Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

Slumus Lordicus

W HEN SHE FELT CERTAIN that she had seen every black-and-white movie ever made, my mother signed up for cable and began watching late-night infomercials in the kitchen. My father would wander up from the basement at about four, and the two of them would spend a pleasant half hour making fun of whatever happened to be on. “Give me a break,” they’d chuckle. “Please!”

The only such program they managed to take seriously was hosted by a self-made man who had earned a fortune in real estate and addressed his studio audience as if they were students cramming for a final. The blackboard was in constant use. Charts and graphs were pointed at with a stick, but no matter how many times he explained it, I simply could not understand what the guy was talking about. It seemed that by refinancing his house, he had bought seventeen more, which were then rented out, allowing him to snatch up a shopping center and several putt-putt courses. If you went through his pockets, you’d be lucky to find twenty dollars, but on paper he was worth millions. Or so he claimed.

If accumulating property were truly this easy, it seemed that everyone would be following the millionaire’s advice, but that was the catch: not everyone was awake at four A.M. While the rest of the world was fast sleep, you, the viewer, had chosen to better yourself, and wasn’t that half the battle? I was between apartments at the time and saw the program twice before I left my parents’ house and moved into a place of my own. That was the spring of 1980. A year later my mother and father owned a dozen duplexes on the south side of Raleigh, and were on their way.

We called our parents slumlords, but in fact the duplexes were not bad-looking. Each unit featured a bay window, parquet floors, and a fair-size yard shaded with trees. When first built, they were occupied by white people, but the neighborhood had changed since then, and with the exception of an elderly shut-in, all of the tenants were black. A few had jobs, but most were on public assistance, which meant, for us, that their rent was paid by the government, and usually on time.

The idea had been for my parents to work as a team — she would handle the leases, and he would see to any repairs.

I assumed that, like always, my father would take over and do everything himself, but for once he acted according to plan. Deeds were signed, and within a month my mother was fluent in the various acronyms of the state and federal housing departments. Forms arrived, and the duplicates were sorted into stacks, the overflow spilling from the basement den to my former bedroom, which now served as a makeshift office. “Should this go under RHA or FHA?” my mother would ask. “Does B.J. qualify for AFDC or just the SSI?” She’d sit at the desk, her elbows smudged with copier fluid, and I’d feel sorry for everyone involved.

On a selfish note, “The Empire,” as we liked to call it, provided me with an occasional job — a week of painting or weatherproofing or digging up a yard in search of a pipe. The downside was that I’d be doing these things for my father, meaning that the pay was negotiable. I’d present a time card, and he would dispute it, whittling my hours to a figure he considered more reasonable. “You expect me to believe you were there every day from nine until five? No lunch, no cigarette breaks, no sitting in the closet with your finger up your nose?”

The video monitor in my head would show me engaging in these very activities, and he would somehow catch a glimpse of it. “I knew it. I’ll pay you for thirty hours, and that’s just because I’m nice.”

If we’d agreed on a flat rate — say, $300 in cash to paint an apartment — I might wind up with a check for $220, to be followed at the end of the year by a I099-MISC form. Every job ended in an argument, my empty threats and petty name-calling put on ice and saved for the ride home. The tenants would have loved to watch us screaming at each other, and so we did our best to deny them that pleasure. Alone in the car we were savages, but at The Empire we were ambassadors for our race, acting not like the normal white people we’d grown up with but like the exceptional white people we vaguely remembered from random episodes of Masterpiece Theatre. Doors were held open, and great blocks of time were spent encouraging each other to go first.

“After you, Father.”

“On the contrary, son, after you.”

Were it not for my mother, we might have stood there all day. “Just go into the damned apartment!” she’d shout. “Jesus Christ, you two are like a couple of old ladies.”

When it came to The Empire, my parents’ roles were oddly reversed. My mother was still the more personable one, but if a tenant wanted any kind of a break, he soon learned to go to my father, who displayed a level of compassion we rarely saw at home. His own children couldn’t get a dime out of him, but if Chester Kingsley lost his wallet or Regina Potts broke her collarbone, he was more than willing to work something out. When Dora Ward fell behind on her rent, he gave her an extension, then another, and another. On discovering she had moved out in the middle of the night, taking the stove and refrigerator with her, he said only, “Oh, well. They needed to be replaced anyway.”

“The hell they did,” my mother said. “That stove was only two years old. What kind of a landlord are you?”

I’d hoped to make money remodeling Dora’s empty apartment, but the dream died when an interracial couple showed up, introducing themselves as Lance and Belinda Taylor. My parents and I were assessing the empty kitchen when they knocked on the door, asking for a tour and announcing in the same breath that they loved the place just the way it was. All it needed was a stove and refrigerator, and everything else they could take care of on their own. “Carpentry and whatnot, that’s what I do,” Lance said. He offered his hands as proof, and we noted that the palms were thickly calloused.

“Now show them the other side,” his wife said. “Let them see your knuckles and whatever.”

