My grandmother Louise remained institutionalized until 1963, when her children, who had, despite it all, grown up and made good lives for themselves, managed to win her release. A cousin told me about that special day when Grandma Little came home.
“She was beautiful. Her thick, long silky hair was braided so neatly. She sat so peaceful, and almost motionless. The years of institutionalized, lonely self-talk had been her only reality.”
Grandma Little lived for a time in Michigan with her son Wilfred and spent the last six years of her life cozily nestled in a house adjoining a small grocery store owned by her daughter Yvonne.
I never met my grandmother. She died in 1989, before I had fully reconnected with that side of the family. I attended her funeral with my mother, and sitting among my aunts, uncles, and cousins I knew Louise Little's strength and spirit were not crushed by the injustices inflicted upon her, but remained very much alive.
By the time I was a sophomore in college, Mommy's career at Medgar Evers College of the City University of New York had blossomed. She was appointed director of institutional advancement and was fully involved in raising money for scholarships, activities, and programs for the school.
Her influence beyond the school had also begun to spread. She served as a volunteer presidential adviser on human rights issues, race relations, and children's issues to Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, and would later do the same for President Bill Clinton. She traveled across the country speaking at high school and college graduation ceremonies, spreading the truth about Malcolm X and his message. She told the world her husband's primary goal was the economic, political, and social empowerment of African Americans. Nothing more, nothing less.
“Malcolm's agenda was human rights, international sisterhood and brotherhood, self-determination, and self-defense,” she used to say.
Or, in my father's own words, “Why should White people be running all the stores in our community? Why should White people be running all the banks in our community? Why should the economy of our community be in the hands of the White man?
“Our people have to be made to see that any time you take your dollar out of your community and spend it in a community where you don't live, the community where you live will get poorer and poorer and the community where you spend will get richer and richer. Then you wonder why where you live is always a slum area.”
Mommy was also active in so many social and political organizations it would make any other person exhausted just to think about it: the NAACP, the Coalition of 100 Black Women, the Links, Jack and Jill, and, of course, her sorority, Delta Sigma Theta, to name a few. Now that her daughters were all getting older and heading off on their own, she was beginning the worldwide travels that would take her to Brazil, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, China, and other places in her continuing effort to improve the lives of struggling people everywhere.
But as busy as she was, Mommy always made her daughters priority one. And she found time to mentor and advise our friends and other African American women throughout the country. She developed a reputation for encouraging women, especially in their careers. She had begun the unofficial mentoring of hundreds of young women and she would continue this for the rest of her life. Here's an example: I remember once a young woman came to her, afraid and upset. She was pregnant and her mother, ashamed and angry, wanted to send her south to have the child. But the girl wanted desperately to stay in Westchester and finish high school. So my mother helped create a program that was geared toward helping pregnant teenagers finish their education instead of dropping out.
My mother's desire to give stemmed both from her own naturally generous heart, from Muslim duties, and from the pain she had experienced. If you're the kind of person Betty Shabazz was, once you've experienced suffering and know in your bones how much it hurts, you don't want to see anyone else go through the same thing. I think Mommy reached out so much because she had needed someone to do the same for her after Daddy was assassinated. She knew what it felt like to need someone to hug you and say “Everything's going to be all right.”
That desire to give, to reach out, and reach back was present in me, too, even when I was unsure about the larger purpose and direction of my life. While in college I got a part-time job at the St. Cabrini Group Home for Girls, a lock-up facility in up-state New York. My first day there I met a beautiful little girl named Donna who was only twelve years old but had already been branded a delinquent. She reminded me of my little sister Malikah—big for her age but cute and innocent. As I watched, one of the counselors began ordering Donna around, speaking down to her and using very unkind words. One thing led to another and soon the two were rolling on the floor fighting. Donna got the best of the counselor in front of all the other girls for a while, but then he managed to pin her down (like she was one of the boys) and threw her into what they called “timeout”—a small, sparsely furnished room.
The counselor was furious. He called the nurse's office and asked for an injection to sedate Donna. But I couldn't bear the sight of a needle being injected into her and so I asked if I could talk to her first.
“Are you nuts? She's out of control! She's dangerous.”
“Please,” I said. I wasn't sure why but I felt that if I could talk to Donna, I could reach her.
“Fine,” the counselor said and let me into the room. Donna was sitting on the floor crying. I hugged her and talked to her as one would talk to a child, which she was. Of course she didn't want that needle, just someone to talk to her, someone to listen, to treat her like the young girl she was instead of a number or a statistic. Or a monster they feared. After we talked for a while, Donna agreed to apologize to the counselor, wash her face, say a prayer, and go to bed.
