The Women Who Raised Me

by Victoria Rowell

  Not far from the dentist’s office was where one of Ma’s mystical encounters had taken place, at the John Eliot Burying Ground—a cemetery that dated back to 1630—when a woman approached her to ask for money. Ma gave her a quarter. Something substantial. The woman thanked her, then proceeded to bury the coin in the aboveground cemetery. Ma tried not to stare, so then looked away and within two blinks of an eye the woman vanished into thin air. This wasn’t strange in Agatha Armstead’s cosmology. Ma explained to me, “Obviously the woman was an angel just testing me.”

  That story made sense to me as someone who would always believe in the mystery of circumstances and that not everything that happened had an obvious explanation. I would come into contact with that woman in various guises on many occasions in my life.

  The first time was in connection to an incident that had taken place early that fall of 1968 when I was returning from ballet class on a new route that Agatha had just mapped out for me. We had only recently moved to Roxbury and our telephone hadn’t been connected yet.

  In case of an emergency, I carried an extra dime and a piece of paper with the number of Agatha’s daughter Barbara, who lived in the upstairs apartment at the brownstone. After I dutifully repeated to Agatha exactly what the route was, she was satisfied that all would go well.

  And it did, until I arrived at a major underground artery, Washington Street Station. This was where I was supposed to change trains but the lack of familiarity confused me as to how to proceed next.

  A young black man in a green leather blazer saw my confusion and offered his assistance. I declined, shaking my head no, knowing it was wrong to talk to strangers. Still lost a half hour later, I looked down from a platform and saw him at the bottom of a flight of stairs. This time I accepted his help.

  Speaking softly, he suggested that I call home and let everyone know I was going to be fine, and then directed me to a pay phone in the subway. I took out the dime and Barbara’s phone number just as the man slithered into the telephone booth with me, closing the door behind him. My hand shook as I dropped the dime and dialed.

  With relief, I heard Barbara’s cheerful, “Hello,” and I began to explain that a nice man was helping me find my way back home. But before she could respond or I could continue, he grabbed the receiver from my hand and hung it up.

  In the blur that followed, I saw a swirl of many people passing by the phone booth, rushing to get to the same place I was desperate to get back to: home. My natural survival instincts now alerted me, indicating that I was in great danger as he took me by the shoulder, pushing me out of the subway, toward the construction site for a new Jordan Marsh department store, and then down a dirt path in back of it.

  Walking with serious trepidation, I asked, “Are you sure this is the right way?”

  The man replied, “Yes, it’s a shortcut.” Now completely obscured by walls, he slammed me against a brick building and warned me, at knifepoint, “If you run, I’ll have to cut you.”

  Fright and flight battled for supremacy as I felt the heat of my own urine pour down my legs, wetting my leotard and tights. But in the split second he paused to raise his hand, I ran for my life. Those moments between moments when time can’t be measured, I flew. Racing furiously down a dirt path, gasping for air, I went past the construction, all in more of a blur.

  With his angry panting behind me, I pushed faster, soon stumbling frantically back down the subway stairs. Unable to breathe, I began to convulse, when I turned around to find him on my heels. Inexplicably, out of nowhere came an elderly woman, who raised her cane in his face, warning him, “You leave her alone!”

  I begged her not to leave me alone, and she didn’t. The old lady limped with me to the train connection that I needed to make, appealing to another perfect stranger who delivered me all the way home. She was most definitely one of the angels Ma had long tried to teach me about.

  To my further relief, I managed to avoid questions from Agatha that night, as I stood with my back to her, washing out my leotard and tights, crying into the sink.

  For the rest of the year, I rode the train in complete terror, knowing that he was looking for me as much as I was looking for him—a necessary process for sharpening my survival skills.

  By late fall 1968, even though life in Roxbury—the “Bury” to us locals—had begun to toughen me up somewhat, I was still very much a fish out of water, especially in contrast to the girls in my fourth-grade class at St. Patrick’s. Lauren Turner was a true case in point. As pretty as she could be and the most popular girl in our class, Lauren was a real toughie, and even led a clique, a kind of black Catholic schoolgirl gang.

