by Hana Ali
—Lloyd Wells, in Muhammad Ali: His Life and Times, Thomas Hauser, 1991
16
My mother was the picture of composure in her suite at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills. She draped her veil over a chair and checked over the bridesmaids’ bouquets.
“You know, I’ve been planning this day for three years,” she said to the reporter with Jet magazine. Except for Dad’s personal photographer, Howard Bingham, who doubled as an usher, and his friend Gene Kilroy, Isaac Sutton, the chief photographer of Jet, West Coast, covered the wedding exclusively. Because of his special relationship with my father over the years, he was granted access to my parents’ suites and to my grandmother’s house later that evening.
Jet magazine had supported Dad’s efforts to get a license to return to the boxing ring ten years earlier, after he was unjustly stripped of his heavyweight title for refusing induction into the US Army during the Vietnam War. Isaac Sutton kept my father in the public eye during his three-and-a-half-year legal battle.
Like justice, my father had a long memory.
“No, seriously,” Mom quickly added, “it took about six months to plan our wedding.”
The ringing telephone constantly interrupted her as she dressed.
“I don’t have time to be nervous,” she said, pulling rollers out of her hair and spraying her wrists with perfume. Several bridesmaids walked casually into the room, carrying their tunics over their arms.
“You aren’t ready yet?” said my mother, momentarily jolted. “It’s almost time.”
Well-wishers had crowded around the door and were trying to peek in as they entered the room. “Keep the door closed,” said Mom. “Those people can see in here through the cracks.”
My grandmother assisted the security guard posted outside as bridesmaids paced the room. “Does anyone have any perfume I can use?” asked my nineteen-year-old aunt, Michelle.
“Are we going to wear the orchids on the left or right side of our hair?” asked the matron of honor, Evelyn Potter.
“Get dressed first; you can pin the orchids in your hair later,” said my mother.
Her telephone never stopped ringing, and a messenger kept entering the room with details about the wedding crowd downstairs and how my father was faring in his suite. Knowing Dad, he was probably already ready and checking his watch.
Dad spent most of his wedding morning meeting with his accountant, Eugene Dibble, and had watched a western later that afternoon, The Return of Jesse James. According to the Jet article, he seemed calm, but he told the reporter he was nervous and joked with Dibble, “I changed my mind; get the luggage!”
The night before, Dad and Howard had gone to the speedway disco for his bachelor party, where he spent most of the night signing autographs and posing for pictures. Occasionally chanting, as he had at the wedding rehearsals, “Muhammad Ali will be no longer free.”
Back in Mom’s suite, with just an hour to go, a dozen people moved around the room shouting out questions, which my mother calmly answered. Then she walked into the next room, where someone helped her into her wedding dress, designed by Christos of New York. “I’m saving this for Hana,” she told the reporter. “If she wants to, she can wear it on her wedding day.”
When the last covered button was fastened down the back of her beaded gown, my mother turned to face herself in the mirror. “It’s lovely,” she said softly.
She walked back into the next room, where the bridesmaids were combing their hair and checking their lipstick.
“Oh, girl,” said her maid of honor, “you look so good.”
“Make sure they remember to put the runner down,” Mom said to my grandmother as they walked out of the suite. The bridesmaids’ dresses were designed by my mother: rainbow-colored chiffon tunics slit up to the waistline with matching silk pants beneath, set off with a pearl necklace and silver sandals.
Meanwhile, my father, political activist Dick Gregory, and some of the ushers in the wedding party lounged around in the living room area of Dad’s suite cracking jokes and listening to Gregory discuss more serious matters.