I loved working at the facility. The girls learned to trust me, and we developed a great rapport because I treated them as Mommy treated me, with lots of love and direction. I used my Sears credit card to charge the girls a bunch of necessities: sneakers, sandals, pants, shorts, toiletries. They used to make all kinds of crafts for me to show their love. One girl, who was supposed to be so dangerous and mean, also won my heart. She had beautiful, dark Egyptian skin, but she did not seem proud of it. In fact, I figured the reason she probably seemed intimidating was because she had probably been teased all her life because of her dark complexion. I gave her lots of attention as well, and for my birthday she made me a hanging mobile of little pink heart-shaped pillows with pearls hanging on the invisible threads. I looked at it and marveled that it was made by someone who was supposed to be so unruly and tough.
One thing was clear: My purpose in life was not to be a great orator. Daddy's brilliance in that regard had not been passed down in the genes.
While still in college, I was invited to be one of the keynote speakers at a national Delta Sigma Theta convention. Just the idea made my stomach churn, but I could not turn them down; Mommy was a Delta and, besides, the theme of the talk was “Daughters of the Revolution,” and it involved an antidrug message. I was supposed to appear alongside Martin Luther King Jr.'s daughter Bernice, Bishop Desmond Tutu's daughter Mpho, and Jesse Jackson's daughter Santita. But I took one look at the program and got on the phone with Mommy.
“I don't know if I can do this,” I said.
“Yasah, you'll be fine. Just say what's in your heart.”
What was in my heart? How did I know what was in my heart? And why would two thousand people want to hear that anyway? In the end, my mother wrote my speech, gave me some pointers on addressing an audience, and sent me on my way.
When I arrived early on the appointed day, the organizers greeted me warmly and ushered me to the stage, to my seat at a long table of people. I was introduced to the other speakers and tried to make chitchat through the dull roar of my own nervousness. A waiter appeared bearing a plate full of food. This was a breakfast conference of at least one thousand people, and all around me the auditorium was abuzz with the sound of forks meeting plates, but the idea of eating w
as way beyond me. I pushed my food around for a bit, then eased the plate out of my line of sight.
And then it was time for the program. One by one the speakers stood and approached the microphone. They all seemed so confident, so calm and collected. They spoke passionately about their hopes and dreams for the progress of African people everywhere. Ms. Tutu's speech stood out especially. She spoke about the bloodshed taking place in South Africa, about the centuries of violence and oppression still being waged against her people, and she connected that involuntary genocide with the choice of young African Americans to destroy themselves and their people by using and fighting over drugs. It was a powerful comparison and it made my head throb and my knees tremble. How in the world was I going to follow that? What was I going to talk about that even came close to what she was saying? I looked out over the sea of faces; they were waiting for inspiration and I didn't think I could deliver it. My father had said it all, and said it brilliantly. I was going to get up there and add … what?
Speech after speech, I sat in my chair getting sicker and sicker to my stomach. Finally, just before my turn arrived I leaned over to one of the organizers and whispered desperately, “I'm not feeling well!”
It was certainly true; I thought I was going to be sick right there on the podium.
“Horrible, horrible cramps,” I whispered. “I'm afraid I can't make it. I need to go back to my room.”
The woman nodded sympathetically and helped me off the podium. I slunk back to my room feeling a little embarrassed and greatly relieved. It would be many years before I was finally able to overcome the fear of public speaking. Not by becoming my father or mother, but by becoming myself.
Once ensconced in my South Side apartment I settled down to college life. Slowly I gathered a circle of friends—Emerald, Joy, Lanie, Sharon, Danielle, Felice, and Kim—who accepted me for who I was. The more radical students on campus, the ones who had hoped to singe New Paltz with a little Malcolm X fire, gradually came to realize I was not my father, and either accepted me as I was into their circle or left me alone.
But there were still occasional incidents. Once, as I was playing Pac Man in the student union building between classes, a brother came up as I was refreshing my lipstick and began to lecture me. He informed me that sisters were not supposed to wear lipstick, didn't I know that? Lipstick, he said, was full of swine, unsanitary, unhealthy, and a symptom of the brainwashing that had taught us all our natural colorings were not good enough. I was flabbergasted; all I wanted to do was put a little chocolate brown moisture on my lips. I went home and called Mommy to ask what she thought. Her response was pure Mommy: Don't let anyone dictate who you are or who you should be.
“Honey, if you want to wear lipstick,” she said, “wear it in good health.”
It was Mommy, and the grounding she had given us, that allowed me to climb into my lifeboat and ride the waves of expectations and dictations that came during those years. Part of college for any student is finding out who he or she is; for African American students, the quest can be especially difficult. For far too many of our young people, excelling academically is considered the opposite of being authentically black. And so they arrive at college and go to one extreme or the other, trying to prove themselves.
I was fortunate in that my mother raised us with such a solid grounding in African and African American history, such a love and appreciation for who we were and whence we came, that I never felt I had to prove myself to white people. And although I was initially taken aback by the young brother's comment about my lip gloss, I was not thrown by it into a tizzy of having to prove myself to black people either. Because deep inside I knew the color of my lipsticks or the style of my hair had no bearing on my legitimacy as a proud African American woman. In that regard, at least, I knew who I was.
