My best friend (we were inseparable) when I was growing up was Al Braxton. We were born on the same day, one minute apart. He was born on a Monday morning June 6, 1955 at 3:28 AM and I was born a minute later. Al was a dark-skinned African-American with fine features, very handsome. He played trumpet and I played trombone and percussion. We wanted to become Latin Jazz musicians and Al came from a family of musicians. We were night and day, yin and yang, if you saw one, you were certain the other was somewhere nearby.And we were trouble: always starting all kinds of shit.
Al had fifteen brothers and sisters and they all lived in this huge 23-room house in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bushwick. I know it had 23 rooms because I counted. Ms. Pearl, Al’s mother, would tire of throwing me out of her house. She used to refer to Puerto Ricans as, “All you mira, miras.” I think she got that from constantly hearing Puerto Ricans exclaim, oye mira, mira! On the streets of what was at the time a culturally diverse neighborhood. She would chase me out of her house, but would send out her sons to look for me if I stayed away too long and then scold me for staying away. Of course, she would throw me out the door and I would sneak back in through the windows. Al got all his looks from his mother, she was a very dark-skinned, fine featured, woman with long, fine hair, still beautiful in spite of all the children. Her house was run like a conglomerate, with varying levels of management. I was totally fascinated.
She didn’t like Puerto Ricans and let me know it, but I think she loved the heck out of me. She would call me “Black” and laugh because I was so light-skinned. The name stuck, I was known as “Black,” as in “Yo, Black,” in her house. However, she couldn’t abide by those other noisy “Po’ Reekans” as she referred to us.
Therefore, it didn’t initial outrage didn't come as a surprise when my family decided to show up on her doorstep one Noche Buena (Christmas Eve) in observance of the Puerto Rican tradition of the paranda. She turned to me and said, “Nigga, what the fuck are all those mira miras doing out there on my front door?” My family also had its share of musicians, my uncle having led a salsa band for decades. My stepfather was also something of a musician and my mother (much to everyone's embarrassment) can’t sing to save her life. But there they were, on Ms. Pearl’s doorstep singing some whacked out Puerto Rican Christmas song with Al, her favorite son, at the head playing trumpet.