As the star-studded audience awaited my parents’ appearance, celebrities chatted amongst themselves. Warren Beatty was probably telling Mayor Tom Bradley about the movie he pitched to my father. Joe Louis was relaxing with his wife a few seats over from Christopher Lee. Japanese martial-arts champion Antonio Inoki—who gave my father a blood clot after kicking him in the leg in the ring the year before—was showing off the beautiful, multicolored Japanese doll he’d brought for my parents. A few rows away, actor Leon Isaac Kennedy was sitting with his wife, actress, and future sportscaster Jayne Kennedy, who was the first black Miss Ohio and the first black woman to grace the cover of Playboy. She showed up wearing a long white chiffon dress. (Several years later, when she was a commentator on The NFL Today, an X-rated recording of her and her husband, Leon, was leaked—making her the first victim of a sex tape gone public.) But that day in the Le Grand Trianon room of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel they were laughing and smiling as everyone listened to the ceremony’s motif, Stevie Wonder’s “You Are the Sunshine of My Life.” Moments later the processional began, as the music eased into Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March.” My father and his best man, his brother Rahman, walked down the runway wearing white tuxedos, tails, and gloves, and stood beside a seven-foot trellis entwined with white flowers. The foot of the altar was adorned with ferns, chrysanthemums, African gladiolus, carnations, and snapdragons.
Then, one by one, the wedding party entered the room.
When my mother walked down the aisle, the 250 guests stood and admired her. The ivory gown featuring English net with Alençon lace was embroidered with pearls. It had a high neck and long sleeves with an empire bodice and an A-line skirt, which was covered with pearl buttons down the back that ended at her waistline. It was all set off with a matching ivory veil and a long chapel train that followed her down the aisle. My mother was the picture of perfection—but people always said that photographs could not capture her beauty.
She gazed into my father’s eyes and took his arm. “At first, I wasn’t even paying attention to what the judge was saying,” Mom confessed to the reporter. “Muhammad kept asking me if I was happy and saying things like, ‘Well, here we are. We’re finally getting married.’ But when I heard the judge ask if I would take Muhammad to be my husband, I started paying attention.”
Judge Billy Mills pronounced my parents man and wife as I, at eleven months old, cried loudly in the background. Although my mother wore a blue garter on each leg, Dad didn’t remove and toss them for the single males to catch. That wasn’t his style.
On the dance floor, my grandfather, Cassius Clay Sr., guided my grandmother around in a high-stylish waltz.
After the wedding, at about 11 p.m., my parents sat at a table in a Beverly Wilshire restaurant. As the reporter noted, “In between autograph requests, a starry-eyed champion lovingly praised his bride. With easily discernable, undeniable love in his eyes, he reflected a moment and declared, ‘She’s beautiful. This is a very sacred moment for me.’”
Later that evening two limousines carrying the bridal party were escorted to my grandmother’s house. Dad was resting upstairs as Mom and her sisters sat on the sofa in the living room with their shoes off and feet propped up on chairs.
“I’m pleased with the way the wedding turned out,” Mom said. “I’m just sorry so many uninvited people turned up. Even with all the security, there were so many faces inside I’ve never seen before.” She walked over to the refrigerator. “Now that I think about it, I didn’t even taste one hors d’oeuvre. And I know Muhammad was starving . . .” She smiled. “When we were having the pictures taken of the bride feeding cake to the groom, I had to cut him two big slices instead of one.” She poured a glass of milk, said good night, and took it up to my father.
A few days later, they were off to Honolulu, Hawaii, for their honeymoon.
17
As I read t
hrough all the old newspapers, links were being made, I could feel them, but to put the pieces of the puzzle together and get to the bottom of the lost love letters, I’d have to face the ghosts head-on. I would have to talk to my parents about them. The dozens of articles and magazine clippings I had read told only a fraction of the story. It was funny to think that some of them had once caused such a fuss, with their half-truths and silly gossip.
I marked my place in the magazine featuring my parents’ wedding and set it down. I reached into my purse and pulled out the audiotape I’d found in Mom’s storage: “For my Veronica, 1976,” ten months before they were married. I took a deep breath, exhaled, and played the recording. To my surprise, my father was singing to my mother, spontaneously recapping the events surrounding their first meeting, as she lay beside him holding me, at one month old, in her arms.
