Still Grazing

by Hugh Masikela

  Cabella asked me one day, “Hughie, are you sure you want to marry my sister? My sister is crazy, Hughie, believe me. Chris is out of her fucking mind. You’ll see.” I was stunned to hear Cabella talking like this about her sister. I said, “Cabella, this grass is getting you all fucked up.” All she said was, “Believe me, it’s not the grass.” I was a little startled, and all the negative voices started echoing in my mind, but I was too far gone on this journey. I could have walked out, but I didn’t have the balls. Chris had the balls!

  One Sunday night when I was scheduled to fly from New York to Los Angeles, Chris rode with me to JFK Airport in a limousine for our usual romantic farewell. When it was time for me to board, Chris began to weep very emotionally. She said she could not stand the separations anymore. At this time she was the toast of Broadway and I was the golden boy of the record world. Everybody more or less knew us all over New York. Chris’s weeping pulled on the airline crew’s heartstrings as we stood by the gangway. They were preparing to shut the doors, and we were delaying the departure of the plane. Because the crew found the whole scene so romantic and encouraged her with their sighs, by the time she walked me to the airplane door, Chris was weeping hysterically. The flight captain and crew were waiting at the first-class door. Chris wailed, “I want to go. Don’t leave me.” I told Chris that she didn’t have a ticket. By now the tears had completely caused her freckles to vanish. Her eyes were bloodshot and her lips crimson-red. The captain said, “Let her come along.” I told the captain that I didn’t have my credit cards or that much cash on me. He interrupted, “She can come as our guest.” The crew broke into applause, sighing, “Aaahh” in unison. Chris was now chuckling through her tears. We were the only two people in first class. The crew spoiled us during the flight. We had completely forgotten about the limo driver back at JFK Airport, who was supposed to take Chris back to the city.

  On Monday afternoon as the sun was beginning to set on Malibu Beach, we were lying on sofa benches, drinking in the cool sea breeze, sipping Dom Perignon, smoking the best weed in California, and occasionally snorting a whiff of prime cocaine. Susie and Stewart had been fussing over us as usual, and all four of us had nothing on our minds except chilling. It was getting late. I told Chris we needed to get back to my place in Beverly Hills, so she could get ready for the red-eye flight back to New York. Chris abruptly said, “I’m not going back.” Surprised, I took a few deep drags on a joint before responding. “You’ve got a gig on Broadway, a whole cast that depends on you, and a contract with David Merrick. He will flip out if you don’t show up tomorrow night. Are you crazy?”

  “Fuck David Merrick,” she said. “That motherfucker is just exploiting us with this black Hello Dolly. Pearl and my father are not getting the kind of money Carol Channing and the white cast got. Plus, the people in the company hate my guts. I’m miserable in that show, and if you love me like you say you do, then you won’t send me back to those motherfuckers.”

  Susie leaned over and embraced Chris. Stewart, who was high, chimed in. “Yeah, baby, fuck David Merrick and them Broadway motherfuckers. Hughie, the poor girl doesn’t deserve to be with those lowlifes, man. She’s happy here with you. Fuck those New York people.” I thought everyone was losing their minds—or maybe I was the stupid one, because I was outnumbered. I should have stood up to them and taken Chris to that plane, but instead I said, “Yeah,” topping our glasses and passing my joint to Stewart as Susie and Chris attacked a coke vial. “Let’s break open another champagne and celebrate this moment. You ain’t goin nowhere, sweetheart. Let’s get high, goddamm it!” How quickly I lost my will.

  My attorney settled Chris’s contract with the David Merrick Company for fifty thousand dollars. He told me many times how crazy he thought I was. The cast of Hello Dolly started spreading the bad word around about Chris. It became apparent that she would never work on Broadway again. By the end of the week, the tabloids had done an about-face. We were no longer the darlings of the media. CHRIS CALLOWAY ABANDONS HIT BROADWAY SHOW TO ELOPE WITH AFRICAN JAZZMAN HUGH MASEKELA, rang one of the headlines. Cab and Nuffie were livid back in Mount Vernon. To them I had become the devil incarnate. Meanwhile, back in California, Chris and I were so anesthetized, our only reaction was “Fuck ’em all. They can kiss our black asses.”

