Just as I Am: A Memoir

by Cicely Tyson

  The final unraveling of our vows came not long after the Pope had cupped his hand over my head. Miles’s insistence on sleeping with a woman right under my nose became too much for me. There’d always been women, of course, as far back as when Miles had been fooling with Betty the first time we were together. The difference, at this point, was that she lived in my building. I spotted her often, prancing her tail in and out of the front door like she owned Fifth Avenue. I’d somehow been able to tolerate the stench of Miles’s philandering from afar, but up close, its intense odor choked me. And the fact that she was a white woman, one twenty-five years younger than Miles, made the smell of the adultery all the more pungent. I knew I had to escape, and one afternoon in late 1987, an exit door appeared.

  Miles was in our bedroom getting dressed to go out and meet with some business colleagues, he’d told me. He stared in the mirror at himself, primping over that hair of his, or at least someone’s. His own hairline had been receding for years, and Miles, then in his early sixties, had taken to getting weaves. He’d spend hours having his hairdresser, Finney, install them, and he insisted that every strand be in place. That hair meant the world to him. Just as he left the bedroom and rounded his way into the living room, a piece of paper fell from his pocket. He didn’t notice it. When he went back into the bedroom, I reached down and picked it up. It was a note from the woman in my building. In it, she asked Miles to meet her at such-and-such address at such-and-such time that evening. I folded the paper in half, slid it under the lamp, and sat down on the sofa to gather myself. Moments later, Miles rounded the corner back into the living room.

  “Cic, did you happen to see a paper I dropped?” he asked. I stared at him without blinking. “I have that business meeting tonight,” he went on, “and the folks I’m supposed to meet wrote down their address for me. I can’t find it.” I remained mute. “Cic, if you’ve seen it,” Miles continued, his voice rising by the syllable, “I really need it.”

  I finally shook my head from left to right. “No,” I said, “I haven’t seen any note.”

  “Are you sure?” he pressed. “I mean, I think it fell on the floor over here, and I need to have it.” I stood up from the couch.

  “Miles Davis, don’t bother me tonight,” I snapped. “I don’t have any note. And if I did have it, I would be foolish to give it to you.”

  That’s what started the tussle. “Give me the damn note,” he shouted, lunging toward me. I backed up.

  “I’m not giving you anything,” I sneered. “Why don’t you go out and meet your woman? You know where to meet her. Y’all been meeting up all of this time, haven’t you? Why do you suddenly need an address? If you want to go out and have the woman, then go out and have the woman. That’s your choice. But please do not treat me like I’m too dumb to know what’s happening!”

  I charged into the bedroom, put on my shoes and coat, and reached for my pocketbook, intending to step outside and wedge some air between us. When I opened the front door, Miles grabbed my wrist. “Where do you think you’re going?!” he yelled. I wrenched my wrist free and put my hand back on the knob.

  “That’s none of your business,” I spat. “You’ve got your date, I’ve got mine.”

  He reached for me again, and this time, I snatched him by the back of his hair weave. “Don’t touch me!” I shouted. Well honey, he got to twisting and turning, and the more he tugged his head back and forth, trying to pry himself loose, the tighter I held on. By the time he struggled free, I was holding a whole bushel of his weave in my right hand. I hurled it onto the ground, marched out the door, and slammed it shut.

  I’m not sure whether Miles met up with the woman that evening, but I suspect that he didn’t. Vanity likely kept him indoors, because let me tell you, that man was preoccupied with his appearance in every regard. No way would he allow himself to be spotted around town with a big bald spot in the back of his head. By the time I returned home after a long, tearful walk up Fifth Avenue, those five tracks of weave were still strewn on the floor. Miles was sitting in the kitchen, waiting to kick up more dust. He stood from his chair when I entered. “You pulled out my hair!” he shouted. I gazed at him as a mischievous grin spread over my face. “Oh, I did?” is all I said, although what I wanted to shout was, “Well you can go out and buy yourself some more!” Neither of us said anything else about the incident or the state of our relationship. I felt no need to drape words on the hanger of inevitability. The marriage had long since been over. That was obvious. All that had to be sorted was when we’d make it official.