  Imagine my surprise one day at school, when I happened to show up wearing the same green cardigan she had in her own wardrobe and she sent one of her sidekicks to tell me, “Lauren Turner’s gonna beat you up if you wear her sweater again.”

  Not saying anything, I gave her a blank stare. I was proud of my green pilled cardigan; it was the only one I had, and I fearlessly wore it the next day.

  Not only did Lauren Turner not beat me up, but when she discovered that my Zodiac sign was Taurus, like hers, we became best friends. From early on and into adolescence, Lauren amazed me by how comfortable she was with using her sensual good looks to taunt and tantalize the boys. Her striking almond-shaped eyes and their exotic tilt were made even more pronounced by how tightly her various Afrocentric dos were pulled back. She had a high forehead, glisteningly perfect skin, and all she had to do was cast a look in the direction of some boy and she would have him coming and going, like a bull with a ring through his nose that she could pull at will. Lauren had mastered attitude, that feminine stance, which in the ’hood is a very different thing from the ballet pose of attitude that I knew.

  “Vicki, put your feet together,” she said one day early in our friendship, rolling her eyes at my constant “corny” turnout. I tried putting my feet together in parallel but then it became apparent that while my ballet training had me tucking my tailbone under, girls in the Bury were flipping theirs out. I just had to learn how to stand two different ways. Lauren demonstrated a slightly separated fourth position as I followed along. “Good, now, put your hand on your hip, and rock back.” She was the prima ballerina of our neighborhood.

  I still needed practice in my stances, the various attitudes, the sucking of teeth and gum-chewing techniques. I still had to learn that hair wasn’t just hair in the ’hood; it was a lifestyle and could define who you were. Everyone wore different versions of Afro puff hairdos except for me and one other girl, Clarissa Townes, who had green eyes, light skin, and long, long brown braids. Eventually, I was given enough grief that when someone told me if I washed my hair in vinegar it could create an Afro, I gave it a try. Not only didn’t it work, but my hair smelled like vinegar for at least a week.

  Then again, as a serious student of ballet, I had to learn another set of hairstyling rules. Traveling between different worlds as I did on a daily basis, I became very skilled at adapting. This is an essential tool for any foster child, not merely to fit in, but to do so with frequency, sometimes at a moment’s notice. Yet it was also important to have my own ground to stand on, my own sense of self, a sense of where my home really existed. Dancing gave that to me. It was freedom and safety. My church. My sanctuary.

  Dance class was where I was headed, in fact, for another shot of inspiration, on what was a memorably crisp midafternoon of that first Monday of December back at St. Patrick’s after the Thanksgiving holiday. With nothing else out of the ordinary, I went through my usual odyssey of transportation, taking a bus, two trains, and a trolley from Roxbury to Cambridge.

  As I walked down Massachusetts Avenue, the smell of smoke was distinct and I could see the commotion ahead. A crowd of familiar and unfamiliar faces, spectators, police officers directing traffic, and photographers, along with firefighters gripping hoses, crisscrossed the avenue from all directions, still extinguishing the last stubborn vestiges of what had be
en a ferocious blaze. In total shock, I saw the remains of the Cambridge School of Ballet. It had been burned to the ground, only the brick shell remained. On all four corners, people gathered, aghast at the sight. I stood there with them, looking up at “my world” in smoke and flames. The smattering of students, mostly from the Bury, were commanded to return to our respective homes immediately. But I was home and could not be moved. I could not leave my dream. Instead, I stepped into the cut of a factory doorway across the street and watched the spectacle in horror. In shock, I had no recollection of how I got back to 48 Burrell Street that fateful afternoon.

