Just as I Am: A Memoir

by Cicely Tyson

  “Why are you laughing, Mom?” I’d ask.

  “Child,” she’d whisper as she pulled another nut from the bag, “I am laughing at my own calamities.”

  As Mom rocked herself back and forth, I now imagine she was tucking away her sorrows, relegating them to the farthest corner of her heart, concealing them the way she did her Mu-ma’s bills in those barrels. Dosha, the shy island girl, must have been secretly weeping over the abuse she withstood. But Fredericka, the immovable oak with three children whose survival rested upon her courage, kept much of her agony hidden.

  4

  Transitions

  I WAS nine the autumn my world cracked into two. One early morning in 1934, I awakened still a child. When the sun closed its eyes on that day, my girlhood, like a fragile vase, had toppled from a table ledge and smashed onto the floor.

  The previous year, the pungent smell of my father’s adultery had drifted into our church. Dad began secretly carrying on with a woman who shared our pews, and from the onset of the liaison, Mom had sniffed it out. For months, she insisted that my father end the affair, and for months, he ignored her. One Saturday evening, Dad stomped up our stairs, raring to go for one of his and my mother’s usual rounds of acrimony. The next afternoon, Mom got the last deafening word in their argument.

  After service, Emily and I stepped outdoors and into an altercation. There, at the foot of the church stairs, my mother was right in the face of the Other Woman. “I want peace in my household!” Mom screamed with such force that a shower of spittle landed on the woman’s cheeks. Melrose watched from nearby, holding my mother’s hat and pocketbook amid the group of church members who’d huddled to witness the feud. “Get away from my husband and my family!” my mother yelled. I cannot recall whether the woman had been in church with us that day, but I will always remember what occurred next.

  Melrose, out of an instinct to defend our mom, picked up a pebble and threw it at the woman’s leg. The shouting ceased. A second later, the scene stirred back to life when Emily and I barreled down the stairs, collected several rocks from the ground, and hurled them at the woman’s back. “Get away from our mother!” I squealed in unison with Emily. My mom, perhaps emboldened by our show of solidarity, resumed her shouting and added shoving. The woman pushed back. That’s when Reverend Byron came outside and leaped toward them.

  “Calm down!” he said, attempting to pry them apart. Mom kept on shoving and swinging. “Mrs. Tyson, that’s enough!” the pastor shouted. Once he’d managed to squeeze his body between the two, that lady could hardly stand. She slowly backed away, straightening her blouse and inhaling deeply as she did. I tell you, boy, my mother whipped that woman’s behind. Thank the Lord none of our stones hit her in the head.

  Just as the embers were settling, my father strode out of the church doors. Everyone froze and peered at him, our gazes delivering a judgment that needn’t be uttered. My father had lit this fire, and all those gathered realized it. The rumors of his infidelity were, by then, commonly known, even if rarely acknowledged aloud. Dad was silent. He stood there with shock on his face, stunned that his wife had done something he hadn’t predicted she’d do: allow their marital animosity to ignite into a spectacle. Right there in our spiritual town square, the privately fierce Fredericka had made her grand public debut, intent on defending her honor and her territory. This was more than my father had bargained for, and by his countenance, I knew it had frightened him.

  And yet it did not scare him enough to alter his course. My dad and the woman set aside their relationship for a time, but by that spring, they were back at it. That turned up the heat on my parents’ tension. In the evenings, Dad would sit at our table and share dinner with us. Almost before the last plantain had touched his tongue, he was out the door with hardly a goodbye. Mom realized where he was going. We all did.

  With each passing month, my mother’s resentment rose. She no longer prepared his supper plates. She’d make our dinner, feed us early, and leave the remaining rice and peas on the stove for him to spoon up for himself whenever he came home. She also refused to wash his clothes. She’d throw his soiled shirts in a tin pail and let them soak in water for days, the washboard resting on the pail’s side, beckoning him to pick it up. As Mom saw it, Dad’s dirty laundry, cotton and otherwise, was his alone to deal with.

