temple, where she'd shot him at close range. He'd fallen forward and hit his head on the edge of the dresser, they told me. They said he died instantly. He didn't suffer.

“Oh, he suffered,” I said.

I went and gave my testimony, but it didn't do a damn thing. Shawna walked out of there with probation, a free woman. I'd made my main man a promise I couldn't keep. And I kept thinking about the snow. And how he'd still be alive if I'd only got in the damn car and gone to get him.

I would never see his handsome face again. I would never hear him laugh again. Never.

Billy had suffered. And his family had suffered. And I was going to suffer for a long time to come.

Billy. My nigger. My main man. I miss you, Billy. The world is a lonelier place without you.

Billy had a big funeral, with people getting up to remember him and pray and sing and tell stories. Normally I was the one who cheered the mourners at these events, with my comedy routines and such. But I didn't find the strength for it that day.

They sealed the coffin, and we took him to the cemetery and buried him.

It was a grim day. Raining. With ice everywhere from the big storm. Me and Morris left the cemetery and picked up a case of beer and went and sat in a park. We were the only ones there, two sad fools drinking beer in the cold rain and missing their friend Billy.

“I should've gone to pick him up,” I said. “Blizzard or no blizzard, I should've driven over.”

Morris kept telling me I was crazy to be thinking like that; that it wasn't my fault; that I had begged Billy umpteen times to open up to me and he never came clean about the serious trouble he was in.

Still, I couldn't help blaming myself. That's the way guilt works. I kept going back to the times I felt I wasn't there for him, and it was driving me crazy. I couldn't stop dwelling on it. It was with me during the day, and it kept me up half the night.

My only solace was in work. I lost myself in my work. They had about twenty Dock's around town, and at one point or another I must've worked in every last one of them. Pat the fish dry, throw it in the flour, flip it over, repeat. Then lay it in the fryer smooth. My fish would always come out flat, not a curl on it. Amazing how a man can disappear into his work. Not think of anything else. Keep it deep inside. Hidden.

But I was kidding myself. The thoughts of Billy were never far behind.

“You have to stop thinking about this,” Rhonda told me.

She could see it was making me crazy, and it worried her. I'd always been hard to read, hard to ruffle; now I was walking around like a zombie. It was showing on my face. In my eyes. In the way I moved.

“Billy's the only one who believed in me,” I said. “He's the only one who thought I was going to make it as a comedian.”

“That's not true,” Rhonda said.

But I wasn't listening.

 

On July 4, I was walking around in my usual daze when I got hit in the forehead by an M-80 firecracker. Woke me the fuck up. Blood was pouring down my face and my ears were ringing so loud I couldn't hear anything. I felt like I was underwater. My cousin came running over and started hollering at me, but I couldn't hear a word. I could just see his lips moving, and the worry on his face. He grabbed me by the arm and helped me home, and Rhonda lay me flat on the bed and put an ice pack on my head.

But my damn head wouldn't stop bleeding, so Rhonda took me to Jackson Park Hospital. When the nurse finally got around to taking my blood pressure, she looked at the gauge like it had to be wrong. She tried again. This time she looked plain worried, and it worried
me.

“What's wrong?” I said.

“Nothing,” she said, and she hurried off to get a doctor.

The doctor told me my blood pressure was 190 over 120. I didn't believe him. I said I felt fine and went home. I lay down and took a couple of aspirin for the headache and went to sleep.

The next morning I got up and had breakfast with my family, then walked Je'Niece to school and went to see my own doctor, a man I trusted. He took my blood pressure and looked at me funny. “Bernie,” he asked. “Did you run over here?”

“No.”

“This is very bad,” he said. “Your blood pressure is 220 over 140.”

“That can't be right!” I said. “That's worse than yesterday.”

He put some kind of tablet under my tongue and told me to hold it there until it dissolved, then wrote out a prescription for hypertension.

“I don't understand this,” I said. “I've always been healthy as a horse.”

