At Home with Muhammad Ali

by Hana Ali

  At night, before bed, I’d scoop a handful of Vaseline and spread it over my hair, trying to straighten my long curls. I wanted it to look as silky as Jamillah’s and Rasheda’s hair. The twins were six years older than me, and I thought everything about them was cool. The way they laughed wholeheartedly with their mouths wide open, or the way they rolled their eyes in unison when something annoyed them. And how they each called out the other’s name, even when they weren’t in the same room together, putting emphasis on the vowels—“Rasheeeeeedaaaa!”—after a funny scene in a movie or when I did something silly, or unbelievable, like the time they found out what I said to Michael Jackson when he came over to visit. I’ll tell you that story later.

  “Jamiiiiiiillaaaah!”

  One morning I got the scissors out of the kitchen drawer and snuck up to the third-floor media room. They had fallen asleep there the night before while watching Daddy’s film The Greatest. We had all watched it together, enjoying Daddy’s reactions to his life on screen.

  “Wasn’t I somethin’?” he’d say as we rewound our favorite scenes again and again. We especially loved the part when Dad called a reporter from a telephone booth in the middle of the night and disguised his voice to sound like an old lady.

  “Cassius Clay is outside Sonny Liston’s house right now with a bus full of people . . .” he squeaked into the receiver. “Well, I don’t like to say that word, but yes, they’re niggers!”

  Dad was trying to agitate Sonny Liston into a fight. At that time, Sonny was the heavyweight champion of the world, and he wouldn’t give my father a shot at the title. Or he didn’t, at least, until Dad rode his bus to his house in the middle of the night, shouting over a microphone, “Sonny Liston! Come out here, you big ugly bear!”

  My father named all his opponents, and Sonny Liston was “the bear.”

  By the time Sonny came outside, the press had arrived and all his neighbors were either peeking out their windows or standing on the sidewalks in their pajamas. Sonny ran across his lawn in his robe shouting and throwing rocks at Dad’s bus: “Get out of here, you crazy fool, before I call the police!”

  As Dad pulled away Sonny tripped on something in his front lawn.

  “What the hell is that?” he asked a reporter, poking at the thick black metal with his foot.

  “That’s a bear trap!” said the reporter.

  I tiptoed over to the sofa, careful not to wake up Laila, Miya, Little Muhammad, or Khaliah, and grabbed a handful of either Rasheda’s or Jamillah’s hair. Like my father, I could never tell them apart. They were identical when they were younger. Dad often called them twin one and twin two.

  As I slid my sister’s hair into the open scissors, May May walked into the room.

  “Hana!” she shouted, startling me and waking the twins. “Put down those scissors!”

  “Daddy!” she said to my father, “guess what I caught Hana doin’ now?”

  “She’ll grow out of it,” he said.

  The twins always stuck together. They were social and playful, but like most identical twins, they had their own special relationship. They always seemed to be sneaking off to the corner of a room, whispering amongst themselves and telling secrets. Like two best friends in their own little world. They were fun, high-spirited, and feisty, but they were sometimes rude to my mother.

  “This is our father’s house,” they told her. “We don’t have to listen to you.”

  As far as they knew, Mom was the reason Dad had left their mother. They had no idea what was really going on. How could they? They were just little girls at the time.

  My sister Khaliah was two years older than me. She was shy and quiet, and often asked to go home before the summer ended. I’m not sure why, really. I never asked her. Maybe she missed her mother and grandmother. Or maybe she felt like Laila—that the house was too crowded.

  But when she was at Fremont, she was always playing in my room. We looked a lot alike and had so much in common. The moment my father brought us together, at the house on Woodlawn Avenue in Chicago, we were drawn to each other. We are still close today. And her son, my nephew Jacob, an exceptional athlete, was recently accepted into Harvard University. My father would be incredibly proud.

