‘We have sent a last-ditch telex to Washington. It’s night over there, so the office is unattended. I’ll be putting a man on duty here all night, to sit beside the telex machine waiting for the reply. As soon as an answer comes in, that man will phone me—and I’ll phone you. It could be at three or four in the morning, is that alright?’
My daughter and I had been packing and unpacking all week, unable to come to grips with whether we were actually going or not, and here it was, Friday afternoon and we still had no entry visa. I momentarily cursed every demonstration I had attended in an effort to gain freedom for anyone else, Angela Davis in particular. This feeling quickly passed, but I still could do nothing to ease my stress levels.
‘Sure,’ I mumbled, heading for the door. Turning, tears hovering behind my eyes, I thanked Ken for all the effort he was putting in on my behalf.
‘I’m sorry. Stay strong. I’ll talk with you later tonight,’ I heard as I made my hasty exit.
‘Naomi, have you finished packing?’ I asked as I arrived home.
Miss Smarty-pants replied, ‘Well, have you got the visas?’
‘You just leave the visas to me, and finish packing your suitcase. That’s all you’ve got to do—so now do it.’ My external bravado was the only thing left for me to sail on, so I was using it.
I completed my own packing, right down to the little gifts of Indigenous Australiana and books which I was taking for my hosts and any others who might render me an important service. Then I waited.
The call didn’t come until almost eight o’clock the next morning, and then it was a woman’s voice on the phone. My instinctive reaction was to imagine that another negative response had been received, and that Ken, no longer able to share and bear my misery, had arranged for someone else to give me the bad news. But no, a telex had come in from Washington around 5 am, authorising their office to issue me with a thirty-day visa. The woman said she had put off phoning to tell me because she thought I might be asleep.
A thirty-day visa—to study for nine months? Perhaps I was going to be required to renew the visa every month, so the security agents could keep their eye on me, I thought, a little hysterically. I didn’t know what sort of powerful agitator I was supposed to be, starting perhaps a second civil revolution at a bastion of conservatism such as I understood Harvard to be.
As the Consul’s office only opened from Monday to Friday, the woman said she would wait there especially for me, and would I please arrive at 11.30. So, on Saturday the United States Consulate opened just for me, and as Naomi and I were due at the international airport at 12.15, there was only a very small margin for error.
7
It is 12 July, 1980. I stare out the window in complete bewilderment. Am I really on my way to Harvard?
I’d like to fall asleep, but instead my mind ticks over frantically, trying to come to terms with our departure and make sense of the past few weeks.
It had not been until we were actually at the airport, leaving our few well-wishers to move towards the departure lounge, that the reality of our leaving had struck Naomi. She had burst into tears, and her brother had moved in, himself moist-eyed, and held her in his embrace until she had settled down.
This was to be their first separation for anything longer than a few weeks, a fact which had weighed heavily on my mind. They had always seemed to tease each other mercilessly. However, when Naomi began going alone to stay with my mother during her school holidays, Mum reported that she’d spent the entire time talking about Russel. ‘I wonder what Russel’s doing now,’ Naomi would say at regular periods throughout the day, until Mum became weary and in exasperation said, ‘He’s gone to bed, he’s sleeping, and that’s exactly where you ought to be.’ Russel, too, had pined for his small companion, and planned activities and surprises for her on her return.
Naomi had taken his attention for granted, especially the protection he extended to her at all times. Living away from him would be a growing experience for her, help her to learn to stand alone.
My ex-husband, William, Naomi’s father, had, surprisingly, sent her a few hundred dollars with which to buy warm clothing when he’d learned she was going with me. From time to time, my mother had tried to get me to make Naomi write to him and ask him for money. But, as he had never corresponded with her or even called from year to year to see how she was faring, I had refused. ‘Mum, Naomi doesn’t have to beg to get her food off me, and she shouldn’t think she has to beg to get food off her father. Girls shouldn’t be taught that they have to beg off men,’ I countered.
