The Women Who Raised Me

by Victoria Rowell

  Later, after persistent urging from all her sisters, Ma took time off to travel, returning to places she had once been—St. Kitts, Antigua, Jamaica, and to her favorite destination in the world, Montserrat. California was out of the question. “They say it’s gonna’ fall off into the ocean” was her pat reason. But those former French colonies in the Caribbean beckoned her. For one special vacation, she sent her most fashionable wig, which she had named Suzie, to Aunt Ruthie to have the salon wash and style it. It left Forest Edge a small mashed-up heap of hair and came back in a gilded hatbox, styled to glorious perfection and pinned to a wig stand inside the box. How could anyone not adore Ruth Wooten Williams?

  Well, everyone did adore her but she ruffled feathers a time or two. Aunt Ruthie had a tough business sense that was unrelenting. She wanted to win and she had to win, but sometimes she stepped hard on toes, if they got in her way. The part of Ruth’s story that resonated the most with me was the fact that she and Harold had adopted a beautiful girl named Barbara. All I knew was that Barbara was raised as if she was their own, which was the attitude that I felt from nearly everyone in the extended family.

  When the 1967 cookout kicked up into high gear, Aunt Ruthie and Uncle Harold glided down Barley Road like movie stars. Aunt Ruthie was the first to ask how my ballet lessons with Agatha were going, and the one who seemed to take the most delight when Agatha and I offered a few moments of entertainment.

  Practical journeywomen, the Wooten matriarchs were cut from the same cloth. Their approval and encouragement was imprinted in my spirit and bones forever.

  The 1967 cookout was significant to me because it would be my last year living full-time at Forest Edge. I did not know this yet, as I hurried off to the softball field where the teams were being chosen.

  This softball game was a serious matter. Everyone under the age of retirement played, everyone except Aunt Velma, and ex-wives who were no longer invited. Aunts like Adrena and Ruby, all wonderful, all missed. Aunts I loved but could no longer see; here one cookout, gone the next. I tried to understand and accept the complex curveball of divorce. Anyway, Aunt Velma, Uncle Ronnie’s second wife, who had not been blessed with children, did not budge from the spot she first claimed upon arrival—where sunblock and a bit of shade from the oak tree foliage protected her fair skin from the summer rays. She did not sit; she lounged in the most languorous, long-legged pose, reclining back on her self-supplied chaise. Her two pampered giant poodles sat on either side of her with fancy hair ornaments I wished I had in my own freshly washed hair. The three of them turned their heads in unison at the most meager of angles to ogle us country bumpkins. Velma was one of the untouchables.

  When I was between the ages of eight and twelve, three of the Armstead children followed their mother’s example and opened their homes to me as I followed my ballet scholarship. They became backup foster parents for durations of anywhere from a weekend to several months.

  Included on that list was Auntie Kay, Agatha’s firstborn, who was the only one of the Armstead offspring to live at Forest Edge year-round on her own two-acre parcel. When Agatha went to the hospital for the radical mastectomy, it was Kay who watched over my sisters and me. Aunt Kay lived in a maroon-painted trailer, outfitted with old car seats for living room furniture, creating a whimsical, inviting atmosphere. The trailer had been cut open like a tuna can more than once to create additional space for her growing family. I figured Aunt Kay must have inherited her steely toughness from her maternal grandmother. Her complete no-nonsense cool served her well. Aunt Kay and I clicked, hatchet or no hatchet. Without apology, a cigarette hanging from her mouth, worn pink sponge curlers in her hair, she exchanged few words with me. There was a sadness behind her eyes, and I felt it; we felt each other. She was the oldest of Agatha’s daughters and I was the youngest. I understood that the foster sister I referred to as Auntie Kay lived a life much different from mine. I loved being in her uncomplicated presence. There was intense peacefulness about it. My theory was that maybe she channeled pain, too, in her own way.

  On Saturday, after a full week working at the factory, the slightest smile formed on Aunt Kay’s face as she watched The Newlyweds. Kay had once been a newlywed, a young beauty, working as a hostess on passenger trains, from South Station to New York City. Kay introduced me to survival skills many women never learn—living without any extras, no frills, no fat, only necessity, a poker face, another plane of consistency.