  Miya was the fun sister. She got along with everyone and was particularly close to my mother. After the divorce, Mom flew her into town to visit us at our new house. We had the time of our lives when she visited. She used to eat Cap’n Crunch cereal at night and teach us how to say bad words in Jamaican.

  “Bumbaclot . . .”

  “Bumbabot . . .”

  “No,” she laughed. “Bum-ba-clot!”

  I had no idea what it meant. But I liked how it sounded. When the boys at school were teasing me—pulling on my ponytails—I shouted, “Leave me alone, you bumbaclot!”

  It was a good thing my teacher didn’t know what it meant either.

  May May was also polite, but she had her suspicions about my mother and she was a detective by nature—always watching, trying to size people up, and figure things out. That first summer when my siblings visited, Mom was with a man in the dining room. It was her friend Terry Scott, an interior designer who was helping her decorate Fremont Place. They were going over ideas for the living-room draperies. Mom met Terry, who was gay, when Dad was filming Freedom Road. He lived with Buzz Harper, a well-known antique dealer, in Natchez, Mississippi. Harper had invited my parents over to dinner one night after filming. What Mom remembers most about that evening was when my father sat on one of the antique settees and broke it.

  “It didn’t actually collapse; he probably only cracked it,” said Mom. “But it made a loud creak, and every head turned in the room.”

  I pictured my father sitting there, wide-eyed, like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. I laughed out loud at the image. This was probably why white ropes were tied across the arms of certain antique chairs in our living room.

  Mom and Terry were looking at a decorating book when May May suddenly jumped in the doorway.

  “Aha!” she shouted, then quickly snapped a Polaroid picture and ran off.

  Mom and Terry looked at each other and laughed.

  “She looked like a little detective,” Mom told Dad later that night.

  “What did Terry do?” he asked.

  “He just laughed . . .”

  My mother was very patient with my siblings. She never complained or gave my father any trouble or stress about them—no matter how rude they were to her. She welcomed all of his children into her home. I think she understood why they sometimes treated her the way they did and silently forgave them. Years after my parents’ divorce, Muhammad Jr. called me and asked for my mother’s number.

  “I want to thank her,” he said, “for never coming between me and my father.”

  Little Muhammad was obedient mostly, but, as I said, he was a magnet for mischief. Playing too rough with our dog, or hitting me in the swimming pool. It was May May who reprimanded him mostly: “Stop it, Muhammad!”

  “Hana tried to drown me!” he said after she yelled at him for bopping me in the head.

  “In that case,” said May May, “if she does it again, slap her again!”

  Muhammad Jr. was the only one who actually called and apologized to my mother for the way he treated her. Perhaps May May and the twins, like the world at the time, thought Mom married Dad for his money. They didn’t know about the prenuptial agreement she willingly signed at the request of Dad’s lawyers. Nor did they know that the man she married after my father was far from wealthy. If anything, she had more money than he did. Mom could have had anyone in the world; actors, wealthy businessmen, even politicians were sending messages to her through their assistants and mutual friends. She turned them all down. Regardless of how or why their fairy tale ended, once upon a time my mother and father were deeply and genuinely in love with each other. They made wonderful memories together.

  It’s strange the things we can remember. The single images that sta
y with us through the years. Like the first time I waited barefoot on the patio for my father to come home. And how in that moment I realized that there was no one in the world I loved more. Somehow, in my mind, images of my childhood grow fainter with each passing day, but I can still recall every detail about that day on the patio. And the first time I drove up Wilshire Boulevard with my siblings in our father’s Rolls.

  * * *

  I waved to the crowds and smiled as they chanted my father’s name. We swept along the street, the wind whipping my hair in my face as cars, trees, and street signs flew by. It was Muhammad Jr.’s and Miya’s turn in the front seat of our father’s Rolls. Normally I would have minded, but that day I didn’t care. It was my siblings’ first summer visiting us at Fremont Place.

  “You guys, tell your mother that you want to come to California one day,” Dad had said to Little Muhammad, May May, and the twins. “She’s not going to do it unless you ask her—let her know you want to come.”