  It was later confirmed that the fire was set by locals—two white teenage boys, one of whom was allegedly the son of a high-ranking police officer—because of anger over the influx of black students. My fear was soon realized—that everything had been burned in the fire: irreplaceable, one of a kind, Russian tutus that had been given as gifts to Esther, which she had carefully preserved as patterns for new ones, as well as costumes, sheet music, pianos, school and office records, ballet films, photography and books, furniture, my trunk. Memorabilia. A lifetime of work. In a way this was the closest I would ever come to witnessing a public lynching. It was also the first time I learned that Esther had lived for many years with police security because of the death threats she received. This taught me the sacrifice required of leadership.

  When the last embers were out and the smoke had cleared, Esther insisted on returning to the wreckage to salvage anything that was left. On a hunch, she decided to search for the school’s safe, and her husband, Peter, climbed down into the pit of ashes, managing to both locate and open it. Inside, where they had been originally left to stay dry, were several pairs of perfectly intact, new pink satin pointe shoes. A tiny miracle, but one that would sustain Esther during the regrouping process.

  Within two weeks we were up and running again in our new home in the basement of the First Church in Cambridge Congregational, built in 1633. Located across from Radcliffe campus, it told me that I was still in the Ivy League. Esther took out ads in local newspapers, alerting her students and their families to return to class at once.

  Esther stayed long enough to pass the torch to her successor, Carol Jordan, but when I learned in the spring of 1969 that the Brooks family was moving to Florence, Italy, I was inconsolable. In the same time frame, Agatha moved back to Forest Edge. The escalation of violence and crime in Roxbury were taking too much of a toll on her weakening body. We decided together that I should stay in Boston and continue my studies with the Cambridge School of Ballet and not return with her to the farm. There were a series of back and forths, however, that would at least reunite us for short periods, both in Roxbury and at Forest Edge. While Sheree and Lori would continue at St. Patrick’s at certain points, staying with different Armstead family members, the three of us were rarely under one roof from then on. For the time being, I returned to Dorchester to live with Aunt Laura, Uncle Richie, and their daughters.

  My tenth birthday, which we had celebrated almost a year earlier, had finally arrived. It coincided with the start of my slow extrication from Agatha, marking the beginning of my adulthood.

  Esther’s departure from my immediate sphere left a permanent ache. At the same time, the teaching she had instilled in me was also permanent. In so many respects she would remain peerless. In the power of her wisdom, the power of her power, the graceful lilt of an arm; her voice.

  Starting from that first year that Esther went away we began exchanging correspondence. One of my favorite letters from her came that following Christmas from Florence, addressed to me at Forest Edge, where I was visiting for ten days:

  Dearest Vicki,

  Your letter was mailed so long ago that I am truly ashamed not to have written you long before this. Will you forgive me? You can’t imagine how much I think of you, and miss seeing you. It made me so happy to hear that you were on toe, also to hear that you are working hard. Mrs. de Mille wrote me that you had improved a great deal. If you keep working like that, some day you will surely be a beautiful dancer, and I will be proud that I had some small part in your dancing life….

  We will all go down after Christmas to the south of Italy to stay for two weeks in a little village called Positano. It is on the Mediterranean sea and built all up and down the side of a mountain. No cars are allowed there because the streets are much too narrow and steep, so if you want to go somewhere and it is too far to walk, you go on a donkey. Now you can think of us all riding around on donkeys and laugh.

  Dearest little Vicki, have a lovely Christmas. I shall think of you on Christmas day and will wish you then as I do now, all the happiness in the world, both in the present and in your future….

  Mountains of love, and a sugar plum tree full of kisses,

  Esther Brooks

  FIVE

  ROSA TURNER & BARBARA STERLING…& LINDA WEBB & CAROL JORDAN

  Between the ages of ten and fifteen, I benefited extraordinarily from the influence of several teachers, advocates, and surrogate fosterers who generously contributed to my growth, helping me make the difficult leap into my teen years. In particular, four women stand out as representing distinct roles in raising me.

