Maybe You Never Cry Again Read online

  Maybe You Never Cry Again

  Bernie Mac with Pablo F. Fenjves

  This book is for my mother, Mary McCullough, who believed in me from the start; for my grandmother, Lorraine, who helped shape me; for my wife, Rhonda, who stood by me when standing by me wasn’t easy; and for my daughter, Je’Niece, who has made me the happiest, proudest father in the world

  Contents

  01 Tar Baby, Spooky Juice

  02 I May Weep, But I‘m Not Going to Suffer

  03 She Was Going to Educate Me If It Killed

  04 Motherfuckin’ Clown Smart All of a Sudden

  05 Come Back When You’re Funny, Kid

  06 Mac Daddy

  07 You Blue Again, Bernard

  08 I’d Had My Fill of Death and Sorrow

  09 I’ma Cut Yo’ Ass in Two

  10 That Dark Place Is Where My Prayers Get Answered

  11 You Suck! Get Off the Motherfuckin’ Stage, Motherfucker. Get Your Ugly Ass Out of Here

  12 Must Be a Got-Damn Storm Raging Inside You

  13 Give Mr. Mac Five Minutes

  14 You Quick, Boy. Man Hits You, You Hit Back

  15 Success Has Many Parents

  16 No–Holds–Barred Funny

  17 I Miss Mama

  18 Spooky Juice, Just Look at You Now

  19 The Biggest Show Business Phenomenon Most White People Didn’t Even Know About

  20 Mi Casa Es Mi Casa

  21 You Fall Down, You Get Up

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  “BLACK PEOPLE: THEY TELL LIKE IT IS.”

  01

  TAR BABY, SPOOKY JUICE

  My name is Bernard Jeffrey McCullough, but people know me as Bernie Mac.

  My mama, God rest her soul—she used to call me Beanie.

  Used to say, Don’t you worry about Beanie. Beanie gonna be just fine. Beanie gonna surprise everyone.

  Woman believed in me. She believed in me long before I believed.

  I loved my mama with all my heart.

  I was born October 5, 1957, on the South Side of Chicago, in the Woodlawn area, a neighborhood that hasn’t changed much in forty-five years. Our house was on 66th and Blackstone, but the city tore it down when the rats took over. We moved to a new place on 69th and Morgan, in Englewood, right above the Burning Bush Baptist Church, a two-story, redbrick building. My grandfather was a deacon at the church, and I think he got a deal on the place. So we packed up: my mother, Mary McCullough; her sister, Evelyn; my older brother, Darryl; my grandparents, Lorraine and Thurman; and little me. Somewhere along the line, maybe during the move to our new digs, we lost Daddy.

  We were poor. You know how to tell if a person’s poor? You look in the fridge. If there’s nothing in there but bologna, you’re talkin’ serious poor. Mmmm, but that bologna was good! We used to fry it up till a black circle formed at the edges, then roll it like a hot dog and eat it slow, make it last. You’d be chewing with your eyes closed, telling yourself, Never had nothin’ taste so good!

  Lot of beans in our house, too. Pinto beans. Lima beans. Red beans.

  And cereal. Only you’d be eating it with a fork, leave the milk at the bottom for the next guy. I ain’t lyin’. You think I’m lyin’, you don’t know what poor is.

  Sundays was different, though. Sundays we had a real dinner. Roast and mashed potatoes and butter rolls and macaroni and cheese and gravy, boatloads of gravy. That was some serious eating. I couldn’t wait for Sundays. I lived for Sundays. ’Course, next day we were back to potted meat and beans, with sometimes a neck bone floating around in there if you was lucky.

  Here’s the thing, though: I didn’t think nothin’ about it. I thought we were just like everybody else. I thought life was good. I thought, This is how life is.

  I was a big-eyed kid. My eyes were about the size they are now, in that little head of mine—and my eyes are way big, so imagine it: like a pair of flashlights comin’ at you through the darkness. Kids called me “tar baby,” “spooky juice.” I was scary.

  “What you looking at?” they’d say.

  “I’m looking at you, motherfucker.”

