Introduction:

Hobart, Indiana - “The Friendly City”
1960 White population: 18,600. Black population: One. Me.

In 21st-century America, mixed marriages and bi-racial children are commonplace, especially in the cities. I was born to an unwed interracial couple in 1958 Indiana, at a time when such relationships were rare, and in many states, including Indiana, against the law.

All my life, the same question has perplexed me: How did I end up as the only black kid in a town called Hobart?

Growing up, without any guidance, I was ill-prepared to face the realities of my racial predicament. As a teenager, I ran around with a dried-out, tangled afro because I didn't know how to take care of my hair, and the local barbers knew even less. I had no one around to tell me my hair looked great, or it looked like shit, or I should get it braided, or I should get dreadlocks, or I should keep it short. White people could just whip out their combs or brushes, and they were set. What was I supposed to use? No one sold afro picks in Hobart. Why would they? After all, no niggers lived in Hobart. So they believed.

What Are You?

I entered Kindergarten at Mundell Elementary in September 1964. The school had morning and afternoon sessions. I attended the afternoon class, where I met my two lifelong friends – Tom Sullivan and Steve Forney. We were the only ones who didn’t cry after our mothers dropped us off.

Back then, we played with toys and took naps. Now, kindergarten children must demonstrate academic potential. My teacher, Ms. Lyon, was friendly. We used to joke about her name because during the spring semester, she remarried and became Mrs. Katt. We would laugh and say if she marries again, will her new name be tiger or leopard?

Although I was the only black student at Mundell, my teachers didn’t treat me differently. However, factoring in human nature and curiosity, some students had to ask: “What are you?” Deep down, they wanted to know whether I was black, brown, or some other life form. I never gave much thought to who or what I was, except that I looked different from my classmates. Girls were intrigued by my appearance, sometimes reaching up and touching my curly hair. I didn’t mind as long as they smiled afterward. To make up for my racial insecurities, I went into impersonation routines from Laurel and Hardy and The Three Stooges. I would mimic Stan Laurel’s mannerisms, such as scratching the top of my head and pretending to cry. I learned to use laughter as a diversionary tactic. If I made my fellow students laugh, it took their minds off of asking me racial questions.

Another issue that seemed to puzzle many of my classmates was the fact that I was adopted. This kid named Mike Zormyer could never figure out how I came into existence. He’d say, “My mom carried me in her stomach. Where did you come from?” Or, “How can you and Joey be brothers, your skins are different colors?” Once, he asked why our parents adopted us. Since I never knew the true reason, I said my mom was unable to have children of her own. 

Speaking of Joey, most of the teachers at Mundell considered him a troublemaker and a bad student. Once, when he was in sixth grade, I saw the principal, Mr. Detterline, yelling at him on the playground. He caught Joey flipping through a Playboy magazine behind the gymnasium. Detterline had ripped out the centerfold, demanding an explanation. Joey must have found it in the garbage somewhere because Frikk never kept those in the house. This incident was the beginning of Joey’s trouble with authority figures.

Frikk’s Follies

My adoptive father, Frank Enrico, or Frikk, as I secretly nicknamed him, had few redeeming qualities, but now and then, he tried to be generous. When I got my driver’s license in 1976, he gave me money for a car that, unfortunately, turned out to be a lemon. He did, however, plant some early musical seeds into my subconscious with his assorted record collection. Besides some 45s, including “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley & His Comets, his first love was polka, which he blasted out on weekend afternoons when cooking sour kraut and sausage. He also listened to The Tom Jones Fever Zone album with Tom performing mostly R&B and soul arrangements. Mom preferred Frikk's Elvis Presley gospel LPs, along with my favorite – “A Taste of Honey,” by Herb Albert & the Tijuana Brass, featuring the sexy album cover of a naked woman covered in whipped cream!

