Maybe You Never Cry Again Read online

  Shawna was mostly okay with me. She knew Billy and I were close. But lots of times she wouldn’t let him out of the house. She had about seven locks and chains and shit on her front door, and one of them was a dead bolt. And on more than one occasion Billy called from her place to say he wasn’t going to make it; Shawna had locked him in.

  He didn’t make it for my grandfather’s funeral but showed up later, at the house, with Shawna. She was clinging to him, holding on for dear life, and when he finally tore free for a moment, he came over and said how sorry he was about missing the service, and how Shawna had locked him in again, and he gave me that little broken-faced look of his.

  “Hey, Billy,” I said. “You’re here now, man. So don’t worry about it. You done it. You came and showed my grandfather your respect and that’s what counts.”

  That’s all the words I got out, because suddenly Shawna surfaced between us like a shark. “I’m ready to go now,” she said.

  “Honey,” Billy said. “We just got here.”

  “Didn’t you hear me, Billy? I said I was ready to go.”

  Said it loud, too. Everybody watching now. No respect at all in that woman.

  “Shawna—”

  She wouldn’t listen. She stormed out and slammed the screen door on her way, slammed it hard, and everyone turned to look at Billy, see what he was going to do. Everyone knew the girl had her claws in him deep. He was so embarrassed he hung his head.

  “Billy,” I said quietly, not wanting him to feel even worse. “You go ahead with your girl.”

  And he said, “Beanie, I’m sorry, man.” And he hurried after her and got in her Mercedes-Benz and they left.

  The next day I got with him again, and he was all apologetic. And I said, “Billy, I’m going to tell you something. We’re brothers. That girl is nothing but trouble. You should get away from her. The sooner, the better.” He didn’t answer me. He looked at the wall. I remember thinking that Billy seemed like drug addicts I’d seen, all morose and missing it. Only his drug was Shawna, of course.

  Sometimes he’d try to fight it. I’ll give him that. One time he got a big carpentry job at a housing development and looked like he was going places. He was happy, and he liked it. But Shawna didn’t like it. She was so insecure that she’d pop up on the job to make sure he wasn’t fooling around with any of the secretaries. He wasn’t fooling around with anyone. He loved Shawna. And he asked her nice to please not keep coming by the site; she was jeopardizing his job. But she kept coming by and sure enough he got fired, and he called me to come get him. I pulled up and he was waiting on the corner with all his tools. We went for a beer.

  “You got to leave that girl,” I said. “She gonna kill you.”

  Sure enough, one morning I get a call that Billy’s in the hospital. He and Shawna had been at a party the night before and he ran into this old girlfriend from high school, and the girl hugged him. And Shawna went off and threw a drink in his face and started hollering like she was being murdered or something, and security came by and told them to leave.

  Billy said he was going home without her. He’d had enough. And he stormed out and got on a bus. But Shawna followed with her car, and when he got off at the bus stop, she ran him over. If it hadn’t been for the concrete bench at the corner, her car would have climbed right over the sidewalk and killed him for sure. As it was, he had a cracked rib and a fractured ankle and contusions all over his body. The ambulance came to get him. And the police, too. Plenty of witnesses had seen the car and got the license plate, but when the cops went to the hospital to talk to Billy he wouldn’t press charges.

  I was furious. I was tight. He came over to my house on crutches, and I had to practically carry him up the stairs. “Billy,” I said, and I read him the riot act. “I’m going to tell you again. That girl is going to kill you.”

  “No, man, Beanie—you don’t understand. Shawna’s a good girl. She’s just never had anyone in her life be good to her. Everyone always abandons her.”

  “Sure they abandon her! They abandon her because she’s no good. The girl is crazy.”

  “No, Beanie. Don’t say that.” He wanted so bad for me to like her. “She just needs help.”

  “I ain’t arguing with that! Girl needs lots of help. From a professional. Not from you.”

  He went back to her. Like a beaten-down junkie. Reminded me of that singing wino in the old neighborhood, fighting with his own self about the damn bottle. “Give it back, nigger!”