  One morning when my father was on his way out the door for work, he said to me, “Sis, when you come home from school today, I want you to wash these underwear for me.” He nodded toward the pail overflowing with his long johns, the heavy flannels my mother had sewn for him. On those days when my father set aside his cart to work at painting the Triborough Bridge, his thermals kept out the cold.

  “Yes, Daddy,” I said.

  I had every intention of laundering the underwear. But that afternoon, I got so caught up in my homework that I never made it around to the chore. I climbed into bed with absolutely no memory of what my father had asked me to do.

  Early the next morning, Dad awakened me, Emily, and Melrose. Mom, who had a rare day off from work, was still in her housedress and headscarf.

  “Sister, didn’t I ask you to wash out these underwear for me?!” he shouted.

  “Yes, Daddy,” I said as I rubbed my eyes, “but I forgot.”

  My mother, stone-faced, stared at him from across the living room. Melrose and Emily dropped their eyes to the floor. My hands began to tremor.

  “Well I’m going to show every damn one of you something!” he shouted.

  Daddy tore through the apartment, smashing the washboard in half, knocking over the pail of long johns, emptying Mom’s freshly made stew out of a cast-iron skillet and into the sink. As we looked on in horror, my father stormed into the bedroom and toward a chest of drawers where my mother stashed her earnings. He picked up an iron, propelled its sharpest edge toward the bureau’s top drawer, and punctured the lock with such power that the drawer could no longer be opened.

  Mom said nothing. She was as astounded as we were by my father’s rampage. “Come on, children, get up from here,” she finally urged us. In silence, we put away our rollout as we glanced around our apartment, surveying the damage, calculating the impact on our family. Once we were all dressed, Mom ushered us outside. She took me by one hand, Emily by another, and the three of us walked, alongside Melrose, to my father’s pushcart on Second Avenue. Mr. Taylor, who managed the cart with my father, was already there working.

  “Keep an eye on these children for me,” my mother told him. He read in her eyes that there’d been trouble with Willie, heard the anxiety in her tone. “I’ll be back shortly,” Mom said. He nodded and we gathered near him around the cart as my mother walked off. No one spoke. In my head, I was still trying to make sense of what was unfolding, replaying the reel of Dad’s explosion.

  Mr. Taylor reached into his pocket, pulled out a quarter, and handed it to Melrose. He’d sensed Mom’s desperation and wanted to help our family, in some small way, financially. That gave enterprising Melrose an idea. Just as he’d done so often when he was out working the cart with my father, my dear brother scurried off to the corner store and returned with two enormous armfuls of brown paper shopping bags. He’d talked the merchant into selling him the bags for half a cent each, with the hope that we could resell them for a profit.

  “You might be able to get two cents apiece for these,” said Mr. Taylor as he inspected the square bags, clearly pleased with my brother’s initiative. “Let’s go out and see how we do.” Melrose handed each of us a stack.

  We made our way up Second Avenue, offering bystanders our wares. “Two cents a bag!” Melrose yelled. Within minutes, he’d sold three. Emily and I, initially glued to Mr. Taylor’s side, sold a few as well. As the sidewalks swelled with passersby on their way to work, we eventually decided to divide up so we could cover more territory. Melrose and Emily wandered up the avenue together. Mr. Taylor kept me in sight from across the street. Near the corner of 105th, a middle-aged white man strolled by.


  “Mister,” I said shyly, “care to buy a bag for two cents?” I held up a bag.

  He looked first at the bag, and then he lowered his eyes onto my bustline. His lips spread into an eerie grin. “No,” he leaned in and whispered as he ogled my chest, “but I will give you five cents for it if you let me touch your breasts.”

  I dropped the bags. With adrenaline surging through me, I scrambled to the ground and gathered the totes into a jumbled heap. I darted away, escaping across the street to reunite with Mr. Taylor. The man went on about his business, looking back at me over his shoulder as he walked off.

  “Everything all right?” said Mr. Taylor, who’d seen me dropping the bags.