  Three, four years old, and that was one of the first words I knew: motherfucker.

  Grandpa Thurman would slap me up the side of the head and tell me to talk classy. “I won’t have none of that intrepidation here, boy! Understand?” He was about five-six, stocky, light-skinned, his hair thin in back and starting to go gray at the temples. “None at all. None. Gonna expedential your ass right the hell up! Hear me? Your ass gettin’ expedentialed.”

  Motherfucker thought those were real words. And he was always repeating everything three, four times.

  “Huh?” I’d say, and I’d look at him like he was an old fool.

  He’d slap me up the side of the head again. “Don’t talk back to me, boy! I’ll abstract you. Man’s gotta rederfrine himself to succeed in this here life.”

  I would go outside in the afternoon, see if anyone my size was around. Maybe kick an old can up and down the sidewalk till the neighbors told us to shut the hell up. That was the neighborhood. Nobody calling out, “Hey, Bern, get your cleats, time for football!” Or, “Wash your hands, boy—piano teacher on her way over!” We didn’t have play dates in our neighborhood. We didn’t worry about being overscheduled. We learned to entertain ourselves. I used to have long conversations with the living room wall.

  “Who you talkin’ to, boy?” my grandma asked, shuffling along on those swollen-ass ankles, eyes squintin’ and flashin’ in that pitch-black face.

  “Nothin’.”

  “You always underfoot, Bern. Go outside and sit on the stoop.”

  “I already done that.”

  “You sassin’ me, boy?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Wait till your grandpa come home. I’m gonna tell him how sassy you’re gettin’. He gonna whup your ass.”

  In my family, you learned respect. In my day, the adults were in control. There were rules, and by God, we had to follow them. Every time my mama set down the law, she’d say, “I know you don’t like it, Bean, and I know you’re mad at me. But life isn’t a popularity contest.” Good thing, too. Lots of days she would have finished last for damn sure.

  Most times, though, she didn’t say much; she could stop me with a look. She figured you didn’t want to be talkin’ to little kids. They’re not hearing you. Little kids aren’t much smarter than dogs.

  When I was about five years old, though, she began to change her ways. She started trying to communicate with me. She’d still give me the look, of course, only she’d add a little philosophy to go with it.

  “Talk is cheap, Bern. When you tell me you’re going to do something, I expect it to get done. Ain’t nobody going to do it for you.”

  If I got angry, she’d tell me to get over it. “Only person you’re hurting is yourself.” And if I did something she considered too stupid for words, she’d shake her head and look seriously disappointed. “Act like you got some sense, boy,” she’d say. “Maybe one day it’ll come true.”

  It did come true, of course. But it was a long time coming.

  I remember the day I started school. Me and the kids in the neighborhood, walking along with our little lunch pails, looking like we was going off to tiny jobs. ’Course, we had our mothers with us. Two blocks was a long way to go.

  I was a shy kid. Other kids, they settled right in and made themselves at home. But me, it took a while. I was the kid in the corner, wide-eyed, sayin’ nothin’, takin’ it in. Didn’t have much in the way of social skills, I guess.

  I’d go home after school and eat potted meat and—weather p
ermittin’—go out front and park my little ass on the stoop. I’d watch the neighbors on their stoops. Watch the cars cruise by. Watch the people in the cars watching me back. Do this till I’m yawnin’, then I’d go back inside and pick up where me and the living room wall had left off.

  One night, though, I come in and find my mama in front of the TV, cryin’. And you know how it is when you’re a little kid: your mama cryin’, you gonna be cryin’ in a minute.

  “What’s wrong, Mama?” I ask her.

  “Nothing, baby.”

  I climb onto her lap. She holds me. I look at them big-ass tears coming down her cheeks and I reach up and wipe ’em with my pudgy little hands. “Mama,” I ask her again, “why you cryin’?”

  “It’s nothin’, Bean. Sometimes I think sad thoughts.”

  “What thoughts?”

