Walking with the Muses

by Pat Cleveland

  chapter 6

  THE BIRTH OF THE BLUES

  Me at nine on a day out with Mom, who’s learning to play golf with Jackie Robinson, 1959.

  It was December 1959, and Mom and I were hanging ornaments on our Christmas tree when a soldier walked into the living room. His uniform was a virtual rainbow of red, blue, and yellow stripes. His arms were loaded down with presents.

  “Hey,” Mom said jokingly, “who let you in?”

  “When you leave the door open . . . ,” he said, kissing her on the cheek. I should have been suspicious, but I was too distracted by the presents.

  “This is Sonny,” my mom said. “We grew up together in Georgia.”

  “These are for you,” he said, handing me several brightly wrapped packages.

  I was overjoyed, though it’s obvious now that the presents were a bribe intended to secure my cooperation with what was about to transpire.

  I tore into the first package. Inside was a bubblegum machine, the kind you stick a penny into to get the gum out. “Here,” Sonny said, handing me a shiny new penny. “It won’t work without this.”

  I took the coin and put it in the machine, and out popped my prize. Mission accomplished: He’d bought my compliance for the price of a sweet, colorful ball of gum. I was so busy with my little machine, digging out the penny so I could get another gumball, that I barely noticed they were kissing for real, on the lips. Nor did I notice that he’d slipped a diamond ring on my mom’s finger. Then Sonny gave me another box, this one very small. I opened it and inside was a silver chain with a cross made of real diamonds. “I bought it in Korea,” he said. “Look inside the center.” He pointed to a tiny clear stone. “You’ll see someone special.”

  I looked, and there was a miniature picture of Jesus as a shepherd. It was the most extraordinary thing I’d ever seen, and that cross instantly became my most prized possession. “I love it!” I said as Sonny fastened the chain around my neck.

  Sonny was a sergeant in the US Army and had earned his stripes and badges from having seen action in Normandy and Germany at the tail end of World War II and in Korea. He had just come back from Vietnam, where the US military presence was starting to heat up, though it was not yet a full-blown war. Sonny was only in his early thirties, but to me, he was old and worldly.

  That spring, Mom and I traveled via a special bus for servicemen’s wives, children, and girlfriends to Fort Dix, New Jersey, to visit Sonny at his military base. I was the only child on board. It was nighttime when we drove through a big gate with barbed wire, then on to the barracks that served as the guesthouse.

  The next day, as Mom and I walked to meet Sonny at the canteen for lunch, we saw soldiers marching in formation. A private escorted us to an old airplane hangar filled with soldiers sitting at long tables. Mom and I waited at the entrance as soldiers filed in. This must have been their free time, because they seemed lighthearted and happy, smiling and flirting with Mom on the way to their meal. With her bright red lipstick, flared skirt, and highest heels, she made quite a contrast to the soldiers in their drab uniforms. I thought she looked like a movie star.

  Then Sonny arrived, and it was like we were with a VIP. One of the soldiers snapped to attention and saluted “Sergeant.” Mom, Sonny, and I joined the line of soldiers to get what they called “slop.” But we were in luck: It was steak day. Plates loaded, we sat at the long table and ate. I was the only child around, so the soldiers told me jokes, played games with me, and even bought me a Coca-Cola. It tasted like nectar. I had a fabulous time.

  The following week, Mom told me that Sonny had gone back to Vietnam. We didn’t see him for a long time, and life went on as usual. Mom and I went ice-skating in Central Park and then to the much fancier rink at Rockefeller Center. I even got my own ice skates, which we decorated with red-and-white pom-poms that we made. We also made doll clothes and doll furniture. We went out to eat Chinese food, and Mom taught me how to use chopsticks. For Saint Patrick’s Day, she sewed me a majorette’s outfit—boots, hat, and a green circle skirt with fringe—and we marched together in the parade, feeling very Irish. (We did have that teeny drop of Irish blood, after all.) At night, before she went to work, she and I would cuddle up on the sofa and watch old movies or Bugs Bunny cartoons on television, and I’d fall asleep. It was almost too good to last—and it didn’t.