  “Yes,” I lied.

  “Was that man bothering you?” he asked.

  I shook my head from side to side as my insides screamed otherwise.

  At nine, I was still quite skinny. But developmentally, I was ahead of schedule: my breasts had come in early. Still, they couldn’t have been any bigger than apricots. And yet on my petite frame, they appeared to be the size of peaches that this man believed were his to pick. I hadn’t yet begun wearing bras, had only my shirt as a barrier between my chest and that man’s animalistic gaping. As he’d undressed me with his eyes, my knees buckled, my spirit revolted. It was the first time I’d ever been approached in a sexual manner. It was the last time I felt truly safe. With his hungry gaze, this stranger had stolen from me a sense of security. That is what violation does: it wrenches away one’s God-given freedom to exhale, to feel relaxed and unguarded in this world. You don’t have to be physically touched to be emotionally robbed.

  For the rest of that morning, I stayed two inches from Mr. Taylor’s elbow. Down the avenue and back we walked, holding up our bags as I prayed inwardly for my dear mother. I felt fearful about continuing, but I knew Mom needed our help. We stayed out on that street for three hours, until every one of our fifty bags was sold, earning us a one-dollar return on Mr. Taylor’s twenty-five-cent investment.

  Before dusk, Mom arrived at the cart to pick us up. Mr. Taylor presented her with the dollar as he proudly told her about my brother’s resourcefulness. She thanked Mr. Taylor and Melrose profusely and we left. But instead of returning to our apartment, Mom led us to Ninety-Eighth Street and Third Avenue. We stopped at a building marked 234 East Ninety-Eighth.

  Mom led us up a rickety staircase to an apartment on the fourth floor. She pulled out a large silver key, turned it inside the lock, and pushed opened the heavy wooden door. Emily, Melrose, and I darted into the two-bedroom space, peering at our possessions scattered across the living room and wondering how they’d gotten there. Mom rested her pocketbook on the radiator and said to us, “This is our new home.”

  True to Mom’s nature, she let a decade pass before she told me all the distress that day had held for her. After leaving us with Mr. Taylor, she returned to our apartment. By then, my father had gone off someplace. Mom yanked up the bottom corner of her mattress, dug into an open slit she’d made with her sewing scissors, and fished out the wad of cash she’d been hiding there for months. She counted out $500. She then dashed to the corner store and purchased some boxes. Back in our apartment, she singlehandedly packed up the few things we owned. Near the doorway, she stacked her boxes alongside her sewing machine, our beds, and the broken bureau. She did not touch my father’s things. Over the next hour, she walked all over our area in search of vacancy signs. She discovered one at 234 and inquired about it. The landlord offered Mom a price she could afford for a place that would still be within walking distance of our school. Within hours of my father’s fit of rage, she’d put down a deposit on our new lives.

  Once she’d secured the apartment, Mom went to see Reverend Byron. “I’m leaving Willie,” is all she said, her speech steady. He nodded in recognition, requiring no explanation beyond the steadfastness etched on her face. The Reverend offered her one of his moving vans, as well as some extra hands. Soon after, he and several deacons arrived at our apartment and helped my mother load up everything. As they hauled boxes, my father returned home. He stood in the doorway and gaped at the scene before him.

  “The children and I are leaving,” my mother said plainly. “I’ve already found a new apartment.” He did not attempt to stop her, nor did he question her choice. And particularly in the presence of Reverend Byron, whom my dad respected, he did not dare argue. He knew by Mom’s sternness, that nothing he could say would change her trajectory. He could sense her resolve, could feel his own fault in the matter. He gathered his belongings and packed them, and then he poked through Mom’s boxes to be sure none of his effects had been inadvertently mixed in with ours.

  To this moment, I am in awe of how my mom made it through that day. Please don’t tell me anything about Black women, about our extraordinary fortitude and resilience, because I know precisely who we are. Beneath the burdensome weights of abuse and degradation, my mother straightened her spine, summoned the strength of God and her ancestors, and bravely stepped ahead. She felt as frightened as any woman would, felt her stomach climbing into her throat. But when circumstances called on her to rise, she answered with nary a quake in her voice.

