by Tavis Smiley
WE HAVE WHAT IT TAKES
Marsha Kelley-Sutton
Working for a program that strives to assist minority students interested in the medical field, I know that God shows us all the time through various experiences that people of color are born quality caregivers. One hot June day in the summer of 1997, I reached home to find that a message had been left for me to return to campus as soon as possible. One of the program participants had been hit by a car while crossing the street at a major intersection. The students had been on campus for only four days, yet when I entered the emergency room approximently fifteen minutes later, it was standing room only. The students had already formed a close bond, something rarely seen on an inner-city campus.
We were informed by the ER physician that the student’s arm, which she had used to shield her head during the accident, had been torn open from her wrist to her elbow during the impact, and emergency surgery would be necessary. The student was released from the hospital two days later and the surgeon informed the director of the program that her recovery time would be six weeks. It was truly a blessing that the injury was not as serious as it could have been, but the bad news was that the program was only six weeks in length.
When the student was told, tears began to stream down her face. You see, the main perk of the summer program she attended was a guaranteed interview at our university medical school for the top fifteen of the program’s 125 students. This was the prize that attracted the majority of students to our program. This program, which could possibly open the doors of medical school to her, was closing before her eyes. She made a plea to stay in the summer program; the director respected her wish, and she was allowed to continue.
After she was released from the hospital, I went to her dormitory to take her extra pillows to prop up her arm. I arrived to find her eating a breakfast that had been prepared for her by a student next door. Her bandages had to be changed daily, and when I phoned to see if she needed assistance, I discovered another fellow student had already carried her to student health, where her bandages had been changed. Other students washed and cared for her hair, carried her books, painted her nails, helped her prepare for class, and shared their class notes. Everyone pulled together to make sure this injured student had what she needed to complete the program, as well as compete for her dream.
At the closing ceremony, the last event of the program, the fifteen students chosen to receive a guaranteed interview to our medical school were announced. Students waited as the names were called one by one. By the time the fourteenth name was called, everyone was perched at the edge of their chairs. The program director became silent, as did the room of students. Who would the final recipient be?
Instead of calling a name, the program director began to retell the story of the car accident. With the help of her fellow classmates, the injured student’s dream had come true. As she rose to go onstage and receive her certificate, the crowd rose to their feet to applaud her. Tears were streaming down her face. She requested an opportunity to speak, and after thanking God, she shared how generous her classmates had been and recounted all of the help she had received from them. Before the evening was over we were all applauding each other.
The memory of the summer of 1997 will be embedded in my mind forever. In a time when we are struggling to increase the number of physicians of color, I had a group of 125 students of color who displayed the compassion, care, and concern so necessary and so needed in the medical field. In my heart, I knew that each one of them had what it takes to grow and develop into our great physicians of the future.
BIOGRAPHY OF A SCAR
Karen Williams
“Keep frowning, and your face is gonna freeze like that,” my father would say to me when I was younger to coax my periodic sadness into a smile. Not that he wanted me to be falsely happy, but to learn that sometimes it’s more advantageous to grin than scowl. The brilliant smile I gave him in response could easily pass for that of other Black girls my age, save for the prominent keloids that framed it, protruding around and underneath my jawline. The cause of these growths was an atypical case of chicken pox I contracted a year earlier. These scars, which formed on my face, torso, arms, and legs, left me hypersensitive, and led to a beleaguered childhood and adolescence.
Only a second-grader when I was stricken in 1970, I became the butt of jokes and pranks, and was labeled “Chicken Pox Girl” and “Cootie Face.” I begged my teacher, Mrs. Frederick, to let me stay indoors at recess—“They keep teasing me”—and she and my parents agreed. As a result, I read SRS reading booklets until their ink colored my hands, joined the Service Squad, and because of my mother’s generosity and fashion sense, became consistently the best-dressed girl in my class. I morphed into a model student, deciding that if I have to be ugly, I’m going to be smarter.
My mother, then a pediatric nurse, ferried me to a local dermatologist at the suggestion of a coworker. His office was located in Dearborn, notorious for its segregationist mayor, Orville Hubbard. The city wasn’t one many Blacks frequented unless to work on the line at Ford Motors or as a housekeeper in a white household, as my grandmother did. It was also my first medical visit beyond an annual checkup from my pediatrician. However, I discovered that the doctor’s staff weren’t comfortable seeing me, either.
After my mother unwrapped the soft cloth around my neck and led me into the examining room, a curious staffer dressed in white took my trembling jaw in her hand. I vaguely recall her white face as she peered closely at my jaw; someone announced (I don’t remember who) that the office had never seen a case of chicken pox scarring like mine, and (I remember this assertion quite vividly) there was nothing they could do. When my mother insisted on a referral, someone suggested she take me “downtown” to Detroit’s Henry Ford Hospital, an urban facility known for its dermatology procedures and work with ethnic (read “Black”) cultures.