  We decided to skip the Mount Vernon ceremony and have a quiet, private wedding in a Hollywood chapel. We went to the license bureau in downtown Los Angeles and got our marriage certificate. On our way out of the building, we discarded what we thought was junk literature in a garbage basket at the foot of the stairs. Jumping into a stretch limousine, I ordered the driver to head for the chapel. During the ride we smoked prime Oaxaca ganja we had mixed with some top-grade opium, drank champagne, and snorted pharmaceutical cocaine, while singing and laughing our asses off.

  Outside the chapel, we calmed down at the sound of the soft, piped-in solemnity of wedding music and held on tight to each other as the woman minister, with Marilyn Monroe looks and a Colgate smile, began the ceremony. With Susie and Stewart as our witnesses, the minister asked Stewart for the marriage certificate. She looked down at the papers we’d handed her and said, to our surprise, “This is not a marriage certificate. These are the forms on how to apply for a marriage license.” Chris and I looked at each other in amazement and realized that we must have accidentally thrown our marriage license out with the other papers back at the license bureau. We apologized to the minister and ran out of the chapel into the waiting limousine. During the ride back to the State Office Building, Chris and I couldn’t stop laughing, while we stole the moment to resume our smoking, snorting, and champagning, much to the driver’s amusement.

  It was nearing five o’clock when we approached the license bureau. Office workers were already streaming out of the building. There was a garbage truck parked outside, and men dressed in orange overalls were busy collecting trash containers from inside and outside the building. We ran up the stairs to the wastebasket, and at the bottom, to our relief, was our certificate. As we rushed back to the limo, I began to worry if this was an omen of doom. Back at the chapel, we continued the ceremony. Susie, Chris, and I cried. Stewart kept a stiff upper lip, and the minister wiped her designer tears and proclaimed us man and wife. Chris was twenty-two. I was twenty-nine.

  We spent the following week dining, laughing, making love, getting high, shopping, and driving around Los Angeles planning our future. We were going to make kids, build a house in the country, buy a town house, and enjoy life together to the fullest. I started a new tour, and we moved back to Toma’s house in Manhattan. It also seemed that we had re-won the hearts of Americans and we were soon appearing in the country’s leading magazines—Vogue, Life, Jet, Cosmopolitan, and national newspapers—as a lovable and exciting couple. Invitations to parties came from everywhere. I often remembered all the naysayers like Billy Dee and the others who had warned me about Chris. Their attitudes, as well as the cast of Hello Dolly, Nuffie, Cab, and Pearl Bailey, became the best source material for our private jokes when we were getting high, enjoying the last laugh.

  One evening, after spending the afternoon with Stewart and Susie, we were driving back to our Hollywood Hills home in my new Mercedes, taking in the sweet Pacific breeze while an orange sun set on the California coast’s beautiful golden horizon. “Grazing in the Grass,” which was still number one on the record charts, was playing on KGFJ, the local R&B station, when suddenly Chris let out a shrill shriek and started to kick in the dashboard. I pulled over in total disbelief. “Chris, what the fuck are you doing?” “Hit me. Hit me!” she screamed back, continuing to kick at the dashboard, shattering the glass in the speedometer, gas gauge, oil gauge, thermometer, and clock. I grabbed both her arms and tried to get her to look me in the face.

  I said, “Stop it, Chris. Stop it.” But she kept screaming and kicking.

  “Hit me. Hit meeee!”

  I had promised my grandmother and mother that I would never strike a woman, but
this one was begging for it. I reluctantly gave Chris an open-handed smack across her left cheek. She stopped immediately. My heart sank from what I had just done, and my head spun—I had no idea what to expect next. She looked me straight in the eye and whispered, “Thank you, Hughie, I love you so much.” Then she clung to me, crying, “I love you. I love you.”

