COME SEE, WILLIE LEE
1964
My best guess is that he’s dead by now. Maybe not, though. He knew how to survive, that boy. His wiles came from his heart and got him by. Sixty years have passed, more than half a century since I last set eyes on him. Summer,1964. Willie Lee Sampson, 11 years old, a Black kid on the gritty streets of Baltimore. His thought process shut down before the age of seven. I met him on the streets. I left him on the streets. I’d never seen him cry before but he teared up when I told him I was moving on. Another job. Another state. Another city. Another life. Because Willie Lee hadn’t the capacity to think beyond a few minutes ahead, he couldn’t understand so much about the future or, to be specific, why one would make plans to go there? And do what? “We be here. Why we be someplace when we be here?”
Willie was functional, but Willie was retarded. Today’s jargon concerning the mentally “disadvantaged” would not necessarily abide the use of that word, but we’re talking sixty years ago, amigo. Willie was my client. He had intermittent bursts of insight that seemed to come from nowhere, yet his thinking never strayed much beyond the age of seven. But Willie Lee could talk. Oh, lord, could that kid talk. His tongue took in everything he saw and gave it words.
I was a social worker in the emergency care squad, children’s division, City of Baltimore, Department of Public Welfare. There were five of us, each having instant access to a car if the situation warranted which, in most cases, it did. A report would come in of a child that had been starved, abused, abandoned, injured or, as was usually the case, all of the above. One of us would find the child and get him or her to care and safety. Then we’d work to reconcile the family or to prosecute. Mainly we worked to keep the child warm, fed, dry, and harbored from further harm. Each case as horrible as the one that followed, and the one that followed that was even worse. I can’t remember a single incident in which poverty was not a factor. The joint was rigged to keep people in place. When was being poor a choice? When was it a moral failing? Who still believes this crap? Come on.
The civil rights movement was underway, although it hadn't quite exploded into the vibrant days of Black Power. Stokely Carmichael, not yet center stage, waited in the wings. I went to work each day in a suit and tie, and spent most of those days "in the field" making my way through the bleak streets of the poorest sections of the city, mostly Black, some crackers, a smattering of gypsies. No Jews or Episcopalians (other than African Methodist) anywhere in sight. I'd go through alleys, cross the parks, ride the battered and clattering elevators up to the top floors of the projects, funeral homes, dinky groceries, jail, prison, bars, churches, and pool halls, but I honestly cannot remember fear. I’m not saying I had none, just that I don’t remember any. I went where I needed to go, and that was that. Would I do the same today? I was young, had been an active duty Marine, still active reserve. Parris Island taught us we were invincible. Even now, writing these words three score years later, I still feel that way, full well knowing how ridiculous it is. Denial? Refusal to accept reality? When reality happens I’ll deal with it. In the meantime, I’m extremely aware of my surroundings, and I sense danger when there is some, but I don’t walk around worried about what I don’t need to worry about. Not then. Not now. As far as I'm concerned, I’m a tourist visiting extraordinary places. Too many things to see. No time for fear.
True, many of the homes I visited were derelict, but many were tidy with pictures on the wall of JFK, Martin Luther King, and Abraham Lincoln all decked out in aluminum foil frames. Who would be pictured now? Like the man said, different times. I feel caution where I never before thought about it. When I hear the weather report warning us about bad air days, I think, “When wasn’t it a bad air day?“ And yet: different times when, after a civil action – a demonstration, a picket line - Blacks and whites put their arms around each other’s shoulders, swayed, and sang, “We Shall Overcome”
It was a hot day in July when I walked down the bedraggled street listed in Willie Lee’s file. This would be the first time we’d met even though his file told me quite a bit about him. On either sides were the red-brick row houses, battered, filthy, chronically in need of pointing and painting. An empty carton sized for a refrigerator sat on the street in front of Willie’s address. I walked up the few steps and knocked. Even the wooden door was hot. It was opened by a very tall, very slender woman with cocoa skin in a raggedy dress.
“Here for Willie Lee?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied, “Is he around?”
“He ‘round but don’ know where he ‘round’ right now.”