  One day that spring, when I was across the hall playing with the neighbor kids, my mom called and asked me to come home. I walked in the door, and there they were, my mom and Sonny, being married by a preacher.

  I was sent to sleep with Aunt Helen in her bedroom that night. After a month of this, Auntie moved to California, and Sonny took up permanent residence in our home. I was grief-stricken to lose my aunt, whom I loved dearly. But that sadness was nothing compared with the sorrow I felt over the loss of my one-on-one romance with my mother.

  My stepfather wasted no time in taking over, and he ruled the roost with an iron hand: There was no more dressing up or going out. Our fun-filled bouts of creativity seemed to fade into a mundane routine of work, food, sleep. One night when Sonny was gone—he’d become a taxi driver and often drove in the evenings—Mom went to a party with some friends, and when she got home, Sonny started yelling at her and waving a gun around. He threatened to kill her if she ever went out without him again.

  My only escape from the gloom was to dream my way out. I began cutting out pictures I loved from magazines and pinning them up on my bedroom wall as reminders of the big wide world outside those four walls. Because Mom worked at night, she’d often be asleep when I got home from school, while Sonny watched television in the next room. In this way, I learned to be a quiet person. At first this was so as not to disturb Sonny and his hair-trigger temper, but eventually, I realized that being quiet fostered my creativity. Amid the emotional tumult of that household, it gave me a chance to hear myself think. It’s a technique I’ve used many times throughout my life.

  On the rare occasions when Mom did have a spare moment, she taught me how to paint. We’d practice drawing eyes, because eyes, she said, were the most important feature on a person’s face. So I spent a lot of time drawing, or reading, or studying. When Mom was asleep, I’d dance silently around the house from room to room, with songs from Broadway and movie musicals playing in my head. On weekends I’d go to the movies or walk in Central Park. These were activities I used to love doing with her. Now I did them alone.

  Sometimes Helen would come back for a brief vacation when her love affairs went south. We’d pick up almost where we left off, with Helen and Mom back to doing and making all sorts of clever things. But my stepfather smothered fun like a blanket on a fire; all he cared about was watching war movies in the middle of the day and smoking big cigars. At night he’d have nightmares and wake up screaming. He slept with a pistol under his pillow and his shoes on. I asked him why he did that, and he said, “Never take your boots off.” In a crazy way, it reminded me of Auntie Helen, who’d say, “Never take your eyelashes off.” Sonny’s fear was being shot dead; Auntie’s was of being caught looking ugly.

  I tried hard to make my mom happy, but sometimes it seemed there were no more smiles left to wring out of her. I ran errands and shopped for our groceries. On the weekends I’d do the laundry and ironing. Sonny barked orders at me like the drill sergeant he was, and if I didn’t carry them out to his satisfaction, he’d threaten to beat me.

  Once I walked in on a terrible fight between Sonny and my mom. I’d burst into the apartment crying, tears and blood running down my face, because a neighbor kid in another apartment in our building—a hateful bully—had hit me in the face with a brick. And there was Sonny, screaming at my mom and holding his gun to her head. I was terrified, but my adrenaline must have kicked in: Suddenly, I was lunging at him to keep him from shooting her. He was drunk and swatted me out of the way. Then he grabbed me, pulled off his belt, and repeatedly brought it down across my back—hard. The only consolation was that he got so busy hitting
me that he forgot about hurting my mom.

  I would have happily taken more beatings if that could have protected Mom from Sonny and his never-ending rage, which grew more extreme and violent with each passing year. Mom was too scared of him to fight back, and I was still too young to be the boss of my own life. I fantasized about the moment when I’d be old enough to say, I’m leaving, and I’m taking Mom with me. You can go straight to hell.