  Her unwavering stoicism was remarkable. When her husband left her, with five children to raise by herself, she went on, without histrionics, living her life and never looking back. Maybe she learned her cool demeanor in her childhood, and had figured out how to take crisis on the chin and keep it movin’.

  Auntie Barbara—who lived upstairs in an early 1900s brick town house Agatha owned in Roxbury—was the polar opposite of her sister Kay. Barbara had a fabulous disposition, and anyone who met her noticed her hourglass figure. Mother of three, and a longtime factory employee of Raytheon, she was married to Uncle Norman for more than forty years. Norman had been stricken by polio in his young life but went to work every day as an elevator operator.

  Playing in the softball games at the cookout, Uncle Norman was a standout athlete. Aunt Barbara cheered him on as he swung the bat and sent the ball over the ridge of tall pines and into the woods. It was impressive. Barbara epitomized wifely and womanly pride in her man. To see Uncle Norman make it to first base in a series of choreographed skips, hops, and limps, then fall down, wrestle himself up again, then fall down a second time, laughing and continuing to run in spite of his polio, made him a champion in my eyes.

  Barbara gladly took the two acres that her mother offered her and kept a pink trailer on it. I was fortunate to have a close enough relationship with her that she could be honest with me about the difference between hygiene in the wilderness and hygiene in the city.

  “When you come to Boston, Vicki, you have to change your clothes more than once a week,” Barbara said. I was embarrassed, but I took the information in stride, not realizing it would come in handy later.

  Aunt Joan was another straight shooter. She was tougher than Kay—gangsta’ tough, hard as nails when she had to be—mixed with the same warmth, humor, and affection that I got from Barbara. One summer when Agatha jetted off to her cherished Montserrat, I went to stay in the projects of Lynn, Massachusetts, where Aunt Joan lived with her husband and their seven children.

  As my foster sister, aunt, and now respite mother, Joan laid it all on the line: “You’ll eat what’s on the table or not at all.” She warned me to forget about my finicky eating habits, my culinary likes and dislikes; there would be none of that in her house. I would have to eat the liver and rice just like everyone else and I did.

  I remember all the commotion when I overhead that Aunt Joan’s husband, a security guard at the time, had committed suicide. Aunt Joan, like her sister Kay, was left with seven children to raise by herself, which she did successfully; she would later say to me, “Vicki, the best medicine is learning how to laugh.” This was Joan’s way of dealing with her pain, of which she had plenty.

  Sylvia confirmed for me that a person could be born into a family and be completely different from all those in it. Agatha’s fourth daughter, Sylvia was named after her paternal grandmother and was soft-spoken and fragile, a flower. She was graceful and gentle, undoubtedly a Wooten woman. I watched her, the mother of three who adopted two more, unload her station wagon, finally arriving after a long drive from Long Island, New York, with her husband, Bill, who was afraid of cats. Later Sylvia would have to endure the tragic loss of one of her beloved sons, Barry, a painter and artist, whom I kept in touch with, further aggravating her delicate constitution.

  As the cookout began to wind down, more out-of-towners started to leave. Among them were the Philadelphia Armsteads—Uncle Roger, who worked as a postal worker, his then wife Marilyn, and their four sons. Aunt Marilyn, a statuesque redhead, was Marilyn Monroe sexy an
d she knew it, flaunted it, and made no apology for being the modern-day Venus of the family.

  Who could have predicted that Roger and Marilyn’s son, Roger Armstead Jr., would one day be party to an arranged marriage? Who would be his bride? My sister, Sheree. Agatha carefully cultivated a courtship between her grandson and her foster daughter. Prior to the marriage, Sheree had become pregnant when she was seventeen by her first love. To see Sheree, a young mother, find family stability after such a tumultuous youth made me think I might do the same for myself one day.

  The unpredictability of life, love, marriage, and children was a running theme at the cookout, that year and every year. As the Robert Armstead Jr. crew began to pack the car to head back to Dorchester, they represented to me the bedrock of marital and family stability. Aunt Joanne, mother to four children, had a gracious, calm spirit. Sometimes there was a hint of an outsider in her, as though she didn’t completely belong to the club, something with which I couldn’t help but identify. Or maybe I had gravitated toward her because of her kindness.