“I know,” my doctor said. “I don't understand it, either. What's on your mind, Bernie? Must be a got-damn storm raging inside you.”

And suddenly I knew what he was talkin' about; knew just the storm he meant. I'd been thinking about Billy. I'd been thinking about all the times I wasn't there for him, about how I'd failed him in life and failed him again at the trial. I couldn't stop thinking about him, and my obsession was making me sick.

 

By the time I got to the pharmacy, I had decided not to fill the prescription. Instead, I walked home and went into that quiet place inside me. It's like a church in there. Best church in the whole damn world.

And I remembered another of my mother's Mac-isms, something she'd tell me when I'd obsess over things that had already come and gone:
Stop living in the past, Bean. You can't change what happened. Just like you can't change the future by worrying about it. You just have to keep moving, son. It's all about forward movement.

She was right.
Again.
I couldn't change the past, but I could sure enough keep moving. I had lost my way. I'd stopped dreaming. Take a man's dream away from him and he might as well curl up and die.

“You know something, Bean,” she once said, “it's very hard to balance a bicycle when you're standing still. But when you're moving forward, there's nothing to it. You can fly.

“Well, life's like that, too. If you're not moving forward, you're going to struggle just to keep your balance. But if you're moving forward, if you've got direction, nothing can stand in your way.”

I was still getting strength from my mother. Her words got me out of my rut, back on track. “You can't control what happens, Beanie. But you can control how you respond to it.”

Before I knew it, I was back doing comedy. I'd leave Dock's at five and run home and shower and go find me a stage,
any
stage.

 

By 1988 I was somewhere just about every night. Tuesdays at Dating Game. Wednesdays at Chez Coco. Thursdays at The 500. Fridays at A.K.A. On weekends I'd do shows and private parties and be the half-time entertainment at local discos.

That's show biz, baby.

When I had a bad night, I wouldn't sleep well. I'd toss and turn. I'd be thinking about where I went wrong. About delivery, timing. And that's fine, because I'd learn from my mistakes.

On good nights, I'd toss and turn, too. I'd be pumped, high. But I had to let that go, too, else I'd be watching the sun come up.

Life isn't about what happened yesterday or about what's going to happen tomorrow. Life is about
right now,
and right now I needed my got-damn sleep. I had other fish to fry in the morning. Well, no—it was the same old fish. Them and the shrimp. But I didn't mind. Those fish paid the bills.

 

One day, during a break at work, I was flipping through a greasy newspaper and saw they were having open mike at the Cotton Club. Everybody was welcome: singers, dancers, comedians.

Last time I'd performed at the Cotton Club, standing in for Bob McDonald, the bastards had stiffed me. But that was water under the bridge. Why hold a grudge? If I didn't go, I'd only be hurtin' myself.

So the big night comes. I'm home, preparing. That's right,
preparing.
Don't think I'd forgotten being booed in front of my own family.
Get off the motherfuckin' stage, motherfucker.

By this time I was doing the
Six P's
—the ones my mama had drummed into my head when I was a little boy: Proper Preparation Prevents Piss-Poor Performance.

So I was ready. Took the bus to the Cotton Club and stood in line with all the other hopefuls. And when it was my turn, I got up there and did my five minutes and killed.

“Been ten years since
Roots
came out, and black people
still
be givin' their kids crazy names. Zaqueeda. Jambalaya. Paradise. What happen to just plain
John
?

“Black folks can't fight. We drink, we smoke, we eat ham hocks. We eat chicken three, four times a
day.
Two black men fight, last about fifteen seconds. Then they dust themselves off and go to Popeye's to kiss and make up.”

“That was pretty good, Bernie,” the emcee told me.

It was better than pretty good. I knew it, and he knew it.

“Thanks,” I said, and I went home.

“How'd you do?” Rhonda asked me.

“I killed.”

I looked at Rhonda. The face on that woman. I could see she was worried. She knew how much I wanted this.

“I love you, baby,” she said.

“I love you, too.”

