Growing Up X

by Ilyasah Shabazz

  I was in a coma for three days. When I woke up the first time I saw Attallah standing at the side of my bed. She had brought pictures of my graduation and she showed them to me. Mommy, who was outside instructing the nurses, came into the room when she heard I was awake. I felt so happy seeing my mother and my sister I wanted to smile, but all I could do was float. There was no pain that I can remember; I felt happy and giddy and sleepy. Then I went back out.

  The next time I woke up I heard Mommy speaking to someone—a nurse, a doctor—in that forceful, commanding way of hers. She was asking a question or giving instructions, something, and the sound of her voice filled me with happiness. I felt completely safe. Mommy was there and she was in control. I closed my eyes and drifted off again.

  When I finally woke up for good I was grateful to be alive and all in one piece. It took awhile before anyone told me what had happened to the others. John and Lisa were in the same hospital, injured, but would recover fully in time. Danielle was a different story.

  She had been taken to a hospital in New York City. The accident had severely traumatized her spinal column; the doctors told her she would be paralyzed.

  I cannot imagine that moment for Danielle. This information hit me like a punch to the stomach and I cried for my beautiful friend. After getting out of the hospital, John drove back up to New York and he and Lisa and I went to visit Danielle. She was in the hospital, on her back in her room, unable to move. Seeing her that way was devastating. In the years to come Danielle, who loved to dance, to feel her body moving through space, would struggle to adjust to her new reality.

  For weeks as I lay in the hospital recuperating, I had no idea what I looked like. But I began to suspect it was bad when Gamilah came to see me. She took one look and burst into hysterical tears. All I could do was laugh and tell her, “It's okay, Gamilah. I'm fine.”

  But she just started screaming. Mommy had to come and take her out of the room to calm her down.

  After I was moved from the intensive care unit into a regular room with Lisa, I noticed, too, that my friends who came to visit would not look at me. They would spend most of their time talking to Lisa and direct only a few comments my way. But then my friend and old science partner Sue came to visit. She pulled up a chair and sat right next to my bed, pulling books and knitting needles and yarn from her bag. Later I realized what a good friend she really was.

  When I was finally able to get out of bed and look in a mirror, I was shocked. The whole right side of my face had been smashed in during the accident. There were open lacerations on my cheek, and my nose and forehead were purple and black and swollen and cut. My eye was bloodred. All in all, it was a gruesome sight.

  I remained in the hospital for about two months and it took several more months after that for all the physical scars to heal. During those months it was painful to see how people reacted; it gave me a small insight into the way a physically disabled or deformed person is treated by the world, how brave they must be to go out and face society each day. Once I was shopping in a store and saw a woman for whom I had modeled occasionally. My face and neck were still bandaged and I must have looked quite a sight. As I walked toward this woman—I'll call her Jane—to say hello, she turned a corner in the store and disappeared. I continued shopping and saw Jane again; again she escaped. Finally, as I was leaving, I caught up with her near the door.

  “Jane!” I cried, happy to see her, thinking she would be happy to see me. It was a small town and I knew she knew what had happened.

  But Jane turned green and backed away. “Ilyasah! I'm sorry, so sorry,” she said over and over. She couldn't get away fast enough and as she left, she would not look me in the face.

  A few weeks later a friend and I went down to the disco Bent-ley's for a night out. I asked a guy if he wanted to dance. He took one look, said no, and backed up like I was a monster.

  Mommy, of course, wanted me to come home. But my friend LaVallis, who had a large condo in Fishkill, invited me to move in with her and I accepted. LaVallis was wonderful during those months, escorting me to the hospital for my physical therapy and checkups and generally helping me back to my feet.

  In the aftermath of the accident, I would sometimes lie awake at night, praising God and wondering why my life had been spared. I know there's no way I should have lived through that; it was far too violent a collision. Danielle and I would talk about trying to find the meaning behind the whole thing.