  Now I was really worried. As we resumed our drive back to Queens Road in silence, the roar of the ocean had lost its charm. With dusk turning into evening and the Santa Monica lights beckoning us toward the twilight zone of Hollywood’s weirdness, I was deep in thought. I figured it might be better to return to New York, that maybe the Los Angeles environment was not her piece of cake. She didn’t have a circle of friends in California, and for a person like Chris, who loved to get around, L.A. was a nightmare because she didn’t have a driver’s license, and even if she had, she didn’t know her way around. Most of all, Chris had very little if any rapport with Philemon and Mabusha, who were living with us. When she was around Philly and Mabusha, they would go to their rooms. They just couldn’t be in the same space with her, and this spooked her, even if she didn’t say it. On the other hand, Chris and Peter Davidson got along fine, and she was tight with Susie, Stewart, and the band. But the rest of my Hollywood scene was anathema to her. After about fifteen minutes of total silence, which I needed to calm my nerves, especially when I noticed the shards of glass all over the car floor, I decided to attempt a sympathetic inquiry into Chris’s mental state.

  “So tell me, Chris, what was that all about?” I asked cautiously, so as not to provoke another psychotic explosion. She was furiously biting her cuticles. I noticed that she had bitten off all her nails, and two fingertips were bleeding. For the first time I realized that I had a major problem on my hands. With tears in her eyes, Chris began to explain how dominating Nuffie was, and what a wimp her father could be, out of fear of his wife. She said she despised her father and resented her mother’s domineering nature. This, she said, was the main reason why she didn’t want us getting married at their White Plains estate. “It would have all been a show for our neighbors and not much to do with us.”

  I was flabbergasted. We stopped at a Beverly Hills restaurant for coffee. I decided that perhaps we should go on a two-week honeymoon. The idea seemed to return Chris to a happy, tranquil mood. She apologized for the dashboard and assured me it would never happen again. On our drive into the hills, she changed to her bubbly self again, to my temporary relief.

  She told me stories from her childhood—about her godmother, Lena Horne, who would sit young Chris on her lap and tell stories and sing to her; about cruises to Europe on the Queen Elizabeth, ski trips to Switzerland, and train journeys on the Orient Express. She loved it when she and her sister Lael would go on tour with Cab’s band and Dizzy would babysit them—but mostly she was very lonely. When they’d get back from their tours and trips, her sister and mother would spend time together, leaving Chris to fend for herself.

  At this point, my heart went out to her. She was clearly miserable. I was determined to make her happy.

  I told her about my youth in Witbank, Springs, and Alexandra, and by the time we reached home we were laughing and joking again. We had some champagne, coke, and other goodies, and ended the night with torrid lovemaking. We decided to take a honeymoon on the Queen Elizabeth from New York to London. We would then travel across Europe on the Orient Express and take in the romantic sites of Rome and Paris before I returned for the Newport Jazz Festival tour, where I was headlining a bill that included Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan, Max Roach, Nina Simone, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Cannonball Adderley, and Thelonious Monk. Things seemed to be looking up again.

  My travel agent in Los Angeles made all the bookings for our transatlantic cruise and European honeymoon. With the album and the single still sizzling, I was doing back-to-back interviews in New York, so I put Chris in charge of the travel logistics. A few days after our arrival in New York, we had tickets, visas, hotel and car vouchers, traveler’s checks totaling about fifteen thousand dollars, and a happy marriage to take on our honeymoon. When I suggested—on the day before our voyage—that we begin packing, Chris began to cry. She said she had lost her bag with the tickets, traveler’s checks, vouchers—everything. She didn’t know how, when, and where. After I called American Express to cancel the traveler’s checks and my travel agent to cancel our cruise and European tour, I consoled Chris, telling her that perhaps our trip wasn’t in the stars. She became furious with herself, biting her nails again, and stormed out of the house crying. I didn’t run after her, but instead called a friend of mine in St. Thomas and arranged for us to travel to the Virgin Islands the next day.

  When Chris returned later that evening, I was all packed and told her about the St. Thomas alternative. Although she didn’t appear too excited, she agreed to the plan, but seemed disappointed that the cancellation of our European honeymoon had not sent me into a ranting and raving tantrum. Later that evening she told me that she had visited a clairvoyant who had assured her that I was going to die soon. I just shook my head in absolute wonder. After a couple of snorts of cocaine, some cognacs, and a big spliff of opium-laced ganja, I laughed myself to sleep while Chris downed a cocktail of barbiturates.