  Such was my life from ages eleven to fifteen. Thankfully, I did have one friend I’d jump rope with. But even pursuing that friendship had its complications. She lived nearby, but to get to her apartment, I had to pass kids on the block who’d hiss at me and pick fights because I was funny-looking. I was too light to be black, too black to be white, and too skinny to be pretty. I worked out a system: I’d run up beside an adult who was walking in the same direction and stay at his or her side, out of sight, until I was safely at my friend’s building. So much for being a carefree child.

  chapter 7

  ALL SHOOK UP

  Me at fourteen, posing for a modeling test shot in the first dress I ever made.

  Courtesy of Adelaide Passen.

  Sometimes I think Sonny’s anger rubbed off on me, which often happens to kids raised in a violent home environment, as mine became. I no longer went cheerfully to school, as I’d done before Sonny entered our life. Now I seethed in fury at the bullies who made junior high a living hell for me.

  One afternoon I was leaving school with my books strapped tightly in my book belt when I spotted the clique of mean girls who dominated my school’s social scene. I ignored them, but the moment I walked out of the school doors, they followed me, as they’d been doing for several days.

  “Hey you, Skinny!”

  “Olive Oyl! Where’s Popeye?”

  “Toothpick!”

  “Giraffe!”

  Yes, I was tall. And maybe I did resemble a giraffe next to them. It was the truth of the jeers that made their sting especially harsh. By the time I was a block away from the school, the girls grew bolder. One by one, they came up behind me and pulled my long ponytail. They followed me all the way to the subway entrance. That’s when I decided I’d had enough.

  “You skinny! Bony! Stick!” they screamed. “Your mama’s so skinny, she looks like jail bars.”

  I stood still without turning around, and all five of them huddled right behind me, pushing and shoving their weight into me. “Stop it!” I said. Nothing more.

  Then one of them punched me in the side. That did it. I lifted my books and rammed the girl in the face. Another grabbed my hair, and I kneed her in the chest. Before I knew it, we were on the ground, scuffling on the rough pavement. The five of them jumped on top of me—each girl was about twice my weight—and I saw darkness and prayed for someone or something to help me.

  But the kicking and screaming got rougher. I was fighting for my life. Finally, using all my strength, I clutched at the group leader’s throat and didn’t let go. She was gasping for breath, and the other girls jumped off of me to try to pry my hands off their friend’s neck. I choked her harder, so hard that her face turned blue. I realized I had a death grip on her, and I actually felt my power surging. I hated her and she hated me and I was about to triumph by killing her.

  The other girls were screaming “Get off!” but it was as if I’d gone deaf. I just kept squeezing her throat. Everything got quiet. The gang was eerily silent. In that hushed moment, I eased my grip on her as it dawned on me how close I was to choking someone to death. I got up off the girl and could feel my scraped, gravel-covered knees burning and bleeding. “Don’t you ever touch me again,” I said coldly, and turned on my heel.

  I walked slowly into the subway station, onto the train platform. And then I saw the gang again. Before I knew what was happening, they’d surrounded me. They started shoving me as hard as they could, until I was at the very edge of the platform. They were trying to push me onto the tracks.

  Thank God a man standing nearby saw all this, and he scared the girls off by waving his briefcase at them. The train came, and I got in and collapsed on a seat. I didn’t stop shaking until I got to the door of our building.

  High school didn’t start off much better. My school was on the west side, off Eighty-Sixth Street, so instead of riding the subway, I took the crosstown bus through Central Park. My first semester was miserable. The other students harassed me on a daily basis about the way I looked and dressed. I tried to avoid trouble, but one afternoon I was hurrying across the schoolyard to meet my mom when three girls came up and threw a soda bottle at me. I was wearing my raccoon coat, which I’d bought for ten dollars in a secondhand store. I was so proud of that coat, the first fur I’d ever owned. I walked faster, but they were right behind me, running and hurling insults. Then I heard a deeper voice yelling in Spanish, and a beautiful boy with raven hair caught up with me. Believe it or not, he was wearing a raccoon coat, too. He took me by the arm and told me to keep walking.

  His name was Juan Fernandez, and he was also new to the school. Unlike me, he seemed completely at ease with himself. “You’re a star,” he whispered in a magnificent Dominican accent. “We must forgive them—they’re mere mortals.” I knew instantly that I’d met a kindred spirit.

