AMBUSHED
From the Memoir "The Cabby's Life"
BY DELL FRANKLIN
Around 5 o’clock rush hour I am sent to the Super 8 motel at the north edge of town on motel row. The Super 8 is one of the few motels in San Luis Obispo that lodges people at weekly rates for as long as they want as long as they pay and don’t damage the rooms or disturb other lodgers. I know my passengers are a black family, one of two regular customers among the tiny black population in this college town of around 40,000.
The other black person I pick up is a buxom, salaciously desultory, good-natured woman around 40 who drinks heavily nights in the ghastly Gas Light and hooks some characters in that dive for small bills. She always sorts through her mash of cash when I drive her home late at night and makes sure to hand me the most wrinkled, soggy singles and lets me keep the coin change if it’s fifty cents or less. She resides in a rundown apartment complex among many Latinos and a scattering of blacks and white folks who seem refugees from our shabbiest trailer parks. Compared to parts of South Central LA, this area, across from a busy mini mall, is decent.
Once, when I dropped her off in a tipsy, flirty condition, she had no money and had me wait while she went upstairs to drag down her man to pay. He was small, with a pot belly and cloudy eyes glowering at her with murderous intent as he asked me if I could “put this one on the cuff.” When I shook my head he sent the woman back up to the apartment for a piggy bank. She docilely complied while he stood not looking at me or anything, but I glanced at him and saw in his eyes an utter disbelief in anything positive or benign, only hopelessness long dissolved into sullen indolence barely concealing a terrifying cold-heartedness.
When the lady returned, handing him a glass of coins, he refused to look at me as he slowly dropped quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies into my hand for exact change and then glanced quickly at his woman, who crept off like a dog anticipating a beating from her master, and then followed her, body clenched.
The scattering of black folks in this apartment complex, other than the hooker, never take cabs. They take the bus. You see them in Laundromats and thrift shops and Dollar stores and fast food franchises and never in Trader Joe’s. You seldom see them walking the streets or the trendy downtown or riding bicycles; you see them at bus stops alongside Latino nannies and the homeless.
The family of seven has been living in a couple rooms at the Super 8 for about six months. Before moving here they resided in a now bulldozed vintage 2-story wooden Victorian on a big lot in an old neighborhood at the very north edge of town near a freeway exit. The home, like the premises, was in disrepair and an eyesore among new homes replacing versions of a past era.
There is no indication that any member of this family works. The matriarch is a wizened woman of at least 80 who has no teeth and talks as if from the south. The daughter is around 60, her patriarch husband the same age, their two daughters perhaps 35 or 40, a grandson and granddaughter seem elementary school age. All of them are silent and uncommunicative with me except the female child, who always insists on coming along when I drive to their usual destination of Food 4 Less, where I wait with meter running for up to an hour, usually at the beginning of each month when their checks come in.
I used to pick up one of the patriarch’s sons, a 40ish wreck of a supreme saxophonist who once played on a grand stage but later tried to sell me his beloved sax for a cab ride and cash so he could visit his heroin dealer at the complex where I pick up the low-rate hooker. I turned him down. He begged. I pleaded with him to give up the drugs and recapture the magic I’d witnessed at a local club years back. He gazed at me like I was a lunatic.
“Why y’all give a mothafuck?” he asked, a formerly ultra mellow cat showing his first signs of anger.
“You’re a human being, man.”
“Fuck yah, y’all ain’t knows shit. What whirl y’all livin’ in?”
“Get out of my cab, Leon. You smell bad, look bad. Go die somewhere else.”
“Yeh, I get out, mothafucka, fuck y’all.”
None of my fellow white cabbies want to pick up the black family or any of its members. They never tip. They make you wait while they do errands. Their anger and distrust lurks beneath exaggerated politeness. Often they do their shopping at Food 4 Less late at night, when planes come in and bars are closing and a cabbie makes bank, and you seethe knowing the other two cabbies are flying around stealing your money.
