Mama has a lot of African ways. When she is cold or in pain, she hums. We all love us some humming. Mama hums to heal. I'm humming right now just thinking about it ... Hummmmmmmmmmm, ah-hummmmmm. Hummmmmmmmmmm, ah-hummmmmm.

Later on in life, when I encounter mantras and meditation and all that New Age business, I hear people chanting the holy Hindu syllable Om Om and I recognize it right away. It's Mama's hum. and I recognize it right away. It's Mama's hum.

The Sanctifying Church we go to is the American one that's the most like African religion. I get sanctified myself when I am five. The parishioners lift me up, pa.s.s me around, and then carry me out, like kids at a rave.

Folks speak in tongues. The better the actor you are, the more popular you are in church. Aunt Katie can act. She is always feeling the spirit. Mama accuses her of doing it just to show her a.s.s. My aunt Erma Lee always wants to preach. But the town is s.e.xist. They won't allow women to be preachers. They look on her like she is a demon.

The same people come to church every week, screaming "Help me, Jesus!" and "Lord have mercy!" People have fits and ask for a healing when they're sick with gout or arthritis. They are always jumping around trying to cast out the devil.

Years later, when I happen to encounter a man on the Santa Monica Promenade having an epileptic seizure, I think he is rolling around, talking in tongues. I walk by him and say, "Amen!" It's my Pentecostal upbringing.

People confess their sins to my uncle Shank, the minister. One parishioner confesses to sleeping with another man's wife. It turns out it is Uncle Shank's wife. Uncle Shank starts wailing on him, and the two have a fistfight right there in church.

The church teaches us lessons about how things are between black folks and white folks. We are always going out in groups from our congregation. I see how careful everyone is in public, putting on a different face for the white people to see.

At a church picnic, Mama tells me that the word picnic picnic comes from white people lynching black people. comes from white people lynching black people. Picnic Picnic is short for is short for pick a nig. pick a nig.

"They pick a n.i.g.g.e.r, any n.i.g.g.e.r they want," she says, "lynch him, and then have a family picnic."

Anyone still hungry after that? I know now that it's not true, that it ain't where the word comes from, but as a child the idea makes a deep impression on me.

Early on, I become convinced that my aunt Katie Gates's son has formed a poisonous jealousy of me. I'm the cute one. I got the face people go to the plastic surgeon to get.

As a child, I always think Bobby Gates is ugly as sin. He's so homely and ill-favored, you have to tie a pork chop to that boy just to get a dog to play with him. So naturally Bobby despises me. It is my first experience of something that happens to me all through my life: being hated on because I'm good-looking.

So when Bobby fools around with fire and burns our house down, I'm certain it's me he's after. n.o.body else is at home.

I'm five years old. I see smoke curling up in the hallway outside the room. I know the house in on fire. So what do I do? With the scared-a.s.s logic of a five-year-old, I hide under the bed. I imagine Bobby, watching pretty Paul burn up, rubbing his hands together and laughing like a movie villain.

Only I didn't burn. My aunt Pressie comes wailing into the house, drags me out from under the bed, and runs out of the house with me in her arms. She's screaming and flailing and I'm snuggling in her embrace as quiet as the baby Jesus.

Outside the house is a big crowd of family, all crying and worrying over whether I'm okay. It's like a warm bath of love. Bobby's fire backfires and I survive. I'm just doted on all the more.

Everyone in Shreveport loves them some Ealys, except maybe Bobby and one other creature. It's our neighbor's parrot, Feathers. Feathers screams out "n.i.g.g.e.r" all day long, every single day. It's the only f.u.c.king word he knows. Everyone in the neighborhood can hear it.

Maybe it's only fitting. The first time I hear the word n.i.g.g.e.r n.i.g.g.e.r, it's out of the mouth of a parrot. All my life, I hear that word parroted mindlessly, and I think of Feathers.

Mama hates on that parrot. Really hates the bird. No one ever calls her "n.i.g.g.e.r." Not to her face. n.o.body even thinks it. They are either too scared, too much in awe, or too loving. Them white folks she works for, they take care of her like she is pure gold.

We stay in Louisiana until I am seven. A whole lotta black folks move North at the end of the 1940s to find better jobs. We are among them. No discussion. Mama just announces it.

"Let's pack our bags," she says. "We're moving to Oakland."

I'm wondering, Oakland? Where's that? Oakland? Where's that?

Oak Land. That's how I p.r.o.nounce it. Like it's two words.