  Over the next several years, she and Uncle “Junie,” as we called him, were happy and compatible, from all appearances. Junie was a Boston cop, part of the elite K-9 force, with his much-loved police dog Geta as his German shepherd sidekick—and later a half wolf/half German shepherd he insisted on training in his backyard, causing a bit of a ruckus in the neighborhood. Out on duty one day, Uncle Junie heard a woman screaming, went to investigate, and found her being accosted. An officer of the law and a compassionate citizen, Junie rescued her. The woman happened to be white and was an ex-exotic dancer. Junie, feeling no compulsion to justify his actions, moved the woman and her daughter in with his wife and children, and then fell in love with her. Not in any particular order. Not long after, Joanne retreated quietly to build a life for herself, and Junie brought the woman and her daughter to Maine to meet Ma. The little girl and I played together as Ma pulled from her reserves and all of her best Emily Post etiquette in an attempt to make this son’s guest feel welcome. I couldn’t help but look at Uncle Junie and this wounded woman and think back to when Dorothy visited Forest Edge with a black soldier. There was something incredibly bare about both women, something heartbreaking.

  When Uncle Ronnie and Velma signaled that it was time for their departure from the cookout, I lingered close by, holding my breath, knowing that Uncle Richie planed to make a special request of his brother Ronald. Before final good-byes were said, Uncle Richie told his brother that their mother was trying to locate a ballet school for me. He asked Ronnie, “What would you and Velma say to sponsoring Vicki with her ballet classes?”

  Ronnie didn’t say no, and he didn’t say yes. He laughed, and laughed some more. He couldn’t seem to catch his breath. He all but said, “Are you crazy?”

  I stood there frozen, composing myself because I owed that effort out of gratitude to Uncle Richie, and deference to Ma, who did not deserve to have my hurt show at the end of her special day. Within minutes, I brought myself to join her in waving good-bye as the Connecticut Armsteads and the two tired poodles drove off in their Cadillac into the dusk.

  Staying at Forest Edge in the attic guest quarters were Raymond and his new wife, Francine. The first time Raymond brought her to meet Agatha, the sun was setting and she appeared out in the front garden as though backlit, like a goddess. There I was in my usual dusty braids, slack-jawed at how effortlessly her long, flowing hair framed her face and her almost adolescent body. In her sassy ruffled midriff shirt, she was right out of the centerfold of Jet magazine—Beauty of the Week.

  Francine pulled off a look like it was magic. To achieve that glorious head of hair, every night she rolled it on humongous curlers, the kind you saw in Spanish Harlem. She traveled with her own egg-shaped beauty-salon-type hair dryer, hood and all. There was a lot she could teach me. But it was more than the look. Francine, only about nineteen years old when Raymond married her, taught me about Attitude. She was a guide to flirting, social dancing, betting at cards and at the racetrack, and being sexy at all those things. Being fabulous, standing there, flaunting her fineness.

  Nobody else had ever shown me that kind of vanity. She had collections of earrings, shoes, perfumes, cosmetics. White frosted lipstick with white frosted eyeshadow to match. It was theater, baby, and I wanted a little of what Francine had. She started me off when she told me to put my earlobes between two ice cubes. Shortly after piercing my ears with a needle and thread as she tied a knot at the end, she said, “Sometimes beauty hurts.” I was on my way.

  Later, Francine caught me off guard when she said it was amusing that I was planning a career in ballet. If she didn’t take my ambition seriously, however, someone who did early on was my Aunt Laura Armstead, Uncle Richie’s wife. An attractive, extremely fastidious, highly motivated mother of two, Laura had married Richard Armstead, a police officer, to escape an oppressive environment where she was growing up with a divorced father and a stepmother. Tall, with a reserved poise and a clear intelligence, Laura received her teaching degree from Boston State College and taught in the city’s public school system for forty years. When I later lived in her household, I would have a very difficult time adjusting to her cool demeanor, as Agatha’s maternal warmth had been such a staple. At the same time, I admired the devotion she showed to her two daughters, the extra hours she contributed to making sure they had access to everything she didn’t—private schools, speech therapy, ice skating, and, yes, ballet.