At Ford Hospital, Dr. Clarence Livingood, a physician who doubled as the team physician for the Detroit Tigers, became my dermatologist. After his initial consultation with my parents, I began years of intensive steroid treatments. I entered the examination room, lay on the table, and waited for the syringes, two-and-a-half-inch needles filled with a stinging liquid anesthetic, Xylocaine. Dr. Livingood explained that the liquid would help flatten and reduce the redness of the scars. A chemical in the liquid, when it entered my scar tissue, would break down the levels of what he called collagen. “That’s what makes a keloid a keloid,” he’d say. “It’s skin, or what we call tissue, filled with too much collagen. And the fact that there’s too much collagen in your skin makes your scars hard, puffy, and plump. If you had a certain chemical in your skin, your scars would be flatter, like those of other children,” he said.
The routine became indelible in my memory. Prior to each round of injections, a nurse would roll a small shallow pan on wheels, something like a cookie sheet, up to the table. Atop a sterile cloth in the pan lay an assortment of needles in shiny packages, two kinds of forceps (blunt and needle-nosed), packets of unfilled syringes, Xylocaine bottles, as well as snowy squares of gauze. Tucked in the pan’s corner were miniature tubes of Kenalog cream, extra cloths, and packets of dry ice. Usually she’d tell me to lie on my right side if the doctor was going to tend to the right side of my face, on the left if that was the side to be treated. Later, when the treatments took another turn, I undressed, donned a cotton gown, and lay on my stomach, ready to receive injections into the scars on my back.
When Dr. Livingood arrived he’d always greet me with “Now what I’m going to do is numb you up first.” He’d take a packet of dry ice, open it, and wrap it with a sterile cloth before giving it to me to hold it against my chin. “Now hold it tight,” he’d continue, “and try not to wiggle it. I know it’s cold, but this will help it hurt less.” The first few times, he walked me through the procedure. “When you’re nice and numb, we’ll”— it was amazing how he’d say “we” instead of “I,” to make me feel more empowered and p
art of the process—“gather a bit of skin between my fingers. Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you. You’ll feel a little prick, then some pressure. That’s the Xylocaine flowing into your skin,” he said. “It’s going to sting a little. Afterward we’ll lightly massage the spot we injected to make sure the medicine goes into your tissues really good. Then we’ll put a little of this cream on there,” he said, holding up the tiny Kenalog tube. “This will stop the itching. We’ll also give you some to take home. Afterward we’ll put on a bandage, and zap! You’ll be finished.” Remembering his remarks and demeanor makes me realize how I learned to cherish what I eventually recognized was an exceptional doctor-patient relationship. Good physicians, like Dr. Livingood, talk to their patients, explain the procedures, and do their best to make you comfortable—to make you feel more human and more protected.
By the time I graduated from the sixth grade, I had been seeing Dr. Livingood for four years, twice a month. It didn’t occur to me a time would arrive for my visits to cease, but I learned they would during the visit nearest my twelfth birthday. “Karen’s getting older,” Dr. Livingood said, “and progressing well, and I’m thinking this should be the last visit we schedule for her. I think we should give her the opportunity to decide whether she wants to continue treatments.” He said he and his colleagues felt that since I was entering puberty, the surface of my skin would soon grow faster than it ever had during the growth process, causing my remaining scars to stretch and fade with time. “But,” he cautioned, “they’ll never disappear completely. By the time you turn eighteen, you’ll pretty much have the face you’ll have for the rest of your life.” I recall quietly saying, “I hope so.” The teasing I had been receiving from my classmates hadn’t decreased.
One day, in a scene that mirrored a key passage of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” two schoolmates followed me home through the woods near our home and pelted me with pebbles. My mother shared what happened with my father. He waited for me at the corner the next afternoon. His voice was curt and rough as he told the boys, “If you ever mess with my daughter again …”
When does a person’s beauty, ugliness, or disfigurement fail to count? I wondered if those boys’ cruelty was predisposed by something outside my body. Are children that eager to harm or to potentially maim?
Though I wanted to continue treatments (my parents had exceptional health insurance plans), part of me screamed to live normally—free of needle pricks and teasing, feeling “special” or freakish. I chose to make that visit my last and to learn as best I could how to live and be in my own skin. But when I left the office for the final time, I was in tears. Dr. Livingood gave me a final hug of encouragement. “You’re a pretty little girl, Karen,” he said. “Remember that, okay? Anything you want to do and be, you can do. Don’t let another’s words, another’s insensitivity, stop you.”
Years later, my skin clear of the keloids (though I now have the most stubborn adult acne, which often leaves its own brand of dark spots to be dealt with), I decided to return to see Dr. Livingood to thank him for the time and care he offered over the years, helping to transform the quality of my skin—and of my life. But just as I was getting ready to make that visit, I read in a local paper of his death. I spent the afternoon weeping before my mother for a man who would never know how much he had taught me about ugliness and beauty, self-esteem and confidence.
DADDY’s HANDS
Donna M. Woodard
When I was seven or eight years of age, I remember sitting on the side of my parents’ bed while my father sat on a chair at the foot of the bed. During these times, my father would impart the kind of knowledge and wisdom to me that only the school of hard knocks and lack of opportunities could teach.
