The Mother of Black Hollywood

by Jenifer Lewis

  “I am still in bed and I am very fucking sick!” (Lying ass.) “What do you want me to do?”

  Of course Rachel knew I was full of it. She said she expected me in her office pronto. During the entire drive there, I grumbled to myself about how unfairly I was being treated and how it was all bull anyway.

  When I arrived, Rachel said, “You have twenty minutes left.” I felt like a damn fool, but I respected her for not taking my shit.

  Slowly, Rachel helped me to comprehend that the emotional scar tissue from my childhood had grown thick and heavy, blocking my ability to move forward in my life in a healthy way. She brought me to see that my mother’s rage was not my fault and that my own rage was a replication of my experiences with Mama.

  JOURNAL ENTRY: The reality of the darkness I’ve lived through is staggering. I have Mama’s anger. I go off on people just like Mama used to go off on me. I just want to be better. God, please help me to stop being so scared all the time.

  I learned that treatment is not a smooth, straight path. I would see bright moments but then become filled to the brim with anxiety and sadness, resolving it all in a drunken streak. My discussions with Rachel unearthed long-suppressed feelings that showed themselves in horrible dreams, my tears falling before I could wake. One time when I fucked up an audition, I threatened to quit and leave the country for good. Rachel said something to me at the time that turned a light bulb on in my mind: “When you’re running, you take yourself with you.”

  There was more. It wasn’t just about my mother’s anger, our poverty, or feeling unloved. Rachel told me what I had refused to admit to myself as I’d watched the movie Frances. She explained that I had a mental illness, more specifically, bipolar disorder. I sat there, confused and skeptical, as she talked about the disease, which formerly was called “manic depression.”

  According the American Psychiatric Association (APA), “people with bipolar disorders have extreme and intense emotional states that occur at distinct times, called mood episodes . . . [that are] categorized as manic, hypomanic, or depressive. People with bipolar disorders generally have periods of normal mood as well. Bipolar disorders can be treated, and people with these illnesses can lead full and productive lives.”

  Say what now? Did she say “disorder”?

  I had never heard of the term bipolar. Okay, well, if white people need to give this bullshit a name, whatever. I thought about poles, about opposites, about the Arctic and Antarctic.

  I was dumbfounded when Rachel characterized my behavior as extreme. Had she said “you’re crazy,” I would have agreed. I had been crazy all my life. And when she said mental illness, I thought, bitch, you crazy. I associated mental illness with people who couldn’t function, with raving lunatics in straitjackets. What was I doing in therapy, anyway? Black people don’t go to therapy!

  Rachel told me that medical science believes bipolar disorder is partly caused by an imbalance of brain chemicals called neurotransmitters, such as serotonin and dopamine. Neuro what? Dopey who? She said these neurotransmitters affect our moods. Well, I certainly knew what a depressive mood was, but this other “manic” part was new. When Rachel explained the details, I gasped. She described me to a “T.” Mania? So that’s what y’all call it? You mean, there is a name for describing why I’m loud and talk fast and walk fast and feel like my brain is racing a million miles an hour? Is that why I rage, create drama, and speed when I drive?

  Compulsive, you say? The incessant doodling, the endless braiding and unbraiding my hair? Impulsive? The arguing with people and storming off? Kicking shit, throwing shit? Yeah, okay, I guess all of that describes me, but . . .

  Rachel broke it down for me because the concept of “mania” is sometimes more difficult to understand than the idea of depression. The American Psychiatric Association has the following definition:

  Mania: A distinct period of abnormally and persistently elevated, expansive, or irritable mood and abnormally and persistently increased activity or energy, lasting at least one week and present most of the day, nearly every day . . .

  Whoa, whoa, wait a minute! “Abbie Normal”? Like in Young Frankenstein? I was uncomfortable and resistant, but I kept listening as Rachel talked about the symptoms that may occur during a manic episode:

  1. Inflated self-esteem or grandiosity

  Well, if I don’t pump myself up, who will?