August 21, 1976
“OH, OH, OH YES, I’m the great pretender—ooowooo—I pretend that you’re doing well. I’m supposed to be, but I’m not you see, I’m lonely, but no one can tell . . . Pretending, Veronica, you’re doing well . . .
“Do you remember that day I first met you—ooowooo—I stepped off the plane. You were so beautiful, you looked so sweet, I knew one day you’d be mine.
“Then I went to the hotel—ooowooo—they got me a nice pretty room. I hoped you liked me, but I really wasn’t sure, then the other girls took you back to your room; you went to your hotel. I went to bed with you on my mind because you were so fine and soon you would be mine. Then a few weeks and months went by. I continually tried to forget about you, but daily things would come to my mind, because that girl I met in Salt Lake City was fine.
“Then I met you the night of the exhibition—ooowooo—George Foreman was there with Frazier. We all boxed our exhibitions, and you, you were there. Oh, Veronica, you had on a two-piece bikini. I took you all aside, gave you a lecture, I saw that your heart was good. You went back to put on your [long] dress. I was proud because you listened to me. You were so sweet.
“That next morning after the exhibition, I got back on the private jet, not knowing that you would soon be in Zaire to see your daddy again. While in Zaire, Daddy heard you were coming. It was too good, too good to be true. I was at the airport waiting for you.
“Then Belinda, my wife, had to go. It made Daddy so mad. I didn’t want her to come to the airport, but she did, but it couldn’t keep me from you. James Brown and his band got off the jet, a crowd of black people. In the African moonlight, they came to see the fight. They all poured in to the airport. Now my heart was getting so shaky, waiting for that pretty, tall girl. That pretty girl from the exhibition. I couldn’t believe she was coming.
“Then I saw your beautiful face, she lit up like a doll. Her pretty, long hair, her pretty, cherry lips, she got off the big brown plane. She walked and she smiled and took pictures. My heart was beating so. Then, Veronica, you looked and smiled at me. You walked over and said hello to people. Belinda following me close, she knew that the fine girls had got in, but she didn’t know what I was thinking.
“And then I got to my car. As I walked away, I saw you looking down at me; my heart beamed. Then Belinda drove back to N’Sele; she stayed with me that night; she left the next morning.
“You and your girlfriends came to my place. My heart was beating so fast. You sat on the couch. You looked so sweet. I went into the kitchen for something sweet. I ate a piece of cake and drank some juice. I was so nervous this girl had come to see me.
“You thought I liked your friend Trina, but I really didn’t. You were so fine when I first met you at the exhibition, I couldn’t say anything to you. In N’Sele, I knew you were true. You came away to see me.
“Well, to make a long story short, after all we did had been done, I knew you had to be mine. Then daily we talked on the phone. We walked on the Zaire River. I brought you your dinner. You comforted me. It helped me to destroy George Foreman.
“And now you have my little baby. My sweet, my sweet, little Ronca—her name is Hana—which means happiness and peace of mind, just like you. You’re a Hana—for short they called you Ronca, but Ronca really means Hana. And now we see it in our little girl. You’re with your daddy in your room; I’m making you this tape. After you hear my song I want you to kiss me. When I count three, Ronca, kiss meeeeee. ONE—TWO—THREEEEEE.”
They kissed, and as I listened from years in the future, my father spoke into the recorder. “This hit song was cut in Show Low, Arizona, August 21, 1976. The time is now 5:25 a.m. I’m here with Veronica. Ronca, did you like that song?”
“Yep.”
“Did you love it, Ronca?”
“Yep.”
“Say ‘I love that song, Daddy.’”
“I loved that song, Daddy.”
“Okay, Ronca . . . it’s 5:25 a.m. just after twenty minutes of road work [training for the third Ken Norton fight]. Signing off.”
The recording was bittersweet. As one romance blossomed, another faded. As one family grew, another was torn apart. I thought about my siblings from my father’s marriage to Belinda—Maryum, Muhammad Jr., and the twins, Jamillah and Rasheda.