During one of our conversations, my father told me that he never wanted my hands to look like his. I guess I must have looked at him with a bewildered expression on my face, for in my mind, Daddy’s hands looked fine.
The look I gave him must have said it all, because right then he began to explain to me what he meant. As my father began to speak, I will never forget the words that came from his mouth.
“Donna,” he said, “do you see these calluses and frostbite marks on my hands? One of the reasons I go to work every morning and come home tired every evening is because I don’t want your hands to ever have to look like mine. Daddy did not have the opportunity to go to school back when I was a kid because there just weren’t many schools for Black children. All we knew was that we had to work. Daddy wants you to get an education because knowledge is power. And as long as you have an education, your hands will never have to look like mine.”
One of the proudest and happiest days of my life came when my father attended my college graduation and said to me, “You’ve done a good job, Donna! Now don’t stop here—you just keep on going and get yourself some more education!”
Today, as the youngest of eight children, I am still following Daddy’s advice. Currently, I am earning my master’s degree from Florida State University in communication disorders and speech pathology. And all because of the inspiration of my daddy, who wanted to make sure my hands don’t ever look like his.
BAD BOY ON BOARD
Booker T. Washington
As I sat awaiting the announcement by the chairman of the board of the name of the new CEO, I couldn’t help but reflect on how I’d arrived at this place in my life. Only a few short years earlier, if I had run across the chairman in the street, he would have been in serious trouble.
I started out a military brat who got into general mischief. You know, breaking and entering, petty theft, vandalism—the kind of things associated with juvenile delinquents. Somehow my comrades and I eased into our roles as hoods, and the hood in us quickly spiraled downward into something closer to pure gangster.
The term “Uncle Charlie,” for me, represented all the white people that had done evil deeds to Black people: like turning fire hoses on Black folk to break up a civil rights rally; setting vicious dogs on a Black man simply for requesting his dignity; leading Rosa Parks away for suggesting that a Black person had the right to sit down on a bus anywhere they pleased; murdering Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in cold blood; the memory of white schoolkids spitting at me from their bus windows as I walked five miles to a wooden shack of a school while they rode a half mile to a beautiful brick edifice. Most of all, I remembered the look on my father’s face after being chastised by his “Uncle Charlie” colonel.
My family arrived at my father’s posting in Frankfurt, West Germany, from Fort Hood, Texas, in September 1968. I was in the ninth grade and attended Frankfurt Junior High School. I was somewhat of a geek. I simply loved mathematics and science. It was there that I met my comrades Eric, Ron Ron, Zack, and Jeff. They had formed a gang, but were just thugs really.
One day they hemmed me up for my lunch money, and I put a whupping on each one of them. After that, Eric, Zack, Ron Ron, Jeff, and I became fast friends. Zack said, “Now there’s a bad boy on board,” when I joined the gang.
On my way to school I had to pass my father’s compound. I would usually see my father standing in formation with his unit while the colonel inspected the squad. We had a special signal that he would send me to say have a good day, even when he was standing at attention. One cold November morning, however, formation was already over and as I approached the fence I could see that the colonel was in my father’s face.
No one got in my father’s face. He was one of those ol’ school guys who would cut you before you knew what happened. To see “Uncle Charlie” leaning in on my ol’ man shocked me. I could see the hurt in my father’s eyes as he caught a glimpse of me. It was as if he knew, at that moment, that his stature in my eyes had been diminished, and by someone who epitomized the deep-fried southern good ol’ boy.
At that moment I decided “Uncle Charlie” needed to be taught a lesson. When I told my comrades what had happened, we agreed it was time to dispense some Black justice.
Two weeks after th
e incident, we arrived at the colonel’s house about one o’clock in the morning. I went to the back of the house and busted in, while my comrades held vigil out front. We knew the colonel was a party animal and usually hung out with the rest of the white officers at the officers’ club until two or three in the morning.
I opened the front door for my comrades, and we proceeded to reduce the place to rubble. But we were so engrossed in the destruction of the colonel’s home, we didn’t notice a key turning in the lock.
Just as I was about to smash a lamp onto the floor, the door opened and in walked the colonel. I quickly spun around and shattered the lamp on the colonel’s shoulder. That was all it took for my comrades to jump in. He never knew what hit him. Zack hit the colonel so hard I could hear his jaw snap. Jeff body-slammed him, and he hit the floor with such force that the bone in his right leg popped through the skin. We were like a pack of wild dogs, kicking, stomping, spitting, and crushing bones from head to toe. I left the house feeling that my comrades and I had recovered a piece of dignity for all the times that “Uncle Charlie” had disrespected Black people.
I couldn’t wait to hear the news about the colonel spread across the compound, but nothing was said. I started to think that he had died and they were secretly searching for the killers. I became nervous and very anxious. One day I was having a general conversation with my father and eased into the topic of military life, to see if he would divulge any information about the colonel. I was in awe of my father’s ability to handle the stress of racism while maintaining the decorum of military life. He explained the military rules and regulations and how soldiers needed to follow these rules in order to survive in times of war. He talked about the racial strife, as it existed for him both outside the military and inside the military.
