Ray Walker

Raymond Jerome Walker

Part I: Ray-Ray

by Larry Greco Harris

A four-year-old boy stands alone on a front porch under a rare rain dropping over Los Angeles. It’s 1961.

He is not crying. He is not smiling. He is holding tightly to the top of a crisp brown paper bag which, filled with a few clothes, scrapes the ground next to his shoes. He faces the door, then swivels his head without moving his feet to catch the last glimpse of his uncle’s car disappearing around the corner.

His crystal green eyes—unusual eyes for an African American child—turret left and right trying to take in everything that moves and everything that doesn’t move as far down the sidewalks as he can see.

“There’s your grandma’s house, Raymond,” his uncle had said as he reached across the boy’s lap to push the door open. “Go on now, Raymond, you’ll be staying here from now on.”

The boy, doing as he was told, had stepped out of the car, had hefted his bag to his chest trying to keep it off the ground, had carried it at his side leaning up the path to the house, and without a single word, had hoisted it directly up the steps, stopped, and faced the door.

Standing there now, with no explanation for any of this, no direction other than that curt order from his uncle to get out of the car, the little boy must now decide for himself what to do next. His decision: he knocks.

And before the sound of that knock has time to fade, Raymond’s grandmother swings open that door and does something that will be done again and again during his lifetime—she renames him.

“Ray-Ray!” she exclaims with open arms, and welcomes him into her home.

On the road ahead of him, this little boy will be painted with many more names—some names so close to fame, some names so deep in drugs. But he won’t be Raymond anymore—at least not until many years later as he sits in a cell, his name a number.

Part II: Guilty of Unworthiness

Raymond had been sent to live with his grandmother because his parents had divorced and his mother, who was a singer and not accepted by his father’s family, could not handle all three children as a single mom. Raymond had been the one sent away, not because he was the oldest child but because he was the oldest boy, and big for his four years. But no one had bothered to tell him why this was happening, why he—as he still calls it today—was given away.

“I didn’t learn the reason until just a few years ago when my sister and brother told me. I didn’t know that both of them had cried and cried for weeks over the loss of their brother.”

And though that explanation might not seem like a very good one, withoutany explanation at all, Ray-Ray was left with nothing but a feeling. “I’ll tell you, I still remember that feeling standing out there on that porch. Though I didn’t have words for it then, it was the feeling that no one loves me, no one wants me.”

Even though his grandmother had scooped him up, cared for him, taken him to church and Sunday school, and even though his auntie and uncle who were living there too showered him with love, it couldn’t take away the feelings—those “twin demons of guilt and shame” that seemed to have sunk their roots into him on that rainy night. Ray-Ray, at forty-eight months into the world, stood guilty of unworthiness. Unworthy of his siblings, his home and his mother. “It even cost me my name.”

In hindsight, Raymond Walker is not at all surprised that in becoming the person that he is today, he “tried on a lot of different characters,” each one with a different name, each name with a different crowd, each crowd with a different consequence.

Part III: Steamboat and Elbow

In elementary school, Ray-Ray was re-named again. This was not so unusual. Lots of kids are given nicknames growing up. Often those names refer to the way kids look. “I was cat-eyes or jolly green giant because of my green eyes and because I was taller than most of the kids in my class. At that time the names didn’t have anything to do with my character as a person.” To Raymond, these names were a harmless part of childhood.

Later, his names began to take on more significance. “When I got to Foshay Junior High School in South Central Los Angeles, I developed another character. I was Steamboat—you know, for a steamboat gambler, because I shot dice. It’s not that Foshay was a bad school, because it wasn’t. We just did stuff we weren’t supposed to be doing—at least I did. I think I was trying to either create or find some identity for myself.”

Later, in high school, when Raymond was playing football, he was christened Elbow because of his penchant for regularly and effectively knocking opponents down with his cocked arm. Though that technique in some situations was legal, he got kicked out of several games for using it illegally to clothes-line receivers coming across the field. But these infractions didn’t minimize the way some people on his side of the field praised him for his aggression.

In those days, Raymond felt that Steamboat and Elbow were wonderful names to wear because they made him stand out and attracted people to him. He sees now that this was the beginning of a pattern. People would give him a name because of something they liked about him. He would embrace that given name and take in “the love”. It then made perfect sense—almost business sense—to do more of the same, to hone and perfect that behavior or that skill. Steamboat became better and better at gambling. Elbow perfected his ability to strike. Praise rolled in and arms were opened. Ray-Ray was learning new ways to approach a door, knock, receive a name, and be accepted. The question now would be what doors?

More chapters . . .