I didn’t mind the crazy way they walked, but I did mind them taunting my mother or aunt with catcalls and whistles when we had to pass a bunch of them occupying nearly the whole street corner. We couldn’t avoid them even by crossing over to the other side. If the catcalls and the whistles were only a temporary interruption to some song they were working out, it didn’t stop me loving their music when they went back to making it. I loved to hear them singing in an alley that had an echo.
My family disapproved of the language that was spoken on the reservation, because it wasn’t what the rest of the nation considered good English. To be fair, it was a dialect and should have been treated with a certain respect as Europeans treat their dialects. Instead, a lot of stigma was attached to it. How the children who had only ever heard and spoken this reservation dialect coped when they got to school is beyond me. Fun with Dick and Jane, which was the first primer, should have had a translation and a glossary.
Of all the versions of English I’ve learned to speak, Melangian is the most expressive and emotional. Maybe this is why it is the language of popular music today. Whether by Hall and Oates, the Stones or Michael McDonald, a lot of hits are written and recorded by non-Melangians in our dialect. It certainly says what it has to say and takes the most direct route. It has a flatness to its tone which is basically guttural and combines this with rhythm and a Southern American lilt.
When Charles Dickens wrote his American travelogue in 1846 after an extensive trip around the States, he said that the English that he heard spoken by women in the Southern states showed the influence of the mammies that raised them. So the Southern accent was affected by Melangian and vice versa. We picked up English how and when we could, as it was never formally taught us.
To hear it spoken, Melangian is like upper-class county English in that it’s full of diphthongs and open vowel sounds. Consonants at the end of words are often dropped, as in the Scots accent, and when they are sounded, they’re softened. This is probably why Melangian is so useful for modern singing. It lets the mouth hold open sounds for words like ‘don’t, ‘last’ and ‘morning’, to name but three.
Melangian was the language I relied upon to express myself on the reservation when my mother wasn’t within hearing distance. We weren’t allowed to speak it at home. I still enjoy using it when I get a chance. When an issue gets bogged down with unnecessary words, if I think in Melangian, I can keep a clearer picture of what’s really going on. Of all the English dialects, Melangian is the one that best expresses joy and ebullience.
The class system on the reservation was more like a caste system, related to physical appearance. I guess it evolved out of the plantation politics, when how you looked may have determined whether you worked in the house or the field. Skin colour, hair texture and facial features affected your social status. Hair that grew wavy and long, light-coloured eyes and skin, afforded you more opportunity.
In the 1940s, educational opportunity was too limited for Melangians to see education as an available route to a better life, although we had our own doctors, lawyers, teachers and professionals, most of whom were educated in small Melangian colleges in the South. There weren’t many of these graduates. My father’s chance to go to Harvard was not one to be taken lightly or interfered with. It compared with a boy from the Gorbals getting a scholarship to go to Christ Church College, Oxford. His academic achievements linked my family to the professional class even though we were struggling to eat, like everybody around us. Our mother worked especially hard to have us live up to our assumed identity and went to great pains to make sure that we spoke English as well as anyone else and that our education and ambitions weren’t stinted in any way. For this she was often accused of acting white and treating us as if we were. On the reservation, no accusation was more damning. She turned a deaf ear.
It would be misleading to paint only a glowing picture of the reservation. If you saw a photograph of one without a caption, you might mistake it for a war zone. Young men prepared for combat, patrolling and armed and waiting; a rubbled landscape; an atmosphere of torment, confusion or resignation on the faces of both young and old, highlighted by a queer sense of abandonment.
The work that was available wasn’t likely to improve your future status and crime seemed to pay.
Pearl Bailey’s mother lived across the road from us, but 23rd Street was on the fringe of what was later to be known as the Crime Belt. I grew perversely proud of this distinction, but in reality I doubt it was much worse than any other section of North Philly. It was like boot camp, and I was happy there even though every passageway seemed like an obstacle course. Whether it was the hallway to the communal toilet, or the staircase, or the few feet of pavement that led to dinky local stores, you might encourage something dangerous.
I wasn’t really allowed out much alone, so one of my favourite pastimes was to observe the world below by hanging my head a bit further than was allowed outside our third-floor window which overlooked the street.
Once, I happened to be looking out when I saw a thief riding off on my tricycle. It caught me off guard. ‘That son of a bitch is stealing my bicycle!’ is all I managed to squeal before my grandmother’s big yellow hand had whipped me out of the window to drag me to the kitchen sink where my mouth was washed out with soap and water. Resisting this punishment was worse than the punishment itself. Thankfully a few tears came to evoke my grandmother’s sympathy.
I could think bad words and no one would stop me, but whenever one would slip out before I could catch it and be overheard by my mother, aunt or grandmother, I’d get my mouth washed out. I cursed a lot although nobody knew it. I was only repeating what I heard, but since ‘Do as I say and not as I do’ was one of the house rules, cursing was considered to be very bad behaviour and what my grandmother termed ‘streety’.
With the six of us living in two rooms, nerves got frayed, and among the adults a lot of swearing and shouting went on, although they pretended after the dust settled that nothing unladylike had been said. None of them swore in front of anybody outside the family other than the ice man, whom Edna cursed if his great big chunks of ice dripped across her clean kitchen floor before he could lodge it in the refrigerator or before she could put some newspaper down.
I spent a lot of time with my grandmother, because my mother and aunt were at work all day at the Signal Corps and my brother and sister were at school. Edna let me do things like go down to Max Bender’s small food store and buy loose potato chips. Max scooped them from a big silver can into a brown paper bag. (They were cheaper if they were stale.) Max also sold margarine from a covered bowl. As part of your purchase, you’d get a little red capsule to stir into it to turn it yellow. Being allowed to stir was a reward for being good, and I tried to follow all the rules.
Once I’d started school, my mother told me to work hard, mind my own business and act like a lady, but I assumed ‘take no shit’ still applied. Easier said than done. As I was only five, combining those efforts required a political skill that I didn’t have. My mother expected me to talk my way out of trouble, but on the front line, talk can get you into a lot of trouble.
To survive our tough little neighbourhood, you had to be alert at all times. Even though I was little, I was mentally prepared to react and defend myself. Just as you’d imagine a real war zone, even the youngest must learn to anticipate danger, to think and react at the same time, and to let fear serve as a natural alarm to warn you of danger, fuel you with the adrenalin that may be your only protection.
When I started kindergarten at St Elizabeth’s Catholic School, I was worldly. I’d seen so many people in the streets with scars that I’d learned to distinguish how a wound had been inflicted: a jagged scar came from