  She didn’t answer. She was lookin’ at the TV. Black guy’s talkin’ to Ed Sullivan. I look at him, but I don’t hear but a few words. And I can’t make them out anyway, see, because suddenly my mama’s laughin’ to bust a gut. Her whole lap’s shakin’. I got to hold on tight or get thrown clear across the room.

  I turn to look at her—this is the same woman that was cryin’ a second ago?—then turn back to the TV. “Who that man, Mama?”

  She’s still laughin’. Takes her a while to catch her breath. “Bill Cosby, son. He’s a comedian.”

  A comedian?

  “What’s that?”

  Now she’s laughin’ harder. Tears still comin’ out of her eyes, but she’s happy. She’s slappin’ the arm of the chair, she’s so happy. She’s lettin’ it out.

  I look over at this Bill Cosby again. I don’t know what he’s talkin’ about—something’s going on in his bathroom—but I know that whatever it is, it’s got power.

  “That’s what I want to be, Mama. A comedian. Make you laugh like that, maybe you never cry again.”

  Oh man, now she gets into some serious sobbin’. She’s hugging me so tight I can hardly breathe.

  “Oh, Beanie!” she’s saying, wailing. “My little baby. I love you so much. Do you know how much I love you, little Bean?”

  Now I had some direction. I was going to be a comedian. I practiced on my pencils. I had a box of pencils at home, five hundred pencils. They all had names. Jamie, Zeke, Hightop. I’d sit there and my pencils would be talking to each other, tellin’ jokes: “Your mama so fat, even the tide won’t take her out.”

  Grandpa Thurman walked by, shaking his head. “That boy crazy. Ought to be locked up.”

  I took my talent to school. Be the cutup, brother. Bernie comin’ out of his shell. Bernie the class clown.

  Teacher would ask the class, “Who was president of the United States when the Declaration of Independence was signed?” I’d say, “Bill Cosby.” She’d ask, “What’s seven times fourteen?” I’d say, “Why you askin’ us? You’re the teacher.”

  She didn’t like that one bit. Called Mama. “Bernie knows the answers better’n most of the other kids, but he likes to say it wrong. He thinks it’s funny.”

  Mama didn’t like that much herself. “It’s a shame when you’re born stupid, Bern, but when you practice it—I got a problem with that.”

  I bowed my head like I was supposed to do. “Yes, Mama.”

  “When your granddaddy gets home, he gonna whup your ass.”

  Shit. I was gonna get my ass whupped.

  During the week, my grandpa was a janitor at General Motors. Sundays he spoke for the Lord. But every day he kept us in line.

  So now I’m worried. I’m thinking about this ass whupping. I’m thinking how my mama just done ruined my entire evening. Sent it all to hell. I can’t eat. I can’t hardly breathe. I’m in a got-damn trance. Only one thought goin’ round in my head, and it’s like a broken record: “Grandpa Thurman comin’ home to whup my ass.”

  And there he is now. I can hear them talkin’ in the other room. I’m shakin’ already. My grandpa walks in, all stiff and bowlegged. Looks at me in that special way of his: Seems like everybody in my family has a special look.

  “What is wrong with you, boy?” he says, snortin’ like an old bull.

  I don’t say nothin’. I know he’s not really askin’. It’s what you call a rhetorical question: What he wants to hear is his own self.

  “Somethin’ wrong with you, boy? You wrong in the head? How did you come out all wrong like that—kin o’ mine?” Repeatin’ everything three, four times like he does, circlin’ me. “You think it cool to be messed up?”

  “I ain’t messed up.”

  WHAM! Knock me up the side of the head good. “I’m just gettin’ started, boy,” he says, and he leaves me there, seein’ stars. He walks into the kitchen. I can hear him ask Grandma what’s on the menu for the evening. Like he don’t know. Potted meat, old man. It’s a long way from Sunday.

  You grow up, world starts changing. Or maybe it’s the way you see it, even if it’s only on Leave It to Beaver. I’m watching TV with my buddy Almon Vanado, seven years old. He lived around the corner, on 68th.

  “Why we poor, A.V.?” I ask him.

  He shrugs. Don’t know.

  Later, at dinner, I ask my mama: “Why we poor?”