  The next morning we were off to St. Thomas. My friend Jimmy Davis, a successful businessman, radio personality, and concert promoter, and his wife met us at the airport, invited us to their home for lunch, and took us to our villa on a secluded beach, situated in a quiet part of the island. The villa came with a cook, a valet, a maid, and a groundsman. When Jimmy was about to leave us in our room, he pulled me aside and asked why my wife was so unsociable. I explained that Chris was still upset about our botched European honeymoon. At dinner at their house that night, she was worse—nasty and rude to our hosts. She left the table in a huff, and went and sat in the Jeep I had rented. On the way back to our villa, I was too pissed to speak to Chris, and all she did was chew her nails. She later took some downers and passed out. The next morning, when I woke up, Chris was already up and gone. Worried and dressed only in a pair of swimming trunks, I went looking for her. The gardener told me he’d seen her walking up a nearby hill. I followed his directions and spotted Chris wearing a white cotton nightgown, standing on a jagged precipice with the ocean below splashing up against the cliff. Her gown was drenched from the ocean spray. She looked down at me and screamed, “Go away! Go away!” I ran up the rocky incline like an Olympic athlete in a hundred-meter dash, all the while thinking how the media would report the whole incident: HUGH MASEKELA MURDERS YOUNG WIFE DURING CARIBBEAN HONEYMOON: PROSECUTOR SEEKS DEATH PENALTY. Chris was still screaming “Go away!” when I reached her and proceeded to drag her down the mountain with a tight grip on her arm.

  “You should have left me to die, you idiot,” she said, with tears streaming down her cheeks. I could hardly talk, I was so out of breath, but I was relieved by our narrow escape. Back at the villa, the staff, which had witnessed the spectacle, was thanking the Lord for Chris’s life.

  After I calmed down, I decided to try to get to the root of Chris’s problem. At this point I was trying out the therapeutic route, convinced that from what she had told me about her unhappy childhood, some sympathy and understanding from me might help turn her toward normalcy. By midday she was laughing and we were snorkeling, diving, and cavorting in the waters of our private seaside alcove, blending in with the fish in the sea. Life seemed once more fat with bliss. Even though I had no experience in psychotherapy, and had flunked psychology miserably at the Manhattan School of Music, I put all my heart and mind into a deep desire to cure Chris’s ailment. I saw it as the only way to save our marriage. Wading out of the water for a late lunch, I felt a sting in the sole of my left foot, but I ignored it. By the time I came out of the shower, I was walking with a limp, my foot had begun to swell, and the pain was excruciating. I called Jimmy, and he referred me to a doctor at the Bayside Clinic. Even though he suspected Chris
had something to do with it, I was mum on what might have happened. The drive to the clinic was torturous. The doctor told us that I had torn the tendon in the sole of my foot, and he advised me to return to New York for treatment. We had to cut the honeymoon short.

  Jimmy came to the airport to say good-bye. He never said one word to Chris. Pulling me aside, he whispered in my ear, “Be careful of this woman. She’s gonna kill you, man.” I told Jimmy that he didn’t understand, that Chris had had a raw deal and that I was trying to help her. “She’s beyond help, Hughie,” Jimmy continued. “This girl is mean and crazy. Go well, Hughie, and lots of luck, man. Believe me, you’re gonna need it.”

  My doctor in New York bound my foot with bandages, gave me a couple of injections, prescribed some anti-inflammation medication, and ordered me to keep my weight off my foot for three weeks. My next gig was in Philadelphia the following week, at Eagles Stadium, where we would kick off the Newport Jazz Festival. I stayed off my foot as much as I could in Philly, though Chris had me hobbling in and out of limousines, assisting her on endless shopping expeditions. My injury attracted considerable attention, but we lied to everyone about what had happened. I did tell Stewart the truth—that I’d probably injured my foot running up that mountain barefoot, trying to stop Chris from jumping.

  “She is crazy, Hughie,” Stewart said. “Damn, she really had us fooled. What you gonna do, man?”

  I told him, “I’m gonna try and help her. She really deserves a shot. She had it so tough.”

  “Tough, my ass, Hughie,” Stewart said. “She’s Cab Calloway’s daughter, man. Dizzy told me what a fucking brat she was when he used to babysit her. She ain’t never gonna change. And you can’t do shit for her. Cab has always been a happy millionaire. There’s no way Chris could have ever suffered except by her own doing.”