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t tell her that I said it. Just say, ‘Mommy, we want to go out and see Daddy. He said we can come one weekend when we’re not in school and meet the stars.’ Say, ‘Daddy said that you’ll have to okay it.’ Give her respect, you hear?”

  “Okay . . .”

  Squashed in the back between my big sisters May May, Khaliah, Jamillah, and Rasheda, I couldn’t wait to show them the fun that Daddy and I had when we went out driving. I was in heaven, and so was my father. He wanted the whole world to see us all together. It was something he’d tried to arrange every summer for years. Now he was finally able to do it.

  “Daddy!” I yelled over the crowds.

  “Yeah?”

  “Daddy, are we taking them to Carnation’s for cheeseburgers?”

  “We’re going to Bob’s Big Boy today,” he said.

  “Okay!”

  I turned to my siblings and filled them in on Bob’s Big Boy, where I loved to order strawberry shakes and french fries. The staff there were always happy to see my father—he overtipped the waitresses, signed autographs for customers, and performed magic tricks. There was even a framed photo of Dad and me on the wall. We are sitting in a booth eating cheeseburgers.

  On our way home from lunch, Dad would thrill us with his theatrics.

  “I kill! Aaaaaaaaaaaahh!” he’d shout, slamming his foot on the gas.

  “Aaaaaaaaaaaahh!” we all screamed, with butterflies in our tummies. He was only going about 35 miles per hour, but his dramatic expressions made us feel like we were riding the wind like a roller coaster. My father was a big-hearted kid, and he was always fun to be with. He turned the simple things in life, like driving down the street, into an unforgettable adventure.

  A few blocks later, Dad spotted a crowd of people waiting at the bus stop. He pulled over, walked into the middle of the stunned crowd, and put on a show. We all watched from the car as Dad pulled a false thumb from his pocket and performed one of his signature tricks, the disappearing scarf. Then a black case was produced from the trunk of his car: cards were laid out, minds were read, copper coins were turned into silver, unequal lengths of rope were made even again, and large dice were turned into small ones. Then he took a scarf from his briefcase, laid it flat on the hood of his Rolls, and ordered everyone to be silent as his voice grew louder: “Rise, Ghost! Rise, Ghost!”

  We all screamed, then he slammed his hand on top of the scarf, to flatten it.

  “Wasn’t that somethin’?” he asked, bright-eyed.

  But he saved his best trick for last—his levitation act. We watched as he turned his back to us, told everyone to watch his feet, then raised both heels slowly off the ground, shifting his weight onto the tip of his front right toe, just enough to make it appear, to everyone watching from behind, that he had levitated a few inches from the ground.

  “He can fly!” one man called out as “Oooooos” and “Ahhhhhhs” buzzed around the crowd. Before leaving, he showed everyone how the tricks were accomplished.

  “This is all deception,” he said. “I’m doing this to teach you a lesson, and it is this: do not believe your eyes. There are people who will tell you lies and try to trick you, but you must always be on your guard.”

  My father didn’t like deceiving people—not even with a little magic. It’s no wonder the magicians’ society kicked him out of their union, depriving him of the honor they’d once bestowed on him. “The secrets he’s giving away are bread and butter to magicians . . .”

  We pulled back onto Wilshire Boulevard, as people called out, “We love you, Ali! You’re the People’s Champ! You will always be ‘The Greatest’!” I rested my elbows on the back seat, smiling and waving at them, then Daddy blew them a kiss, held up his victory fist, and drove home—their echoes following us in the wind.

  The summer was full of lively adventure. Whatever stunts I pulled—putting Laila in the clothes dryer, trying to cut the twins’ hair, running into the street without underwear, holding my brother’s head under the water too long, or breaking into the house of the famous singer Lou Rawls, who lived around the corner, and accidently setting off the alarm—Daddy always replied the same: “She’ll grow out of it . . .”

  He was right. Eventually I did.