  2. Decreased need for sleep

  That’s not me. I get at least eleven hours a night!!

  3. More talkative than usual or pressure to keep talking

  Yeah, I do sometimes feel like I just have to keep spouting off, or singing or cracking jokes.

  4. Flight of ideas or subjective experience that thoughts are racing

  Damn! Well, I guess I have sometimes felt like I can’t catch up with the chaos in my brain.

  5. Distractibility (i.e., attention too easily drawn to unimportant or irrelevant external stimuli)

  I admit I’ve always had the attention of a fruit fly.

  6. Increase in goal-directed activity

  Look, I get things done! Something wrong with that?

  7. Excessive involvement in pleasurable activities that have a high potential for painful consequences

  Wait, what? So I like to drink a little, smoke a little, and get laid. Doesn’t everybody? I mean, it’s not like I ever did hard drugs.

  Even though I resisted the definition of manic symptoms, I had to admit a lot of it described things I had been experiencing my entire life. Especially that last symptom about pleasurable activities. Rachel explained that people with bipolar disorder seek to relieve their depression or manic feelings by “self-medicating” with behaviors that temporarily may impact the balance of neurotransmitters in their brains. Actually, everybody does this. I mean, how many people do you know who smoke weed or drink wine every night when they get home? They do it to feel better. But because the brain chemistry of people with bipolar disease is out of whack, their relationship with their drug of choice gets out of whack. People with bipolar disorder typically self-medicate with gambling, food, drugs, alcohol, even overspending. Often it’s a combination of several of these.

  My addiction was sex. I was a high-functioning addict who needed regular orgasms in order to get those neurotransmitters flowing. I heard Rachel and knew she was right. All of this described my life, my moods, my behavior.

  I began to realize that my hypersexuality was intertwined with my upbringing, bipolar disease, and my conflicted feelings about men. Just as alcoholism isn’t really about the liquor, my addiction wasn’t really about the sex. It was about the unresolved psychological problems that caused me pain. Sex was simply my painkiller.

  By the time I entered therapy with Rachel, I had had more sex partners than I wanted to count. Therapy helped me understand why I felt compelled to have sex and how I used orgasms to prolong the joy and fulfillment I felt on stage. I knew from a young age that orgasms brought me peace, comfort, and relaxation. Now I had insight about the psychological and biological reasons behind it all. I do not feel ashamed about my sexual history. I’m just amazed that I’m still alive and healthy.

  Let me stop beating around the bush and share this little ditty:

  ODE TO THE MEN

  There was hunky Butch, Nasty Bruce, and silky sexy Lenier

  The Ethiopian in Boston who had to put it in my ear

  James had a tongue as long as the Nile

  John was high yellow with the sexiest smile

  Lenier was my first at the tender age of thirteen

  Caught him with Phyllis—that sad Halloween

  Dexter was my army boy, we did it on two chairs

  Keep it down, fool, my mama’s upstairs

  There was Jessie, Jeffrey, Jimmy, and a dancer named Little Joe

  Who lay me down, flipped me over, but didn’t dent my ’fro

  Gary pulled my hair and had me in the closet

  Maurice served up a beer can, no return, no deposit

>   Sawyer, Sam, Gregory, Tucker, Eric, Adam, and Ken

  In the words of Sly Stone, the butcher, the baker, the drummer, and then

  On tour in Detroit in the middle of a blizzard so they had to cancel the show

  He introduced himself as Scoobydoo. Scoobywho?

  Scoobydoo, fuck it, let’s go!

  The businessman, the boxer, and the one in the sauna

  I beckoned him with my titties, “com’ere baby—you you wanna?”

  On top the Empire State Building—yes even up there

  Was anybody watching? Cha, please! I don’t care!