  There was the steady force of Carol Jordan, Esther’s successor as director of the Cambridge School of Ballet, who was to prepare me, like no else could have, to compete at the highest levels of my discipline. Adding to the array of social workers who pulled strings on my behalf was Linda Webb, assigned to me when I was twelve years old because of my status as a “special case”—on account of my living out of state, studying classical ballet on a full scholarship, and not always living with Agatha, still my official primary foster mother. Barbara Sterling was a respite caregiver, representing the many willing part-time fosterers who couldn’t commit for an entire year but could foster me in my early teens for a weekend at a time. Rosa Turner became an official temporary foster mother during a good portion of a school year.

  Each of the women who raised me in these years left me with lasting lessons that came from their unique talents, while Rosa Turner, as though clairvoyant, most showed me the road into the future, letting me see there were treacherous roads ahead on my way to adulthood and providing me with the sustenance for my survival.

  All of these individuals, together with the agencies and institutions that were supporting me, collectively sent me the empowering message that they sincerely believed in me and wanted me to win. That sparked my desire not just to be good at ballet, but to be great. To be great, however, meant being fearless—to reach high, risk failure, falling, getting up and starting over. Lessons to be learned.

  No doubt Carol Jordan recognized that drive in me and cultivated it, taking over where Esther had left off, bringing her own brand of foundation building to the school and to me.

  Ms. Jordan, as all the students referred to her, was English, born in the working-class city of Birmingham. She not only left behind the poverty of her youth but, through unflinching determination and strong, classical athleticism, had overcome what was not the optimum physique for ballet. Ms. Jordan had nonetheless worked tirelessly to develop every muscle in her body, even her instep, eventually ascending the ranks as a teacher in the Royal Academy of Dance syllabus.

  In 1920, when RAD was conceived in England, the founders brought together the most esteemed names in the ballet world from different nationalities—including British, French, Russian, and Danish. Carol’s influence came from that versatile background and she also taught in the Vaganova system.

  In Russia in the late 1800s, Agrippa Vaganova had faced her own challenges as a dancer, because, it was whispered, “Vaganova doesn’t have the beauty to be a prima ballerina.” During the last year of her performing career she did indeed master the role of prima ballerina, and upon her retirement as a dancer, she taught some of the most legendary dancers, including none other than prima ballerina assoluta Maya Plisetskaya.

  Those were the rigors from which Carol
Jordan drew to become the stalwart of balletic discipline that she was. She exemplified the necessity of relentless training and performing experiences, never underestimating the lesson, no matter how small the venue. I was honored, at age twelve, when she chose me for a liturgical dance that I performed to Erik Satie’s Morceaux en forme de Poire, as part of a program presented at the First Church in Cambridge Congregational where we studied. For added inspiration, I loved the program notes that were handed out to the fairly sizable audience in which it was affirmed that the ancient tradition of dancing was to show delight in a relationship with God, an “inevitable and normal part of worship.”

  This was why, after all, the church had been providing a home for the Cambridge School of Ballet to hold classes in its basement, in support of the mission to provide artistic education and scholarship to so many children throughout the greater Boston area. The connection was not lost on me between what was happening in my corner of existence and what the worldwide mission was—to raise children up out of poverty everywhere. These were some of the seeds planted in me, allowing me to feel part of something integrally important, beyond myself. It mattered that somehow my performing that Sunday morning helped raise money to feed children thousands of miles away. This was an introduction to acting with purpose and the power of reciprocity, made possible wherever you stood or danced, and by Carol Jordan’s efforts—who sent me the loveliest notes, writing, “Thank you darling for the hard work & the joy you put into the ballet.”

  With incredible energy and conviction, Ms. Jordan led by example and lecture. There never was a class or rehearsal that she was late for. She demanded the same from her students. No nor’easter could keep her from teaching and neither could her two pregnancies. She demonstrated grands battements, pirouettes, tour jetés with ease and grace at every stage of her developing motherhood. This was proof to me that a woman could always excel by doing what she loved, and it was evidence that motherhood was filled with an energy that did not impede a woman’s passion; in fact, it seemed to increase it.