  “Don’t mean nothin’,” she says. “You be proud, son. Hold your head high.”

  My grandma whacks my elbow off the table. Sneak attack. I almost fall clean off the chair. “What’d I say about elbows on the table?” she asks, but she’s not wantin’ an answer. “Use your manners, boy. We’re poor, but manners don’t cost nothin’. Good manners tell people who you are.”

  My grandma had other sayings, too. Sayings ran in the family. On bad days, she’d say, “Life is a heavyweight fight, Bernie. Protect yourself at all times.”

  On good days, it was, “Beautiful mornin’, ain’t it, son? I get another crack at it this mornin’; another chance to improve myself.”

  My grandma was the mayor of the neighborhood. Everybody knew my grandma. When somebody was sick, she was the first one there. Bringing soup, cleaning up. If somebody couldn’t pay the rent, she organized a rent party. Other times, I got sent out to help the neighbors—even if they didn’t need it.

  “Grandma says for you to go help Mr. Willis wash his car,” my grandpa would tell me.

  “What for? He got a boy of his own.”

  WHAM! Right across the back of the head. No warning. “I’ll knock your eyeball out, boy! Then step on it.”

  No idle hands in our house. Busy busy busy. We was church people, and we were there to set an example.

  Sunday comes around. I wake up thinking of roast and potatoes, and that chocolate cake that comes after. Lyin’ in bed, tastin’ it already. Grandma walks in. “Time for church, Bern.”

  “I’m sick, Grandma,” I say.

  “I’m sick every day,” she says.

  I whine a little, but there’s no getting out of it. Put on that starchy shirt and march downstairs to the got-damn church.

  Man, it’s crowded. Who knew the world was so full of sinners? Everybody hugging and kissing like long-lost relatives, when you saw them only last night, dancing in the middle of the street, drunk.

  Then you go inside to your regular pew, first row, and suffer through all that singing and praying and hollering. And then Grandpa’s up there, his voice rolling like thunder, shaking his fists. Sinners! And everybody’s hollering back, “Oh yeh, Lordy! We sinners and we knows it!” Shaking their fists, too. Some of them got-damn faintin’ in the aisles. And I’m thinking, Dear Lord, can I get some quiet here?

  Finally, it’s over—but it’s still not over. I have Bible class to get through. And, you know, I like a good story as much as the next guy, but why they always tellin’ us we’re going to hell?

  One day we had a little banquet after church, and one of the guest deacons said to me, “Bernie, I hear you think you’re funny?”

  “Pretty funny,” I said.

  Eight years old and I already had a reputation. This was 1966. Cosby w
as going strong. Richard Pryor was a rising star. And Bernie Mac was about to test the waters.

  “Ladies and gentleman,” the man said. “We have some entertainment for you this afternoon. I think you all know little Bernie. Little Bernie is a regular comedian.”

  He made me go stand up front, where everyone could see me, and I looked out at their stony faces. Tell you something I learned early on: Black people are tough; they want to be entertained. And I could see it in their eyes: We don’t think you’re funny, boy. Nothin’ funny about kids. I waited for them to quiet down, then I got started: “My family—you don’t want to mess with my family. My grandpa, he say everything four times—four times he says it—four!” They’re laughing already, looking over at Grandpa, who’s not laughing. They know what I’m talking about, though. I do his voice, make it go all deep, and I snort and breathe heavy and do all his gestures just right: “Pass me that gravy, woman. Don’t be hoggin’ that gravy. How many times I got to ask for that gravy? I’ll bonk the top of your head you don’t pass me that gravy now.”

  Those two, Thurman and Lorraine, they were bickering all the time. She says black, he says white.

  So then I do my grandma, giving it back: “Thurman, you ain’t bonkin’ nobody. And you calm down about that gravy. Boat’ll get to you. You start on ’em potatoes.” I squint my eyes the way she does, and it’s clear from the laughter that they got grandmas that squint, too. I tell ’em how she shuffles up behind you, scares you half to death. “And when she give you a bath, man—she rub you till you bleed.” They’re really laughin’ now.