  As the years passed and life went on, I put the accident behind me. And it wasn't until my mother passed that the reason God spared my life that night on Interstate 87 dawned on me. For one thing, I know if something had happened to me, my mother would have been devastated. She had already suffered so much painful grief in her life; how could she have handled the horror of losing a child?

  Then, too, I believe God knew there would come a day when Mommy would finally need someone to take care of her, when the woman who had dedicated her life to helping not only her daughters but countless people of all cultures and colors would need help herself. And when someone would be required to fill, in some small measure, Mommy's shoes when it was finally time for her to go on and meet her husband.

  C H A P T E R E L E V E N

  Daddy's Home

  Life was a whirlwind after the accident as my body and soul recuperated from the trauma and my heart pressed onward, trying to find its way in the world.

  My friend LaVallis, in whose condo I'd lived during my recuperation, got married. Mommy drove up from Mount Vernon and mothered us all, preparing LaVallis for her special day with spa treatments and hairstyling advice and copious amounts of love. After that, I found a new roommate, Tammy, and together we moved into a town house in Wappingers Falls, a small, Hudson River town that would, a few years later, be made infamous by Tawana Brawley.

  With medical school on hold, I decided it was time to look for work. I applied for a job at Ciba Geigy, a large pharmaceutical company. It was one of my first job interviews and I thought I was handling it pretty well, until the interviewer asked, “What are some of your strengths?”

  I didn't realize this was standard interview-speak and that I was supposed to say something like “I'm highly motivated” or “I love to work!” Instead I thought for a moment then said, “Well, as you know, by nature all black women are strong.”

  I did not get that job.

  For a while I worked as a substitute teacher at Mount Vernon High School. Walking into the school the first time was a shock for me: the lack of supplies, the absence of books, the low expectations, and the air of ennui. Some days I was told to just go into a classroom and turn on a video. But I found the children were as hungry to learn as anywhere—if you could make the learning interesting and relevant to them.

  Once, when the topic of the day was essay-writing, I began by asking the students who their favorite recording artists were. Then I asked if there was one place they could go, where would it be? And how would they travel—boat, airplane—and what would they do when they arrived? And what is their biggest dream?

  This was a classroom of struggling students and people had warned me it would be difficult to get them to simply settle down and be quiet, let alone learn. But in this case they were all interested. They scribbled down the answers on pieces of paper I had distributed to them while I wrote on the board.

  “Now,” I said, when they had finished. “I want you to write me an essay using all the things we just wrote down. You went to sleep, you had a dream, and …”

  The results may not have been ready for publication in The New Yorker, but they were passionate and heartfelt and clear.

  Meanwhile my baby sister Malikah had grown up and was living the life down in New York City. She was in the mix, knew everybody, and was forever getting tickets to this concert or passes to that hot event. Her life seemed very exciting, so I decided to move back to civilization and join in the fun.

  I moved to Brooklyn, and once again, Mommy stepped in. She help
ed me get a job in the office of academic affairs at City University of New York. My work there, which I enjoyed, was helping to create and manage programs to encourage students who had dropped out of high school to pursue higher education.

  Although I majored in biology in college, my real passion was in the arts. I had dabbled in theater as a child and while in college, but I never got seriously involved. I think if Mommy had not been so certain I should become a doctor I might have decided at an earlier age to pursue acting or music as a career.

  As it was my short-but-sweet foray into the arts came after I graduated college and was casting about for meaningful and enjoyable work. When I told Mommy I wanted to give acting a try, she telephoned her friend Norman Jewison, the Canadian director known for his films In the Heat of the Night, Moonstruck, and The Hurricane, among others. Mr. Jewison in turn called a few people and the next thing I knew I was trying out for every soap opera on television. I managed to land bit parts, most of them nonspeaking, on “One Life to Live” and “All My Children.” I even took lessons from an acting coach for a brief time, but in the end things didn't work out. I was far too inhibited back then to be a good actor.