For entertainment, Frikk enjoyed making lewd comments to neighborhood teenage girls who walked past our house. One, named Deb Danneker, would cut through our yard to get to her home across the alley. Frikk would say, “Go shake your tight little ass on someone else’s property.” Deb would flip Frikk the finger or tell him to fuck off. Another family he enjoyed tormenting was the Yarboroughs. They lived across the street and were originally from Arkansas. Frikk would whistle from the porch and call them hillbillies. The Yarboroughs eldest daughter, Jodi, was the prime target of Frikk’s verbal abuse. Jodi was always dying her hair in different colors. Every time she stepped outside, Frikk shouted at her, “Hey, hillbilly, is the hair between your legs the same color as your wig?” I felt sorry for Jodi because she was unattractive, but Frikk had no right to insult her.

The Yarboroughs loved to party in the summertime. On a hot Saturday afternoon in July 1968, they had some kinfolk visiting from Kentucky. For fun, a bunch of them climbed up on the porch swing, which hung from the roof by twin chains. When their obese aunt attempted to jump on top, the swing crashed to the ground in a pile of splintered wood, tangled limbs, and crying kids. It’s a miracle nobody was seriously injured. Joey and I were playing catch baseball when we heard all the commotion and ran over and tried to help. Frikk stood up, pointed, and laughed his ass off. Mr. Yarborough finally had enough. He came out into the street and challenged Frikk to a fight, but Frikk chickened out and hurried back into the house.

Like many Southerners I came in contact with, the Yarboroughs used the word “nigger” casually in everyday conversations as if it were part of their regular lexicon. Their middle son, Kevin, used to tell Joey and me, “If you ever go down to Jamestown (Virginia), watch your back. ‘Cause if the niggers catch a white boy alone at night, they’ll cut off his dick with a switchblade and feed it to the hogs.” I always felt that his nigger stories were directed at me, but I never said anything.

Enter the Anti

Staten Island

I had to find a place fast, with a limited amount of money stuffed in my guitar case. I answered an ad in the paper for an apartment near the ferry. When I arrived, three guys were busy retiling the kitchen floor. It was a fixer-upper, and I had zero carpentry skills. Outside, I met the landlords, Harold and Ruth Ballins. They asked if I’d be interested in renting a studio from them on St. Paul Avenue over in Stapleton. (Stapleton housed the majority of Staten Island’s blacks, along with a few pockets of working-class whites.) The semi-furnished apartment occupied the third floor of their home and had a separate street entrance facing Van Duzer Street.

When the warmer temperatures arrived in May, Harold asked if I’d help out with a few chores in the backyard on weekends. He didn’t offer any money but said I’d be doing him a favor in exchange for the low rent I paid each month. I agreed. But after a few weeks, my lower back spasms returned. How would I break the news to Harold? I looked out the window and saw him dressed in his scarecrow straw hat, knee-high white socks, and sandals, alongside an assortment of tools propped against the shed. With regret, I told him the bad news. He didn’t say a word, but his expression changed as if he’d stepped into a pile of dog shit. It reminded me of my old Jewish neighbor back in Hobart, Mrs. Sullivan, who also frowned at me when I refused to pick weeds in her flower beds.  

I wondered, could Harold be Jewish? I decided to investigate. Early Saturday morning, I crept downstairs outside their door, listened for voices or movement, and knocked. No one answered. I walked in. Holocaust and Nazi-related material dominated their shelves. I noticed a framed photo of Harold as a young man wearing a yarmulke. My instincts were correct. Harold was Jewish. 

The Madness of Mr. Joassaint

Mr. Pierre, as he is called and not by his last name, Joassaint, resides in the apartment above ours. My wife knew him long before I did and said he's lived in the building since the mid-1980s. When she introduced him back in June 1999, his appearance shocked me. He looked like an old wino who had just crawled out of the gutter with his wild, unkempt afro, whiskey breath, and the overpowering smell of cats all over his tattered clothes.