Mama sends Daddy on ahead. He rents us a house. So we get on the train, all our belongings packed with us, and embark on our new life.

As soon as we leave the station, Mama leans over to me. "Well, we're never gonna have to hear that parrot say 'n.i.g.g.e.r' no more. You know why?"

"'Cause we're going to Oak Land, Mama?"

"Nope," she says, grinning. "Because I poisoned it!"

We laugh at that as we leave Louisiana behind. Looking out the train windows is like watching a movie for me. I sit on Mama's lap and watch the countryside roll past.

I have a fantasy as a child about what would happen if the black people take over and run things. Mostly it involves me having all the candy I want, a bigger house, a nicer car, Mama retired at her ease, and Daddy wearing a nice suit.

But as that train travels through East Texas and then hits the plains, I think, This country is too big for black people to run This country is too big for black people to run. The train goes a little farther, and now we're in the gra.s.slands that never end. I think, This country is too big for white people to run, too This country is too big for white people to run, too.

Why don't we just run it together? Nice fantasy, child. I fall asleep to the clickety-clack of the train wheels.

CHAPTER 7.

I never much realize I am a Negro until we move to Oakland. My Shreveport life is such a warm coc.o.o.n that even if we are in the racist South, I don't see myself as anything but loved. The whole Ealy clan, friends and family both, eventually relocates to California. never much realize I am a Negro until we move to Oakland. My Shreveport life is such a warm coc.o.o.n that even if we are in the racist South, I don't see myself as anything but loved. The whole Ealy clan, friends and family both, eventually relocates to California.

In Oakland, Daddy Preston rents the family a two-story house on 18th Street, in the middle of the ghetto. But the Oakland ghetto back then isn't all black. Our neighbors on one side are Portuguese, and Mexican on the other. Across the street from our house is Gilmore Steel, owned by a Jewish family.

Italians, Jews, Irish, all cram in side by side. It's not all black, but it is all poor. It's the first time I hear the word n.i.g.g.e.r n.i.g.g.e.r used both ways-as a slur and as a term of affection. Mama can kill the parrot, but she can't stop all the people in the Oakland ghetto who toss around that word as if it's nothing. used both ways-as a slur and as a term of affection. Mama can kill the parrot, but she can't stop all the people in the Oakland ghetto who toss around that word as if it's nothing.

On the first floor of our house is a storefront, and to bring in cash, Mama opens up a little convenience store, selling eggs, bread, milk, and the kind of small, everyday sundries that people in the neighborhood forever need. She sells cold Coca-Cola in ten-ounce bottles for five cents.

It's odd, but though we are in the middle of the most built-up part of Oakland, it's as though I have a rural childhood. For pets, I raise the wild animals that Daddy Preston captures and brings home. I keep a whole menagerie: a red fox, a bantam-tailed rooster, a rabbit, and a chicken that I call Turkey. Daddy brings me a baby racc.o.o.n that I name Sam. Turkey chases Sam until he grows up and gets a little bigger. From then on, Sam chases Turkey. Turnabout is fair play.

Even living in the ghetto, Daddy Preston still manages to hunt. He goes up into the Oakland hills and shoots possum, racc.o.o.ns, rabbits, and snakes, and drives farther up into the mountains after black bear.

Mama stews up everything he kills. I eat it all. My favorite dish is beef neck bones and b.u.t.ter beans. You can take the family out of the South, but you can't take the South out of the family.

Mama can cook her a.s.s off. She knows her way around a kitchen. She grows her own herbs and has a vegetable garden in the backyard. She makes her own b.u.t.ter. Everything in her house is fresh.

It's on 18th Street that Mama first calls me Mooney. She never says why. Maybe I am a sloe-eyed, moony child, dreamy-looking. Mama starts calling me Mooney, and then suddenly everyone else is calling me that, too. Pretty soon that's how I think of myself. I am not Paul Ealy or Paul Gadney. I am Paul Mooney.

Nicknames are a thing with us. Everyone has one. We all have celebrity look-alikes, too. My mother LaVoya's nickname is Didaree. She has the makings of Dorothy Dandridge and Diahann Carroll. Her older sister Katherine, my aunt Katie, looks like Tina Turner. My mother's baby sister Pressie is a dead ringer for Eartha Kitt. She's a hoofer, a tap dancer, and I get my dancing skills from her. My mother's brother, my uncle Buddy, looks just like Sidney Poitier. There are also my other uncles, Tip and Shank.