  Whenever I called over to her place to talk to him, I was very respectful. But Shawna liked to taunt me. She knew I didn’t like her. “Mr. Mac Man! Big Bernie. How’s the funny man?”

  “Doing good,” I’d say, and eventually she tired of it and put Billy on the phone. I’d tell him I was going to a club that night, and asked could he come. But things were tense over there; lots of times she wouldn’t let him, and it shamed him.

  One night I did a party for this girl I’d met through work, and Billy came along—and brought Shawna with him. I did my show and had them rolling on the floor. Even Shawna was laughing.

  After the show I sat with them for a beer, and when Billy went off to find a bathroom, Shawna got all earnest with me. “Bernie,” she said. “Why don’t you like me?”

  “I’m sure I’d like you fine if I knew you,” I said. “What I don’t like is the way you treat Billy. Billy is my main man. I love that boy. I hate to see him hurting.”

  “He’s my main man, too,” she said. “And I love him, too.”

  “I don’t think what you do is called loving,” I said. “This ain’t my business, but you asked. And I’m going to tell it like it is. I can’t pretend it’s okay.”

  Billy got back to the table, and he could see we was tense. He hated that. He loved Shawna, or thought he loved her, and he didn’t want his best friend and his woman not getting along.

  A few days later he came over to the house and sat there and hugged me hello and played with Boops while I got dressed. Like I said, Billy was funny. He could do Woody Woodpecker and stuff and get Boops laughing till there were tears in her eyes. He was her favorite uncle, good old Uncle Billy.

  We went out to Popeye’s for chicken later. Loved that spicy chicken and those red beans and the jalapeño peppers. And while we’re chowin’ down, Billy’s mood got dark. He showed me the tip of his little finger and said, “A bullet this size can take your life.”

  I looked at him. “What’re you sayin’ that for, then?”

  But he wouldn’t answer. He got all quiet.

  So I asked him again. “Where’d you come from with that, Billy?”

  “Nowhere,” he said. “It was just a thought.”

  But I knew it was more than a thought. Next day I called my friend Morris Allen, over at Merrill. Said something was up with our friend Billy. “I’m real worried about him.” We got him over to the house a few days later, me and Morris and another friend of ours, Tony, and had some takeout and a few beers. But Billy wasn’t in any festive mood.

  “When I die,” he said, “I want to make sure my son’s taken care of.”

  He had a son with another woman, from when he was in high school. He looked over at Morris and began asking for financial advice, and Morris told him about living trusts and such, and how not to get a big tax bite (as if Billy had that problem), but I stopped all the money chatter and looked dead at Billy.

  “Man, what’s going on with you? You’re among friends here. What’s all this talk about bullets and dyin’?”

  “Nothing, Bean. I’m just talkin’. I’m thinking about my son. I wish I could be a better father to him.”

  But that wasn’t what he was thinking about. When I went off to get more beers, he followed me into the kitchen so close he was breathing down my damn neck. Gave me a scare. “Man! What are you creeping around for? Make me jump like that.”

  He’s all serious. “Bean,” he said. “If anything happens to me, I want you to get Shawna.”

  “Wha
t?”

  “Just promise me that,” he said, and I saw he had tears in his eyes.

  I cornered him right then and there, in the kitchen, but he didn’t tell me nothin’. He slipped back into the living room and joined the others.

  Later, I dragged him to this club called Sandpipers, just the two of us, and I still couldn’t get nothin’ out of him. My main man wouldn’t talk to me. Then these two girls came over and one of them looked at Billy and said, “Come here, you handsome devil. Dance with me.” And Billy went and danced. But he wasn’t even looking at this pretty girl. He was only thinking of Shawna. She’d be wondering where he was, maybe even looking for him now.

  He came back from dancing and I said, “See that? Everywhere you go, women want you. But you got to pick the one that’s trying to kill you. Tell me what the hell’s going on, Billy?”

  He still wouldn’t talk to me. I was getting tight, but he didn’t care.