  My other savior was the after-school drama club, which I joined because the principal said it was a way to get extra credit. I’d never been part of a group of young artists, and by the middle of the term, I understood that at long last I’d found my tribe. I made a few friends, including a girl named Frances and a cute, witty boy named Ray Robinson, Jr., whose father was the famous boxer Sugar Ray Robinson. I immediately developed a crush on him.

  The big difference between these kids and me was that they were seniors and I was a fifteen-year-old freshman—a vast chasm when you’re in high school. They also smoked cigarettes and drank alcohol. I did neither.

  We began going out to a club on Fifty-Third and Broadway called the Cheetah, the first big disco in New York City, which held a teen night on weekends. We’d all pile into our friend’s pizza van—it belonged to his dad—and go out dancing until three in the morning. I needed clothes to wear, so my mom taught me how to sew. These were precious times, sitting in the living room with my mom again, in a whirl of creativity and fabric, coming up with some pretty wild styles. Usually, Mom would suggest lowering the hem by five inches, and I’d suggest raising it by five inches, and then we’d compromise by raising it four. We mixed new looks with antique clothes from the twenties and thirties, and thus my style was born.

  We’d even rip apart old clothes to repurpose the expensive fabrics into modern designs. And it was as if, with every stitch, my mom was threading her dreams of fashion and design into mine. The backlash from my classmates continued during the school day, but once the stars came out, I was on top of the world, heading to the club, joining in the line dances that were the latest craze. The girls would be on one line, standing opposite the boys on the other, everyone moving in sync to the R&B music, doing the Popeye, the Cleopatra, and a little bit of the twist. I wore anything and everything my mom and I dreamed up, and my wardrobe was starting to get noticed.

  One night I went to the Cheetah with Frances, who was now my closest friend. All I wanted to do was dance with Ray, but he was quite the playboy and barely noticed me. I sort of slid off to the side, and as I stood there, looking longingly at him, I heard a male voice say, “You know that guy you’re looking at?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “He’s a friend of mine.” Then he said, “Wanna dance?”

  The guy’s voice was vaguely familiar and so smooth I almost swooned. He could be a newscaster, I thought. Then he said, “My name is Frankie Crocker, what’s yours?”

  Frankie Crocker? As in the number-one-disc-jockey-in-the-whole-region Frankie Crocker? No wonder his voice sounded familiar: I listened to his show every night. He was the original Soul Man, a pioneer in black-format radio who singlehandedly brought R&B to millions of teens.
His program was the heartbeat of the city, especially for young black teenagers—the total black experience in sound. Before spinning a record, he would always tell little stories, complete with enigmatic, thought-provoking phrases like “Wherever you go, there you are,” or “You don’t have to be a pauper to be unhappy,” which would match the theme of the song he was about to play. He’d always sign off with something inspiring, like “You can’t run away from your destiny.”

  Clearly, he was my destiny that night. Frankie, who later became known for wearing silky open-necked shirts and lots of gold chains, was impeccably dressed in a three-piece suit. He took me by the hand, and we danced in line. Ray came over. “You’re dancing with Frankie?” he said to me.

  “Hey, I found her,” Frankie said.

  “Well, she’s with us,” Ray replied. Suddenly, he’s jealous? That’s a positive development, I thought.

  We compromised and all danced together. Ray knew Frankie through his dad, because Frankie had interviewed Ray Sr. for his radio show. After we were good and tired from dancing, we all decided to go to the beach. Ray and I got into Frankie’s fancy convertible, me in the front seat with Frankie and Ray in the backseat with the girl he was after. Off we went into the night, with loud Latin music playing. The other kids went ahead in the van.

  We drove to Coney Island, way out in Brooklyn. We all sat under the boardwalk and looked out at the Atlantic Ocean, listening to the waves and feeling the midnight mist. But I was distracted: Ray was making out with that girl, and it upset me. Frankie saw the distraught look on my face and asked, “You want me to take you home?”