Willie’s file described her as functionally retarded, seven kids, all mentally deficient to a greater or lesser degree. Nothing negative except everything negative, yet she was a loving mother, devoted to those kids. She told me, “Come inside”, so I did.
Unless you are poor you have no idea how hard life can be, regardless of the brainwash that John Calvin and the trickle-down proponents concocted. There was very little furniture – a shabby armchair, a tattered couch. Another large packing crate, this one wood, sat in the middle of the living room floor. Mrs. Sampson excused herself and left the room. I walked over for a look at the crate. An infant, maybe six months, lay there nearly asleep while a large, black rat hunkered in one corner. I reached in and lifted that baby up and out of the crate. Mrs. Sampson returned with a baby bottle. When she saw me holding her baby she held out her arms and collected her with a “Gimme here.” I did, and she quickly popped the bottle in her baby’s mouth.
“A rat was in there with her,” I pointed at the crate.
“She OK,” said her mother.
“You got a shovel or a hammer, something like that?”
“Hamma.”
“Fine.”
She left the room and returned with a three pound mallet in her hand. Perfect. I took it from her, crept with supreme stealth to the crate. Very cautiously, very, I leaned over the crate and slammed that evil critter over its black, pestiferous head, except I missed, so it ran towards the far side of the crate, jumped over it, and went wherever rats go after a near death experience.
She looked at me. Her face bore an expression of great concern.
“Where I’m gonna go?”
I had no answer. Well, actually I did: nowhere. This was it. She told me her daily prayer was to “stay alive ‘til my chillun don’ need me no more.” There was nothing else she would do with her life. Nothing else she could do with her life. Many folks, I believe, might think of this as a drain on our "resources", a pox on society. But to see how that woman loved her children was a wonder to me, the depth of her love and responsibility an awakening to what could be.
“No Willie Lee, huh?”, I asked
She shrugged.
“Some place cool and shady. Slow but ain’t no dummy. You here to take ‘im?
“No, ma’am. No way would I do that.”
“You ain’t takin’ him!”
“No, ma’am. He’s all yours.
“How ‘bout dat school thang?” she asked.
“Dat school thang” was my determination to get Willie Lee into a public school with a curriculum designed for potentially independent students like him. Now, I wasn’t against the state. Hell, I was the state! Except the state wanted him institutionalized, but I didn’t. Special programs were available, tucked away somewhere, only, back then, few and far between. I was determined to get him into one. Maybe even Willie could live home, see his mother all the time. If he were stashed away he’d disappear, fall off the earth. She’d never see him again. I damn sure wasn’t going to be responsible for shutting that boy up knowing that every morning for the rest of Willie Lee’s life he’d awaken to a world of seriously demented inmates, their ailments dwarfing his.
The howling never stops in such a place – a real bad black and white British horror film ca. 1927 – only unimaginably worse because it is real. Piercing, relentless, terrible shrieks, shrieks of everything, of pain, of anger, of loss, of loneliness, of dread. Willie Lee did not belong in a place like this. His mother had been in one as a child. No way was she going to inflict that on her son. She didn’t know much but as best she could she knew how to be a mother. Never beat them. Never locked them outside in the snow. Never molested them. Taught them, ma'am and mister. Never chastised them in front of people. Fed them everything she could. Went through dumpsters years before it became a middle-class sport. Nothing wrong with her at all except an IQ up there in the sixties.
"Tell Willie Lee I’ll be around. You all got enough to eat?”
“We fine. Say ‘Bye, mister,” she said to the infant and waved the baby’s hand, “Bye, Bye.”
It was listless, limp. I instantly registered, “another one”, again, an assessment not a judgment. I closed the door behind me and stepped out onto a stoop so hot the heat waves writhed from it like skinny snakes stretching upwards towards the sky. That refrigerator-size carton was no longer in the street but now at the curb. Noticed but not given much thought. Somebody'd kicked it. I had turned to walk back up the street to my car when Mrs. Sampson came outside, baby in arms, a jelly glass of Kool-aid in the other. She bellowed so loudly the whole neighborhood could hear.
“Willie Lee Sampson! Come git your Kool-aid. Don’t you git too hot, hear me? Hear me?”