A few months later, he started slipping notes under our door at all hours of the night, asking technical computer questions. More often, he'd jot down web addresses of links to shadowy government agencies or operatives he alone considered dangerous. At first, I was hesitant to get involved, but I eventually decided to help. I went upstairs and stepped into a hellhole of decrepit clutter. Roaches scurried about, and gnats zipped by my face as he told me to make myself at home; I preferred to stand. As he rambled on with his computer questions, I noticed that his kitchen sink, toilet, and bathtub were all filled to the brim with brownish-green water. This muck, along with aging building infrastructure, resulted in numerous leaks and floods we would have to endure over the next six or seven years. Also, instead of a trash can, Pierre threw leftovers out his living room window to the street below. In 2009, the landlord tried evicting him due to neglect and destruction of property. Housing court sided with Pierre.

Pierre allied himself with right-wing politics, embracing Fox News and Alex Jones’s Info Wars. Along the way, he developed a pathological hatred towards President Barack Obama, whom he nicknamed "The Joker." He blamed Obama for every imaginable atrocity perpetrated on the planet, and he gave Michelle Obama, whom he equally despised, a new name, “Gorilla Lady.”

At the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2010, President Obama joked about sending drones to strike the Jonas Brothers if they came near his daughters. Pierre took this literally and collapsed at our doorstep in tears. "Did you hear what the Joker said about killing the Jonas Brothers?” Boo, hoo, hoo, hoo!

After the death of his German Shepard MeeMee, he abducted five feral cats off the street and locked them in his apartment. One, whom I named Killer, escaped, and Pierre posted notices all over the neighborhood looking for him. He blamed MeeMee's death on a building located on the other side of Morningside Park, which resembles an inverted pyramid. Pierre claims this structure emitted lethal invisible rays, which gave his dog cancer and crippled its hind legs.

Despite his peculiarities, Mr. Joassaint was an intelligent, generous man, and sometimes we’d invite him down to our place for drinks and political conversation. He raised excellent points until the discourse turned into shouting matches over his conspiracy theories and illogical fears. He would scream out, “Listen to me!” to emphasize his arguments and criticize us for not knowing about a particular website or supposed henchmen working for President Obama. The condition of his apartment always came up, and my wife encouraged him to get help. His explanation: As a boy, the U.S. government kidnapped him, surgically installed a transmitter in his skull, and slid metal splinters under his fingertips. The resulting pain made it impossible to clean. In 2015, bedbugs invaded Pierre's apartment and infected multiple units on the sixth floor. Once again, management tried to have him evicted. The case is still pending in housing court.

Pierre's fall from grace stunned all who knew him. Pamela told me he came from a proud and educated Haitian family who fled the Duvalier regime and moved to Upper Manhattan. Pierre and his siblings attended the best schools in the city, and he went on to become a successful pharmacist at Harlem Hospital. In the 1980s, he threw the grandest parties attended by relatives and intimate friends, all thriving professionals. She said he was always well-groomed and wore the hippest fashions. I asked her what caused Pierre’s horrible transformation. Crack cocaine. At one of his parties in the early 1990s, he sampled the poison, became hooked, and his life went downhill. His close friends abandoned him, and his appearance and living space went to hell.

Since the election of President Donald Trump in November 2016, Pierre hasn't had much to say. No more scraps of paper under my door, and he has stopped listening to right-wing radio. I know he's still alive because I hear the bongo drums every morning, and his peculiar odor lingers in the elevator and stairwells. He bought a cane last week. He claimed fluoride in the water is dissolving his bones. I try to make our encounters brief and keep a safe distance since he refuses to allow exterminators in to combat the bedbugs.

His new political target is the twice-defeated presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. According to Pierre, she, her husband Bill, and their foundation are responsible for the Haitian earthquake in 2010, which killed at least 150,000 people. He also blames the Clintons for stealing millions from the Haitian Relief Fund.

Pierre passed away on August 30, 2019, from lung cancer. When Pam and I visited him at St. Luke's Hospital in July, his body had withered down to skeletal proportions. Long estranged from his family, Pam had to track down his brother and sister, both living in Washington, DC, to inform them of his death.

Now, whenever I hear Jehovah's Witnesses sliding pamphlets under the door, I think of Mr. Joassaint.

Testimonials

Goodreads Susana González reviews Face It, You're Black!