  A few days following Weave-gate, Miles told some journalist that I’d pulled out his hair, while he of course left out the details of what stirred the skirmish. He sought sympathy. He wanted the world to know that this woman, this Cicely Tyson that some perhaps deemed an innocent lady, had attacked him. What nonsense. Because if Miles hadn’t tried to block me in that doorway, I never would’ve touched a strand of his precious locks. By grabbing my wrist, and then by writhing himself all around, he’d pulled out his own hair, just like he’d unspooled the final fibers of our vows. And also, he should’ve kept his mouth shut. Why would you go around telling folks you’ve got a plug in your head, prompting them to try and spot it? At one point, I heard Miles saying to someone on the phone, “Do you know how much I paid for that weave? And she just snatched it right off of my head!” I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cringe, which is why I did both.

  At the start of 1988, a month or so after our literal tug of war, I still hadn’t fully left Miles. That changed on one morning when, as I was entering the kitchen at Miles’s brownstone to blend up my greens, he said something snarky to me. I don’t remember what devilishness tumbled off his tongue, and frankly, I don’t care to recall. Without a word, I made my way upstairs, picked up my pocketbook, went out to Miles’s guilt gift of a Rolls-Royce, and drove to a friend’s place. I never returned to Miles’s home. That same year, I filed for divorce. Miles, who’d foolishly convinced himself that nothing he could do would wrench me from his side, reeled upon receiving the papers, or so I heard from his friend Finney. Miles eventually rang me.

  “Cic, I need to see you,” he said with more rasp in his voice than usual. “Can you meet me?” I reluctantly agreed, though I refused to have him at my place. We met instead in a dimly lit café, in a private booth at the rear. Miles leaned in over the table and spoke softly. “Cic, I don’t want a divorce,” he whispered. My gaze dropped to the table and then traveled back up to his hollow expression. “I want us to stay together—but just no sex,” he said. I sat all the way back in the booth, the brute force of his words striking me in my chest. In the months since I’d last seen Miles, I’d heard the talk of his health status. Word at the salon was that he’d contracted HIV. In fact, though the US press hadn’t broadcast that news widely, it was all over Europe that he’d sought treatment there. He’d apparently begun a course of AZT, the antiretroviral drug then used to treat HIV and AIDS.

  Rumors also swirled that Miles and his longtime male hairdresser, Finney, were lovers. Frankly, I’d heard that gossip for years and had tuned it out for just as many, in hindsight because believing it would’ve crushed me beyond repair. Denial became my iron shield, the breastplate I kept securely over my heart. As Miles sat there across from me, with sunken eyes and a skeletal frame, I didn’t quite know what to believe. Two things, however, were certain. First, if Miles was asking for us to be together minus all physical intimacy—and as I see it, a union without lovemaking does not a marriage make—he must’ve believed he was infected with something lethal. And second, he clearly respected me enough to protect me from whatever that was. I stared at him as I squelched tears, though one escaped down my cheek. Before the floodgates could swing open, I stood, retrieved my pocketbook, and walked swiftly from the restaurant without a word. That was the last time I ever saw Miles Davis.

  Barbara Warren, a friend so close to me that folks thought we were sisters, happened to know the transcriber
who was working on Miles’s autobiography. For months before our final meeting, Miles had been relaying his life story on tape, speaking in glowing terms about how I’d resurrected him to life, how I’d nursed him back onto his horn and kept him from annihilating himself. According to Miles, said the transcriber to Barbara, I was the greatest woman who’d ever walked across the planet, a towering beacon of compassion and warmth. Well honey, the day after I met with Miles in that café, I became Cruella de Vil. He apparently tore up his initial transcripts and dramatically altered his characterization of me. It pained him that I would not reverse the divorce process, that I’d refused the pitiful pact he’d extended. He absolutely did not think I’d ever leave him. The truth is, years before I ended our vows, he’d long since given up on both our union and himself. The divorce papers simply formalized his betrayal.

  When Miles’s book was published in 1989, I never read it, though I heard that, unsurprisingly, he had some not-so-pleasant words to say about me. Miles was clearly concerned about how I’d react to what we both knew were lies, because the second that volume hit bookstores, he started calling my friend Barbara, who also knew him well. For weeks, he rang her morning, noon, and night, leaving messages asking whether I’d read the book. He even called me. I did not answer, nor did Barbara. I had said everything I needed to say since that day, in 1965, when I’d first spotted him on a bench in Riverside Park. Twenty-three years is plenty long enough to clear one’s throat and speak. Soon after the memoir’s publication, Miles’s daughter, Cheryl, came backstage to see me following one of my performances. “Have you read Father’s book?” she asked. “Why would I do that?” I said. I didn’t need to read a book to know what was true. I lived it. And no written account could fully capture what I know happened between the two of us.