The voice of a young boy answered, “Yes, ma’am.” It came from under the refrigerator carton by the curb.
“Come on now. I ain’t wanna stand out all day."
The box moved, lifted off the ground, and there he was: Willie Lee Sampson with that eight-lane smile of his. A fixture. Available on the instant. I watched him walk right by me and take the glass from his mother. “Want one?” she called out to me. My first instinct was to say, “No”, give some excuse – appointments, doctor’s office, something – but a red flag popped into my head like a flag from the barrel of a magician’s trick pistol. “Yes, ma’am,” I said, “Thank you.” “Set,” she said, pointing to the stoop. “Willie Lee, set with this man so he ain’t be lonely.” She went inside, and Willie Lee dutifully sat down on the stoop beside me.
“Want some?” he asked, offering me his glass.
“No, thanks,” I said, “Got some coming.”
Then that smile.
“Lots of sugar.”
“Way I like it,” I said.
“Way I like it,” he replied.
His smile was as large as his face would allow. He then startled me by abruptly asking, “Does you believe in God?” I didn’t, but, keen observer that I fancy myself, I sensed this was not the moment to argue theology.
“Sure,” I said, “You do, right?”
“Yessir!”
“What’s He look like?”
“Ain’t never seen him.”
“How do you know who He is?”
“’Cause I know.”
“Tell me.”
“God,” he said. His face changed in the instant. He held my eyes. I could not turn away. In a soft, sure, positive, almost matter-of-fact manner, he said, “He the man what take me by the hand and lead me ‘round this world.” No smile then but a simple expression of peace and quiet pleasure.
I loved that job more than any other I’ve ever had in what is by now a very long and eclectic life. I never looked at the streets in those vibrant days of the early sixties as combat zones. Many of the neighborhoods did look as if they had suffered a bombing run, like photos showing Berlin and London after World War II, but these Baltimore ruins were about neglect and worry, about making next month’s rent, tomorrow morning’s breakfast, staying dry without a roof, zoning laws that put them there. These neighborhoods, these streets, their alleys and nooks, streets where poor people pitched pennies or shared a bottle of cheap wine or slept. But, the children! Often shoe-less, always in tattered clothes (except for Sundays at church), but most with all the energy of a switch-back wind - running, darting, jumping, hiding, seeking, pushing, pulling, fighting, dancing, growing. When my own children were younger, still at home, we’d be walking somewhere when a cute little kid would toddle by, and suddenly it was my duty to get them to smile. Sometimes I just said, “Hi”, and waved, but, most times, I came up with questions and faces designed to give me and them a nanosecond of pure joy. It provoked the hell out of my own children who could not understand why I wanted to talk to all the babies out there. Don’t ask me. I’ve already asked myself, “Why this particular quirk?” It’s a simple pleasure. That nanosecond of true connection injects joy into my day. Fair enough.
My job was also to make sure Willie went where he was supposed to go and do what he’s supposed to do – doctor’s appointment, court appearance, testing center – wherever, so we were often in the car together. He just loved it like it a fun park ride. Once we passed a street corner with a gaggle of Asian school girls. Willie twisted his neck around to cop a final glimpse. I don’t know how he did it: seemed like his head swiveled backwards.
“Mr. Foreman?”
“Yup?”
“Is you got a girlfriend?”
“Uh, huh.”
“Tell me,” Willie said, “Is she white or is she Black or is she like them
Chineses I sees on the corner?”