  19

  My father once said, “It is an expensive price I have to pay to be the most famous man on earth.”

  The price he was referring to was lost time with his children. Like most kids, when I was a little girl I only thought about my own sorrow—my own pain. But now, as an adult, knowing all that I do, I can finally see his. For all that he had, my father did not have everything he wanted. He suffered too.

  Although my father had more time to spend with Laila and me than he did with Miya and Khaliah or with his first family, he still missed out on some of our special moments. Dad made a comment to this effect in the middle of an interview he was giving in his hotel room in May of 1977. He was in Maryland to fight Alfredo Evangelista in his ninth defense of both his WBC and WBA heavyweight titles. My mother was with him, but I, at nine months old, was at the Woodlawn house in Chicago with Gertrude. My father was speaking to the interviewer when my mother walked into the room and whispered into his ear. “Hana’s walking!”

  He proudly relayed this information to the journalist. “My daughter is walking!” he said. “We left Chicago two days ago and she couldn’t walk. Now Veronica called home and the babysitter said that she walks.” He looked at my mother. “Give me a kiss,” he said tenderly.

  A moment before Mom walked into the room, the reporter had asked my father if he had enough time to see all his children. There were eight of us in total, including Laila, who was still in Mom’s belly at the time.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t. I suffer for that.”

  I was usually with my parents when they traveled, but sometimes they left me at home with the babysitter. But from then on my parents brought me—and in the months to come, Laila—nearly everywhere with them. I think this was one of the main reasons why my father made so many audio recordings over the years. He wanted to capture all the incredible events and moments that people weren’t witnessing in his everyday personal life and preserve them for his children and posterity. Perhaps so many of the recordings are of Laila and me laughing, singing, crying, playing, and getting ready for school because he lost valuable time with his first family and he wanted all of his children to have proof that he was doing his duty as a loving father whenever he could.

  But, like all fathers, he thought his children were growing up way too fast and wanted to preserve some of the intimate moments we shared. Laila never seemed to mind him leaving; it was my heart he had to ease, my tears he had to wipe.

  “I wanna go bye-bye with you—I wanna go bye-bye . . .”

  “This tape is being made on December 16th, Sunday, 1979. Hana Ali, three years old, is crying because she cannot go with us to Hong Kong and Peking. With me on this trip is my wife, Veronica, her sister Diane, and my father, who came in f
rom Louisville, Kentucky . . . Hana Ali is in the background crying because she can’t go . . .”

  He walked into the room. “Laila, pick that up and put it back . . .” He spoke into the recorder. “Laila’s got the toothpaste all over the floor. Put it back, Laila.”

  “Hana, please stop crying,” my mother pleaded in the background.

  “Why are you crying?” my father asked me.

  “I wanna go bye-bye with you—I wanna go bye-bye with you!”

  “Me and Mommy are going on the airplane to China and Hong Kong. We can’t take you, but we’re going to buy you some dolls and toys—we’ll bring them back.”

  “You’ll be back?”

  “Yeah—I’ll be back.”

  “I want to go with you, Daddy. I wanna go bye-bye with you.”

  “Hana, please stop crying. Please stop crying, Hana. I’ll be back—I’ll be right back . . .”

  My father’s career kept him away from home, but after marrying my mother and eventually retiring from boxing, although he still traveled, Dad had more time to spend with us.

  “Hana, I’m going to go eat. Do you want to come with me?”

  “Come on, Laila, hurry up,” my mother called in the background. “Go eat with Daddy.”

  “Now I’m going downstairs to eat breakfast,” he said into the recorder. “Hana wants me to pick her up. Okay, Daddy’s got you . . . Why are you crying, Hana?” he asked again, carrying me into the kitchen with him.

  “I wanna go bye-bye—I wanna go bye-bye!”

  At the kitchen table, he spoke into the recorder. “I’m trying to eat and Hana wants to sit on my lap.”

  “I want some bacon,” I said.