English translation below

Con un humor muy fino y, a veces, ácido, el autor nos lleva de la mano a través de su infancia y juventud donde, junto a todas sus aventuras, nos va descubriendo las múltiples situaciones racistas que sufrió, y a las que, en aquel momento, no supo hacer frente. Lo curioso es que la mayoría eran más o menos disimuladas y de su entorno cercano, mientras que los ataques explícitos eran muchos menos porque su apariencia física no era de "nigger".

Para el lector extranjero es una sorpresa descubrir el nivel de racismo que existía en aquel entonces en el norte de USA, en Indiana e Illinois, lugares que los europeos imaginamos mucho más abiertos a las diferencias raciales (al contrario de lo que pensamos de otros como Alabama o Georgia).

Lo que más me ha gustado es la forma de narrar, no sólo hechos sino, sobre todo, sentimientos. Describe sus pensamientos tal y como nos vienen a todos a la cabeza, de una forma que no hablaríamos con otras personas, sino sólo para nosotros. Nos revela sin tapujos aquéllos que todos hemos tenido alguna vez pero nunca confesaríamos (desear la muerte de alguien, avergonzarse de las lágrimas de tu madre o disfrutar matando bichos). Aborda sin reservas temas que en la mayoría de los libros se tratan mojigata o frívolamente (sexo, drogas, insatisfacciones...) pero no de la forma natural (y con preocupaciones) en que lo vive un joven.

He echado de menos un poco más de profundidad en los personajes más cercanos y algo más de detalle en alguno de los acontecimientos que narra. También me hubiera gustado más trasfondo histórico para entender algunas cosas que, como foráneos no conocemos bien.

Una lectura fresca, ágil y muy entretenida, que se lee de un tirón (y no sólo por sus escasas 150 páginas). Mike, ¡Esperamos la continuación!

With a fine and sometimes sharp humor, the author leads us by the hand through his childhood and youth when, along with his adventures, he discloses the numerous racist situations he suffered and those which, during that time, he didn't know how to face. The curious thing is that most of them were more or less veiled and from people he knew, while the overt attacks were far fewer because his physical appearance wasn't that of a "nigger".

For foreign readers, it is a surprise to discover the level of racism existing in those days in the north of the USA (in Indiana or Illinois, for example), places that Europeans imagine to be much more open-minded to racial differences (unlike Alabama or Georgia).

What I liked the most is the way the author tells facts and especially his feelings. He describes his thoughts in the same way; they come into all our heads in a form that we would not relate to others but only to ourselves. He reveals, without reservation, those thoughts we all have had but would never confess (to wish someone's death, to be embarrassed by your mother's tears, or to enjoy killing bugs). Likewise, he freely tackles matters that in most books are handled prudishly or frivolously (sex, drugs, dissatisfactions) but not in a natural way and with the concerns that a young person feels.

I would have liked a little bit more depth in the characters closest to him and more details in some events he relates. I would have liked more historical background to better understand some things that, as outsiders, we don't know very well.

James M. Blaney

5.0 out of 5 Stars

This book is well-written and gives a powerful account of what it was like to grow up black in an all-white town in 1960s and 1970s Indiana.

As a white male who grew up in a similar environment (a steel mill town), I have often looked back at how rough growing up could be for a teenager. Mike had the huge added burden of having people taunt and question him constantly because not only did he not "look like everyone else," he also "looked different" than the all-white family who adopted him.

Although multi-racial families and children are very common today, this story offers one account of what it was like, not so long ago to endure and overcome the tremendous pressure and prejudice that he faced.

Fresh, lively, and enjoyable, it's an easy read (and not only for its barely 150 pages). Mike, we can't wait for the next part!!

Gwen

4.0 out of 5 Stars

Well written, interesting to view life growing up as “Mike”. Looking forward to the next book. Nice, interesting, easy read. I read it on the train from Michigan City to Ann Arbor.

Vanessa

5.0 out of 5 Stars

It’s a must read. This book is brilliant. Loved it!

All excerpts copyright 2020