  Around that same time I met Spike Lee. I had gone to see his smash debut movie She's Gotta Have It and was surprised and pleased to see, at the end, various quotes from my father. I said to myself, “I want to meet this director.”

  I contacted Spike, who was gracious and welcoming. We became friends and he introduced me to the film world, giving me a job as a production assistant on his Michael Jordan commercials and even casting me in bit parts in some of his movies. But don't look for me in Jungle Fever or School Daze—all of my scenes ended up on the cutting room floor.

  After awhile Spike was like family. But as much as I liked him, he could sometimes make me feel a little self-conscious. I was still young, still trying to figure out who I was supposed to be, and sometimes Spike did not make that easy. I had just moved down to the city after years in mostly white upstate New York, and I was into Madonna and the GoGos as much as the emerging hip-hop scene. When Spike invited me to a Knicks game, I got all dressed up in black ski pants, my favorite cable knit sweater, and what I thought were kicking boots: ivory, rugged, with an artillery chain around the ankles. Spike takes me to Madison Square Garden, sits me down, checks me out, and says, “So, you're into Madonna?” From the tone of his voice and the look on his face I knew it wasn't an idle question. I went home and gave the boots to my girlfriend Kathy. Spike also questioned my decision to relax my hair, saying he didn't think my father would like the idea.

  That threw me for a loop. His comments came at a point when I was already thinking of cutting off my hair and starting from scratch, growing it out and then locing it—not necessarily because I wanted it that way but because it seemed the thing to do. But then I thought of my mother. Anyone who would suggest Betty Shabazz was not a proud, self-actualized, and fully committed African American woman would be laughed out of the room by anyone who knew her. Mommy's words—“Yasah, focus on yourself ”—came back to me. Meaning: Whatever you want to do, do it, as long as you can look yourself in the mirror and know you're living the way God wants you to. All this other stuff really doesn't matter. So I decided to keep my hair relaxed.

  One night I went to a Bobby Brown and Al B Sure concert, both of whom were friends of mine. I went with a guy who was a member of the group Najee. This guy knew everybody, all the other band members and production people, and it was a great time. We met an agent named Stephen Sands who worked at the William Morris Agency. He told me, “You need to come work with me.”

  I became his assistant, his right-hand woman. Together we sought new talent, booked shows, arranged tours, listened to music of all kinds in search of the next big thing. It was a great job, lots of fun, but it was a fast life of parties and concerts and receptions, and eventually Stephen decided it was too fast for him. He resigned to go to medical school and another agent, Leon Saunders, was hired to replace him. When Leon started asking me to get people on the phone for him and bring him coffee, I realized his idea of an assistant was very different from Stephen's. And from mine.

  After leaving William Morris, I worked for Pendulum Records as coordinator of promotions and marketing. This was during the time when Digable Planets, Lisa Lisa of Cult Jam, and Lords of the Underground were all hot. But the two visitors who caused the most excitement among the women in the office were singer Christopher Williams, with whom I went out on a single, friendly date, and Fabrice Morvan, one half of the pop group Milli Vanilli. Everybody loved Fab. He was one fine African French brother.

  It was during this time that I visited my father's grave for the first time in my life. I don't know what it was that prompted me; it just seemed the right time to go. Although Daddy was buried not twenty miles from our home in Mount Vernon, Mommy had never taken us to his grave when we were children. I'm not even sure if she ever went herself. Certainly she never mentioned it, and when I brought the idea up tentatively, she didn't really want to talk about it. It was simply too painful a place for her. Even decades after my father's death, the wound remained open for Mommy. She simply could not emotionally afford to look upon that site.

  But I suddenly wanted to see it. So one day after work I got into my car, got on the Thruway, and headed north. It was the height of rush hour, and traffic was the usual New York mess. By the time I found the cemetery in Hartsdale the sun was setting and the gates were about to close.