When his cheque arrived out of the blue, Naomi had been overjoyed and danced around. She had no doubt missed having a father active in her life. Russel, though, brought her quickly back to earth. Ever the mathematician, he pointed out: ‘This cheque represents less than five cents a day over all the years he has never sent you anything. Wake up, Nome, it’s Mum who always gives you things.’
My mother’s response to the news that I was going to Harvard for nine months was far from supportive. ‘you’re biting off more than you can chew this time, my girl. You’ll come a cropper, you’ve always been too big for your boots,’ she said initially, shades of her talks during my younger years when she had urged me to be satisfied with washing beer-soaked towels and urine-stained sheets in the back of Townsville’s Central Hotel. When the article had appeared on the Sydney Morning Herald’s front page, she wrote, ‘Well, the whole world’s going to be watching to see you fall now. I wished you had taken notice of me and shelved this stupid idea. You can only come to grief.’
When this line of argument hadn’t worked, Mum had changed tack, coming down to Sydney to personally plead her case. ‘I’m an old woman now and if you go away, I’ll die. It’s time for me to die. So, is that what you want—to be out of the country while I’m lying dying?’
‘Mum, it’s only for nine months. Do you think you can hang on for just that long?’ In response, she had pursed her lips with displeasure. On the eve of her return to Tweed Heads, she said, ‘Well, okay, I can see you’re determined to go. So give me your address. I’ll write—and you make sure you write too.’
‘But I don’t have an address yet, Mum.’
‘I see. You don’t want me to write to you. Well, if that’s the way you want it—’
‘Here,’ I replied, scrambling for my diary, ‘I’ll give you the address of the school I’m attending. Write to me there. I’ll let you know as soon as I have a proper address.’ The papers I had received from Harvard had explicitly stated that students should not use the school as their address, but what the heck. Overseas students, especially those with persistent mothers, didn’t have much option.
Professor Chester Pierce had earlier written that I should plan to arrive in Boston a few weeks before school was due to start in September, so that I could orientate myself and be ready when classes began. I had written to Charlotte Meachem, a Quaker whom I had met in 1972, and with whom I’d intermittently corresponded since that time, advising her that I was flying through Hawaii, where she now lived. Charlotte invited me to break my journey in Honolulu, and said she would find me somewhere to stay. As well, my dear friend Andre Reese, whom I always called Ande, had moved for a while from Australia back to her home in Los Angeles. And she also invited me to stopover on the way.
I had been reluctant to accept these invitations due to the urgency I felt burning away in my stomach, and because it was always on my mind that anything not directly connected to my work was ‘wasting time’. The stresses I had encountered in my preparation for departure, however, had created unimaginable tension. So the idea of stretching flat out on my back on the sands of Honolulu for a few days was enormously attractive, as was the promise of ‘hanging out’ with an old running friend whom I knew to be a very social creature, capable of having a ‘good time’. Naomi was keen to stop in Los Angeles. ‘That’s where Disneyland is, isn’t it, Mum? We’ve got to stop there.’ Indeed, I felt Naomi, once she’d visited Disneyl
and, would have been quite happy just to return home.
For reasons I have since forgotten, our plane was very late arriving in Honolulu. Charlotte’s husband was ill with cancer, dying in fact, so she had delegated a young woman to meet us. Even after the plane landed, we continued to be delayed. I was held up initially at the Immigration counter, where my passport and visa were thoroughly inspected. The officer, after an equally long scrutiny of a screen on his counter, waved me through, saying, ‘Well, have a good time, Bobbi.’ I suppose I shouldn’t have been shocked by this, but I was because my passport carried my full name, Roberta. Obviously his computer screen had provided him with this information.
We were further held up at the Customs counter. ‘Do you have anything to declare? No. Well, are you carrying gifts?’
‘I have a few books in my suitcase, for friends.’
Naomi, who had inserted herself between me and the officer and desperately wanted to be included, to be acknowledged as part of the action, a traveller in her own right, piped up, ‘Yes, and I’ve got lots of Mummy’s books in my suitcase too.’