I care about them deeply and wondered what it must have been like for them when he moved away. Did they also cry themselves to sleep, night after night, when they realized Daddy was never coming home? Did they have nightmares, like I had? Waking my mother with screams and cries, begging her to give my father another chance, promising to be a good little girl—thinking it was my fault. Helplessly trying to reason with her when she sat me down to explain, “We love each other and always will, but we’re different people now . . .”
“But you both like movies, you both like pickles . . .” Tears streaming down my cheeks.
I thought, too, about the tape recordings between my father and his first family, perhaps the most heartbreaking and haunting of all.
“I’m calling Maryum, Rasheda, Jamillah, and little Muhammad at their grandmother’s house in Chicago. Today is Friday, November the 30th, 1979.”
This was the year after we moved to Los Angeles and four years before Belinda finally agreed to let them come visit for the summer. Until then, they’d have to settle for short visits on his random trips to Chicago and fleeting telephone conversations.
“I’m still your daddy,” he said to eleven-year-old Maryum. “Parents get divorced all the time, but they don’t stop loving their children. I’ll always be your daddy, won’t I?”
“Of course! You will always be—ALWAYS!”
“Your daddy is Muhammad Ali. I can still run and play and get around. These are valuable years we’re missing . . . Wouldn’t it be nice if you were with your daddy more?”
“Yeah.”
“One day soon I’m going to start coming out there to see you more and fly you all out here . . .”
“Okay . . .”
I’ll have a similar conversation with him when I’m twelve, two years after my parents’ divorce. I’ll be sitting on the sofa in the living room of our new house, just like my sister Maryum, talking to my father on the phone.
I’m not sure when my happy childhood began to unravel. Did it happen all at once? Or bit by bit? Did I beg my father to take me with him—put up a fight when he left? How many nights did I cry myself to sleep? How long did I blame my mother? More importantly, have I stopped blaming her? I don’t have the answers because I locked them away long ago with my broken dreams, shattered hopes, and painful memories.
“Maryum, your daddy is history conscious,” he said on the same recording. “I’m always thinking about history. Do you remember the day your sisters Khaliah and Miya were all at my Woodlawn house with you and Hana and Laila, and I took those pictures of you all sitting on my big red steps?”
“Yeah, I remember!”
“Well, I kept those pictures. So when you all get to be grown ladies and get married and when you look back to when you were coming up, you can say: I didn’t live with all my sisters, but Daddy let me see
them and we knew them, because Daddy let us play together. And to prove it, we’ve got pictures . . .”
I have the photos of which he spoke—framed images of my father sitting on the bottom of the red steps at the Woodlawn house, all of us gathered around him. We were all there: me, Laila, Maryum, the twins, little Muhammad, even Miya and Khaliah, his kids from women he was never married to. All his children, playing happily together, under one grand roof. A divided but blessed family.
“Maryum, I wanted to talk to you for a while. I love you so much, and I never hear your voice . . . I’m making tapes of Hana and Laila trying to sing and talk and playing. When I see you, I’m going to let you hear them. Then when they grow up I’m going to let them hear the tapes. I’ve got tapes of you and me talking on the phone from five years ago.”
“You do?”
“Yeah . . . you’re going to hear them one day . . .”
My memories of the house on Woodlawn are few. All I know is it was a large brick mansion where I first lived as a child. I was only three when we moved to Fremont Place in Los Angeles, but I remember the large winding staircase and its red steps. I remember my father playing fragmented melodies on the grand piano—playing only scales because it was all he knew. My parents’ friends Tim and Helga, Mom, Laila, and I lay on the white carpet, listening in front of the fireplace.
I can vaguely remember my siblings spending the night and eating breakfast together—Cheerios and Frosted Flakes. Dad took photos of us all gathered around the table like one big happy family. Those are my only memories of Woodlawn, which was never supposed to be ours to begin with. The memories I do recall feel stolen. They should belong to my siblings, Dad’s first family.