Nicknames and look-alikes are running jokes. They create the world of my childhood. "Look at Sidney Poitier, running off to the john!" somebody calls out, as Uncle Buddy hotfoots it to the bathroom. Everyone cracks up. I get a lot of my comedy from the Ealy family.

All the time I am in Oakland, I can feel change coming. I am at DeFremery Park, just down the street from our house, and there's some sort of political rally there. This handsome white man is grabbing everybody by the hand, and he's got the mayor of San Francisco with him. He's somebody. He looks like a movie star and he carries himself as though he thinks everybody else should know that he's somebody. He's got better hair than Elvis.

It's the first time I see a white man that black people love so much. I hear other people in the crowd say over and over, he is going to be president. I don't believe them. The white man is too young. Presidents are old, saggy-faced white men, like Eisenhower. Then I hear Mama say it, too. "That man is going to be president some day."

So when he comes around to me, I move up front in the crowd and reach out. I say, "You are going to be president." JFK flashes that big toothy Boston Irish grin at me and shakes my hand.

In Oakland, I see LaVoya, my real mother, more than I ever did in Shreveport. My father George Gladney stayed in Shreveport and faded out of my life, but my mother is always in and out of the Oakland house with my aunt Katie. The two women are fast. Aunt Pressie can't keep up with them. At one time, they are both playing softball on an all-girl's team and are members of a motorcycle club.

Later days: My mother, LaVoya Ealy, and me in front of my cherry red Caddy I only slowly wake up to what is going on with Mother and Aunt Katie. They are riding back and forth to L.A. on motorcycles. They bring back furs, designer clothes, jewelry. I think, well, we're rich. Then I realize that my aunt and mother know all the boosters in the neighborhood.

"Can I get a quarter?" I ask my mother one afternoon.

She looks at me as though she is about to cry. "Oh, honey," she says, "I don't have a quarter-I don't even have a dime."

She does burst into tears then, and brings me into her arms and hugs me. "I'm sorry," she says over and over.

I realize just how poor we are. Money comes in waves, but sometimes the tide stays out a long time. We get flush once when I am thirteen, when LaVoya works at a jazz club. At first she's a cleaning lady, but there's a push on to integrate jobs. The management suddenly realizes how pretty my mama is, and they make her a waitress.

When she comes in at three or four in the morning, I help her count her tips. The dollar bills smell like beer. Even though my mother lives a very risque lifestyle, she never lets a man stay overnight at our house.

My mother's always sorry about something, but not sorry enough to stop taking money from her son. I'm working in the cuc.u.mber fields that summer, and I get a few bills and some coins for pay-and all the cuc.u.mbers I can lug home.

Mom waits for me. "Darling," she says as soon as I come in the door, hot and sweaty from working in the fields. "Where's your money? Give it here quick!"

I am naive. I see all the men in my family giving money to their girlfriends. Since I am always giving my mom money, I figure she is my girlfriend.

Mama catches wind of this and wises me up. We decide to keep all of my money in Mama's bra, since that's her equivalent of hiding it under the mattress. There's a lot of room in there. My money goes into the left cup. I always know where it is. I do my business at the Bank of Mama's Left t.i.t.

Mama doesn't trust banks. She never goes to a bank except to add money to our Christmas fund. Even if it is only two dollars, she puts money in every week so we have something under the tree.

Under Mama's stern influence, my mother slowly turns her life around. She's approaching thirty, and she can't go around with bikers and ballplayers forever. She goes back to school to get her nursing degree. She does real estate. LaVoya loses her wild ways and becomes a respected person in the community.

All along I cling to Mama, my rock.

Mama has the greatest expressions. "A dog that will bring a bone will take a bone." Meaning don't trust anyone who's too subservient. "A new broom knows how to sweep the floor, but an old broom knows where the dirt is." "The gra.s.s is always greener on the other side of the fence, but don't forget what they have to put on that gra.s.s to keep it green." "Birds fly high, but they have to come to the ground to get water."

When scammers come around the house trying to borrow money, Mama tells everyone, "A cow always knows where the weak fence is." She never wants people to take advantage of us or treat us badly.

Some of her phrases are adults-only, directed toward the women of the family. "A hard d.i.c.k knows no names." "Never buy a man shoes-he'll walk away from you." My favorite is what she says to the women when they come home after staying out all night or being gone a few days.

"You dumb b.i.t.c.hes!" she yells at them. "I don't fatten frogs to feed snakes. Are you stupid? I taught you better than that. A wet p.u.s.s.y and a dry purse don't match."

Solid wisdom.