  By jamming that lock on the bureau, my father thought he’d rendered my mother financially helpless. But never once during their relationship was he able to rupture her resourcefulness. Like so many in our world do, my father gravely underestimated a Black woman’s ingenuity. He hadn’t counted on Mom creating a second stockpile of cash, just as he hadn’t anticipated she’d teach the Other Woman a lesson amid a whirlwind of dust. And what had been true on that autumn day was undeniable on this one: my mother had had enough. That morning, Dad had unleashed an inferno that prompted Mom to move her children out of his destructive path. Without realizing it, my father had crossed a red line of demarcation, the one labeled Maternal Instinct. And when he blazed his way out our front door, my mother found a way to march us through a new one. That is power. That is tenacity. That is an oak.

  Our father showed up at the new apartment that evening. How did he know we were here? I wondered as he casually entered. He must have seen the question in my eyes because he said, “Sis, I came to put a new lock on the door.” My mother had been the one to give him our address and had even asked him to come and install our old lock on the new door. Her intent hadn’t been to ban him from our lives, only to put some distance between their children and his tirades. I wonder if he is going to stay here, I thought. Maybe they made up. They hadn’t. But they did put a peace treaty in place. Dad would be present in our world. He just wouldn’t permanently reside with us. After leaving our old apartment that morning, he’d rented his own place a few streets away.

  As Dad unscrewed the lock, his hands shook ever so slightly. Tears welled up in his eyes and threatened to escape. He was absolutely broken. He knew he was to blame, that his womanizing had provoked the rift. In the following years, Mom would often say that the Other Woman had splintered our home, that she’d created so much misery for our family. But in the quietest chambers of their hearts, my mom and dad must have known the reality. That woman spotted a crack in my parents’ connection, a fissure that had been forming for quite some time. She simply slid her way into a deep crevice that was already in existence. My dad had been the one most culpable for fracturing our family. On that Sunday when we children cast our stones, we struck just one of the two Goliaths. My father, the taller and more accountable giant of the pair, initially went untouched.

  I lingered near my dad’s side as he installed the lock. When he finished, he leaned in close to me and whispered, “I threw away all the things your mother used to beat you with.” During the long months of his latest affair, Mom’s tongue had dripped with more and more venom. When she called me Father Face, she did so with a sneer. Given how much I resembled my dad, as well as how much my mom detested his unfaithfulness, my dad feared I’d pay a blistering price in the coming years whenever my appearance reminded my mother of his. S
o when Mom’s back had been turned that morning, he’d removed some wooden hangers and extension cords from her boxes. He also took her jump ropes. If I, Emily, or Melrose disobeyed our mother, she’d sometimes sit on the edge of her bed and braid three of those ropes together as she warned, “This is for you.”

  I didn’t know what to think about my father’s attempt to spare me a beating. In one respect, I was relieved that Mom would have fewer weapons to use against me. But in another regard, I understood it was my dad’s conduct, not my mother’s belt, that had created this upheaval in our home. His comment left me feeling as if I were somehow in the middle, just as I’d been on all those nights when I’d crammed my body between theirs, begging them to surrender. And from my place at the center, I vacillated between my tremendous love for my father and my anger at his behavior.

  After Dad had gone, Melrose set up our pullout. Until Mom bought each of us a bed, that is where we slept. As the sun set on the most painful pivot of my childhood, I lay there quietly weeping next to Emily. Much as I knew my father’s affairs were the true reason for our family’s dissolution, I also felt deeply responsible. I had been the one to forget about what my father had asked me to do, had been the child who’d left his underwear sitting in that pail, soaked with water, heavy with enough proverbial kerosene to spark flames. It was my forgetfulness that had catapulted him into the fury that overturned our world. However untrue I now know that is, it is what I felt as a girl.