And so I focused on going to class and doing what I had come to New Paltz to do. I was a math major and very serious about it, until I got to linear math and had no idea what language the professor was speaking. I switched to biology and plowed ahead. I didn't smoke, didn't party too hard, rose each morning and ran six miles for exercise.
During my third year at New Paltz I got a call from Mommy telling me to go to Pennsylvania and pick up Gamilah at Lincoln University. I don't remember the details, but I did as instructed and my sister came to live with me for a while and to take classes at New Paltz. Later Malaak also came to live with me for a while after deciding she did not like life at Springfield American International College. For a while there I felt like the pit stop for my younger sisters. I took the responsibility seriously. Once, driving along Route 32, the main thoroughfare through campus, I saw Malaak walking along. I knew she was supposed to be in class, so I stopped the car and, just like Mommy, said, “Get in.” Then I drove her to class and watched while she went inside.
Despite my harsh introduction to the social perils of college life, I ended up enjoying my time at New Paltz immensely. Moving off campus turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as it allowed me to meet and befriend slightly older people, such as a woman named LaVallis. LaVallis lived in the condo next to Tammy, another friend, and she would later come to help me greatly in a time of need.
After switching my major to biology, I worked hard to keep my grade point average at a decent level because I had plans for medical school—or, rather, Mommy had plans. She had it all worked out: I was going to graduate, go to medical school, become a doctor, get a condominium, get married, have a family. She was so rock-solid certain and she was Mommy, so who was I to contradict?
Besides, I felt as though the daughter of Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz should certainly be doing something important, something great. Being a doctor sounded about right, though I was not inherently interested in a career in medicine. But the expectations of my fellow students had not left me untouched. Clearly I wasn't going to be a campus radical. Clearly I wasn't a great orator like my father—Peaches could attest to that. I did not have all the answers, nor the unwavering confidence my mother seemed to possess. At least if I became a doctor I could dedicate my life to helping my people preserve and maintain their physical health. Maybe that's what Mommy thought, too.
But the best-laid plans of even someone as seemingly invincible as my mother can go astray. In 1984 an accident canceled my medical school plans.
I had graduated a few weeks before with Mommy and all of my sisters looking on. Attallah had made my dress for me, a fuchsia-and-white ruffled concoction that I thought was just the bomb. And I thought she was just the bomb for being able to sew like that! Having my sisters and Mommy around me that day was so very special. They all stayed at my apartment and we told stories and made gentle fun of Mommy and laughed and laughed and laughed.
I was now living in the historic town of Newburgh in a lovely old neighborhood full of huge prewar homes, arching trees, and picturesque views of the surrounding mountains. My apartment was part of a renovated schoolhouse; it was airy and spacious, with cathedral ceilings and high windows emphasizing the view outside. All in all, the apartment was a big step up from my place back in New Paltz.
I was in that heady, slightly surreal fissure of time that comes after college graduation, when all the doors of the world seem open, but only for a moment. The days of youthful exploring and testing are over. Now is the time to get serious, to get a job, choose a career. And once you choose, all the other doors now standing open will begin, one by one, to close.
I still had a few credits to earn before my graduation was official, so I was working at a department store while finishing up classes at New Paltz. One day my friend Lisa, who was now living in Washington, and a friend named John drove up from D.C. for the weekend. They arrived late Wednesday night. My friend Danielle came over and we all stayed up until the sunrise, talking and laughing with that untamed energy young people have for old friends. I managed to catch forty winks before going off to work.
After work I went to class, then back to my apartment. My friends were
still there, still talking and laughing and now drinking. Though bone-tired, I agreed to go out with them. I suggested a nightclub called The Capricorn, but considering Lisa had driven her fancy car all the way from D.C., she wanted to drive down to the city. We went back and forth for a while, debating whether we shouldn't wait until the next day, a Friday, before going to New York. But Lisa was persuasive: The Capricorn was nice but small-town and its crowd was mostly white. The city would be more fun.
We drove down to New York and, after wandering around for a while, ended up at Studio 54. Once inside we noticed that something was slightly different about the crowd, but we couldn't put our finger on it, until one of us realized there were almost no women in sight. A gay party was being held. We stayed at the disco for a little while and then decided to head home. I was so sleepy I could barely keep my eyes open, but because the others had been drinking and I had not, they all piled into the backseat.
“I'm too tired to drive,” I told them, but nobody listened. Their heads were swimming and they knew they couldn't steer themselves, let alone a car. So, after a few minutes, I climbed into the driver's seat.
The rest of the night is spotty, as these things often are. I remember being on Interstate 87 and saying again how incredibly sleepy I was. The next thing I knew, I was waking up in the hospital.
The truck driver who stopped to help us and who called the police said we were speeding up I-87 when the car veered to the left, struck a rail, and bounced back to the right of the road. We hit a tree, overturned, and tumbled fifteen or twenty feet down an embankment.
Growing Up X Page 16