  And I know this: I loved Miles and he loved me. At age ninety-six I still have many questions about this life, but of that fact I am certain. In the same imperfect way that my father and mother cared for one another, in the same lopsided manner in which hostility and devotion can live side by side, Miles and I found deep connection, however flawed our union was. The final declaration of Miles’s care for me came in the shadows of a café neither of us had ever frequented, in a conversation he’d never dreamed we’d have. “I want us to stay together—but just no sex,” his gravelly voice had whispered. And though his words had pierced me on that evening, they also strangely became my salve in the following years. When all was said and done in our marriage, Miles thought enough of me to shield me from the malevolent forces that had taken him under. I think now that it wasn’t Miles who’d protected me. Rather, it was the Savior, by way of a pontiff’s warm palm, who kept me safe in his care.

  In 1991, Quincy Jones, a dear longtime friend to both Miles and me, told me that Miles was near the end. “I didn’t know he was so sick,” Quincy repeated over the phone, his voice quivering. “I just didn’t know.” Miles’s vital organs were wrecked, just as they’d been in the months before I took him to Dr. Shen. His children and his nephew Vince, along with other close family members, were eventually called to his bedside in Santa Monica. Though I was in California at the time, I had no desire to see Miles in that state, emaciated and struggling for oxygen. That would have tortured me. Barbara went to visit. Just as she was leaving, he motioned for her to draw near him. She leaned down close so she could hear him over the hum of the breathing machines. “Tell Cicely I’m sorry,” he whispered through labored breaths. “Tell her I’m very, very sorry.” Days later, in the fall of 1991, Miles slipped from this life and into the next.

  On the day the world lost Miles, I was at the beauty parlor in New York. While seated in the lobby, waiting for my appointment, a bulletin came over the radio. “We interrupt this broadcast with the news that jazz legend Miles Davis has passed away at St. John’s Hospital near his home in Santa Monica. He was sixty-five.” In silence, I got up and walked out of the salon, which was near my Upper East Side apartment. Just as I was crossing Madison Avenue, I somehow found myself flat out in the middle of the street. I had not tripped or missed a step. And yet there I was, down on the gravel with my heart galloping away. I quickly gathered myself and stumbled to my feet, shaken by what might have been if a car had sped through there. Oh no, Miles Davis, I’m not going with you, I thought as I stood. I wanted you in life, not in death. You chose to leave this place, but I’m not going anywhere. I believed then, as I do now, that Miles aimed to take me with him. And yet three decades later, I am, by God’s mercy, still right here.

  * * *

  While mourning the Last Act between Miles and me, I poured myself into work. In 1988, the year I filed for divorce, I had met Oprah Winfrey. The premiere of Oprah’s national talk show, two years earlier in 1986, had irrevocably altered television’s landscape. The shift came literally overnight. The microphone-wielding Phil Donahue had created the template for talk television, moving hot topics from the couch to the studio stage. Who can forget how Phil raced around his set, eliciting input from his audience, while intermittently shouting, “Caller, are you there?” to those who phoned in. His show, syndicated nationally in 1970, had established a seemingly immovable foothold in the ratings. Well darling, God had another foot in mind, a brown one. Enter Oprah Winfrey, Mississippi born and Spirit led, who took Phil’s blueprint and made it sing soprano. From her very first episode, Oprah bested Donahue in the ratings, welcoming her viewers to a shoes-off, Kleenex-required, purpose-filled conversation that ultimately revolutionized the culture. She grabbed the number one spot in the ratings and held on to it for twenty-five seasons.

  The year Oprah and I first connected, her production company, Harpo, had begun filming The Women of Brewster Place, an ABC miniseries based on the National Book Award–winning novel by Gloria Naylor. The story showcases the nuanced experiences of seven Black women in a dilapidated tenement. Oprah, who played Mattie Michael, the main character, had gathered an ensemble cast of other gifted actors, including Lynn Whitfield, Jackée, Robin Givens, Mary Alice, and Olivia Cole. She asked me to portray Mrs. Browne, the dignified, well-to-do mother of Melanie, Robin Givens’s character. Having read the book, which few could do without weeping, I wholeheartedly said yes.