Will I, the thought flashed through my mind, just strangle her here and now, or will I continue to drag this loose-mouthed child across America until eventually she drops something into a conversation that will cause us to be sent home or arrested?
Charlotte had found a house for us that belonged to one of her friends. It was wonderful, secure and cosy, with every possible amenity, but instead of being on the beach, it was nestled in a suburb high on a mountain. Each morning when we rose, it was cold. We would dress warmly, catch a bus into town, then have to discard almost all our clothes, the difference in temperature being so great. Instead of my being able to lie sprawled on the sand and rest, Naomi wanted to go everywhere, see everything and do everything. Her energy was boundless, while I had none at all. Still, I traipsed after her as she charged from place to place.
I spoke to Charlotte daily on the phone, and, as she lived at a remote location, went out to visit her just once. She didn’t like to leave her husband alone. The young woman whom she had sent to meet us took us on a tour around the island, pointing out volcanoes and other points of interest, drove us to meet a couple of Native Hawaiian friends of Charlotte’s, and organised other social events that were suitable for both an adult and a child. I felt the few whirlwind days we spent there were really interesting, this being my first trip to the country, but they were not the rest for which I desperately yearned.
Ande lived in a free-standing duplex in Crenshaw, a suburb in Los Angeles. Her mother, a former beautician and practising Buddhist, lived on the ground floor while Ande, her husband and their family lived above. Ande immediately recognised my exhaustion and organised for Naomi to be largely taken off my hands by other members of the household.
An energetic and feisty woman, Ande and I had formed a close friendship since 1974. I had been introduced to her as a filmmaker by Roberta Flack, the Black American singer who’d been giving a free concert for the Black community at the Black Theatre in Redfern. I had been absolutely thrilled for Ande when, in 1976, just two years after arriving in Australia, she won the Benson & Hedges Award for her documentary Sunrise Awakening. She had filmed it at the same theatre around a multi-faceted Aboriginal arts workshop which had been held there. She was a talented and experienced cinematic artist, and had brought to Australia the skills she had learned in Hollywood. However, they had largely been ignored and left to wither by Australian arts funding bodies, which had found it easy to disregard Black Australians in this genre and were not about to cave in easily to applications for funds from a Black American, however laudable her previous successes.
Ande surprised me by arranging what felt like a never-ending series of ‘dates’ for me with tall, dark and handsome Black men, all of whom were her cousins. I was dined and danced all over town. Ande herself took me to a party in Nichols Canyon, hosted by Roslyn Heller, and it was obvious she was well known and respected in filming circles. It was at this party that I met Sam Waterson, perhaps best known now for his role in The Killing Fields as well as his ongoing position in the television series Law and Order. A Yale graduate, when he heard that I was on my way to Harvard, he jumped up with the old school rivalry, dumping on Harvard and asking why I wasn’t going to the ‘top’ school, Yale. ‘Because they didn’t invite me,’ I had replied, neatly nipping his argument in the bud.
Ande had given a copy of my poetry book, Love Poems and Other Revolutionary Action, to her friend, writer, poet and broadcaster, Wanda Coleman. When Wanda came around to meet me, I felt honoured to be in the presence of such a talented and eccentric artist, and we got on like a house on fire. Our chat spread out over several hours of an afternoon and early evening, during which time she read to me some of her work and, surprisingly, some of my own which she told me she regarded as great. Suddenly I was startled to hear helicopters approaching. Wanda, however, hardly looked up from a piece she was reading on the policing of Los Angeles. She just kept raising her voice to make herself heard above the noise. At last I could bear it no longer. I leaped up and ran to the window, and saw there, hovering outside the house, just above roof level, two police helicopters. They were so close that their whirring propellers were stirring the dust on the street in front of us.
‘That’s Los Angeles policing,’ yawned Wanda, as I watched heavily armed men in riot gear on the ground bolting over fences and through backyards. They were being directed in their pursuit from the copters above, just one block over from where I stood.