But now it is 4:30 in the afternoon when I pull up to the Super 8. I honk the horn. As usual, there is no reaction. It’s usually at least 5 minutes before a door opens and I never honk twice, realizing they won’t face the public unless perfectly presentable. Even if I’m 30 minutes late, at least 5 minutes pass before a door opens. This time, out come the old matriarch, the two 60 year olds, the daughter, and the little girl. The oldsters sit in back, momma in the middle, the daughter and child in front, the child beside me.
The patriarch in back is well groomed and still handsome and of a lighter skin, like the great Cab Calloway and was evidently once a musician of note like his son. I have never seen the very attractive daughter up front when she wasn’t scowling in a manner that might intimidate an inexperienced white person. The child beside me is in pigtails and always wants to talk, asking me questions about where I live and do I like my job and am I happy, and I’m always friendly and responsive to her while the others remain stony and aloof.
The patriarch, always in charge, says, “Goin’ to the post office.”
The old Roosevelt era post office is in the center of downtown on a main artery across from the Cineplex and Barnes & Noble and a row of little franchise boutiques and cafes and a Starbucks. I head down motel row in that direction and make a turn having gone about half a mile, when the woman up front snarls at me, “Where the fuck you goin’?”
These are her first words to me ever. “To the post office, ma’am.”
“The post office ain’t that way. Where y’all takin’ us?”
“The main post office downtown, on Marsh street.”
“We ain’t goin’ to that post office downtown. We goin’ to the post office over on Madonna road.”
“I didn’t know that…”
“What you doin’, you takin’ the long way an’ run up the meter. You takin’ advantage of poor folks, what YOU doin’.”
“I don’t do that. You should have told me you wanted to go to the post office clear across town when the main one’s only a short hop downtown. I can’t read your mind.”
“You prejudice mothafucka, don’t y’all sass me.”
My heart beats like a base drum as a chill runs up my spine, tingles my scalp. I feel suddenly weak, deflated. “I’m not a prejudiced person, ma’am.”
“Fuck y’all ain’t. Y’all got the attitude, you hatin’ us niggers. I smell a racist mothafucka a mile away. That you. Now y’all turn around an’ take us to the mothafuckin’ post office on Madonna., you hear?”
I’m shaking, close to shuddering. I gaze in the rearview mirror. They’re all meeting my eyes with knowing, persecuted, surly eyes of their own. The little girl stares up at me with her wide-eyed innocence shattered, like I’m a monster. There is a certain relaxed smugness in back.
I turn the cab around and head for the freeway, which I can take to the Madonna road exit, my usual route to that end of town from this end. Avoid downtown and residential streets. “Look,” I say to the woman in front. “I’m turning off the meter. This is a misunderstanding, so let’s start over. When I pass the Super 8 I’ll restart it, okay?”
“Sheee-it,” she mutters. “I reportin’ y’all to the cab comp’ny. Y’all tryin’ rip us off.”
I release a massive sigh and enter the freeway, start the meter. She’s glaring at me. “Us poor niggers got to put up with yo’ racist bullshit. Y’all treat us like shit. Y’all ain’t nothin’ but po’ white trash.”
“I’m just the opposite, if you’d give me a chance.”
I gun the engine, wanting to get this ordeal over with. My face feels flushed as she glares at me, smoldering with righteous rage.
“Y’all can’t fool me. We ain’t payin’ shit fo’ this cab ride, mothafucka, cuz y’all try an’ rip is off cuz we niggers. You ain’t getting’ shit!”
Something snaps in me and in a blind fury I find myself pounding the dashboard twice with such savagery that the Crown Victoria literally shakes. The sound coming out of me is strangled yet so loud it echoes in my own ears: “I’ll pull this cab over right now you don’t pay! I’ll drop the whole goddam bunch of you off right here, right now, and call the goddam cops and have you thrown in jail for refusing to pay cab fare. TRY not paying me, bitch!”