My own introduction to s.e.x comes soon after we move to Oakland. My two best friends are some Portuguese kids from the neighborhood, a brother and sister. We go to Cole Elementary School, a few blocks away from my house, on 10th Street. Every morning the sister screams from outside my bedroom window. She yells, "Wake up, Mooney, wake up!"

I come to the window and scream out, "I'll be right down!" Because I don't wear pajamas but sleep in my birthday suit, I always show up at the window naked as a jaybird. This might be what gives her ideas. One afternoon in my bedroom, when Mama and Daddy aren't at home, she rapes me.

There is nothing else to call it. I am eight, she is twelve years old. She has a movie magazine. She opens it to show me the pictures. We start out by imitating the kissing she sees in one photograph.

She rubs herself all over me. I don't know what is happening, but it feels good. She pulls her shirt down and her skirt up, jumps on top of me, and wriggles and bucks until I come.

Unlike other people who are raped, I like it. Because she and I have s.e.x, I believe that I am automatically in love. I want so badly to marry her. I go to her parents and ask solemnly for their approval.

Her mom and dad say no. Of course, I think it is because I am black. Or the fact that I am eight years old. To my surprise, they say no because I am not Catholic.

For her sake (and for the sake of the feeling I get when she rubs up against me), I try to become Catholic. I study the catechism. I get stickers of the saints. But marrying her becomes a problem. The one day I go to Ma.s.s, I have sore knees. I conclude that I can't become a Catholic because I can't kneel in church.

Her brother is still my best friend. The Christmas before I turn ten, Mama uses her bank money to buy me a Lone Ranger and Tonto costume set.

"Let's play," I say to him. "I want to be the Lone Ranger."

He says, "No, I'm white and you're not. You look more like the Indian. You be Tonto."

Right about then is when I start to hate him.

CHAPTER 8.

When I am fourteen years old, my mother moves us out of Oakland, north across the freeway to Berkeley. She's trying to straighten out her life and get away from the crowd she runs with.

This is the first time in my young life that I am away from the constant loving atmosphere that surrounds Mama. Even though she and Daddy live only ten miles away, I feel as though I have been shoved out of the nest.

So what do I do? I try desperately to find that same level of love elsewhere-and that's when I discover a truth that changes my life. I find out that applause equals love.

I become the hambone king of Berkeley, California. It's a popular song and a dance craze at the time.

That year, 1955, a lot of bands, both white and black, come out with versions of the hambone song, which is basically an old minstrel tune with a lot of different variations. "Hambone, hambone, have you heard? Papa's gonna buy me a mockingbird."

More than anything, hambone is a beat, done with palms. .h.i.tting your chest or leg: slap-lacka-lacka-slap-slap slap-lacka-lacka-slap-slap. The Milwaukee drummer Red Saunders and his orchestra have a hit with his version, the whiter-than-white Bell Sisters, too, and the country singer Tennessee Ernie Ford. Everybody is doing it. Later on, Bo Diddley takes it over and makes it rock and roll. Johnny Otis's rock hit "Willie and the Hand Jive" is just another version of the song.

All the local movie theaters have hambone dance contests before the shows. Grand prize, ten dollars, sometimes fifteen or twenty-five.

My best friends, Brother and Sammy, get me up onstage for the first time at the Oakland Paramount when we get to the theater early for the matinee one Sat.u.r.day afternoon. I still recall the feature: Mister Roberts Mister Roberts with Henry Fonda. with Henry Fonda.

"Sign up, kids!" announces the movie emcee. "Dance for the prize!"

"Come on, Mooney," Sammy says. "I seen you do it. You can win!"

I know I can hambone with the best of them. You pop your fingers and twist out your knees. I hear that beat in the cradle. I've been doing hambone for Mama since I learn how to walk. n.o.body's got anything on me.

So I get up onstage at the Oakland Paramount and win the whole contest.

I don't realize it back then, but the hambone is juba, a slave rhythm brought from West Africa. The reason they slap their bodies is that the masters don't allow them to have drums. Too dangerous. The darkies might be pa.s.sing messages to one another. They might be plotting to kill us in our sleep. No drums allowed.

There are just a few hundred kids in the Paramount audience that afternoon, and a lot of popcorn flying around, and not everybody is paying attention, but I'm bitten by the performance bug, and bitten good.

Applause is love. I'm up there, and I know it. I feel that the audience is loving me, they are with me all the way, with Sammy laughing and the faces of the girls in the front row shining up at me.

Slap-lacka-lacka-slap-slap.