An Only Slightly Fictionalized Memory

Afterthoughts

Two days after I recognized my already always listening about Black people and money, it occurred to me that my filters are not all there is. How much of me and money is luck?

• I was born gifted – luck. I studied hard – me.
• Loving parenting and guidance – luck. Trust and obedience – me.
• Historical realities and timing – luck. Courage to venture into unknown – me.
• Shit happens – bad luck. Motivation to overcome adversity – me.
• Shit happens – luck. Planning and dogged tenacity to execute plans – me.
• Opportunities – luck. Patience – me.
• Opportunities – luck. Judgment – me.
• Opportunities – luck. Gratitude – me.

The money opportunities that I have taken were unpredictable for a skinny little dark-skinned immigrant girl growing up in Spanish Harlem when I did. There were no role models in my world and no reason why I should even dream the world that I never knew existed.

Another day, another layer. And the beat goes on.

An Only Slightly Fictionalized Memory

Adolescence (College)

I worked a second summer at the brokerage house before college. Although I had won a $10,000 scholarship from my father’s union – more than enough for my college education at Boston University, I continued to save aggressively. When I went to BU I paid my own transportation. I bought my own clothes, a hi-fi, a hair dryer, and an iron.

I was a chemistry major, one of two Negro girls in my freshman calculus class of several hundred. Heather was pre-med. James McRae, later called Jimmy Mack after the Martha and the Vandella’s hit song, was an engineering major. I think there were a couple of other Black guys out of the 500 students in the lecture hall. I have forgotten them. Heather was Jamaican. I lost touch with her. I don’t know if she attained her professional goals. Jimmy Mack was from Harlem. He didn’t finish BU. I saw him decades later garbed in a dashiki and selling poetry on a street corner at a Harlem Street Festival. He is not an engineer.

I always had jobs during college. All white collar or academic. I worked at NASA and Prudential Insurance, I taught at Northeastern University. I taught summer school in Brooklyn. I worked on Wall Street some more. I was a day camp supervisor. I worked for an arts program. Over school breaks I did temporary clerical work. I had so many offers that I turned down enviable corporate internship opportunities. One year, while our classmates struggled to find summer employment, GE offered to employ me and provide me housing for the summer. The recruiter begged me to take the job. When I told him I was married, he said that they would hire my Psychology and Philosophy – major husband too. I taught pre-calculus to incoming freshmen that summer.

One time I told my mom that I had applied for a job in the cafeteria, she forbade me to take it. She said that she would work a second job if I needed the money. That’s when I took the work-study job at NASA. I come by my conceit about my career honestly. Garifuna people have a history and reputation around work. My ancestors refused to be enslaved and were banished from St Vincent’s Island because of it.

This story has gone far astray from where I was headed. It has served its purpose. I get my internal narrative about Black people and money. I see how I got to be me about money, clearing me for what is to come.

I made it all up.

An Only Slightly Fictionalized Memory

Adolescence (First Job)

We couldn’t wait until we turned 14 so that we could get working papers. It’s like suburban kids wait to get their learners permit. We went to Honduras the summer after sophomore year. I was 15 when I got working papers. Like my classmates, I applied for jobs at the local five and ten cents stores. Most of the white girls and two of the very fair-skinned Black girls got hired. I was not even given applications – except once. I was so excited to take the test. I got 100%, and no job. I knew I was going to college. It was a given. I wouldn’t have minded working in a factory, sewing clothes, like my mom, but no. I was going to go to college.

In the spring of my junior year of high school I got my first job. One of the nuns had a relative that worked for a brokerage house on Wall St. They needed a few young girls to fill in for the regular workers over the summer. I wrote the story of my hiring a while back. I’ll stick to the money part here. I got paid for two hours a day after school. I earned $1.50 an hour. Minimum wage was 1.25₵, so that was a 20% premium. In the summer, I got paid for 40 hours, although we worked “banker’s hours,” (~10am-4pm) like most people in the financial sector at the time. My weekly take home pay was $54. I compared my paycheck with that of my uncle, who worked in a restaurant and got paid every other week. His check was just few dollars more than mine. I think there was a fluke in the wage laws for restaurant workers; he was paid less than minimum wage, and they deducted for the meals that they gave him.

I opened a savings account with my first paycheck. I saved $44 of my pay check every week. I would need the money for college. I remember my budget:

• $3.00 subway tokens
• $1.00 two pairs of stockings

• $.75 for a toasted English muffin every morning in the company cafeteria
• $1.00 for lunch on Friday; I took my lunch on other days
• $1.00 for a 45 (record – mostly Motown)

The rest I could blow on a movie (50₵) or save for a dress ($3-$7 on sale) or more likely fabric for my mom to make me a dress.