“You mothafuckin’ piece o’ trash, try an’ call the cops.”
I start to pull over. The patriarch calmly taps my shoulder from behind. “Keep going. Take us to the post office. We will pay.”
I’m trying to get my breath. I’ve got an instant headache. I’m sweating bullets and my gut roils with nausea. My hands shake as if palsied. I veer onto the Madonna road off ramp. There is silence, but the woman sitting shotgun rests her malignant eyes on me, nodding slowly, reassuring me that I am exactly what she has accused me of being, and worse—the enemy, the pestilence responsible for centuries of misery and humiliation and their current plight. My heartbeat is strangling me. We poke along Madonna road parallel to the giant mall and I can feel the woman’s baleful eyes on me but refuse to look at her.
I pull up to the post office.
“We ain’t payin’ this lowlife trash,” growls my tormentor.
“Momma,” says the patriarch calmly. “Give the man his money.”
While the little girl gazes at me in horror, near tears, the ancient lady picks through a saggy cloth hand bag with gnarled fingers. She inspects each of the 9 wrinkled bills to make sure they’re singles; then adds a dime and two nickels for exact fare. They all pile out, the woman who tongue-lashed me haughty, not bothering to cast me one last scowl, finished with me, proud, regal. The ancient lady, creakily gathering herself out of the back seat on the hand of the patriarch, catches my eye with her own rheumy eyes.
“Y’all cain’t hep who you is,” she utters with resigned sadness. “Po thang.”
I pull over a few spaces and park. I cannot drive. I am unnerved to the very core. Still, I check in with our dispatcher and tell her I will never pick these people up again, racist or no racist, and she reminds me that somebody has to pick them up, so live with it.
I could never have seen it coming. Hours later, though, during dead time between dinner and the bar crowd, the lingering uneasiness still in my gut, it dawns on me with blinding finality: These people are always clean and pleasantly fragrant and dressed exquisitely in new, well-pressed, stylish attire—even the ancient one—while I look like I just got off the boat.
BY DELL FRANKLIN
Around 5 o’clock rush hour I am sent to the Super 8 motel at the north edge of town on motel row. The Super 8 is one of the few motels in San Luis Obispo that lodges people at weekly rates for as long as they want as long as they pay and don’t damage the rooms or disturb other lodgers. I know my passengers are a black family, one of two regular customers among the tiny black population in this college town of around 40,000.
The other black person I pick up is a buxom, salaciously desultory, good-natured woman around 40 who drinks heavily nights in the ghastly Gas Light and hooks some characters in that dive for small bills. She always sorts through her mash of cash when I drive her home late at night and makes sure to hand me the most wrinkled, soggy singles and lets me keep the coin change if it’s fifty cents or less. She resides in a rundown apartment complex among many Latinos and a scattering of blacks and white folks who seem refugees from our shabbiest trailer parks. Compared to parts of South Central LA, this area, across from a busy mini mall, is decent.
Once, when I dropped her off in a tipsy, flirty condition, she had no money and had me wait while she went upstairs to drag down her man to pay. He was small, with a pot belly and cloudy eyes glowering at her with murderous intent as he asked me if I could “put this one on the cuff.” When I shook my head he sent the woman back up to the apartment for a piggy bank. She docilely complied while he stood not looking at me or anything, but I glanced at him and saw in his eyes an utter disbelief in anything positive or benign, only hopelessness long dissolved into sullen indolence barely concealing a terrifying cold-heartedness.
When the lady returned, handing him a glass of coins, he refused to look at me as he slowly dropped quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies into my hand for exact change and then glanced quickly at his woman, who crept off like a dog anticipating a beating from her master, and then followed her, body clenched.
The scattering of black folks in this apartment complex, other than the hooker, never take cabs. They take the bus. You see them in Laundromats and thrift shops and Dollar stores and fast food franchises and never in Trader Joe’s. You seldom see them walking the streets or the trendy downtown or riding bicycles; you see them at bus stops alongside Latino nannies and the homeless.