  It makes me smile now, given the global force for good that Oprah has become, but her body language told me she was a little nervous the first time she saw me on set. By then, she’d delivered a pair of hankie-lifting performances in The Color Purple and Native Son, yet alongside an old-timer like me, she was then a relative neophyte of the stage. When I noticed her slight fidgeting, I chuckled to myself, thinking, I’m the one who oughta be intimidated! Like her daily talk show, the award-winning Brewster resonated with viewers, and it eventually even led to a weekly series. Though I played in the original series, I of course did not view it at the time. Two decades later, I happened to catch it one evening on BET, and mesmerized by the plotline, I cried from start to finish. I called Oprah afterward. “Boy, that Women of Brewster Place was something!” I exclaimed. “What a fabulous piece of work!” The phone line went silent for a moment.

  “You mean you’ve never seen it?” she asked in disbelief.

  “No,” I told her, “but I finally caught the rerun.”

  “Oh, Cicely!” she said, cracking up. What can I tell you? Twenty years late is still better than never.

  My work with Oprah on Brewster was just the start of what has become a cherished sisterhood. For her fiftieth birthday in 2004, I knitted Oprah a special gift, a tapestry rug, with no idea how my creation would spawn one more priceless. Upon receiving my present, Oprah thanked me, while inwardly chiding herself that she’d forgotten to invite me to her birthday luncheon that year. That gave her the idea to ask me over for our own tête-à-tête, a thought that soon prompted another: Why not invite Ruby Dee as well? Next thing Oprah knew, her inkling had flourished into the Legends Weekend, a grand three-day celebration of twenty-five African-American women whose legacies have served as a bridge from past to presen
t. She also invited forty-five “young’uns,” those with the privilege of navigating that overpass. In May 2005, we all gathered at the breathtaking Montecito estate Oprah aptly calls the Promised Land.

  My heart just about burst open with joy that weekend as I reveled in the company of longtime friends—including Diahann Carroll, Ruby Dee, Coretta Scott King, Maya Angelou, and renowned Essence editor in chief Susan L. Taylor—while soaking in the tributes of the young’uns who, in unison, read to us the Pearl Cleage poem “We Speak Your Names.” That Sunday morning on Oprah’s lawn, at a gospel brunch like none I’ve ever attended, BeBe Winans handed the mic to Shirley Caesar, first lady of gospel, and the Holy Ghost showed up and cut a step. Throughout the weekend, Gayle King and Stedman Graham, Oprah’s two mightiest oaks, teased me. “This is all your fault!” they kept saying, laughing as they recounted how my gift had given birth to the grandmama of soirees. For Oprah’s sixtieth a decade later, I moved on from knit work and sent an enormous bouquet of roses, with stems nearly as tall as she is. That blew her away, so much so that she posted a photo on Twitter. “I’ve never seen roses that tall!” she told me.

  Not too long ago, I ran into her and Stedman, Oprah’s rock of nearly four decades, her gentle giant. I tell you, boy, that man must be seven feet tall. “What do you dooooo!?” Stedman said when he saw me, sweeping me up in his wide arms, baffled that I never seemed to age. It’s all about the greens, my dear—thrice daily, blended if you prefer, taken with a side of temerity. That, along with bar pull-ups in my apartment and walks all over Manhattan, keeps my body strong. My bar is right in the doorway of my master bedroom. Soon as I get up in the morning, I do three sets of twenty pull-ups.

  As for preserving my mind, continuing to take roles, well into my nineties, has been my sustaining force. Folks “retire” so they can sit on the couch and watch television while they wait to die. I’ve known several people—six months after they stopped working, so did their hearts. Some form of occupation is necessary for survival. For years, you get up, get dressed, eat breakfast, and work all day. It’s an exercise. What makes you think you can suddenly cease that routine without slipping into senility? You can’t just stop or that’ll be the end of you. I aim to live. Purpose courses through my veins just as surely as artistry does. It’s what gets me out of bed, eager to do my pull-ups, and curious to discover the world anew.