  That’s why, when Agatha reminded Laura, “And don’t forget to check on some names of ballet schools for Vicki for next summer,” Laura nodded her head and promised to do just that.

  What is most prominent as the curtain fell on that particular cookout, as with every yearly celebration, with the happy hordes leaving, some to stay over, some to wander down to their trailers, others driving back to the big cities, is the sight of a petite sixty-five-year-old woman—who year-round collected seeds and romanced the idea of greatness from a garden not only for herself but for all who wanted to sit at her banquet table—giving each and every one a part of Forest Edge as they departed.

  That is collectively what I learned most from the Wooten and Armstead women: the joy of giving. For Agatha, it was her moment of greatest pleasure as she cut her best blooms from her garden, wrapped them in newspaper, and lovingly gave them away.

  Over the years, I collected treasures that aunts, sisters, mentors, friends, and mothers had given me in every form imaginable. I saved every letter, note, and postcard—all holding remarkable energy.

  All of my aunts were extensions of Agatha. She is best remembered standing in the middle of the dirt stretch of Barley Road, with night approaching, gazing with satisfaction at the little faces pressed up against the glass in the backseats of cars, arms reaching out windows to wave good-bye, her waving back, long after the cars have driven out of sight.

  PART TWO

  MENTORS, FOSTERERS, GRANDE DAMES

  (1968–1983)

  For those filled with the spirit of the true dance, it is a lifetime of giving. Art conceals art to reveal on stage the appearance of effortless expression. The desire consumes. There is no satisfactory substitute. Once felt, the only release is to perform. Inspired by the legend of Karsavina or Nijinsky, Fonteyn or Nureyev, the child must dance. And school’s rigorous discipline is happily endured to that great end—the first performance.

  CHARLES MURLAND,

  “CHILDREN TO THE DANCE”

  FOUR

  ESTHER BROOKS

  Agatha firmly believed that when a child turned ten years old it was reason enough to celebrate. She did not think that turning sweet sixteen was as important a milestone in a child’s life as living an entire decade, 3,650 days, on Earth. That really impressed her. She had already faced the fragility of a child’s life when her baby Ralphie, one of the twins, died at five months old. Agatha knew that childhood could be cruel as well as short. After all, she was the one who had to extract me from a heartbrok
en Bertha Taylor when I was two years old.

  As my ninth birthday approached, Agatha began planning a tenth birthday party for me. She knew with certainty that I was on my way to somewhere, so she decided to take the liberty of celebrating my ninth birthday late and my tenth birthday very early, combining that purpose with a going-away bash. All of the children on Barley Road were invited to the Saturday afternoon party. The highlights were Ma’s homemade cake and a game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey. With tape attached to a paper tail we delightfully played the game with a neighbor’s actual burro. For this party, Agatha gave me my first introduction to party planning. Every detail was addressed and carried out to the fullest extent. She passed me her Brownie camera, instructed me to look down into the small square magnifying lens, frame the party guests, and press the button.

  Agatha wanted this day to be momentous and memorable. We both knew I was a year shy of turning ten, yet the gravity of what was before us dictated that perhaps we would not be together for my tenth birthday, and she wanted me to have the same experience she had given my two older sisters.

  For nearly a year, Agatha had conducted a full-court press to locate an accredited, accessible, and affordable ballet school for me. Her effort was fueled not only by a belief that ballet was going to be important in my future, but also by my passion to dance and by my desire to study. By the spring of 1968, however, her search looked to be a losing proposition.

  That was until the phone rang on the evening of my last day of third grade. We shared a party line with a number of neighboring farms, but each house had a coded ring. For instance, the Amadons had three consecutive rings, the Gothwhites had one ring, and Forest Edge had two. We all shared a common trust that we wouldn’t listen in on each other’s conversations. Such we assumed to be the case when Agatha listened intently to the caller. Saying very little, she nodded her head, as if confirming information she already knew. Before hanging up, she did say, “That’s the ticket, Laura; we’re cookin’ with gas now! I’ll make arrangements with Vicki’s social worker and be in touch.”