My mother suggested that the couple come back in a few months, but my father saw something almost biblical in their situation. A carpenter and his wife in search of shelter: all they lacked was an exhausted donkey. He moaned when told they were living in a motel, and buckled completely when shown a photo of the couple’s three children. “We were going to touch the place up a little, but what can I say? You’ve got me.”

“Let’s just think about this,” my mother said, but my father had thought enough. Lance paid the deposit in cash, and he and his family moved in the following day.

On seeing his new neighbors, Chester confided that it was the kids he felt sorry for. “Them and the husband. I mean, is that white woman ugly, or what?”

My father took the high road and tried to talk him out of it. “Oh, you don’t mean that.”

“Yes, he does,” my mother said.

They did make for an odd-looking couple, not because of their color but because they were physically so mismatched. Lance was handsome and accustomed to being admired, while Belinda was gaunt and, “well,” my mother said, “unfortunate looking. That’s the kindest way to describe her, isn’t it.”

When they first moved in, the Taylors were polite and gung ho. Could they plant a vegetable garden? Certainly! Paint the living room? Why not? But the garden was never sown, and the paint cans sat untouched. They fought often, and loudly, and more than once the police arrived to pull the couple apart. The first time he fell behind in his rent, Lance called the house, demanding that my father distribute pebbles over his driveway. “I’m not paying three hundred dollars a month to walk over crushed oyster shells,” he said. “It’s bad for my tires and for my shoes, and before you get any more of my money, I want something done.”

Distributing pebbles over Lance’s driveway meant distributing pebbles over everyone’s driveway, and it surprised us all when my father agreed.

“I’m not talking cheap pebbles, either,” Lance said. “I want the nice kind.”

“You mean gravel,” my father said.

“Yeah. That.”

The driveway was hardly urgent, but still it was heartening to hear someone stick up for himself. This was exactly the sort of thing my father would have done had he been the tenant, and in admitting it, he was forced into a grudging admiration. “The guy’s got gumption,” he said. “There’s no doubt about it.”

A dump truck was sent, and I spent three days slowly spreading gravel. Lance paid his rent and called a few months later, complaining that birds were congregating in the tree outside his bedroom window. Had they been vultures, we may have seen his point, but these were songbirds, whose only crime was happiness.

“What do you want me to do?” my father asked. “Come down there in person and scare them away? Birds are a part of life, buddy. You’ve just got to learn to get along with them.”

Lance insisted that the tree be cut down, and when told no, he went ahead and did it himself. It was just a pine, not necessarily old or beautiful, but that didn’t matter to my father, who loves trees and admires them the way playboys admire women. “Will you look at that!” he’ll say, pulling to a stop at a busy intersection.

“Look at what?”

“What do you mean, 'Look at what?' The maple, idiot. She’s a knockout.”

When told what Lance had done, my father retreated to his bedroom, staring at the oaks outside the window. “Trimming is one thing,” he said. “But to cut something down? To actually end its life? What kind of an animal is this guy?”

Lance felled the tree with a hatchet and left it where it lay. A few weeks later, now a month behind on his rent, he complained that rats were nesting in the branches. “I’ll call the city and report you,” he said to my father. “And if one of my kids gets bitten, I’ll call the city and my lawyers.”

“His lawyers, right!” my father said.

My mother had tried to look on the bright side, but now she worried that Lance might bite the children himself. In talking to other landlords, she’d come to identify him as a type, the sort of tenant who’d live rent-free, biding his time until he eventually bled you dry. If there was a skill to renting out property, it was the ability to spot such a person and never let him through the front door. Lance and his wife had made it in, and now my parents would have to get rid of them, delicately and by the book. They didn’t want to give the Taylors any ammunition, and so it was agreed that the tree would be removed. “I really don’t see any other way,” my mother said. “The son of a bitch says jump, and we’ll just have to do it.”

I went with my father to cut it up and carry it away, and from the moment we arrived I had the distinct feeling that we were being watched. It was like one of those scenes from a Western — high noon and the street was empty. “Be cool,” my father said, more to himself than to me. “We’ll just do our job and be on our way.”

We’d been at it for all of ten minutes when Lance stepped out, dressed in jeans and toffee-colored cowboy boots. Maybe the boots were too small or not yet broken in, but for whatever reason he moved slowly and tentatively, as if walking were new to him.

“Here we go,” my father said.

Lance’s first complaint was that the noise of the chain saw was disturbing his children, one of whom was supposedly sick with the flu.

“In September?” my father asked.

“My kids can get sick any damn time they want,” Lance said. “I’m just warning you to keep it down.” There was no way to keep down a chain saw, but that wasn’t really the point. My father had been put on notice within earshot of the other tenants, and now there would be complications.

Lance hobbled back into his apartment and reappeared a short while later. The boots were gone now, and in their place he wore a pair of sneakers. I was dragging a branch toward the curb, and he complained that in doing so, I was disturbing the integrity of his yard, which was alternately bald and overgrown and had all the integrity of a litter box. “You need to lift those branches,” he said. “One of them touches the ground and you’ll be answering to me. Understand?”

My father was a good six inches shorter than Lance, and he raised his head skyward in order to meet the man’s eyes. “Hey,” he said. “Don’t you talk to my son that way.”