Good grief, I thought, as I moved away from the window, concerned that I might have been hit by a stray bullet if anyone was to open fire. The thought struck me, however, that I had already been shot at, my flat fire-bombed, and been the recipient of death threats in Australia. If I were to be shot in America, it would at least only be by accident, not purposely directed at me, as would have been the case at home. This small measure of anonymity reassured me, and despite my feeling of ever-present danger, I felt somehow comforted by this realisation.
I went looking for Native American community organisations in LA, without a great deal of success. Only two were listed in the local telephone directory under names which would be immediately recognisable. I went to visit the one nearest where I was staying, the other was too difficult for anyone trying to get around on public transport. When I arrived, there was only one young woman in attendance, talking desultorily into the phone for most of the time I was there. I had hoped to find perhaps an art or cultural display, even some pamphlets on organisations or local events. But when I asked the girl she shrugged and went back to the phone. Perhaps, I thought, I will need to get out of the cities to find these American kin, and such a visit will probably take a great deal more to arrange than just catching a bus across town.
The Inner-City Cultural Centre, Ande told me, was a ‘must’ on my schedule. This time I called first to ascertain that there would be somebody in attendance to provide me with information, before I trooped across town. Los Angeles is a most difficult place to get around for anyone without a car.
I need not have worried, the place was booming with activity when I turned up. There were dozens of mainly young people carrying on all manner of artistic activities. They were drawn, so I was told, from as many cultural groups as they could attract. The Centre was a haven, particularly, for people of mixed descent, and I saw many youngsters with Asian/Mexican/Indian, as well as black and white, ancestry milling about.
I agreed to say a few words to the students about what it was like to be in Black in Australia. And all those engaged in the singing, dancing and acting classes assembled to hear me. Under the direction of Bernard (just call me Jack) Jackson, who became a close friend until his death more than fifteen years later, the Centre provided a meeting place and opportunity for learning and exposure for many talented young people trying to break into show business in this difficult, ruthless and hard-hearted town.
Another friend from yore, Taly
a Ferro, a Black singer and entertainer whom I had met in Australia, again through Ande, took Naomi and me to her house in Hollywood. She then arranged, much to Naomi’s relief, to take us to Disneyland. In my mind’s eye I see Talya still, in her high-heeled shoes, initially trying to keep up with Naomi—the child berserk in this fantasyland—until eventually we just let her have her head and go, hoping she’d get into no harm. Talya and I sat resting our feet and sipping cool drinks, and waited for her.
I had been concerned that, during the three years since I had attended his lecture, I may have forgotten Professor Pierce’s face. From his regular and supportive letters, he felt like an old and familiar friend, but would I recognise him when I saw him? And if he failed to meet us at the airport in this strange city, what would we do?
I need not have been concerned because as Naomi and I made our exit from the plane in Boston, he was there. His happy face was so glowing at our arrival that it was impossible to miss him. He picked up our heavy suitcases, which Naomi and I had dragged through all the terminals, as though they were packed with feathers. Then he whisked us into a car and away, home to meet his wife Patsy and daughter Deirdre. They had made space for us in their large basement. We were to stay with their family until I started at school.
‘Just call me Chet, and this is Patsy’ he told us. ‘Everybody else does.’
It wasn’t true, of course. As a Professor on two Harvard faculties, Medicine and Education, an eminent psychiatrist and world-renowned scientist and consultant to NASA, a mountain at the South Pole named in his honour, Chef’s name and achievements struck awe and respect into the hearts of almost everyone he came in contact with.
We had barely got settled, creases knocked out of our travel clothes, when Chet took us off to show us around Harvard University and grounds. A long-legged and extremely athletic man, he set a breakneck pace which even the active Naomi had trouble maintaining, much less her slower mother. Chet pointed out Widener and almost every other library on Cambridge campus, the very famous Harvard Yard and Peabody and other museums. Finally, it was time for Chef’s favourite treat, hamburgers.
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