  Now it’s four o’clock in the morning and he said he was hungry and we went over to Harold’s Chicken, on 71st and Racine. Half the city was there. Hustlers and pimps and gangsters and whores, gettin’ their fill of chicken. And we ate and I took Billy back to Shawna’s and her car was gone. And Billy put his head down like he knew he was in trouble. I tried to talk to him again, but he opened the door and ran off and left me there, more worried than ever.

  I was still putting in my hours at Dock’s, where they’d raised me to five hundred dollars a week, and I was getting plenty busy at the clubs.

  Whenever Amateur Night came along, the emcees knew I’d be there—and they were happy to have me. But they never paid me. They all said the same thing: “It’s about exposure, Bernie. You’re getting known all over town. You’re hot, brother.”

  I was hot, too. Other aspiring comics would come looking for me after my bit, to ask me about their own routines. Some of them were terrible, and I said I couldn’t help them. But some of them were pretty good, and I started opening doors for them at different venues—the places where I was already known. It was like a little side business for me; I was playing manager. If I got a call about a party or a funeral and I couldn’t make it, I’d tell them I had someone who could take my place. It worked out good. I had a good sense of what kind of comedy would work where, and I got very few complaints. Plus if there was a complaint, I always took care of it.

  For my own self, though, there was some growing frustration. I felt I was being taken advantage of. I’d see where they might put my name on the marquee, but they still didn’t mention any money. But what could I do? Comedy was a calling. And it was calling me loud.

  People would be coming into Dock’s and they’d see me back there at the fryer and do a double take. “Wait a minute,” they’d say. “Ain’t you that comedian?”

  And of course the guys at work didn’t know about that, and when they found out, they’d rag me. “If you so funny, what you doin’ fryin’ fish, boy? Why you even need this job?”

  It didn’t bother me. I stayed focused. I was moving forward on all fronts.

  My only genuine worry at the time was Billy Staples. I never seemed able to get him on the phone, and when I did, he didn’t sound like himself. He was blue and short with me and always busy with something else.

  “Why you pulling this shit with me?” I told him once, getting angry. “This your brother Bernie you talking to.”

  “I gotta go, Bernie.”

  “Don’t do this, man! You’re pissing me off!”

  Then I’d hear Shawna hollering in the background: “Billy! You gonna keep me waiting all day?”

  “Like I said, Bean—”

  “I want you to call me later.”

  “I will.”

  “Promise me you’ll call.”

  “Promise.”

  But he didn’t call. I was all the time trying to track that boy down, and always with less and less success.

  One night I got a call from the Cotton Club. They had a regular there, Bob McDonald—very funny guy. When they first discovered him, he was a mess—had a drug problem. So they got him cleaned up and fixed his teeth and put him in a tuxedo. And when he was on, he was very, very good.

  But this one night he didn’t show. And they knew about me, of course. But they didn’t really think of me as the main attraction. They thought I was a good opener, a warm-up act. And the reason they thought this is because they’d never given me a chance.

  So they called and asked if I had a suit. I told them sure, I had a suit. I had two suits, motherfucker. They said they needed me that weekend. “Two nights, three shows each night—and we’ll give you five hundred dollars.”

  I was thrilled, but you know Bernie—he keeps it inside. “Okay,” I said, real calm, real smooth. “I’ll be there.”

  I was flying when I got off the phone, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at me. I was also thinking that I didn’t have a suit, but I had some dark slacks and a white shirt and I could borrow a coat that almost matched.

  Friday night, I hustled down to the club. The place was packed. A jazz band was playing. Time came, I got up onstage and did my thing.

  “What is it about black people on TV? You know what I’m talking about? Must be a conspiracy or something. Maybe them white people who run the shows are giving them too much direction.” Then I’d do my white voice, impersonating a TV executive—though of course I’d never met a TV executive: “Okay, here’s the thing, Mr. Jones. We want you to come out and dance. And really shake it, like you people do. Then I want you to fight with your girlfriend, but loud. You know—loud and scary; your regular voice.”