“Well, you talked to my son that way,” Lance said. “You called him a liar. Said there was no way he could have the flu in September.”

“Well, I didn’t say it to him,” my father said.

“It’s the same thing. You talk shit to my son and I’ll talk shit to yours.”

“Oh, come on,” my father said. “There’s no need for that kind of language.”

They started talking at the same time, and when my father raised his voice Lance accused him of shouting. “You can’t yell at me,” he said. “Plantation days are over. I’m not your slave.” This was played to the balcony, his arms cast toward the neighboring windows.

“Who are you talking to?” my father asked.

“You think I’m just some nigger you can shout at? Is that what you’re saying, that I’m a nigger? Are you calling me a nigger?”

I had never heard my father use this word, so it was doubly unfair for Lance to put it into his mouth. People would talk, and in time it would seem that my father had called Lance a nigger. This is the nature of storytelling, and nothing can be done about it.

“You’re out of your mind,” my father said.

“Oh, so now I’m a crazy nigger. Is that it?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No, but you’re thinking it.”

My father abandoned his good manners. “You’re full of crap,” he said.

“Oh, so I’m a liar?”

They were inches apart now, the toes of their shoes almost touching. In the distance, I could see Belinda standing at her window, and Chester standing at his. Regina Potts, Donald Pullman: all of them had the same eager expression. Were someone threatening my landlord, I’d have been thrilled, too, but this was my father we were talking about, and so I hated them for looking so thoroughly entertained.

I don’t remember what prompted my father and Lance to cool down, but it happened, gradually, like a kettle taken off the burner. Balled fists slackened to hands, the distance between them grew wider, and little by little their voices lowered to a normal register. My immediate sensation was relief. I didn’t have to do anything. I had been spared the indignity, the responsibility, of watching my father engage in a fight. The thought of him throwing a punch was bad enough, but the thought of him losing — my father pressed to the ground, my father calling out in pain or surprise — was unbearable.

My new worry was that this was not over. We’d gotten through today, but what would happen the next time Lance and my father ran into each other? A person who wore cowboy boots and cut down trees in order to displace birds was likely capable of anything: a surprise attack, loosened lug nuts, a firebomb. They were reasonable fears, but if any of them occurred to my father, he did not show it. When Lance walked away, he simply put on his gloves and went back to work, as if this had been just any ordinary interruption — Chester wanting him to check a leaky faucet, the Barrett sisters asking if we could come and clean out their gutters. It may have been different for Lance, but my father didn’t live like this. There were no shoving matches at IBM or the Raleigh Country Club, and while he was aggressive in smaller ways — ramming people’s carts at the grocery store, yelling at other drivers to get a Seeing Eye dog — I think it had been a long time since he had seriously considered a fight. All he said was “Can you beat that?” and then he shook his head and revved up the chain saw.

The sun was setting as we piled the logs into the bed of the truck. My father fished the keys from his pocket, and we sat in the cab for a few minutes before heading home. Over at Minnie Edwards’s, a child opened the door to a live-in boyfriend who was not supposed to be there. This sort of thing was of interest to the welfare department, especially when the boyfriend held a job and contributed to the running of the household. Every so often, a caseworker would come around, looking for men’s clothing or evidence of wild spending, and it was assumed that my family shared this interest. The man entered Minnie’s apartment, and a moment later she stepped outside and gestured to my father to roll down his window. “He’s my brother,” she said. “Home from the army.” All this hiding. All this exhausting explanation.

“So what do you think?” my father said. He wasn’t talking about Lance or Minnie Edwards’s boyfriend, but all of it. Everything before us was technically ours — the lawns, the houses, the graveled driveways. This was what ingenuity had bought: a corner of the world that could, in time, expand, growing lot by lot until you could drive for some distance and never lose your feelings of guilt and uncertainty.

Lance and his family would eventually leave the apartment, but not before what had seemed to be a perfectly fine bathroom ceiling fell with no provocation upon his wife’s head. She would limp into court, ridiculous and so predictable with her bandages and neck brace, but the jury would fall for it and award her a settlement. We’d later hear that the two of them had broken up. That he had taken off with someone else. That she was changing beds in a hotel. Chester, too, would eventually break up with his wife and leave with not just the appliances but the storm windows as well.

Troubles moved on only to be replaced by new ones, and looking out the windshield, my father seemed to see them all: the woman whose son would set fire to his bedroom, the man who’d throw a car battery through his neighbor’s window, a frenetic blur of hostile tenants, dismantling his empire brick by brick.

“I was going to help you out if Lance, you know, hit you or anything,” I said.

“Of course you were,” my father said, and for a moment he even allowed himself to believe it. “The guy didn’t know what he was up against, did he?”

“No, he didn’t.”

“The two of us together, man oh man, what a sight that would have been!” We laughed then, Vespasian and Titus in the cab of a Toyota pickup. My father patted my knee and then pulled the truck away from the curb. “I’ll give you a check when we get home,” he said. “But don’t think I’m going to pay you for standing there with your mouth open. It doesn’t work that way. Not with me it doesn’t.”