  Don, Ron, Tyrone, Tyrell, and I remember Rocky smoked a pipe

  But it was Perry, ooh Perry, ooooh Perry was just ripe

  There was a Mr. Gold, a Mr. Blue, and Mr. Green had lotsa dough

  Had them in Minnesota, North Dakota, and yes, I confess Idaho

  Phillip, Peter, Paul, oh yeah, and that crusty Brit

  Was it Jeffrey? No Nigel. No Ed. No Fred. I’m gittin sick a dis shit

  There were some STDs and pregnancies, and y’all know I didn’t give birth to no kids

  The recklessness, meltdowns, and chaos left me on the skids

  This madness lasted throughout the decades of the eighties

  I shared it in order to express to you ladies

  Back then I didn’t know my body was a temple—how precious and fragile we are

  I was blind, crippled, and crazy—desperate to be a star

  Oh, but I got up somehow, and scrubbed most of it away

  Left a little funk on me—so I’d be stronger on this day

  No shtick

  Still love dick

  I can joke about my sex addiction now. But trust me, there was nothing funny about it. It was sick, compulsive, dangerous behavior. My discussions with Rachel about depression, mania, and sex addiction were extremely painful. But Rachel said that if I made a commitment to stay with the healing process through the long haul, I could, in fact, become a joyful person. Joy? I made other people laugh for a living, but had never actually considered that I had a right to full-out happiness myself.

  Rachel suggested that I begin journaling. I told her, “Well, you know, I’ve been keeping a diary all my life.” Rachel said, “Really? That’s probably one of the things that has saved you.” Expressing my thoughts and feelings on paper was one of the best habits I developed on my own. I wrote, doodled, and drew in my journals, chronicling my experiences, sorting out problems, writing my history. I could always be more adventurous when I was alone. Every day was a different drama. When you live in that drama, you stay in that drama. It becomes a habit. My journal entries were dramatic, but at least they were honest. Now Rachel wanted me to process it all.

  My sessions with Rachel transformed my journaling and doodling from pastimes into actual tools I could strategically employ to help myself through the difficult process of getting well. To write about my painful feelings, to illustrate them in many colors, would help me to experience them deeply. Fully feeling and acknowledging my painful feelings could prevent me from acting them out—either toward others or myself. My journals from this period show how I was my own harshest critic. I contradicted myself at every turn. Being manic and crazy one minute, then grown up, realistic, and even wise the next.

  JOURNAL ENTRY: It’s not so much stardom I want anymore as it is that I just want to feel better. Be better. I wanna stop trying to prove I am somebody and be somebody. I’m dramatic even as I write this. Let go baby. Nobody’s gonna hurt you anymore.

  Becoming a star was once my highest goal. My talent for entertaining people, making magic with my voice and my whole self as a performing artist, was the gift God gave me above everything else in life. I thought that if I worked hard enough, the challenges God gave me—poverty, abuse, lovelessness—would fade away.

  I had been in therapy just a few months when Mama sent me a printed program from an event at her church. When I saw Pastor Heard’s name, every cell in my body reacted. A numbing sensation engulfed me. I went out and bought a bottle of hard liquor. I got drunk. I held myself together enough to call Mama and ask for Heard’s number. She hesitated. So I said, “I want to ask him about a scripture.” I knew that she knew his number by heart.

  I called Pastor Heard.

  “Hello.”

  “This is Jenifer.”

  “Hellooooo, Jenifer! We saw you on television! Oooooh, we’re all so proud of you!”

  “It ain’t that kind of call, motherfucker.”

  He was silent.

  “You still fucking with little girls in your church? Listen to me. If you hang up that phone, I’ll fly there and kill you! Why did you do what you did to me?”

  “When I kissed you, Jenifer, I was trying to show you what you might run into in Hollywood.”

  “You sick, twisted motherfucker. Do you realize that in those ten seconds that you touched my body, kissed me, and felt me up, you took everything from me? And you still call yourself a man of God? Just know if you hang up and don’t let me get this out, I will blow your stupid, pathetic, little storefront church to pieces with you in it!”

  “Am I allowed one word?”

  “What, bitch?”

  “Sorry. I am sorry.”