The family of seven has been living in a couple rooms at the Super 8 for about six months. Before moving here they resided in a now bulldozed vintage 2-story wooden Victorian on a big lot in an old neighborhood at the very north edge of town near a freeway exit. The home, like the premises, was in disrepair and an eyesore among new homes replacing versions of a past era.
There is no indication that any member of this family works. The matriarch is a wizened woman of at least 80 who has no teeth and talks as if from the south. The daughter is around 60, her patriarch husband the same age, their two daughters perhaps 35 or 40, a grandson and granddaughter seem elementary school age. All of them are silent and uncommunicative with me except the female child, who always insists on coming along when I drive to their usual destination of Food 4 Less, where I wait with meter running for up to an hour, usually at the beginning of each month when their checks come in.
I used to pick up one of the patriarch’s sons, a 40ish wreck of a supreme saxophonist who once played on a grand stage but later tried to sell me his beloved sax for a cab ride and cash so he could visit his heroin dealer at the complex where I pick up the low-rate hooker. I turned him down. He begged. I pleaded with him to give up the drugs and recapture the magic I’d witnessed at a local club years back. He gazed at me like I was a lunatic.
“Why y’all give a mothafuck?” he asked, a formerly ultra mellow cat showing his first signs of anger.
“You’re a human being, man.”
“Fuck yah, y’all ain’t knows shit. What whirl y’all livin’ in?”
“Get out of my cab, Leon. You smell bad, look bad. Go die somewhere else.”
“Yeh, I get out, mothafucka, fuck y’all.”
None of my fellow white cabbies want to pick up the black family or any of its members. They never tip. They make you wait while they do errands. Their anger and distrust lurks beneath exaggerated politeness. Often they do their shopping at Food 4 Less late at night, when planes come in and bars are closing and a cabbie makes bank, and you seethe knowing the other two cabbies are flying around stealing your money.
But now it is 4:30 in the afternoon when I pull up to the Super 8. I honk the horn. As usual, there is no reaction. It’s usually at least 5 minutes before a door opens and I never honk twice, realizing they won’t face the public unless perfectly presentable. Even if I’m 30 minutes late, at least 5 minutes pass before a door opens. This time, out come the old matriarch, the two 60 year olds, the daughter, and the little girl. The oldsters sit in back, momma in the middle, the daughter and child in front, the child beside me.
The patriarch in back is well groomed and still handsome and of a lighter skin, like the great Cab Calloway and was evidently once a musician of note like his son. I have never seen the very attractive daughter up front when she wasn’t scowling in a manner that might intimidate an inexperienced white person. The child beside me is in pigtails and always wants to talk, asking me questions about where I live and do I like my job and am I happy, and I’m always friendly and responsive to her while the others remain stony and aloof.
The patriarch, always in charge, says, “Goin’ to the post office.”
The old Roosevelt era post office is in the center of downtown on a main artery across from the Cineplex and Barnes & Noble and a row of little franchise boutiques and cafes and a Starbucks. I head down motel row in that direction and make a turn having gone about half a mile, when the woman up front snarls at me, “Where the fuck you goin’?”
These are her first words to me ever. “To the post office, ma’am.”
“The post office ain’t that way. Where y’all takin’ us?”
“The main post office downtown, on Marsh street.”
“We ain’t goin’ to that post office downtown. We goin’ to the post office over on Madonna road.”
“I didn’t know that…”
“What you doin’, you takin’ the long way an’ run up the meter. You takin’ advantage of poor folks, what YOU doin’.”
“I don’t do that. You should have told me you wanted to go to the post office clear across town when the main one’s only a short hop downtown. I can’t read your mind.”
“You prejudice mothafucka, don’t y’all sass me.”
My heart beats like a base drum as a chill runs up my spine, tingles my scalp. I feel suddenly weak, deflated. “I’m not a prejudiced person, ma’am.”
