The Greatest Story Never Told

Chapter 5 - Leaving Home At 16

I became a 'Party Animal.' I went from leaving the house on a Friday night at around 10pm, and wouldnt come back home until 6am. Often, Hiawatha would be in the living room pissed off waiting for my return. He had control of the house and all of my siblings, who all had better sense that I did. They lived within the framework of house rules. I was cut from an entirely different cloth. The allure of the music, the girls, the dancing, the flashing lights, the beer and the making out far outweighed Hiawatha's wrath. While he waited, I'd enter the house through the basement window. After I climbed in, I'd go sit on the top of the basement steps. It was eerie listening to the muffled sounds of everyone waking up and walking through the house at 6:30 am.

I would sit there, sometimes for hours after being out all night. I would wait, wait for the sound of Joanie's voice. Once she was in proximity to the basement door, I'd knock lightly, or call her name as she walked by. Joanie was my salvation. She often put herself in jeopardy by opening the lock to let me back in. When she did, it allowed me to avoid Hiawatha and made it easy for me to get to my room. In the beginning I was able to get around Hiawatha, telling him I was back by 11pm, and that he just didnt see me come back. But, eventually he figured out I was lying. This led him to wonder how the hell I was getting past him. This was his house and I, the unstable isotope, was making his house unstable.

This developed into a battle of wills. A 16 year old and a grown ass man were locked in battle due to 'My Right To Party.' As the partying really took off, with night-spots morphing into discos, the arrival of music that really made you want to dance your ass off like, The Commodores tune 'Machine Gun' and the Hues Corporation tune 'Rock The Boat,' Hiawatha's micro-mananaging me was doomed to fail. I started packing an overnight bag on a Friday night, throw it out my bedroom window on the second floor, climb out the window and jump down to the steps below. I'd grab my bag, before Hiawatha busted me, and I would run up the block to link up with my homeboys and home girls for a full weekend of partying. This is also when I first started drinking beer and wine, which later on became a problem.

It all came to a head one morning when, after Joanie had let me in, I went to my room to get some sleep. I was tired from all the dancing and going from place to place in search of a good time. Just as I was falling asleep I heard him gruffly say, 'GET UP!' It was Hiawatha. He was super pissed! I rounded on him, with a 'fuck you' attitude. The next thing I knew, I got dragged out of the bed and onto the floor. I got up and sat back onto the bed. He said, 'Get outta my house!' I got up and walked past him and sat on a chair in the upstairs kitchen. This really pisssed him off. Now, bear in mind, Hiawatha was a two-time Purple Heart holder. He killed 14 Koreans who he was ordered to hold as captives. They forced an escape attempt and he killed all 14 men after being attacked by them.

 (Hiawatha Nathaniel Toney the bane of The Party Animal)

He followed me into the kitchen where I was sitting. Things intensified. He said, 'Git the hell up! Git outta my damn house! I just sat there, maybe he'd get tired of this and walk off. He didnt. Because the military trained him on how to do hand-to-hand combat, I found out the hard way that there are levels here. In the blink of an eye, he used the inner palm of his hand in a quick upward movement. His target? My nose. The blood poured out of it and onto the light green tee shirt I was wearing. It was gushing. Again he said, 'Now, git outta my house!' I stood up, and it felt like I was in a slow motion movie, walking slowly down the steps, everything was sounding muffled, it was surreal. As I hit the last step that's when I saw my mother drift over to the step landing. As I walked past her holding my nose she saw all the blood.

Its amazing that, here in 2021, I can still remember this moment with so much clarity. As I walked past my mother, her hand went to her chest and I heard her say, 'What happened?' I had no words. I walked past her after giving her a look that said, ' I'm never coming back.' And, at age 16, I took off with the clothes on my back. As I walked out of the house and headed up the block I ran into some of my homeboys. As I held my nose, they were asking me, 'Is it broke? Damn Ace, that's fucked up! Where you gonna go now? I didnt know where I was going to go, technically I was homeless now. Homeless at 16, in Bushwick, in Brooklyn, in the 1970's. Then I realized what I needed to do. I decided to go to grandpa's house.

I walked the mile and a half to Herbert's apartment and knocked on his door. Odessa opened it. When she saw all of the blood on my shirt and me still holding my nose she called Herbert, who was sleeping. He got up and came into the living room where I was sitting. He asked what happened, and I told him. He freaked out. He snatched his phone off the cradle and called my mother. He read her the riot act. I felt bad. It wasnt my mother's fault. I know I caused some of this, but I was bleeding over this which just didnt seem to be the consequence that fit the crime.  After he stopped yelling and threatening harm regarding Hiawatha, Herbert hung up after he said, 'I don't give a good god-damed! The boy is staying with me!  Odessa took care of my nose cleaning it out. The next day Herbert took me home for my clothes and I lived with him and Odessa.

After moving in with grandpa and Odessa, I continued going to school from my new address. I was attending George Westinghouse High School at the time after taking an qualifying exam while in the 8th grade prior to graduating from Enrico Fermi J.H.S. I scored high and winded up at Westinghouse, a technical high school. Was this Sally again? I began my course work, but I began to struggle badly. The technical material and academic expectation was way high at Westinghouse. I started falling behind. I was in the 9th grade, out of touch with the rest of my family, 16 years old living with Herbert and Odessa, who were much older than I was, with a totally different set of values. Dont get me wrong, I loved Herbert, he was my hero, and Odessa embraced me as her grandson. They showed love, but I felt very out of place there. I got Bushwick home-sick.

I started going back to Bushwick after school. I was failing anyway, and I wasn't going to cut classes to go home to grandpa's house. What was I going to do, sleep all day? It made sense to go back to Bushwick whenever I had free time to see my friends, and maybe some of my siblings. I walked a lot between Bushwick and Bedford-Stuyvesant. I'd go to Bushwick and hang out until all my friends said they were going home and I would often be the last one left hanging out on Stanhope Street after everyone had left. Then I would take the long walk back home. This became a daily routine. In many ways, I was living 'in between worlds.' Then, I got dealt the bad news from Westinghouse. I failed the testing that would qualify me for the 10th grade. I fucked around and got left back.

Looking back in time, getting left back for the first time wasn't shocking. I had so many factors going on that would ensure my distraction and failure. I blame no one. I lost Sally, my home life was in a shamlbes, I wasnt sleeping much, I was tired due to walking to and from Bushwick, I was drinking, started smoking weed, I had so much personal emptiness inside of myself. I ultimately became a stranger to myself. I wasn't handling getting left back well. And, one day while visiting the block and hanging across the street from Hiawatha's house with my homeboys, one of them yelled, 'WATCH OUT ACE!' When I turned around it was Hiawatha. He had a cane in his hand and he tried to get the cane's rounded handle around my neck to capture me. I ducked and took off,  getting out of range of him and his cane. Apparently he wasnt done with me yet.  

To this day I often wonder if his attempt at trying to catch me was to forcefully bring me back home to my mother. I'll never know. He took the answer to that question to the grave. I still tried to keep things together. I went back to school trying to get to the 10th grade again. I still lived with Herbert, and still came to Bushwick to hang out. But, it all began to fall apart. I lost interest in trying. I decided to throw the towel in and finally dropped out. Once upon a time I was David, then I became Ace, now I had become Ace the Bushwick Vagabond. I began to sleep the mornings away, getting up at 11-12 noon, and hanging out in Bushwick until the break of dawn, only to do it all over again the next day. This became my daily routine and my life. Then, tiring of this Bushwick rountine, I started to branch out... I started taking the subway in search of escape. Escape from all reality...