  I had no idea where to look, no idea even where to begin. Should I go left or right? Should I keep driving or just park and start looking around? It wasn't a small cemetery and there was no one around to ask. Dusk was rushing in and soon I would have to leave. What if I couldn't find Daddy? What if he wasn't really there at all?

  Jittery with panic, I parked the car and leapt out. I walked and walked and walked until, suddenly, somehow, there it was. A simple, elegant brass plate, flat on the ground and inscribed:

  HAJJ MALIK EL-SHABAZZ

  zMALCOLM X

  1925#x2013;1965

  Seeing his name on the tombstone filled me with such a sense of hollowness my arms began to ache. My head swam and my knees weakened; I wanted to just curl up right there on the ground beside him. Instead I cried. I cried torrents, and talked to him, calling his name, telling him how much I missed him, how sorry I was he had to go.

  And then one of the cemetery caretakers drove past and told me the gates would be closing soon and it was time to go. I kicked myself for not bringing something to leave behind for my father, for Daddy. Some symbol of my love. I searched my pockets and my purse for something personal, something of me, but came up empty. In the end I removed the barrette from my hair and placed it gently inside the vase, the scheaf.

  Shortly after that day I flew to Atlanta to meet with Dexter King. I wanted to talk with him about the King Center and its functioning; I thought my father deserved something similar, a living memorial to his life and his work. This was before Columbia University touched off a firestorm with its plans to tear down the Audubon and build a biotechnology research center on the site. Mommy was pulled into the maelstrom with university officials, city politicians, and community activists all tugging at her sleeve. Eventually Mommy gave the university her support for the medical center on two conditions: they create a permanent memorial on the site and a living memorial, providing medical scholarships to the young people of Harlem or other students in need, especially those who would commit to returning to their home communities to practice medicine.

  Although there have been some bumps in the road, we are now on track toward making the site a vibrant, community-based educational and political center in my father's honor. I think Mommy, who for years had been unable to walk past the Audubon but eventually came to the point where she was looking forward to working there after her retirement, would be pleased.

  I was still working at William Morris when Spike Lee first spoke to me about making a movie base
d upon my father's life. He was not the first person with the idea. Since producer Marvin Worth secured the film rights to my father's story in 1968 and made a documentary on the subject, writers as varied as James Baldwin, David Bradley, David Mamet, and Charles Fuller have tried their hands at writing a screenplay for a feature film. Billy Dee Williams expressed interest in playing the role. So did Richard Pryor. Sidney Lumet considered directing such a film, and Norman Jewison had actually gotten the go-ahead from Hollywood. Then Spike got wind of it.

  Spike told me that a white man had no business directing a film about Malcolm X. He believed only a black man would be able to do my father's story justice and he vowed to wage a protest campaign to wrest control of the film from Jewison.

  I don't know if Mommy had an opinion on this. She didn't participate in the discussion and neither did I. I liked and admired both Norman and Spike, and when Norman agreed to bow out of the picture I was like, oh, okay.

  Spike invited me to try out for a part in the movie as my father's secretary. I wanted badly to play Laura, my father's sweet, lindy-hopping dance partner in his early days in Boston. Although I read for both parts, I landed neither. But at least this time I did make it onto the screen.

  You can see me squeezing down the left aisle in a mosque as my father speaks, bringing converts to Islam. You can also see me when he steps outside of a mosque in one scene and is surrounded by well-wishers.

  Being on the set of the movie was both exhilarating and awkward. Watching scene after scene of my parents' lives unfold felt slightly surreal. Denzel Washington was wonderful; he captured the essence of my father. But as much as I admired his work in movies such as Glory and loved the fact that he was a fellow Mount Vernonite, he was so clearly not my father that it was sometimes difficult to watch him work. Plus I was taller than Denzel. That felt strange because my father was so very tall—six feet, five inches— and always loomed even taller in my mind.