Leaving that job ranks as one of the most difficult decisions I have ever had to make in my entire life. Because of my education from Morgan, I had been accepted into the three graduate schools to which I had applied (I also won a Fulbright, but that's another story): State U. of Iowa (their prestigious writing program), University of Chicago (Ph.d in Linguistics), and Yale (Playwriting and Dramatic Lit) Yale! I mean, how do you turn down Yale? My dismal high school record had me scarred for life. To this very minute. Not kidding. I mean, why would anybody accept me anywhere? Even now! But, Yale did! Hot damn! Yale! How do you turn that one down? But it meant I would need to leave my clients behind, Willie Lee, most of all. I'd spent more time with Willie Lee than anyone. The city of Baltimore would not have approved that time. Couldn't help it. I liked that kid so much. I'd always come away from him feeling better than I had before. I can hear some folks saying stuff like just another privileged honky making himself feel good because he spent a couple-three hours with a helpless Black boy who didn't know no better, any better. Believe it. Don't believe it. He did know better about things that kept him alive. He knew every alley, twist, turn, fence, hedge in the neighborhood. He couldn't fight them off but he could outsmart them. That's what I mean. He knew the stores he could go by where someone usually gave him some sort of food. The Chinese lady who ran the donut shop would give him a donut for his mother. He had to pay 15 cents for his. Three nickels not fifteen pennies, please. Whether or not they did, he'd smile and ask folks did they need help carrying stuff? He might get a few coins some days, although he would not come right out and ask for them. "Momma say how you like somebody do you like that?" That's also what I mean. Another great thing was that Willie Lee, intended or not, was very funny, really offbeat funny. His take on things: I never knew what was going to come out of his mouth, like that "Chineses" crack. Being with him made my day brighter, for Willie Lee as well. We shared joy. Making his life a little better made my life a little better. Leaving him obliterated all that.
He was not happy about it when I told him.
"Me, too?"
"What would your momma say?"
"Don't know."
"Yes, you do, Willie Lee."
He nodded because he knew I knew.
"Why?"
I told him I had a job very far away.
"Where?"
"Long way." I pointed up.
"Be cold?"
"Too cold."
"That ain't nice," he said.
"No," I said, "It's not."
"Girlfriend goin'?"
"No more girlfriend."
"That ain't nice neither," he said.
"Tell the truth?" He nodded. "It's a lot nicer than it was."
He continued to look serious. It took a while before he looked at me and said, "Come see, Willie Lee?"
"When I'm home again I'll come see you."
He snorted, brushed the back of his hand across his eyes, "I be here," he said. I moved to hug him but he spun around, ran away down the street, up an alley, gone. I died a little.
It was a good while before I came home for a visit. By then it wasn't home any more. I drove by his house. It was all boarded up. Condemned. The entire block. No Willie Lee. I asked some people but nobody knew, nobody even knew who lived in that house or where they went or when they went or nothin'. The donut shop was still there but somebody else ran it, little guy, white turban. The grocery had become a convenience store that cashed payday checks. In the days when I worked the neighborhood it was pretty far gone but still functional. History had taken over. So many houses boarded up. So many bedraggled people on the streets. So many pot-holes ignored by the city. I didn't know much about gentrification yet, so no way could I predict that a Holiday Inn had already been planned to replace it. Had Willie Lee survived all this? Where was he now? Where might he be? I drove around and looked. No Willie Lee. I asked the clerk was there a Sampson family around here? Lots of heads shook. Don't know.
Who? Willie who? Lee what you say? Don't know no Willie Lee.
What now? Yeah. What now? I wondered if I'd never left Baltimore would I have been able to protect him? Hell, if I'd never left Baltimore, I wouldn't even have been able to protect myself.
I parked my car and sat there for awhile amid the desolation, the squandered lives, human beings who pray they don’t get shot while eating dinner at their own kitchen table. Where was the Marshall Plan for our own? Where the hell is it now? A little nation building in our own nation? How about it? If oil were discovered under the streets of a ghetto, you can bet the money would come and the people would go. Willie Lee’s smile was the bright spot here, had been, yes, but he was gone. The child had spirit, a zest at being alive, even though he had little reason to be. Or is that not true, that he had little reason? I don’t think he had a reason or needed one. Probably never even passed his mind. He didn’t complain, didn’t kvetch, was right there and nowhere else when with you. Willie did not see his world as problems, just stuff to do. He hurt when he had to and wouldn’t when he didn’t. I think simply being on this earth was fine for Willie Lee. Talk to him about the sound of one hand clapping, he’d look at you like a damn fool.
It's hard to end this piece because there is no ending. Maybe he isn't dead. Willie Lee might be out there somewhere. Warm. Safe. There are times when you pop unbidden into my mind, Willie Lee. I smile when you're there. Thank you and be well. I hope God has taken you by the hand, and I hope that, from time to time, you think of me and smile.