  I continued to attack him and wanted to tell him to go straight to hell, but strangely, I felt his remorse. His apology did not lessen my disgust for him or rectify the damage he had done to me. But, confronting him was liberating. My conversations with Rachel about the molestation became easier. Ultimately, after many, many months, I was able to come to terms with the molestation, to acknowledge that it was evil, to feel my anger and sadness about it and to recognize that it was not my fault. Y’all, confronting Pastor Heard felt so good in terms of standing up for myself as a woman. I promised myself never to keep another secret. And I want other women to know they can stand up and must stand up to their persecutors. Feel the fear and do it anyway! We are all as sick as our secrets, y’all. Remember that shit.

  In early December, I flew to Columbia, Missouri, to perform in a short run of Ain’t Misbehavin’. When I picked up the phone in my hotel room late one night, it was Mama.

  “Hello?”

  “Jenny, your daddy’s dead. When can you come home?”

  I was devastated by the heartless way in which my mother told me of my father’s demise. She had once told me she detested him. But it was me she hurt. He was my daddy and she was not respecting my feelings. I rented a car and drove the two hours to St. Louis for my father’s funeral.

  I’ve never known a funeral that didn’t bring surprises. When I walked in the house, I recognized everyone in the family except one person: a ten-year-old boy who looked just like my father. My family had received him with open arms, and so did I. The funeral was sad. Having not really known my father, I was unclear about what I felt or should feel. Some of my siblings were closer to him, and I spent most of my time comforting them. My mother sat in the front row at the funeral service, of course. Though they had been separated for thirty-three years, they never divorced. So there she sat in a full-length mink coat while the mother of the young son sat in the back of the church.

  The morning of my father’s funeral, Mark Brown called and told Mama that Quitman had died. Thank God Mama was merciful enough to hold the news until the repast after the service.

  I went into the old bedroom that was once mine. I curled up on my old bed. Surprisingly, I smiled at first—God, help me—remembering every salad Quitman had made. Every piece of toast he had meticulously spread butter on, careful not to miss a spot. Every tight T-shirt he had squeezed his perfectly formed body into. I lay there and could still feel the deep compassion he showered on me when I’d burst into his apartment, wailing about some lost man, some lost audition, some note I couldn’t hit, some lyric I had missed. But when my mind wandered to the last time I had seen him and those purple lesions covering my baby’s face, I lost complete control and sobbed into the night.

 
Rest in peace, baby. They’ll never tell you no again. Nobody will ever call you a nigger again. And all the suffering is over. I will love you into forever.

  I returned to Columbia, Missouri, to finish the run of Ain’t Misbehavin’. When the show closed, I went back to Kinloch and confronted my mother for the first time in my life. I had learned a few things in therapy: (1) to protect myself; (2) not to let horrible things invade me to the point that I would lapse into a deep depression; and (3) to just tell the truth and get shit out on the table.

  I used the courage therapy was giving me to confront my mother. She was washing dishes. I said, “The way you told me Daddy died was not right.”

  “It was the only way I knew to tell you.”

  I didn’t feel that was apologetic enough and after months of working on myself in therapy, I was not afraid to let her know how I truly felt. I had come to understand that my fear of my mother was no longer necessary because she was the one who was really afraid.

  As we stood over the kitchen sink, I looked her dead in her eyes and I said, “Mama, I am going to ask you: if something happens to one of my sisters or brothers, please tell me to sit down first. Or warn me that you have some bad news.”

  I don’t think anyone had ever talked to Mama like that. And, frankly, she was not fazed. But after so many hours discussing my mother with Rachel, I understood that my mama could never admit that she had been wrong, ’cause then she would have to feel remorse. Her life, her circumstances, had mostly blotted away all feelings but anger or disdain. Perhaps it was survival. I tried not judge her, but I had made my feelings known and could now choose to be my own self. I was growing up and went back to Los Angeles proud of myself.

  Rachel suggested I try to resolve some of my issues by writing letters. “You don’t have to mail them, but sit with your feelings. You can burn them if you want.”

  I wrote everybody I could think of, avoiding my mother. I wasn’t ready to handle the pain. However, after several more sessions, I finally conjured up the nerve.