 

Two days later the man from the Cotton Club called me at work. “Bernard,” he said. “What are you doing Tuesday night?”

“This Tuesday?”

“Every Tuesday.”

“What did you have in mind?” I said.

“A regular gig. Gonna call it the ‘Tuesday Tickler.'”

I took a moment. “I think I can handle that,” I said.

 

Next Tuesday I worked at Dock's all day and went home and showered and hustled over to the Cotton Club. And there it was on the marquee, in big-ass letters: TUESDAY TICKLER WITH BERNIE MAC.

Shit.

 

“Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Bernie Mac and I'm your host for the evening.”

Sweet.

I did Andy Griffith as a black man. Had 'em rolling on the floor.

I was off and running. People weren't just coming to laugh on Tuesdays, they were coming to see Bernie Mac.

Sometimes, hell—I was in The Zone; I could do no wrong. Like slow-motion basketball: Every shot, pure net.

Other times, I couldn't even find the backboard.

I remember one night this guy came backstage after the show. Never saw him before in my life.

“Bernie Mac?” he said.

“Yeah?”

“You ain't funny.”

“I'm sorry you didn't enjoy the show,” I said.

“You're right,” he said. “I didn't enjoy it. Not a damn bit. I didn't enjoy it because you ain't funny, brother. Now Eddie Murphy, he funny. Richard Pryor, he funny. But Bernie Mac—he ain't funny at all.”

“Well,” I said, “thank you for taking the time to share that with me.”

“You're welcome,” he said. And he left.

I went and got myself a beer and thought about what the man had said. And it's a strange thing about people. We like to tear each other down. Why is that? What do we get out of it? And we're always
comparing.
I
know
Eddie Murphy's funny. But what does that have to do with me or my show?

I'm here to focus on my own damn self and give you the best damn show I can. I'm not here to compete with Eddie Murphy. I don't want to be Eddie Murphy. I'm busy being Bernie Mac.

 

I called over to the Comedy Cottage, a white club. Owner wouldn't even take the call. I went in person. “I'm Bernie Mac,” I said. “I do the Tuesday Tickler at the Cotton Club.”

“We got all we need,” the owner said.

Maybe he thought I was too raw for his audience.

 

I went over to Catch a Rising Star for open mike. Lot of white faces in the audience. Ninety percent white. I found I was editing myself, trying to keep it clean, wanting to be liked—we're
always
wanting to be liked—and it took some of the bite out of my routine.

But they still clapped.

I'm gonna tell you the truth now: White audiences are a lot easier than black audiences. I ain't lying. Black audiences—they
tough.
They sittin' there all dressed up, slouching, arms crossed, sipping champagne from the bottle, and it's like they
want
you to fail.
We here to laugh, motherfucker, and when you come out of the gate you better got-damn make us laugh.

If you don't make them laugh, they're gonna eat you up. “Nigger,” they'll say, “you ain't funny.” “Nigger, you suck.” “Nigger, don't you ever go near a microphone again.”

Whites give you the benefit of the doubt. They're thinkin' their nice white thoughts:
We're here to have a good time. We're here to be entertained, and by golly we will be entertained.
They're so polite: They'll applaud even if you don't make them laugh. Maybe white people feel guilty: “Hey, our bad. We brought you here as slaves.”

Take the bad with the good, brother, and don't be affected by either.

Listen and learn. And keep going. You can do it.

“Bernie,” my mother used to say, “you should never stop reaching for the stars.”

A lot of people condition their children for failure, she told me. Kid wants to be an astronaut, mother tells him to aim lower; maybe manage men's shoes at the local department store. Father says, “Astronauts gotta be smart, boy! You too dumb to be a astronaut!” A child believes that. He goes nowhere. That same child with a different message could have been the first black man on the moon. Hey—that's a good point! When we gonna see a brother on the moon?

“You have a dream, it's your dream,” my mama used to say. “Live it. Ain't no one gonna live it for you.”

So that's what I was doing, Mama. Living the dream.