I was extremely judicious with my money. A fast food joint opened around the corner from my house. Most of my ‘round the block friends weren’t working, but they always seemed to manage to get some money. While they walked to the new restaurant to buy buttered corn for 25₵, I walked in the other direction to the A&P to buy 12 ears for that same quarter, boil them and join my friends on the stoop. They made fun of me and swore that their corn tasted better. I ignored them. I was saving for college. They laughed at that too. We were living in Brooklyn. Although there were lots of “Spanish people” moving into the neighborhood, my friends were all southern Blacks. My Black friends at my Catholic school were, like me, mostly immigrants. All of my school friends went to college right after high school. None of my neighborhood friends did.

My dad was forced to retire from his seaman’s job for health reasons early in my senior year. I paid $250 of my $275 senior year tuition. That was about half of what I had saved for college. I was proud to be able to help out. My mother would never accept money from me. Other friends had to “pay rent” when they started working. I didn’t. My mother said that she would not be able to help me pay for college, so I needed to save everything I could. I think it instilled a sense of self-sufficiency, financial independence, and delayed gratification in me. It’s funny how those early money lessons stay with me.

An Only Slightly Fictionalized Memory

The Early Years (Savings)

Savings – how can I forget savings! I always had a piggy bank. Any money I got – birthday presents, BINGO and 31 (a card game like blackjack that we played with my dad and his friends). All of it had to go into my piggy bank. My dad would stake the kids, and he pretended not to see my hand reach over and slide some of his change towards me when I lost my pot. I always ended up with money; I was not allowed to spend it. I look back and see a powerful message – I start out with money, I can always get more, I always end up with money, and I have to save it. I lived my life that way until two years ago. Six months after my mother died I purchased a house on a hill with a Bay view – much more fitting my income than the adequate, comfortable, modest house I had lived in in East Oakland. A few months after that, I bought a Volvo – an upgrade from my fourteen-year-old Honda.

An Only Slightly Fictionalized Memory

The Early Years (Whites)

The white people I saw were:

• On TV – they were rich
• Nuns and priests and lunch ladies and janitor at my Catholic school – they all had jobs; in the first and second grade there were a few white kids in my class – I assumed they all had money, just like the people on TV
• People at the settlement house I went to (Casita Maria); some of them were working, some of them were just good people, I guess – they must have had money – they were white
• Agent who came around to collect the rent every week – he wore a gun, because he had money
• Vendors at La Marqueta (Park Avenue Market) – they were mostly Jews; it was against their religion not to have money, I heard
• Doctors, nurses, hospital folks – all working

The only people in my world who consistently did not have money were the southern Black people. There were a few notable exceptions. My friend Marcella was one of about a zillion kids in her family. Her dad was in the Army. They lived in Germany for our third and fourth grade and then came back to their huge apartment on Central Park North. People in the military could have large families, because they got paid extra for each child they had, I heard. The other exception was Gloria’s aunt. She was the numbers lady.

An Only Slightly Fictionalized Memory

The Early Years (Neighborhood Businesses)

The businesses in our neighborhood were owned (or maybe just run) by Puerto Ricans – two corner stores (bodegas), the candy store, the funeral parlor, the Laundromat, the dry cleaners, the soda shop with the juke box, the ice cream trucks, the woman who sold cocitos (homemade coconut ices) from a hand truck, even my doctor … There were no stores owned by Black people. The closest thing to Black business persons I remember in my neighborhood were the watermelon man who sold watermelons, whole or by the slice, out of the trunk of his car and door-to-door salesmen. They were typically immigrants. They sold Fuller brushes and Stanley home products, mostly. There was an African man who sold Filter Queen vacuum cleaners door to door. He was in college. My parents bought a vacuum cleaner, and “adopted” the young student. He visited our house frequently to feast on mashed plantains and fish head chowder.

There were also immigrant Blacks who owned brownstones on the West side of Harlem where my dad’s relatives owned houses. They had humble jobs, like housekeepers, but were working and had money.

An Only Slightly Fictionalized Memory

The Early Years (Spanish Harlem Stereotypes)

I remember being around people who didn’t have money. We lived in Spanish Harlem. As I think back, the Puerto Ricans never seemed to be as broke as the few Black people around. Maybe because the “Spanish food” we ate was not available from the surplus food dispensaries, I remember seeing the distinctive black and white packages of cheese and macaroni and silver tin cans of potted meat at the houses of the Black families. On the other hand, the Black kids were freaked out by the fish heads and cow lungs that I ate.

I have memories of my Black neighbor waiting for government checks. I am now certain that the Puerto Ricans did also. It’s just not reflected in the rear-view mirror of my mind. I suspect that this is partly due to what I saw, and didn’t see in my Black neighbors. I saw lots of children. I saw mothers. I rarely saw fathers. I was in college when I learned about the laws that required men to be absent in order for their families to get government support. That was a misguided practice for which our society continues to pay.