  People eatin’ it up, roaring. Then I’d go back to my regular voice and say, “You know what that’s called? That’s called bringing out the nigga in you. My grandma used to say that all the time: ‘Don’t bring out the nigga!’”

  I’m not a guy who overprepares. I get up there and talk about people I know or people I’ve met, or I see someone in the front row wearing a red dress or something and I run with it. It’s more instinctual with me. I don’t sit home and polish the material. Talking shit, I call it. And as long as they’re laughing, I know I’m on the right track.

  And that night I was on the right track all the way. The jokes. The impressions. Singing along with the band. Audience loved me. Ate it right up. Heard ’em in the front row: “That Bernie Mac, he funny.”

  I could hardly get to sleep that night. Adrenaline, I guess. And the whole next day I was still wired.

  I went back that night, Saturday, to honor the rest of my commitment. And I had all new material. You didn’t want to be doing the same tired-ass routine, even if most of these people hadn’t heard it. You want to keep fresh and on your toes. And that’s what I did; I kept it fresh and killed all over again.

  “I was a sex champion at one time, but those days are over, motherfucker. I’m old now. Old and tired. Best I can do now is three minutes. It’s all I got. It’s all I want.”

  I walked off the stage, savoring the laughter and applause, and made my way back to the manager’s office.

  “You’re getting hot, Mac,” he said. “Hot hot hot.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  He pulled out his big-ass checkbook and wrote me a check and handed it over with a big-ass smile. I looked at the check. I wasn’t smiling no big-ass smile.

  “A hundred and seventy-five dollars? You said five hundred.”

  “Five hundred? I’m sorry, Bernie. You must’ve misunderstood. It was a hundred and seventy-five.”

  I took the check and left. Didn’t make no big deal about it, neither. Just walked out, thinking about what my grandmother had told me long ago: “Life is a heavyweight fight, Bernie. Protect yourself at all times.” How right she was. I’d given the man an opportunity to fuck me, and he’d fucked me. I had no one to blame but myself.

  Next day, I looked in the Yellow Pages and called the Crystal Ball Agency. I told them I needed representation. I seemed to be able to take care of other comic
s, but it looked like I didn’t know how to take care of myself.

  I sent them a demo tape. They called back two weeks later and said I was out of style. “What do you mean I’m out of style?” I said. “I can do any style you want. I’m just getting good.”

  “Well, I’m sorry,” the lady said. “You’re not good enough.”

  I took my next paycheck from Dock’s and went to a record store and bought three hundred dollars’ worth of records. Cosby and Pryor and George Carlin and Bob Newhart and Pigmeat Markham. Everything they had. And I went home and sat there listening to them over and over, until Rhonda and Boops was sick of hearin’ the jokes. They didn’t understand. I was trying to figure out what made comedy work. I wanted to be a comedian worse than ever. “I can’t believe you spent three hundred dollars on records,” Rhonda said. “That’s a lot of money. What if you get sick—”

  “So what if I get sick!?” I snapped. “What if I lose my job!? What if I get hit by a car on my way to the store!? Got-damn it, woman—comedy is what I want to do with my life. Can’t live with all these what-ifs. What if the got-damn sun don’t come up tomorrow?”

  Hey, what can I say? I wasn’t always a saint.

  One night I did a private party, and there was a guy there that said he knew Arsenio Hall. He said Arsenio was coming out to do a show at one of the hotels, and maybe he could get me a crack at the stage. Guy got tickets for my whole family. Rhonda, her parents, some of my friends.

  Big night comes. We had our own table. Arsenio came on before dinner and killed, and then we had dinner and it was comin’ on my turn. Rhonda was a little nervous. She kept asking if I was ready, and I told her I was always ready. You know me: I don’t believe in overpreparing. I had my shit down.

  Well, I got up there. Must’ve been a thousand people in the audience. I ain’t lying. Every last one of them was looking at me. I’d never experienced anything like it before.

  “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” I said. “My name is Reverend Doo Doo, and I preach a lot of shit.”