“Fuck y’all ain’t. Y’all got the attitude, you hatin’ us niggers. I smell a racist mothafucka a mile away. That you. Now y’all turn around an’ take us to the mothafuckin’ post office on Madonna., you hear?”
I’m shaking, close to shuddering. I gaze in the rearview mirror. They’re all meeting my eyes with knowing, persecuted, surly eyes of their own. The little girl stares up at me with her wide-eyed innocence shattered, like I’m a monster. There is a certain relaxed smugness in back.
I turn the cab around and head for the freeway, which I can take to the Madonna road exit, my usual route to that end of town from this end. Avoid downtown and residential streets. “Look,” I say to the woman in front. “I’m turning off the meter. This is a misunderstanding, so let’s start over. When I pass the Super 8 I’ll restart it, okay?”
“Sheee-it,” she mutters. “I reportin’ y’all to the cab comp’ny. Y’all tryin’ rip us off.”
I release a massive sigh and enter the freeway, start the meter. She’s glaring at me. “Us poor niggers got to put up with yo’ racist bullshit. Y’all treat us like shit. Y’all ain’t nothin’ but po’ white trash.”
“I’m just the opposite, if you’d give me a chance.”
I gun the engine, wanting to get this ordeal over with. My face feels flushed as she glares at me, smoldering with righteous rage.
“Y’all can’t fool me. We ain’t payin’ shit fo’ this cab ride, mothafucka, cuz y’all try an’ rip is off cuz we niggers. You ain’t getting’ shit!”
Something snaps in me and in a blind fury I find myself pounding the dashboard twice with such savagery that the Crown Victoria literally shakes. The sound coming out of me is strangled yet so loud it echoes in my own ears: “I’ll pull this cab over right now you don’t pay! I’ll drop the whole goddam bunch of you off right here, right now, and call the goddam cops and have you thrown in jail for refusing to pay cab fare. TRY not paying me, bitch!”
“You mothafuckin’ piece o’ trash, try an’ call the cops.”
I start to pull over. The patriarch calmly taps my shoulder from behind. “Keep going. Take us to the post office. We will pay.”
I’m trying to get my breath. I’ve got an instant headache. I’m sweating bullets and my gut roils with nausea. My hands shake as if palsied. I veer onto the Madonna road off ramp. There is silence, but the woman sitting shotgun rests her malignant eyes on me, nodding slowly, reassuring me that I am exactly what she has accused me of being, and worse—the enemy, the pestilence responsible for centuries of misery and humiliation and their current plight. My heartbeat is strangling me. We poke along Madonna road parallel to the giant mall and I can feel the woman’s baleful eyes on me but refuse to look at her.
I pull up to the post office.
“We ain’t payin’ this lowlife trash,” growls my tormentor.
“Momma,” says the patriarch calmly. “Give the man his money.”
While the little girl gazes at me in horror, near tears, the ancient lady picks through a saggy cloth hand bag with gnarled fingers. She inspects each of the 9 wrinkled bills to make sure they’re singles; then adds a dime and two nickels for exact fare. They all pile out, the woman who tongue-lashed me haughty, not bothering to cast me one last scowl, finished with me, proud, regal. The ancient lady, creakily gathering herself out of the back seat on the hand of the patriarch, catches my eye with her own rheumy eyes.
“Y’all cain’t hep who you is,” she utters with resigned sadness. “Po thang.”
I pull over a few spaces and park. I cannot drive. I am unnerved to the very core. Still, I check in with our dispatcher and tell her I will never pick these people up again, racist or no racist, and she reminds me that somebody has to pick them up, so live with it.
I could never have seen it coming. Hours later, though, during dead time between dinner and the bar crowd, the lingering uneasiness still in my gut, it dawns on me with blinding finality: These people are always clean and pleasantly fragrant and dressed exquisitely in new, well-pressed, stylish attire—even the ancient one—while I look like I just got off the boat.