Some of my memories are based on the stereotypes I heard in my home, on the news, and in school. “They” are all on welfare. Why don’t “they” get jobs? They did. I remember in the winter when it snowed really hard that the older boys would skip school and go shovel snow for the city for $5 a day. That was a lot of money. Men would work too. It was one of the few jobs they could count on in the winter when there were no construction jobs available. As I write this, I am recognizing that my vision is still tinged by those filters. I still see Blacks as poor, by their own doing. I still see myself as different, my dark brown skin notwithstanding.

I remember my Puerto Rican friends and neighbors. Pat’s father worked on ships, like my dad. I remember Helen, across the hall. She lived with her mother. That was unusual. The Puerto Ricans always had two-parent families. Helen’s mother didn’t work. As I write this, I am thinking that she must have been receiving public assistance. I remember that Puerto Rican family who lived across the alley. There were more kids in that family than mine, I had three siblings. I don’t know what their dad did. He would get drunk and yell at them and their mother, but he appeared to be supporting the family.

An Only Slightly Fictionalized Memory

The Early Years (Twenty Dollars)

The next thing I remember about money is $20. I took it from my mother’s purse. I was old enough to know about money and the value of different bills. I was old enough to know that stealing was wrong. I only wanted a dollar, but she had none. I probably would have settled for change, but there was none. I took the bill. I was going on a class trip. I knew that that was a day when evvvvvvvverybody else would have some money. I could not bear one more day of watching everyone else buy ice cream and candy and sodas and even a ham and cheese sandwich while I ate my school-provided lunch of peanut butter on whole wheat bread. It stuck to the roof of my mouth. I still remember the sensation. All I had to wash it down was milk. I hated milk. I am amazed that I did not choke to death. I got home that evening with chocolate smeared around my mouth and a tummy ache. I confessed. Mom did not understand why I needed the money or why I had taken it. I had a roof over my head and clothes on my back, shoes on my feet, and plenty to eat. We weren’t on home relief like many of our neighbors. Why did I need money? I remember her outstretch arm and finger pointing to my room as she yelled in Garifuna, “Beyba yanyege! … Sianti nabeychegebu! Ahsan nabechebu, naaafarradibu!” “Get out of here! Get out of my sight! Go to your room! Don’t make me hit you! I can’t hit you, if I hit you now, I will killlllllll you!”

An Only Slightly Fictionalized Memory

The Early Years

The first thing I remember about money is not having any. I was in school, so I must have been seven or so. No one in my neighborhood had a lot of money. All of my classmates had some money sometimes. Not me, not never – and that’s only a teeny exaggeration. Penny candy was more than just an appellation. There was such a thing as two-for-a-penny and sometimes three-for-a-penny. A Popsicle, with two sticks, cost two pennies. Didn’t matter; I couldn’t buy any. One exception was when I only pretended to put the nickel my mother had given into the collection basket.

Back in those days, it wasn’t just not having money; I wasn’t allowed to have money. I remember when, Mr Sam, the elderly Negro gentleman who lived across the hall knocked on my door and asked my mother if I could go to the corner store to buy him some butter. Oh boy! Oh boy! Oh boy! I knew that Mr Sam was a generous tipper. None of the kids next door who usually went to the store for Mr Sam were around. He always gave them money for running errands. I was always envious. Finally it was my chance! Of course I could go to the store! Finally a payday for me! I returned with a stick of butter. Mr Sam had actually wanted a pound, but he thanked me gave me a quarter anyway. I was delighted.

My mother made me give back the quarter. Over Mr Sam’s loud protestations, I was not allowed to accept payment. The stick of butter was only 23₵. How could I possibly accept more than the value of what I had delivered! I was always allowed to run errands and do chores. I just was not allowed to be paid for them. It’s funny how those early money lessons stay with me.

I remember the days and days of babysitting. All of my mother’s friends could drop off their kids while they went shopping. I had to watch them. I was responsible for everything that they did and, I was not allowed to get paid! The kids were mostly well behaved, but like most kids, sometimes they strayed. I remember the day that Didan got his big head stuck in an iron fence in Central Park.

We lived across the street from Central Park and went there often. One afternoon my siblings and I walked across the street with mom. Mom joined her friends who were seated on a park bench. There must have been five or six children following closely behind me as I ran off to the playground to catch up with my friends. I heard mom’s voice in the back ground, “Llévelos con tigo, y cuidelos bien.” “Take them with you, and watch them well.”

At some point the ball we played with went out the fence. The playground was surrounded by a tall iron fence of thick bars. Rather than running around the perimeter, some of the kids squeezed through the fence to fetch the ball. It was no big deal. It wasn’t the first time we had done it. Didan ran behind us. All of a sudden I heard crying behind me. … I don’t remember how he got out. There were adults involved, and there was punishment for me afterwards.

There was no upside to being “in charge.” It was all downside. It took me about 25 years of psychotherapy to figure out why I always self-sabotaged my opportunities for promotion to management.